Uncle Brick and the L.A. Ex

By Allan Leverone

. . . So I figure all we have to do is pick up six or seven more of these jobs in the next couple of weeks and we'll have no trouble making the nut on this place, and even have a little cash left over for, you know, expenses.” My uncle was reviewing the invoice from our latest case—a little film-the-scumbag-banker-cheating-on-his-not-so-gullible-wife caper—and trying to explain how in the hell we were going to avoid getting thrown out of the Callahan Investigations offices at the end of the month for non-payment of rent.

Things had been a little slow around here lately, and no cases meant no money coming in, which meant no money going out. You didn't have to be an ex-accountant like me to know that.

I had a couple of thoughts while he tried to convince me things were going to be fine:

1) This PI stuff was sometimes less interesting and often more depressing than I had imagined it would be as I was making my way back east to join my uncle in the family business after my father's murder, and,

2) As a professional accountant by trade, I couldn't help but wonder after reviewing our finances how in the world my dad and Uncle Brick had managed to make a go of the agency for more than four decades, and finally,

3) Did my uncle really believe six or seven more angry spouses were going to come waltzing in off the street over the course of the next fourteen days? All with checkbooks in their hands and divorce decrees in their hearts?

I shook my head as I realized Brick Callahan couldn't care less about any of my concerns. He would continue living his life and running his business like he didn't have a care in the world, exactly as he had lived his life for the past eighty years and run his business for the past forty. And I have to admit to feeling a twinge of jealousy. I had never been able to approach anything in my life with that sort of devil-may-care attitude—it would have been career suicide in my former world as an accountant—and it seemed like the kind of thing I would very much like to try, although I knew I never would.

These thoughts ran through my head and then it occurred to me that my uncle was staring at me quizzically, as if waiting for me to speak. That was when I realized he had just asked me a question and actually was waiting for an answer. He looked a little antsy, too. Uncle Brick had the patience of a three-year-old on Christmas morning most of the time, and I know exactly what you're thinking: How can you be a Private Investigator and not be blessed with the patience of Job?

My answer: I have no idea; it's another of the many mysteries of Brick Callahan.

“Uh, sorry,” I said. “I guess my mind was wandering. What was the question again?”

“Wandering? I guess it was wandering,” he said. “You looked like you were a thousand miles away; three thousand, even, say, back in Los Angeles instead of here in Boston . Which leads directly to the question I asked you while you were busy ignoring our conversation and living in your own little dream world. I asked if you would ever want to go back to L.A. ”

“ L.A. ? I've only been here in Boston a few months, why would I want to go back to L.A. ?”

“Oh, I don't know,” Brick said, a funny little smile on his granite face. It made me think of the Mona Lisa. “Don't you ever miss Allyson?”

“Hmph,” I said, mostly because I couldn't believe the turn this conversation had taken. It was getting downright strange, even for a talk with Uncle Brick, and that was saying something. “Of course I miss Allyson, we were married for ten years, but I think you're forgetting a critical detail.”

“Hmm.” He scratched his chin and gazed thoughtfully over my shoulder. “I don't think so. What am I forgetting?”

“ Allyson was the one who left me, remember? She was the one who had an affair with my business partner and decided our marriage wasn't fulfilling enough for her. Is any of this ringing a bell? Striking a chord?” I was a little miffed that my personal struggles had meant so little to my father's brother that he couldn't even keep the details straight.

“Ah,” he said, making a little brushing-away motion with his hand, like the dissolution of my marriage was a minor detail in a Callahan Investigations case; nothing to get all worked up over.

“So you wouldn't want to go back out to L.A. to see her, I assume.”

“Now you're getting the picture. Not in a million years.”

“And what if she came here to see you?”

I laughed. “Allyson? Come here? She would never leave the west coast, especially to see me. California fits her lifestyle perfectly. What are you getting at, anyway? Why all the questions about Allyson?”

“I like to be prepared, that's all.”

“Prepared for what?”

“I don't know,” Brick shrugged. “Why don't you ask her yourself? She's standing right behind your chair.”

***

I sat motionless for maybe three seconds, certain that Brick was playing some kind of incomprehensible game; equally certain he would never do so. Finally I swiveled in my seat and there she was, beautiful as ever, tall and slim and self-possessed, a nervous smile crinkling the skin under her tired eyes. Her clothes looked slept-in, like she had flown all night and napped on the airplane. I decided she probably had.

I was rendered utterly speechless, a common occurrence when dealing with Uncle Brick, a new development in my relationship with my ex-wife. For what seemed like a long time nobody moved. Finally she saved me from the impossible task of spitting out a coherent thought, at least for the time being. “You're looking well,” she said simply.

I rose from my chair and motioned her into it without answering and she sat, gratitude evident in her tired features. For once Uncle Brick had nothing to say; he just sat behind his big battered desk waiting to see what would happen next. I was a little curious myself. “What are you doing here?”

“It's nice to see you, too,” she said with a nod and a smile for my uncle.

“You know what I mean, Allyson. You left me. I'm not your husband any more. I'm sure you heard my entire soliloquy while you were standing behind me without my knowledge. So it's not like I haven't missed you, but—and please excuse me for repeating myself—what are you doing here, three thousand miles from the smoking ruins of the disaster we called a marriage?”

“You're right,” she nodded. “Of course. You owe me nothing, I understand that.”

I didn't answer.

She sighed. “I suppose I should get right down to business.”

“Good idea,” I agreed.

“It's about Roger.”

Wonderful, I thought. Just when things couldn't get any more awkward. Roger Samson was my ex-partner, the former business associate who had stolen my wife away from me. “Listen, Allyson,” I said. “I really don't carry a grudge against Roger—” I tried to say the name neutrally, but could feel a bit of acid slip onto my tongue— “but all the same, it would be a stretch to say I'm interested in discussing the man's affairs. ”

“No pun intended?” she said with a tiny smile.

“It was definitely intended. Can you please get to the point? What is so important about Roger—“ there was that acid again—“that it was necessary for you to fly all the way to Boston to throw him in the face of your ex-husband?”

“He's missing.”

***

Roger Samson had never been the most reliable business partner in the world. The guy was a whiz as an accountant, could crunch numbers with the best of them, but his personal life was a mess; in a shambles pretty much from the day I met him until the day I voluntarily turned over my half of the accounting firm to him. That day came roughly three weeks after I in voluntarily turned my wife over to him, and roughly three weeks before I bolted L.A. to start a new life with my uncle in Boston .

Roger's weakness—besides his love affair with my wife—was a love affair with the horses, as well as with casinos and lotteries and basically anything involving odds or point spreads or games of chance. It was mostly a one-sided romance, as you might imagine. He was forever losing his ass, finding himself in trouble with the guys with bent noses who inevitably hunted him down to collect their bosses' winnings. I didn't find out about this little personality defect of Roger's until after launching the partnership with him—I know, I know, my due diligence skills leave something to be desired; all you have to do is look at my current job to figure that one out—but by then it was too late.

I had always suspected he might one day get in so far over his head that he would discover the location of Jimmy Hoffa's final resting place by joining him in it, and I can't say it didn't concern me while we were still partners, but then I found out he was riding my wife like one of his precious jockeys on a horse, and just like that he ceased to be my concern.

“How long has he been gone?” I asked. Brick still hadn't said a word since alerting me to Allyson's presence in the office, a span of at least ten minutes, which I suspected must be close to a personal record for him.

“Three days. He's not answering his phone or his texts, and no one at the office has seen him, either.”

Brick spoke up. I was kind of glad, because I had basically exhausted my supply of intelligent questions after the first. “I understand he is not exactly the most reliable man in terms of his personal life. Has he ever gone missing before?”

Allyson shook her head emphatically. “No, that's the thing. I know all about his fondness for gambling, and I know he loses a lot, but he always comes home. He's very faithful to me.”

I cleared my throat at that, wanting to remind my ex that I was still in the room, that I hadn't suddenly disappeared—unlike her current man—and she shot me an apologetic glance. “Sorry about that,” she said in a small voice. “Um . . . there's more,” she continued.

Brick nodded. “I assumed as much.”

“Some money is gone, as well.”

I cut off Uncle Brick and jumped in. Even a newbie like me knew the next question to ask. “How much money?”

“Forty thousand dollars.”

“What?” Brick and I cried simultaneously and at that point Allyson, who had been holding up impressively, a model of composure, began to cry. She folded in on herself and sank down in the office chair and before I even realized what I was doing I knelt next to her and put my arms around her and held her like I had done a thousand times before.

She smelled familiar and felt familiar and cried into my shoulder and against all odds and what little common sense I had left I felt my own eyes welling up. I looked over at Uncle Brick and he just sat behind his desk, stroking his chin and watching my ex-wife cry.

***

We shuffled down the narrow aisle in the center of the big Boeing 757, Brick leading the way, until we reached our seats roughly two-thirds of the way toward the back of the cabin. The airplane was mostly full, which surprised me, and everyone seemed kind of sullen and grouchy, which didn't.

I had assumed with a down economy that there would be empty seats all over the plane. When I mentioned it to my uncle after we sat down he shook his head. “Nah,” he said. “The airlines simply schedule fewer flights when the economy's bad so they can keep the seats filled on the airplanes that do go. It's called the load factor.” Then he turned and stared out the window and I wondered how in the hell he knew so much more than me about, well, just about everything.

In the seat to my left, Allyson fidgeted, clearly uncomfortable having to sit next to me for the next five and a half hours. I was enjoying her discomfort and although I felt a twinge of shame for my pettiness I just couldn't help myself. She had jettisoned me for my business partner because I wasn't exciting enough for her. I wondered what she thought of excitement now.

After Allyson had spilled her guts about Roger going missing along with forty grand, Brick had told her, yes, of course we would fly out to L.A. to take a look around. I had barely wrapped my arms around her sobbing shoulders when my uncle turned to the computer humming on the side of his desk and began tapping keys. He concentrated hard on his work and I was certain it was more to avoid my accusatory glare than because he really needed to devote all his attention to the Internet.

Within seconds he had pulled up Logan 's flight schedules. A couple of minutes after that, about the time the last of Allyson's tears had soaked their way into my shirt, he looked up with a smile. “We'd better get moving,” he said, still avoiding my eyes, preferring instead to look into Allyson's. I couldn't blame him. Her eyes had always been mesmerizing.

“Why?” we both said together.

“Because our flight leaves in an hour.”

We had thrown carry-on bags together and dashed to the airport, running through the terminal like O.J. did back in the days when people still wanted him to promote their products, arriving at the gate just as our section was boarding. Needless to say, any more discussion of the case had had to wait, which was probably a good thing. I didn't understand why Brick would want to help my ex-wife, especially after what she had done to me, but then I rarely understood what he was thinking, anyway.

I turned to Allyson as she fumbled with her seatbelt buckle and asked the question I had expected Brick to ask just before he went off the deep end and bought three tickets to the left coast. “Didn't you notify the police?”

Brick snorted softly next to me and I glanced over. I think he was chuckling at the naiveté of my question, but he turned it into a cough, covering his amusement up just enough so that I couldn't be sure.

“Of course I called the police,” Allyson said with a look of exasperation on her face. That look was nothing new to me and was one of the things few things about her I had decided I wasn't going to miss when we split up. “But we're talking about Los Angeles , California . You remember L.A. , right? I mean you used to live there! Unless there's solid evidence Roger was kidnapped—a ransom demand, for instance—or was the victim of some other type of crime, the police are far too busy dealing with other things to spend much time worrying about a grown man who didn't come home for dinner.”

I thought about it and reluctantly concluded she had a point. I wasn't giving up that easily, though. “Well, it has been more than one dinner by now, hasn't it? Aren't we up to three or four?”

“Sure, and undoubtedly at some point the LAPD will begin taking the case seriously, especially considering the amount of money that has gone missing. But right now, the case just isn't high on their priority list. There isn't even any proof the money has been stolen, technically, and without a ransom note or telephone call or something . . .”

I shook my head slowly. “But I still don't understand. There must be dozens of PI firms in and around L.A. Why didn't you just go to one of them?”

“Why? Because I assumed that someone I had shared my life with for ten years might be inclined to put a little more effort into the case than a stranger. Was I wrong about that?”

I wanted to say Of course you were wrong! You screwed me over and I have zero interest in finding the slimeball who weaseled my wife away from me. I hope he's strung up somewhere by his thumbs. Or some more appropriate body part.

But of course I said nothing of the kind. “No, Allyson, you weren't wrong.”

By now the plane was pushing back from the gate, ready to begin lumbering like a giant elephant toward the runway. I looked out the little window over Brick's shoulder, thankful for the distraction. Allyson wasn't the only one feeling uncomfortable. I couldn't wait to get to L.A. , as counterintuitive as that seemed. After leaving the west coast a couple of months ago I had been convinced I would never return—California was Allyson's territory, not mine—but now that we were heading out there, the sooner we got to the bottom of this mess the sooner we could get back to Boston.

I clung to that thought doggedly, and before long we were climbing out over the Atlantic Ocean , banking back left toward the massive expanse of continent we would have to cross before once again putting our feet on solid ground.

***

It had been less than sixty days since I left L.A. , but in many ways the area seemed as foreign to me as it had when I first moved out there after marrying Allyson a decade ago. It wasn't the weather— Boston could get as hot as Los Angeles in the summer, and a hell of a lot more humid—or the palm trees or the freeways or the urban sprawl. There was just a different feel to the place. Laid-back and chilled out as opposed to uptight and pissed off, which seemed to be the default mood on the east coast.

I knew I was just kidding myself with that one, though. There were plenty of pissed off people committing plenty of crimes out here, especially in L.A. Hell, the possibility of criminal activity of the most heinous sort was why we were here in the first place.
We walked off the plane and through the massive terminal at LAX, bypassing the baggage claim area because none of us had checked any. That fact, more than anything else, proved to me how worried Allyson really was. She didn't go to the grocery store without dressing to impress and fully accessorizing. So for her to travel three thousand miles with just a carry-on bag wasn't just stepping outside her comfort zone, it was like a full out-of-body experience.

Allyson led us to her car and I walked right on by when we got there, turning around only when I realized I was now walking alone. She had traded in our three year old Jetta for a brand-new, midnight blue Acura, apparently coming to the conclusion that a new man in her life wasn't enough of a change. I felt a twinge of annoyance, or maybe jealousy—I didn't even have a car anymore. Although, to be fair, I didn't really need one. A car in Boston is like air conditioning in northern Maine —nice to have every now and then, but mostly unnecessary.

“Nice ride,” I said, climbing into the front seat next to Allyson while Uncle Brick stretched out across the back. I felt the same acid tone creeping into my voice that I heard whenever I mentioned Roger's name, but Allyson either didn't notice the sarcasm or chose to ignore it.

“Thanks,” she said. “Roger's theory is that having money is pointless if you can't enjoy it. So I decided to enjoy some of mine.”

I bit down hard on the retort that tried to pop out of my mouth all on its own. The money that was “hers” used to be “ours,” and I almost couldn't stop myself from asking her how much she was enjoying the forty grand that had vanished when her new boyfriend disappeared, but I knew nothing productive would come from that question. Plus, I was determined to stick to my plan—get to the bottom of this Roger mess and then get the hell out of Dodge.

Besides, Roger's theory about money was nothing new to me. The strange thing about that was that his theory didn't extend to his personal vehicle. As long as I had known him, Roger drove around in an ancient Jeep CJ like some penny-pinching college kid. In all other areas of his personal life, he liked to flash his money around like a pimp at a gangster convention, but he held on to that piece of crap car like Linus to his security blanket.

Thank God he hadn't treated our accounting firm's financial affairs with the cavalier attitude he exhibited in his personal life, but I had known him for a long time—much longer than Allyson—and felt confident that his “theory” about conspicuous consumption had led directly to the predicament he now found himself in, whatever that might be.

“So,” Allyson said, looking at me expectantly.

I stared back. “What do you mean, ‘so'?”

“So, where am I supposed to go?”

I was about to tell her I hadn't the slightest notion, although straight to a restaurant for dinner might be a good place to start. The airline had served a so-called meal that resembled food only in the most liberal interpretation of the term. It would have started a riot if served to the prisoners at Cedar Junction, the maximum security prison outside Boston .

Then Brick piped up. “Head to the racetrack.”

I swiveled in my seat. The leather was rich and supple and I had to admit, if only to myself, that Allyson had chosen vehicles wisely. Of course, I would never admit that to her. “Excuse me?” I asked. I half thought he had fallen asleep back there.

My uncle ignored me and spoke to Allyson's back. He loved tweaking me and I knew that was why he had spoken so cryptically. Working with Brick Callahan was like dealing with a six year old. “You said earlier that Roger enjoys the ponies. Which racetrack does he most like to frequent?”

My ex thought for a moment and said, “ Hollywood Park .”

“Then that should be our next stop,” Brick said before lapsing back into silence. I sighed deeply, realizing food would remain an unrealized pipe dream, at least for the time being.

Allyson wheeled the brand-new car out of the access road at LAX and onto the 405, driving like she did everything—full speed ahead, taking no prisoners. Suddenly I remembered why I had made it a point always to drive when we were together. She loved the California lifestyle, but would have fit right in with the aggressive drivers in Boston . She weaved in and out of traffic, alternately accelerating and braking, changing lanes for no apparent reason. I glanced in the back seat and Brick was smiling and nodding, perhaps recognizing in Allyson a kindred driving spirit.

Fortunately, Hollywood Park was located not far from LAX and before long we had blasted into the parking lot, Allyson jamming the nose of her new car into an empty space like a woodsman smashing a wedge into a log with a sledgehammer. We piled out of the vehicle and I would have sworn it was still rocking on its springs as my ex keyed the button locking the doors.

We walked into the gigantic structure of Hollywood Park and I asked my uncle, “What's the plan?” I still felt slightly disoriented from the whirlwind car ride, but Brick and Allyson looked completely relaxed.

“We're going to talk to the people in the know, find out if they have any idea where Roger might have gone.”

“The people in the know?” I scratched my head. “This place is mammoth. What are the odds they'll even know who Roger Samson is?”

“They'll know,” Brick answered confidently, as if it was he who had spent the last decade of his life on the west coast rather than me. “We just have to talk to the right people.”

I shook my head dubiously but trusted my uncle's instincts. He had been a PI for nearly the past half-century and I had only been one for the past few weeks, so logic dictated we follow his plan. Plus, I had no plan, so it truly was a no-brainer.

I turned toward the cashier's windows, looking for a sign or some other indication of where the general manager's office might be, wandering through the thick crowds of bettors, each anxious to plunk down his or her hard-earned cash on the next sure thing. “We're going to have to ask for some directions,” I noted astutely, stopping in my tracks when I discovered I was completely alone.

An elderly white-haired man with a rolled-up Daily Racing Form protruding out of his back pocket bumped into me and gave me a dirty look. He reeked of cigarette smoke; it wafted around him like an invisible force field. I mumbled an apology to no discernible reaction and peered over, around and through the teeming crowd, finally locating my uncle and ex-wife after he lifted his fingers to his mouth and whistled like a construction worker harassing a pretty girl.

“Where did you think you were going?” Brick asked as Allyson shook her head at my foolishness. I wanted to remind her that we were only here because she had had no idea what to do, either, but decided not to bother.

“I was looking for the general manager's office.” It seemed to me the answer should have been obvious; after all, the plan had been Brick's in the first place.

“Why would you do that? They're not going to have any idea who Roger is. To the management of Hollywood Park , he's just one of a thousand anonymous gamblers.”

“But you said—“

“I said,” he continued, brushing my frustration aside, “that we need to talk to the people in the know, and finding those people is completely unrelated to meeting with anyone in any official capacity.”

I raised my hands in surrender and did what I should have done in the first place, closing my mouth and vowing to follow blindly along. Brick turned and moved through the crowd to the grandstand railing, gazing left and right, peering up and down row upon row of spectators, looking for something only he seemed to understand, although Allyson followed in his wake like a school of pilot fish trailing a shark.

We moved laboriously along in this manner for several minutes as the afternoon sun beat down on L.A. I had no idea what number race was taking place, but suddenly the horses thundered past, flying down the home stretch, and as they did, our forward movement stopped and we watched, awe-struck. The magnificent animals were simultaneously sleek and powerful, performing the chore for which they had been bred with grace and breathtaking speed.

The crowd screamed and cheered and we continued our search for whatever we were seeking. I still had no idea what that might be. At last Brick zeroed in on a group of three men clustered together, two of them leaning on the railing while the third faced them with his arms crossed. All three wore windbreakers despite the blazing sun, and they looked no different than dozens—maybe hundreds—of such people we had passed during our strange march through the crowd.

My uncle approached them, holding in his hands a Daily Racing Form he had plucked off an empty grandstand seat like an actor with a prop. “Any luck today?” he asked, smiling and nodding to all three.

“You know how it goes,” one man grumbled. “You win a few, you lose more.”

Brick chuckled conspiratorially, as though the man had spoken some sort of universal truth. My uncle wasn't a gambler, to the best of my knowledge had never set foot inside a horse track, but he looked the part and played it with the ease of a natural bettor. “I hear that,” he said.

The men shared a moment of chummy silence, looking across the infield of the track, and then Brick continued. “I wonder if you can help me. I'm looking for a guy who owes me a few bucks.”

“Aren't we all,” answered the same guy who had spoken earlier. He seemed to be the spokesman for the group.

“True enough,” Brick said easily, “but I'm thinking maybe you fellas could steer me in the right direction.”

“Who is it?” the spokesman asked, apparently not even curious why Brick would think he might know this as-yet unspecified person.

“It's a middle-aged gentleman by the name of Roger Samson. He's a pretty average guy, but he spends a lot of time here, and—“

“—Yeah, we know Roger,” the spokesman interrupted, “but he hasn't been here in a few days, ever since . . . well, we were wondering ourselves where he's gone off to, weren't we, fellas?”

The other two men nodded vigorously, shuffling their feet and appearing suddenly uneasy. “Very strange,” one of them offered, while the other said simply, “Yes, we were.”

Brick smiled as if the answer confirmed what he had suspected all along. I could barely follow the conversation, so great was my astonishment that my uncle had managed somehow to locate people who knew Roger, seemingly out of thin air. I had seen Brick do things like this before, but the display invariably caught me by surprise. It seemed almost mystical.

“What happened three days ago?” Brick asked quietly.

“What do you mean?”

“You said you hadn't seen him in three days, ‘ever since' something. What happened when you saw him here three days ago?”

The man hesitated. “Who did you say you were again?”

“I didn't,” Brick answered, his face hardening. “It doesn't matter who I am. What matters is that you might be the only people standing between Roger Samson and a very unpleasant fate. If something happens to him, do you want that on your conscience? More to the point, if something happens to him, I will come back and find you and when I do, I'll have the police with me. I'll tell them you had information that could have saved Roger and refused to spill it. Do you want that on your conscience?”

“Jesus, settle down!” the guy said, backing away and raising his hands. “It was no big deal anyway. Roger had a short, intense conversation with some guy, maybe three minutes worth, and then they both split. Roger headed toward the exits and the other guy just sorta disappeared into the crowd.”

Brick thought for a moment. “Did you recognize the man Roger had the intense conversation with?”

“No. And now I think this conversation is over. We've got nothing more to say to you.”

“Fair enough,” Brick said. “If you see him, let him know the Callahans are looking for him, would you?”

“Sure thing,” the spokesman answered, making it perfectly clear, even to me, that he would do nothing of the kind. Brick had to have noticed too, but he strode away with Allyson in his wake, leaving me, once again, to hurry along in an effort to catch up.

We walked out of Hollywood Park without speaking and piled into Allyson's car as I tried to prepare for another white-knuckle ride along an unknown route to a destination I could not guess. I hoped the plan might include dinner, but had my doubts.

***

“Well, that was a waste of time,” I volunteered, washing a slice of vegetarian pizza down with a glass of Allyson's white wine. It seemed a strange combination, but just as I had feared, the ride to Allyson's and Roger's apartment hadn't included a stop for food, and when my ex-wife had suggested pizza delivery I wasn't about to quibble over minor details.

We were sitting in the kitchen of my former home, a place I had never again expected to see. The vibe was awkward and strange and being here made me feel more than a little melancholy, like my ex had simply scrubbed me out of the picture with an eraser and replaced me with my former business partner, but neither Allyson nor Brick seemed to notice, or if they did they weren't about to acknowledge it.

I tried to concentrate on the conversation in an effort to remove myself from the surroundings, or at least to make them seem a little less depressing, and I asked my uncle, “How the hell were you able to sniff out the trio of guys who knew Roger when you had never stepped foot inside Hollywood Park before this afternoon?”

Brick smiled. “What makes you think I've never been to Hollywood Park ?”

“Have you?”

“Well, no, but it's a mistake as an investigator to make an assumption if you are not in possession of sufficient evidence supporting that assumption.”

I sighed in exasperation. It's not like I didn't appreciate Brick's efforts at instruction in the fine art of private investigations, but it would be nice if once in a while he would just give me a straight answer. But of course that would be like asking the sun not to shine. “That doesn't answer my question. Let me try again. How did you manage to locate the only group of people, out of several thousand at the track, who knew Roger?”

“Again, you are starting out with a false premise. There were probably plenty of other people in the crowd who are familiar with your partner—“

“—Former partner,” I interrupted, in a petty attempt to get under my uncle's skin like he was getting under mine. Naturally, the effort went unnoticed, or at least unacknowledged.

“Of course. My mistake. Your former partner,” Brick continued without missing a beat. “Anyway, we know Roger spends a lot of time at that particular racetrack, so it stands to reason many people would know him, at least by sight. The horseracing community is a fairly tight-knit, insulated universe, so a regular patron undoubtedly has a relatively large circle of acquaintances.” Brick paused to sip his wine while wiping the corner of his mouth with his sleeve. Watching him made me think of Jed Clampett, but I knew inside Brick Callahan's bumpkin-looking exterior was a powerfully deductive intellect.

“Still,” I began.

“Even I was a little surprised to hit the jackpot on the first try,” he finally admitted. “I had been prepared to move along and try again and again with groups of the most likely-looking possibilities until stumbling across a bunch of regulars familiar with Roger.”

I knew there was more to it than Brick was letting on, but decided to let the matter drop. It didn't really make any difference, and wasn't even the thing I was most curious about. “After you went to so much trouble to find them, it seemed as though you . . .” I wasn't sure how to say it.

“Let them off easy?” he offered.

“Exactly. It felt, to me at least, like they might have been, I don't know, hiding something, like maybe they knew more than they were letting on.”

My uncle nodded proudly. He turned to Allyson and beamed. “This young kid might actually become an investigator yet,” he said.

Young? I was forty-two and didn't feel young, although I wasn't about to split hairs. Compliments from Brick Callahan were similar to shooting stars, in that they were rare occurrences and not always easy to follow. “So, you got the feeling they were hiding something as well?”

The corners of his mouth twisted slightly in a sardonic grin. “They were lying their asses off. The man who had taken it upon himself to speak for everyone had no trouble looking me in the eye until the subject of Roger came up. Then he took great interest in everything around us except me. Plus, the two stooges with him were about as talkative as gargoyles, again, until Roger's name was mentioned. Then they practically spit all over themselves in their haste to agree with the brains of the operation that none of them knew a thing about Roger's disappearance.”

“So then it seems we were getting somewhere. Why did you choose that moment to take off?”

“Simple. Those doofuses weren't going to give us any more information we could use, so why waste the time?”

“Any more information? They didn't give us any to begin with.”

“Sure they did,” Brick corrected. “We learned everything we could have expected to without them coming out and telling us where he is, which I'm quite certain they don't know.”

I stared at my plate, thinking hard, before reaching the inevitable conclusion that I would have to demonstrate my ignorance if I wanted to learn more. What the hell, I thought, I'm used to it. “I'll bite. What did we learn from this seemingly innocuous conversation?”

Brick turned to Allyson, the sardonic grin still planted on his face. “Remember what I told you about this young buck becoming an investigator?”

Allyson nodded.

“Scratch that.”

Then he turned to me and continued. “We can deduce that the Three Stooges are at least marginally aware of Roger's disappearance, from their behavior when confronted. That tells us he was either snatched from Hollywood Park or, at the very least, his disappearance is somehow related to the racetrack.”

“Okay, that sounds reasonable,” I shrugged, still smarting from my uncle's wise remark to my ex. “So why not press them a little harder to find out some more details?”

“I already told you. That trio isn't involved and couldn't give us any more details if we pressed them for the rest of the century. They might have a vague idea who Roger was talking to and I might have gotten them to admit that if I rode them hard, but I'm certain they don't know Roger's whereabouts. And since that's what we really want to know, why bother?”

“So what do we do now?”

“I'm having another slice of pizza. Maybe you can go all day without eating, but I'm starved.”

***

The dishes lay forgotten on the table, wine glasses mostly empty and plates holding a couple of lonely pizza crust remnants. I found it strangely reassuring that in the midst of all the evidence of our changed relationship, Allyson still had absolutely no interest in housework in general or washing dishes in particular.

“That really hit the spot,” Brick said with a satisfied sigh, rubbing one meaty hand over his belly. He looked ready for a nap.

“But it isn't getting us any closer to finding Roger,” I reminded him, still uncomfortable in the home I had made with Allyson when neither the woman nor the home belonged to me any longer. I told myself that I was hurrying him along because, statistically, the more time that goes by in a kidnapping case without locating the victim, the less likely it becomes that you ever will, but in reality I still mostly just wanted to get the hell out of L.A. and back to Boston. It felt like a couple of decades since I had made this area my home, rather than a couple of months.

“Excellent point, my boy,” Brick said, and stretched at the table before wandering out of the kitchen in the general direction of either the living room or the downstairs bathroom. I was left to decide whether to follow my uncle when he clearly wanted to be left alone or stay in the kitchen in the company of the woman who had spurned me for another man.

Neither choice seemed especially palatable, but in the end I picked up the dishes and piled them in the sink before rinsing them off and stacking them in the dishwasher while Allyson leaned against the counter and watched. It was almost like being caught in some strange, Twilight Zone time warp, like we had been transported several years into the past, back to a time when we both still cared about each other and wanted to spend time together.

“Listen,” Allyson began, and I shook my head.

“Don't,” I said. “What's done is done and there's no point reopening old wounds. We've both moved on and there's no going back anyway, so explanations or apologies are unnecessary.”

“That's good,” she answered, “because I wasn't planning on explaining or apologizing. I was only going to point out that you missed a spot on that plate when you rinsed it.”

I felt a flash of annoyance and then Allyson giggled. It was a sound that used to captivate me, a sound that once upon a time was as commonplace between us as traffic on an L.A. freeway, a sound I suddenly realized I hadn't heard in years. A second later I began to laugh, too, and it was as if the past few years, with their accusations and recriminations and secrets and angry silences, had never happened. And just like that, the atmosphere between us felt like the air after a spring rain, fresh and clean and new.

I finished loading the dishwasher and then punched the buttons to start the wash cycle. As I dried my hands on a dish towel, she asked, “What do you suppose your uncle is doing?”

I shrugged. “Could be almost anything, including taking a nap. One thing I've learned since moving back east is that Brick Callahan's methods are totally incomprehensible to anyone not named Brick Callahan. Maybe my dad could understand his brother—after all, they ran the agency together for decades—but he's gone now and I'm pretty sure there is no one else alive who even stands a chance at figuring the guy out. I certainly can't. Let's go hunt him down and find out.”

We walked together into the living room in a companionable silence. I felt closer to Allyson than I had in as long a time as I could remember, and while it should have made me sad to realize that fact, I was thankful that the tension between us had evaporated, at least for a while. When we entered the living room I spotted Brick fussing with the old desktop computer in the corner of the room. “Did Roger use this computer much?” he asked without looking up.

“Not really,” Allyson replied. “He had a laptop that he used much more than this old thing.” I remembered the laptop from our time together running the accounting firm. It was black and sleek and powerful and I rarely saw Roger without it.

“I don't suppose it's here,” Brick said dubiously, and Allyson said, “As a matter of fact it is. Roger never brought it to the track, that would have been silly, and he wasn't comfortable leaving it in his car.”

Brick nodded and said, “Good. Would you mind if I took a look at it?”

“Of course not; especially if it will help find Roger.” Allyson hurried upstairs to their bedroom to fetch the computer and I wondered what an old fossil like Brick Callahan could possibly learn from looking at the missing man's laptop. Then I pictured the sophisticated equipment sitting on his desk at Callahan Investigations, and remembered how it was Brick who had recognized the potential uses for a simple MP3 player during our investigation into my father's murder and was reminded how foolish it was to underestimate the old guy. He might be eighty years old but mentally he was as sharp as anyone half his age.

When Allyson returned, she handed him the slim computer unit and he eased the cover open, booted it up and began clicking through things, accessing files, presumably. I couldn't see exactly what he was doing and Brick wasn't saying, so I could only guess. Allyson and I began making uneasy small talk, the closeness we had experienced in the kitchen just a fading memory. I hoped Brick wouldn't take too long messing around with the computer because I was beginning to feel a little claustrophobic.

“Hmmm,” he said at last, his bushy grey eyebrows knitted together. He looked up from the laptop's viewing screen and seemed surprised to see us still sitting there.

Allyson was either too polite or too intimidated by my uncle to ask the obvious question, and I couldn't blame her. He was a formidable looking man. But I was getting used to him by now, and I had no such hesitation. “Hmmm what?” I said.

“Hmmm, let's take a ride.”

Allyson leapt to her feet and began fishing around inside her purse for her car keys. “Where are we going?” she asked.

Brick smiled at her and placed a hand on her shoulder gently. “We need to check out a possible lead, but I think it's best if you stay here. I'm not sure what we'll find, if anything, and we will fill you in entirely when we return. I promise.”

Allyson shook her head, an obstinate look in her eyes. I knew the look well. “I'm going with you,” she said.

Brick paused. “I'm guessing Roger wouldn't want you placed in any danger on his account, would he?”

“Of course not. What sort of danger are you talking about?”

“Probably nothing,” Brick replied. “But until we know for certain, I must insist you remain here. Besides, in the event Roger phones, someone should be present to answer.”

My ex-wife seemed grudgingly to accept Brick's rationale, handing her keys to him and plopping back down on the couch like an aggrieved teenager. “We shouldn't be too long,” Brick promised, “and we will call immediately if we learn anything.” With that, he marched out of the house and down the walkway to the Acura, settling himself into the driver's seat before I was even out the front door.

I wished I could convince Brick to let me drive but realized the chances of that happening were laughably slim. My uncle was a notoriously aggressive driver, with a lead foot and a knack for cutting other motorists off. It was terrifying enough to ride with him around Boston , the city he knew like the back of his hand, but I could barely comprehend the potential for disaster with Brick trying to navigate the massive urban sprawl of Los Angeles .

I opened the passenger side door and leaned into the Acura's cabin. “How about if I—“

“Forget it,” Brick interrupted. “Just get in and let's get a move on. Time's wasting, or have you forgotten how badly you want to finish up here and get home?”

I sighed deeply and said a quick prayer in my head. I'm not a particularly religious guy, but I thought God might be willing to get past my lax churchgoing habits once he looked into the car and recognized the situation. Then I eased into the supple leather seat and buckled myself in securely, wishing I had a crash helmet, hoping I was ready for anything, fearing I was not.

***

“Nice girl, but she's a little flighty, isn't she?” My uncle had entered an address into the Acura's onboard GPS after sitting down and we were now flying toward our destination, taking corners much too fast and rolling through intersections like perhaps Brick thought he was driving a police cruiser with the light bar flashing.

“You don't know the half of it,” I answered, hanging on for dear life, half afraid we would get pulled over and half wishing it would happen just so Brick would be forced to slow down. “Care to share what our destination might be and how you came up with it?” I stammered.

“Of course, sonny,” Brick said, lighting a cigar as he drove. I considered filling him in on Allyson's iron-clad rule about not allowing smoking in her car, but decided the hell with it. Call me vindictive, but as far as I was concerned, she had it coming after everything she had done to me. “We're heading to an address in Westwood where, with a little luck, we might run across some evidence of Roger's whereabouts. With a lot of luck, maybe we'll even find the missing man himself.”

I had been with Brick every second of every hour since arriving in L.A. , with the exception of the ten minutes it took to load the dishwasher after dinner, and I had not seen nor heard one thing that would have pointed me in the direction of Westwood. And I hated to ask, but I knew I had no choice, because Brick wasn't about to fill me in unless I did.

“Ooookayyyy,” I began, hoping he would take the hint, but of course he ignored the unspoken question. “Come on, help me out here, throw me a bone. Don't make me beg.”

Brick grinned at me around the stumpy brown wrapper of his cigar and finally took pity on me. “Okay,” he said. “We can assume Roger's disappearance is in some way related to Hollywood Park , judging from the reaction of those three idiots when we questioned them earlier today.”

There hadn't been any “we,” my uncle had done all the talking, but who was I to argue? I nodded and Brick continued. “And we know he wasn't removed forcibly from the grounds of the racetrack, that would have attracted the attention of too many people and possibly gotten the police involved, or at the very least, Hollywood Park security.”

“Okay. I'm with you so far.”

“What else do we know?”

I thought hard. “Not much, aside from the fact that forty thousand dollars is missing along with Roger.”

“Exactly! And that's important.”

It was fun to see Brick so excited, but for my part, I still didn't see how everything fit together. I thought for a while longer. Brick turned lefts and rights, following the instructions of the onboard GPS, driving with such a thick wreath of smoke surrounding his head I considered it a minor miracle he could even see out the windshield.

Finally my uncle got tired of waiting for me to connect the dots. “What do we know about Roger's car?” he prompted.

“It's an old beater. He seems to think it makes him look like a college kid or something.”

“Right. And a fifteen or so year old Jeep probably has no GPS on board, wouldn't you agree?”

“I would agree, but that doesn't mean Roger couldn't have used a portable unit.”

“True,” Brick said, “but from everything you've told me about Roger, he doesn't seem the type to bother entering everything into a GPS unit when he can simply print out directions from his computer.”

I couldn't argue with any of Brick's logic but still didn't quite understand where he was going. “What's the point of all this?”

“The point, sonny, is that a guy who is constantly in a hurry probably uses the Auto-Fill feature on his computer, to avoid having to re-enter information more than once when he needs it. And it seems unlikely Roger would have been familiar with the directions to wherever he brought the forty grand, so—“

“—So you went to Mapquest on Roger's computer and played around until the Auto-Fill feature completed an address!” This time I interrupted Brick, more excited that I had finally caught on to his train of thought than about the actual information it contained.

He smiled, the little wreaths of smoke hovering over his head like tiny storm clouds. “But how did you know which address to use?” I asked. “There must have been more than one.”

“Excellent question,” Brick said, nodding in approval. “There were a few. I simply looked up all the potential addresses online and eliminated the ones that led to an established business. That left only one. And would you care to hazard a guess where that address was located?”

“Westwood,” I answered immediately, shaking my head in amazement at my uncle's investigative skills. As I did, he pulled the Acura to the side of a quiet street and stopped. I pressed the button to lower the window on my side of the car and said, “Which house is it?” Despite the fact the sun was setting somewhere out over the Pacific, the air remained heavy with the day's heat.

Brick nodded at a bungalow a couple of houses up and to the right. It was placed squarely in the center of a small lot and appeared nearly identical to all the homes surrounding it; as if the entire neighborhood had been constructed by the same builder, probably all at the same time. The house was small but looked well-cared for, with a neatly trimmed lawn and a fresh coat of white paint covering its walls. It was quiet, as was the entire neighborhood.

“What are we looking for?” I asked.

“Activity. Hopefully we'll get some idea of whether Roger is even here, and if he is, what sort of company he might have.”

We lapsed into silence and waited. Nothing happened for a long time.

***

Brick seemed to be getting antsy. I had passed that point at least an hour earlier and knew my uncle well enough to know something was going to happen soon. Brick Callahan preferred action to inactivity all day long and twice on Sunday, and I could tell he was getting to the point where he was going to do something. I just had no idea what that something might be.

“Stay here,” he said, opening his door and stepping out onto the edge of the street. Every now and then a car rolled past, but this was a residential neighborhood on a quiet cul-de-sac and there wasn't much activity beyond the occasional soccer mom or dad driving to the grocery store or bringing Junior to karate class or baseball practice.

“Where are you going? What am I supposed to do?”

“I'm going to the house—that should be obvious, even to an accountant—and you're going to sit here and see what happens.”

“What are you planning on doing?”

“Making something happen.”

Brick walked down the sidewalk and up the short driveway to the bungalow's front door and knocked firmly. If he was worried or ill-at-ease he didn't look it. A moment later the door swung open and Roger Samson peered out. I knew immediately it was my ex-partner, even from a distance. He looked around nervously, peering over Brick's shoulder and then down the length of the street, before obviously asking my uncle what he wanted.

Brick spoke for a moment and Roger shook his head, then Brick said something else and Roger shook his head again, and then my uncle looked right at me and waved at me to join them. I went to roll up the window and lock the car door and I realized I couldn't do either thing, because the engine was off and Brick held the key. Oh, well. This neighborhood was probably as crime-free as you could expect to get in L.A. , and it's not like the fancy Acura was my car anyway.

The door closed with the authoritative clunk of expensive Japanese engineering and I moved to the bungalow, where my uncle and my ex-business partner stood. It appeared as though they had not said much of anything to each other after Brick's initial volley of questions. I joined the tiny party and Roger opened the door fully, inviting us inside. If he was surprised to see me, he didn't show it.

I was on edge as we entered the house, unsure of what to expect. Was a group of kidnappers waiting for us, weapons in hand? If so, why had they allowed Roger to open the door, and why had Brick then allowed both of us inside, effectively trapping us with few—if any—options? I realized I was holding my breath and I let it out with a rush of air. We turned the corner into the living room and came face to face with—

—Nothing. The room was deserted. Cartons of Chinese food littered the surface of the coffee table and a small squadron of empty beer bottles ringed the leftovers as if standing guard. In the corner a television flickered, tuned to ESPN, where Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon were arguing over whether the Angels had enough pitching to win their division.

“Have a seat,” Roger offered dully, and the three of us plopped ourselves down, facing each other in an almost perfect triangle centered by the table with the food on it. I was confused. Roger wasn't shackled to the old-fashioned radiator in the corner. There were no guards with guns or knives ensuring he didn't flee into the street. There was no lock on the door keeping him prisoner. There was just Roger, picking at his food like an anorexic runway model and staring half-heartedly at Michael Wilbon.

“How long are you planning on hiding out here?” Brick asked as he plucked a piece Teriyaki Steak by a thin wooden stick protruding from one of the cartons.

Roger shrugged. “I dunno.”

“Is this your bookie's house?”

“One of them,” came the answer, and Brick nodded sagely.

I felt like Alice after falling down the rabbit hole. I was used to the sensation; it was a common enough occurrence working with Uncle Brick, but it never got any easier to prepare for. “Wait a second,” I spluttered, raising my hands in the universal “Time Out” gesture. I knew it must have looked silly, but I didn't care. “Hiding out? Bookie? What the hell are you talking about? Where are the kidnappers? What are their demands? Who—“

“—Whoa, slow down there, sonny, before you hurt yourself,” Brick said. Getting interrupted in the middle of a sentence was another common occurrence and one which was normally annoying as hell, but I was too confused to make much more than a token glare of disapproval at my uncle.

I glanced between the two of them, Roger staring glumly at his fried rice and Brick gazing back at me with a half-smile on his face, his eyes twinkling in amusement. “Okay,” Brick said to Roger. “I'm going to tell a little story and you're going to let me know if I have it about right, how does that sound?”

Roger shrugged again and Brick said, “You've had a bit of a losing streak, right? Not just at the track, but in general. Your horses started tanking and when that happened you tried to make up your losses on the Dodgers. When that didn't work out, you dumped increasingly large sums of money on the Giants, and then those bets went south, too. How am I doing so far?”

“It was the A's, not the Giants,” Roger mumbled without looking up, “but other than that you're pretty much right on target.”

“And your bookie began to put the pressure on you,” Brick continued. “You owed a lot of money, an amount he was afraid you might not be able to pay. Maybe he threatened you—“

“—Yep—“

“—and then you met him at Hollywood Park and he threatened Allyson—“

—Roger nodded miserably—

“—and you knew you had to do something. But to make matters worse, Allyson had no idea how much money you owed. If your bookie didn't kill you, she would. So you withdrew the money and paid him off and decided to lie low for a while.”

“It was only going to be for a few hours, until I could figure out how to tell Allyson,” Roger said. “Then I realized there was no way to tell her, really. How do you break it to the woman who is going to be your wife that you've blown forty thousand dollars—half of which belongs to her—and it's not coming back? How do you explain that kind of betrayal to someone who is supposed to be your partner?”

I almost reminded Roger that I had been his partner once upon a time and that he had done worse to me, but he looked so downcast that I didn't have the heart to say it, even after losing my wife and my business to him. In fact, I didn't know what to say. I was still trying to wrap my brain around the notion that this whole crazy adventure was a result of one person being afraid to come clean with another.

I thought of Allyson and the way she had looked so unlike herself as she crumpled into the chair in the Callahan Investigations office back in Boston ; how she had seemed so lost and afraid when she was normally so confident and strong. I began to feel a red-hot anger percolating up from my gut, driving the words from my esophagus and out my mouth without any real conscious thought on my part.

“You son of a bitch,” I said. “Allyson thought you were dead,” and when Brick started to cut me off I froze him in his tracks, flashing an intense stare his way and then turning to glare at my ex-partner. “She had no idea where you were or what had happened to you. How could you do that to the person you claim to be in love with?”

“I—“ he began, but I continued speaking, raising one palm in front of his face like a traffic cop. I couldn't have stopped myself by then if I had wanted to, which I didn't.

“She called the cops, did you know that? And then she flew all the way to Boston on the red-eye to hire her ex-husband to find you. Her ex-husband! Do you have any idea how hard that must have been for her to do? But she did it anyway, because that's how much you mean to her.” I took a deep breath and shook my head. My hands were shaking and I felt a little light-headed. “I found out you were a cheating son-of-a-bitch a few months ago, but I had no idea you were a pathetic coward as well!

“You're going to get your sad excuse for a carcass off that couch and you're going to go face the woman who loves you and you're going to come clean and pray she forgives you,” I finished, “and you're going to do it RIGHT THIS MINUTE!” I turned and stalked out of the bungalow, stomping across the front yard to Allyson's Acura, ready to kick ass and take names.

Fortunately for me, since I don't know how to fight, there were no asses between the house and the car to kick and no names to be taken. I just dumped myself into the front passenger's seat and waited for my uncle and Roger to join me.

***

The lights were dimmed and the conversation muted as Brick and I sat in the cabin of the Boeing 757 winging our way over the heartland and back to the east coast. The steady whine of the big engines was almost hypnotic but despite my exhaustion, I couldn't fall asleep.

I looked sideways at Brick and expected to see him dozing; it had been at least an hour since either one of us had spoken. He was awake, though, and he returned my gaze, ready for the question he knew was coming. “How did you know?” I asked quietly.

“I didn't know, not for sure, not really. But I had my suspicions. No one with half a brain who was planning a kidnapping would have confronted Roger so openly in front of thousands of potential witnesses at Hollywood Park . They would have waited until he was alone and isolated, someplace quiet and away from prying eyes, and then stuck a gun in his ear, forced him into a car, and driven him away.”

“So you figured all along he had engineered his own disappearance.”

“It wasn't that much of a stretch, especially when you combined his history of gambling—his track record, if you'll excuse the pun—with the thousands of dollars in missing money. That was the key, the money.”

I thought about it and it made sense when Brick explained it. In fact, now that the whole thing was over, it almost seemed obvious. Then something occurred to me. “But what if you had been wrong? What if when we walked into that house there had been half a dozen guys with automatic weapons stationed around the room? What would we have done then?”

“Pssh,” Brick said, dismissing my question with a wave of his hand. “That's why I brought my secret weapon.”

“What's your secret . . .” My eyes opened wide. “Me? Tell me you're not talking about me. I'm supposed to be your secret weapon? Are you out of your mind? What was I going to do?”

Brick laughed loudly and a grey-haired little old lady leveled a death-stare at him from across the aisle. My uncle winked at her and she smiled and turned away. “The odds were so far against guys with guns being inside that house that it really wasn't dangerous at all, and if I had been wrong, well, there's always a way out of trouble; you just have to find it.”

I was still hot under the collar, picturing what could have happened, and I turned to look out the little porthole window, more to escape the unblinking stare of Brick Callahan than because I had any interest in the bland cross-hatched farm scenery far below. I shouldn't have been surprised Brick would enter the bookie's house unarmed while not one hundred percent certain of what the hell he was getting into. It was how he had run his detective agency for more than four decades, and history had proven his instincts to be right an overwhelmingly large percentage of the time.

The ground continued to roll past, great chunks of land broken up by the occasional narrow paved road snaking like a ribbon from one unknown point to another, lonely farmhouses dotting the otherwise vast emptiness of the American Midwest. I thought about Roger's hangdog look as we had driven from Westwood back to the home he shared with Allyson. I almost—but not quite— felt sorry for him. He had known he was in for the verbal beating of a lifetime once Allyson learned what had happened, and her initial excitement at seeing him when we entered the house had already begun turning into a shrill expression of disbelief and outrage when he began explaining what he had done.

Brick and I had decided to slip quietly away, leaving Roger to face his fate alone. There was no doubt in my mind Allyson would stay with Roger, at least for now, but the eventual fate of their relationship seemed crystal-clear to me.

I was glad to be heading back to Boston and to Callahan Investigations. As reluctant as I had been to return to L.A. , the scene of so much pain and disappointment, in some ways it had been cathartic. My home was not there anymore. My place was with my uncle, and although I was forty-two years old and just starting a brand-new life, I knew it was a good one, and I was anxious to find out what would happen next.

I lifted my gaze from the window and looked at Uncle Brick. “I'm proud of you,” he said. “I know it wasn't easy sticking up for Allyson after how she treated you.”

“Thanks. Now that I think about it, I'm proud of me, too.”

Brick turned and faced the little television mounted on the ceiling of the airplane. Some detective movie was playing, an action flick where the good guys chased the bad guys with guns blazing. “Oh, and one more thing,” he said. “No, you can't drive home from the airport after we land.”

It was like the old guy could read my mind. God, I hated when he did that.