She sighed and hung up, which suggested she was going to do it. Satisfied that he’d done about all he could for the time being, Stump took a shower and borrowed Myles’s electric shaver for his bi-monthly shave. As he splashed on some cologne Juanita called back.
“That was fast,” he said.
“Mr. Kraft’s car was gone. I was scared, but I’ve got three people for you.”
Stump grinned and grabbed a pencil. Investigating was sorta fun. “Who’s first?”
“Erlinda Romero. Dixon used to see her every week. Then one day, I heard them fighting about her children. The next day she moved out and left most of her things behind.”
“Okay. That’s a good possibility. Who’s next?”
“Ronnie and Betté Herrera. I don’t know exactly what Dixon did to them, but it had something to do with Ronnie’s brother. Dixon got out his gun and made them leave.”
“That sounds good too. Who else?”
“The last ones are Jorgé and Mary Salazar. I heard that Dixon tried to get her into the bedroom and that Jorgé was really angry, so Dixon made them move.”
“Good. If you think of any others let me know.”
After they hung up, Stump shuffled excitedly around his living room. Even though he’d never really investigated anybody, he seemed to be catching on—and liking it.
He wasn’t exactly sure what to say to the people, but he figured the best thing to do was jump right in there like he did when he knocked on doors with Myles. Erlinda Romero answered almost immediately.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Erlinda. My name’s Stump. I want to know about Dixon Browne at Cal-Vista.” He barely finished the sentence when he heard a click followed by a dial tone.
He redialed and got another quick answer. “Stop calling me.”
“I’m just trying to find out if Dixon Browne ever hurt you.”
“Who’d you say you are?”
“My name’s Stump. My girlfriend’s mother got beat up, and we think Dixon did it. We want to know if he did the same thing to you.”
“I don’t like getting calls from strangers. How’d you get my number?”
“Juanita got it for me.”
“The cleaning lady? She’s nice, but I don’t want to talk about this. Don’t call me back. Okay?”
Stump sighed. Erlinda obviously knew what Dixon was like, but he didn’t do a very good job of drawing her out. He made a note in his iPhone to try her again later. Then he made another note. Ms. Romero loosened up when she heard Juanita’s name. That was a good lesson. People might be more inclined to talk with him if they liked a common acquaintance.
He called the next number and got a recording. “Hello, my name is Stump. I got your number from Juanita at Cal-Vista. We’re investigating Dixon Browne and she told me you had an interesting experience with him. I’ll try to call you later. Thank you.” He hung up. Even though he hadn’t connected with a real person he was proud of how he handled the contact. He’d used Juanita’s name and made the call sound important. He even used the word “we” to make it sound as if there was an entire organization of some kind doing the investigating. He added another note to his sleuthing lessons. Make it sound like you’re with a big team. He dialed the final number.
“Hello?”
“Hello. My name’s Stump. Juanita at Cal-Vista gave us your number. Is this Mary Salazar?”
“Yes.”
“We think Dixon Browne beat up one of the women at the apartment building. We’re trying to find out if other people might know of other bad things he’s done.”
“The police? Good. I hope you put that peeper in jail where he belongs.”
Police? She thought Stump was with the police! Wow! He was on a roll. “A peeper, huh?” he asked, trying to sound as official as possible. “What did he do?”
“Oh, yeah. He walked in on me in the shower. He said somebody reported a scream from our apartment, but I could tell by his eyes he just wanted to catch me naked. I told Jorgé. He got real mad and wanted to kill Dixon, but I was afraid of that gun so I didn’t want to live there anymore.”
“We don’t blame you,” he said.
“Do you need me to sign some papers? ’Cause I will.”
Just then another call came in. Stump checked the read-out. Betté Herrera was calling back. “That won’t be necessary right now,” he said to Mary Salazar, “I’ve got another call coming in. I’ll get back to you if we have any additional questions.”
“Okay by me.”
Stump grinned and clicked to the other line. “Stump here.” His name sounded cool when he said it like that.
“Hello. I’m Betté Herrera returning your call.”
“Yes ma’am. Thanks for getting back to us. As I said on the message, we’re doing a background check on Dixon Browne. Did he ever hit you or anybody else you know of?”
“Mr. Dixon wouldn’t have done anything like that to us. He was afraid of my husband and his brother.”
Juanita never did say what Dixon did to the Herreras so Stump hoped he could draw it out of her. “Yeah. We heard he really screwed you guys over. What’s your version?”
“Mr. Dixon said Umberto could stay with us for an extra hundred dollars a month, but then he raised it to two hundred. Ronnie and Umberto said no, because if he raised it once, he’d do it again.”
“So what happened?”
“Mr. Dixon said we had to move and we wouldn’t get our damage deposit back.”
“What? He screwed you over and then kept your deposit too?”
“We haven’t told Umberto yet because if we don’t get it back, Umberto will want to do something very bad to that man and won’t care if he has to go to jail. That’s why I called you back. Can you get our money for us?”
“Well, er, no. I’m afraid that’s not my department. Maybe you could take him to small claims court.”
“What’s that?”
Stump barely knew what it was, but he was proud for thinking of it. “I suggest you call the main line at the police station. They should be able to direct you. Can I ask you one more question?”
“I guess so.”
“Do you know anybody else who we should call to see if Dixon Browne has hurt anybody else?”
“Yes, there’s one lady who probably still lives there. A long time ago he used to get drunk and hit her when he got mad. Her name’s Inez.”
Holy shit! That was Maria’s mom! This meant that Maria was probably right. If Dixon had hurt her mama before, he easily could have done it again. Stump was excited to have uncovered such a significant clue, but he stayed focused. “Did you mention any of this to anybody else?”
“Nobody ever asked me.”
That was another great lesson. “Okay, then. You’ve been a great help. We’ll call you back if we have any more questions, and good luck with that small claims court matter.”
As Stump hung up, he could barely contain himself. Betté had good information that she was willing to share, but nobody ever asked her. He made a note. Ask if they know anybody else who can help.
He hobbled into the bathroom and beamed at himself in the mirror. Among other things, he learned that nobody could tell how young he was if he asked his questions over the phone. He decided to do a quick Google search about interrogations.
Chapter Fifty-Two
On Friday morning, when Stump first awoke, the word consequences danced in his head, but since he’d already missed two days of school another day wouldn’t matter. He called the attendance office, said he was supposed to stay home for another day. Even if he did get caught, it would be worth it if he could get back at Dixon.
He could see much better so he fetched his copies of Dixon’s notebook and picked up where he’d left off a few days back. There were still forty pages to translate and this was the day to make a big dent in it.
Once again he wrote out the alphabet and numbers one through twenty-six. He began by changing a few numbers to letters because that m
ight spell out words. He got a couple hits and smiled as he followed his instincts and worked on a group of characters with an equal number of letters and numbers. A tale unfolded right out of his pen. Before long additional scrutiny revealed certain abbreviations: The letter D meant Dixon. H stood for husband, W for woman or wife, B for boy, and so forth. Some of the entries were more wordy: D had H paint hall; 2-103 pd 300 for 2 weeks. More words formed and sentence fragments came forth and ultimately the excrement of a dark soul emerged.
The earliest entries were several years old, mostly monetary in nature, and consistent with the things that Stump and Myles learned when they first examined the building. Dixon cut side-deals with tenants each month, mostly allowing extra people to live in the apartments in exchange for a hundred bucks or so in cash.
Stump assumed that Mr. Kraft never knew what was going on because there were so many legitimate tenants coming and going that there was no way the man could keep track of everything and considering Dixon’s usage of multiple receipt books Mr. Kraft wouldn’t see a paper trail.
Several pages and a long hour passed before something unusual popped up. When translated, it said, 3K to bank. Stump grinned. He had gone beyond the reaches of petty sums. The term embezzler came to mind.
Another strange grouping referred to the days of the week: Friday-200, Wednesday’s B-day. None of those made much sense, but that didn’t deter him from going on.
As the minutes became hours, he dug through more pages. If it weren’t for the sleaziness of Dixon’s activities, Stump might have admired the accomplishment. No single misdeed was big enough to draw attention to what Dixon was doing, but tens of thousands of dollars had successfully escaped from Mr. Kraft’s business and slithered into Dixon’s bank account.
Stump shook his head. While he and others were busting their asses to earn a measly ten bucks here and there, a corrupt turd with false teeth was dancing around Cal-Vista, picking up hundred-dollar bills as if they were rectangular palm leaves. Nobody should get away with that, especially at the expense of a nice man like Mr. Kraft.
Stump considered going to the big boss with what he’d learned, but he had been told to stay away until Monday and the best he could hope for was that Mr. Kraft would fire Dixon. He’d decide what to do later. For the moment, he only had a couple hours before James was supposed to drop by so he wanted to use what time he had left to translate as much of Dixon’s code as possible.
He persisted, looking for something different, something more substantial, monetary or otherwise. Then after lunch he caught a break. It came from three years earlier. To somebody else, it was just a bunch of jumbled letters and numbers separated by commas, but after he translated it, it said, “Y only had 1K must work til Feb.”
It appeared that Y was somebody’s initial, and whoever it was had paid Dixon a thousand bucks, but owed him even more. The important thing was, it confirmed that some of Dixon’s transactions were substantial, which justified working it all the way to the end as soon as he could. That noted, he heard James honk.
The previous evening Mr. Connors called to say he had a job for a few guys at four o’clock the next day and wondered if Stump might like to help out. Stump shared the news about his knee and recommended James.
“Thanks for getting me the job, Dude,” James said as soon as Stump wiggled himself into the Subaru. “How’s your knee?”
Stump scoffed. “I can tell you this: Jiggle Jaw deserves a big-time smack-down, not just for what he did to me, but I found out some other shit about him and Maria’s mom too.”
“Good for you, Dude. I bet you’ll get him. What about this job? What does this Connors guy want me to do?”
“Sounded like somebody got arrested and abandoned one of the apartments. You have to get the furniture and stuff out of there so they can rent the place to somebody else.”
“Don’t they already have guys that can do that kinda shit?”
“Probably, but Connors said he likes to help younger people too. He probably wants to help us go to college or something.”
“College? You? You never said nothing about going to no college.”
“I never thought about it much until recently. Do you think I’d make a good detective?”
“I dunno. I guess you’re pretty good with solving puzzles. They’re kinda like clues.”
“And seeing messages in license plates and phone numbers.”
James scoffed. “Thank God you don’t do that no more.”
“I still see them. I just don’t say much cause it bores everybody else.”
“True that,” James said as they came to a detour off the main drag.
“Speaking of clues,” Stump said, “I found a couple other people who have dirt on Dixon. One lady said he used to beat up Maria’s mama a long time ago.”
“A long time ago? Is there a statue of limitations?”
“I think they’re called statutes, Dude, with an extra t sound at the end. They’re not statues in a park.”
“Whatever. You gonna turn him in or not?”
“Not sure what Maria will want to do.” Stump grinned. “But I have some other news for you, and you ain’t gonna like it. What do you and the last bottle of olive oil have in common?”
“I dunno. What?”
“Remember when school started. We were both complaining that we were probably the only virgins left in our class? Well, now you and olive oil are the last two virgins.” He sucked in a ridiculously huge deep breath so his chest would swell to its fullest size. “I got laid.”
James’s head swung Stump’s way. “No shit? You and Maria?”
“Yep. Not only that. She wants to do it again, but don’t say anything.”
James banged on the steering wheel. “I don’t believe this shit!”
Stump smiled and nodded at the same time. “Just before I was supposed to go to the meeting. In the owner’s office.”
“You wild dog,” James said, obviously impressed.
“There’s one little problem though. When we were done, I told her she was my first, but she didn’t say anything like that back to me. Do you think I should ask her if—”
“If she has a history? What do you care, as long as you get what you want?”
“I dunno. It just seems like it should matter.”
“It wouldn’t matter to me none.”
Stump paused a moment. “Maybe you’re right. I guess it’s none of my business unless she wants to talk about it.”
“Agreed. When a loser like you catches a hot chick, he shouldn’t look for ways to make a problem out of it.”
Stump smacked James on the arm. “Look who’s talking. The only virgin,” he said, just as they reached the police building and lot. He pointed. “Hey, look. There’s Myles’s truck. The one with the 49ers decal in the back window.”
“Yeah, I see it. You wanna stop?”
“Naw. I don’t want to be late for our appointment with Mr. Connors and I was hoping we could stop at the bank and Target first.” He looked back over his shoulder, wondering what Myles was doing at the police building.
Chapter Fifty-Three
After introducing James to Mr. Connors, Stump called Maria expecting to hear that Dixon had finally ratted them out, but he discovered otherwise. She agreed to meet Stump outside.
Stump grabbed a gift he’d bought for her at Target and wobbled his way to poolside. While he waited, he snagged his iPhone and began a new list consisting of his business contacts. He had a couple dozen names identified when Maria walked out of her building and quickly scooted his way on those lovely long legs of hers. He was surprised she kissed him on the lips. “How’s your knee?” she asked.
Liking the sympathy, Stump sat and rubbed it more than it needed. “A little better, but I’m wondering why Dixon hasn’t said anything about us to your mama.”
“Maybe he’s just being nice.”
Stump scoffed. “He doesn’t do nice things unless there’s something in it for h
im.”
“Have you found out anything we can use against him?”
“A few things, but don’t worry, I’m going to find a way to bury him.” He smiled. “Without hurting you or your mama, of course.”
“You’re the smartest person I know,” she said, patting his arm.
“I bought you something.” He reached under the table, then handed her the bag. “Sorry I didn’t have any wrapping paper.”
She tilted her head. “An early birthday present?”
“Nope. Just ’cause I like you.”
“Like?”
“Okay. Love,” he said, shifting his foot.
A huge smile washed across Maria’s face as she opened the sack. “A purple candle.” She took a huge whiff. “You’re so sweet.”
“It’s lilac, my mom’s favorite flower. And you know what else?”
Maria held the candle to her nose and inhaled. “Hmmm?”
“This proves I love you ’cause it cost me three times as much as it would cost somebody else.”
Maria took another sniff of her candle. “How can that be?”
“’Cause if I saved the money instead of buying the gift, Myles would have matched it and so would my trust. I gave up all of that just for you.”
“I don’t understand all that, but I do know that you deserve a special reward.”
Stump’s heart jumped. If she meant what he thought she meant, they needed some privacy. He didn’t dare take her to Mr. Kraft’s office again. Maybe the kissing van? No. They could get caught there too. Too bad he didn’t have his own car. Suddenly, Maria’s eyes focused on something over Stump’s shoulder. Instinctively, Stump turned just as Dixon reached them and laid a small white box on the table in front of Maria.
“Here you go.” He pointed his jaw toward Stump. “I was looking out the window and noticed he just gave you a candle. I thought you might like this better.”
The nerve of that bastard. What the hell was he doing?
“I don’t want nothing from you,” Maria said, abruptly, causing Stump to smirk.
“Go ahead; open it,” Dixon urged. “Consider it an early birthday present. I never told you that I have a daughter your age. I know that dating can be confusing for young women.”
“Leave us alone,” Maria insisted.