The Cool Dad (A Calvin Recker Mystery Novel)- Chapter 2

Click image to buy

Back for more free stuff, huh?

The Cool Dad is available for purchase on Amazon HERE (or click image) for $2.99.

We had a great first couple of days of sales. Let's keep it going and climb up those rankings!

Here's Chapter 2.

2

Naptime.

I’ve looked forward to a lot of things in my life.

Summer vacation.

Opening day baseball.

The new Radiohead album.

But I’ve never looked forward to anything as much as I look forward to NOT seeing my own children for a few hours each day.

Every action I take with the kids all day long is geared toward getting them tired enough to get to this point.

Naptime.

Me time.

I walk downstairs after successfully setting Daisy down in her crib with her pink blanky and, after two separate trips to the potty, Ryan in his big boy bed with his blue blanky, two green binkies, a stuffed Mickey Mouse, a stuffed brown bear named Muddy, three Matchbox cars, a wooden serving spoon (I don’t know why either), and a sippy cup of water. For added security, on the floor lined up next to the bed, there’s a Tonka garbage truck, a Tonka fire truck and a Tonka tow truck. The boy is prepared.

What should I do first? Clean up the disaster of a kitchen after lunch and pick up all the mac n’ cheese and pools of Go-Gurt that always ends up glued to the floor or grab a big bag of potato chips and couple juice boxes, plop on the couch, and continue watching this TV series I found on Netflix called Ninja Awesome?

It’s about ninjas.

And there’s like 150 episodes.

Awesome.

The answer is obvious.

I open the pantry and grab the bag of chips I keep hidden from the kids on the top shelf tucked behind the cereal boxes. I sweep the Cheerios off the couch to clear a spot to sit and fire up episode forty-eight of Ninja Awesome.

I crunch my chips and watch the silent ninja, katana poised, approach the door of a split-level ranch house in the San Fernando Valley.

Ding-dong.

A ninja would never ring the doorbell. That’s my own front door.

Ding-dong. Ding-dong.

I swear, if the person ringing the doorbell is anyone other than a couple of Girl Scouts selling Thin Mints and Tagalongs and they wake up the kids, I’ll be royally pissed.

I run to the door before they ring the bell again and open it.

And it’s not Girl Scouts; it’s an older man with steel gray hair and matching suit.

I’m about ready to whip out my pre-prepared, “I already have a church I don’t go to, but thank you for this pamphlet and I find your belief system weird” speech, when the man says, “Mr. Recker, my name is Don Harper, and I want to hire you for a case. Kelli-Anne Bradley referred me to you.”

Kelli-Anne Bradley is a local real estate agent at Best Offer Realty who hired me to find out who was damaging her For Sale signs. It was my second case. Thanks for the referral, Kelli!

“Step inside,” I say. “And don’t mind the mess.”

He steps inside and eyes a pile of what looks like every Lego ever made. “Are your children up?”

“No, it’s naptime,” I say. “We can talk in my office. Follow me.”

We walk through the land of Legos that is the living room, past the nuclear waste site that is the kitchen, and a pillow cushion fort set up in the family room, until we reach the sliding glass door that leads to the deck.

“You’re office?” Donald Harper says.

Hey, man. If you’re going to hire a stay-at-home dad detective, you have to expect a certain amount of quirk.

“It’s a nice day,” I say instead. “Can I offer you a juice box?”

He looks at me funny like, “Is that a real question?”

It was a real question. Does he think I have a decanter of Scotch sitting around? And besides, juice boxes are A. delicious B. fun and C. potent enough, based on evidence provided by my own children, to supply you with sufficient energy to run through walls.

“No, thank you,” he says. “This is a nice deck.”

I was hoping he’d say that so I could say this to him, “Thanks. I built it with my own two hands.”

“Impressive.”

Yes it is. Of course, I failed to mention how much of the deck I built with said hands compared to my much more competent father-in-law, but we’ll just leave that part unsaid.

“So, Mr. Harper. How can I help you?”

“It’s my daughter.”

That’s a good start.

“Is she missing?”

“Oh, no. Nothing like that.”

“She hasn’t run away or been kidnapped?”

“No, actually she lives just down the street at the end of your block.”

“The new house?”

The famous last house built in the Stable Bluff subdivision. It only took five years, a few housing market collapses, and series of deep discounts to sell all the lots in fulfillment of the developer’s divine prophesy.

“I bet your daughter got a great deal. What’d she pay, three? Two-eighty? Two-fifty? Not two-fifty? Two-forty? If she paid two-forty, I’m breaking down in tears right now.”

“Whatever the price was, she got a great deal, because she didn’t buy the house. I did.”

“Very generous.”

“It was a wedding gift.”

“You obviously went off registry.”

“Do you mind if I sit down,” he says, reaching for a deck chair. “Or did you build this with your bare hands as well.”

That cut like a knife. I lean up against my Weber grill, my baby, and think about barbecuing some ribs tonight, or maybe some grilled chicken, but who am I kidding, it will be hot dogs for the kids, again. I wish I had a really killer barbeque sauce or rub recipe, something I could bottle and sell. How does “Cayenne Calvin’s Secret Suh-Weet Q Sauce” sound? Oh, it looks like Don Harper is ready to speak again. I smile and nod and non-verbally indicate he has my full attention.

“My daughter, Elise, has always had problems with men. Tall men, short men, handsome men, bald men; all her relationships have ended poorly, often with me having to get involved to untangle her from whatever she got herself tangled up in.”

“That sounds awfully vague. What type of problems? What tangles? Was bubble gum involved?”

“Drugs. Drinking. Bad loans. My daughter is a wonderful person. A beautiful woman. But she doesn’t see herself that way. I don’t know what she sees reflecting back at her in the mirror, but it isn’t what her father or anyone else sees. If I had to forward a guess, it would be that she sees herself through the man in her life. If she’s dating a real loser, than that’s how she sees herself while she’s with him. The last boyfriend, Lyle, got her pregnant. Christ, what a fuck-up he was.”

“He left?”

“Three months into the pregnancy, Elise had a craving for olives and Captain Crunch cereal. You know those crazy cravings women get.”

“Oh, I know,” I say. “For my wife’s first pregnancy, it was Nutty Bars and chocolate milk shakes and for our second, Daisy, it was eggs Benedict. That poor girl’s got hollandaise sauce pouring through her veins.”

We both shake our heads in agreement on how crazy women can be during pregnancy, which is something guys feel they can do when women aren’t in the room.

“So Elise had a hankering for olives and Captain Crunch, and Lyle the Loser volunteers to drive to the store to pick some up for her.”

“And he never came back.”

“That’s right. He took their only car, emptied their joint checking, and took the diamond earrings I gave her for her high school graduation. Can you imagine that? He left his pregnant girlfriend and unborn child stranded in an apartment complex with no vehicle and no money.”

“Did you ever find Lyle?”

“Oh, sure. He blows into town every once in a while, pretending like he’s interested in the son he abandoned. But he doesn’t care about him, he’s just looking for another hand-out.”

“From you?”

“That’s right. Look, Mr. Recker.”

“Calvin.”

“Calvin. I’ve made two worthwhile things in my whole life: a beautiful daughter and a pile of money. And like most men who make a lot of money, I think that I can use the second thing to save the first. So I pay whatever I need to pay to help Elise. But now there’s a third thing in my life.”

“Your grandchild.”

“Max. And I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how grandparents feel about their grandchildren.”

“I think my parents forgot my name when my first child was born.”

“They’re our chance at turning back the clock.”

“So you want me to keep an eye on your daughter in her new house down the street?”

“That’s right.”

“But you said the house was a wedding present. Did Elise marry Lyle?”

“No. And thank God for small favors. Three months ago, Elise went on a trip with some girlfriends of hers to Australia. I bought her ticket of course. I thought it would do her good to get away and have some fun. That I got to spend some time with my grandson was a bonus. While there, the ladies went snorkeling. But something malfunctioned with Elise’s equipment and she would have drowned if it weren’t for a local surf instructor who saw her struggling from the shore. He swam out and pulled her back to shore, gave her mouth-to-mouth, and brought her back to life. It turns out the instructor was an American. They spent the rest of the vacation together. And when it was time to fly home, he came with, as her husband.”

“That’s fast.”

“Now this husband of hers is handsome. Real handsome.”

“Is his name Jake Ryan?”

Don Harper shakes his head. “No, Henry Newcombe.”

“Mr. Harper, I’m sure you are rightfully gun-shy about Elise’s past relationships, but this all sounds like a real love story.”

“A love story is just that. A story. Not the real thing. There is no one on this planet who thinks Elise is beautiful more than her own father, but seriously, why would a younger good-looking guy who somehow won life by spending his days on the beaches of Australia drop it all for a woman in her late thirties with a eight-year-old son he’s never met? Then agree to move to a subdivision in Hatchet, Illinois, in a house bought by her father? He doesn’t even have a job. He just stays at home and watches the kid.”

LIKE ME! I mean, like me.

Don Harper continues, “Who is Henry Newcombe? What does he do all day? And can I trust him with not only my daughter, but my grandson?”

“And maybe catch him cheating on Elise with any of the Stable Bluff housewives? And those housewives, let me tell you, are ready and willing to cheat. Next to bitching about the local elementary school on Facebook, bed hopping is like their number one hobby.”

“It’s more than that, though. I want you to really get to know him. Become his friend,” Don Harper says.

“His friend?”

“I figure you two would have a lot in common. You are both stay-at-home dads in a sea of suburban women. It’s not like he has any friends around here. You could have play dates or whatever you call them. Maybe take him out for drinks, get him drunk, and see what comes out when he spills his guts. Maybe he’ll tell the real story about why he gave up the young man’s dream in paradise for an insta-family in fly-over country.”

“But if it gets out that I’m a private detective, won’t his guard go right up?”

“Oh, let him know you’re a detective. I’m sure he’ll get a kick out of it. I sure do. Take him on a case if you’d like.”

“It will make it tough to do surveillance if I’m spending all this time with him. You’ll probably want to know things about him that he won’t even let his friends see.”

“That’s true. You’ll need someone else.”

Don Harper thinks for a second.

I take a sip from my juice box.

“Do you have a sidekick?” he says.