Chapter 17
About every other vehicle parked in the mall lot reminded Sipe of the SUV from last night. What wasn’t big and shiny and black looked like it’d been dented by something likely big and shiny and black.
Timbers Athletic operated inside the biggest structure on the lot, nestled in between a bakery and jewelry store. Tiffany stayed inside the car, a view right on Timbers Athletics front entrance, and Sipe walked around the buildings, doing reconnaissance. Behind the businesses a dirt road, loading docks, and a grassy area populated by shattered wooden pallets and aluminum flotsam.
After he returned to the car, Tiffany asked if she could go use a bathroom. Hesitating, like she expected he’d come with her, make sure she didn’t tattle to some adult about the thug who’d attacked her earlier. When she came back, she handed him a plastic bag. A present.
“Hope you don’t have a prescription or anything,” she said.
Sunglasses. Not sleek, but big granny-like sunglasses. He slid them on. Sipe checked out his reflection. The lenses big enough they muffled the initial visual impact of his bruise.
A half-hour after he got back to the car, Millicent exited the front doors of her business.
Today the red gold hair hung loose across sun baked shoulders bared to the world, her body clad in a strapless swimming pool blue stretch top and crimson colored, skin tight yoga pants. She wore mirrored sunglasses. The entire walk from the front entrance to her vehicle she stared at her phone, at one point halting midstream the main arterial in between the parking and the businesses. When she pulled out of the parking lot, Sipe and Tiffany followed.
“This is kind of cool,” said Tiffany. “This is like a TV show or something. Have you followed someone before like this?”
“Couple times.”
“Wow. She’s turning.”
“I see it.”
“Wow. She doesn’t signal, does she?”
“Guess not.”
“Uncle Norm doesn’t signal either. One time we got pulled over and he flat out lied to the cop. Told him it wasn’t him it was the truck. The wiring all gunnybag. The cop believed him. But, I mean, seriously? That truck? Who wouldn’t believe him?”
They drove past a community college and then up a hillside with kind of a corkscrew path for the road. High up the hill a construction crew was installing a condominium on one end of a street, and on the other end were finished condominiums, plopped on the same lot, each structure skinny on the bottom, wider on the top like a flower constructed from LEGO blocks. Millicent turned off the street into a driveway. The SUV disappeared. Sipe sped up slightly and drove just a bit past the driveway entrance, braking and hunching low in his seat, looking out Tiffany’s window to try and see where the SUV ended up in the condo parking. It looked like a lot of parking slots.
“Keep looking for traffic,” he told Tiffany.
“Ok.”
A few second later, he said, “Maybe.”
“What’s that?”
“They might have it marked out with numbers. If you’re in Unit 1, then the parking is specifically labeled like that. So I get out, see where she’s parked and it’ll tell me which one to go to.”
“Which one what?”
“Condo.”
“Yeah. Maybe. Wait.”
“What?”
Tiffany pointed. She’d tilted forward, her head hovered over her knees, looking through the passenger side window and up towards the condominium.
“That’s her.”
“Where?”
“There.”
The second condo back from the street, Millicent stood in a window on the top floor, something in hand having arrested her attention. Mail? Likely that phone, again. A woman walked into view. The sun struck one half of the window. Millicent in the shaded portion. The woman in the sunlight had white hair and wore a bright pink top. It looked like she tried to grab the phone from Millicent, but all Millicent did was rotate, keeping the phone out of the old woman’s reach.
Sipe drove down the street, made a right, backed up in a driveway, and then drove back down Millicent’s street and parked curbside a couple houses down from the condos. Before he shut the engine off he rolled down Tiff’s window. Engine off, he opened his door.
“Wait. Now what?” asked Tiffany.
“I go knock on the door.”
“Really? You don’t wait?”
“Don’t really have time to wait.”
“I thought you’d have binoculars and all that. Stakeout the place.”
“Can’t.”
“Because of the guy. The Wub.”
He nodded.
“The Wub. I’m sorry. How scary can a guy be if he’s called the Wub?”
Sipe looked at her.
“I mean, geez, what? He comes up to someone and says ‘I’m duh Wub heah doo Wub oo out’.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“What? How he talks? Whatever. Do you do that? What he does?”
Sipe didn’t know why it felt worse, admitting it. Like words were more violent somehow than nearly tearing off her limb.
Sipe shoved the door wide and got out.
“Oh.” Then Tiffany said, “Oh, shit. Your gun. We should’ve stopped and gotten it.”
Sipe shrugged. Shut the door.
“That might not be a problem.”
Walking away from the car he heard her say, “Might not be a pwobwem.”
His car, the company car, the Lexus, was parked next to Millicent’s SUV. The parking spots weren’t conveniently marked. Lucky he’d gotten the window shot of Millicent in the sunlight. Lots of signs posted around the parking spouts espousing trespassers would get towed. Sipe bet a camera was watching him.
Despite the Old Man’s assertions, Connie wasn’t a complete idiot. The black sedan was locked up tight. If Sipe had a spare key, he’d pop the trunk, move Connie’s bags, slip out the black briefcase nooked inside next to the toolbox, dial a combination lock, and arm himself with the backup gun and burner phone, simple as that.
A repetitious click-click-click-click sounded. A little dog scooted out from a walkway and paused and looked at Sipe. Smaller than Pluto, the dog’s lower jaw extended forward further than the nose.
“Bijou, you bad thing. You wait for mama. Yes you do. You wait for mama.”
A woman with white hair and wearing a pink sweater with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows appeared.
“Oh.” She saw Sipe and stopped.
Bijou looked back at mama, waiting for instructions. The kill order maybe.
“I don’t have to worry about being eaten, do I?” asked Sipe.
Mama laughed.
“Maybe if you taste like chicken. Bijou is a connoisseur of chicken.”
“I think I might be all right.” Sipe laughed. Mama laughed. Bijou snuffled the asphalt, peered down the drive like out on the street, something chicken tasting was wasting away.
“Pardon my poking around down here. Do you know how much these places go for?” Sipe asked. “It’s not for me. I got a nephew, coming back to the states from Singapore, and I’m price shopping for him.”
“Ohhhhh.” Mama tilted her head back like that explained this strange little man’s presence in what was normally a vacuum. “That is a good question.”
Sipe took off the sunglasses. Hooked the earpiece into his shirt collar. He pointed to his bruise. Laughed.
“This. I know. Horrible looking. It’s what happens when you don’t pay attention playing doubles.”
“Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho.” Mama got it. He didn’t have to tell her.
“I don’t know, you know,” said Sipe. “He sounds more like he wants something really urban. Portland. Seattle. I tell him Pendleton’s a good place, but Singapore to here, that might be kind of bumpy. Transition and all, you know?”
“Totally. Mmmm. Totally.” Mama old as Sipe’s mothe
r. A shade of tan just shy of saddle leather. Ratchet one of those thin arms behind her back and it’d go to dust quicker than a stake through a vampire’s chest.
“He’s in software, so, he’s got money to burn. Here.” He stepped towards Mama and put up his hands. “I don’t…Cujo here isn’t gonna eat me, is he?”
“No. Bijou’s a baby. A little sweetie. You be good, you don’t eat the nice man, baby.”
Sipe laughed, patting himself down, walking towards Mama, saying he had his wallet here somewhere. Telling her the nephew’s wife was something else, but it was the kids. She had to see ‘em. He had the pics right here, 4 of ‘em if you could believe it, boom-boom-boom-boom, in half as many years. Honestly, could you fit a family that big in one of these condos?