out of the MG. Frankie Blue slid out of the T’bird and Tatiana shut down the big-block Ford just as Chief Forte’s Bandon Police cruiser nosed in beside the three vehicles.
The chief climbed from the Crown Vic, shaking his head.
I walked to Cookie, “What’s the convention? And where did Frankie get David Kime’s T’bird and Tatiana Bruce’s ’40?”
“We’ll explain in 10 minutes, in the living room.”
With that, the three women disappeared – Tatiana giving Sal a toodles wave with her fingers -- into the house leaving Sal, Forte and me in the driveway.
“What’s up, Chief?”
“Got me, Nick. All I know is Frankie texted me to be here at 11:30. It is now 11:25. And I’m as in the dark as you guys.”
“When did Frankie get the T’bird?” Sal asked.
That got a simple shoulder shrug from the Chief. “What about the ’40? Isn’t that Bruce’s car?”
Sal scratched his beard, “Well I know she fell in love with it when we got back after the whole thing in the South Pacific. She didn’t have it this morning when we got up.”
Tatiana, a former Russian agent for that country’s equivalent of Homeland Security, and Sal had been an item a couple of years ago. Then she returned to her Mother Russia only to return as part of the team that captured a Russian tanker and brought it to Hawaii.
“Well, I guess we’ll find out soon enough,” I said. “Want a mini-donut, Chief?”
The living room has been redone a couple of times in the past twenty-four months after a couple of gun battles and a later explosion. It looked pretty good, except Cookie was right, it did have a slight donut smell.
The women were standing next to the big screen TV. Cookie waved the three of us to the couch.
“Tatiana, Frankie and I have made a decision.”
I raised my hand.
Cookie gave me a brief smile, “Yes, dear.”
“What’s with the hot rods out front?”
Tatiana giggled as only a 6-foot-2-inch tall, hot as a branding iron woman can.
“I’ll get to that, Mr. Drago.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“The three of us,” Cookie continued, “are going into business.”
“Pizza palace, I hope,” Sal said. He wasn’t taking this seriously, either. “Nick, don’t you think it would be great if they opened a pizza palace?”
“Only if they deliver, so to speak.”
Forte snorted. Very ungentlemanly.
Frankie gave the Chief the evil eye and the smile evaporated.
“We’re opening a private investigation agency.”
CHAPTER TWO
The coastal hills had been reforested, cut and reforested again over the decades. Winter rains often turned the ground into mud, the smell of mold and moss and mildew heavy in the damp air.
Jolly bashed his way through the woods, climbing once clear-cut ridges, pulling himself up by wet limbs, boosting himself by planting a shoe into the dead stump of a long-cut tree, clawing his way toward the top of the hill.
Jolly only had one goal; one compelling reason for climbing these hills: To find a mineshaft of one of the scores of mines once spotting Coos County. The “portal” to coal that powered San Francisco for decades; that represented the fourth leg of Coos County’s economic base alongside timber, shipbuilding and agriculture.
It had been a hot June afternoon when Jolly found the portal purely by accident. This was his fifth exploration of the hill near his home. He had begun a’thinkin’ about the paths he found in the woods; the trails that were overgrown with blackberries; the rutted depressions in the ground that would occasionally cough up a railroad tie or spike.
“What’s up there?” he asked himself, staring hard at the hill, eventually seeing the sporadic growth differences between the older Douglas firs here and the smaller, younger ones there. You had to look hard, but once your eye became accustomed to those differences, there was a visible, though subtle, track up the mountain.
He began the quest as only a 12-year-old with a rambunctious nature could: A blue kerchief filled with an apple, three sugar cookies, a tin of water and a slab of homemade bread slathered in fresh butter.
Aloud, “Tub would just die climbing this hill. He’d be a’suckin’ on that inhaler thingy every two seconds.”
Jolly enjoyed each of the trips up these hills, although he never quite got to the top on the first four journeys. But each time, he’d sit in a clearing or against a tree overlooking the river, take in the clear dry summer air and tip back against a pine to eat his bread and butter, a cookie and a long slug of water.
On this day, at the plateau, sitting Indian style legs folded in front of him, he saw it. Maybe it was just the way the light hit the side of the hill or his eyes getting sharper to variations in the landscape. What looked like a divot in the side of a sandy mound when someone shoots a gun into a hillock. At first, nothing but a shadow. But darker than the surroundings. Not a random, natural shape, rather a precise incision.
Keeping one eye on the shadow, Jolly felt around him and wrapped the water can, remaining cookies and the uneaten half of his apple in the kerchief. He was already walking toward the dark shape in the side of the hill as he unconsciously tied the kerchief’s corners into a knot.
Sal, Forte and I sat silent for a second, trying to take in this monumental announcement.
Clearing my throat, “Are you going to investigate shoe stores?”
Sal choked. Under his breath, the Chief said, “Ouch” and turned his head away as if to distance himself.
Cookie gave me “the look.”
“Do I have to shoot you, Nick?”
I shook my head vigorously. I know when I’ve stepped in it.
“Okay, then,” Sal said, “What’s the name of this agency?”
Tatiana beamed. “Caught Looking. You know, baseball term. And we often catch men looking at us, so it has double meaning.” Looking at Frankie, “Da?”
“Da.”
I began to sing Baby’s Got Her Blue Jeans On, thought better of it and shut up.
Frankie crossed the room and sat in the Chief’s lap. “And we expect local law enforcement will direct some business our way.”
Forte groaned. “Oh, God, help me.”
Cookie continued, “We rented an
