Chapter 13: The Faux Trucker with the Intimidating Manner

“It’s not my truck,” the trucker — that is, the policeman dressed like a trucker — said.

“But you were leaning up against it,” Tania said.

“Smoking a Camel,” I added.

“That’s lesson number one if you want to be a detective,” he said. “Don’t jump to conclusions without concrete evidence.”

“Okay,” Tania said.

“And it wasn’t a Camel,” he said. Clearly this guy knew some of what we were up to; the question was, how much? Could he know about the money? How safe was it jammed under the front seat of my car?

“Now answer my question,” he said. “What do you know about Jezebel Cooke?”

“Who?” I said.

“Nice name,” Tania added. “Never heard of her.”

“Interesting,” the man said. He crossed to his table and returned with his coffee cup and a photograph, which had been sitting under the cup. He held up the photo, of the tall blonde whom we had been following, or crossing paths with, depending on how you saw it. “This is Jezebel Cooke.”

“Looks a little like Chrys Peterson,” Tania said.

“What?” The man was clearly getting testy.

“Must be a Shenikwa or a Larson man,” I said.

“Or he doesn’t follow the news,” Tania said.

“Are you two through?” he said in a no-nonsense voice. “You know what I’m talking about, and this is where it ends.” He took a swallow of coffee, waiting for us to respond.

“Actually,” I said half-truthfully, “we’re in the dark. But we were planning on coming to see … Ow!” Tania kicked me under the table.

“Can I get a look at your badge again?” she asked politely.

The man coughed a couple of times and stared at us each in turn, taking his time. I gave him high marks for intimidation. He took another slurp of his coffee, and reached slowly for his pocket. But then he started coughing again, more violently, and grabbed the edge of the table, which he also started pounding on, with his free hand. His coffee and ours was sloshing onto the table top.

Tania and I backed away, toward the big front window; there was no immediate escape. There was more coughing, then he seemed to lose consciousness, and fell heavily to the floor, ricocheting off the table first. Sometime while this was going on, the young woman working at her laptop at a nearby table began to scream. There was also some commotion further away, back in the kitchen it sounded like.

On the floor, something was trickling out of the man’s mouth, but he wasn’t moving.

When the woman stopped screaming, it was eerily quiet. And unmoving, a freakish version of that famous Edward Hopper painting of the diner. Tania and I were frozen with … shock? Fear? Fatigue? A cocktail of all three, I thought.

“What should we do?” I said.

“That would be the $64,000 question,” she said.

“He’s not moving.”

“Do you still wanna go to the police?”

“I’m not sure … why are you asking me now?”

“Well … if we stick around long enough, they’ll save us the trouble; they’ll be here.”

“I want to go home,” I said.

“Me too.”

Her statement hung in the air for awhile.

“Then let’s get out of here,” I said.

Somebody in the Dunkin’ Donuts told us to wait, but we didn’t. We didn’t look back until we were in the car and driving away, destination unknown. Silence reigned for awhile here too, until I couldn’t stand it anymore.

“What do we do now, Nancy Drew?” I said.

To be continued …

Click here to the beginning of Glass City Eclipse: Chapter 1

Click here for Glass City Eclipse: Chapter 14

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Chapter 14:  The Villainess with the Biblical Name

While I drove, Tania counted the money. “Don’t you want to go back to the Dunkin’ Donuts and see what happens?” I said.  “We could park far away.”

“33, 34, 35, 36, no it’s not safe. If that trucker-cop-whatever guy was watching us, somebody else could easily have been watching him.”

“Somebody?”

“Okay, 43, 44, 45, 46, somebody named Jezebel, like in the Bible.”

“Our tall blonde mystery woman,” I said. 

“Think of it as the first piece of the puzzle. At least we know that.”  

“For what it’s worth,” I said.

“And I don’t think we can be sure that the trucker was really a cop.”

“So now you want to go to the police?”

“No,” she said. “51, 52, 53, if he was a cop, we’ll get arrested. I thought we were going to be heroes; instead, we’d probably get arrested.  And if he wasn’t — 56, 57 — then somebody else is going to be after us.”

“Especially with all this money,” I said.

“Especially,” Tania echoed, and in a lower voice, “There’s more than $15,000 here.”

“Fair price for a contract hit.”

Tania rolled her eyes. “Like you know that.”

“We agreed to put off all decisions until the morning. The past 14 hours — was it only? — had exhausted us in every way and we needed to think clearly. We also agreed to stay together. I drove by Tania’s house, but there was somebody sitting in a parked car across the street so I didn’t even slow down. We skipped my house altogether, and got a room at the Wingate in Sylvania.

I slept like the proverbial log and woke to find Tania reading the newspaper at the little blonde desk. “Good morning,” she said, without turning around. 

“What are you doing?”

“Looking for news about our two dead guys.”

“Good idea,” I said.  “Would that be our local daily that you’re consulting?”

“Mm; it’s one of America’s Great Newspapers.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, it says so just below the masthead, so it must be true.”

“Noted,” I said.  “Find anything?”

“Our Dunkin’ Donuts dead guy was not a cop.”

“Or a trucker,” I said.

“Exactly,” she said.  “The paper describes him as an unemployed auto worker.”

“What does that mean?”

“Not sure,” she said.  “That he pumped gas at a Marathon station…?”

“Wow, you’re really showing your age, Tania.”

“Watch it!”

“What about our dead guy at the library?”

“Well, that’s pretty interesting.  There’s nothing in the paper about him at all, and remember he was killed in the afternoon … hours before Dunkin’ Donuts.  It doesn’t make any sense.”

“What about this whole mess makes any sense?” I said.

“There is a pattern,” she insisted.  “We just have to figure out what it is.”

“Alright.”  I took a deep breath.  “Where do we start?”

“I think we should go back to the library.  We can double-check for any news on the internet there.”

“We could do that at home.”

“Not safely,” she said.  “And we can interview the library staff about the dead guy.”

“What about that guard?  Won’t it be dangerous for us if we run into him?”

“More dangerous than waiting for someone to come after us?”  I had to admit she had a point.  “Besides,” she continued, “what better way to run into him than in a public place surrounded by other people in broad daylight?”

“Okay.”  I was sold, but still wary.  “When should we leave?”

Tania’s answer was precluded by a knock at the door.

To be continued …

Click here to the beginning of Glass City Eclipse: Chapter 1

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