The Entirely Fabricated Story of Lizzie Nickerson

Chapter 46

"Hey, Frazier," Officer Ott said as he approached the detective's desk.

"Hey, Delvin. How's it going?"

"It's all good. Gotta date tonight." He broke open a schoolboy smile.

Frazier leaned back in his chair. "Good for you, big guy."

"Say, uh..." Ott drummed his thick fingers on the detective's desk. "What's up with your partner?"

Stoudemire looked around. Tarpick wasn't in view.

"He's been sitting in his car out there in the parking lot."

"Oh?"

"It's not a good look. I think he's been out there for over an hour. Works for me if he sits out there all week."

Frazier got out of his desk chair and slipped into his jacket.

He left the building and started across the parking lot, looking for his partner's car. There it was parked near the back fence and Ott was right. Tarpick was sitting behind the steering wheel.

Frazier approached, waving his hand but Tarpick didn't acknowledge him. He walked right up to the driver's window and tapped lightly before he drew his partner's attention.

"Hey, Mitch. You okay?"

The man looked worse than usual, which was quite an accomplishment. His rutted pale face sagged, his eyebrows angling dangerously close to slipping from his brow and sliding down the sides of his face. He was going dark.

"Mitch?" Frazier repeated.

When Tarpick dropped his head, Frazier thought his partner might break down in sobs. He looked like some giant hand had squeezed out every last ounce of attitude and pissiness and discarded him like a used-up tube of toothpaste.

Stoudemire walked around to the passenger side and got in. "What's going on, pal?"

He muttered something about a kick in the hairies. He may have said something about pickin' berries but Tarpick wasn't the type to go rooting through bushes for fruit and the scowl on his face conveyed intense pain in which case, a kick in the hairies would certainly elicit that reaction.

Frazier asked, "Did you just refer to your testicles as hairies?"

Tarpick heaved a long, slow, depressed sigh. "When I got home from work yesterday, there was an old purple junker minivan parked out in front of the house. And my side of the garage was filled up with all my ceramics work. I almost ran over my favorite salad bowl!"

"What's that about?"

"I'd converted the second bedroom to my ceramics shop. But news flash, Tyler's back!"

"Who?"

"My boy. Tyler. Chloe dotes on that kid. She won't have him sleeping on the couch, so I'm the patsy. She cleaned out his old bedroom and stacked all my ceramics in the garage! She doesn't support my art, never did. She did it out of spite."

"I thought you said Tyler moved out west somewhere."

Tarpick nodded. "Without so much as a phone call, he shows up at the front door yesterday. After five years."

"Well, that's great, right?" Frazier looked down at the floor mat, which looked like it had just been vacuumed. Not a crumb, not a pebble, like the car was brand new.

Tarpick gave him an angry side-eye. "He's still the same immature dope. He changed his name to Montego Belmont, remember?"

"Yeah, I remember that. What's he been up to?"

"Montego Belmont has been playing bass guitar in some pinhead rock band. He's a musician like I'm the Pope. When he was a kid, the dog would hide every time he sang. In high school, he ditched the clarinet, thank God, and then got kicked out of the band because he couldn't even keep a simple beat on the triangle!"

"Wow."

"He looks like hell and he smells worse. A real hippie-dippie type. And that's not the half of it."

"How long is he staying?"

Tarpick shrugged. "He brought his girlfriend along for good measure."

"Oh, boy."

"I don't know how he pulled this one off. This dame must be at least five years older than him. Maybe more. She's a hippie, too, but a doll. A real looker. It just doesn't add up." He noticed a glob of wax on the dashboard and scraped it off with his thumbnail. "She must be out of her pretty little skull to get into a relationship with that drip."

"That's your son you're talking about."

Tarpick groaned. "He could've been a doctor. Or a dentist. But no. He's a bass player in some pasta band."

"I think you mean rasta." Frazier glanced out the window and waved to a couple of uniformed officers getting into their police cruiser.

"There goes my peace and quiet," Tarpick moaned. "The kid never shuts his trap about his Jamaican music and that hippie dame is a non-stop walking promotion for hemp soap, hemp clothes, hemp milk, hemp jewelry. And they're smoking the stuff, too."

"What?"

"I found a whole garbage bag full of wacky tobacky in his minivan. Gotta be five pounds. Maybe more. I didn't want to flip my wig and get into a rhubarb in front of Chloe so I stashed it in the trunk. Now I don't know what to do with it."

"You stashed it in the trunk of the car we're sitting in?"

"Roger that."

Frazier leaned closer. "Mitch. There's detection dogs that walk right through this lot."

His eyes went wide. "Holy Hannah! What a knucklehead! I didn't even think of that." He started the engine.

"Where you going?"

"I gotta amscray. Find someplace to ditch it. Help a fella out, would you, Frazier? I'm really behind the eight ball."

"I can't, Mitch. I'll cover for you here but I can't be hands-on with a Hefty bag full of ganja."

He bailed out of the car moments before Tarpick hit the gas leaving a trail of rubber and smoke across the parking lot.