“So, tell them it’s important. Make something up. And take Randy with you so you won’t be alone. Everything will be all right.”
I wasn’t so sure about that.
All the way to dinnertime I rolled the idea over in my mind. Should I go or not? Finally, I decided I had to. I quit the grocery-sacking job, I quit FOKC, I even quit football in middle school. I couldn’t quit on this case.
I had to come up with a good story about why I needed my parents’ car, though. I mean, they weren’t about to go along with the idea that I needed a ride to go talk to some shadowy anonymous informant about Ashton Browning. So, after running through several options, I came up with a lie about needing the car for a movie date. Seeing as how I’d never had a date before, this was pretty far-fetched, but when I ran it by them, they didn’t call me a liar. No, it was worse than that. They were proud of me.
“That’s great,” Mom said, beaming like a headlight. She looked at Dad. “Did you hear that? He has a date.”
“Fantastic,” said Dad, grinning. You would’ve thought I’d just won a scholarship to Harvard.
Then they launched into grilling me about who the girl was. Not being too quick on my feet when dealing with a situation like this, the only girl I could think of was Trix Westwood. After all, no way would my parents be acquainted with anyone who even knew Trix or her dad.
They bought that lie too but were worried when I told them I met her on the Ashton Browning search party. My mom got this look on her face like she couldn’t stand the idea of her boy getting hurt by a rich girl, but my dad was more worried that I’d have to drive the car so far away from home. It was okay, though. The next night, I still got the keys, but I had to leave the house wearing slacks and a button-up shirt so it looked like I really was going on a date with a rich girl.
I picked up Randy, and he made the inevitable crack about how uncool I was to have to drive my parents’ old car. Of course, I reminded him he didn’t have anything to drive. Still, I did take the feathery dream hoop off the rearview mirror.
At Topper’s, Rockin’ Rhonda loitered outside as usual. She gave me the “Mr. Mojo Rising” greeting, and I told her I’d slip her some change on the way out like I always did. We arrived early enough to order our burgers before the mystery man showed up, but still my nerves twanged every time someone walked in.
I didn’t like the look of this guy who nabbed a booth across the room. He was around nineteen or twenty, thuggish, with skuzzy long sideburns and brown hair that looked like it hadn’t been washed or combed since he got fired last month from his job as a motorcycle thief or whatever he did to keep himself in beer and weed. He kept glancing my way, but he didn’t come over, so I figured he wasn’t my man.
Then, when I was about halfway done with my burger, the door opened, and I knew I didn’t have to wait any longer. In walked the same basket-bellied middle-aged dude with the swooping cowboy mustache who’d hassled us outside Gangland.
Randy coughed as a chunk of cheeseburger went down the wrong way. “You didn’t tell me we were meeting that guy,” he said when he recovered.
“That’s because I didn’t know it was going to be that guy, genius.”
Mr. Mustache pulled a chair up to the side of our booth, eyed Randy, then turned to me and said, “I thought you were coming here alone.”
I told him I never said anything about coming alone, and he looked at me like, Yeah, but you should’ve known. Like I was supposed to be some kind of professional at this crap and had broken the rules.
“I’ve seen you before,” Randy told him, and he’s like, “And I’ve seen both of you before too.”
I explained how Randy was there as my backup in case anything went funny, and Mr. Mustache goes, “Well, well, well, you two think you’re a couple of real detectives, don’t you?”
“More like an investigative journalist,” I said. “I’m on the school paper.”
“Oh, excuse me—investigative journalist.” He let out a nasty chuckle, and the wings of his mustache flapped.
“So exactly who are you?” I asked. “I don’t think we ever got that figured out last time we met.”
He pulled out his wallet and showed me a card that identified him as Franklin Smiley, Private Investigator.
“You can call me Smiley,” he said, taking the card back. The mustache cocked up, probably the closest thing to an actual smile you were going to get out of this character.
So I’m like, “Okay, Mr. Smiley—”
“Just Smiley. No need to be formal.”
“Uh, okay, Smiley, on the phone you said you had something to show me.”
“I do,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “But not here. You’ll have to come with me.”
“I don’t know about that,” I said.
“Yeah,” Randy chimed in. “How do we know you’re not some crazy psychopath or something?”
“Now, do I really look like a psychopath?” Smiley said, holding out his hands as if to give us a fuller view of his wholesomeness.
“I don’t know,” I said. “If you could tell a psychopath just by their appearance, they’d pretty much be out of business.”
“Well, maybe you’ll trust my employer.”
“And who’s that?”
He pulled his phone from his coat pocket, brought up his list of phone numbers, then showed me the screen. Among the other numbers, one was highlighted—the number of Eliot Browning, Ashton’s dad.