“Mean anything to you?”
“Nope.”
She went back to her mag. Ralph went to Officer Gould, who was still entering hard copy info into some database and swearing under her breath when she hit a wrong key, which seemed to be often. She glanced at his notebook.
“Tup is old-timey British slang for screwing, I think—as in ‘I tupped me girlfriend last night, mate’—but I can’t think of anything else. Is it important?”
“I don’t know. Probably not.”
“Google it, why don’t you?”
While he waited for his own out-of-date computer to boot up, he decided to try the database he was married to. Jeannie answered on the first ring, and didn’t even need to think when he asked her. “It could be Tommy and Tuppence. They were cutie-poo detectives Agatha Christie wrote about when she wasn’t writing about Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple. If that’s the case, you’ll probably find a restaurant run by a couple of British expats and specializing in things like bubble-and-squeak.”
“Bubble and what?”
“Never mind.”
“It probably means nothing,” he repeated. But maybe it did. You chased this shit to make sure, one way or the other; chasing shit was, apologies to Sherlock Holmes, what most detective work was about.
“I’m curious, though. Tell me when you get home. Oh, and we’re all out of orange juice.”
“I’ll stop by Gerald’s,” he said, and hung up.
He went to Google, typed in TOMMY AND TUPPENCE, then added RESTAURANT. The PD computers were old, but the Wi-Fi was new, and fast. He had what he was looking for in a matter of seconds. The Tommy and Tuppence Pub and Café was on Northwoods Boulevard in Dayton, Ohio.
Dayton. What was it about Dayton? Hadn’t that come up once before in this sorry business? If so, where? He sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. Whatever connection he was trying to make courtesy of that yellow bra strap continued to elude him, but this new one he got. Dayton had come up during his last real conversation with Terry Maitland. They’d been talking about the van, and Terry had said he hadn’t been in New York since he honeymooned there with his wife. The only trip Terry had taken recently had been to Ohio. To Dayton, in fact.
The girls’ spring vacation. I wanted to see my dad. And when Ralph had asked if his father lived there, Terry had said, If you can call what he’s doing these days living.
He called Sablo. “Hey, Yune, it’s me.”
“Hey, Ralph, how’s retirement treating you?”
“It’s good. You should see my lawn. I heard you’re getting a commendation for covering that dipshit reporter’s delectable body.”
“So they say. Tell you what, life has been good for this son of a poor Mexican farming family.”
“I thought you told me your father ran the biggest car dealership in Amarillo.”
“I might have said that, I suppose. But when you have to decide between truth and legend, ese, print the legend. The wisdom of John Ford in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. What can I do for you?”
“Did Samuels tell you about the kid who originally stole the van?”
“Yeah. That’s some story. Kid’s name was Merlin, did you know that? And he sure must have been some kind of wizard to get all the way down to south Texas.”
“Can you reach out to El Paso? That’s where his run ended, but I know from Samuels that the kid ditched the van in Ohio. What I want to know is if it was somewhere near a pub and café called Tommy and Tuppence, on Northwoods Boulevard in Dayton.”
“I could take a shot at that, I guess.”
“Samuels told me this Merlin the Magician was on the road a long time. Can you also try to find out when he ditched the van? If maybe it was in April?”
“I can try to do that, too. Do you want to tell me why?”
“Terry Maitland was in Dayton in April. Visiting his father.”
“Really?” Yune sounded totally engaged now. “Alone?”
“With his family,” Ralph admitted, “and they flew both ways.”
“So there goes that.”
“Probably, but it still exercises a certain particular fascination over my consciousness.”
“You’ll have to ’splain that, Detective, for I am just the son of a poor Mexican farmer.”
Ralph sighed.
“Let me see what I can find out.”
“Thanks, Yune.”
Just as he hung up, Chief Geller came in, toting a gym bag and looking freshly showered. Ralph tipped him a wave, and got a scowl in return. “You’re not supposed to be here, Detective.”