This was huge!
“Holy crap,” Joey whispered reverently. “So cool.”
“Let’s begin,” Arthur said.
Luna moved to and fell into the couch, her dazed eyes on the speaker.
Once she was down, a picture of Mr. Shithead came on the screen on the back wall.
Or, his mugshot.
“Duane Darin Poole, age forty-two,” Arthur told us. “Born in Detroit, Michigan. His parents moved their family to Phoenix when he was a senior in high school.”
“Bad timing,” Harlow mumbled.
“Yes,” Arthur agreed.
Annnnd…
Holy shit!
He actually was talking to us and hearing us!
Arthur kept going.
“But Duane was engaged in petty criminal activity before the move, and after. Nothing substantial. Fighting. Shoplifting. Vandalism. He continued on that bent through adulthood. Not ambitious enough to commit any serious crime, not a strong enough moral compass to stay out of trouble.”
“Right,” Luna said when Arthur paused.
“However, he’s kept his nose clean for the last five years since he’s been employed as the night manager at the Sun Valley Motor Lodge,” Arthur shared.
“Is his family still in Phoenix?” Jess asked.
“Mother, deceased. Diabetes. Two years ago. Father lives in Apache Junction. They rarely see each other. Younger sister married, had children, divorced, remarried and lives in Oregon. They don’t speak either, except on holidays. Even so, these conversations don’t last long.”
“So sad,” Harlow, our heart-of-pure-24-carat-gold girl, observed.
“Are they all the petty-criminal-do-just-the-amount-you-can-to-get-by type like our Duane here?” Shanti inquired.
“Father has had a lifelong struggle with his addiction to gambling. He lives in a mobile home community. There’s a possibility Duane’s mother would still be alive if she went to the doctor and saw to herself. She didn’t. The sister has had recurring issues with drug addiction, this the cause of her divorce. She lost her children and never bothered to try to get them back.”
Yuck.
It was a huge drag to know all of this about Mr. Shithead.
And it gave some understanding of why he acted like a shithead.
On the bright side, as ever, Arthur sure didn’t leave any stones unturned when he did his research.
“Uh, sir, has Duane been married?” Gemma asked timidly.
Luna, Jess, Harlow, Shanti and I grinned at each other at the “sir.”
“You may call me Arthur, Gemma,” Arthur said.
“All right,” Gemma mumbled.
“And no. Duane has never been married, no children, and he’s never cohabitated.”
