CHAPTER 27
We returned to Uretsky’s neighborhood the very next day, arriving exactly one hour later than the time we saw Ruth out walking Bucky, the psycho-sniffing dog. We didn’t want her to think we were stalkers—which, of course, we were. We sat in Ziggy, just like a couple of private dicks on a stakeout. We were parked directly across from the little yellow house with the crooked green shutters. Unlike the Uretskys’ house, the garage here was attached, and a structure was built on top of it, too, an addition of some sort.
“What are you going to do if you see him?” Ruby asked.
Ruby rested her hand on my leg. I loved the feel of her touch, though it made me miss our more playful and more naked touching sessions. One look and I could tell that Ruby was missing them, too.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You don’t know! That’s your plan?”
“I just want to see him.”
“And then what?”
“Then I think I’ll know if he’s involved in some way.”
“Now you, Ruth, and Bucky all have the sixth sense?”
“Wasn’t that about seeing dead people?”
Ruby punched me in the arm. “This isn’t funny, John. Ruth thinks Carl had something to do with Uretsky’s disappearance. He could be dangerous.”
“Tell me this, then. If the Uretskys have disappeared, how is it we’re being terrorized by Elliot Uretsky?”
“So why are we even here?”
“Because what else do we have to go on? Maybe Swain saw something during his Peeping Tom sessions. Something that could help lead us to Uretsky.”
Ruby couldn’t argue that point, or she could but didn’t feel like arguing, so we went back to waiting.
I broke a minute of silence by asking, “Do you want to play twenty questions?”
Ruby shot me an annoyed look. “No, I don’t want to play twenty questions,” she said. “I want to go home, and by home, I mean to the apartment you rented to a couple of Spanish-speaking professors.”
“I just want to wait a little longer,” I said, kissing Ruby on the cheek. “I love you.”
“You better,” Ruby said before giving me a quick kiss on the lips.
We returned to silence. Twenty or thirty minutes later my cell phone rang. It was Clegg calling—or returning my call, to be more precise.
“Hey, David,” I said. “Thanks for getting back to me.”
Ruby looked at me, shaking her head in dismay. “I have a sixth sense, too, you know,” she said.
“Sorry I wasn’t around yesterday,” Clegg said. “What’s up?”
I could tell that his “Sorry I wasn’t around yesterday” was code for “I was preparing for a climbing expedition.” Sensitive guy he was, he knew better than to tell me.
“Remember that LEAPS thing, or whatever you used to look up information on Uretsky?” I said.
“Sure,” he said.
“Can you look up somebody else for me?” I asked.
“A buddy of Uretsky’s?” Clegg asked, not missing a beat.
“Something like that,” I said.
“Sure thing. Give me the name and address.”
I gave him Carl Swain’s name and Carl’s address.
“I’ll check the Triple I, too,” Clegg said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Interstate Identification Index. It’s basically Google for criminal history.”
“Sounds good,” I said.
“It’ll take a bit, so I’ll call you back,” Clegg said.
“Good again.”
“Kiss your lovely bride for me,” he said.
“With pleasure,” I said. I got out of the car.
“Stretching?” Ruby asked.
“I’m going to take a look around.”
“I’m coming with you,” Ruby said, reaching for the door handle.
“No. Stay in the car. I’ll be less conspicuous alone.”
“No, you’ll be just as conspicuous,” Ruby said. “But maybe it’s better if I stay and keep a lookout. Make sure your cell is on. I’ll text you if I see anything to be worried about.”
I nodded, leaned forward, and kissed Ruby, as Clegg suggested, and away I went.
Twice, I walked past the front of the house feeling, just as Ruby had predicted, completely and ridiculously conspicuous. It looked like one of those homes without any lights on during Halloween—the kind you’d scurry right past because on the night when bogeymen were most real, this was the exact sort of place they’d like to congregate. The windows were dark and dirty; sprigs of weeds came shooting up through cracks in the front step bricks. The lawn, more brown than green, looked mostly dead, and while some lovely pots filled with dirt were set out front, the plants within them were nothing but thin sticks with black leaves. In another bit of creepy construction, there were no windows on the extension built on top of the single-car garage that was connected to the side of the house.
It looked like nobody was home, but I knocked on the front door, anyway, just to check. No answer. I tried the doorbell. It didn’t work. So I cut across the forgotten lawn and stood close enough to Ziggy to get Ruby’s attention. “I’m going to check out back,” I said in a half whisper.
Ruby rolled down her window. “What?” she asked loudly.
Now it was my turn to shoot her an annoyed look. “I’m going to check out back,” I said, speaking in my normal voice. I gave up trying to not appear conspicuous. It was obvious that we were both lacking in the detecting department.
“Be careful and keep your phone on,” she said.
The back of the house, like the Uretskys’, proved to be as ugly as the front. A dilapidated trampoline with one leg missing took up a good portion of the postage-stamp lawn. Rusty toolboxes were strewn about with no tools inside—none that I could see, anyway. The trees were cut down to stumps, and the stone birdbath next to one of them, cracked and ugly, held brown, dirty rainwater. The lawn was a dead patch of dirt where nothing, not even weeds, would grow. The basement door had a window covered by a curtain, and the other windows out back were too high for me to see inside without a stepladder.
I did a three-sixty and got the same feeling Ruth Shane had expressed the day before. The place felt poisoned.
I’d decided it was time for me to head back to Ziggy when my phone buzzed. I looked and saw a text message from Ruby. Some of the words were misspelled, but the content of her message told me that she had sent her text in great haste.
Woman wiith gunn run!