Chapter 18

“OK,” said a very bored Danni. She reached over to the driver’s seat and poked Norm in the arm, “who are you texting?”

“Didn’t your mamma ever tell you it was rude to poke,” Norm replied with no small amount of frustration. He just did not have the hang of electronics and phones were no different than their bigger brothers.

Danni remained bored, “um, we’re not talking about my mother, Norm.”

That actually stopped Norm from tapping away with his thumbs. He thought about what Danni just said, and then he went right back to typing. “It’s still rude girl.”

Danni blew a strand of hair out of her face and got comfortable before saying, “you don’t have any friends. When you want to talk to Darcy you just call. I’ve never seen you even answer a call from Barbara. Has she ever even called you?” Then Danni looked over to him and said, “running out of suspects here Norm.”

“Finished,” Norm said with no small amount of relief.  Then he looked at the girl and said in a half snarl, “if you must goddamn know, I’m texting Jake.”

Danni’s eyes opened wide and she became excited. She pulled out her own phone and began tapping away with her thumbs at lightening speed. It was enough to make Norm dizzy. He just had to ask her, “what the hell are you doing?”

“I didn’t know he did text,” Danni said as she finished up her own message and sent it. Then she waited, waited, and waited a little bit more before a reply finally did come back. She read it out loud with a lot less enthusiasm than she had used to send it, “get back to work.”

“Which is sound advice,” Norm told the young girl. He started up the car and began driving. A few minutes later they were on the west end of Austin Street. Norm had to actually find a business with a visible address and begin counting down to find his building. He complained, “hell, I don’t even know if that’s a shop address or a building address.”

Danni sounded confident enough, “I get over this way a lot. What’s the number?”

“Seventeen Eleven,” Norm told her as if she were a distraction.

Without any hesitation Danni replied, “Two light’s down on the right.”

Norm abandoned his searching and looked at Danni with disbelief written all over his face, “how the hell would you know that?”

“Told you,” Danni said with a ‘duh’ tone. She then pointed to a turn, “that’s the parking lot right there. Like I said, I get down this way a lot.”

Exactly why Danni knew this place was completely beyond Norm and, for that matter, why anyone would even want to. The building was actually more modern than most of the those down here on this end of Austin Street but, that was all he had in the compliments department. The place was just your basic strip mall and, as such things went, this one was mostly empty.

Norm took a quick survey as he drove through the mostly empty parking lot. The first obvious problem that he saw was the security lights. This place had them but, Norm would have bet money that the majority of them did not even work. More than a few of them looked to have been shot out by gun fire.

Of the few cars that he saw, three of them had Canadian street gangsters hanging out around them. Those guys were obviously not here to go shopping. Of the three operating stores, in a building that appeared to have around twenty units, there was nothing in any of them that Norm thought would interest gangsters. Then again, Norm reflected, he was not so sure he’d be caught dead in any of them either.
One store was a dress shop and, while it appeared to be in business, it was currently not opened. The other store was, well upon reflection, Norm was not even sure what that place sold. The last one was a flower shop. While Norm would buy flowers for Darcy, from time to time, he would never go do that chore himself. Norm would always get someone of the female gender to do that kind of shopping for him.

When you added all of this up, it came to exactly nothing. Norm stopped the car as far as he could get from the Canadians without actually leaving the lot. Then he thought about what he was looking at for a minute. Then he just put up his hands and said, “I don’t see anything all that important here, do you?”

“Well yeah,” Danni replied and pointed to the weird looking store that had so many dark posters in the window that you couldn’t even see the inside of the place. Danni was quite chipper when she said, “that’s Madam Toulon’s.”

Norm blinked, “excuse me?”

“Get your brain out of the gutter,” Danni said rolling her eyes. “She’s not a Madam, Madam. She’s just Toulon. Hell, for that matter, I doubt that’s even her real name.” Norm did not reply. He just had a funny look on his face and bulging eyes that would not stop staring at Danni.
She snapped at him, “what?”

Norm sounded quite serious when he said, “what the fuck are you going in a place like that for?”

Danni crossed her arms and became smug, “bet you don’t even know what that place is?”

“Sure I do,” Norm replied without skipping a beat.

Danni did not hesitate either, “ok what is it then?”

“That’s not important,” Norm bit back. “Do you know this girl that runs that place, or not?”

Danni began snickering and then she replied, “yeah I kind of know her. Been in her shop a few times.”

“Good,” replied Norm sounding as if it was anything but. He opened his car door, “let’s go talk to her.”