Leave No Stone Unturned (A Lexie Starr Mystery, Book 1) (13 page)

"Think he's Native American. Couldn't tell you what tribe he belongs to. I'd guess
his mother was white, his daddy Indian. Looked mostly white to me." Because of the
missing teeth, Fred talked with a slight lisp that made him sound like a cartoon character.

"Do you know where he worked?" Stone asked.

"Was working at a local seafood restaurant. Washing dishes, last I heard. Tended to
go from job to job. Never seemed to work at any one place for more than a month or
two. Was bussing tables, or something, for a while at the Starlight Lounge. Joint's
right down the street. Don't know what, but something happened and he got canned."

I noticed that Fred didn't waste a lot of time on personal pronouns. Between the lisp
and the choppy speech pattern, I had to concentrate to keep up with what he was saying.

"After he discovered Eliza Pitt's body, did he talk about it any?" Stone asked.

"Not that I recall. Not even to the media. Followed him around like he was the Pied
Piper," Fred said. "Never talked much to anybody about anything. Like I said, he kept
to himself. Moved right after that, anyway. Back to Washington. Did hear tell that
he spent a lot of his childhood in foster homes. Got moved from place to place. Finally
stayed in the last one for several years. Can't remember who told me that. Don't think
it was Rod. He never spoke about much of anything. But I do know he'd been real fond
of those foster parents. Spoke of them quite often. Referred to that foster father
as Uncle Bill. But Uncle Bill apparently died right before Rod moved here. Kid seemed
like a lost soul to me."

"Did Rod go hiking in the mountains a lot?" Stone asked.

"Don't really know. Might have. Wasn't around a whole lot on weekends. Didn't particularly
seem like the hiker type to me. Too lazy to pick his own nose, if you want to know
the truth. That's why he couldn't hold a job for long. Do know that he must've spent
a lot of his spare time hunting for unusual hatpins. Always wore one of those fishing-type
hats. Must've had at least fifty hatpins attached to it. After he moved out, I found
two of them on the floor of his apartment. One was a Seattle Supersonics pin from
1979. Won the NBA Finals that year. Other one was an apple that had 'I love New York'
across it."

"Just something to show where he's been, I suppose, like a charm bracelet," I said,
more to myself than anyone else. "Do you know why he moved to Seattle, Fred?"

"Born and raised there. Didn't like it here, I guess. Moved back to where he come
from. Like everyone else seems to do eventually."

* * *

We stopped at the Starlight Lounge for lunch. It was a bar and grill, so we ordered
hamburgers and beer. Like myself, Stone occasionally liked a cold one with lunch,
so we thought we'd try a pale ale they had on tap that came from a local microbrewery.

"Say, son, do you remember anything about an Indian guy named Rod Crowfoot that used
to work here for a short spell back in 2001?" Stone asked the waiter.

"No, sorry sir. I just started here last month. But Bernie, the cook, might remember
him. He's been working here for years. I'll ask him and let you know," the young man
offered.

"Thanks, I'd sure appreciate it."

About halfway through our sandwiches, the waiter came back and told us what the cook
had said. "Bernie doesn't remember much about the Crowfoot guy, other than he found
some dead body up in the mountains, and he always wore a goofy hat with a bunch of
pins on it. If he remembers right, Bernie thinks Crowfoot got fired after a customer
complained that he followed her home one night. He'd been hitting on her here earlier
while she was having a couple drinks. Creeped her out, I guess. Bernie said she was
a typical redhead, hot-tempered, drama queen-type that overreacted to everything."

"Hey, thanks for the information. That helps a lot," Stone said. "Tell Bernie thanks
for me too." After the waiter agreed and walked away, Stone looked at me and said,
"Hmm, that's interesting."

"Yeah, it is," I agreed. "But a guy hitting on a girl at a bar is not exactly big
news, Stone. It certainly doesn't make Rod anything but a typical young guy. Like
the waiter said, she may have just been overreacting to Crowfoot's overly flirtatious
manner, kind of like the customers at the Food Pantry objecting to Kale's forwardness.
Some guys, unfortunately, just don't know how to take 'no' for an answer."

"Yeah, I imagine you're right."

Chapter 13

Neither Stone nor I was very hungry Saturday evening so we ordered Cobb salads for
supper. We decided it was time to pay a visit to Jake Jacoby's house, and if we were
going to do that, the best time to catch him at home would be a Sunday, which was
tomorrow. We really only wanted to snoop around. We couldn't let Jake know who we
were or why we were visiting him. He'd only have to pick up the phone to alert Clay.
That made the task more challenging, but certainly not impossible.

I accessed an online phone directory and found a Jake Jacoby listed on Eighth Avenue
in Boston. Stone had purchased a map of the city at a service station earlier in the
day. We'd booked two rooms at a motel in Boston and packed overnight bags to take
along. We were ready to go out-of-state on a sleuthing mission.

We turned in soon after supper and set our alarms to get up early and head for Massachusetts.
I sure was getting up early a lot these days, not even to have Ed McMahon standing
on the porch with a huge check for me.

We took Stone's car, a red 2003 Z06 Corvette. Four hundred and five horses, zero to
sixty in less than four seconds, he told me with pride. I was riding with a Mario
Andretti clone. Stone went on to say that this special edition Vette came only with
a hardtop. I was more interested in whether it came with antilock brakes, dual airbags,
and side impact panels. Despite the alarming rate at which the Corvette was chewing
up miles, I managed to doze off halfway to Boston. I was mortified when my own snoring
woke me up. I straightened up in my bucket seat and glanced over at Stone. I was relieved
to see that he hadn't appeared to notice. He was tapping his fingers lightly on the
steering wheel and seemed focused on his driving. I noticed he had very nicely manicured
fingernails and wished mine looked as well cared for.

Soon after we'd passed the Boston city limits sign, we stopped at a silk screening
shop and had matching shirts printed. Next we stopped to purchase a few items at a
lawn and garden store. It was early afternoon before we reached Jake's neighborhood.

We pulled into the gas station across from Jake's, and Stone got out of the Corvette.
He walked away and then back to the car a minute or two later and handed me a slip
of paper.

"You ready for this?" he asked, as I climbed awkwardly over the console into the driver's
seat. This proved to be a difficult task in the hard-topped Corvette.

"As ready as I'll ever be," I said, after I'd finally positioned myself behind the
steering wheel. I left Stone standing there at the station as I drove his car across
the street into Jake's driveway. I parked the Vette next to an older model white Mustang
convertible.

I walked up to Jake's door and rang the bell. Then I waited what seemed like a full
ten minutes before a good-looking young man opened the door. He was wearing nothing
but a pair of sweatpants that were cut off at the knees. I couldn't help but admire
his impressive biceps and pectoral muscles. His hair was damp, as if he's just stepped
out of the shower. It was a spiked style, brown with blond tips. He had tattoos on
both forearms, some sort of dragon tattooed above his left breast, an earring in his
right ear, one in his nose, one in his lip, and one through each eyebrow. Didn't those
have to have hurt? To me it looked ridiculous on an otherwise handsome guy. It was
like wearing your IQ on your face. Why not just take a magic marker and write across
your forehead, "I ain't got a lick of sense, and here's holes I had punched in my
head to prove it." Maybe it was just another reminder that I'd entered the middle
ages.

"Is this 756 Eighth Street?" I asked, trying not to stare at the golden loop earring
through his belly button.

"Yes," he answered with a confused look.

"Are you the owner here? Jacoby?" I asked, consulting my notebook, which had a list
of fictitious names and addresses written in it. Some of the names had check marks
beside them.

"Yes, I'm Jake Jacoby. But I didn't call for an exterminator," he said, pointing at
my T-shirt which read Celtic Exterminating on the pocket. I showed no reaction to
his comment as I made a check mark next to his name in my notebook.

"No, I know you didn't. A lot of folks in this neighborhood did, however. We've been
contracted by the Boston Health Department to spray all the homes in a ten-block area.
There's been a recent influx of brown recluse spider bites around here. Two bite victims
reported yesterday alone—just up the way." I pointed in the general direction of west,
indicating somewhere between next door and the Pacific Ocean. "We sprayed both their
houses first thing this morning."

"Oh, I don't know that it's really necessary to—"

"It's required, sir."

"—spray my house."

"Whenever there is a public health epidemic like this one, the health department steps
in and takes mandatory steps to eliminate the hazard. As dictated by paragraph two,
section five of the department's procedure manual." I was really proud of how competent
I sounded.

"There will be no expense levied on any of the residents. In other words, the treatments
are free," I explained in simpler terms. After all, I was talking to a guy with a
collection of self-induced holes in his head.

"That's good, but still—"

"If you're prepared to—"

"I don't—"

"—vacate the premises for an hour or so, we can get started. I have one of my men
getting the sprayer ready. It's out in the trunk."

I noticed Jake look out at his driveway. An odd expression crossed his face when he
saw Stone's sports car parked next to his own.

"All of our regular vans are tied up spraying homes, since, of course, the entire
neighborhood has been affected," I explained. "Out of necessity, we had to bring Carl's
car instead." Don't all exterminators show up in 2003 Corvettes and fill their tiny
trunks with sprayers full of toxic chemicals? Jake still looked skeptical, so I had
to get more dramatic. I lifted up my pant leg and showed him a large, mottled scar
on my calf. A look of revulsion crossed the young man's face as he stared at the disfiguring
wound.

"You wouldn't want an ugly scar like this from a bite that takes months to heal,"
I told him. "Brown recluse bites cause your skin to rot—down to the bone. Very, very
painful. You obviously take pride in your body, Mr. Jacoby, treat it as a temple and
all. You wouldn't want a bunch of unsightly scars like this all over you, would you?
No, I didn't think so. I guarantee you, you wouldn't want to be bitten by a brown
recluse."

You wouldn't want to lean up against the hot muffler of your little brother's motorbike
either, I thought, as I pulled my pant leg back down over the old burn mark.

"That does look nasty all right," Jake said.

I removed Stone's cell phone from my back pocket and punched in the number written
on the slip of paper he'd handed me earlier. "Here, Mr. Jacoby, Leo Friar is on the
line. He's the head of the health department." It was a safe bet that a guy Jake's
age would have no idea who the director of the local health department was, or even
what the department did for the city.

"Hello, Mr. Friar? Uh, this is Jake Jacoby over on Eighth Avenue. I have the Celtic
Exterminating people here to spray my house for brown recluse spiders. And—uh—I guess
I just wanted to check the situation out," Jake said into the phone. He looked over
at me after a few seconds and asked, "What's your name, ma'am?"

"Mandy Hill."

"Yes, Ms. Hill is here. Un-huh, yes, I see. Okay, Mr. Friar. Thanks."

He pushed the "end" button and handed the phone back to me. "I guess it's okay. Mr.
Friar said that the stuff you spray is pretty toxic, though. He suggested I find something
to do away from the house for an hour or two. I was getting ready to go down to the
gym anyway. Could you lock the door when you leave?" Jake asked in a polite manner.