Quest and Tillie

Chapter 10: Do You Look Good In Orange?

Never thought I'd do anything but work on cars and stalk Tillie, but for the last few months, I had a new job: detective. I hadn't been kidding when I said I was going after Mary-Lou for mouthing off to Tillie the way she did. Mary-Lou could call me out in public, if she wanted, but Tillie was off limits. When she crossed that line, that sealed her fate with me. I wanted to get her out of town. I had no idea at the time that it would happen, just not in the way I expected.

After I'd talked with Jack Tyson to have him fire Mary-Lou, it'd started me thinking. And what I figured was something I'd never thought about before simply because I didn't think about her at all, but Mary-Lou drove a really nice car. A really nice car, come to think about it. Considering she probably didn't make much more than minimum wage at Jack's place --

I called Jack at work. His voice sounded rough, which wasn't surprising considering what he'd been going through. Rumor had it Jack's wife, Carla, had dragged Jack back to Loaners after he'd gone home to tell her about Mary-Lou, and then Carla had proceeded to confront Mary-Lou by calling her some colorful and descriptive names. After a few rounds of bitch-slapping, Carla had then taken Mary-Lou by what was left of her extension-less hair and had dragged her out the door and thrown her down on the sidewalk, screaming, "You and your overused, rotting crotch are fired!"

"What, Quest?" his voice was tired, and I'm sure as the catalyst for blowing up his life, I was the last person he wanted to talk to.

"How much were you paying Mary-Lou?"

"Fifteen hundred a month," his voice was barely above a whisper.

"That's it? That's not even four hundred a week."

"What are you talking about? She agreed to that amount because I gave her the job, too."

"What are you talking about?" I was thoroughly confused. "I was asking how much you paid her as your receptionist. What else..."

Then the light bulb went off.

"You were paying her to keep quiet."

"Quest," he almost whined.

"You didn't tell Carla about the payments."

"Barely hanging on by a thread here, Quest. Carla's talking about leaving me. If she found out I'd been paying Mary-Lou for three years, she'd run me over with the car a couple times and then she'd leave me while my body turned to dust in the street."

"Give me Mary-Lou's address."

"Why?"

"I want to see where she lives."

"Just a second." I could hear him typing on his computer. "OK, here it is." Then he rattled off her address, and I hung up.

On the drive over to Mary-Lou's, I kept wondering about where she lived, which turned out to be a really nice duplex in the next town over.

Nice car, nice home.

As I drove away, I called Nancy. Every female customer always commented that she dressed nice considering she worked for an autobody shop, so if she didn't know the answer, she'd know someone who would.

"It's me," I told her when she answered. "Does Mary-Lou dress nice? Like, are her clothes expensive?"

"Quest Sullivan! Why in heaven are you asking such a thing?" she was practically shouting, frothing at the mouth like a rabid dog.

"I need to know."

She huffed and puffed into the phone. "Yes, she wears a lot of designer clothes."

"Hmmm. What else about her is expensive?"