Catherine Nelson - Zoe Grey 02 - The Trouble with Theft (5 page)

“Actually, I need to
see Cory. Is he home?” I played it sweet with the kid for the moment, hoping
he’d be inclined to help me.

“Cory?” he spat. “What
the hell does a hottie like you want with Cory? Especially when
I’m
right here.”

He held is arms out to
the sides, showing me more clearly what he was offering.

Mostly he was
irritating me. And I didn’t know how long he’d been in the sun, but I was
pretty sure he’d forgotten to put deodorant on that morning. Or maybe shower altogether.

I grinned at the kid
as I looked him up and down. “Well, Cory already paid me, but maybe I could
just say he wasn’t home.”

The kid dropped his
arms to his sides, and his smile fell slightly as he was, no doubt, trying to
calculate the odds of propositioning a real whore.

I shrugged, smiling.
“Sure,” I said. “Why not? You’re pretty cute. But Cory didn’t include tip, so you’ll
have to pay that. Oh, and you have to wear a condom. My test results haven’t
come back yet.”

I took a step toward
him.

Smile gone now, he
immediately stepped back.

I stopped and looked
at him. “That’s what I thought. Now, where’s Cory?”

The kid moved off the
sidewalk and pointed an almost accusatory finger at the house. “Inside.”

I climbed the stairs
onto the porch that spanned the entire front of the house and went in the open
door. The house was what you’d expect for one built in 1910. The rooms were
small and square, the floors hardwood, the walls tight and angular. I made my
way through the rooms on the first floor, finding them empty. As I was coming
back to the stairs, I heard footsteps. I looked up and saw Dix coming
downstairs.

He slowed when he saw
me, grinning in what I’m sure he thought was a charming fashion. I forced
myself to smile back. What the hell was wrong with these college boys?

“Please tell me you’re
looking for me,” he said.

“Actually, I am.”

He was surprised.
“What? Really?”

I nodded and came to a
stop at the bottom of the stairs. Dix was a couple inches shorter than six feet
and very thin. He had dark hair, light brown eyes, angular facial features, and
a big nose. He was wearing jeans and a green Sesame Street t-shirt. Whoever
introduced the look of adult-sized kids clothes should be shot.

“You’re Cory, right?”

“Yeah …”

“Then I’m looking for
you.”

Then he was serious.
“This doesn’t happen to me. What do you really want?”

“I need to talk to you
about your court date.”

It was all I got out.
As soon as he heard the word “court,” he spun around and darted up the stairs.

I rolled my eyes and
started after him, but my goal was only to keep him in sight, because I was
sure he was trapping himself.

Of course he had to
run.

After the first three
steps, I was panting, sweating, and more than a little angry. My legs were
screaming, and I thought it a real possibility they might stop working and I’d
fall flat on my face. Until that happened, though, I pushed on.

Dix cleared the top of
the stairs before I’d climbed five and was gone around the corner to the left.
I heard his hurried footsteps on the hardwood, and as I got to the top, I heard
a loud banging, like a door crashing open, and some yelling. Making a left, I
sprinted (I use the term loosely) down the hall in the direction of the
yelling.

“What the fuck, man!
Get out!”

I heard what I thought
was a window opening, and as I got to an open doorway in the middle of the
hall, I smelled something distinct. I thought I knew which room Dix had barged
into and why the current occupant was yelling about the interruption. Sure
enough, when I got to the open door, I saw it was a bathroom. Another
college-aged kid was fastening his belt, a magazine on the nearby counter. And
he hadn’t flushed yet.

This was beyond the
normal stink. Based on the smell, the guy must have had an upset stomach, and I
wanted to suggest he take something for it. But there wasn’t time for
conversation. As I came into the doorway, I saw Dix’s legs disappear through
the open window behind the toilet. In a moment of temporary insanity brought on
by anger and a lack of oxygen, I raced forward. Just as Dix had done, I stepped
onto the toilet seat and reached for the window ledge. Two things caused me to
stop.

One, a good look out
the window revealed just exactly how Dix had gotten down from the second story:
there was a large tree with a branch about four feet from the side of the
house. I could only imagine the damage I’d do to my still-recovering shoulder
if I went swinging around in that tree like a freaking monkey. Two, I heard a
splash, and before I looked, I knew what had happened.

I’d lifted my right
foot onto the toilet. The motion of lifting my leg had pushed my cell phone up and
out of my pocket. Leaning forward had caused it to slide away from my leg and
drop into the toilet, which
hadn’t
been flushed. I was also right about
the upset-belly thing.

I stepped off the
toilet and stood beside it, pulling the collar of my t-shirt over my nose and
mouth. The kid in the bathroom came to stand beside me. We both looked down
into the toilet for a long moment. My phone wasn’t even visible.

“Man, that sucks,” the
kid said.

“I don’t suppose I
could talk you into reaching in and getting it, could I?”

He slowly shook his
head. “Don’t suppose you could.”

“All right, do you
have any of those yellow cleaning gloves?”

He thought about it
for a moment then snapped his fingers and looked up from the toilet.

“As a matter of fact,
I think we do.”

“I’m also going to
need a plastic baggie.”

__________

“What’s this?”

The salesman reached
for the plastic baggie as if to open it.

I stood across the counter
from him in the Sprint store. There were two other employees and half a dozen
customers in the store, all of them eyeballing the baggie with suspicion, all
of them curious to see if the guy helping me would reach in and grab the phone.

“I wouldn’t open that
if I were you.”

“Why not? What
happened to it?”

“It fell in the
toilet.”

“Oh, okay, so you’re
worried about water damage. Did you try drying it out?”

“Water damage is the
least of the problems.”

He stared at me for a
long moment then pulled his hands away from the baggie.

“Ah,” he said. “I
understand. Well, we can get you set up with a new phone.” He turned to the
computer and began punching some keys. “What’s your phone number?”

I recited it.
“Actually, I have insurance. Can you order a replacement?”

When I was seventeen,
I’d worked in a nursing home. I’d dropped my phone in the toilet there once.
That
toilet had been flushed, but that didn’t make any difference to the phone, only
to me when I had to reach in and fish it out. After that incident, I stopped
carrying my phone in my front scrub pocket and started carrying the expensive
kind of insurance on my cell phones, the kind that specifically covers damage
by toilets.

He searched the
computer screen for a moment then looked up. “Yes, we can do that. But it’ll
probably be a week. Unfortunately, we don’t have any loaner phones to give
you.”

“Of course not,” I said
with a sigh.

Ten minutes later, I
left the Sprint store and got back in the truck. I drove east on Harmony to the
library on Council Tree, where I went in and found a computer. It wasn’t very
busy, and I didn’t have to wait.

The internet has
revolutionized the power of information and ease of obtaining it. Some of this
has been good, but there are always two sides to every coin. Certain kinds of
crime are increasing at alarming rates because of the incredibly personal
information bad guys are now so easily able to find out about people. But, that
is a two-way street. People like me are able to find out just as much information
about the bad guys.

My first stop was Facebook.
Bad guys usually don’t make time for jobs or court dates or other
responsibilities, but somehow they can always make time for Facebook. I don’t
have a Facebook account, mostly for the reasons I just gave, so I logged in as
my friend Jill who uses her dog’s name for all her passwords, no matter how
many times I’ve warned her against it. I did a quick search of the name
Danielle Dillon. Nothing came up.

Playing a long shot, I
looked up Cory Dix. It was my very good luck Dix had a page, and he didn’t have
it set to private. A couple minutes of searching netted me his current place of
employment, the Starbucks on College and Walnut. I also learned he had a
girlfriend, a sophomore named Megan Rice. A little smarter than Dix, Megan had
her page set to private, and I didn’t get much from it that I couldn’t already
guess. Still, neither a job nor a girlfriend had been listed in the file I’d
been given on Dix, so I had at least made progress.

I logged out of Facebook
and brought up dexknows.com. I did a reverse search of the Conrad address. In
addition to the Conrads, one other name came up: Ian Dawson. A quick property
search in county records told me Dawson was the owner of the property and that
he’d inherited it. I went back to Dex and searched his name, coming up with a
post office box and no phone number. I made a note and searched Megan Rice.
There was no Megan, but I found a Peter and Sonja, which I thought might have been
her parents. I scribbled their names down then went to the
Fort Collins
Coloradoan
website, searching back issues for information about the Conrad
murders. Despite what Bonnie Matheson had said about the paper having done
extensive coverage, I could find little more than what she’d already told me.

Feeling a little like the
library stop had been a bust, I walked over to Dazbog Coffee (my favorite) and
got a perfectly blended chocolate-flavored coffee. I chatted briefly with the
girl behind the counter and one of the owners who’d been in doing paperwork,
then left. Two sips in, I didn’t feel the trip had been a waste of time at all.

Back in the truck, I
motored over to the next address listed for Dillon. The house, another huge
place, was in a neighborhood near Fossil Creek High School, off of Ziegler. The
houses here are probably comparable to the houses in the country club area I’d
just been to, but the major difference was that the sidewalks here were full of
activity: bikers, skaters, parents, kids, dogs.

I took a moment to add
the license plate and car information to my list, then I got out and walked to
the house I needed. The front yard was a bit small, but it was well kept and
the expansive flowerbeds were immaculate, blooming with a multitude of colors
and sizes.

I climbed the steps to
the front porch and rang the bell. A moment later, a brunette woman in her
thirties peered out at me cautiously. She was well dressed and groomed, though
without the pomp Mrs. Burbank had. I could see two paintings on the wall of the
living room behind her that I guessed were expensive. I smiled and introduced
myself.

“Do you know Danielle
Dillon?”

She opened the screen
door and stepped out onto the porch with me, pulling the door closed behind
her. I got the impression she wasn’t in the habit of inviting strangers into
her house. I didn’t get the feeling she was hiding Dillon inside.

“No, I don’t know
anyone by that name.”

I showed her the
picture. “Recognize this woman?”

She thought for a
moment. “I think she looks familiar, but I really can’t think where I would
have seen her.”

“Can I ask your name?”

“Linda McKinnon.”

“Do you live here
alone?”

“No, my husband Dave
lives here, too.”

“Do you have any house
staff?”

“Do you have some sort
of identification?”

I gave her my card
then pulled the cheap badge out of my pocket. I didn’t blame her when she
didn’t appear impressed. I think the badge looks like it came from a costume
set at the dollar store, too.

“You’re a bond agent?”
she asked.

“That’s right. Feel
free to call the police and have them run my name.”

“That’s okay. It’s
just people have to be so careful nowadays, what with everyone trying to scam
them. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. More people
should be so careful.”

“To answer your
question, we don’t have any house staff, but I do have a cleaning service that
comes once a week.”

“Which service would
that be?”

“Clean Sweep. It’s a
small, local business. I switched to it last year. I was using House and Home.”

I know of Clean Sweep;
it’s Amy’s business.

I thanked McKinnon for
her time, asked her to call if she thought of anything, then left.