"You know what might come in handy?" I said. "Some handcuffs."
Trixie brightened. "How many pairs you need?"
I held up three fingers.
"I'll get you two regular sets," Trixie said, "and one fur-lined. Don Greenway always liked the soft kind."
Earl and I looked at each other and then at Trixie.
"So he was a client." She shrugged. "But he was a lousy tipper. Fuck him."
Chapter 25
Earl said he had to get dressed and do a couple of things before we headed out. First, I heard him go into the garage, do something with his truck, slam a tailgate, then he wandered past the kitchen door on his way upstairs to put on some clothes. In his absence, I gazed, tiredly, across the table at Trixie and thought how fortunate I was, in my time of trouble, to have a dominatrix and a pot grower to bail me out.
"Thanks for not judging," Trixie said.
"What?"
"Back at my place. I was waiting for the lecture, the inquisition, why are you doing this, what kind of girl, et cetera."
I shrugged. "I'm a bit past being able to point a finger. People in glass houses, you know."
"Yeah, well, if having character flaws disqualifies people from throwing stones, how come there's so much of it going on?"
"I guess people aren't very good at recognizing their own faults. And I'm sure there's much to recommend in your line of work. You get to work from home, you can choose your own hours, and you get to meet a lot of interesting people."
"That's certainly true. And you get to learn a lot about what makes people tick."
"True." I paused. "Like cream cheese."
Trixie smiled. "You don't want to know."
"You're right."
"Things good between you and Sarah? Aside from her thinking you've got a problem with the hydraulics?"
"Yeah, they're good. But after all this comes out, I don't know. This has got nothing on The Backpack Incident, or when I hid her car down the street. I think I've been a bit of an asshole lately. A busybody."
"Well, you're an asshole, there's really no question about that," Trixie said. "But you're a reasonably nice asshole, and I think Sarah's a lucky girl." And then, for reasons I wasn't sure I understood, she looked away.
Earl appeared. He was wearing a Toronto Blue Jays sweatshirt, jeans, and heavy lace-up workboots that hadn't been tied at the top. "You ready?"
I nodded.
He went over to the kitchen drawers, opened the middle one, reached in toward the back, and brought out his gun. "Let's go see if we can solve a few of your problems," he said, tucking it into the top of his pants.
o o o
"Maybe you could go over some of this with me again," Earl said, shoving in the cigarette lighter and waiting for it to pop. "This girl, the one who's dead, was on film boffing this guy?"
"Carpington."
"A councilman? For the town?"
"That's right."
"So, they just liked to record the moment or what?"
"My guess is Carpington was being blackmailed."
"So he finds out, he loses it and kills this girl?"
"It's a motive, but I don't know. He just didn't seem the type. I went to see him earlier tonight, at town hall, and he didn't seem to have it in him."
Earl nodded. The lighter popped and he lit his cigarette. "One thing I've learned, Zack, is that people are often not what they seem. They can surprise you."
I thought of Trixie. And, for that matter, Earl. Both of them ended up being in lines of work that had caught me off guard.
Earl slipped the gun out of his pants and slid it across the seat toward me. "Hold that and get a feel of it."
I took the gun in my right hand, startled, initially, by how heavy it was.
"See that little thing there, the safety? Make sure it stays set that way so you don't shoot your nuts off. But if you think you're going to have to use it, you move it" - he reached over - "like that."
"Got it," I said. I put the safety back on, slid the gun back across the seat. "Maybe you should be the guy who uses this. And I'll ask the questions."
"Sounds good to me," said Earl, holding his cigarette between his lips as he turned the ignition. "Where we going?"
"Last time I saw Greenway and Company they were headed to the sales office. That was more than an hour ago, but they might still be there."
"Why don't we troll on by," he said, rolling the truck out of the garage and slipping back out momentarily to close the garage door. We turned left on Chancery and drove to the entrance to the Valley Forest Estates, where the sales office was set up.
"Drive by once," I said.
Earl slowed only slightly as we passed the office. Out front were Carpington's Cadillac and Greenway's Lincoln.
"Looks like Rick isn't there," I said with some sense of relief. "I don't see his car around. He may still be looking for me. I think he thinks I have the ledger."
Earl did a U-turn at the next intersection and came back slowly. "Whose car is whose?"
"The Caddy is Carpington's, and the Lincoln is Greenway's."