Chapter 5
Believe it or not, things got stranger.
A person learns a lot in this business—the kind of stuff that could never be found in any academic textbook. You won’t find Lying Jerks 101 among the possible course selections at your local university; they offer no degree in Psychology of Cheaters. I’ve yet to come across anyone with a Masters in Bullshit Busting, or a PhD in Intuition. But all of these and more are available to your average PI, if you’ve got the knack for reading people and are prepared to study their behavior.
Curse or gift? Damned if I know. Maybe a bit of both.
For example, I’ve learned that insecure men often laugh a lot, especially if they’re insecure businessmen, and they’ll watch you the whole time you’re laughing back to see if you really think that they’re funny. People who say they want to be left alone, often really do just want to be left the hell alone. Men with small dogs in the park are looking to get laid, especially if they put a ribbon in the dog’s hair. And oh, by the way, the pinker the ribbon, the hornier they are. (The men not the dogs). Yeah, if you watch closely you’ll learn a hell of a lot about people, but you’ll learn even more if you watch with sideways glances.
But here’s the trick of it. Sometimes it’s just as important to not let first impressions fool you. At least not when it comes to the way people look.
Because I’ve also learned that people come in all shapes and sizes, and in the long run, that means diddlysquat about their character. That is to say, we judge people by their external appearance at our peril. The most doe-eyed of women are often the strongest. The most macho seeming of men can be brought to their knees with a good solid kick to the... whoops, I mean with the right words. Although that foot-to-gonads thing does come in handy sometimes. So, okay, though I may mentally dub a person on first sight (e.g., Jennifer Weatherby as the Flashing Fashion Queen), I don’t judge on first sight. Maybe that’s why I’m rarely surprised.
Rarely, but Mrs. Jane Presley, the owner/caretaker of the Underhill was one of those people who managed to surprise me. Because on first sight—God, it was years ago now, when I was first running errands for Jones and Associates—I’d pegged her as a pushover. A sweet little old lady who probably had cookies baking out back and rescued kitties on the weekend.
Not.
To this point in my career, I’d probably been to the Underhill Motel a few dozen times. Posing as a hooker, running surveillance, chasing leads, following up on suspicions that so often proved true. That’s where I learned a lot of what I wanted to know, and the one thing I didn’t the first night I drove by here, so long ago. But hey, we all have our heartaches.
Where was I? Oh, yeah. I’d been to the Underhill so often, Mrs. Presley was on my Christmas card list.
She was a tiny woman, all of four feet ten and maybe ninety pounds with a brick in each pocket. When you entered the Underhill, it was she you encountered—standing under a sign that read, “No I don’t know Elvis”. She always wore flower-patterned, short-sleeved blouses with a pencil-pen-pencil combination tucked into the front pocket. Her skirts flowed from her hips nearly to the floor. I’d never seen her don the glasses that hung from the chain around her neck, but their granny style fit her image perfectly. Her make-up was understated, and her smile was wide and genuine. Friendly. Easy. Geez, you just wanted to give her a hug.
Unless you pissed her off. Because despite first impressions, Mrs. Presley was as tough as freakin’ nails.
She had a no-nonsense reputation, and her two hulking sons—Cal and Craig— each of them six feet tall, helped her keep the Underhill no nonsense. She had rules and they were ironclad. Once you were barred from her place, you stayed barred. No exceptions. No second chances. A person could come to the Underhill Motel, take care of business and pleasure, but keep it clean. The cops knew it was a local hooker hangout, but as long as things didn’t get out of hand, then they left it pretty much alone. Better to have things under one roof on the outskirts than under many near the ‘better’ parts of town. Plus, Mrs. Presley had been known to help the police out on occasion.
Oh yeah, and she always wore blue suede shoes. Really.
But like me, Mrs. Presley could read people with sideways glances. And she used this instinct of hers to help keep the place out of trouble. It was somewhat unnerving to stand with someone who could read you as well as you could read them. I have often wondered what her first impression of me had been.
There was no doubt that Mrs. Presley’s keen eye for detail helped keep things under control. No one wanted to bite the hand that housed them. But as I learned, the prostitutes actually appreciated Mrs. Presley’s eagle eye. Once she saw a face, she never forgot it. She looked after ‘her girls’, too. She wasn’t a madam, she once told me, but she was a mama. And it gave the girls who worked the Underhill a small sense of security to know that she was looking out the curtains with her binoculars when they checked in with their johns.
I’d packed a few photos. If Mrs. Presley knew anything, if she’d seen anything, she’d tell me.
This was the scenario I envisioned: I’d show Mrs. Presley the pictures of Ned Weatherby, she’d identify him as a client (a Mr. John Smith, no doubt), and if she knew who the mistress was, she’d tell me. Especially when I told her that murder was involved. Then I could prove to Detective Head once and for all that I wasn’t lying. Prove that I didn’t imagine the whole freakin’ thing. That I wasn’t totally stalking Ned Weatherby like some love-starved fool. I’d locate the mistress, get a confession and present the evidence to the police by noon.
Damn, I was good! In my own mind, I had it all sewn up. Supper at Donatta’s on 33rd Street would be an appropriate celebration afterward. I’d order the grilled shrimp with a nice unoaked chardonnay.
Why, I was actually smiling when I walked into the Underhill.
But like I’d said, things got stranger.