My Dad, the Private Eye: Keep on Truckin'

CHAPTER 10

As Dad and I walked from the Windsor Police Station to a motel down the street, his mind was working a mile a minute. In fact, ideas poured out of his head just about as fast as his lunch had poured out of his stomach after Harley's autopsy. (Yep, he finally couldn't hold it back and spewed big time.)

"That's how Harley got to Windsor!" Dad exclaimed. "He came in his tanker truck all right, but not in the cab – in the tank!"

"But how did he get into the tank?" I asked. And then I remembered. "Oh, I know! Remember Gator said sometimes they've got to climb inside the tank to clean it out?"

"Right, but Harley wouldn't climb into a tank full of wine. He must've been in there before it was filled up."

"So someone else filled it up while he was in there? Was he asleep maybe?"

"Or knocked out," Dad surmised. "He had a lot of enemies."

We arrived at the motel, and boy, what a dump this place was. It was even worse than the one back in Toronto. "C'mon, Dad, another cheap motel?" I whined. "Can't we afford a real hotel this time?"

"It's just for one night," Dad said. "We'll graduate to nice hotel rooms when I see another paycheck."

As we walked into the musty motel office, I had another thought. "But wait a minute, how did Harley's body end up in the lake if he drowned in the tank?" I asked.

Dad said, "One room, please," to the old man behind the counter, then he turned back to me. "I'm guessing the people at the wine distribution center found Harley after they pumped out all the wine," he suggested. "And maybe... maybe they thought that if they told the police, they'd have to throw away all that wine."

I picked up where Dad was going and finished his train of thought. "So the winery had someone dump his body into the lake, figuring if he was found, people would think he drowned there instead of in the tank!" I was so proud of myself (and Dad) that I jumped up and down. "We're gonna nail those winery dudes!"

Dad was thrilled too, but he caught the eye of the old man behind the counter who was staring at us like we were crazy. "Uh... that'll be $69.50," the man said, trying to remain businesslike. Dad gave him a credit card.

But then I realized something. "But... how do we prove all this?"

Dad's enthusiasm fizzled a bit as well. Then he had a thought. "The logs! Those driving logs in Gator's truck – which used to be Harley's truck. There's probably a record of Harley signing in that day but not signing out!"

"Yes!" I cheered. But, again, reality brought me back down. "But how're you going to get the logs?"

Dad thought hard about this. I think he realized that this part wasn't going to be easy.

We had dinner after we checked into our motel room, and we decided to continue our investigation the next day. With time to kill, we just channel-surfed on the old motel TV and ended up on an old Humphrey Bogart movie about truckers in the '30's. Well, Dad ended up there. I spent most of my time on TikTok.

But, even though this part of our private eye job was boring, I was actually thrilled. I mean, we were working on a real case! We were on the road, hot on the tail of Harley Beaudry's killer, and we were solving the case little by little.

And, you know what? I wasn't feeling held back by my ADHD, OCD or any of that stuff. Maybe it's because I was really into being a private eye. I wondered, was this my calling in life? Dad certainly seemed to be taking to the job. Maybe I was too.