Missouri Loves Company (Rip Lane Book 1) Read online

  I set the big bag down on the pavement beside my motorcycle. Transporting the bag was not going to be easy. Not on a motorcycle. Transporting two bags would be almost impossible. Still I wanted both.

  The dogs were not too happy to see me returning to the garbage can. It probably hurt their egos that they had failed to scare me away the first time. They upped the ante by barking and growling even louder than before. I made a kissing noise at them. They weren’t too happy about that either.

  Something happened before I could carry the second bag away. A dark Mercedes sedan came down the street. Caught in its headlights, I put the bag down. The car stopped beside me. The driver’s window slid down.

  “What in the blazes are you doing with that garbage bag?”

  I gnawed my lower lip.

  The driver turned to his wife.

  “Audrey, call the police.”

  It took me less than twenty seconds to get to my motorcycle and make my getaway. Unfortunately I got away with only one bag. It sat between my legs, which made for hazardous driving. And hazardous breathing. The stench was horrible.

  I roared past the guard shack and pulled out onto the highway. Nobody tried to stop me. Nobody tried to follow me.

  I was sure to be the talk of the town at the country club the next day. Audrey and her husband would inform all their neighbors about the garbage thief. It wouldn’t be the first time somebody talked trash about me.

  When I got to my motor home I dropped the big black plastic garbage bag on the floor and stripped off all my clothes and shoved them into the washing machine. In the shower I lathered and scrubbed, lathered and scrubbed. By the time I was done it was too late to do anything else. So I went to bed.

  In the morning I did my usual morning routine. Routines work for me. They make my days run more smoothly and efficiently.

  I had a great workout. Three-mile run. Twenty flights of steps. Thirty-four pull-ups. Sixty-seven push-ups. Sixty-three sit-ups.

  After my workout I stopped by to check on Lance’s Arctic Fox truck camper. He had flown to California to meet with his lost love, and he had left his camper at the campground. I did a quick check. His camper seemed fine. No damage from Mother Nature. No damage from vandals.

  I was making my way to my motor home when I ran into Harry and Sally Moran.

  “What are you two up to?”

  “Getting ready to pull out,” Harry said.

  “Vacation’s over?” I said.

  “Yep. Heading back to Detroit.”

  “You get to see the Gateway Arch?”

  “Sure did. Now we can cross it off our bucket list.”

  “How was it?”

  “Hot waiting in line. Worth it though.”

  “I’ll have to check it out.”

  Sally smiled sadly.

  “Thank you both for everything,” I said, and hugged Sally. “You have my number, call me if you ever need anything.”

  “We will,” Sally said.

  I shook Harry’s hand.

  “Keep in touch,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “Safe travels,” I said.

  CHAPTER 40

  I BEGAN TO sort through the contents of the big black plastic garbage bag that I had stolen from Sara Garcia’s garbage can. I was not dressed in a hazmat suit, though I did have on rubber gloves and a surgical mask. My hands and nose were protected. So was the floor of my motor home—a plastic tarp lay beneath the garbage bag.

  I went through the contents of the bag one by one. There were few surprises. Everybody’s garbage is pretty much the same as everybody else’s. Including rich people. Inside the bag I found: chicken bones, coffee grounds, crumpled wads of Kleenex, crusts of toast stained with grape jelly, eggshells, meat scraps, milk cartons, orange rinds, pet liter, plastic bags, potato peels, sanitary napkins, soda cans, soiled paper napkins, tea bags, and yard clippings.

  At the bottom of the garbage bag I found a crumpled piece of newspaper. I picked it up, unfolded it.

  It was a Dear Abby column. It had been torn out of a newspaper. There was a handwritten note on it.

  Sara,

  This reminded me of you.

  Hugs,

  Anna

  It seemed to me that Anna must have mailed the column to Sara. I searched the garbage bag for an envelope. There was none.

  I turned over the torn piece of newspaper and looked at the other side. Nothing but a crossword puzzle. Useless information.

  What I wanted to know was the name of the newspaper. But the name had been torn off. All that remained at the top of the page was the date of the newspaper. August seventh. Six days before.

  Knowing the name of the newspaper would have told me where it was published. Knowing where it was published would have told me where Anna was likely to be hiding.

  I wondered if the name of the newspaper had been purposely torn off. Maybe it had been. But by whom? Anna? Sara? Sara’s butler?

  I was pretty sure the butler didn’t do it. But everybody else was suspect. Including Colonel Mustard.

  Not much of the plastic tarp showed beneath the piles of garbage that were strewn about. It took me over two minutes to stuff all the garbage into the bag again. I put the plastic tarp in there too. It was beyond salvage.

  The torn piece of newspaper, however, I kept out. It was still soggy, so I placed it in a patch of sunlight to dry.

  I made it to the Dumpster and back before anybody at the campground could get a whiff of me. My scent was not unlike that of a skunked dog.

  Once again I stripped off all my clothes and shoved them into the washing machine. Then I showered until I gleamed like Mr. Clean.

  The shower is where I get most of my creative ideas. Problems get solved. Solutions come to me. I’m not sure why it happens in the shower, though I’m glad it happens somewhere.

  By the time my shower was over I had an idea. It was to visit the local library. A librarian could help me figure out the name of the newspaper. Librarians have resources. Librarians have skills.

  CHAPTER 41

  THE POTTSLAND PUBLIC Library was housed in the Woods Memorial Building, a structure noted for its massive doors of carved wood, its enormous windows of stained glass, and its abundance of parking meters.

  The librarian at the desk wore her gray hair in a bun. She had a friendly expression on her face, a cardigan sweater on her shoulders, and owlish glasses on her nose. I wondered if she had ever tried to thwart the stereotypical librarian dress code.

  “Do you need any assistance, sir?”

  Her emerald eyes looked big behind the thick glasses.

  “I do,” I said, and handed her the torn piece of newspaper. “I need to find out what newspaper this is.”

  “Let’s see . . . dated August seventh . . . no newspaper name at the top . . . crossword puzzle on one side . . . Dear Abby column on the other. . . . What’s this handwritten note, sir?”

  “You can ignore that.”

  “Okey dokey. We can ignore the crossword puzzle too. It’s the Dear Abby column we should focus on.”

  “Okey dokey.”

  “See, each newspaper uses its own unique format when printing columns. Each one decides what typeface to use, how many lines the column will have, how many paragraphs. This means the Dear Abby column will look different in each newspaper.”

  “So I have to find out which newspaper uses the same format as the one used in that torn piece of newspaper.”

  “Correct.”

  “Sounds like mission impossible. There must be hundreds of newspapers that run Dear Abby.”

  “Which means we need to narrow the search. What states do you think we might be looking at?”

  “Who knows? I guess Missouri’s a good place to start.”

  “So we’ll take a look at Missouri newspapers that ran Dear Abby on August seventh. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find a match.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  The librarian looked down at the torn piece of newspaper
in her hand and started to read the Dear Abby column. After a moment she stopped and looked up at me again.

  “There’s a slight misprint in this newspaper,” she said, and handed it to me. “See that? The word weird is spelled wrong in the Dear Abby column.”

  “That’s weird,” I said, looking at the misspelled word.

  “But helpful. Now all we have to do is find the newspaper that misspelled weird in the Dear Abby that ran on August seventh.”

  It didn’t take us very long. We found the perfect match in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Everything matched. The misspelled word. The typeface. The format. Everything.

  It meant Anna was probably hiding in St. Louis. Finding her in a big city like St. Louis would be difficult. I had hoped for a small city, someplace where I could track her down easily, without the need for outside resources.

  I was going to need some help finding her.

  I knew just whom to call.

  CHAPTER 42

  IAN SANDERS WORKED for the United States Marshals Service’s Technical Operations Group. It is the best electronic surveillance manhunting organization in the world. Their Electronic Surveillance Branch, Air Surveillance Branch, and Tactical Support Branch provide investigative and intelligence support for the Marshals Service.

  Ian and I had once worked together during one of the FALCON operations. FALCON is an acronym for Federal And Local Cops Organized Nationally. The operation is a weeklong dragnet organized by the Marshals Service. It involves law-enforcement personnel from federal, state, county, and city agencies. Everybody collaborates to capture the biggest targets of the participating agencies. Targets include violent offenders, sex offenders, and gang members. Operation FALCON has apprehended more violent fugitives than any other initiative in U.S. law-enforcement history.

  Together Ian and I had captured sixty fugitives during Operation FALCON. Several had entertained us with stories while riding in the back of our car.

  One fugitive had explained why going to jail beat going to work.

  “A jail cell’s bigger than an office cubicle, and you get your own toilet—you don’t have to share it with coworkers. You get three meals a day in jail, but only one meal break at work. In jail a guard unlocks all of the doors for you, but at work you have to unlock them yourself with a security card.”

  Ian and I have stayed in touch over the years., though we never got an opportunity to work together again after Operation FALCON.

  I phoned Ian.

  “Need a favor, pal.”

  “Name it, Rip.”

  “Need to find a woman named Anna Cruz.”

  “What’s her home address?”

  “Nineteen forty-one Bluebird Street, Pottsland, Missouri.”

  “Lemme get back to you.”

  “I think she’s hiding out in St. Louis. I’d bet my reputation on it.”

  “What reputation?”

  Later that day Ian phoned me back. He gave me Anna’s driver’s license information, a description of her car, and her license plate number. He also provided me with the car’s general location.

  License plate readers make it possible to track and locate the license plate of almost any vehicle in America. Automatic license plate reading cameras are mounted on bridges, utility poles, and police cars across the country. These cameras capture images of passing license plates. The license plate numbers are recorded by a commercial database called the National Insurance Crime Bureau, which is the source of information for the United States Marshals Service’s Technical Operations Group when it comes to locating license plates.

  Ian, using information from this database, had determined that Anna’s car was located within a few blocks of the Gateway Arch in downtown St. Louis.

  The hunt was on.

  CHAPTER 43

  IT WAS FIVE a.m. when I pulled out of S’mores and Snores Campground. I had the GPS set to take me to an RV park in St. Louis. My estimated arrival time showed nine thirty-two a.m.

  I like to get on the road early. Before traffic gets heavy. I like to feel the cool air of early morning, see the first beams of the rising sun, hear the songs of awakening birds.

  My motor home rolled along with no problems. The engine sounded good. Bob the mechanic had done a fine job of repairing it.

  The interior and exterior of my motor home looked new. As if it had never been used. No scratches. No dents. Everything gleamed. But my motor home was not new. I had bought it used. It was much cheaper that way, and most of the kinks had already been worked out by the previous owner. I had considered buying new, but then thought better of it. I didn’t want to spend a fortune on an RV that would begin to depreciate as soon as I drove it off the sales lot.

  My headlights cut through the darkness. I set the cruise control to sixty, turned on the radio. Nothing good was on the radio, so I listened to an audiobook, sipping my coffee as I listened.

  After a while the pale sun began to rise over the distant blue mountains. I put on my sunglasses and turned off my headlights. It was going to be a beautiful day.

  I love this way of life. Living on the road. Never staying in any one place too long. Always on the move. I love the freedom of not owning a home. No yard work. No property tax. No permanent neighbors. I love not being weighed down by stuff. Rooms filled with furniture. Closets filled with clothes. Cabinets filled with junk. I love seeing America. East Coast. West Coast. Everything in between. I love not having to stay in hotels. No bedbugs. No noisy ice machines. No lack of privacy. I know the mobile lifestyle is not for everybody, but for me there could be nothing better.

  Once when I was camping in Maine I met a rough-looking guy who told me that living on the road was his purpose in life.

  “Before I found my life’s purpose,” he had told me, “I had tons of money, owned a lot of land, had a huge house too. Drug money paid for it all. I had all the material goods a man would ever need. On the other hand I always had to watch out for the law, and for people that wanted to steal money and dope from me, and for girlfriends that were with me only for the drugs and money.

  “Then everything changed. The law locked me up for six years. The government took my possessions. When I got out of prison I owned almost nothing. I thought I had nothing to live for then. There was nothing to keep me going, nothing to get me through the day. I remember thinking about how my life had gone bad, how physically out of shape I was, how little I had left to live for.

  “One day I put a gun to my head. But then I thought, Well, I still have some cash left and there are still some places I’d like to see and some things I’d like to do first. So I bought a used van. I’ve been living on the road ever since. Every morning when I wake up in my van I look outside and see a new landscape and realize I have a million-dollar view on a lemonade budget. I try to focus on what I have and not on what’s missing from my life. I take pleasure in the small things in my life, live life for today, enjoy every second of it.”

  Sometimes I think about that guy, how he found his purpose in the mobile lifestyle, and the thought gives me solace and strength.

  In my rearview mirror I could see a line of cars behind me on the winding road with a single lane. I pulled over to let them pass. None of the drivers seemed angry at me for having slowed them down with my lumbering vehicle.

  When all of the cars had passed I pulled onto the road again. The posted speed limit was forty miles an hour. It was not a fast road.

  I have no desire to live in the fast lane.

  No desire to live in the slow lane.

  I prefer no lane at all.

  I blaze my own path.

  CHAPTER 44

  HEAVEN ON WHEELS RV Park was located just ten minutes from downtown St. Louis. It had plenty of amenities. Basketball court. Courtesy patrol. Dump station. Free WiFi. Full hookups. Laundry room. Lighted pedestals. Onsite bike rentals. Picnic tables. Swimming pool. Whirlpool.

  I went into the office to register. Then I parked at a site, leveled my RV, and connected the hookups.r />
  Meanwhile a white pickup truck pulling a travel trailer came into view. Two boys and one girl spilled out of the truck and began to set up the trailer at breakneck speed. They chocked the tires, unhitched the trailer, leveled the trailer, set the corner jacks, turned off the circuit breaker, connected the electric cord, turned on the circuit breaker again, connected the water hose, connected the sewer hose, went inside to check all the connections, opened the slides, set up the satellite dish, and opened the awning.

  It was impressive to watch. I had never seen a travel trailer set up in such a short time. I spoke to the father.

  “Your kids work fast. You must know how to motivate them.”

  “Nobody goes to the bathroom till the trailer’s set up.”

  It was only a little after ten a.m. and I was already getting hungry. So I took a Greek yogurt from my refrigerator and sat down at a picnic table. The sun was hot. The blue pool water looked cool.

  I was about to go put on my swim trunks when an elderly woman pulled up beside me. Her SUV was pink. Her travel trailer was pink. The woman looked like she was glamping.

  Glamping is a blend of glamour and camping. It is for campers who want to experience the great outdoors without sacrificing luxury. It is a way to experience the advantages of camping without the uncomfortable disadvantages.

  I sat watching as the elderly woman tried to back her thirty-foot trailer into the site. She tried. And tried. And tried.

  I learned a long time ago to never give advice to anybody unless they ask for it. Some people hate advice. No matter whom it comes from. No matter whether the advice is good or bad. The irony is that the people who hate advice the most are the ones who need it most.

  I kept watching the woman try to back her long pink trailer into the site. She would pull forward, come to a stop, start to back up, realize she was turning too much or too little, come to another stop, and then start the entire process all over again. It was like watching a tennis match in slow motion.