Chapter 2
Chapter Two
AIDEN
T his is the part of my job that I hate. Put me on the ground, in the thick of things, and undercover, I’m your man. However, I dread doing reports, which amounts to heaps of paperwork and cold call follow-ups.
I dial the number and the woman answers on the first ring. I make a mental note that she doesn’t sound like she just woke up. My mother used to call me “Lil Sherlock” because I’d always notice details, find lost items, and solved my first crime when a neighborhood lawn mower was stolen. Little does she know that I got into the right profession.
“Hello, this is Agent Fuller,” I say.
“What was that? Hello?” a bubbly female voice asks.
“Hi, this is Agent Fuller,” I repeat.
“No, this isn’t the Bagel Father. That’s in Little Italy, on Grand at Baxter Street, I believe. If you hit Canal, you’ve gone too far and will end up in Chinatown.”
The lines between my eyebrows crimp—the other day my sister Mae said the furrow was so deep, it reminded her of the Grand Canyon. Yeah, well, this case just keeps getting more and more complicated, not that she knows anything about it.
“Is this Tinsley Humber?” I ask, trying a different approach.
“How would I know if you got the right number? Who are you trying to call?”
Either an elderly woman with a youthful voice needs to adjust her hearing aids, this woman is messing with me, or we have a bad connection.
I repeat my name, following protocol to properly identify myself in this situation. Neither my parents nor my sister have ever heard the Agent part attached to the last name Fuller.
“Sienna, is that you? Sounds like you had a late night. I promise you mine was later. As wild as they come. Wait until you hear the story.”
“Miss, I am an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and would like to discuss—”
“Wait, this isn’t Sienna. Who’s calling?”
“I just said—” I start but my own voice echoes back to me, suggesting something is wrong with the cellphone network. I pace the office, repeating introductions, but with each attempt, the conversation gets more garbled.
“I’m going to hang up and try calling back,” I say.
“If you’re asking if I’d wear off the rack, no. Designer only.”
I hang up before trying to decode what she means. I count to ten, taking deep breaths. Then I count backward. When my blood pressure still feels like a geyser about to erupt, I decide to calm up —it’s a method my mentor taught me. My mentor being Aslan. Yes, from the Chronicles of Narnia . During a rough patch almost a decade ago, I read the books by C.S. Lewis. The lion really spoke to me about purpose and how the big are meant to protect the little, among many other things.
He’s also a lion, which is a big cat, so I turn to kittens to center myself and refocus when I feel like kicking the can down the street and then running for the hills. Instead of calming down, I do something to elevate my mood.
I swipe to the internet search page and type Cute kittens . My smile is immediate. There are three orange and white long hair kittens in a basket, eyes wide, looking all around. My chest drops and my shoulders relax.
Works every time.
I dial Tinsley Humber’s number again. She answers right away.
“Hello, this is Agent Fuller with—”
“Don’t mess with me, Ferris Bueller is fictional and would not be calling me this early anyway.” Like a federal attorney, she continues to outline her case against me being the movie character in great detail.
I rock back on my heels and stare at the white mineral fiber ceiling tiles common in offices. They’ve always reminded me of freeze-dried vanilla ice cream like the kind astronauts eat. A fluorescent light flickers in my periphery. I squeeze my eyes shut, wondering if I really should just become the mayor of Butterbury and call it a day.
“I think she’s messing with me,” I mutter.
Another agent, seated at a nearby desk, glances over his shoulder.
I simply shake my head.
“Tinsley Humber, you are speaking to a Federal Bureau of Investigation Agent, please cut the theatrics.” I’m the one acting, using utmost calm when I want to say a few choice words to siphon off the frustration of this call.
But whatever ridiculous response she gives, I don’t hear because the line goes dead.
It’s moments like these that I’m ready to go full farm boy. Become a hay seed back home. It’s bad enough I had to leave Butterbury and fly to Los Angeles when the case escalated at the arrest of Harold Jerrold Pumanowski. I have yet to determine his intentions—whether he was knowingly committing treason or was merely looking for a payday. Ultimately, that’ll be left up to the judicial system, but when I conclude the case, I’ll make a judgment for myself. In the meantime, I have to figure out whether Tinsley Humber is actually the skilled actress she aspires to be—at least according to intel—or in the wrong place at the wrong time. My peers let her off because of the latter, which is likely the case.
Agent Harrison swivels to face me and with a laugh, he repeats the last name, “Bueller,” like in the classic movie.
“Ha ha. Very funny. It’s too early for this.” I scrub my hand down my face.
“Or it’s late, depending on how you look at it.”
Out the window of the high-rise building, the Los Angeles sky makes me think of an eggplant. I ought to grow some in my garden once I get it going. Below, the city lights spread grid-like in every direction.
Without fail, when I fly into LA at night, I can’t help but stare in awe at how much light there is and how it abruptly ends where the ocean begins. Goes dark.
My future used to be like that, but now I see glimpses of it, where I can put down roots, shine some light on the earth and see what grows.
Harrison clicks his tongue. “Let’s see, Tinsley Humber comes from a well-to-do east coast family. Is an aspiring actress, including performances as ‘The cat food girl’ in a kibble commercial, a sidewalk sweeper in a musical mystery, and I can’t leave out ‘Sexy Alien Number Three’ in the sci-fi film, Distant Dust: Galaxy 2100.”
“Can’t say I’ve ever heard of it.” Despite the fact that my sisters think I’m a pleasure-seeking, jet-setting business tycoon, I can’t remember the last time I sat down and watched a movie in its entirety. It’s work or nothing and sometimes my work looks like nothing, but that’s just part of being an investigator.
Harrison chuckles. “So, Tinsley Humber is either A.) Just another girl with stars in her eyes. B.) A talentless hack. Or C.) A criminal mastermind in disguise.”
My instincts are on option A. But you can never be too sure, and it’s my job to exhaust all possibilities before I arrive at a conclusion.
“The guys cleared her,” Harrison says.
“But I want to ask her some questions myself.” Now, even more so.
“Of course you do.” Harrison chortles.
I raise an eyebrow.
He spins a photograph my way, revealing a compilation of what must be Tinsley’s acting/modeling collection of headshots and images.
I can’t help but let out a low whistle. She is a blonde bombshell. Long hair, longer legs, and big brown eyes.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t see her in Malibu when we arrested Puma.” Harrison’s tone lifts with disbelief.
“I’d prefer if we call him Harold.”
“He has a few bangers.” He sings a bar of an unfamiliar song.
I cock my head and cross my arms in front of my chest. “Harrison, how old are you?”
“Fifty-six.”
“Bangers? Really?”
“It’s what the kids say. I won’t even tell you the last case I was working on.” He brushes his hand across his forehead as if tired just thinking about it. “I had to create a glossary of terms just to understand what was going on.”
My chuckle dies when I think about Harold Jerrold Pumanowksi. Earlier at the house in Malibu, my focus was on criminal activity and an inept fame and fortune seeker. With a shake of my head, I answer Harrison’s question about having seen Tinsley Humber. “I saw sequins. That’s all.”
“Yeah, I bet. She had on some kind of nightclub outfit that would make my granny scold her six ways from Sunday. Apparently, Rickson and the guys woke her up from a dead sleep. My money is on her being innocent, but I understand why you might want to pursue your investigation.” He clears his throat suggestively.
I have a strict rule of never, under any circumstances, getting involved with a suspect, asset, or anyone remotely involved in an investigation. Officially, she’s cleared, but I want to hear her story myself. I’m closest to this case since it connects back to Gatlin Stoll and Georgia, so I want to make sure we’re not missing anything.
I absent-mindedly leaf through a few files, going over the conversation to cement it in my memory. Bubbly voice. Awake during the fourth watch unless she’s on the east coast. Could be. Even there, it’s early for a girl who frequents nightclubs. Then again, perhaps she never went to sleep and is at an afterparty. But I didn’t hear any noise in the background.
“Since that call wasn’t successful, what next?” Harrison asks.
“Depends on how you define success.”
“Getting the answers you were looking for,” he says.
“Sometimes what the person doesn’t say gives you more insight than what they do say. And it’s always a matter of asking the right questions.”
“That’s wise. You surprise me, Fuller. You have a reputation for being a maverick, a ladies’ man. James Bond with southern swagger.” He laughs.
I would chuckle too if it weren’t true.
At work, I’ll admit that I’m a bit of a renegade. I’ve been told that I have a pigheaded thirst for justice even when it means taking risks that others aren’t willing or dumb enough to take. I call it courage. I’m not quite a loose cannon but on my way there. The fuse is lit, it’s just a matter of whether I’ll stay with the agency long enough for it to reach the gunpowder in the ignition chamber—my grandfather was big into Civil War reenactments, so I know all about cannons.
Truth is, I don’t like bad guys. While most people would agree, I do something about it.
But my family doesn’t know that. Around them, I’m the big cat, the fat cat, jetting around the world thanks to what my sister Mae calls my “fancy” job in finance. I have a hunch Bess thinks I’m a felon. My crime? Leaving broken hearts in my wake.
The finance part is not entirely a lie as I deal in money, most of it illegally obtained and transferred. Not to my account, but among and between the criminals I intend to bring to justice. As for being a felon, Bess isn’t entirely wrong.
I’ve never told a woman I loved them because that would’ve been a lie. I’m never in one place long enough for a relationship to develop beyond like . Can’t stick around that long. Too risky on multiple levels.
But who is the real me? I’ve been playing multiple roles for so long that sometimes I’ve lost track, but nothing grounds me back to reality like being in my hometown. For better or worse, my current case happens to be in Butterbury, Georgia and I cannot wait to get back.
“You asked where to,” I say, once again picking up on the question Harrison asked. The thing about me is I never lose a thread, even if it takes me a moment to tug on it and see where it leads.
In this case, home. The more I think about it, the more I hope this is my last case. In any event, I’ll soon have a house waiting for me in Butterbury. The builders promised to have the bathrooms done by the end of the week—the last update I got, the contractor was waiting on the tiles and tubs.
Like a brick sliding into place, I realize something. The thread I most recently needed to pull looks more like a whisker. Not that I’d ever pull a cat’s whisker.
I’ll admit that my relationship with Butterbury’s mayor got a little twisted. I set myself up as his enemy before realizing that I’d catch more flies with honey, so I made up a story about how I’m jealous of his success and really greased his ego. Wanted to see how the big dogs did things.
The guy lapped it up, so here I am, now my target’s right-hand man. Or left, since I’m left-hand dominant. I let out a long breath as I think about something important that I overlooked. Something furry.
“We’ve got Gatlin Stoll and his associates at Hydro-pro—a scammy for-profit outfit, under the guise of an environmental and community-first company which was initially why I was brought in to investigate. Despite the hydro name, they bleed counties dry,” I say, starting to think out loud.
“Yeah, the guys got a laugh when they heard you were being sent to some Podunk Georgia town.”
“Podunk, Georgia happens to be my hometown. Or my adopted one. My grandparents had a farmstead in Butterbury. Spent the best years of my childhood and young adulthood there. My sisters and I inherited it. Mae, my youngest sister, is on that show Designed to Last—”
“Oh, my wife loves those ladybosses. I do not—no offense to your sister. Every weekend, Michelle wants to go to the home improvement store and work on one project or another. Can’t a man watch a ballgame anymore? No, she’s got me looking at grout. Do you have any idea how many shades there are for grout? And how after a while they all look the same?”
That reminds me, I have to finalize the grout colors too. “If it’s your own home, I say that’s a worthy cause. Anyway, I have a history in Butterbury.” A future too, I hope.
“Careful. Don’t get too close. Don’t take it too personally.” Harrison pours us each a cup of coffee in a paper cup. He spins some cream into his while I drink mine black.
Thanking him with a nod, I take a sip, not caring if it burns my tongue. Anything to stay awake. “It’s always personal.”
Harrison chuckles. “You terrify me sometimes, Fuller. Anyway, from what I’ve gathered, you have enough dirt on Stoll to put him away for the rest of his life.”
“Stacks of crimes. Heaps.” I tell him about the alliance with Hydro-pro which is a shell corporation. There were also the fabricated taxes levied against his constituents, falsification of clerical documents, and the list goes on, which I give in great detail as the sky begins to lighten ever so slightly from the east. “Not to mention he has a tab at the local diner a mile long.”
Harrison shakes his head. “What can you tell me about Silas William Fallon? Sounds like a white-collar felon if there ever was one.”
“You got that right.” I outline the ex-military, present defense contractor’s involvement along with the governor and his daughter, Dandy. Now, I can add the guy who fancies himself a musician and calls himself Puma, aka Harold Jerrold Pumanowksi, to the roster. I’d like to say this case just keeps getting more interesting. In reality, it’s tiring.
Usually, I ride an ongoing adrenalin rush during an investigation. This one has me wanting to sit on my back deck, kick up my feet, and watch the sunset.
Good thing I’m getting back to my roots.
“So you asked what’s next? I’m going to steal a cat.” I wink.
Harrison does a spit-take, showering coffee all over the desk.
We both start laughing.
I abruptly stop, and deadpan, I say, “I’m not kidding.”
“Are you going to steal a puma? You’re known for pranks and shenanigans. George Wilson said you left the guy who ran that international designer brand shoplifting ring with little more to wear than a plastic bag. Rumor has it Puma took an actual puma on tour with him, and would bring it out onstage when he made his grand entrance.”
“His name is Harold,” I correct. “And I’ll be sure to look into that to make sure it wasn’t mistreated. Also, it was a paper bag.”
“Your quest for justice is impressive.”
“It better be.”
“So you’re really going to steal a cat?”
Giving a lazy salute, I start toward the door. “Yep. Right now, Twinky is our number one asset.”