“Well, for one thing, this.” I slid the ledger book across the table at her.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Well, you’re the accountant. Maybe you can tell me.”
She opened the book. Her nails were long and bloodred, and I found that I felt just a bit feverish. Where her robe opened I could see the swell of her breasts, pushed up and out, courtesy of the spectacularly engineered corset.
“Let’s have a look. List of payments, money coming in, some names here. Wow, I think I recognize this guy. He’s a building inspector, comes here sometimes, likes to play doctor.”
“Okay.”
“So he’s getting paid five hundred every, it looks like, every week or so. And here’s another name I recognize. Carpington?”
“Roger. He’s a client, too?”
“No, I just recognize the name. From the paper.”
“He’s a town councilman. How much is he getting?”
“Well, right here he’s getting five thou.” She thumbed the pages. “His name pops up a lot, but it’s just one of dozens. Zack, where did you get this?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I’ve got time,” she said, leaning back in her chair and crossing her booted legs.
“Sarah and I were shopping,” I said, and went through the whole thing. Taking the wrong purse, trying to return it, finding Stefanie Knight’s body, getting tracked down by Rick, the meeting with Carpington, the episode at the construction site. Trixie said barely a word, taking it all in, nodding slowly.
I finished with finding the ledger in Stefanie’s car, and Rick’s destruction of mine out front of McDonald’s.
“You’re in some kind of deep shit,” Trixie said, running her tongue across her top teeth.
“Yes,” I said. “That’s a fairly good assessment of the situation. Thank you.”
“Listen, don’t get snippy with me. Did I tell you to take Sarah’s purse to teach her a lesson?”
“No. Did I mention that, in addition to everything else that’s happened tonight, she thinks I’m impotent?”
“No, I think you left that part out. Are you? I could check.”
“She wanted to, you know, spend some time with me tonight, before she went to work, but it’s a bit hard to concentrate when you think the police might be looking for you and charging you with murder. I think maybe it’s time to go to the police.”
Trixie thought about that. “How did you get here, if your car’s blown up?”
“Stefanie’s car. Her Beetle. I parked it one block over.”
“So you not only stole her purse, but now you have her car? That’ll look good to the police. You’re not wearing her underwear, too, are you?”
I hadn’t thought about the incriminating aspect of driving Stefanie’s car all around town. I did not, it occurred to me, have the makings of a master criminal.
“But if I don’t go to the police,” I said, “how’m I going to protect myself from this Rick guy? He’s a total nutjob. He killed that Spender guy down in the creek, probably killed Stefanie, and he’s wandering around town with a python in his trunk.”
Trixie blinked. “Does Sarah know anything about any of this?”
I shook my head. “She’s noticed me acting kind of weird, but no. And she won’t be coming home from work until morning, she’s doing the night shift, and I farmed the kids out to friends’ houses.”
“You need some kind of backup,” she said. “You have a gun or anything?”
“Are you kidding? Do I look like someone who owns a gun? I don’t even know anyone who owns a-” I stopped.
“What?” Trixie said.
“I do know one person. Who owns a gun. Someone who owes me a favor. Someone who might let me borrow it.”
“DO YOU KNOW WHAT TIME it is?” Earl said when he opened his front door to me and Trixie. She’d changed out of her work clothes and into some jeans and a T-shirt, and had gone out of her house first, making sure there was no sign of Rick or anyone else at my house two doors down, then waved for me to join her. I ran across the street in a flash, ducked into some bushes as Trixie rang Earl’s bell.
“Let us in,” Trixie said. “Zack needs your help.”
“Where’s Zack?”
“He’s the one here, in the bushes. Turn off your front light.”
Earl was dressed in checkered boxers and a sweatshirt. He padded barefoot into the kitchen, where he found a pack of cigarettes and lit up.
“What the fuck’s going on?” he said, running his hand over his shaved head. He looked nervous. “You told, didn’t you?” he said, looking at me. “You told the cops about my business. How long before they get here?”
“I didn’t do anything like that,” I said.
“Did you tell that wife of yours? Did she call them?”
“That would be Sarah,” I said. “And no. I didn’t tell her. I’m here to ask a favor.”
Earl squinted. “A favor?”
“I need a gun,” I said. “I want to borrow your gun.”
“Forget it.”
“Earl, I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. There are people looking for me tonight, and until I sort a few things out, I need some protection.”
Earl glowered at me. “You ever owned a gun?”
“No.”
“You ever fired a gun?”
“Not exactly, no.”
“Zack, you ever even held a gun?”
I tried to think. Did toy guns count? And what about the G.I. Joe figures and accessories I’d had as a kid? Did that count for something?
“I guess, technically, no. All my shooting has been with a camera.”
“And what the hell do you need a gun for anyway? How many enemies does a guy make writing space stories?”
“Come on, Earl. Don’t you owe me one? Did I make a call to Detective Flint after I left here the other day?”
Earl shook his head. “Look, I appreciate that. But what you’re asking, I don’t know.”
“Maybe you’re going to have to explain,” Trixie said.
And so I started in all over again, for the second time in the last hour and a half, although I gave him the
“So I wanted to return it, and check the driver’s license, and it was a woman named Stefanie Knight, who works over at Valley Forest Estates.”
Earl turned away, shaking his head, and reached for a beer from the fridge.
“So I was trying to track her down, and left my name and e-mail address at her mother’s place, and then this psycho named Rick comes looking for me, wanting what’s in this purse, which at first I thought was all this money, but that turned out to be counterfeit, and then I figured it was this film-”
“Film?”
“A roll of film. Of Stefanie Knight and this councilman in the sack.”
“What councilman?”
I told him. “But it turns out Rick and his boss, Greenway, wanted something more than just the film, they were after this ledger.” I indicated it, on the table, as if I was pointing to Exhibit #1.
“So they’re after you for this ledger?”
“Yeah, that, and I sort of pissed off Rick, hitting him in the head.”
Earl sat down, alternating puffs of cigarette and swigs of beer. “You hit him in the head.”
