Two Girls Down(17)
“How did you know I had a daughter? It wasn’t in any of the articles about me—I went through a lot of trouble to keep it out.”
Her eyebrows raised up just a little bit, in a tiny arch, charmed.
“I saw her shoes when you opened the front door. Female athletic shoes.”
Now Cap smiled, both of them caught in the joke.
“I see,” he said. “So how’d you pin her age?”
“You have a copy of Othello on the dashboard of the car in your driveway.”
“How do you know it’s not mine?” he said. “Maybe I live for Shakespeare.”
“Just a hunch,” she said, shrugging, looking down.
Was she looking down shyly? Was this flirting? Cap couldn’t tell. He hadn’t been on a date in so long he’d forgotten what it felt like.
“Thanks for your time,” said Vega, and then she left.
Cap watched her go, fairly certain he saw the lines of a holster crossing her back under her jacket.
3
In the car, Vega scrolled on her phone to the photos she had taken of Caplan’s file while he’d been on the phone in the other room. She stared at the photo of Brandon Haas, looked over his stats, and tapped out another email to the Bastard on the screen.
Later in her room at the inn, she was studying footage from the Kmart parking lot when the message from the Bastard came in:
“Got a Brandon Hass with same birthday as your Haas from ADP paycheck dated 3/15, Luke Construction out of New Castle, PA. Also leases, driver license, but all old.
Also Junior Hollows is boring as shit but his wife has two Facebook pages, and you’ll get a kick out of one of them.”
Vega sniffed in approval at the Bastard’s ingenuity and stopped reading, closed up her email, and went online to find a number for Luke Construction.
—
Vega was on her way out the front door, patchouli and lemon still in her nose from the sitting room, a slip of paper in her hand with an address on it.
“Ms. Vega?”
She turned. It was Elaine, the owner of the inn. She was a slender woman in her seventies with long hair. She wore a lot of scarves and beads and was holding a basket of fruit.
“Hi,” said Vega.
“This is for you,” Elaine said, presenting the fruit.
Vega stared at it.
“It’s your welcome basket,” Elaine added. “Usually I have it waiting in folks’ rooms, but this all happened so quickly I didn’t have a chance.”
“Thanks,” muttered Vega. “It’s really not necessary.”
Now Elaine gave her a bit of the side eye, wagging a teasing finger.
“Now you strike me as the kind of person who doesn’t eat unless she’s reminded, right?”
Vega made herself smile. She felt about ten years old.
“So you take it with you. These are all organic. I’d like to tell you they’re local, but this isn’t the best time of year for fruit around here.”
Vega took the fruit. It was unexpectedly weighty.
“I’ll get the door for you,” said Elaine.
“Thanks.”
Elaine opened the passenger side door, and Vega dropped the fruit basket on the seat.
“Cheese and wine at six if you like,” said Elaine.
Vega continued to smile, and then Elaine was off, down the front path, her skirt swishing around her. Vega got into the car, started the engine, and plugged the address from the slip of paper into the GPS.
“Head northwest on Market Street,” it said.
She checked her mirror and made herself smile again, just to see what it looked like.
—
Vega parked on the vacant west side of the lot of New Town Mall, where a Real Food Market was being built. It didn’t look like much of anything yet, a crevasse where whatever had been there before had been recently gutted, and dumpsters of debris.
She sat in the car for a few minutes and watched construction workers walking around, talking in groups. There were only about ten of them. She figured most had quit for the day. It was just after five. She glanced around at the other stores.
She got out and went to a Home Depot, up and down the aisles to Tools and Hardware.
At the register, a man with a ponytail and yellow teeth said, “You find everything okay today?”
Vega watched the items show up on the digital screen:
Straight Link Chain, 5 ft
EZ Bungee cord, 2 ct
Iron Tough Pipe Wrench
She said, “Yeah, thanks. Do you know where I can get a hot tea?”
—
Vega walked from her car to the construction site, about forty feet. The tea spilled over the sides of the open cup, ripping hot streams down her fingers. Two groups of men, one of three, one of five. She went up to the three-man group.
“Hey, baby,” said the one on the left. “You bring me coffee?”
She said to the one in the middle, about five-ten, crew cut and a forehead hanging over his eyes like an awning, “Brandon Haas?”
“Yeah?” he said. Amused, excited. The others shouted and laughed.
Vega started by throwing the hot tea at his crotch. He screamed and crumpled to the ground. The comedian on the left went for her and she cracked him across the nose with the pipe wrench. The one on the right came half a second later, and she punched him, an uppercut to the jaw with the chain wrapped around her fist. All three down.