A Favorable Favor
by Brendan Dubois
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In my line of work, as the only woman private investigator
in a remote area of New Hampshire,
I have certain hard-and-fast rules when it comes to my clientele.
First rule is, nothing illegal. Which means no burning down
a neighbor’s barn over a land dispute, or trying to arrange a hit on a cheating
wife or husband, or planting drugs in a bullying older brother’s car trunk so an
anonymous phone call would result in him being sent to the state prison in Concord. This also means a
thin client list, but at least one that won’t keep me up at night.
The second rule is, payment up front. Despite promises of
income-tax refunds in the mail, small-claims court settlements in the mail, and
other bits of monetary windfall in the mail, I never allow any client to hire me
on credit. Not that I didn’t make that mistake during the first few months after
getting my P.I. license, but after several weeks of living on noodles and rice
and hoping the PSNH truck wouldn’t stop at my house to pull the power plug, I
learned.
And rule three concerns male clients. Whenever a male
client enters my office, I open up the center drawer of my desk, revealing the
usual and customary office paperwork, and—the not-so-usual and customary
stainless steel Ruger .357 revolver resting within. I’ve always performed this
little task from the beginning, since males coming to see a private
investigator—and especially a female P.I.—are often under some unique forms of
stress, and I’ve always been one who believes that while stress on your part is
fine, expressing it on one of my body parts is definitely not fine.
Only once—before today—had I ignored this particular rule.
About a year into my new business, a sweet old man, dressed in a gray wool suit
and red bowtie, came into my office, leaning on a cane. He sat there, smelling
of peppermint, passing the time, and when he wanted to hire me to give him a
massage and I gently declined, he nodded, stood up and whacked me up the side of
the head with his cane. No stitches, but plenty of blood, and ever since then,
somebody coming in bearing Y chromosomes means the center drawer opens up.
Except for today, at my
small office, which has gilt lettering on the glass door that reads K.C. DUNBAR
INVESTIGATIONS.
And why was today any different?
Well, when the male client is the police chief of your
town, secretly handling a loaded handgun in his presence doesn’t seem to be the
brightest move to make.
Bryant Hughes came in
looking sheepish. He had on a dark-blue uniform, the usual leather holster, belt
and jangling keys hanging off the side. He was a beefy five-foot-ten or so, with
a thickness about the gut that told of too many hours sitting on the couch with
a beer in one hand and a remote in the other. His face was flushed, and his
thick black hair was combed back, the color matching his mustache. He nodded as
he came in, his presence almost overwhelming my office, at the moment consisting
of a desk, phone, three chairs, computer and two three-drawer filing cabinets
with good solid locks. The window behind me overlooks a set of abandoned B&M
railroad tracks and some marshland, and the front glass door gives a nice view
of the Purmort grass common, once you get past the aforementioned gold-leaf
lettering.
“Karen,” he said, taking one of the chairs. I moved my hand
from the closed center drawer and said, “Chief. What can I do for you today?”
He looked around for a moment, as if checking to make sure
none of the town’s three selectmen were skulking, in a corner or something.
There are police chiefs and then there are police chiefs. From the handful of
times I’ve broken bread and chatted things up with my competition in the rest of
the Granite State, I know the differences in police
officials that P.I.s can run into while doing their jobs. Some police
departments won’t give any information out unless you make an appointment a
month in advance and come bearing a cashier’s check to help offset any expenses.
And then there are those that give you a spare desk and chair in their records
department and give you the run of the place.
Bryant falls in between these two categories. While not
particularly overindulgent in granting me favors, he’d always been professional
and a reasonable guy to work with.
Which is why I found
his presence so damn disconcerting. My last bit of official business with the
Purmort police department was getting a copy of a motor vehicle accident
report—a stunning piece of investigative work that took all of 10 minutes, and
for which I billed the insurance company a full hour. But that had been months
ago; there was no clear reason for Bryant to be here now.
Bryant looked around
again and said, “I … I need your help.”
Well, that was a first. I played around with a pen on my
desk and said, “Sure, I’d be glad to help out. What do you need?”
The sheepish look on his face got deeper. “This is
confidential, right?”
“Absolutely,” I said. Maybe not technically, but if he
wanted confidentiality, he got it. “What can I do for you?”
He wiped at his mustache, coughed and said, “Can’t believe
I’m actually saying this. Karen, I need you to find my daughter.”
Now I knew why he was here.
I picked up a clean legal pad and the pen and said, “Chief,
before we start, well, this seems a bit out of my league. You have all the
resources of the state behind you. One word from you to the state police and
other police departments around here, and they’ll all be looking for her.”
A shake of the head. “No, I don’t want to do that—and damn,
I guess I didn’t speak right. I know where she is. I just want you to make sure
she’s there, and then get her home.”
I eyed him as I toyed
with the pen. “Tell me what you can, then.”
He shifted in his seat, the leather gear creaking some.
“Her name is Carla. She’s seventeen. She’s … she’s a runaway. She’s done it
before and has always come home in the past. But this time it’s been almost a
month. Maureen, my wife, she’s frantic. And I have a pretty good idea where she
is.”
“And where’s that?”
“With her idiot boyfriend, Logan Duprey. From up in
Montcalm. Twenty years old, lives in a double-wide out on Timberswamp Road. Number fourteen.”
Kept on toying with the pen. A nervous little tic, I know,
but at least I recognized it for what it was. “Chief, I’m sorry. I still don’t
understand how I can help. If you know she’s up there, why don’t you just go
there and get her yourself? Or have the Montcalm police help you out?”
By then, the poor guy
looked miserable, leaning forward, rubbing his big hands together. “It’s … it’s
like this. This uniform of mine opens up a lot of doors, gets me into places
other people usually can’t go. But it’s also a trap. If I was just an insurance
adjuster or lawyer or something else, I could go in and deal with it, do
whatever I had to do, and no problem. Who would care? But I’m a police chief. If
I do anything—anything at all that’s even a bit controversial—I got the
selectmen watching over me, plus the newspapers. Can you imagine the newspaper
coverage I’d get if I went up there and tried to get Carla, and a fight or
something broke out?”
“So what do you want me to do?” I asked, though by then I
pretty much knew the damn answer.
He kept on rubbing his hands together. “What I need, if you
agree, is for you to just go there and get her out. Take her back home. Tell her
we’ll work it out, that her mother and me miss her very much. Can you do it? Can
you?”
I hesitated. For only a few seconds, but they seemed long
seconds. I could see a variety of outcomes, from me going to get her and having
her tearfully join me in coming home, up to and including running into the
boyfriend, and having him fly into a rage against me fueled by beer and
firearms.
But this was the chief
of police before me. Doing this would put a huge deposit in the favor bank,
something I could draw down when the time came, and damn, it was like he read my
mind, because he said, “A favor, Karen. This would be a hell of a favor.”
But it wasn’t just the favor quotient. Something else
tugged at my heart: seeing a police chief, usually all bluff and bluster,
nightstick, pistol and cuffs, but now, here, just a dad who wanted his daughter
back.
I nodded. “Okay. I’ll do it.”
Fifteen minutes later, when Bryant had gone, my head was
spinning. After getting the information about Carla and a picture of her and a
description of her boyfriend, I had brought up the issue of compensation. His
face flushed and he said, “Karen, I was sort of hoping we could do this off the
books. Maureen, my wife, she doesn’t know I came here and well, you know …”
Sure. No payment, just
that hefty deposit in the favor bank.
So after he left, I
swung around in my swivel chair, looked at my walls, nearly bare save for a
framed print of Mount Washington, my license from the N.H. Department of Safety,
and an award I received in a previous life from the New England Press
Association. I recalled my three hard-and-fast rules and realized with a touch
of horror that I had violated all three of them in the space of 15 minutes.
For I had not opened my
center drawer when a male came in, I had agreed to do a job without payment, and
while it probably wasn’t illegal, doing this job was certainly skating to the
very, very edge. If retrieving the chief’s daughter went south on me, then I
could face kidnapping charges, which, being a federal offense, would mean
attention from the FBI. And although I admire them for much of what they do, I
had a recent run-in with a local special agent who didn’t appreciate my charm
and feminine approach to the business. I could just imagine the pleasure he’d
take in arresting me.
So: 15 minutes, three broken rules, one hell of an
accomplishment. I decided it was time to call it a day and go home to the man in
my life.
Dinner was a bowl of fettuccine Alfredo, balanced on my
tummy, sitting on the couch, legs stretched out on a coffee table, watching one
of those cable network judges who dispense justice in thrilling cases of pets
run astray or hairstyles gone bad. Roscoe sat beside me, grooming himself and
waiting for me to finish so he could lick the bowl.
“So,” I said to my
black-and-white cat, about the size of a raccoon and occasionally with the
temperament of an old man upset that
Jeopardy has been cancelled on his local cable station. “Police chief comes
into office. Makes unusual request, for no payment. I agree to fulfill said
request. What does that mean? Am I getting light in the brain department? Time
to pull the plug? Time to do something else besides sitting at home alone,
talking to my cat?”
I finished off the
fettuccine, wiped at my chin with a napkin, and picked up my glass of wine.
Roscoe looked at me intently. “You know, if I were to die now, can you imagine
how my obituary would read? Single woman
found dead in her home, accompanied by moody cat.”
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