Chapter Six: The Scavenger Hunt Begins

 

Chapter Six: The Scavenger Hunt Begins

11:30 a.m. Sunday July 2

…These are a set of instructions that I would like to be followed. It is very important to me and the ones I leave behind, should they still be among the living, that these are implemented. I beseech you, Reader, that you do this...

The one person who could say they know the best would be Janelle Deans. Her contact information is attached at the end of this note. She can either assist you, Reader, or take up the mantle herself. Janelle, I’m sorry I had to leave, and I hope you three get by just fine. I have faith in you. I just have to ask you this last favor to help out. Whoever finishes this as well, I thank you from the bottom of my heart…Assuming my death allowed me to have one still. Ha-ha. Funny, huh? No? Oh well then. On to business…

Of course, Janelle is the first of who should be visited. It would be the easiest for her to do this, but in case something happened, I will just call you Reader from here on out.

The one thing I can say I am thankful for in my life is my friends. However, I feel like I have done them a grave injustice. I left this world without them knowing the real me. Each of them know a small part of me, but no single person holds the whole within their grasp. I cannot stand for this! They must know the truth. Someone has to gather the pieces and put them together for everyone to see. And I would like it to be done before my memorial. I can’t have them remembering the wrong person. I want them to truly know Frank Derahno for all of his flaws and vices as well as his virtues.

The second one that should be talked to is Marie Sanchez. She is a close second to Janelle in terms of knowing me, and should be a great help. However, she is a no nonsense women who would not let my flaws go by unnoticed; especially since she knows I would do the same for her… For this she is critical to putting together all of my pieces of shattered persona…

 “Well then… Okay,” I said aloud with exasperation clearly evident in my tone. At the time it was a little odd, but I guessed it made sense in the end. I know I wouldn’t want people go on and on about how great I was at things that I actually sucked at.

This was when the phonebook Janelle gave me would first prove invaluable. I turned to the residential listings and searched until I found the ‘S’ listings. Sure enough, there was a Marie Sanchez listed. Apparently she lived in an apartment complex just a bit off of Main Street here in Arab. I guessed that would make it fairly easy to spot the complex, as anything above a normal sized shop kind of stuck out in this town.

I cranked the car and pulled out of the driveway, after making doubly sure this time that there were no impending eighteen wheelers of doom. I did not care to repeat that rattling experience, even if I was being more paranoid that what was called for.

I had a fair idea of the layout of this town already, so I knew at least how to get to Main Street here. I figured that once I got there I could just drive up and down the street until I eventually stumbled across the apartments I was looking for.

Sure enough, the plan worked out like a charm for me. Within five minutes on the street I saw a sign declaring a network or large white buildings Elmwood Apartments, which were the ones I was looking for.

I turned into the place and then looked at the apartment numbers on the doors in the building nearest to me. I saw numbers in the one hundreds on the building on my left, and numbers in the nine hundreds on the building on my right. It was safe to assume that the first number of each door referred to the building that it was located in. I was looking for apartment 612, so I kept driving towards the middle of the complex. Once again my plan of action proved sound, as I saw apartment 612 on the second floor of the building. I parked my car in one of the spaces allotted for that building and got out, Frank’s note in hand within its protective bag. I took the white flight of wooden stairs up to the outside of the desired apartment. I wasted no time in using the same firm knocking I used at Evan and Janelle’s house.

I only had to wait ten seconds for the door to open revealing a young lady of about twenty or twenty one. She was Latina, a young Hispanic with flowing midnight-black hair reaching down to the small of her back. Her pretty face had a slight devious quality to it, with dark chocolate brown eyes that seemed to stare at nothing and everything at the same time. She looked to be around five feet, six inches in height and had skin of faded bronze. Her figure was, while not entirely petite, still on the smaller side, but matched well with her height. She had an air of almost vibrating, as if even standing still seemed a waste of time to her.

“Miss Sanchez, I presume?” I asked, figuring to get the ball rolling.

She looked me up and down suspiciously, her dark eyes flashing with annoyance.

“Yes, I am. Let me go ahead and tell you… If that idiot Morrison called again trying to get me deported, this will be the last time I tell you people! I was born here!” she started in on me. Apparently misunderstandings due to her ethnicity were common enough.

“Hey now… I’m not a G man or anything, Miss Sanchez. I just came here to ask you a couple of questions about Frank Derahno,” I explained to her.

Her eyebrows arched in surprise in response to my explanation.

“…Yeah? What about him?” she asked, with a guarded voice.

“Well, I was the paramedic who happened upon the crash scene when he died the other night and…”

With those words, her expression on her face went from suspicion to utter shock all in the space of point two seconds.

“What? Frank died? Ay, Dios mio!” she exclaimed. She shook her head as if clearing it and continued, with a note of disbelief heavily evident. “Surely this is some kind of bad joke. Is that b*****d hiding somewhere? How much did he pay you for this farce?”

Oh boy, I thought. This was going to be a little more difficult than I thought it would be. It was one thing when someone already knew about a death. It was quite another ballgame when you had to be the bearer of bad news. That’s one of the perks of being a paramedic. On the streets, you only have to answer to a conscious victim, and your own conscious. The doctors and nurses I handed the bodies to were the ones who had the pleasure of informing the family. I suddenly pitied them a whole lot more.

The doctors and nurses, that is. This was going to suck.

I nodded, trying to maintain a calm front to make sure there was no miscommunication between us.

“Yes. He was involved in a traffic accident Friday night near downtown in Huntsville. He basically died on impact from a head injury. There was nothing anyone could have done once the eighteen wheeler hit. I’m sorry for your loss.” The last part came out sounding as lame as when I asked a girl out on a date my freshmen year of high school. And man, let me tell you… That’s pretty damn lame.

I was expecting denial. I was expecting tears. Haughty laughter, however, was not on the list of ‘Things to Expect upon Informing of Deaths’.

But haughty laughter was what I got about ten seconds after I told her that her friend was dead. This went on for about a minute straight until she finally calmed down enough to explain her absurd behavior.

“I’m sorry, sir. It’s just that this is just like him. Going off and dying like that right in the middle of things! Classic Frank, that b*****d!” she exclaimed. I was wondering if Frank was mistaken on just how good his friends were.

            “Don’t call me sir. My name is Leonard Garcia, but you may call me Leonard or Leo. And, please forgive me for asking, but why do you find the death of your friend so amusing? He is…was your friend, right?” I asked her, the confusion clearly evident in my voice even to my own ears.

            She nodded, while wiping away tears of mirth from her eyes, before answering me.

            “Yeah, he was my friend. A damned good one, at that. But he always seemed to have a knack of disappearing at the oddest times and for the oddest of reasons. I guess this struck me as him outdoing himself one last time. At times, he might as well have fell off the face of the earth if he felt like not being bothered. I guess no one can really bug him now. But you did come here to talk about him, and not just stand out in front of my apartment. Please, come on inside.”

            And with that, she led me into her modest apartment. There were some plain brown couches, a small coffee table, and a stand with a simple television placed upon it. On the wall above the TV was a pastel painting of the Virgin Guadalupe. It didn’t look mass produced, and it showed great detail and artistic talent. Almost as soon as the door closed behind us, a phone rang from where it hung on the wall near the entrance to her kitchen. She shot me an apologetic look and went over to answer it. She picked it up and instantly her voice took on a professional note and quality.

            “Hello, you’ve reached Marie Sanchez. How may I help you?” While I looked more closely at the pastel work and thinking about how odd it was to answer a home phone like that, she seemed to be listening intently to whoever was on the other end of the line. Soon she replied to whatever the person had to say.

            “I’m so sorry, Mr. Smith. I will have a plumber by first thing tomorrow morning. None of them work on Sundays here, but they will be over by eight in the morning, I assure you. Thank you for letting me know… Uh huh… Okay now. Goodbye!”

            She turned back to me and explained before I could even ask her what that was all about.  

            “I own and manage the little bed and breakfast just up the road here,” she said. “It basically runs itself, and I just have to make sure it maintains to regulations and clean up the rooms after a tenant leaves.”

            I nodded. It seemed like a pretty cozy set up.

            “That must be nice, Miss Sanchez. By the way, I couldn’t help but admire the pastel of the Guadalupe. Do you know the artist personally? I would love to get one just like it,” I said to her. My apartment was quite bare and it needed something more for if I ever brought a woman over.

            She smirked at me and looked immensely please with herself as she answered.
            “I guess you could say I know her quite well, seeing as the artist is me. That’s actually how I make about half of my money. I sell my regular quality works either in art auctions or I get commissions for them.”

            “Wow,” I said. “I’m impressed. But if you sell your regular quality to make money, what do you do with the better ones?” I asked. She got a small smile on her face.

            “I either keep them for myself, or I give them to my friends or family.” She got a slightly depressed air about her then. “Frank actually has one of my works in his living room in his apartment. It was an oil painting of a rising sun. He loves…Urgh! He loved watching the sun rise. He used to work from before dawn to after dusk, and it depressed him that he could never see the daylight for very long, so I painted him the sun so he could always enjoy it.”

            “But if you can make paintings better than what you sell, why don’t you sell some of the better ones and jack up the prices a bit?” I asked. Nowadays everyone was doing just about anything they could for the extra income.

            Her smirk came back at this point, but it was less, mocking and more wistful.

            “But then it wouldn’t be art! A person’s art is all they can leave in this world to prove they were here.”
            “But what if they don’t paint or sculpt or anything like that?” I asked, confused.

            “Anything a person puts their heart and soul into can be considered art. It’s the emotional investment behind it that counts. While I leave behind paintings and such, say a martial artist will leave his teachings of his Art to his students or peers.”

            I nodded. I kind of understood, but I don’t think I got the depth of what she was trying to convey. I wasn’t much for the philosophy of art and such. But it was time to get down to business.

            “Alright then… But back to my original point, Frank wanted someone to carry out his last will, which I found on his person, and part of it seems to be talking to certain people that he left behind. He feels that no one truly knew him, so someone should before he was long past gone. Janelle, if you know her, was going to do it, but her daughter is too ill for her to leave.”

            She nodded. “Yeah, I know Janelle. It sucks that her kid is sick. That’s one reason why I don’t plan on having kids. I’ve worked too hard to be independent to start caring for another human being who can’t do it for themselves. But that sounds about right with Frank. You get him alone, and he’s one clear person. But if he ever had to mix his groups of friends, who he usually attempted to keep clearly separate, he would seem to switch up on how he acted around us. If I didn’t know better, I would think he had some form of multiple personality disorder. I guess his will sent you here so you can get my take on him, huh?” She finished, asking. I nodded in response, and she continued talking, now with a slightly depressed look.

            “Well, the Frank I knew was pretty solid. Yeah, he was flaky at times, but when the chips were down, and I needed him, he would be there unless it was just absolutely impossible for him to do so. Hell, I am planning on expanding my bed and breakfast business, and he was going to help me manage it. I know we are young, but my family has done this kind of thing for a while, and he always had a good head on his shoulders for business things. It was always so easy for him to look at the cold hard facts, pick them apart, and if someone was trying to set him up and cheat him, he knew how to read between the lines and beat them to the punch. Although he could be kind of cold at times to me, I know he always tried to take care of me or any one of his other friends if they needed help, even if they didn’t ask for it. He was just a decent guy like that. Even though during the first bit of our real friendship he didn’t have any reason to be nice to me, he was.” Seeing my questioning look, she continued.

            “You see, Frank and I dated way back in high school, and we both treated each other badly in our own way, me hurting him a bit worse than he hurt me. We were both young and stupid. After we didn’t speak at all for a year or so, we got back in touch and became really good friends, even though I didn’t think I would ever have his trust again.”

            Her expression lightened somewhat, but her eyes still had a faraway look.

            “You see, that was Frank all over when he was younger. Even when someone would screw him over good, if he had a bit of time to cool off, and he received an apology, he would generally give them a second or third chance. But he changed in that regard over the years. I guess too many people betrayed his trust too many times, and he became less trusting. I always said it was about time. He pretty much put on a red carpet, and let people walk all over him in his youth. But anyway… Leonard Garcia, Frank Derahno was a b*****d with the way he would help people, and then disappear at times. He meant well, I’m sure, but he never let people repay the favors unless he truly needed something, and then he acted like he owed them something. Frank was a good b*****d though, and that’s what I will remember for myself.”

            With her summary of Frank Derahno, I felt a little more confused and like I had just sunk a little deeper than what I had originally planned with this will thing.

            I nodded in understanding, although I was even more confused at this point. If Frank helped people, then why would some of his friends hold that quality in slight contempt?

            “Thank you for your time, Miss Sanchez,” I said to her. “I believe I will be taking my leave of you, so I hope you will excuse me. I have more people to talk to before Frank’s memorial two days from now. I guess I am supposed to let someone know about whatever it is he wanted to be known there. I trust you will be there?”

            She nodded once and then assumed a thoughtful expression.

            “Yes, I will. Also, if I feel like you’ve done a decent job, I will repay you. I will give you one of my best works, free of charge. I will have it with me at the memorial. Good luck, and have a good day, Mr. Garcia.”

            And with that, she walked me to the door of the apartment. I stepped out onto the landing outside and she closed the door behind me. I thought it was odd that she would rush me out like that until I heard something else. I heard a full thud and then a sliding sound. Straining my ears close against the door, I was able to discern that Marie Sanchez was now mourning her friend in private with her tears. I figured she was one who preferred to be alone with her emotions, hence the rush, so I went ahead and made my way down the stairs to my car. I got in the driver’s side and then sighed heavily. I can only hope the other people heard about the wreck. I didn’t want to be the grim messenger anymore. This wasn’t my place… But I had a promise to keep.

            I pulled the heavy phonebook from the passenger seat and into my lap and fished the bag containing Frank’s will from my pocket and let it drop onto the phonebook. I heaved another sigh, something I seemed to be doing more lately, and then opened the bag to begin to read the next part of the note. I hated it though. I was tired of immersing myself in the depression of others. I hated this grim business.

            I hated this grim note.