Indigo Slam: An Elvis Cole Novel by Robert Crais Read Free Book Online Page B

the two calls to Tucson and the five to Seattle. Over four months, there were also eighty-six local-area toll calls. The Tucson calls were to two different numbers. The five calls to Seattle were to two numbers, also, one number once, the other four times. I called the Tucson numbers first, getting a woman who answered, “Desert Moving and Storage,” and asked her if Clark Haines was there, or if she knew how I could reach him. She told me that she knew no one by that name. Clark had probably used them to move to LA from Tucson, and she didn’t remember the name. A woman named Rosemary Teal answered the next call. I asked her if Clark was there, and she told me that he’d moved, though she wasn’t sure where. I asked her how she knew that he’d moved, and she told me that she was his neighbor. I asked if she’d heard from him since they moved, and she said only once. She said he’d called to ask her to please check and be sure he’d turned off the gas. When she insisted that I identify myself, I hung up.
Turn off the gas
. The junkie as concerned neighbor. I called the Seattle numbers next. When I called the first number, a young woman’s voice answered, “New World Printing.” I again asked for Clark Haines, and she told me that no one by that name worked there. I dialed the second number, and on the third ring a hoarse male voice said, “Hello?”
    “Hi, is Clark there?” Bright, and kind of cheery.
    The voice said, “Who is this?” Suspicious.
    “Tre Michaels. Clark said he was coming up and gave me your number.”
    “I think you got the wrong number.” Clark Haines had spoken to someone at this number for over an hour on two separate occasions.
    “I’m sure I copied the number right. We’re talking Clark Haines, okay? Clark said he’d be at this number or that you’d know how to reach him.”
    “I don’t know anyone by that name.” He hung up, and he didn’t sound anywhere close to credible.
    I called my friend at the phone company, gave her the area code and number, and asked for an ID. Forty seconds later she said, “That service is billed to a Mr. Wilson Brownell. You want his address?”
    “Sure.”
    I copied the address, then hung up and thought about the two hundred dollars I had taken from Teresa Haines. Wilson Brownell clearly knew Clark and, under normal circumstances, would be the next step in the investigation. A ticket to Seattle and a hotel would normally be a billable expense, but having a fifteen-year-old kid for a client wasn’t normal. Teresa and Charles and Winona were minor children living alone because their father, unemployed and now established as a drug user with a spotty employment record, had, for all intents and purposes, abandoned them. There was every real possibility that Clark Haines might never return, or even be found alive, and the smart thing to do would be to call the police and let them handle it. If I went to Seattle, I couldn’t reasonably expect to recover the cost.
    Only I had promised Teresa Haines that I would try to find her father, and it bothered me to leave the lead to Wilson Brownell untested and unresolved. I thought about the two hundred dollars again, and then I picked up the phone and dialed another number.
    First ring, and a man’s voice said, “Pike.” Joe Pike owns the agency with me.
    “I’m looking for a guy named Clark Haines, and I believe he’s gone to Seattle. He has three kids and I need you to keep an eye on them while I’m up there.”
    Pike didn’t respond.
    “Joe?”
    We might as well have been disconnected.
    “They’re doing okay, but I don’t like the idea of them not having an adult around if they need help.”
    Pike said, “Three children.”
    “I just want to make sure they don’t burn down the house.”
    More silence.
    I was still waiting for him to say something when the cat came in through his cat door and growled so loud that Joe Pike said, “Is that your cat?”
    The cat trotted into the living room