Mystery Tribune / Issue Nº16

Dates to a Prom-1

Dates to a Promby Brendan DuBois

It was a sunny May day and I was on hold with the accounting department of Great Northern New England Insurance Company—“Since 1901, Always Here For You!” except for contractors, obviously—and hoping I could get their sticky corporate fingers loose enough to pay me for a two-month-old invoice, when a large man came into my office in the small town of Purmort, New Hampshire.

I blinked at his approach and gingerly opened the center drawer of my metal desk. Nestled in there among yellow sticky notes, paper clips, stamps, pens and such is my .357 stainless steel Ruger revolver. As a private investigator I’ve made maybe two or three enemies along the way, but enemies you can prepare for and easily identify.

Some years ago a sweet elderly gentleman, dressed in a nice gray wool suit and red bowtie, came into my office, leaning on a cane. And he sat there, smelling of peppermint, passing the time, and when he wanted to hire me to give him a massage, I gently declined. He nodded, stood up, and whacked me up the side of the head with his cane. No stitches, but plenty of blood, and ever since then, somebody coming in bearing Y chromosomes means the center drawer opens up.

Especially when a man this large comes in.

He was about six foot six, broad and heavyset, wearing tan work boots and a dark gray suit that was worn and soiled. The white shirt couldn’t be buttoned around his thick neck, and his light yellow necktie—spotted with stains—hung over a big belly. He had a shaved head and trimmed black beard.

My office was cozy, but with his size ambling in, it suddenly seemed claustrophobic. He nodded at me and took one of the two chairs in front of my desk. It creaked as he sat down.

“On the phone,” I said. “Sorry.”

He shrugged. “I can wait.”

The hold music went on and on.

He said, “You K.C. Dunbar?”

Times before I have said funny things like, “No, I’m her Evil Twin,” or “No, I’m her secretary, she’s out chasing Bigfoot” but I wasn’t sure about this huge guy’s sense of humor. I decided I would wait to find out what his sense of humor was like, and got the feeling it might take me a year or so.

That was unusual, that someone wanted to hire a female private detective.

“Yes, I am.”

“What does K.C. stand for?”

“Karen Cathleen,” I said.

A click on the phone line made me feel relief.

“Ms. Dunbar?” the woman’s voice asked.

“Yes, right here,” I said.

“Please continue to hold,” and there was another click, and the hold music returned.

The man said, “I’d like to hire you. What are your rates?”

“One hundred dollars an hour, plus expenses.”

He lifted his eyebrows. “What kind of expenses?”

“Meals, mileage, copying expenses for getting documents.”

He smiled. His teeth were perfect. “Good,” he said. “That means I won’t be paying any expenses.”

“Excuse me?” I asked.

The hold music continued to drone. I checked my office clock. Eleven minutes and counting.

He said, “I want to hire you as a bodyguard.”

The music from the phone seemed to quiet out.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t do bodyguard work.”

“But you’re a private detective. I thought that was what you folks did.”

“You thought wrong,” I said. “Sorry. We do background checks, assets checks, and workmen’s comp cases, among other things.”

He shifted in his seat. It loudly creaked in protest.

“But you’re the only private investigator around here that’s a woman,” he said. “That’s what I need. A female bodyguard.”

That was unusual, that someone wanted to hire a female private detective. I live in a pretty rural part of northern New Hampshire, and while it still mostly had its “live free or die” way of living, meaning lots of privacy and minding one’s own business, there was still an undercurrent of those who couldn’t believe a woman could do what was considered a traditional man’s job.

Hence my business card and on-line presence that indicated “K.C. Dunbar.”

I said, “Being a private investigator is mostly records research, talking to people, and maybe a bit of surveillance. Being a bodyguard is a whole different set of skills, which I don’t have. Sorry.”

I also wanted to add that with his imposing bulk, my morning visitor didn’t look like he needed a bodyguard.

But he persisted, while the hold music kept on playing, in a loop that was irritating the hell out of me.

He said, “But I really need help.”

I said, “Some of the other agencies in the county might be able to find a female bodyguard for you. Probably a deputy sheriff or cop on his or her day off.”

He frowned. “No, no cops. I want you.”

“But… excuse me for saying this, I can’t see why you need a bodyguard.”

“Oh,” he said, his face lightening up, like a grizzly bear faced with a salmon dropped in his paws. “I don’t want a bodyguard for me. I want a bodyguard for my daughter.”

That sounded odd indeed, and while I’m sure he had a fascinating story, I really wanted to get him and his bulk out of my office.

“Again, sorry,” I said. “I can’t help you.”

“I’ll pay you double. Two hundred dollars an hour.”

“That really—”

He went on. “A thousand dollars. For four hours work.”

That caught my attention.

I checked my office clock again.

Twenty-three minutes on hold.

I hung up.

“Okay,” I said, pulling a white legal pad and black ballpoint pen to the center of my desk. “We’ve got a deal.”

After a few minutes of talking, I learned my visitor was Gil Wyman, a resident of Purmort, and that he was self-employed.

“Doing what?” I asked.

His massive shoulders shrugged. “Little of this, little of that.”

I didn’t like what I was hearing. “I’d like to know more about the this and that.”

Another shrug. I was impressed that his suit was holding together with all that stress. Gil said, “Some welding. Oil change for your cars or trucks. Tree-cutting. Snowplow work in the winter. Run some lines for sap in the spring. A bit of plumbing and electrical work if you don’t ask for any licenses.”

“Your daughter’s name?”

“Jessica.”

“And why does she need a bodyguard?”

Something seemed to be going on behind that scary-looking face. Then he smiled, shook his head. “She’s going to her senior prom this Saturday with her boyfriend Carl, Carl Taft. Nice guy. But the problem is… a guy she dated a few months ago. Frank Young. She broke it off with him, and he didn’t take it that well. Jerk. He texted her a couple of times last week, saying he planned to crash the prom, make it memorable for her. You know?”

When Gil Wyman first came into my office, I couldn’t wait for him to leave. Now I wanted to know more.

“Tell me more about Frank and your daughter.”

“Oh, well, I thought Frank was okay, you know? One of the guys I hire to do tree-trimming, Walt Young, he’s Frank’s father. Frank had a good job working for an exterminator outfit over in Leah, and his dad Walt wondered if Jessica might be interested in going out with his son. Weird question, hunh, what do dads like me know about what his daughter likes when it comes to dating? But I sort of asked her and she didn’t so no at first, but things started out on their own. Like… organic. Right? Organic.”

I was carefully taking notes and said, “Then what?”

He looked away. “I don’t know. I really don’t want to know. But Jessica broke it off, and said she didn’t want to be with him no more, and that was that. He tried coming by a couple of times and once left a plastic red rose in our mailbox, but Jessica wouldn’t bend. Some phone calls and texts and then it ended. And I thought it was done. Then Jessica started dating Carl, and Carl asked her to the prom, and that’s when the trouble started.”

I realized I was missing something and asked, “What does Jessica’s mom think of all of this?”

He slowly frowned, and seeing that expression on this big man’s face was like seeing one of those slow-motion videos of a rocky avalanche.

Gil said, “She’s living in Bangor. Over in Maine.”

“Okay.”

“Said she couldn’t stand the drama.”

“What drama?” I asked.

“Who knows,” Gil said. “I put a roof over her head, paid for her clothes and groceries… but I’m not here about her. I’m here about my girl.”

I put it all together. “And you want to make sure her prom goes nice, am I right?”

A firm nod. “Yeah. It’s my girl’s special night… I want it to go right. I want you there to make sure her old boyfriend Frank doesn’t bother her, doesn’t do anything to ruin that night.”

“Did you go to the police?

Another landslide, another frown. “Jeff Picardson? The chief? No.”

“I’d think that’d be a call you’d want to make.”

“No. Me and the chief… we’ve had… disagreements.”

“But—”

He reached back like he was going to pull a pistol out of his waistband, and I put my hand back in my open center drawer, because if that beefy hand came out with a weapon, I was going to drill a hole into my new client.

His hand came out with a worn, thick brown leather wallet. He opened it up—revealing an impressive amount of receipts and bits of notepaper—and pulled out ten hundred dollar bills. He fanned them across the top of my desk and said, “That’s the fee for this Saturday night. Seven p.m. to 11 p.m. No more talk about me, or the chief, or anything else. Okay? I just want you to protect my girl.”

I looked at the calm pursed lips of Ben Franklin looking up at me, and then gently scooped up the thousand dollars and put them to the side of my desk.

“All right then.”

“Good,” he said. On my desk was a little metal stand holding my business cards, and he took one and slipped it into his sweaty shirt pocket. “Later today I’ll email photos of my daughter Jessica and her former boyfriend Frank, and Carl as well.”

“Can you set up a time for me to talk to her?”

He heaved himself up from the chair, and I could practically hear the chair sigh in relief. “No. I don’t want you to talk to her.”

“But I need to—”

“No,” Gil said. “My daughter, I don’t want her to know you’re there. Okay? I already embarrass her enough by the way I work, talk, the way I dress. I just want you to protect her at the prom before she goes off to college. Stay in the background. That’s all. And if you can’t do that, then give me my money back.”

Dear me. I have some serious standards and rules when it comes to my work, and my new client was working very hard to convince me to break them.

Ben Franklin kept on calmly looking at me.

“I can do that,” I said.

“Good.”

And he ambled out of my office like a circus bear, taking his first break of the day.

Then I picked up my phone and called Great Northern New England Insurance Company back.

Even with a thousand unexpected dollars in my hand, The Man still owed me money.

Some long minutes later, after getting a promise from “John” in accounting, who sounded like he was several thousand miles and time zones away, that payment was most certainly coming my way, I got to work on the Great God Google and started doing research on my brand new client.

My office was in a small strip mall in Purmort, right next to a pizza restaurant. My name is on gold-leaf lettering on the glass door—K.C. Dunbar, Investigations—and was pretty simple and straightforward. It’s a single-room office that has a desk, phone, three chairs, computer and two three-drawer filing cabinets with good solid locks. On the walls were a framed award from the New England Press Association from my previous short career, my license, and a color photo of Tuckerman’s Ravine. No washroom, I’m afraid, although the nice folks who run the pizza shop next door let me use theirs when the need came up.