A Body to Spare (The Odelia Grey Mysteries) (16 page)

“Mom,” I called into the phone. “You still there?”

“Here,” Mom said. “You talk to her.”

There was a brief moment during which Greg and I could hear fumbling and voices as the phone was passed along to someone else. Finally came a familiar voice. “Dottie, is that you?”

My eyes snapped in Greg’s direction. He also recognized the voice and was having trouble keeping his mind on his driving. The van swerved slightly, and the guy next to us laid on his horn.

“Elaine, what are you doing at my mother’s?” I asked, not even trying to hide my shock.

“You contacted me, remember?” she said, her voice filled with amusement.

“Um, does my mother know who you are?”

“Affirmative.”

“And—?” I prodded. I looked over at Greg. He was staring straight out the windshield and shaking his head in disbelief.

“And we’re drinking coffee and eating banana bread fresh out of the oven while playing gin rummy,” Elaine reported. I looked over at Greg. His eyes grew wider and wilder as he urged the van to go faster. “Grace makes great banana bread,” Elaine added.

“Why my mother, Elaine?” I asked. “I contacted
you
. Why get her involved?” I wanted to ask her how she found Mom, but after using Marigold, I realized that might be a waste of time. There might be several deep search engines like it on the net. Let’s face it, individual privacy is a ship that sailed a very long time ago. All we private citizens can do is wave goodbye to it with hankies while it disappears into the horizon.

The next question was, how did Elaine get into Mom’s retirement community? It was gated and, unlike Jean’s complex, had a guard at the front gate. Did Elaine simply say who she was and Grace told the guard to let her in? It would be something my mother would do.

“True, but you have way too many police buddies for my comfort,” Elaine explained. “That’s all I’d need is for that Fehring woman or Dev Frye to show up at your door while we were having a heart to heart. It might get messy.” She paused to let the full impact of her words sink into my thick skull. “And it seems I made the right decision, considering what your mother has told me. The cops
and
the FBI? Odelia, you’ve come up in the world since I last saw you.”

“Mom told you about…um…the body?” I looked up out the windshield and realized for the first time how fast Greg was going. For a guy without the use of his legs, he sure had a lead foot—at least today.

“Yes, she did,” Elaine said, “and the guy’s identity, which is why I wanted to see you sooner than later. Come straight here, Odelia. Make some excuse to Fehring to put her off, but come straight here. It’s important for you and for Fehring. I’ll be waiting.”

As soon as I hung up, I texted Andrea Fehring and told her we had to make a small detour—a family emergency that had just cropped up—but that we’d be at her office as soon as we solved the crisis.

She texted back immediately:
You have two hours to get in here. Don’t make me come and get you!

Family dinners would be a laugh-a-minute if Clark got involved with this woman. I texted back, assuring her that two hours should be plenty of time.

“Forget Long Beach,” I told Greg when I was finished with my phone. “We need to stop by my mother’s first.”

“That’s where I’m heading,” Greg said, keeping up the speed and deftly weaving in and out of traffic.

“Are you deliberately trying to get a ticket?” I asked.

“I’m trying to save your mother’s life,” he answered, not taking his eyes off the road.

I chuckled. “Relax. You heard Elaine. They’re drinking coffee and playing gin rummy.”

“That’s the problem,” Greg snapped without looking at me. “Grace cheats at cards.”

On my side of the vehicle, I nearly pushed my right foot through the floor board.

nineteen

When we got to
Mom’s, she was still alive. The two of them had abandoned their card game and were sitting companionably on Mom’s patio enjoying the fresh air. They looked like a couple of old hens gossiping about the neighbors. The patio ran across the front of Mom’s townhome and was bordered by a waist-high concrete block fence. It was accessed through sliders in the living room. They waved to us as we approached the front door. “The door’s open,” Mom said to us as we came up the walk.

By the time we entered the house, both Mom and Elaine had made their way back into the living room. “Let’s talk inside,” Elaine said as she closed the slider to the patio. “No sense taking the risk of someone overhearing us.”

“You two want some coffee or tea?” Mom asked us.

“Just some water, Mom,” I said.

“Coffee would be great, Grace,” echoed Greg. “Thanks. And do you have any of that banana bread?”

Leave it to my hubs to think of his stomach, even while in the presence of a killer.

Mom went into the kitchen, which was separated from the living room by a short counter. She would be able to see and hear everything from there, otherwise she might have not have offered us drinks. Meanwhile, Elaine and I stared at each other, neither making a move to sit. I wasn’t sure if I should give her a hug like I would one of my usual friends, or even Willie. Willie didn’t scare me. Elaine Powers terrified me. She made the decision for me.

“Come here, Dottie,” Elaine said, holding out her arms to me. I tossed my bag onto the counter and went to her. We shared a short warm hug. Elaine called me Dottie because I reminded her of her deceased sister. If Elaine hadn’t been the mastermind of a successful crew of hitwomen, I think we might have been normal friends. She’s smart and funny and genuine. But it was kind of difficult to overlook the killer part.

After releasing me, Elaine held out her right hand to Greg. “Nice to see you looking so fit, sport.”

Greg eyed the hand, not sure what to do with it. Even more than me, he had personal conflicts when it came to being chummy with murderers. The first and only time he’d seen her was after he’d been shot, when she’d visited him briefly in the hospital. In the end he caved and shook Elaine’s hand.

“I didn’t see Lisa outside,” I said to Elaine after we each took our seats and Mom had delivered our drinks. Then Mom scampered back to the kitchen to retrieve a plate of sliced banana bread and napkins. She handed a slice on a napkin to Greg before sitting down in her recliner. Grace Littlejohn wasn’t about to miss a thing.

“Some things are better done solo,” Elaine said with a brief smile. “It attracts less attention, especially in a place like this where people have nothing else to do with their time but be nosy.”

“You’ve got that right,” agreed my nosy mother.

Lisa was a pint-size killer who usually rode a sleek, high-powered motorcycle and often accompanied Elaine as her bodyguard. I wasn’t sorry Lisa wasn’t present, and I certainly would not have given her a hug. She didn’t like me one bit, and the feeling was mutual. The first time we met she wanted to put a bullet in my brain. The last time we saw each other she called me dumber than a box of rocks, but at least no guns were involved. Maybe that’s measurable progress, but I still didn’t like her.

“But rest assured, Lisa isn’t too far away. She never is.” Wiping the smile off her face, Elaine got down to business. “Do they know anything about Zach Finch yet?” she asked. “Like who killed him?”

“Not yet that we know of,” I told her after glancing at Greg. His mouth full of banana bread, he gave me an encouraging nod to go ahead and tell Elaine what we knew.

“Maybe that’s what Andrea wants to talk to you about,” chimed in my mother. “She said it was urgent.” Mom leaned toward Elaine. “Even though she’s a cop, Andrea Fehring is quite nice socially. I think my son Clark is a little sweet on her.”

Elaine laughed at the thought. “Considering Clark’s connections and yours,” she said to me, “that could be a very interesting pairing.”

“My son used to be a police officer, you know,” added Mom. “In fact, he was chief of police in our town. They’d have a lot in common.” Elaine looked at me and winked when Mom finished.

Right then and there, I understood that Elaine knew a lot about me and my family and friends that I hadn’t disclosed. I was also pretty sure now that Mom didn’t have a clue about Clark’s true employer but that Elaine had more than a clue. Next to me, Greg started tapping the fingers of his free hand nervously on his leg as if sending me a message in code.

“Andrea’s good people,” I confirmed. I looked Elaine in the eyes and slightly shifted mine toward Mom, hoping to send her a warning to tread lightly with information. Elaine gave me a tight-lipped smile and blinked once—message received.

“The police think you might have had something to do with Zach Finch showing up dead in Odelia’s trunk,” Greg said. He’d stopped drumming his fingers, so maybe he’d caught my silent little tête-à-tête with Elaine.

“Not me, sport,” Elaine answered.

“My name is Greg,” Greg informed her with a face so tight it could crack. Even his beard, a tidy van dyke, looked ready to splinter and fall off. Years ago Greg and I had come across a criminal named Gordon Harper who had called Greg
sport
. He has hated it ever since, no matter who used it. Elaine paused a moment, and I held my breath. Mom looked uncomfortable too.

“That it is, Greg,” Elaine finally said to him. “My bad, and I apologize.” She smiled at him, and he nodded acceptance of her apology.

“Getting back to Zach Finch,” Elaine continued, “my crew had nothing to do with killing him or with stashing him in Odelia’s trunk. Even if we did do the job, I would never put you all at risk like that. We’re not that sloppy, for one thing, and I don’t treat
people
I like with such disrespect. Odelia here gets in enough trouble on her own without me throwing gasoline on the fire.”

“You’ve got that right,” my mother said half under her breath.

After shooting my mother the evil eye, I turned my attention back to Elaine. “There’s been another development just this morning, which is what I’m sure Andrea wants to discuss with us.” I took a deep breath and a drink of water, then jumped in with both feet. “We just came from Jean Finch Utley’s place—that’s Zach’s sister. Right after we spoke to her, she did a swan dive off the balcony of her third-floor condo onto concrete.”

Mom gasped. “What did you do to that woman, Odelia?”

“We did nothing, Mom,” I assured her. “We asked her a few questions about Zach and her family and her move to California in the past few years. When we left her, she was dressed in running clothes. When she fell, she was naked except for a short terry robe. The police found her shower running when they went to check her apartment. She must have been getting ready to take a shower when she was murdered.”

“Murdered?” Mom asked. “So it wasn’t suicide?”

“Nothing’s been determined yet,” I said, “but why get ready to take a shower, then change your mind and jump from the balcony? The police and FBI aren’t sharing information with us, so we don’t know if they found evidence of anyone in the condo unit after us. After we left her, we were hijacked by Special Agent Shipman at our van and questioned. There was about twenty to twenty-five minutes between the time we last saw her and her death.”

“Plenty of time for someone to slip in and push her off the balcony,” noted Elaine, “especially if they were already in her place or nearby.”

I filled Mom and Elaine in on the information we’d gotten from Jean. After, we were all silent for a bit. Greg snagged another piece of banana bread and took a big bite. I loved my mother’s baking, but right now the sight of the bread turned my stomach.

Elaine broke the silence. “We were contacted about the job,” she admitted.

“Zach or Jean?” Greg asked after swallowing his last bite of bread.

“Both,” Elaine answered.

In shock, we all snapped our heads in her direction in expectation of more information.

“I received a request, but when I got the names of the targets,” Elaine explained, “I turned it down as too much exposure for the crew.”

“Exposure?” asked Greg.

“I do my homework on targets before I give the green light to a job,” Elaine explained. “Zach Finch was a live grenade, even dead. The kid of a powerful man goes missing for years, then shows up freshly dead? The police and the feds would be all over that like a bloodhound after a coon, which they apparently are. We could dispose of the body somewhere, make it disappear, but even that’s tricky. We kill pests; we don’t dispose of the remains. As for Jean, just being Zach’s sister would put a spotlight on that.”

“So who tried to hire you?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Elaine answered. “All inquiries about our services are anonymous until I agree to take the job. The less I know about the employer, the safer I can keep my crew and me if I turn down the job and it blows up later.” She paused, then added, “Like this one did.”

“So when do you find out about who hires you?” asked Greg.

Elaine hesitated before answering, then with a shrug gave up the information. “First I get a cryptic message, like how Odelia contacted me this week. Then I contact that person using a burn phone. One burn phone per job. When the job is done, the phone is destroyed. We discuss the job by phone. If I’m interested, I ask for information about the buyer to confirm who he or she is. Once I’m convinced that it isn’t a set-up and the target is legit, we move forward with payment arrangements and the job. All I remember about this job request is that the person on the phone was male, with no strong accent—either international or Southern or even from the Northeast—that I could decipher.”

“What do you mean by a legit target?” Mom asked, leaning forward as if taking notes.

“I don’t kill for the sport of it, Grace,” Elaine told her. “There has to be a good reason for the target to be taken out for me to take the contract, like maybe he’s a pedophile or wife beater. Or maybe it’s a woman who abuses her kids or murdered them and got away with it. I fancy myself an exterminator of vermin. And I have other business endeavors that don’t involve killing, which I have to protect.” She winked at me, reminding me of how I last came across her. She’d been running a financial scam on the aged mother of one of my bosses.

“It’s still murder,” noted Greg with his eyes fastened tightly on Elaine. “Even though you’ve helped Odelia out a few times and even saved her life—and for that I’m very grateful, believe me—it’s still murder.”

Elaine got up and started for the kitchen. As she passed Greg, she gently patted him on the shoulder. “That it is, Greg. I don’t deny it, and I don’t deny that I deserve to be damned to hell for it.”

Elaine continued to the kitchen. She was wearing loose black knit pants and a bulky knit pullover, also in black, with a cat print around the hem. On her feet were bright blue Crocs and rainbow socks. When I last saw her, Elaine’s hair was a soft brown. Since then, she’d let it go to a natural shiny dark gray shot with silver, which she wore clipped into a perky tousled pixie. She looked like she’d lost weight since our last encounter, and her skin was pale and her eyes dark. Maybe she just needed a good night’s sleep. Being the leader of contract killers had to cause many sleepless nights. As she walked away from us, I could see the outline of a gun tucked under her jersey in the waist of her pants. Greg saw it too and widened his eyes at me. Did he really think she’d come unarmed? At least she’d left Lisa, her churlish bodyguard, somewhere out of sight. Elaine may trust us, but she wasn’t in the habit of letting her guard down.

In the kitchen, Elaine started to help herself to a cup of coffee. Mom started to get up to assist her but Elaine waved her back down in her seat. She returned with the pot and refilled Greg’s mug. After putting the pot back in the kitchen, she stood on the kitchen side of the counter and sipped her coffee. She was so at home, you would have thought she visited my mother frequently. “Do you know any other professionals in my field?” she asked us.

“If I do,” I said, “I’m not aware of it. I mean, I can hardly imagine Zee or Steele or Sally Kipman moonlighting as contract killers.” I hesitated. “Well, if any of my friends had it in them, it would be Sally, but I seriously doubt she’s taken that path.”

“How about William Proctor?” Elaine asked. “Has he branched out from embezzlement and fraud?”

“The police asked me the same thing,” my mother said, “but I don’t recall ever meeting a William Proctor.” Through her thick glasses, my mother looked truly puzzled.

When my mother met Willie, he had been going by the name of Willie Carter and was passing himself off as Greg’s cousin. We always thought she’d figured out the truth somewhere along the line but was keeping her own counsel. Once Mom had asked Greg’s mother about Willie Carter, and Renee had looked at her with confusion. Greg had quickly stepped in and got the two women’s minds onto something else before anyone could compare notes. Later he told Mom that Willie was a very distant cousin, the black sheep in his father’s family, and that no one talked much about him.

At some point, she was going to make the connection. My mother is far from stupid, but she can be artfully distracted. So after the Renee incident, Greg, Clark, and I had sat down and fabricated a story about Willie Carter using bits and pieces that Mom already knew and the lies we’d told her. Then we each memorized the story and made a pact to stick to it, come hell or high water. Herding Mom’s inquisitive mind in the direction we needed it to go for both Willie’s and her protection could be exhausting. She seemed to have pretty much forgotten about Willie until the police questioned her about him this week.

I caught Elaine’s eye and telegraphed another warning. Over the rim of her coffee mug, she gave me a slight nod of understanding, barely hiding her amusement, and moved back into the living room to take her seat.

“Wait a minute,” Mom said, raising an index finger in the air like she was testing wind direction. She turned to Greg. “Are William Proctor and your cousin Willie Carter the same person, Greg?”