Never Street by Loren D. Estleman Read Free Book Online

Cherie’s. It’s a strip joint in Ypsilanti. He might still be there. Sometimes the help forgets to sweep under the tables.”
    “He goes there often. I called and spoke to the manager. He was there last night. Nobody saw him leave, and they haven’t seen him since. I’m not alarmed. Brian’s not like Neil; he stays away days at a time sometimes. He has his own income, from a trust fund our parents set up. Probably he’s shacked up with one of his teenage tramps. I just thought you should know, in case you think the disappearances are related.”
    “Right now I’m not sure how the Marx Brothers are related. So far it’s a puzzle without any pieces. If I see Brian I’ll shoo him on home.”
    “Thank you.” Her tone lifted. “How’d you find the island?”
    “Easy. I just followed the smell of fertilizer.”
    When we were through talking I dialed Vesta Mannering’s number. I didn’t get Ma Bell’s scratchy apology this time, but on the other hand I didn’t get Vesta either. I fixed myself a nightcap and went to bed.
    Over coffee and my second cigarette of the day I called Gilda Productions. The same air-conditioned female voice treated me to a medley of Billy Ray Cyrus’ greatest hit and then Leo Webb came on. He spoke in clipped, executive-issue tones with no accent at all; he’d been in Michigan a very long time, if he hadn’t actually been born here.
    “You said you’re a detective? I hope you’ve got something more for me this time than just questions. I’m out better than twenty grand.”
    “Oh?”
    “It’s all in your report, for chrissake. Why do you bother to write them up if nobody reads them? Some of that equipment was still in the box.”
    “Video equipment?”
    “Video and sound: four cameras, two sound mixers, a seven-channel equalizer, a laser disc player, and eight speakers. Not to mention half a mile of copper wire and I don’t know how many gold-plated connectors. All studio quality, none of that Radio Shack shit. Twenty thousand wholesale. I can’t tell you what all that’s worth on the street. That’s your job.”
    “Is it?”
    He started to say something else, then broke off. When he spoke again, the guards were up. “Who did you say you were?”
    “Amos Walker.”
    “My secretary said you were with the police.”
    “If she’s a good secretary, she said I’m a detective. That’s what I told her. Gay Catalin hired me to find her husband. I understand you’re partners.”
    He came back at me from another channel entirely, courteous and jovial. He had some pretty impressive sound equipment of his own. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry so much about Neil. He’s always been the creative half of our association. I imagine he’s off on one of his intellectual benders. Probably show up bright and early tomorrow morning, spewing French phrases and working his hands like an old-fashioned crank camera.”
    “His wife says this only happened once before.”
    “From home, yes. Around here we’re used to his missing meetings and not coming back from lunch. Neil’s a dreamer. I’m not knocking it; it was his dream that started Gilda. I’m what keeps it going. I do all the scutwork.”
    “I’d like to come in and talk with you about him. Just in case he doesn’t show up tomorrow morning.”
    A Rolodex clattered on his end. “I can give you fifteen minutes at nine-forty-five this morning. I was planning to use them to go over my notes for a presentation I’m making tomorrow, but I know it cold. Don’t be late.”
    I started to say I didn’t intend to, but I was talking to a dial tone.
    My Mercury didn’t want to start. I flooded it, waited five minutes, then shoved the accelerator to the firewall and ground it into life. It had been done quicker by others, but I didn’t have a hunchbacked assistant. It was time to think about new wheels.
    Gilda Productions had a suite on the seventeenth floor of the Michigan Consolidated Gas Company Building on Woodward, a furnace-shaped