Chapter 8

D oreen wandered around City Park, heading toward the huge pergola, where she and Frankie had planned to meet. She picked up two coffees and took her time getting there. By the time she met up with Frankie, the coffees would almost be cool enough to drink, or at least she hoped so.

Picking up these coffees when they were so hot meant she had to carry these hot cups for the whole distance. Still, this investigation was going better than she thought it would, at least she hoped so. It seemed a little early to have any real idea of what was going on.

When she arrived at the meeting place, she sat down to wait for Frankie. She waited and waited, the coffee now cooling off in her hands. Then she heard a noise behind her, and Mugs instantly growled. Doreen held tightly onto his and Goliath’s leashes.

“Don’t turn around.” When she froze, the man mockingly said, “Good choice. We don’t want people asking questions.”

“Yet all I’m doing is trying to figure out if you had anything to do with the burglary at your friend’s place.”

“Is that what friends do to each other?” the man asked, again with that mocking tone.

She shrugged. “Not my friends.”

An ugly silence came after that. “Good point,” he muttered, sounding nonchalant.

“If they did that, maybe they’re not friends,” she added.

“You’ll get yourself in a lot of trouble saying that.”

“Maybe. Yet, if you’re involved in this burglary, you might want to know that something stolen has now been used in several other crimes.”

At that came a shocked silence.

She nodded without turning around. “In case you didn’t know that.” Mugs continued to growl, but the man behind her never mentioned it.

“What kind of crimes?”

“The worst kind,” she replied, her tone soft, “and that’ll lead to all kinds of trouble.” She heard him cussing in the softest of whispers. She waited and then added, “Any information would be helpful.”

When no response came, she asked, “Will you talk to me?” With still no response at all, she instinctively knew that she was alone. Plus Mugs had quit his growling. She slowly turned, and, sure enough, nobody stood behind her. She groaned at that, realizing she had no idea who she’d been talking to. She realized that she hadn’t been talking to Frankie, and she had no idea who it was. And still had two coffees in her hands. Frowning she took a drink of one, her mind consumed with the conversation.

“That’s not helpful,” she muttered, as the animals crowded around her, wanting pets and scratches behind the ears. “The least you could have done was talk to me,” she muttered to no one. She saw no sign of anybody, not running away or otherwise acting suspicious. She got up and walked around with her animals. Of course City Park was always filled with people, always attracted tourists to walk around the area, always catered to people simply sitting around, visiting. It was a beautiful morning, and just enough foot traffic was in the park to hide anybody who wanted to slip away unseen, so she found no sign of her source. Finding a bench, she sat down, placing the coffees safely beside her before picking up her phone and calling Mack.

“How’d it go?” She explained and he swore. “Wow, just simple questions, and it blows up.”

“I’m not sure it was very simple at all. I don’t think it was the same guy.”

“What?”

“The voice was different, more mature or refined somehow.”

“Sure, but one was a phone call, and one wasn’t.”

“Still, it was a different voice. I’m certain of it,” she insisted. “I’m not exactly sure if I would recognize it again.”

“Did he disguise it?”

“No, I don’t think so,” she replied hesitantly. “But he didn’t know anything about what the Taser had been used for recently.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I just mentioned that it had been used in several incidents, crimes, and he wanted to know what exactly. When I said the worst kind, he swore, then took off right after that.”

Mack pondered that for a moment. “That’s not good. But, if he was involved, it could be that he’s afraid the heat is coming down on him.”

She nodded slowly. “I guess that’s possible, isn’t it? Something else has to be going on there.”

“Oh, something is going on, no doubt about that. The job now is to figure out just what it is and put a stop to it as quickly as possible.” She didn’t have anything to say to that. “Where are you now?” he asked.

“I’m still standing in the park,” she shared, looking around for the man she just spoke to.

“I wouldn’t hang around if I were you. No good reason for him to come back at this point.”

“Right, I hear you,” she said. “I have to admit that I’m a little worried about Frankie at this point.”

“Why?” Mack asked curiously.

“Because I really don’t think it was him just now, and the stranger’s warning to not talk about this would have applied to Frankie too.”

“And you think that, by contacting Frankie, he’s in trouble?”

“I’m not taking the blame if something does happen because obviously Frankie’s been heading down a criminal pathway and has been for a while.”

“Exactly,” Mack agreed. “Do you want me to give him a call?”

“Actually I can give him a call,” she suggested. “That would be a normal thing to do if he didn’t show up for a meeting, right?” He hesitated and she smiled. “You’re right. That’s exactly what I’ll do. I’ll call you back in a minute.” She disconnected and quickly dialed Frankie’s number.

When there was no answer, she called again, and it went to voice mail. A few minutes later, she decided to call again. When a woman picked up on the other end, Doreen quickly asked for Frankie.

“He’s not here,” she said. “He headed down to City Park.”

“I’m the one he was supposed to meet down here, but he didn’t show up.” Doreen had a ten-year-old photo in the case file to go by, but at least she had that much.

“What do you mean he didn’t show up? He left here forty-five minutes ago, maybe even an hour.”

“He’s not here,” Doreen repeated, “and I’ve been standing here, waiting, holding a coffee for him.”

“Who are you?” the other woman asked suspiciously.

“Somebody asking him questions about a break-in that happened at the place of a friend sometime back.”

“Arnold,” she muttered in disgust. “I told Frankie that all this sketchy stuff he gets involved in would get him in trouble one day.”

“It may have gotten him into trouble right now,” Doreen shared. “I don’t see him anywhere. I’m Doreen, by the way.”

“I don’t know where he is either,” she muttered. “He’ll come back. He always does. He just runs off scared after he gets himself into trouble, but hopefully he’ll get himself out of it again this time.”

“I hope so,” Doreen replied. “Anyway, if he contacts you or when he gets home, can you have him call me? I’m a bit worried about him.”

“That’ll be a surprise. I doubt if many people have ever worried about him,” she snapped.

“Are you his partner?”

“No, we share rooms here, but that’s it.”

“Is it just the two of you there?”

“No, four of us. It’s hard to pay the rent in town. In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s pretty darn expensive.”

“You’re quite right,” Doreen agreed. “And your name?”

“Tammy. Tammy Farrow.”

Doreen wrote down her name, as she nodded. “The rents are high downtown.”

“Not that you would know anything about it,” Tammy muttered in disgust. “You’re probably one of those people sitting high and pretty, with your own little house.”

Doreen winced because she did have her own house, but only through her grandmother’s generosity had she gotten there. “I inherited one from my grandmother, so, yes, in a way, you’re right,” she admitted, “but I was without one, without any place to live for a long time, so, yes, I do understand your frustration,”

“ Huh ,” Tammy muttered. “Maybe you do understand then. Anyway, if Frankie gets back, I’ll have him give you a call.”

“Okay, thanks.” Doreen rang off. She sent Mack a text, saying there was no sign of him, then wandered toward the boardwalk along the lake. She felt foolish holding the second coffee, but she was still hoping Frankie would show up, and she could hand it over. It may not be worth drinking by now, but it would be a nice gesture.

Finally she sat down on one of the benches and just watched, as the water splashed in front of her. When Mugs barked, she slowly turned and found a man motioning her to come closer. She frowned at that but, snagging the coffees, she got up and slowly walked over. “Frankie?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“What is going on?” she muttered. “We were supposed to meet up on the other side.” She handed him the cold coffee.

He took it and threw back a good portion of it without even breathing. Then he smacked his lips together and said, “I needed that.”

She stared at him. “So, who did you send in your stead?”

He stared at her in shock and then horror. “Did somebody come?”

She nodded slowly. “He wouldn’t let me turn around, but he basically told me to stay away and to stop asking questions.”

He swallowed nervously and looked around. “That had to be Jed.”

“Yeah? Who is this Jed, and who does he think he is, coming up and scaring me like that?” she muttered.

Frankie shook his head. “Jed’s a scary dude, and you should stay away from him.”

“That’s very nice to know, but I’m not the one who approached him,” she noted in exasperation. “Where were you, and why didn’t you show up on time?”

Frankie frowned, then looked around a little wildly. “I was talking to Jed this morning, and I wasn’t sure what he was up to, so I followed him. I lost him in the park here, and, before I knew it, I’d missed our time frame. I saw you wandering around, but I wasn’t sure whether you were who I was supposed to meet or not, so I followed you, until I decided it was worth a try.”

“It’s me,” she confirmed, “and your coffee would have been hot if you’d gotten here on time.”

He shrugged. “Coffee is coffee. I’ll drink it anyway I can get it.”

She understood the sentiment, yet she didn’t understand anything else he had said. “So, you told this Jed guy about me?”

He nodded. “Yeah, sorry about that.”

“Is something likely to happen to me because of it?”

He stared at her in shock. “Most people wouldn’t ask something like that.”

“Yeah, well, most people aren’t me at this point in time,” she snapped, her gaze turning hard. “So, did you set me up, Frankie?” At her tone, Mugs began to growl again.

“No, no, of course not,” Frankie replied. “Why would you even say that?” He started to back up.

She waved her hands about wildly. “Because this guy showed up in your stead, and, for all I know, you set it up that way.”

He shook his head. “No, I didn’t, but, once I told him, he told me that I should stay away. He thought you were probably a cop, wearing a wire.”

“I already told you that I’m not a cop and that I’m not wearing a wire.”

“Yeah, but you can say all kinds of stuff,” he declared, glaring at her.

“If you thought that, why did you show up?”

He shrugged. “Because Jed is scary,” he muttered.

“So scary that you’re afraid he might do something?”

He nodded slowly. “Yeah, he’s that scary.”

“That’s good to know,” she muttered. “Not that I want to be in that position of course.”

“No, you don’t,” he confirmed. “You should just leave this alone. Walk away and leave it be. Just let it all go, and it will be better for both of us.”

“Why? Because you had something to do with the break-in?”

He shook his head. “No, I didn’t do it.”

“You didn’t have to do it,” she clarified, studying him. “But that doesn’t mean you didn’t give Jed the times or let somebody know when Arnold wasn’t home.”

He stared at her. “But that wouldn’t have been so bad, would it?”

“Absolutely not, unless you did it on purpose.”

“What if I didn’t know what they would do?”

“You sure didn’t help your friend at the time, did you? Arnold could have done something about it back then, and maybe that would have been the end of it.”

Frankie swallowed, then looked around. “You don’t know what this is all about.”

“Maybe not,” she admitted, “but, so far, it sounds pretty simple. It sounds as simple as one guy betraying another, resulting in a breaking-and-entering at a cop ’s house, where they stole something that was later used in the commission of a crime. I don’t know how many years somebody hung on to that Taser, but, when they brought it out, they put on one heck of a show with it.”

He looked at her. “Did anybody die?”

She nodded. “Yeah, somebody sure did.”

His face paled. “But surely I can’t be held responsible for that.”

“I don’t know what they do in these cases,” she stated. “I told you. I’m not a cop. And I’m definitely not a lawyer, so I don’t know anything about it. But I can tell you one thing for sure. If you do know something now and if you don’t come clean, then it goes badly for you. Especially if this Jed is involved. You said yourself that he was bad news so—”

“No, it just goes bad anyway.”

“Sure, if you’ve already done jail time maybe.” She frowned at him. “Have you?”

He shrugged. “Not really.”

She winced at that. “Look, Frankie. I don’t really understand all the details or what kind of trouble you’re in, but I’ve about had enough of the nonsense. So tell me exactly how not really applies to jail time?”

He glared at her. “I got off on a technicality.”

“Thank you, that makes more sense, and yet I really don’t know how that works. I guess it depends on whether you were guilty, and they just decided to not go back and retry you because it wasn’t worth it, or if you’d spent enough time in jail already.”

He shrugged. “It was a lot of things. I don’t even know why or how it all came down, but I got off and took off, then never looked back.”

“Smart move. It seems you should have stayed there.”

He nodded, his face glum. “I would have if I could have, but finding a job and all that is hard. There are no jobs for cons.”

“I find that hard to believe. There are always jobs for someone who is honest, respectful, and willing to work hard. And the work starts with applying for jobs with a good attitude, until you get one. Regardless I’m certain it’s difficult for guys coming out of jail. On the other hand, getting in trouble seems to be pretty darn easy, so maybe getting out of it should be harder. I don’t know.”

He stared at her. “You still don’t know anything about this?”

“No, and, unless you tell me, I won’t know.”

Suddenly he appeared to make a decision. “Look. If Jed finds out I told you, I’m dead.”

“Sounds like a great guy to be hanging around.”

“No, he’s not. He’s scary, but he pays the rent, and I’ve got to live somewhere.”

She mentally counted Jed among the four who lived in his house. “Go ahead and tell me. What did Jed say?”

“It’s just that he knows what happened to the stuff at Arnold’s back then.”

“Was he involved in the original theft?”

Frankie shrugged. “I just told him that Arnold was on night shift that night. I didn’t say anything else, I swear. They took advantage of that information.” He gave her a pitiful glance. “Next thing I knew, I was coming home from the pub, and the place was getting cleaned out.”

“Ah. Getting cleaned out. So you saw and knew who they were, and you were there during the commission of the theft. That’s a little different from what you told me before.”

He nodded. “Yeah, I was there, but I didn’t plan it, and I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“Didn’t plan it, didn’t have anything to do with it, yet somehow your friend’s place got stripped of something of value,… furniture, electronics, anything they could pack off, and you didn’t do anything to help Arnold. He was giving you a place to stay, which seems to be a far better situation than what you have now.”

He winced at that.

“And that’s how you chose to repay his friendship? That is beyond my understanding.”

He stared at her. “I needed the money.”

“For drugs?” she asked.

He nodded slowly. “But I’m off the drugs now.”

“I’m certainly glad to hear that.” She studied him. “The thing is, getting off the drugs is only part of the battle.”

“Yeah, that’s true,” he agreed bitterly. “I wasn’t really big into it, but it was a way to make money.”

“It probably paid better than finding and making true friends, which is a slow and time-consuming process, only to then rip them off when they probably didn’t have a whole lot to rip off anyway.”

“See? That was the problem. I think they thought that, because Arnold was a cop, he would have an awful lot more than he did. However, Arnold’s been paying for his mom’s keep for a long time, so he didn’t really have much money.”

“Wow, this doesn’t get any better for you, does it? So, they ripped off Arnold, using intel provided by you, and you didn’t even tell the cops?”

“I couldn’t. Don’t you understand?” he cried out. “If I had told, and those guys found out, then I’m the one who would have been in trouble.”

She nodded slowly. “Right, so back to that self-preservation thing.”

He glared at her. “When you’re already down on your luck, you would do anything you can to get back out again.”

“I understand that,” she noted, “and I’ve been through that a few times now.” He looked at her oddly. She shrugged. “The more time I spend watching people do the things they do, then listen as they try to justify it, the more I realize just how much humanity in general needs some serious help.”

He flushed. “I suppose you’ll tell Arnold now.”

“It’s not as if he’s trusted you ever since, has he?”

Frankie shook his head. “No, he hasn’t. So maybe he knew some of it all along, and I,… I felt really bad about it.”

She laughed. “Yeah, you felt really bad about it.”

At that, he started to get mad. “You don’t get to preach at me. I made a mistake, but I didn’t know how to tell him.”

“ Right . Either you can tell Arnold now or I can tell him. But this is your chance to man up, and he’ll want to know about this sooner rather than later.”

Frankie’s shoulders sagged. “I’ll tell him.”

“That would be a very good idea, since his career and his pension are on the line right now.” At that, Frankie stared at her in horror, and she nodded dismissively. “So, not only is it your life that you’ve ruined, but somebody else’s too.”

And, with that, he gave a shudder, took another look in her direction, then turned and ran away.

He was moving like his home was on fire, and she wasn’t sure he would do the right thing or not. She hoped, but hope was a fickle thing.

“I guess time will tell,” she muttered to herself.