Page 27 of The Children of Eve (Charlie Parker #22)

CHAPTER XXVII

The BrightBlown Dispensary and Life Store was on Forest Avenue, close to the Morrills Corner intersection. It was far enough from the center of town to avoid competition from the plethora of cannabis outlets around Congress Street and the Old Port, but not so distant as to make potential customers think twice about making the trip. The premises had previously housed a discount furniture outlet, but the functional nature of the building had been softened by the addition of a new brick facade and the installation of arched windows. Inside, it resembled an upmarket tanning salon, with mood lighting, inoffensive music, potted plants, and stripped pine furnishing. It even had its own line of clothing, which showed just how far we’d all come. I was old enough to remember when wearing a T-shirt promoting cannabis was an invitation for a cavity search. Then again, the last time anyone had offered to sell me pot, the dealer in question looked like he’d been dragged backward through a hedge and smelled strongly of skunk, both vegetal and animal. The young man behind the counter at BrightBlown wore a branded black T-shirt and clean black jeans, and smiled like a relieved cultist who’d drunk the Flavor Aid and hadn’t died. His hair was bunched in an intricate topknot that would force him to censor his photos in later life so his children didn’t laugh in his face, and he wore a sparse beard that appeared to be growing back after he’d accidentally set its predecessor alight.

Lord , I thought, I’m getting cranky in my middle age .

“Help you?” He eased a basket of gummies toward me and invited me to try one. “They’re gluten-free and vegan.”

“Sorry,” I said, “I’m on a diet.”

“It’s okay,” he replied, taking back the basket. “I don’t like them much anyway.”

I showed him my identification and asked if his boss was around. He told me she was in her office and went to find her, leaving me alone to make the place look untidy. He returned with a woman in her late thirties, also wearing a BrightBlown T-shirt, but with hair that wouldn’t be a source of regret to her in years to come.

“I’m Donna Lawrence,” she said. “I’m the manager.”

She lifted the hatch on the counter and invited me to follow her. BrightBlown was messier behind the scenes, but that wouldn’t have been hard. We passed a handful of employees, none older than thirty, variously engaged in tending, weighing, and bagging, who barely glanced at me as I passed. Mellow classical music came from a Bluetooth speaker by a window.

“Is that good for the plants?” I asked Lawrence.

“It’s good for my sanity,” she replied. “If I give the employees their head, they play stuff that sounds like we’re being burgled.”

She led me to a large, glass-sided office with a desk, a couch, and a pine meeting table with four matching chairs. On the desk was a photograph of Lawrence with a woman who could have been her darker-haired twin and two young children, a boy and a girl. The only decorations on the walls, pinboards and work rosters apart, came from children’s paintings. They gave the place the air of the principal’s office at a kindergarten.

“Family?” I asked, indicating the photograph.

“Wife and kids. There’s also a dog, but she doesn’t sit for pictures.”

Lawrence suggested we talk at the table. She offered me coffee, water, or soda. I opted for soda. She handed me a can from a mini fridge, retrieved a maté gourd with a silver bombilla from among the papers on her desk, and sat across from me.

“So,” she said, “I hear you turned down a gummy.”

“Was that some kind of test?”

“It helps put new customers at their ease and promotes sales. Do you indulge?”

“Not me. I’m high on life.”

“Then you mustn’t be paying sufficiently close attention to it.”

Ah, so we had ourselves a cynic. That made me happy. One could negotiate with a cynic, but not an idealist.

“Not paying close attention certainly helps,” I said. “But pot was never to my taste, maybe because I never smoked cigarettes either. I’m dull that way.”

Lawrence drank her maté.

“I’m old enough to still enjoy reading newspapers,” she said. “I’m familiar with your background, and you’re not dull at all. In my experience, only dull people claim to be interesting. The intriguing ones don’t need to advertise.” She regarded me appraisingly. “You know, this is the first time I’ve ever met a private investigator.”

“If it helps,” I said, “this is the first time I’ve ever met a big-time cannabis dealer who wasn’t facing charges.”

She laughed.

“I’ve never thought of myself that way, though I suppose you’re right. And I may be out of line, but I sense you don’t entirely approve of what we’re selling.”

I shrugged. “Like cell phone stores and Starbucks a few years ago, it’s not the presence or the product I object to so much as the ubiquity. I feel the same way about vape shops: they don’t add a lot to the life of a street. When it comes to cannabis stores, we don’t so much have an industry here as an outbreak.”

“I agree, which is why we’re on Forest and not downtown. Soon, the city may have to start restricting new openings around Congress and the Old Port, like it did with fast-food outlets back in the day. We felt it was better not to get caught up in that debate. But I doubt you came here to lodge a formal protest.”

“No, but you did invite an opinion.”

“Guilty as charged. So why are you here, Mr. Parker?”

“I’ve been hired to find one of your employees, Wyatt Riggins. He skipped town and there are concerns about his safety.”

“Is he in trouble?”

“Probably, but not with me.”

“Can I ask who hired you?”

“You can ask.”

I had decided that it would be better to leave Zetta Nadeau’s name out of the investigation for the present, even if her relationship with Riggins might be common knowledge in some circles. Whoever Riggins was running from might track him to the Northeast, and I didn’t want them knocking on Zetta’s door to find out what she knew, not because of something I might have disclosed to the wrong person.

“I can probably guess. Unless it was family, and Wyatt didn’t speak much about them, I’d say his girlfriend stumped up the cash. There must be money in bad art.”

Ouch. I wondered whether Zetta had crossed Donna Lawrence. Unless Lawrence was bisexual and unfaithful, it couldn’t have been over Riggins, yet he was the point of contact between them. Perhaps Lawrence simply wasn’t a fan of conceptual sculpture.

“Everyone’s a critic,” I said, but it seemed sensible to cut short any further discussion of Zetta. “Where did the taste for maté come from? That’s not something one sees often in the cold Northeast.”

“It’s a recent development. I was getting jittery on coffee, and we discourage staff from using our products during working hours, so I was trying to set a good example. It took me a while, but I’ve grown to appreciate maté.”

“Have you traveled much in Latin America?”

“Not me. I’m a homebird.”

“So the gourd was a gift?”

“You can pick them up north of the border now,” she said. “We live in a globalized world.”

Which was, I noticed, not answering the question.

“I should tell you,” Lawrence continued, “that I don’t know a great deal about Wyatt, and he hasn’t been in touch since he started missing shifts.”

“Were you worried when he didn’t show?”

“I was annoyed. We’re struggling to retain staff as it is. There’s a lot of competition in the industry for anyone with experience, and don’t get me started on wage inflation. When Wyatt didn’t materialize, I had to cover for him on what was supposed to be my day off. If he did come back, I’d be tempted to fire him if we didn’t need people so badly.”

“So he had experience in the industry?”

“He’d been arrested a few times during the late nineties and early two thousands, twice in New York State and once down south. I don’t remember where offhand. Misdemeanor and felony marijuana possession, but the most he ever spent behind bars was ninety days, so he was lucky. We have a guy working on our farm who did three years in Arkansas for possession: four point one ounces, and that point one was the difference between a rap on the knuckles and what amounted to ten percent of his life in prison. Wyatt had both used and sold, which wasn’t—and isn’t—unusual, and he knew a bit about cultivation, so he was just what we were looking for. Convictions for cannabis-related offenses aren’t an obstacle to working for us. They’ll bump you right up the list so long as no violence was involved.”

“Do you perform criminal record checks?”

“Of course,” said Lawrence. “There are still conservative elements in this state who aren’t convinced that legalization was the way to go. We don’t want to give them any excuse to come after us.”

I was taking notes as she spoke. I always took notes. It made me look like I knew what I was doing when mostly I was just stumbling around in the dark. But if you stumbled around long enough, you typically found the light switch.

“And Wyatt Riggins just showed up here one day, looking for a job?”

Lawrence didn’t immediately reply, which raised the question of who or what she might not be keen to discuss.

“Listen,” I said, “I don’t want to make anyone’s life more complicated. My client just wants to know that Riggins is safe. If he overstepped a line, I’m not interested in what he might have done or who might have helped him to do it unless someone got hurt.”

“But if you find out he’s done something illegal, don’t you have to tell the police?”

Which was also what Zetta Nadeau had asked me before speaking in more detail about her missing boyfriend. Perhaps Wyatt Riggins was simply cursed with one of those faces. Perhaps I was too.

“Only if asked about it directly in the course of a criminal investigation, or if the crime involves a child. The rest I tackle on a case-by-case basis, but I incline toward discretion. It’s better for business.”

Lawrence toyed with her silver straw. Like the gourd and BrightBlown itself, it was shiny and new but would weather with time. Weathering was good, tarnishing not so good, and Lawrence had BrightBlown’s reputation to consider.

“Wyatt was recommended to us by one of our budtenders, Jason Rybek,” she resumed. “Jason’s been here longer than I have. He should really be a dispensary manager, but he doesn’t embrace responsibility.” She hacked up a humorless laugh. “That’s another thing about the industry: it attracts individuals who’ve been smoking pot for so long that they may lack motivation. Some of them are surprised by how hard the work is, but those ones often fall by the wayside. Jason is just laid-back enough.”

Maybe I’d been right to take that parking space as a good omen. Lawrence had given me Jason Rybek without my having to reveal my interest in him. If I’d been a gambling man, I’d have bought a Megabucks ticket on the way home.

“Is Jason around?”

“He’s off today, but he’ll be at the farm tomorrow. He likes to spend a few days a week working directly with the plants. Says it gives him a better sense of them. He knows his stuff, so who am I to argue?”

“Would you have his address, or a phone number?”

But that was as far as Lawrence was willing to go where Jason Rybek was concerned.

“Why don’t you speak to him face-to-face tomorrow, Mr. Parker? I prefer not to give out the personal contact details of employees. It’s a trust issue, not to mention a legal one.”

It might also give her time to contact Rybek and advise him that a private investigator would soon be asking him questions about Wyatt Riggins.

“Did Riggins appear frightened lately, or overly watchful around strangers?” I asked.

“Wyatt was always edgy. I think it was his disposition, or had become part of it. He served in the military, but I’m sure you know that. He told me he was taking medication for PTSD and was careful about what he bought here with his staff discount. He wanted to be sure it balanced with his meds.”

Lawrence checked her watch. “I have to go, Mr. Parker. I have a Zoom meeting at four that I need to prepare for.”

I put away the notebook. We were done, more or less. Lawrence escorted me back to the dispensary.

“By the way,” I said, “does the name Devin Vaughn mean anything to you?”

“I don’t think so.” But she didn’t look at me as she answered.

“You have a boss, right?”

“Yes.”

“And he has a boss?”

“I would assume so.”

“Well, my understanding is that somewhere between that boss and God is Devin Vaughn.”

We were at the counter now. Lawrence unlocked the hatch so I could leave.

“Why are you telling me this, Mr. Parker?”

“Because sooner or later, Devin Vaughn will discover that I’m trying to find Wyatt Riggins. When he does, be sure to spell my name right.”