Checkered Crime: A Laurel London Mystery (13 page)

He must’ve known what he was doing because the Phone Shop was always packed.

“Get on out of here,” he warned and walked back toward the street. Before he rounded the corner, he yelled over his shoulder, “Stay away from Jax Jackson!”

“Will do.” Ugh…if he only knew that I had to work for Jax and the FBI, not to mention the mob.

I crouched down and looked under the car. It was pitch black. I got up and looked in the car to see if there might be a flashlight in there but there was nothing. The light above the dumpster flickered, and then buzzed on.

I bent down to look under the car. The bullet was right there by my foot. I grabbed it and put it in my pocket before I got back into the car.

Chapter Twelve

Call me a hypochondriac or just plain crazy, but the idea that there could be something, anything about my past in the old orphanage sat in my gut next to my ulcer or whatever had to be growing in my stomach. It had to be hereditary.

Henrietta wasn’t in any rush to get home because she was curled up in the back seat of the car, eyes shut tight.

I backed the car out and turned it around to turn onto River Road so I could head out to the abandoned orphanage. Before I pulled out, someone smacked the back of the trunk. In my rearview window I could see it was the couple of kids I had seen on the docks.

“Can you give us a lift? We don’t have any money and if I don’t get back by curfew my dad is going to kill him.” The young blonde pointed to the scrawny guy next to her.

“Get in.” I sighed heavily. I remembered what it was like being young, only I didn’t have a ride anywhere.

They jumped in and muttered a few “thank yous” and told me how to get to her house. It was in the trailer park a few miles away.

“If you don’t start giving it up, you won’t have to worry about a curfew because I’m dumping you.” The guy grabbed the girl by the leg making her wince.

“I told you. I’m not ready for that.” Tears hung on the edge of her lids. “But Tommy I love you.”

I reached over and pulled the little gun next to me.

“Then give me a little. That’s how you show me.” He grabbed her and planted a big kiss on her. She fought him off, wailing on his chest.

Abruptly I stopped the car and turned around in the seat. I had had enough.

“Listen here, bitch.” Tommy looked like he was talking in slow motion. “Drive you stupid cabby bitch.”

“Tommy!” the girl yelled. He backhanded her.

“Tommy is it?” I waved my little confidence in the air between the front and back seat. “Me and my little buddy think it’s time for you to get out of my taxi.”

Tommy’s eyes grew big and I wasn’t sure, but I’d put money on it that he just might have shit a little in his shorts.

The next thing I knew, the back door slammed and I was driving full speed.

“That was awesome!” The girl smiled from ear-to-ear. “You just saved my life!”

“What?” I blinked and tried to steady my shaking hands. “No. I didn’t save your life.” There was nothing worse than seeing a young girl who wasn’t able to take care of herself. I guess I was lucky since I had no choice. “You need to value yourself so much more than that. Haven’t I seen you at Friendship Baptist on Sundays?”

“Yes,” the young girl said meekly.

“Get rid of Tommy and get back to your family and friends and church.” Even if it was with Pastor Wilson, anything was better than what she was doing now.

“Thank you,” she whispered and turned around and looked out the back window.

Tommy was flailing his middle fingers in the air and shouting something. I slammed on the brakes. He did a double take and took off running when he saw the reverse lights go on because I was going to go back and bust his balls.

“You know,” she yammered on, “he treats me like a piece of meat. I knew he only wanted me to go on the docks to get a piece of my ass. I wasn’t about it.” She smacked the back of the seat, causing me to jump.

I took in a deep breath. She grinned ear-to-ear.

“Are you like some undercover cop or something? Because you are one badass.” She nodded her head up and down.

I held up the gun. “Something like that.”

After she got out of the car, I gripped the steering wheel and pulled out of the girl’s trailer park and headed south on River Road. I was going to cut over on Fifth Street and then left on Main so I could head out of town toward the old orphanage. The state never tore it down and I knew the records weren’t ever moved because Trixie would have complained about it in some sort of fashion.

The gravel spit up under the Belvedere tires as I sped up the old drive. There was no reason to try to be careful and not ding the car because after all this FBI stuff, I was going to get a real job and get the Old Girl painted something other than yellow.

I parked the car directly in front of the office window on the left side of the orphanage and left the lights on. Without a flashlight, I had to get creative somehow. Trixie would sit in the bay window and look out as all of us spent our day playing in the front yard. There were always stacks upon stacks of files and manila envelopes. Surely there was something in there with my name on it.

The old stone mansion used to be gorgeous with the ivy growing up the big pillars and the pointy roof. There were eleven bedrooms. Five on each side of the stairs with a master smack dab in the middle. I swear Trixie never slept. She could hear a mouse scurrying around for a crumb at night. If you wanted to sneak out, it had to be after dinner or right after school.

Pieces of the stone steps crumbled with each step I took. The shutters creaked in the night wind. The hair on my arms stood up as the air whipped up and around my body.

“Here goes nothing,” I whispered. I’d never been one to be scared of anything, but trying to figure out where I had come from and if I had some sort of diseases was a little terrifying. I couldn’t help but have a little fear in my soul. Maybe it was anticipation of finding something about my past that should stay exactly where it was…in the past.

Gia never understood it. As much as I had tried to explain to her, she never had to worry about anything medical or what ethnicity she was. I looked down at my hands wondering if they looked like my mom’s and knew I was doing the right thing by trying to figure out something about my past.

The single-pane front door had some broken glass, just enough for me to put my hand in and unlock the door. The old place was dusty and filled with cobwebs.

“Blah, blah.” I spit out the cobwebs that had clung on my face as I walked through the large foyer and down the hall to where the office was.

The light of the moon dripped through the large windows, shining into the dark old house putting a little glow in the house.

I peeked my head in all the rooms on the way to the office.

All of the furniture was the still in place as if we had left for a long vacation. With a little bit of dusting, the place would be exactly like I remembered it. The old red velvet Victorian couch and chairs had large tarps draped over them.

There was a sense of belonging putting a little doubt to why I needed to find out about my past. “What the hell is wrong with you?” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “Why do you need to know your past? Trixie has been such a good caregiver.”

Trixie would be so hurt if she knew I was here, but I had to put that in the back of my mind.

Without thinking too much, I went into the office. The car headlights did exactly what I had intended for them to do. The light was shining in perfectly as though I had the lights inside on. Just out of curiosity I flipped on the light switch. The chandelier flickered right on.

“What the hell?” I continued to flip it off and on as the lights did just that. “Why is the electricity still on?”

That was strange. I knew that Trixie couldn’t afford to keep the lights on and the state shut the orphanage down and there was no way they were going to pay to keep the lights on. Something wasn’t adding up.

The files were still stacked like I remembered them. The grey filing cabinets lined the inside wall of the room and Trixie’s large mahogany desk was still right in front of the window just like I remembered. There was a pen and paper with her handwriting on top as if she had just gotten up to go to the bathroom and would be back to finish whatever it was she was doing.

More and more questions flooded my mind. Why would the electricity be on? Why would the furniture still be here? And why are the files still here?

Regardless, I was there to find out about me, not everything else going on.

One by one the old file doors squeaked when I pulled the long drawers out as far as they would go. There were names on the tabs. Some I recognized and some I didn’t. I’m sure they were of kids that had been there long before I was there.

I wasn’t sure how long Trixie had run the orphanage before I was born. It was a question I had never asked.

Carefully I used my finger to pluck through all the filing cabinets with no luck to me. I bit my lip and looked around the room. There had to be something somewhere. My eyes zeroed in on Trixie’s desk. Vaguely I recalled her always shoving papers in the drawers when I would come in to talk to her.

There were three drawers on each side of the desk and one long one in the middle. Nothing out of the ordinary for a desk. Just a typical wood desk.

I eased myself into Trixie’s chair and pulled the top drawer open. Nothing but pens and a few stray paperclips. Then I proceeded to go through each drawer one by one.

“Bingo.” My eyes almost popped out of my head when I saw my name printed on a small envelope. “Please be something.”

I opened the envelope and pulled out a piece of paper that looked like someone had ripped it off a larger piece of paper.

“Louisville?” The only thing printed on the paper was an address. I was hoping to find something a little more exciting…like Paris, France or something.

I pulled the envelope apart hoping there was something else in there, but there wasn’t. I stuffed the piece of paper in my pocket and rummaged through the drawer some more. There wasn’t anything else in there but a few unused notepads and unopened pack of pencils.

At least I had an address that I could trace.

Chapter Thirteen

When I got home, there was a note from Jax Jackson that was slipped under my door. First he wanted to know why I didn’t have a cell phone and two he wanted to verify our plan to meet up at The Cracked Egg after I made my drop off with Trigger Finger. He had my first set of instructions.

First set? He had another thing coming to him if he thought I was doing more than one.

Henrietta didn’t move an inch throughout the night after we had gotten home from the orphanage, but I did. Trigger Finger Tony, Jax Jackson, having a hand gun, and a possible address from my past rolled around in my head like a hamster on a wheel. And lying in bed didn’t help matters.

Thoughts of Trigger Finger pinged in my head only to bounce off an idea about Jax Jackson which made me think about the gun and so on. Nothing was getting solved. Only more of a stomachache which made me wonder if I had some crazy family sickness.

All this talk about Trigger and mobs was taking up all the breathing room for my brain. The whole mobster thing was getting to me.

I surfed the Internet looking at all sorts of images of Trigger Finger Tony. I even saw the guy from the boat and the docks that the caption referred to at Nicoli Fabrizo. He was in a lot of Trigger’s pictures, wearing the same head-to-toe white outfit and his finger.

Quickly I got showered, fed Henrietta, and grabbed my bag along with
my
new little gun friend before I left to go see Derek to get one of his old cell phones he had promised me.

“You’re here early.” Derek was already in the garage bay working on the same car he had been working on earlier in the week. “Your passenger needs a ride?”

“What? How did you know?” I couldn’t believe it. “That Gia!” I was going to give her a piece of my mind for telling him about Trigger Finger.

“Calm down.” He wiped his hands off on his already dirty rag. “Why are you getting so worked up? You are the one who told me about Jax Jackson needing a ride to and from Morty’s while he’s in town for that music festival.”

“Oh, yeah.” I sucked in a big deep breath, so happy he didn’t know about Trigger. I was more on edge than I realized.

The phone rang which caught Derek’s attention, taking the focus off of me. He walked in the office to answer it. I heard a few mumbles before he slammed down the phone.

“Got to go!” He ran out of the office with one of his coat sleeves hanging off his shoulder while he tried to finagle the other one on and also shut the bay door. “A little help?”

“What’s the rush?” I pushed the remaining opened part of the large garage door down with my foot so he could lock it up on the rail.

“Fresh body!” His eyes sparkled like his toothy grin. “First dead body I’m going to get to see in the line of duty!”

He grabbed his set of truck keys off the hook he had nailed by the door and rushed me out in front of him.

“The phone! I need a phone!” I punched my finger in the air toward the office and watched him run to his truck.

“It’s going to have to wait.” He jumped into his truck, leaving me standing there.

“Damn.” I sauntered back to the Old Girl.

Click, click, click. The sound of a dead battery made me turn around. Click, click, click. Looking through the back of the truck window, I could see Derek smacking the hell out of the steering wheel.

“Piece of shit! Piece of shit!” he screamed and spit on the ground. Not to mention a little stomping.

His eyes slid over to me.

“Laurel, I need a ride.” He ran over to the Old Girl and got in the passenger seat without me agreeing to cart him around.

“I’m, I’m…,” I looked at my watch. I had to be on time to pick up Trigger or my finger wasn’t going to be able to hold that gun Derek let me borrow. I opened the door and got in.

“Drop me off.” He put his hands in the air. “That’s all I’m asking. River Road!” He pointed ahead.