Chapter Sixteen
SIXTEEN
Callahan
“It’s here,” I say, unbuckling my seat belt with such haste that I get a bit tangled in it and Annie makes it outside before me.
She unlatches the gate on the chain-link fence, and we march up the cracked pathway toward the porch. We’re nearly there when I realize that something isn’t right.
“Ah, shit,” Annie breathes, apparently noticing the same thing.
The display case sits there atop Gustav’s welcome mat.
The goose is not inside.
I march up the steps onto the porch to double-check that our eyes aren’t deceiving us—stupid, obviously, considering there’s no way we would overlook a massive dead bird, even in the dark.
Annie reaches out toward the video doorbell, which glows as it registers our presence, and presses it.
“Not interested,” comes a gruff, groggy voice through its built-in speaker.
“We’re not selling anything,” Annie responds. “Are you Gustav?”
“Who is asking?”
“My name is Annie, and this is Cal. We’re here about a prank your friend Nevin played on you. He took something that didn’t belong to him, thinking it would be funny, and we’re hoping to get it back.”
“Are you police? FBI? CIA?”
“Um,” I say. “We’re antique dealers?”
The door swings open, revealing a white man in an undershirt and red basketball shorts. His long dishwater blond hair is secured into a low ponytail, frizz haloing one side of his head and making it clear that he just woke up.
“So. What did Nevin do now?” he asks in an impassive way that makes his Scandinavian accent sound thicker. Then his gaze shifts downward after examining us and he spots the glass case. “What’s this?”
“A display case,” I say. “It used to hold a taxidermy goose. Nevin thought it would be funny to leave it here on your porch.”
“Why would this be funny?” he asks.
“Because your name is Gustav…” Annie supplies. “Goose. Gustav.”
“I see. They sound similar and so this is amusing.”
“I think that was his thought process, yes,” I confirm.
“Where is this goose now?” Gustav asks.
“That’s what we’re hoping to figure out,” I say. “It was in this case. But it isn’t now. And if you don’t have it, presumably it was stolen from your porch.”
Gustav scratches at his scruffy chin, considering. “Yes, I think I can help with this. Come inside, please.”
I follow Annie into the house. It looks like it hasn’t been updated since the 1970s; green shag carpet covers the floor and green-and-yellow floral-print wallpaper still hangs on the walls. The faintest hint of stale cigarette smoke lingers in the air, reminding me of my childhood home in Dundalk.
Gustav sits in a high-backed office chair at an expansive black desk designed for PC gaming. He has several monitors of varying sizes lined up on risers. “I do not trust government,” he says simply.
“The US government?” Annie asks.
“Any government. I know too much.”
She and I exchange looks.
“I take many precautions in case they are angry about this.” Gustav pulls up security camera footage of his porch, showing the glass display case from multiple angles.
I’m torn between excitement that he very likely can provide us with an image of the culprit and the uneasy feeling that we’re probably being recorded even now.
“Nevin said he left the goose early this morning.”
“I work third shift, so this makes sense why I did not notice it then,” Gustav says as he winds the footage back to 6:30 a.m., when the cameras caught him arriving home.
He speeds up the recording until we see a Black teen nearly as tall as Marvin but much lankier, giggling as he and a large, baby-faced white guy carry the goose in its case up the stairs and set it in front of Gustav’s front door.
The footage fast-forwards again as we search for what happened next.
Based on the timestamp, it’s about an hour later when a woman with shoulder-length faded purple hair appears.
Gustav switches back to normal speed and we watch as she stops at the top of the steps, looks both ways but apparently doesn’t clock any of the three cameras watching her, and attempts to lift the case.
When it doesn’t budge, she tries unsuccessfully to drag it.
All this does is dislodge the glass top from the base.
This apparently gives her the idea to fully remove it, lifting the goose from its stand and tucking it under her arm before replacing the glass top with obvious effort.
It’s frankly a miracle she didn’t knock it over and shatter it.
“Then…” Gustav says, switching to a different camera view—I guess there are four cameras—that shows the street.
A yellow Volkswagen Beetle, the back covered in various stickers and magnets, is parked there.
The woman opens the trunk, tries to put the goose inside, finds it doesn’t quite fit, and instead places it in the backseat.
Then she does a three-point turn that’s more of a seven-point turn, and speeds off in the direction from which she originally came.
“Do you know her?” I ask Gustav.
“No. I have not seen her before.”
“Purple hair. Yellow Beetle with a ton of shit on the back,” Annie summarizes. “Not exactly inconspicuous. We can probably track her down…if you want to?” She looks to me.
I consider the possibility of letting this woman get away with taking the goose. The likelihood of it being traced back to Virtu at this point is certainly less. But it still isn’t zero.
I can’t risk it.
Harold would kill me, and Nicole would never trust me again with anything.
And while we’re no longer together, I’m hopeful this is an opportunity to reestablish our friendship.
Because seeing her again the other night made me realize that’s the part of what we had that was special, and what I miss the most.
I nod subtly. “Thank you, Gustav. This has been extremely helpful. And we’re sorry to have bothered you.”
He shrugs.
“Could we trouble you to send us the best still image of our mystery woman? And her car?” Annie asks.
“I never send things electronically, since they are watching me,” he says prosaically. “But I can print them for you.”
We leave Gustav’s bungalow with the empty display case and a surprisingly clear photo of the purple-haired woman standing beside her distinctive getaway vehicle.
“Well. That was certainly interesting,” Annie says as we head back to my SUV. “I wonder how Gustav and Nevin became friends. They don’t appear to have much in common.”
“ ‘Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows,’ ” I quote idly as we buckle our seat belts. “Just look at us.”
“Hm. Are we?”
“What?”
“Strange?”
“Asks the woman who sings to her meatball subs and can juggle fruit while flawlessly rapping about big butts.”
“Oh, no, I admit that I am weird. But not strange. They’re completely different things.
” She flashes me a devilish look before becoming serious again.
“I know we’re very different people, obviously.
But I was starting to think…I don’t know.
It’s kind of silly but I feel like, despite the unusual circumstance in which we now find ourselves, we make a certain amount of sense together.
” My heart accelerates as a hesitant smile stretches across her face.
“As friends,” she tacks on, making it sound a bit like a question.
“You’re blackmailing me,” I remind her.
“Only a little.”
I snort out a soft “Ha.”
“Besides,” she says, crossing her ankles beneath the glove box, “I think you like it.”
“You think I like that you’re blackmailing me?”
“Yes. Because it means that you don’t have to be alone.
” I’m fairly certain Annie intends that in the “not alone in solving this problem” way, but something inside me takes it in a different direction.
Unable to go backward or forward, I’ve defaulted to remaining in place.
It’s left me lonelier than I’ve been able to admit, but the ache of it continues to dissipate a fraction more with every second I spend in her company.
When Nicole unloaded this goose on me, it felt like it could potentially be a catalyst for movement.
But then Annie showed up and uncovered my conundrum, and ever since, it’s felt like I have rockets strapped to my shoes—I’m being forced forward, forward, at a much greater speed than I ever expected and with absolutely no control over any of it. It’s terrifying.
It’s also surprisingly freeing. Thanks to Annie, for the first time in a long time, my mind can conceive of a worthwhile destination potentially ahead.
If I can stay out of jail, that is.
“I do like that.” I say it so quietly that I’m not sure she hears me.
But then she emits a little pleased-sounding hum, though whether it’s generated by the sentiment or her simple enjoyment of having been correct, I don’t know.
“I appreciate you helping me with this. And with the shop. Thank you, in case I haven’t said it. ”
“You haven’t,” she confirms with a sly smile. “But you’re very welcome.” Annie shifts in her seat so that she’s facing me, left leg now tucked beneath her—the way I’ve noticed she sits atop the counter when she doesn’t realize I’m still around. “Can I tell you a secret?” she asks after a moment.
“If you want.”
“I lied to you last night.”
I riffle through my memories of everything we discussed and try to figure out to what she could be referring. Nothing sticks out as obvious or particularly problematic. “About?”
“When you asked about my celebrity crush. It isn’t Harrison Ford. I mean, it isn’t not him. He’s always been a fox. But…”
I come to a halt at a stop sign and take the opportunity to glance over as Annie trails off.
Her face is illuminated by a nearby streetlamp, and I can just make out the blush spreading across her round cheeks.
Or maybe it’s just the reflection of the pink neon light in the window of the bar we’ve stopped in front of.
“But what?” I prompt.
“But,” she finally continues, “for a while now, it’s been you, Cal.”
My heart stumbles and my breath hitches as my brain directs all of its energy toward trying to make sense of her words. “Huh?”
“After I saw you on Antiques Roadshow. I just…something about watching you with that lamp. You looked so handsome, and you were so knowledgeable. I was immediately drawn to you. So when Uncle Harold asked me to come help out at Virtu, that was one of the reasons it was so easy to say yes. Because I really wanted to meet you in person. To see if you were like you were in my imagination.”
I swallow. “And? Am I?”
“Not at all,” she says with a little laugh. “Even so, you’ve been growing on me.”
“Glad to hear it.” I’m surprised I manage the words with how erratically my central nervous system has started acting in response to this development.
For a moment, the only sound is the low murmur of a voice on the radio giving an update on international affairs and the periodic scrape of my windshield wipers as I try to erase the evidence of a cold drizzle that’s just starting up.
“It’s raining,” she states, watching the drops streak down her window as we approach Virtu on the way to Harold’s house.
“Hopefully it’ll stay light, at least until after I drop you off.”
“I think I actually need to go back to the shop,” she says slowly. “If you don’t mind? I, uh, might’ve left something there.”
“Oh. Okay.” I do not think Annie is telling the truth.
And considering what she’s just revealed about her…
crush on me—god, how bizarre, that someone like her could see me being a huge dweeb on TV and think, Yeah, I want that—I feel mildly nauseated.
In a good way. I think. “I’ll park out front, then,” I say, doing so. “Since we’ll just be in and out.”
She makes a noise that sounds like, Will we now? Although maybe that’s only in my imagination.
Maybe this is all in my imagination.
Maybe I tripped coming down the stairs of Virtu two weeks ago and put myself into a coma, and everything that’s happened since—the call from Nicole, the goose, Harold and Inés, Annie—is simply a dream.
Yes, that must be it. Because none of this can possibly be reality. There’s no way that Annie wants me the way that I want her. How could she even exist in waking life? She’s too beautiful, too clever, too charming. Too right to be real.
But if I am asleep, I hope I don’t wake up any time soon.