Trouble in Paradise(10)

Toni gave me a warning look and quickly jumped in. “Thank you, Madam Junaida,” she said.

Madam Junaida escorted us out. I hung back as the others left. When we walked into the place, I’d only intended to ask if she’d seen Tammy Susie, not engage her services. But, bidden or unbidden, she’d taken the time to do her entire shtick for us, and I could see from her modest digs that business wasn’t exactly booming for her. “What do I owe you?”

She looked down her nose at me. No small feat, considering the fact that I had a good six inches on her. “You owe me nothing. For law enforcement, my services are free of charge. Go. Find the child.” And with that, Madam Junaida waved me away.

I went out to the sidewalk, where the others were waiting. Something about all of this rankled me. Something beyond the obvious—and typical—bullshit chicanery factor. Bailey picked up on my mood.

“What?” she asked.

I replayed our introductions in my mind. “Did you tell her we were cops?” I asked.

“No,” Bailey said.

“Then how’d she know?”

Bailey frowned, but further discussion was curtailed when Toni, who’d been studying her phone, broke in. “There’s a residential section just a few blocks north of here.”

Bailey looked unhappy. “I don’t know. This seems like a gigantic turd hunt. We have no idea where that house is, if it even exists, or if Tammy Susie’s really there.”

I looked at Erica—she seemed crestfallen. Madam Junaida’s pronouncements had given her a real blast of hope. I sighed. “On the other hand, what’s another ten minutes in the grand scheme of things?” I asked. Having found the girl’s cell phone nearby, we at least had reason to believe we were close.

Erica nodded eagerly. “I agree! We have to try this! If we find Tammy Susie, being late won’t matter. And if we don’t…” She trailed off.

“Okay,” Toni said. “But let’s make it quick.” She followed the blinking blue circle on her phone, and we followed her. In mere minutes we began to see small houses interspersed with businesses, and pretty soon there were only houses. A surprising number of them had signs in the window that said fortune-tellers could be found within. Apparently Erica was right: Arubans were big on this sort of thing. That was probably good news for the cigar business. Capitalism at work.

Some intriguing aromas wafted out of the homes we passed. Fish, a predictably popular choice for islanders, seemed to be cooking everywhere, but I also detected the smell of a rich lamb stew and…“Pumpkin?”

“I read that pumpkin soup is a real fave here,” Bailey said. “Supposed to be fantastic.”

“You read?” Toni asked. Bailey couldn’t even drum up the interest to read a dinner menu, let alone take the time to look up exotic culinary specialties.

“Or maybe Drew told me,” Bailey said.

Toni and I exchanged a knowing smile. That was more like it. Drew was a true gourmet. Before he’d settled on the idea of opening his own bar, he’d toyed with the thought of setting up a haute cuisine restaurant.

We moved up and down the blocks but saw no green shutters. Or yellow dogs. Plenty of children, though. They flew by us with happy abandon on bikes, on skates, on skateboards, and on foot. A couple of little girls in leotards and sunflower headdresses strutted past us with stately importance. I guessed they were headed for the same parade as the costumed guys we’d seen at McDonald’s.

Time was running out, and this whole escapade was starting to feel like a wild-goose chase. Or, as Bailey so poetically put it, a “turd hunt.” The fact that we were willing to go in search of a house with green shutters was a serious measure of our desperation. I was beginning to understand how people got snookered into losing their life savings to clowns like Madam Junaida.

We’d just turned the corner on our fourth block and I was about to suggest that we give up after this street when Erica stopped dead in her tracks and pointed to the street sign. “Malmok Weg! I saw that name on a call sheet a few days ago! Remember, Madam Junaida said the place was known to one of us? Well, it is—to me!”

Before I could tell her that it was probably just a coincidence, Erica was off and running, her head swiveling as she scanned both sides of the street for a house with green shutters. We had to run to catch up to her and nearly knocked her down when she again came to an abrupt stop and turned to her right. Sure enough, there it was: a house with green shutters.

“Well, what do you know?” Bailey said.

“Yeah?” I said. “Then how come our fortune-teller didn’t mention the bird?” I pointed to a rooster strutting through the front yard.