Chapter 8
I KNOW of several private detectives who would love the chance to visit Pickin’s and be able to add it to the expense account. I wasn’t one of them. I hadn’t been in a strip joint since college, when I’d grudgingly gone to one for a buddy’s bachelor party.
I paid the cover at the door and thought about asking for a receipt. The brawny guy taking the money didn’t look like he had much of a sense of humor, so I didn’t. I wasn’t armed, and I never was much of a fighter, and getting the crap beat out of me by a behemoth in a tight black AC/DC T-shirt wasn’t on my list of things to do.
Inside, the place was as seedy as I expected. There were two stages, the main one along the back wall and another smaller one off to the side. These were just for show or maybe for special performances, since no one was currently dancing on them. The dancing was all done on the long, horseshoe-shaped bar. There were three girls strutting their stuff. It was early, and the crowd was thin, and most of them seemed more interested in drinking beer than watching the dancers. Maybe the leering crowd came later in the evening, or maybe it took several beers before the leering commenced. Either way, I felt a little embarrassed for the girls, dancing their hearts out with no one paying attention.
I found a stool and sat down. The bartender, who could have been a brother to the hulk who took my money at the door, came over and asked what I wanted. I ordered a gin and tonic. Not far from me a young woman with enormous breasts, wearing only a G-string, was gyrating to the music. She was looking my way, a little hopefully, I thought. I gave her a smile.
The bartender set my drink in front of me. I transferred the smile to him. I don’t think he noticed. “Things are a bit slow this early in the evening, aren’t they?” I asked. Great conversation-starter, me. He grunted and started to move away. I raised my voice a little. “Does a girl named Brenda Sanderson work here?”
The bartender stopped moving and turned back to glare at me. “Who wants to know?”
“Me. She went to high school with my little brother.” I put my best innocent face on. I have a great innocent face. Some people have described it as vacuous, but that’s just jealousy.
Brawny the bartender shrugged. “She works here. Or did. Haven’t seen her for weeks.”
“Aw, damn,” I said with a sad shake of the head. “My brother really wanted to get in touch with her too. He’s getting married. Would any of the girls know where she’s gone?”
“If they did, they’d tell me. And they haven’t.” Brawny was very sure of himself. With biceps like his, I didn’t blame him. He went off to wait on another patron. The dancing girl edged my way. I drank half of my gin and tonic in one go.
“You looking for Amber?”
The speaker was a guy in his early twenties with long, unwashed light-brown hair. He had crooked teeth with one missing in front. He was sitting on the stool to my left. I hadn’t really given him much of a look when I’d sat down. I gave him more of an appraisal. He would be kind of cute if he cleaned up a bit and got his teeth fixed. “Her real name is Brenda Sanderson,” I said.
He shrugged. “Amber to me. She’s roommates with my sister.”
“Think I could talk to your sister? It’s really important to my brother to get in touch with Brenda.”
Nodding to the dancing girl close to me, he said, “That’s Tiffany there. That’s my sister.”
Oh yeah. Because it isn’t creepy going to a strip joint and watching your own sister cavort about in a G-string. I suddenly needed to towel off my mind. I looked at Tiffany and then at Brawny the bartender. I didn’t think he’d appreciate me questioning one of the girls during working hours. “Think I could have a word with her later?”
The guy nodded and offered to shake hands. “I’m Craig.”
“Duncan Andrews,” I said as we shook.
Craig’s eye got a little twinkle. “You don’t seem like the type of guy who usually comes into a place like this.”
It must have been my handshake. I’d have to work on butching it up. “Not really, no.”
He smiled at me and picked up his drink. “Let’s move over to a corner. The music’s not so loud over there, and we can chat without shouting.”
Craig found us a small table at the far end of the place. He was right. One could almost talk in a normal tone and be heard there. Craig was wearing a tight ribbed shirt and even tighter jeans. I noticed as we sat down that he had a tattoo of a dagger dripping blood on his right forearm. He had a habit of shaking his head every now and then to get the stringy brown hair out of his eyes. “So what’s a guy like you doing here?”
I indicated my half-empty drink. “I’d heard the gin was particularly good here.”
Snorting, Craig replied, “You heard wrong. Do you really have a brother looking for Amber?”
“I have a brother. He lives in Rockford, Illinois and has a dairy farm. He’s never heard of Brenda Sanderson, or Amber, in his life.”
“So what’s your real reason for wanting to talk to her?”
“Would you believe I’m a private detective, and I’ve been hired to find her?” By the look on his face I wondered if I’d have to resort to the old Don Adams routine and add some more. Would you believe I’m a Boy Scout, and I need my Missing Persons Badge? Would you believe I’m in training to join Scooby and the gang in the Mystery Machine? Eventually Craig’s frown cleared, and he decided to believe me.
“You’re gay, though, right?” Craig asked.
Usually at this point Robbie would have shown up. If the person in question wasn’t able to see him, as most weren’t, he’d have spilled their drink into their lap or something of that nature. As Robbie had died before the legal drinking age in Indiana, most bars were safe from his presence. Craig’s beer wasn’t going to take a tumble. “Yeah, I am. And here I thought I was so straight-acting.”
Craig shifted in his chair so that his knee made contact with mine. He left it there. I don’t know why, but I didn’t move mine. Hell, it was contact with a male human being. “My sister won’t get off until three in the morning,” he said. “We can go back to my place and fool around until she’s off work if you want.”
I actually had to think about it. It had been an awfully long time, so long in fact that I was nearly ready to overlook the missing tooth. Maybe I could talk him into a shower before we got naked, and we could get his hair washed. The hair and the total lack of any romance won out. “Maybe some other time,” I said.
Craig didn’t seem fazed by the rejection. He did give it one last try, though. “I’ve got a really big cock. You look like you could use a good fuck.”
Geesh, did it show? Hair, I told myself. Bad teeth. And I found myself thinking of Robbie. Damn his hide. “Another time,” I said.
Craig and I ended up chatting for the next several hours. We had more than a few drinks while we talked. The bar had filled up nicely in the meantime and the girls were finally getting attention. I looked around every now and then and saw lap dances, lots of laughing and drinking, and hundreds of bills being stuffed into G-strings. A fun time was being had by all, it seemed. I was even getting to like Craig, in a weird sort of way. Then again, I was getting a little drunk. I switched to drinking Diet Pepsi once I realized this. I was, after all, on the job.
Eventually three o’clock rolled around. It seemed to take forever. A disembodied voice announced last call over the loudspeaker and people began to filter out. By this time Craig was swaying about a bit and slurring his words when he talked. Alcohol also had the effect of making him hornier, which was getting to be a problem.
“We’d better wait outside,” he said, pronouncing “outside” as “oushide.” “It’ll take a while for Tiff to change her clothes, and they don’t like people hanging around after they close.”
We went outside. I had to help Craig walk and keep upright. The night air revived him a bit but only made him more of a handful. He kept trying to grab hold of my nipples through my shirt. I guided him to his car, which was parked in the rear parking lot. There were only a few cars remaining here and most seemed to belong to people who worked at Pickin’s. The clientele who remained were quickly departing.
Craig sat behind the wheel and became all hands. He tried to kiss me. I turned my head. When he gave up trying to suck my face, he unzipped his fly and then tried to pull my head down. I resisted. It was like being in a small car with an amorous octopus. An amorous octopus with bad teeth and hair. “We’ve got time for you to suck my dick,” he assured me. “You know how long women are getting ready.”
I was beginning to wonder if waiting to talk to Tiffany had been the right thing to do. “I’m not really in the mood,” I told Craig. And then the air changed.
There was a sudden rush of positive ions in the air, like after a thunderstorm. As there hadn’t been a storm, I knew some sort of paranormal activity was either happening or about to happen in the area. I smacked Craig’s hands away. “Quiet,” I told him as I scanned the parking lot.
I could see one of the show girls leaving by a back entrance. She looked a little different with clothes on, but she had been the dancer who had been nearest to me when I’d been at the bar. She wore jeans and had a light jacket on, which she held closed at the front with one hand rather than zipping it up. She didn’t look our way but headed along the side of the building and went down an alleyway.
“Where is she going?” I asked.
It was a rhetorical question, but Craig answered anyway. “That’s Bethany. She lives just a few blocks away. She almost always walks home.” Craig leaned in, trying to kiss me.
I got out of his car quickly and told him, “Stay here.” My Spidey-sense was kicking into overdrive, and I knew something horrible was about to happen to Bethany unless I did something to prevent it. I shut the door on a surprised-looking Craig and started after her down the alley, wishing I had my gun with me. I was even wishing that Robbie had at one time blundered down that alley so he could assist me. Even the company of Daisy the Zombie Dog would have been a comfort.
The alley was dark, and when I entered I couldn’t see much of anything other than shadows. There didn’t seem to be any movement ahead of me, and I figured that Bethany had already turned a corner. I started to run, hoping I would catch sight of her at the end of the alley.
Her scream pierced the air before I got there.