Chet’s Truck Stop turned out to be the kind of place Ron didn’t want to be. The main office was the only area easily accessible. Tall chain link fences surounded the back area, where the trucks had to stop for a wrought iron gate to be opened. Scattered around the property were dogs on heavy chains that erupted into a cacaphony of angry barking the moment he pulled into the parking lot. They were big, thick-necked beasts that had no fear of Ron and less love of him. Through the fence he could see Chet looking at him. Age was the only change Ron noticed from the last time he saw Chet. His expression upon seeing Ron was blank, emotionless. After a moment Chet looked back to the men unloading the truck and started making notes on a clipboard.
The office inside was the polar opposite of Kate’s. It was tidy. There were no loose papers scattered around the floor. Audrey Carmen sat at a desk off to the side of the door, her eyes pouring over some paperwork. Without looking up at Ron she indicated she would help him in just a moment as a rote response to the bell positioned above the entrance. Chet’s desk was behind a half-wall in the back that Ron could see over. It was as blank as the expression Chet gave him earlier. Ron made his way over to Audrey’s desk, looking for any sign of another person in the small room. Chet didn’t have much use for extra office personnel and it showed.
Audrey looked just as good sitting at her desk as she had on the stool in the diner. She wrote something down on the paper she was so intently studying and looked up at Ron. “Well that was fast,” Audrey said.
“Business,” Ron said. “It’s just a coincidence you work here.”
“Shipping something big?” Audrey asked. She leaned back in her chair.
“No. I’m here to talk to Chet about Kate Nass’s murder.”
“You’re a cop?” Audrey asked.
“Nope. It’s personal. Kate was a good friend of mine, and I’m asking questions since the cops aren’t.”
Audrey looked him over and leaned forward, touching her mouth just so with the edge of her finger. “You’ve met Chet Mason, then?” He nodded. “Then you know he’s not likely to be helpful… and if he did know anything…”
“I know. I just don’t have much to go on.”
The sound of a door shutting behind them caused Ron to take a step away from Audrey and half turn. Chet stood at the back door, clipboard in hand. His face remained blank. It was like watching a master poker player, only Chet didn’t have any other expression. Ron tried to talk to him, tried to figure out if he knew anything, but Chet just got aggravated. An aggravated Chet was a difficult Chet, so Ron just backed off and excused himself. He sat on his motorcycle for a long while, staring at the barking dogs. Chet was always a little paranoid, even before being knocked in the head. But this new set up was a bit much and he wondered if the impatience was caused by some rabid theft. Chet hated to be stolen from. The lilting jingle of the bell told him someone had come out, and he looked up to see Audrey approaching him. The wind pushed her hair out to the side and into her face. She stopped about ten feet from Ron, adjusting her hair and holding it in a makeshift ponytail until the wind died down. Ron looked her up and down again, enjoying every last inch of her. She would know about any thefts.
“We should get dinner,” Ron said.
“Maybe. Listen, Ron. I don’t want to overstep, but Kate was murdered. Are you sure that you should be digging into this?”
“He wouldn’t have rested if I had been murdered, Audrey. I can’t very well let this go without at least trying,” Ron said. “I’ll be careful. So, dinner tomorrow night?”
She shook her head, but grinned at him. “Some other time, Flyboy. Good luck.”
On his way back to town Ron found himself being pulled over by a particulalry smarmy cop. The guy was about his age, clean shaven, and wearing a nice uniform. But something in his face screamed at Ron and the word was toadie. Ron waited in silence as the cop approached and stood next to him. He wouldn’t be the first to speak, he wouldn’t give the officer that courtesy. Ron didn’t ask why he was pulled over.
“You Cavanaugh?”
“I am, Officer… ?”
“Walker. Chief wants to see you.”
“Lead the way,” Ron said.
Chief of Police Phil Brousard had a nice office. A clean office, too, with a few items he’d been given for meritorious service hanging on the wall or taking up room on the desk. Phil Brousard was dressed nice. A hat rack in the corner held his hat, a jacket, and a shoulder holster that was empty. Walker stood by his desk when Ron walked in, and remained standing once Ron sat in one of the two empty chairs. Brousard was bent over some papers, studying them through his thick glasses. They sat there like that in silence for more than a few minutes as Brousard shuffled papers and attempted to look too busy for Ron. Given that he’d had Ron brought in, that seemed kind of stupid. But Brousard wasn’t known for his intelligence.
“You’ve spent a lot of time in Kate Nass’s place,” Brousard said.
“A bit. I’ve been cleaning it up.”
“I saw that the sign indicated the office was open. You aren’t a private investigator, Ronald.”
“Ron. And there’s no law that says I can’t do the same job Kate did. I don’t need permission. Besides, for now, I’m just trying to ask questions and figure out what happened to Kate Nass.” Ron wanted to tread carefully but he wasn’t going to back down and he knew the laws in the state. When it came to being a private detective there weren’t many.
Brousard set aside his papers. “Well, that may be. But I’m asking you a favor. Drop it?”
“No,” Ron said. “It’s been months. Where is your investigation?”
“We’re working on it,” Walker said.
Ron stood up. “Am I under arrest?” Both men shook their heads. “All right then. Officers. Good luck with your investigation. If I find anything out you’ll be the first to know.”
Neither man spoke as he stepped outside. His initial instincts were right. Officer Walker was a toadie. Unfortunately, the king toadie in this case was also the Chief of Police. There was something there, in the way the man looked at Ron, that made him feel Brousard knew more than he was letting on. Maybe even knew who killed Kate Nass and had just decided to clam up about it. Maybe it was someone important, or maybe it was him. Perhaps Mrs. Brousard hired Kate to see if the Chief of Police was putting his gun in any other holsters.
On his way out Ron noticed that a younger Detective in a light grey suit was watching him. The man was thin but had a rounder face and a soft nose. In his right hand he held a coffee mug not far from his mouth. A slightly older detective in a navy suit sat at a desk next to him and also had his eyes fixed on Ron. The name plate at the desk said “Det. Franklin” at the top and “Internal Affairs” at the bottom. That would be a man Ron might have to talk to at some point in the future. He nodded his head slightly to both of them and walked out into the street.
With police harrassment apparently in his future Ron decided to take stock of what he had. Kate’s car, which was a junker and had to be replaced, along with Kate’s office and the few case notes Ron kept out of the dumpster. There were a collection of pictures of people in various states of undress or sexual activity taken for cases, and a healthy number of pictures just showing people out together. His guns and Kate’s together were something of an arsenal but he could only shoot a maximum of two of them at a time. Kate had an old camera and Ron would need to learn to use it and remember how to work the dark room.
He would need some sort of tape recording device. The clunker buried in the desk wasn’t portable unless Ron hired a crew of moving men to go around with him at all times, and that wasn’t in his budget. But the real thing he needed, the one item that Ron needed most to help him, was to know who was who in town now, and who might want Kate dead. Based on the notes Ron found there weren’t many people left that liked Kate. But killing him was a step most wouldn’t take. Sane people didn’t often commit murder.
The motorcycle barely fit in the garage with Kate’s land boat of a car. Ron adjusted a few of the empty oil cans that Kate apparently collected before heading inside and looking around the office. On the wall something caught his eye. The bulletin board didn’t sit flat on against the wall any longer, and he hadn’t noticed before. Ron went to adjust it and the thing fell to the ground. But that wasn’t the surprising part from Ron’s point of view — it was what lay hidden behind it. Stuck to the wall behind the bulletin board were pictures.
They were taped together in a sort of tree shape, implying a heirarchy, and each featured a different person. The top picture was a man in a nice suit with a fedora pulled down over his face. It was a distant shot and from the side, concealing enough of the man’s face to keep him from being readily identifiable. Written on the bottom of the picture, in Kate’s handwriting, was the name “Puppetmaster.” Beneath him there were three more photographs in a row, each of men in suits, each as distant and bad angle as the others.
“The Boss,” one said. More of his face was visible than any other but Ron couldn’t place him. The middle picture was labeled “Runner.” A tall, thin gentleman in a light colored suit, leaning as he stood. The final label was “Captain” and it was a man that bore more than a little resemblance to Phil Brousard. The naming system was odd, and it fit the kind of thing Kate would come up with himself. A fourth picture, off to the side, contained the only woman in the set. She wore a women’s fedora and a well fitting dress over a pair of boots. Ron almost fell over at her label. “Boots.”
Scribbled beneath that it said, “The boots are red.”
“Only you, Kate,” Ron said.
At the bottom there were pictures of some of the local idiots: The Davis boys, Officer Walker, a few other individuals that Ron recognized as neighborhood punks. Written beneath that row of infamy was the line, “Idiots, Fall Guys, and Patsies.” But other than those brief descriptions Kate hadn’t left any clue as to what this all meant, or who these people were in relation to Kate. Ron replaced the bulletin board and sat down. His grief and anger were now being replaced by pure determination.
No matter how long it took he wanted to bring the person or persons responsible for Kate’s death to the justice they deserved. Those pictures had to be some sort of clue. Kate kept them hidden, out of the way of prying eyes. Had Ron not seen the way the bulletin board sat on the wall he never would have noticed it, never would have found it. Now he knew. There was something going on in town that Kate was looking into, something not tied to any of the notes he kept in the office.
Something that probably got him killed.
Ron looked at the wall clock. He had a dinner date with Lynn and Stretch, the first time he would have seen them both at the same time in a decade. He wasn’t sure what to expect, or what would be coming. The mere idea of it made him uncomfortable deep in his bones. He wanted to keep working, to keep trying to find out what happened to Kate. To get the revenge he craved so heavily. But maybe Stretch could offer some clues and make it worth his while. Maybe Stretch would have been another addition to Kate’s wall, or maybe Lynn was Boots. He hated to think of his old friends that way.
But at this point everyone was a suspect.
Category Archives: bootsarered
The Boots Are Red Rewrite — Chapter 1
Chapter 1
Stepping off the boat and onto the land of the free was a feeling like none other for Ron Cavanaugh. He’d been gone for almost six years, and not because he didn’t love his country or because it didn’t love him. It was just the way it happened for him. But that spring morning in 1954 was one of the happiest moments in his life up to that point. After stepping off the long, slow boat from England he leaned on his cane more than he needed to and watched the men unload the large crates with a crane. One of the big containers held his belongings, including his Norton Big Four. He’d sent almost everything else he owned back in the mail.
As he waited for them to get his crate Ron leaned against the wall out an outbuilding and had a smoke. It was unusually cold for this time of year and he was taking some comfort in the heat of the cigarette held between two fingers. The Port of New Orleans had gotten a lot busies since he was a kid and he realized this could be a while. But he was anxious to get home to his small town in Mississippi, just over the border but a few hours by the roads as he remembered them. For the first time in years he’d see his parents, his brother, and all of his friends. He’d meet with Kate Nass and show him his battle scars and the bike, though he was sure Kate would one up him with a story.
Ron always wondered why Kate’s mother saddled him with the name Kate. It fit, though, because the man was one of a kind. He was an old cuss while still in diapers and probably the meanest man to serve in the first War to End All Wars. Kate joked that Hitler shot himself when he found out Kate was heding to Europe. People who knew Kate well weren’t so sure he wasn’t at least partially telling the truth. Between serving his country — the second go around taking a lot of string pulling and old favors to arrange for his fat, old ass — he’d been a private detective. In that career he’d made as many enemies of clients as the people he was hired to watch.
Once, when Ron was a teenager, he asked him why he’d want to do something that was such a hard job with odd hours and no respect. Kate’s response was, “Dames and smokes.” Apparently it was a common question for men in that field. Is it for the peeping? Do they hate people, or just men, or just women? The last part always depended on which spouse was assumed to be cheating. Kate’s bread and butter had been suspicious husbands and wives all up and down the deep south — from Jackson and Birmingham to New Orleans, to Mobile. It was the triangle of Kate Nass, spying on cheaters and landing evidence for divorces.
Ron knew he enjoyed the peeping, though. He was that sort of scumbag, but he was good at it. Kate was the kind of man you had to know well to get the full idea. A short, portly guy with a walrus mustache, horseshoe badlness, and what hair he had unkempt most of the time. His hair had started to fall out when he was in his teen years, and Kate said he figured God was a woman, too, and all women hate Kate Nass.
People also said he had a funny limp, and a funnier gace all cragged with pits. His eternal companion was a stogie, either hanging from his mouth or in his hands. If he wasn’t on the job he had a glass of cheap whisky, and if he was on it, he had a glass of better whisky. He preferred Scotch, neat, aged in sherry casks, but he’d drink a good bourbon, too. Even when he wasn’t working Kate was trying to work, sneaking around town and seeing everything with his near-black eyes. Dishevelled, drunk often, wearing a steel-blue suit with a red and black tie and sweat-stained undershirts. He’d wander around his office in circles, talking to himself or his visitor, waggling his cigar at invisible suspects and clients as he worked through the case in his mind.
Music often accompanied him from the record player in the corner, one of the few surfaces not covered in stacks of paper that threatened to topple at any moment. The top pages were almost always ringed with coffee stains from his mugs. There were rats, of course, but Kate wasn’t a good enough shot with his pistol to kill them.
The one major redeeming quality Kate had was hating everyone the same. Nobody was a nigger, or a spic or a darkie. There were no gooks or wetbacks. Everyone was the same to Kate — “assholes.” He even referred to clients as assholes when they weren’t in ear shot, unless they hadn’t paid. The only exception to the rule of assholes were attractive woman, who were always “dames.” That is, until they slapped Kate or turned down an obscene offer — then she became a “bitch.” Most women eventually became bitches in Kate’s eyes. But then, the only people he regularly spoke well of were Ron’s father, his war buddies, and Ron’s grandfather. Pretty much everyone else had either been a client or a victim.
Except Chester “Chet” Mason, Kate’s only friend other than Ron’s father. They had a beer fight about a week before Pearl Harbor was hit, and Kate run Chet’s bell with a beer bottle good and well. Chet was never right after that, and Kate still regretted it. Kate had looked after Chet after that, but the weird thing was, Chet got better at running his truckstop once he was slowed down in the brain. It was like he refocused on just getting everything done where it needed to be and everything else in life took a back seat to that.
Finally, two dock hands came over to see if he was waiting on anything in particular. Ron indicated the one that had “CAVENAUGH” stencilled across it, wondering how the guy who packed it managed to misspell his last name when it was clearly written on the form and payment slip. Then one of the men noticed the jacket Ron was wearing and pointed at it.
“You a pilot?” He asked.
“Not anymore,” Ron said. He dropped his cigarette on the ground and stepped on it, twisting his foot and grinding it into the ground.
The man who’d asked nodded at him. “You need anything?”
“My crate opened,” Ron said. “It’s got my ride out of here in it.”
The two men went to it, getting the large crate open faster than Ron expected. He tipped them a couple bucks each and got on the bike, heading out toward home. Once he cleared New Orleans the drive back was mostly pine trees and then more pine trees. Despite the cold, the day was mostly clear and sunny and he enjoyed the ride. As he approached town it seemed like not much had changed. There was more to the town, of course, as the businessmen fought hard to bring the town up and make it the Mississippi version of New Orleans. They couldn’t get a foothold there and wanted their own little metropolis to play power games in.
He stopped at the quickstop to gas up and saw his high-school friend Murphy “Stretch” Dwyer stepping out of a very nice car as the young kid who worked at the station came up and began filling the car. Ron got off his bike and approached, waiting for Stretch to return. When he did, Ron hung back for a second until he got in the car, then helped himself into the passenger seat. His friend jumped and bowed up at Ron.
“What, Murph, you owe money to the wrong guys — again?” He asked.
“Ron, you fink. When did you get back in town?”
“Just now. What kind of car is this boat?”
“Wow, Ron, when did you get back in the country? This is a Chevrolet Bel Air. It’s only the –”
ROn interrupted, holding a hand up and signalling surrender. “I don’t want to hear about how great your car is, Stretch. If I let you start that you’ll be on about it until the Second Coming. I remember how long you talked about your new bicycle in third grade.”
When Stretch laughed, Ron noticed a suspicious band of gold on his finger. “When’d Stretch Dwyer get hitched?”
STretch looked guilty. “Aw, Ron, I wanted you to be my best man but you were gone and we just…”
“She wouldn’t put out without a ring, huh? So who is the unlucky lady?”
“That’s a nice bike, Ron,” Stretch said.
“Who is it?” Ron pressed. The deflection only increased his curiosity.
“Ron, you were gone for six years. We barely heard from you, you weren’t… Don’t punch me. Lynn and I got married.”
Ron almost punched him in the face. How could Stretch marry Ron’s gi rl? Then he sighed and shook his head. She hadn’t been his girl since before he left, and at least she was with a decent guy instead of the losers all of her friends fawned over.
“No, Murph, it’s all right. She and I split it off. I didn’t expect her to wait for me to get my head straight.”
“Things have changed, Ron. The town is growing, bit by bit. Chet now runs a trucking service in addition to his truckstop. While you were off trying to conquer the world…”
“Hey mister, is this your bike?” The boy asked, sticking his head in the driver’s side window and totally ignoring Stretch.
“Yeah, fill ‘er up?”
“Sure thing, mister!”
“So while I was out shooting at commies, the town grew and you moved in on my girl.” He let it hang in the air for just a moment longer than Stretch was comfortable with before punching his shoulder. “Just messing with you, relax.”
“Did you see a lot of action?” Stretch asked.
“Not while I was wearing my uniform!” Ron said. Then he waited, and waited more, as it took Stretch a moment to get it. The town sure had changed. When they were younger that sort of joke would have been the first place Stretch looked for humor. Apparently getting married took his mind off that sort of thing. “Not until the end,” Ron said. “Not really a lot at all. My last flight, I took shrapnel to the knee. Place barely landed in one piece. It was like courting a girl for months just to get five minutes of second base.”
“What’d you fly?”
“The Thunderjet, F-84. I was with the 49th Fighter Wing, but like I said, I didn’t do a lot of flying in combat zones. Don’t get me wrong, I’d like to come back here and pretend I did all the flying and saved the world. I shot some guys down and blew up some ground targets, but Sunon was the most action I saw, and it was over pretty fast.”
“How’s the knee?”
“It’ll heal, a bit more. I spent about six months at a ROyal Air Force station called Molesworth watching paint dry. Do you know how hard it is to go from flying to piloting a wheelchair around a hospital full of Brits?”
“Why didn’t they bring you home?”
“There was some talk about some joint training mess with England, but by the time I was out of the hospital my service was up, and my knee wasn’t in good enough shape for me to re-up and get to fly. I didn’t want to be a desk jockey.”
Ron got out of the car and paid the kid for the gas, and then added a tip. “See you around, Murph. Tell Lynn I said hi, maybe we can get together some time.”
He watched Murphy drive off into the distance. It was weird being home and seeing people. Murphy was right about Ron not writing or keeping in contact. He didn’t want to be in contact with them. Ron had been a punk kid, mad at the town and the world with no rhyme or reason. Then he turned into a hotshot pilot flying so fast he felt like nothing could catch him, nothing could touch huim. Then something did touch him. The cool breeze made his knee ache. Now he couldn’t run, and they wouldn’t let him fly anymore. He slipped the kickstand up and started his bike. He couldn’t fly, but he could ride.
Despite his misplaced anger at the town he had to admit it was nice being home and hearing familiar voices and accents. His parents were happy to see him when he got to their house, ecstatic even. They had a good dinner, and he brought them up to speed on his adventures across the globe. After they ate, he and his father retired to the study. His dad handed him a fine, hand-rolled cigar. Ron spun it in his fingers as his dad held the lighter up, keeping it just off the flame, puffing enough to get the tip cherry red and smoking. They sat down at the desk and his dad poured each a Scotch.
“In the morning I’m going to go see Kate,” Ron said.
His father froze, his hand midway to his own Scotch glass. “Son, I… didn’t you get my letter?” Ron shook his head. “Ron… Kate was murdered three months ago.”
This time Ron froze. An ill feeling washed over him, and he felt simultaneously sick and angry. The word murdered echoed in his mind. It wasn’t a surprising way for his friend to have died, but he hadn’t expected to hear it. He downed the Scotch and puffed at his cigar. Dread and an enormous weight on his shoulders were fighting with the anger and alcohol.
“Who did it? Why?”
“We don’t know.”
Ron blew a single smoke ring and watched it dissipate. Now he had to hurt people. For Kate to be murdered and no one to find the person or persons responsible couldn’t stand. There were things he’d have to figure out in the mean time like where he would start looking. Kate had enough enemies to take him a life time to sort through. But someone actually going so far as to kill him was entirely farther than any anger he’d ever seen directed Kate’s way. He leaned back in the chair. This wasn’t some jilted woman angry because of the truth of the photographs Kate presented her, or an angry husband caught giving it to the maid. But it could be someone Kate photographed who felt they had a lot to lose.
“What about his office and things?”
“That was in the letter, too. He owned the building his office and apartment are in, straight and clear. Without any family… he left it to us. I haven’t been in there, except to watch and be sure the cops didn’t mess anything up when they were searching for clues. I didn’t know what to do, and was going to wait on you to let me know what you wanted to do.”
Ron nodded. “I think tomorrow I’ll start going through it, looking to see what Kate was up to.”
“Son…”
“Are you going to pay me to fly?” Ron asked.
“What?”
“I can fly, I can shoot, or I can be an engineer. There’s not an airport here, I’m not going to be a cop, and what can I engineer in town? For now, until I decide what to do next, I’m going to try and figure out what Kate was up to. Maybe some people owed him money and weren’t keen on paying.”
“There’s an airstrip now.”
“What?” Ron asked.
“You said there wasn’t an airport. There is an air strip.”
Ron nodded. Somehow flying a crop duster didn’t appeal to him just now. At this moment he pictured himself in a steel blue suit with a red and black tie, figuring out who murdered his friend and offering them some lead-coated attitude adjustment. He shook his head and leaned back, puffing on the cigar some more. It was a fine smoke, straight from Cuba and well cared for.
“So, Lynn and Murphy. Who knew?” Ron said to break the silence.
His dad laughed and poured him more Scotch. They spent the better part of the evening catching up, including a more detailed explanation of what happened to his knee. The unpleasantness he kept in at dinner came out. His dad understood; Winston Cavanaugh had been shot by a German sniper and barely made it. At the end of the night, Ron set the nub of his cigar in the ashtray and requested that his dad leave the key to the office and apartment. Winston agreed and Ron went up to his old room.
It was as he’d left it. Somehow his mother had even resisted taking down his scantily clad pin-up girl that had been there since he was fourteen. His old radio sat next to the window, the place with the best reception from his favorite station. The bed had been made that evening, with fresh sheets. He tore off his shoes and collapsed onto the bed but couldn’t sleep right away. The idea that his friend had been murdered kept him up for a good long while. He mentally played over various revenge and justice scenarios in his mind.
When he came back to town Ron hadn’t known what he would do. Now he knew with certainty what he had to do.
Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas from Cigars and Legs!
The Boots Are Red is currently free. Check it out!
Also, the first in my new fantasy series is now on Amazon: The Five, the first Sword of Nalin book. The first chapter is available at Sword of Nalin. Check it out!
Preview from Book 2!
I also added this to The Boots Are Red on Amazon:
Every town has multiple faces. The one the town wants to present is almost never the one a guy like me needs to see. The same can be said for people; we all have some sort of mask, a protective shell, that we broadcast. Especially on the first meeting. The great thing about cities, compared to people, is the total lack of shame. While the citizens might not want you to know about the underbelly of the place, it has no shame, no emotion. All you have to do is know where to look. Most people who are up to something are the same way, too, with a fatal flaw: they project too hard to compensate. It's only the truly talented, and truly dangerous, that can avoid this pitfall.
Now most people might think I was talking about looking for the seedier side of town, but that's not true, at least not always. It just depends on the job; everyone has something they want to hide, and every client is paying me to find that, regardless of what side of town it was on. This time it happened to be that I was after someone who stayed on the seedy side of the map. It was an old story: rich businessman has a daughter who is interested in a punk with too much grease in his hair. This time the dad knows better than to just outright forbid her to see him; that's like turning him into the most precious jewel in town.
Instead, he wants me to see if the guy is up to something, and he's willing to pay my expenses and give me a nice room in his hotel.
After meeting with the gentleman, a Mister George Gregs, and checking out my room, I went on the hunt. Gregs told me the mark worked part-time for a local butcher. I didn't particularly care to follow around a guy whose job involved using knives on a regular basis, but that's where the money went. His name was Thomas Kent, but according to Gregs his daughter always called him Tommy. Average in most ways; height, weight, typical dress. The main problem seemed to be his tendency toward a bad temper and the group of friends he associated with.
The feeling I got, though, was that he just didn't choose the richest parents to be born to.
Something else I learned, though, is that people with something to hide carry themselves a lot differently than those who don't, when they think no one is looking. It boils down to the ones who are hiding something always act like someone is watching them. They walk differently, their legs move a little quicker. There's almost a guilty look about them -- but only when they think no one is looking. The fact they assume people are makes this behavior all the more contradictory. Kent didn't walk like he was particularly concerned with being followed.
He stride was filled with confidence. Which meant either he had nothing to shy away from, or he was a sociopath. Fortunately for me, I only agreed to follow the man, and not determine any guilt or innocence. George Gregs would get my report and any evidence against Kent; beyond that, it was up to him. I didn't want any more trouble than I already had.
The trouble from Kent wouldn't compare to the trouble from Brousard and Boatman, but it would still be trouble.
When Kent went inside a business with no windows, I felt obliged to follow. I was met on the inside by a second door, locked closed from the inside. A knock later the small viewing slit
opened and a pair of seedy eyes stared out at me.
"What's the password?" An equally seedy voice asked.
Password? What is this, the 1920s?
The Boots Are Red — available now.
The Boots Are Red is currently available at Amazon: get it here.
New Site for the New Book
Amazon is reviewing The Boots Are Red. Once it’s published, I’ll post a link. In the mean time, I’m working on this site a bit.