“I’ve lost you, dude.”
“Pay attention. These guys come down here and get lucky. They find a diary, a map, a letter.”
“And?”
“We’d be better off to find
James had a point. It came from his lazy nature, but he had a point.
“So, Mrs. Trueblood says that their website is down. Their phone has been disconnected.”
“And?”
“Pull out our computer, my friend.”
I took it from the bag.
“Check it out.” He pointed to a small sign on the wall. “Free Wi-Fi.”
“James,” the guy seemed oblivious to the facts, “they’ve vanished. These two detectives no longer exist.”
“Google Yellow Pages.”
I did.
“Now, in the search box, type in AAAce Investigations.”
I did.
“So, what did you find?”
“A site.”
“Ah, grasshopper, but not a personal website. They’ve taken that one down. But, they probably didn’t take down sites from some reviewers. Am I right? Tell me I’m right.”
“Yeah, of course. You’re always right, James.” He wasn’t. But in this case-
“Click on the one that says photos.”
I studied the options.
“How the hell did you know there would be-”
“Click it.”
I did.
“Pictures, right?”
There were. I nodded. It was a Yellow Page ad that was still posted.
“Ah, I knew it. Ego guys. What do
“
“Do you see? No ego.” He drained his bottle, banging it on the table.
No money. That’s what it boiled down to. James had ego. Trust me. If we’d had the money, James would be front and center in all the Yellow Page ads. Oh, my friend James had ego.
“Can we print this? Get a feeling for who these guys are? I want to know it when we run into them.”
“We can print it back at the,” I hesitated as the word made both of us smile, “resort.”
We laughed out loud.
“Resort. Okay. Let’s view the enemy. Hopefully we’ll recognize them.”
They stared at us from our computer screen, names under their photographs. Two guys not much older than we were. Weezle had a stubble of beard and a
The body copy in the photo ad read as follows.
“It doesn’t say where they are, James.”
“No, but we know who they are.”
I studied the faces. Two guys who had enough money to buy a Yellow Page ad. It was impressive. We didn’t have a boat. We didn’t have a-
“Skip, look at that ad again.”
“I just did. We’ve got a car. Mine. It may not be worth much, but we’ve got a car.”
“We’ve got a truck.” James nodded his head.
“But we don’t have a boat.”
“No,” James agreed, “and we don’t have a motorcycle.”
“But-”
“But, amigo, somebody ripped by us today on a motorcycle. And I’ve been thinking ever since that-”
“Yeah. That the guy on the motorcycle spattered the paint on the truck. Same thought, James.”
“Excuse me.” She came out of nowhere.
We both looked up and were surprised at the attractive woman approaching our table. She didn’t appear to be a waitress.
“What can we do for you?” Charming James.
She smiled. She beamed. An almost flirtatious look on her lovely face. “Do you own the truck outside? The white box truck with the splash of black paint on it?”
James frowned. “Yeah. What about it?”
She pulled up a chair and sat down. Maybe thirty-five, and very interesting. Very expressive eyes, dark, probably Italian, but you could never tell and-
“I’m Maria Sanko. I’m a realtor.”
We both nodded. Women inviting themselves to our table was not something that happened on a regular basis.
“I was having lunch in the other room,” she pointed to the main dining room, “and I got a text.”
I could tell from James’s puzzled look that neither of us had a clue where this was going.
“I manage a number of rental properties in the Islamorada area, and occasionally I get an emergency.”
“Okay.” I was impatient. The lady dragged the story on, just like Mary Trueblood.
“There’s a major leak at one of my apartments, and I saw your truck-”
Shit. The Smith Brothers Plumbing sign.
“We don’t … we can’t …” James was stumbling. He’d turned pale, and I was concerned he was going to trip over his tongue.
“It’s not far from here, and my tenant is really concerned. If you two could just follow me to-”
“I am sorry. What my friend is trying to tell you is that we’re on vacation.”
“Really, it won’t take long. And I’ll pay you whatever you say. I really need some help, guys.”
“No, no. We left our tools back in Miami. There is nothing we could do. The truck is empty.”
James’s color returned. “Yeah. Tools are back in Miami. We’re sorry.”
The lady gave us a suspicious look, as she probably should have.
“Okay.” She reached into her purse, pulling out a white business card. “If you are ever interested in moving down here, call me. I could use a good plumber. Not just now, but about every other day. And the guys down here, the guys who call themselves plumbers, they’re working on island time.”
“Next time, for sure. It’s just that right now, we’re not prepared.” James flashed her a shaky lady-killer smile.
She stood up and walked away.
“You didn’t want people to know we were investigators so you had the plumbing signs made.”
“Yeah?”
“We could be called Smith Brothers Hauling. We could do that. Haul stuff. Or, like I told you, you could have just gone signless. Now, we stick out like a sore thumb. I mean, a plumbing truck with no tools and no plumbers.”
