Catherine Nelson - Zoe Grey 02 - The Trouble with Theft (19 page)

“How troublesome for
you.”

She was starting to
piss me off. It was rich, stuck-up people like her who had caused me to run
screaming from my six-figure income and lifestyle a few years back. I didn’t
like them then, and I can’t stand them now.

“Actually, it’s going
to become troublesome for you if you don’t start telling me the truth.”

She sucked in a breath
and put a hand on her chest where it fluttered.

“How dare you!”

“Now, let’s try this
again. Do you recognize this woman?”

“I will not stand here
and be treated like this in my own home!” She started to back into the house.
“I’m calling the police.”

Irritation bubbling
over in me, I held the capture paperwork up in my right hand.

“Danielle Dillon is a
fugitive. This is a legal document authorizing me to arrest her. It gives me
the right to enter and search any premises I think she might be in. She is
associated with this address. Your husband confirmed he’s seen her here. That’s
more than enough for me to spend the better part of the day tearing apart your
house looking for any clue that might lead me to her. And just in case you’re
unclear, the police will not help you, because I will not be breaking any
laws.”

That isn’t true. The
capture paperwork gets me in the door; it doesn’t give me the right to tear
anything apart. I can go in and look any place that might reasonably hide a
person—nothing more. But this is one of those technicalities I don’t like to
burden people with.

Mrs. Burbank’s eyes
were big, and her hand was fluttering over her chest like a hummingbird.

“What
is
against the law is aiding and abetting a fugitive,” I went on. “You’re lying to
me, and I can prove it. It looks a lot like you’re lying to
protect
Danielle Dillon. So when
I
call the police, they will arrest
you
.”

I watched Burbank’s
hand flutter against her chest for a beat while she processed my threat. It was
a gamble, because I’d stretched some truths, but I thought I now had a pretty
good read on Virginia Burbank.

“What’s it going to
be?” I asked, taking a step forward, as if to enter the house.

“All right!” she said
quickly, blocking my path. “All right.”

I stepped back and
held Dillon’s photo out to her.

“How do you know this
woman?”

“She came around the
house a couple times several months ago. I thought she was having an affair
with my husband.”

“He said he thought
she was working in the house. Why did you think they were having an affair?”

“She’s beautiful. Not
in that picture, of course,” she said, looking down her nose at the photo.
“She’s all …
bruised
. But normally she is. And I only ever saw her
leaving. My husband had been home each time I saw her.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s all I know.”

“I mean, that’s why
you thought she was sleeping with your husband? Because you saw her here?”

Mr. Burbank was right
about her not thinking.

“She’s a beautiful
young woman. Better men than my husband have fallen prey to the wiles of
beautiful, young women.”

I shook my head. “When
did you see her?”

“Last summer. May,
maybe.”

“What else can you
tell me?”

“Nothing. That’s all I
know.”

“All right,” I said,
putting the photo back into my pocket. “Why did you lie to me the first time?”

“How could I have
known what you wanted, why you were asking around about her? For all I knew,
she’d gotten pregnant, and you were a private investigator trying to help some
lawyer get her a big settlement.”

“So, when I said I was
a bond enforcement agent trying to locate Danielle Dillon, you were confused?”

“The card you gave me
said Sideline Investigations.”

“And
Bail Bonds
.”

She just shrugged.

I rolled my eyes and
left.

__________

I drove south on Timberline to
Horsetooth then cut over to Zeigler and took it south to the McKinnons’ house.
When I arrived, the garage door was open and the couple was working in the
backyard. Mrs. McKinnon got up from the flowerbed where she was pulling weeds,
and Mr. McKinnon stopped the lawnmower and came over. After introductions, I
showed him Dillon’s picture.

“I’m wondering if
you’ve seen this woman, Mr. McKinnon.”

He looked at the photo
then shrugged. “I’m not sure. She looks familiar, but I can’t say why. Honey,
you didn’t know her?” He tipped the picture to her.

“No, I—wait,” she
said, taking the photo from him. “This isn’t the same picture you showed me. I
know
this
woman.”

“You do?” Mr. McKinnon
asked.

“From where?” I asked.

“From the cleaning
company. Don’t you remember?” she asked, turning to her husband. “She was the
one who never did the bathroom right. I was always complaining.”

He looked at the photo
again then nodded. “Yeah, okay. I do remember now. I only saw her once or
twice.”

“Which cleaning
company was this? House and Home or Clean Sweep?”

I already knew the
answer, but I had to hear it from her. No way in hell Amy would hold on to an
employee who didn’t clean something so well you could eat off of it, toilets
included.

“House and Home.”

“We actually had a lot
of problems with them,” Mr. McKinnon added.

“When was the last
time you saw her?”

“Well, we fired House
and Home last spring,” she said.

“That’s right,” her
husband confirmed. “In April.”

I thanked them for
their time then left.

I still wanted to see
the Burbanks’ housekeeper and gardener, but I made my next stop Martha Porter’s
house. If the scene was quiet enough, I wanted to have a quick look around. I
wasn’t sure what I would find, but I was still regretting never having a chance
to speak to her again. I felt compelled to at least visit her house. Maybe I could
garner some insight or inspiration.

I found Grandma’s
house free of any lingering police officials and others loitering about. I
parked around the block then walked back. I didn’t even bother with the front
door. It may have been left unlocked, though that was doubtful, but there was a
police crime scene sticker over it, which, if tampered with, would alert the
next cop to come by that someone had been inside. Since I didn’t have any
gloves and would be leaving prints all over the place, I didn’t want the cops
to have any obvious reason to go looking and find I had been in the house. That
would unnecessarily complicate a lot of things for both the police and me.

The backyard was small
and neat. There was no lawn or patio furniture, no figurines, nothing of a
personal nature. I tried the door to the garage and found it locked. Next, I
tried the sliding glass door leading off the kitchen. It was unlocked, and
there was a broom handle in the track. Charlie bars are an effective,
unbeatable way of preventing sliding glass doors from being forced open, but
only if they are mounted on the frame. Broom handles dropped in the track
actually
aid
the break-in process.

I’ve made mention of
my troubled past. I did a lot of things I wish I hadn’t. I did a lot of things
I’m lucky I never got caught for. A lot of those things, though, taught me
lessons that have served me later in life. One of those lessons was how to get
the sliding glass door open using a broom handle.

It took me a couple
minutes, but I got it open. This, like my lock-picking skill, had suffered
since I’d become a law-abiding citizen. I slipped inside then struggled to get
the door back in place. Whenever I did this before, I had never bothered with
replacing it; I left that to the homeowners or the cops or somebody to do
later. Now I better understand the reason for that. It takes for-
freaking
-ever
to get those damn doors back in the track. I was sweating and cussing
colorfully by the time I finally succeeded.

Wiping the sweat off
my forehead and working my left arm in a circle against the ache in my
shoulder, I wandered farther into the kitchen. I froze when I got to the end of
the counter separating the dining area from the kitchen. There was blood
everywhere. The dark red stains looked horrible and grotesque against the white
of the floor, cabinets, and countertops.

After taking a moment
to compose myself, I started thinking again. The blood on the countertops and
cabinets looked like sprays and splatters. The blood on the floor had drips and
several smears, as if from shoes, but there were also large pools. It was
obvious where the center of the attack was. Also quite obvious was a
square-shaped blank spot in the middle of all the blood. I looked more closely
and spotted a perfect circle of white in one pool of blood near one corner of
the square. It seemed like it could have come from a chair leg.

I looked behind me at
the rectangle table and noticed chairs on each side except the end closest to
me. That chair was missing. The legs of the remaining chairs were circular,
and, I guessed, exactly the same size as that circular mark in the blood.
Whatever had happened to Grandma had happened in the kitchen on a chair. If the
blood was any way to judge, I was pretty sure it had been terrible.

I left the kitchen and
went from room to room throughout the rest of the house. Each room was neat and
tidy; everything had a place and everything was in its place. I found
everything to be surprisingly modern. My vision of the homes of the elderly is
a collection of heirlooms and hand-me-downs from generations past. Martha
Porter didn’t seem to have anything like that. Really, she just didn’t have a
lot of stuff—something else the elderly often wind up with. The furniture in
each room was minimal, and the personal and decorative items were sparse.

Upstairs, I found her
bedroom and a guestroom. Her bedroom appeared to be the most lived-in room in
the house. There was a nightgown tucked behind a pillow on the bed, a housecoat
draped over the back of the rocking chair in the corner near the closet, and slippers
in the bathroom. In the bedside table drawer I found a small photo album. I
pulled it out and flipped through it. The photos were entirely of Danielle
Dillon, from the ages of about thirteen to eighteen. Mrs. Burbank had been
right about one thing: Danielle Dillon was a beautiful woman. I knew this must
be true, because she had been a gorgeous girl. As I put the album back, I
wondered why there were no photos of Desirae Dillon.

In the guestroom, I
found a couple items of clothing hanging in the closet. They appeared to be
roughly Danielle Dillon’s size and perhaps five or so years out of fashion. On
the floor of the closet I found a trunk. Inside were dozens of trinkets and
keepsakes. There were no personal items about the house because they were all
stashed in this trunk.

I looked through them,
finding more photos of Dillon, though in some of them she was much older, in
her twenties. Near the bottom, there was a blue box, about eight-inches square,
with a sweet little teddy bear on the top. I lifted it out and peeked inside.
There was a stack of photos, all of a dark-haired baby boy. The earliest photos
appeared to have been taken at the time of his birth. The latest ones showed a
boy of about a year. There was a blackened piece of something in a plastic bag.
I was guessing that something to be foreskin. (I can’t understand some of the
things people save.) There was also a small lock of dark hair and a baby
bracelet from the hospital. The baby’s name was Jonathan Russell Porter. This
was Martha Porter’s son.

I replaced everything
then went back downstairs. I couldn’t help but stare at the kitchen as I walked
through to the door. Who would have wanted to kill Martha Porter? Why would
that person prop her up in a chair to do it? Deeply saddened by the fate of my
kindred spirit Martha Porter, I let myself out.

Before my next stop, I decided to
break for lunch. I felt depressed and more than a little discouraged after my
visit to Grandma’s house. I drove to Amy’s house to ask her to lunch. I needed
a pick-me-up, and I wanted to ask her about the McKinnons. As an added bonus,
it was possible she had some cookies left from the bake sale fundraiser.

I’d seen no sign of
any silver Cadillacs since leaving the brewery, but as I walked down the
sidewalk in front of Grandma’s house, I noticed one parked at the far end of
the street. It was too far away to make out the plate, and the windows were so
dark I couldn’t even determine if there was anyone inside. But there was. As I
pulled into traffic a couple blocks away, I watched in the rearview mirror as
the Cadillac stopped at the end of Grandma’s street.

Ellmann’s warning rang
in my ear. Being so near the police station anyway, I pulled into the King
Soopers shopping center and drove around until I came out on Drake, then I
turned right. The Cadillac kept with me, though it stayed way back. Had I not
been looking for it, I don’t think I would have spotted it. I turned left into
the police station lot and slowed, watching the mirror. Behind me, I saw the
Cadillac cruise by. I turned around and left the lot, quickly heading in the
opposite direction before the Cadillac could turn around and catch back up.
Tail-free, I drove to Amy’s house. 

When I arrived, I was
glad to see only Amy’s car. I don’t mind Brandon, and sometimes I even think
he’s sort of fun, but he gets Amy all to himself pretty much every day. When I
come to see Amy, I want her all to myself. In fairness, he’s normally pretty
good about this. But not always. And I was glad it wouldn’t even be an issue
today.

I let myself in and
called for Amy. She didn’t respond, and I heard the water running. I went
upstairs and into their bedroom. I smiled to myself as I stepped over articles
of Amy’s clothing strewn across the floor. Amy has never been much of a neat
freak. Ironic since she is such an outstanding cleaning lady. Brandon is a bit
of a neat freak, though, and I know this is a point of contention in their
relationship.

I called her name again.
This time I heard her answer.

“In here!”

I went into the
bathroom and sat on the toilet.

“How long you been in
there?” I asked.

“I’m almost finished.
How’s it going? Oh!” She stuck her head around the shower curtain. “You didn’t
see Priscilla Casimir again, did you?”

“No, fortunately not.”

She shrugged and
disappeared behind the curtain again. “Someday you’ll come tell me she
developed a horrible flesh-eating rash. Or that she has boils all over her
face. It’ll be a glorious day, so I’m content to wait.”

I smiled. “Have I told
you recently how much I love you?”

She laughed. “So,
what’s going on?’

“I wondered if you’d
had lunch yet.”

“You could have just
called.”

I told her about my
cell phone going to cell phone heaven.

“That’s disgusting,”
she said. “And what are the chances of it happening to you twice?”

She twisted off the
water, and I pulled her towel off the rack, handing it to her as she pushed the
curtain aside. I sat on the toilet, and we chatted while she brushed her teeth
and put stuff in her hair. Then I sat on the bed, and we chatted while she got
dressed. It was the same thing we’d done since grade school.

“Where do you want to
eat?” she asked as we piled into the truck. “Did you have somewhere in mind?”

“No. Suggestions?”

“Let’s grab a salad. I
think I even have a coupon in here.” She pulled her purse onto her lap and
started digging. We were halfway there by the time she found it.

Mad Greens on College
was pretty crowded since it was lunchtime on a weekend. When we were through
the line, we carried our food outside and snagged a table. Amy sat in the sun
because she doesn’t burn, and I sat in the shade of the umbrella because I do.

“Did you find your guy
yet?” she asked.

“No, that’s on hold
for the moment. My time is running out to find Dillon, anyway, and I need some
kind of plan to get Dix, the slippery son of a bitch.”

“How’s it coming with
Dillon?”

I shrugged and took a
drink of water.

“I’m making progress,
but I don’t have much hope of finding her by six a.m. tomorrow. Actually, I
wanted to ask you a question. One of the addresses I have for Dillon belongs to
Linda and David McKinnon. They’re clients of yours.”

“The name sounds
familiar. Where do they live?”

I told her and added,
“They fired House and Home before they switched to you.”

“Oh, that’s right! How
could I forget? I think I’ve only talked to the husband once, but I like the
wife, and she’s a great client.”

“Why are they so
memorable? Don’t you get a lot of people who switch from House and Home?”

“Quite a few, yes. But
Linda sticks in my mind because of what happened with House and Home. She told
me she’d had a lot of trouble with the girls doing shoddy work, and she said
quite a few things got broken. Then a painting was stolen from their house. I
guess it was something small by some French impressionist or something; her
husband is quite the art nut, and they do have quite a few collectors’ pieces.
They still don’t know who is actually responsible, but she suspects someone on
the House and Home staff had a hand in it. House and Home is a national chain,
otherwise that lawsuit would have put them out of business.”

I guess this helped
explain why Linda McKinnon was so cautious about whom she spoke to and let in
the house, as well as what sort of “problems” they’d been having with House and
Home.

Something was tickling
the edge of my brain. I reached for it, but I couldn’t quite get it. We sat
quietly for several minutes, eating. How strange that both the Burbanks and the
McKinnons had had something stolen from them—in both cases, an art object worth
quite a bit. If there is no such thing as coincidence, what explanation could
there be for this? I wondered if Eric Dunn had ever had anything stolen from
his house. I remember seeing quite a few artsy things I thought might be worth
a pretty penny.

Then I remembered what
Mr. Burbank had said. He thought Dillon had been working in the house. Mrs.
McKinnon remembered Dillon from House and Home as the girl who did a crappy job
cleaning the bathroom, no pun intended. Eric Dunn told me he didn’t have any
house staff, but I suspected he used service people of some kind.

“You clean for a lot
of rich people, don’t you?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Some.
Why?”

I pulled the photo of
Dillon out of my pocket and passed it to her.

“She look familiar?”

“Yes …” she said,
and I could see the wheels turning. “Okay, let me think for a minute.”

“Amy Wells.”

I paused with a bite
halfway to my mouth and cringed at the nasally tone I always hope never to hear
again.

Priscilla Casimir
stopped beside our table, on the other side of the wrought iron gate enclosing
the restaurant patio, and looked down at us. She was dressed in another suit,
charcoal gray today, and wore giant sunglasses.

Amy turned to me. “She
do that to you?”

“Isn’t it annoying?”

“I’m not surprised,”
Priscilla said. “Where there’s one, there’s the other. That’s how it always
was.”

“It’s weird how
friends do that, huh?” I said.

“If you wouldn’t mind,
Priscilla,” Amy said, “we’re having lunch.”

“I wondered when I’d
run into you,” she said to Amy, “since I ran into Zoe. You were never far
away.”

“That sounds a lot
like jealousy masked as disgust,” Amy said casually. “Maybe you should talk to
someone about that.”

“Always so crass,
Amy.”

“Actually, I believe
that was
sarcasm,
” Amy said. “You’d think someone at one of those fancy
schools would have been able to teach you the difference with all the money you
were paying them.”

Priscilla opened her
mouth to respond, but I spoke first.

“Enough, Priscilla!
Now, buzz off. We’re busy.”

“Is that any way to
treat an old friend?” she asked.

Amy and I both rolled
our eyes.

“We’re not friends,” I
snapped. “Never were, never will be. Stop saying we were.”

“Oh, Zoe,” Priscilla
said sadly, shaking her head.

“Hey, brainiac,” Amy
said sharply. “You were the one who decided you two would be enemies. Don’t be
mad if she embraced it.”

“Fascinating how time
dilutes the memories,” Priscilla said.

“Think she learned to
talk like that at those fancy schools?” Amy asked me.

“Probably some sort of
requirement, you know. ‘You can’t graduate until you sound like a pompous idiot
every time you open your mouth.’”

Priscilla made a show
of looking at her expensive watch.

“Well, I must be
going,” she announced. “I have a meeting with the man I’m dating. I’m sure I’ll
be seeing you both around.”

We watched her walk
away, her heels
click, click, clicking
across the sidewalk.

“Hey, you’re dating
Ellmann, right?” Amy asked without looking away from Priscilla.

“Yeah,” I answered,
also not looking away.

“Don’t you call him
your boyfriend?”

“Yeah.”

“And you have dates,
not meetings?”

I nodded. “Yeah. But
then, Ellmann’s real, you know, not some guy I made up just now.”

She turned back to me.
“See, that’s what I thought.”

“Made up?”

She nodded. “Yes!
Because who—”

“—would date her?” we
finished together.

We both burst out
laughing, drawing looks from those at tables nearby and passing on the
sidewalk. We hardly noticed. After several minutes, we were able to sit up. I
reached for my water, and Amy sighed.

“Boy, I hate her.”

“Tell me about it.”

“It’s really too bad
she finally grew into those hips.”

“Absolutely
heartbreaking.”

She reached for her
fork again, glancing at the photo of Dillon still lying on the table.

“I got it!” she said, picking
up the photo. “She applied for a part-time position a while back. I interviewed
her.”

“Really? When was
that?”

“Oh, geez, Zoe, I have
no idea. I don’t have the turnover some companies do, but I have quite a bit.
I’m almost always hiring, and I interview a lot of people.”

“It could be
important,” I said. “Is there any way you could find out? Do you keep
applications or notes or something?” Knowing Amy, she did.

“Sure, of course.” She
glanced at her watch. “Missy’s in the office for a few hours today.” She picked
up her phone. “Let me see if I can catch her.”

Missy had been halfway
out the door when she’d heard the phone ring. Amy relayed her request, and a
moment later Missy came back on the line. She reported there were no interview
notes for anyone named Danielle Dillon.

“I didn’t think that
name was familiar,” Amy said to me. “Uh, Missy, look for an application done in
blue ink. And, I remember she listed Rocky as her highest level of education.”

“Blue ink?” I heard
Missy ask over the line.

Amy has a memory for
visual things like that.

Amy’s interview notes
and applications are filed by year and then subfiled by month. Missy had to go
back sixteen months to February of last year. Finally, she found it.

“Kelly Shultz. Thank
you, Missy.” Amy hung up. “She used the name Kelly Shultz.”

__________

Before I left Amy’s house, I used
her phone to check my messages. There were three: one from Ellmann, one from
Frye, and one from a Detective Charlie Simmons. Ellmann called to check in,
Frye called to warn me about Simmons, and Simmons called me about Vandreen.

Jeremiah Vandreen,
represented by his attorney Eric Dunn, was pressing charges against me for
assault and a few other things. Simmons was investigating and requested I
return his phone call immediately. Which was about all I needed just now. But I
wasn’t surprised. Vandreen wasn’t the type to take something like that lying
down.

I debated for several
minutes about returning Simmons’s call. I had no intention of running from what
I’d done, but I really didn’t want to be arrested until after six a.m.
tomorrow. Once the deadline on Danielle Dillon’s bond passed, I was perfectly
willing to see my consequences through. If I found Dillon in time, maybe we
could share a cell.

I sighed. I really
hate jail.

I decided not to call
Simmons. He may well come looking for me, but I thought I could elude him for
the next eighteen hours. In the end, I might not find Dillon. But if I
couldn’t, it wasn’t going to be because I wasted what little time I had left in
jail.