Easy as One Two Three (A Flap Tucker Mystery) Read online

  I shrugged. “Ax all you want — long as you can return the favor.”

  He pulled his head back from me in a little jerky motion. “Oh. You want to know is what we got business up here?”

  “Something like that.”

  He took a step closer to his friend. “Maybe it’s the same business you got.”

  The big moose looked ready to draw again.

  I decided to show my hand. “I doubt it. I’m up here looking for a little kid that’s lost in the woods. Kind of a friend of a friend. Otherwise I’m just a tourist.”

  The moose spoke, but he seemed very nervous, like he was telling a lie. “’At’s what dem guys was talkin’ about … before.”

  The little guy in the fedora explained it to me. “Yeah. That’s right. See, we been out here all day an’ night. We run into a number of your citizen locals looking all over sundry for the little tyke.” Once more with the eyeball. “You don’t look like the type, if you don’t mind my sayin’ so — get me?”

  “Oh, I’m the type all right, I’m just not in my natural habitat.”

  “Which is?”

  “Atlanta.”

  He nodded. “I see. Big city. You’re just up here helpin’ out a friend of a friend …”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “An’ I’m supposed to believe this?”

  I smiled. “I guess you can believe what you want. They tell me this great land of ours was in fact founded on religious freedom.”

  He looked at Moose. “Hey, a comedian.”

  Moose was confused. “Really?”

  I shook my head. “Look. I’m a kind of you-go-your-way-and-I’ll-go-mine sort of a guy. Believe it or not, I am looking for a kid that’s lost out here, one that’s been gone a good long time at this point. So — much as I’d like to stand around and crack with the wise, maybe have a smoke with you two … or would that be yous two — I guess I’d have to say I got to be going.”

  The little guy was thinking. You could tell by the white steam coming up from his fedora. Then he turned to Moose. “Whatdaya think?”

  Confused as ever: “Me? Uh …”

  Fedora answered his own question. “Yeah. I can dig it.” Looked at me. “See, we’re in the way of bein’ just a little bit lost ourselves. So can we help each other out? If you can get us in from the cold, we’ll walk along with you to the nearest anything, make sure you don’t fall down or nothin’, and then be on our merry way. Ya know what I mean?”

  I nodded. “As it happens, I’m going down this road, and it comes out by the hospital, they tell me. So if you feel like walking along and looking for a little ten-year-old, I’d actually kind of like the company.” I popped on the flashlight again and showed it on the road. “Look out for the ruts. They’re deep.”

  Moose was entranced. “Hey. A flashlight.” He turned his big head to his cohort. “We coulda used that.”

  He gave his big friend a long-suffering look, obviously to be shared with me. “Yeah. That’s right. We coulda used a flashlight out there in the dark for the last hundred and fifty hours.”

  I started down the road again.

  Moose followed behind. “Was it that long?”

  I looked back at the big guy. “Just keep your eye out for any signs of a little kid, okay? You know, clues.”

  He squinted, looked all about. “Yeah.”

  Fedora pulled in beside me. Honest to God, the guy was at least a foot shorter than me.

  I let the flashlight play across the road. “So you never did tell me what you’re up here for. I’m guessing not vacation.”

  That was a good one to him. “Are you kidding me? Vacation? Here? What’s to vacate up here? Vacation is casinos and beaches, doncha think?”

  “I don’t know — I hardly ever take one. I’m usually the type to mix pleasure with a truckload of business.”

  He commiserated. “Tell me about it.” He looked back at Moose. “When’s the last time we had any real fun?”

  Moose was quick. “This is fun.”

  He winked at me, Fedora actually winked. “See what I mean? Business is pleasure.”

  I looked back at Moose too. “And yet I notice you seem to be avoiding the issue, which is, what are you doing up here?”

  Moose was wise. “Business trip.”

  I pressed. “What business?”

  Moose answered. “Real estate.”

  That stopped me. “Real estate?”

  Fedora kept on walking. “More like land acquisition.”

  Moose indicated with a flutter of his ham-hand that I should keep moving, so I marched on.

  Fedora was happy to gab. “You got big room up here. Plus you got a little economy. Let us say that a factory wants to get built up here. You got, right away, a gaggle of goons that needs the work and is going to do it for kind of cheap — at least until some union or other gets ahold of ’em. Plus you got all manner of distractions for the executive types: big houses that overlook big valleys, lakes for the fishin’ an’ … whatever the hell else it is you do in a lake. Boats, I guess. Anyhow, everybody’s happy … if you get the land and you get it at the right price.” He lowered his voice. “Trouble is, the people up here, they’re suspicious of outsiders comin’ to take their land. And Pappy Yokam don’ want to sell the homestead. Plus he’s got a inflated idea of what it might be worth. So, to make a long story somewhat shorter, we — my large colleague an’ me — we help acquire the land.”

  I looked back over my shoulder. “That right, Moose? You’re a robber-baron?”

  “Huh?”

  Fedora smiled. “You’re confusin’ him. He ain’t never robbed nobody in his life. An’ his name ain’t Moose.”

  I nodded. “I just call him that.”

  Moose seemed far away for a second. “My brudder used to call me Moose. I ain’t seen him in a montha Sundays.”

  I wanted to know. “Where’s he living now?”

  He was happy to oblige. “Rockford, outside Chicago.”

  I smiled. “Nice little town, is it?”

  “Not so little.”

  I smiled bigger, so he’d know I was friendly. “Not if your brother’s big as you, it’s not.”

  Moose cracked a grin himself. “Me? I’m the runt.”

  Fedora interrupted. “We through with family hour, here?”

  I looked back at him. “So you two help convince the population hereabout that selling their land would, ultimately, be … healthier than not selling.”

  He was very serious. “We’re businessmen. Occasionally somebody might get the wrong idea about us, an’ feel a little intimidated — might feel we got a notion to strong-arm. But, like I say, that’s the wrong idea. We’re business types, get me?”

  I shrugged. “Yeah.”

  I was about to press for more information about just who it was might want to buy land around Lost Pines, when Moose halted dead in his tracks, grabbed my arm, and spun me around to my right.

  “Look! Clue!”

  His hot-dog finger was indicating something important to him in the woods. I played the light that way, and what do you know: There was something. Looked like a little kid’s wool hat.

  Fedora flashed him some kind of look; seemed, maybe, mad or something. I thought he might be perturbed at the notion of slowing our progress toward someplace warm, but Moose just looked suddenly like he’d made a mistake.

  As for myself, I had to congratulate him. “Nice work, pal. I think it actually might be something, and shame on me for not seeing it first.”

  He was modest. “I got good eyesight.”

  We all stumbled over to it. As it was on top of the snow, see, and the snow had just quit, we imagined it might have been a recent deposit. I scooped it up. It was little — definitely a tyke chapeau.

  Fedora was in a musing kind of mood. “Uh, course it could be any little kid’s hat.”

  I nodded. “Any little kid that’d be up at this time of the night. It’s pretty late for hide an’ go seek, or what have you.”
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  Moose looked around like he was telling time by staring at the trees. “Yeah, I guess it is kind of late at that.”

  I went on. “And we did track the kid in question up to this general locale — we think.”

  Fedora looked around. “What is this, the royal we? I don’ see nobody but us chickens.”

  I nodded. “My troops. They’re waiting for me at the end of this very road.”

  He smiled. “Is that right? More urban sophisticates such as yourself?”

  “Naw. Locals mostly.” I didn’t feel like mentioning that one was a cop. Seemed like it might make them nervous, and they appeared to be a little nervous just to hear that there were other night crawlers like us out and about. Being in their particular line of work, I could see why.

  Fedora looked around. “Let’s get on with it. There’s no findin’ the kid from just looking at her hat.”

  Cold as I was, my brain was still cooking enough to get ahold of something wrong in that sentence. It only took me a second to figure out what it was. “How’d you know the kid, the lost kid, was a girl?”

  He didn’t look at me. He looked at the hat. “You told me.”

  I shook my head. “Try again. I’m big on gender neutrality in language.”

  He still wouldn’t give me a gander. “Musta been those other guys, the ones we run into earlier who was lookin’ for ’er too.”

  Moose erupted. “Hey!”

  I shot him a look, but so did Fedora, and the big guy got very quiet again, all of a sudden.

  I still tried. “What?”

  He looked down. “Nothin’. I just thoughta somethin’, is all.”

  “What was it?”

  “I just remembered …” And he looked over to Fedora. “I just remembered I ain’t had no dinner an’ I’m kind of hungry.”

  “Maybe they got a cafeteria at the hospital down there,” Fedora pushed.

  Moose seemed disappointed. “I hate hospital food.”

  He said it like a guy who’d spent some time in a hospital.

  Fedora was building on a good mad. “Look. You guys can stand here in the ice an’ snow an’ whatnot all night long if you want to. Me? I’m headin’ on down the road. Get me?”

  Moose nodded.

  I held my ground. “She could have just dropped this. She might be right here, right close …”

  But I didn’t even get a chance to finish my thought. Fedora nodded. Moose drew. It was a big old automatic, sure enough.

  Fedora was very polite. “The three of us is all goin’ down the hill. I’m not going to be stuck out here in the cold anymore, and you’re just the guy to get me out of it. Now, I apologize right this minute for slappin’ a pistol into the proceedings, but necessity is a mother here in this particular case. Don’t be angry with me. Let’s just go on down the road.”

  I looked at Moose.

  He shrugged. Then he leaned in close to me. “I ain’t really going to shoot you. Dis is just to give you some kind of scare.”

  Caught, as I was, on the horns of a big mean dilemma, I acquiesced. Ginny had warm clothes, and she seemed to know where she was going better than anybody who was trying to find her. I actually felt better about her chances than I did about mine at that moment.

  I smiled politely at Moose. “Okay.”

  He put the gun away.

  I pocketed the hat as best I could, broke off a nearby pine bough and stuck it in the snow where we’d found the hat, and down the road we went.

  It was crummy going, and I realized that these guys were more or less under the impression that they were escorting me down the hill, and that my sole purpose in life was to get them out of the woods. It was a clear case of the blind leading the stupid.

  With no more snappy conversation, we trundled our way just fine until we saw some lights ahead. Fedora stopped. “What is it?”

  I peered. “Cars on the road?”

  He breathed out. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s it. Cars.”

  Moose smiled. “We ain’t lost no more.”

  I smiled back. I really wanted the guy on my side. “That’s right, bud.”

  We made it down the rest of the old logging road with very little ado. The lights, as it turns out, were some parking-lot lights. We were in back of the Wal-Mart. You could see the hospital a little way off in the distance. Much to my dismay, given the tenor of our relationship, Cedar’s cop-mobile was nowhere to be seen.

  I picked up the pace. “So, gents. Welcome to what passes for civilization around here. You want to come meet my friends, or is this goodbye for us?”

  Fedora was looking down the road. “Which way is back to town?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know.” I pointed down the road away from the hospital. “That way, I think.” Fedora gave me the strongest once-over I think I’d ever gotten. “You don’t seem like the type that gets all bent out of shape by one little face-to-face with a firearm. I’m countin’ on your ability to forgive an’ forget.” He stepped closer to me. “Plus, I got a real good memory for faces.” Then he flashed a very winning smile. “We’ll be catchin’ you on the flip side.”

  Moose grinned. “That means ‘See you later’. He loves talkin’ that way.”

  I nodded. “I’m hip.”

  He started off after his other half. “See you ’round.”

  I watched them go. I was pretty sure I’d see them again, and soon. “I’m countin’ on it.”

  And then they were gone. Strangers in the night. Do be do be do. I must have been getting pretty tired, at that point, to have that in my head. Still, there it was, and I was hiking with all my might toward the hospital, Dally, hot coffee, warm feet, and a little woolen prize to share with all and sundry, tucked nicely away in my coat.

  13. Hats

  Hats used to be all the fashion. Now they seem more a statement than a matter of course. You don’t assume a hat anymore, you don one deliberately. In the big city a wool hat means something other than it means in the country. It’s my opinion that this odd and somewhat lax view of headwear started with President Kennedy. Wasn’t he the first to be inaugurated bare-pate? And wasn’t it even snowing? After a cue like that the whole nation started in to giving all manner of haberdashery the once-over. My own somewhat arcane chapeau has, on occasion, been the object of derision. I don’t care. Ultimately I believe hats have a single purpose in this life. When somebody asked the Dalai Lama the meaning or religious significance of the thing he wore on top, he tilted it a little and said only, “It keeps my head warm.”

  The hospital was very calm and quiet. Even the nurse at the maternity ward seemed to be dozing just a little. I smiled at her as I walked past. Without even opening her eyes she said, “Don’t wake Sissy or Mustard up, they need their sleep. The others are down by the coffee machine.”

  How she knew who I was or what I was doing there, how she even saw me through closed eyelids, I wouldn’t know.

  Still, there were Dally and Cedar at the coffee machine, and they waved when they saw me coming.

  Cedar spoke right up. “That was quick. We were just about to head over to the Wal-Mart parking lot.”

  Dally offered me a cup. “I think you’ll find this the worst coffee you ever tasted.”

  I took it. “Doesn’t matter. I got news.”

  Cedar squinted. “You find something?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  I produced the wool hat like it was a rabbit out of a hat. They were both impressed.

  Cedar took it. “Could be something.”

  I nodded. “It was on top of the snow. No snow covering it.”

  He understood right away. “Snow just stopped. This is a recent loss.”

  “Right.”

  He really gave me the eye. “Why didn’t you stay out there looking? Why’d you come in?”

  I looked at Dally. “I had company that sort of forced me out of the woods.”

  Cedar spoke first. “What?”

  But Dally was a close second. “Other folks out looking?”r />
  I shook my head. “Not folks. Hoods. City types.”

  Cedar folded his arms. “Doing what?”

  “Being lost, far as I could tell. I rescued them.”

  Dally could tell I was keeping something back. “What’re they doing up here?”

  I looked at Cedar. “Said they were in the real estate business.”

  He looked at the floor. “BarnDoor.”

  Dally and I both waited for more.

  She finally looked at him. “What?”

  “BarnDoor, Limited. Got to be. It’s a kind of designer home-improvement company, sells fieldstone, lumber, old barn wood, clay bricks … they want a factory sort of a deal up here. That’s got to be what they meant.”

  I still didn’t get it. “What kind of a factory?”

  He was still looking at the floor. “They want to take the fieldstone and the lumber and the other resources and package them in a high-end kind of way. Mail order, mostly. You buy an old barn up here from some needy farmer for a hundred bucks, then you package it just right and you sell each board for twenty-five. It’s quite a profit.”

  Dally grinned at me. “Big money in home improvement.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t see these guys I was with tonight being associated with a happy yuppie organization of that ilk.”

  Cedar turned quite the calloused gaze my way. “Business, Mr. Tucker. No heart, no soul, no conscience. BarnDoor’s had several unsavory types up here hassling people to sell. That’s what big-city business is all about.”

  I returned the look. “You seem a little young to be quite so bitter, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  He looked away again. “People up here? We … things get taken from us without our knowing it. Land gets grabbed. Beautiful valleys where homes used to be are turned into lakes for the summer tourists. People from the city think our poverty is quaint. The way we talk is a little joke to them. Our suspicion of outsiders is crafted from experience, not a natural predisposition.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe. But you don’t have a corner on the market. Everybody and his brother thinks in terms of us and them. It’s the main thing that makes the world a more difficult place than it needs to be.”