I asked if there was any Lee at Rosie’s house and that was a negatory too.
We took off to go see Rosie’s friend, emergency contact numero uno. He had a house in the Highlands area. Great old houses and bungalows, though Rosie’s friend didn’t live in one that had been renovated. For that matter, he didn’t live in a block that had a single house that had been renovated. Or in a block that had a single house with more than a dozen blades of genuine grass growing in their yards or decent curtains in their windows. It was semi-wasteland.
We knocked to no answer.
We sat in my car and called the house number on my cell phone, no answer.
We scanned the neighborhood and Ally pointed to the end of the block.
We got out of the car and walked to the corner Stop & Stab which had surprisingly not been crushed by the overabundance of Denver’s convenience stores. A guy of Arab descent stood behind the counter.
We walked up to him and he smiled.
“You want gum?” he asked.
“No, we’re…” I started to say.
“Cigarettes? They’re bad for you but I have to sell them or I’ll go bust. Everyone in this neighborhood smokes cigarettes.”
I shook my head and then wondered briefly why Lee smelled like tobacco, I hadn’t seen him smoke since he enlisted.
I noticed Ally staring at me like, “Hello?” and I shook out of my Lee Reverie.
“You know Rosie Coltrane?”
“You’re not buying goods?” the counter man asked, looking both disappointed and defeated.
I couldn’t help myself, he immediately made me sad.
“Yes, mints,” I grabbed a pack of mints and put it on the counter.
He stared at the mints.
I stared at the mints.
Ally stared at the mints.
The mints seemed lonely and the purchase of the mints was not going to do anything to help feed this man’s family.
I put another pack of mints on the counter, followed it with two candy bars and then walked over to the fridge and grabbed two bottles of water and two diet pops.
On the way back to the counter, I grabbed a box of cream-filled, prepackaged cupcakes. I hadn’t had a cupcake in ages.
He happily started ringing up my purchases. “Who are you looking for again?”
“Rosie Coltrane. He works for me and didn’t come into work today and I’m worried,” I lied.
I was a good liar, I’d been doing it since Lee, Ally and I were caught behind the garage trying to smoke leaves when Ally and I were eight and Lee was eleven. I came up with the imaginative excuse that we were thinking about roasting marshmallows but didn’t know how. Malcolm bought it, kids, marshmallows, my cute, angelic smile. It all seemed benign and plausible.
After we got off with just a lecture about fire safety and the danger of matches, Lee tousled my hair.
Happy memories.
“I do not know a man named Rosie. What kind of man has a name like Rosie?”
“Rosey Grier?” Ally tried.
“I don’t know a Rosey Grier either,” the counter man said.
“Football player? Helped catch Sirhan Sirhan?” Ally prompted.
“I don’t follow American football. I know no Sirhan Sirhan. Is he a football player too?”
“No, he assassinated Bobby Kennedy,” Ally explained.
“Oh my gracious! I certainly don’t know of him!” the counter man exclaimed, horrified.
I decided to cut into the history lesson. “Our Rosie doesn’t live around here but his friend does, down and across the street about four houses. His name is Tim Shubert.”
“I know Tim, he buys lots of cheese puffs and frozen pizzas.”
If Tim was a stoner the caliber of Rosie, I had no doubt he bought a lot of cheese puffs and pizzas.
“Rosie’s thin, about five foot six, dirty blond hair, looks a bit like Kurt Cobain but his face isn’t as pointy,” Ally put in.
“I know no Kurt Cobain but I have seen a man of this description with Tim. Is his name really Rosie?”
“Nickname,” I said, “his name is Ambrose.”
“Ambrose is a perfectly fine name. Why does he not call himself Ambrose?”
Ally looked at me.
I decided to ignore that one. Any answer would have to span a generation and a culture gap. I didn’t have it in me today, in less than twenty-four hours, I’d been shot at, physically dragged out of bed and kissed by Lee Nightingale three and a half times (yes, I was counting and the half was the kiss he planted on my neck).
I was a woman on a mission and I didn’t have time to explain a dud name like Ambrose.
“Have you seen him lately, like say, today?” I asked as I paid for my purchase.
“No, not today.”
“Tim?” Ally asked.
“Not Tim either.”
He handed me the bag and I took it, at a loss for what to do next.
“Jeez, Indy. Don’t you read detective novels? You own a bookstore for God’s sake,” Ally hissed and then turned to the store owner.
The counter man smiled huge. “You own a bookstore? I love books. What bookstore do you own?”
“Fortnum’s, on the corner of Bayaud and Broadway,” I answered.