Dead Lift (11 page)
The day was so insanely hot that wavy translucent forms radiated upward from the blacktop around me, playing tricks on my eyes. There was no mistaking the envelope wedged underneath my driver’s side wiper blade, though. It bore my name in thick, blue marker and was not only sealed, but taped shut.
I scanned the jail’s quiet lot, mostly occupied with county vehicles and police cars, and didn’t see anyone suspicious. In an adjoining field several hundred yards off, an unsupervised trustee in an orange jumpsuit like Claire’s was cutting the grass on a riding mower—no fences. He made me nervous as hell.
I pulled the envelope from my windshield and opened it. Inside I found a key fastened to a cheap metal ring with a paper tag attached. It took me a minute to recognize the address printed on the label. Other than the key, the envelope was empty.
Who would have left me a key to Platt’s bungalow, and why here?
I unlocked my car and leaned in to start the ignition, but I waited, one foot propped in the door frame before climbing inside. Better to let the super-heated interior come down a few hundred degrees first. Meanwhile, I studied the unfamiliar handwriting on the key’s label. Maybe this was a trick, some kind of ruse to get me inside Platt’s house the same way Claire had been lured there. But then what? Would someone be waiting inside? I thought about last night’s strange e-mail and didn’t like the idea of following a mysterious lead to an empty house. It wasn’t a protected crime scene anymore but might become one again if I didn’t watch out.
When the temperature inside the Taurus was tolerable, I headed across town to meet Jeannie and Annette for an early lunch at a family-style buffet that Annette favored. My phone squawked its sick noises again—someone wanted to talk to me, but the water-damaged display provided no clue about who that person was. Obviously, Jeannie’s rice treatment had been a bust.
It turned out to be Richard. “What was in the envelope?”
“How’d you—”
“Did you know you were being followed?”
I tried to catch up. “You had me followed?”
“Not you.” He chuckled. “Diana. I have a guy on her, remember? And he said Diana spent this morning watching an apartment. When he gave me the address of that apartment—yours—I knew something good was coming.”
“That’s creepy.” I wanted to tell him about the e-mail, but I could tell he wasn’t finished.
“When he told me Diana followed a redhead to the county jail, I got worried she might confront you again.”
“She didn’t.”
“I know. She left a note on your windshield and drove away. What’d it say?”
“I’ll show it to you later,” I said. “Right now I’m in some heavy traffic here and I need to hang up.”
The white lies came easily. I needed to think about whether to tell Richard about the key.
***
“Why keep it under wraps?” Jeannie smoothed honey butter over a home-style dinner roll and passed it to Annette. “This is big news. Richard would want to know.”
“He’d never let me use it.”
“Why the hell not?” She glanced at Annette, an afterthought, and made an apologetic face at me for swearing. Then she dumped a package of sweetener into her iced tea and stirred it with a finger.
Annette was too busy peeling off pieces of richly buttered bread to notice Jeannie’s linguistic slip. She folded a bite of the roll onto her tiny tongue and chewed, oblivious.
“If Richard breaks the law he could lose his license. He might be fined or sanctioned,” I said. “Or even go to jail. I’m not telling him about the key.”
“I’m confused. How would he be breaking the law?”
“Entering a house without consent.”
“Consent’s impossible,” Jeannie said. “The owner’s dead.”
“
Somebody’s
the custodian of that property now. Without that person’s permission, going inside is breaking and entering. Even with a key.”
“No it’s not.”
Yes, it is
, I wanted to say, but with Jeannie there was no point in arguing, so I sipped my ice water instead.
“You planning to go alone then?” she asked. “That doesn’t seem very smart.”
“Not sure.”
“I’ll go with you,” she said. “For insurance.” Then she snapped her fingers, remembering. “Damn. It’s usually in my handbag but stupid airport security…I feel naked without it.”
“You feel naked without airport security?”
“No. Without my Ladysmith.”
Annette perked up. “What’s a Ladysmith, Aunt Jeannie?”
“It’s…kind of like a super soaker, kid. Only instead of getting a person wet, it stops him cold.” She stabbed a piece of chicken fried steak onto her fork. Then to me, she added, “Nine millimeter.”
“I want a nine millimeter!” In her excitement, Annette said this loud enough to draw a look from the next table.
I glared at Jeannie. “I don’t like guns. Even when they’re toys.”
Annette’s enthusiasm dampened and I caught Jeannie giving her a look I didn’t fully understand—the kind that suggested the conversation wasn’t over.
“No guns, water or otherwise,” I said to them both, by way of clarifying. I was glad she’d had to leave her weapon behind in Ohio, otherwise it would likely be getting passed around the dinner table now.
“Hey,” Annette said, the final bite of dinner roll having disappeared into her mouth. “Now can I go to the dessert bar?”
Her plate was still full of veggies and chicken. Jeannie looked at me expectantly, clearly bursting to spoil my daughter. I reminded myself that she wasn’t in town that often and that everything was okay in moderation. They pushed their chairs back the instant I gave the nod, and Annette led the way to a tall stack of clean plastic plates. I watched them ogle a spread of cobblers, pies, cookies, and cakes and then I looked away, fearing the impending sugar buzz.
Annette came back with two cookies and a heaping bowl of vanilla ice cream with a side dish of Gummi Bears. She dumped the bears into the ice cream and stirred tirelessly until it melted into some kind of smoothie. “See what I’m doing?” she asked Jeannie. “Like this.”
And Jeannie, who’d brought an identical compliment of goodies on her own tray, first copied Annette, then sampled the frozen treat, and finally pronounced my daughter a culinary genius.
“Think you two can manage without me for a few more hours?” I asked. “I have a little more work to do.”
Jeannie squinted at me, her suspicion obvious.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I won’t go alone. I’ll take Vince.”
“He’s funny.” Annette set down her spoon. She pulled her lower eyelids down and pushed the tip of her nose up as far as it would go. “He showed me how to do this.” She looked back and forth so that her eyeballs went to the extreme left and right sides of their sockets. As I took in the capillaries and stared up her nostrils, it seemed everyone I knew was conspiring against me where raising this child was concerned.
“Don’t do that,” I said. “Your face might get stuck that way.”
Annette laughed. “My dad says that too.”
He never had a chance to
.
“Only that’s when I flip my eyelids inside out like this.” She started to demonstrate, but I tapped her arm.
“Not now, sweetheart. People are eating.”
She picked up her spoon again, suddenly self-aware, and returned to her ice cream.
“Sure, Em.” Jeannie used the edge of her spoon to isolate a trio of Gummi Bears. “We’ve got it all under control. Say, does Vince have a…super soaker?”
Annette giggled.
“No.”
“Shame. He’s almost perfect.”
I laid some bills on the table and got up to prepare a To Go box for Vince. Pulling that cowboy off an important job would be tough, but my few experiences with him had indicated that all things were possible with the right combination of “fixins.”
“This is trouble if I ever saw it.” Vince pulled a handkerchief from the back pocket of his jeans and wiped sweat from his face. He stared through my open window to the Styrofoam box sitting on the passenger seat next to me. “What are you doin’ to me, woman?”
I squinted up at him. The midday sun beat down on both of us, but whereas his Stetson shielded his eyes from the glare, I took it straight on the retinas. “You busy?”
I knew he was.
“We’re gonna finish framing this today.” Behind him, another cookie-cutter house in the latest master planned community had begun to take form. I didn’t like the uniformity of the floor plans or the way new neighborhoods were laid out in barren fields with seedling trees. The homes on this street, each in different stages of assembly, all looked drearily homogenous and devoid of personality.
He leaned closer to my window and, even though he was dripping sweat, I hoped for a kiss. “Do I smell green beans?”
I cut my eyes toward the box. “Maybe.”
“Well now we’re talking. Let’s have ‘em.”
“Here’s the thing.” I popped the top on the Styrofoam and let him take inventory. Sirloin, green beans, mashed potatoes with dark gravy, two rolls, and…
“Gummi Bears?”
“From Annette.”
He smiled. Lord, I loved that smile.
“But I need a favor. Can you get away for an hour? Eat in the car?”
He reached into the car and grabbed a few green beans, then turned without explanation back to the house-in-progress and walked away. He tossed his head back to chuck the beans into his mouth, and veered toward two men in hard hats who were examining a blue print at one corner of the lot. It was always a treat to watch Vince walk away, especially in worn, dusty old jeans.
I rolled up my window to keep the air conditioning. A moment later, he returned and climbed in the passenger side. I gave him my sweetest, you-are-so-good-to-me face. He made the same face right back at me, his version more sarcastic than sincere.
“You’re making fun of me.”
“Just a little.” He winked, grabbed the seatbelt without looking. As soon as its buckle clicked into place, he took the plastic silverware from my console and tapped the lid on a sweaty thirty-two ounce Coke in the cup holder. “This mine too? I’m afraid to ask where we’re going.”
He started to eat and I filled him in.
“So you’re not taking Richard because he wouldn’t go inside?”
“Right.”
“But you think Diana might be Platt’s killer?”
“Maybe.”
“And you know for sure she’s the one who left you this key.”
“Yes.”
“So it might be a trick.”
“Correct.”
“And my part in all this is what?” He laughed. “Protection?”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“You said it’s breaking and entering even with a key.”
“Yes, because I don’t have permission to use it.”
“So if we get caught we’ll get in trouble?”
“Yeah.”
“Trouble. I knew it as soon as I saw the food.”
“You don’t have to search with me. Just help me make sure the house is empty first. Please?”
I took his silence as an unspoken yes. For several miles, he sat quietly and ate, working his way, one at a time, through each divided section of the Styrofoam box. First the meat, then the potatoes and beans. When he was on the first roll, he stopped and turned suddenly toward me.
“Hey,” he said. “What if you find something in there?”
“That’s the idea.”
“No. I mean, if you find something, you’ll have to tell Richard where it came from.”
“Depends.”
“When you say where it came from, you’ll have to explain how you got in the house.”
“Sometimes it’s better not to tell him stuff.”
“Sometimes it is.” He tapped his chest, indicating a scar I knew was underneath his damp, gritty work shirt. A few months ago, he’d taken a bullet, arguably the result of another time I’d withheld information from Richard.
I didn’t answer him but my eyes must have given me away. He stroked the hand I’d been resting on the gear shift. “You know that’s not what I meant. I meant that I don’t want it to happen to you.”
I opened my hand, palm up, and he intertwined his fingers with mine. I loved his purposeful, deliberate grip. We didn’t let go until I pulled into Platt’s driveway.
“Here goes nothing.” I turned off the car. We walked up Platt’s carefully painted front steps and let ourselves inside, assuming the use of our key would assuage the worries of any curious onlookers.
The house reeked.
Its air conditioning had been turned off, leaving the place stuffy and grotesquely hot. I didn’t know in which room Platt had been killed, but I hoped the sickening odor of violence I smelled wouldn’t worsen as we got deeper into the house.
“No one’s hiding here,” I said. “Too foul.” I closed the front door.
Vince casually peeked into a coat closet on our left anyway. He flung the door open wide to show me its contents—sports jackets on hangars, wing tips neatly paired below.
Platt’s furnishings were decades old but, like the cottage itself, impeccably maintained. The stoic feel of hardwood floors was softened somewhat by a large oriental area rug he’d chosen for the front room. Opened letters waited on the oiled surface of a walnut coffee table and I skimmed the envelopes, all utility bills.
A sofa and chairs lined the perimeter of the expansive rug, the sofa facing the front door and the chairs angled in near the corners. The chairs, I thought, hadn’t been used much but the sofa cushions had wear marks in their centers. Throw pillows crowded the left end of the couch, one wedged between the armrest and seat. A smallish flat screen TV had been mounted on the opposite wall. I imagined Platt winding down on the sofa after a long day and wondered if his had been a lonely life or one of intentional solitude.
An ornamental mirror and two nondescript paintings decorated the walls, but I found no portraits, which struck me as a little sad. Then, on an end table, I spotted a framed 8x10 wedding picture of Platt and his late wife, who’d been mentioned at his memorial service. The photograph added the only real personality to his otherwise utilitarian living room.
Ahead of me, Vince roamed toward the kitchen and dining areas, two narrow, connected rooms running left to right across the back of the house. I noticed the back door Claire had used a week ago when this whole affair had started, and tried to picture her hesitantly pushing the door open, calling for a dog that didn’t exist. Black fingerprint dust remained along the doorframe and knob, probably forgotten among the more obvious cleaning priorities.
Vince opened the pantry and found only canned vegetables and the usual staple foods.
“Come on.” I headed for the hall.
The little bungalow had only two bedrooms and a single bath. I looked under the bed in the first room while Vince stuck with checking the closet. As expected, nobody was there.
Across the hall, a smaller room facing the street served as a simple, no-frills home office. The centerpiece, a plain wooden desk, faced the only window and, although a keyboard and mouse pad had been left, his computer was absent.
On the other side of the glass, my old Taurus baked outside in the drive. I was glad I’d remembered to leave its windows down.
Platt’s bookcases held more papers than books and his walls were bare except for a deep beige coat of paint. When I noticed the dark smear stain on the floor planks, I stopped, feeling strangely more determined.
Platt hadn’t left legions of friends and loved ones behind to rally for the truth about his murder. Everyone assumed his killer had already been caught. I’d come to the investigation aiming to clear an innocent mother, wanting foremost to reunite her with her kids. Standing where Platt had died strengthened my resolve. Not only did Claire’s boys deserve their mom, Platt deserved justice.
Being near his personal things moved me. Walking his floors, seeing his wingtips, I knew a simple man had lived here. Near as I could tell, he’d kept to himself any time he wasn’t out helping people.
“Bathroom’s clear too,” Vince said, stepping into the room. I hadn’t noticed he’d left. “What now?”
I turned to him, sickened by the lingering smell of washed-up blood and sorrowful for a man I’d never met. “I have to figure out who did this to him.”
He stole a glance at his watch. “Eighteen minutes. I’ll take the bedroom.”
I watched him turn and leave. In three strides, he was in the room across the hall.
I started with the desk. Its top drawer was for pens, pencils, and sticky pads. The middle was for a stapler, tape dispenser, and spare computer mouse with a cord so tightly wound around itself that it was disturbing. And the bottom contained extra printer paper. At my own desk, all these items would have been crammed into a single drawer.
His closet was equally neat. Instead of jackets and shoes like we’d found in the foyer, this one was filled with the components of a model train set. A plywood base rested on-end against the closet’s wall. The shelves were stacked end-to-end with small, meticulously arranged boxes containing individual rail cars. Segments of track, capable of snapping together in interchangeable patterns, were nestled in an opaque Rubbermaid tub at the foot of the plywood base. And that was it. There were no rolls of wrapping paper jammed in the closet’s darkest corner, no forgotten knock-around shoes, and no board games. There wasn’t even a winter coat for Houston’s fluke cold days. Just trains.
Apparently, Dr. Platt didn’t believe in Miscellaneous. Even the papers on his bookcases were categorized: back issues of professional journals, Xeroxed articles, manuscripts in-progress, and sheet music for an instrument I hadn’t yet determined.
As I was about to give up on the room, I caught sight of his phone. It was a standard cordless model made to stand upright in its base while charging. The display said READY and its prominent capital letters got me thinking. I lifted the handset and pressed the Caller ID button with my thumb. Forty calls were in the log. I helped myself to a pen out of Platt’s top drawer, a sheet of paper from his third, and got busy writing down names and numbers. When a repeat entry appeared, I kept track by adding checkmarks.
“Found something here,” Vince called from the bedroom.
I noted the final entries from the log, folded my list, and tucked it into the back pocket of my shorts. Across the hall, Vince waited in a reading chair that occupied the far corner. A manila folder was open on his lap.
“You’re going to want to take these.” He indicated the stack of papers inside the folder. “There’s no time to read them here.”
I didn’t like the idea of removing property, but Vince was right. We’d run out of time.
Then I noticed something on the end table next to Vince’s chair. “I know that geode.” It was impossible to miss.
He turned. Prominently displayed on the nightstand between Platt’s bed and armchair was an enormous amethyst identical to the one I’d seen at the club.
“The other half’s in Diana’s office.”
Vince pulled open the drawer in the same end table. It was empty.
“This is where I found the folder. It’s full of letters from Diana.”
My shock must have been visible.
“Old letters,” He added, quickly. “From back in the eighties.”
I couldn’t wait to see them. Probably sensing as much, Vince snapped the folder closed and stood to leave. “Later,” he said. “I have to get back to the site.”
We backtracked through the short hall and were nearly through the kitchen when I noticed a neglected fish bowl in Platt’s recessed window sill. Olive algae adhered to the sides of the little bowl and a red Betta fish hovered in the murky water, probably afraid to move and stir up any funk. I imagined the poor guy hadn’t eaten for days. I crossed to the window and lifted the bowl, figuring there was no sense losing two lives in that house.
My car was obnoxiously hot despite its open windows. I settled behind the wheel and passed the bowl to Vince. Ahead, William Saunders’ automatic garage door lowered. I didn’t figure William had a driver’s license, so that meant his caregiver Mr. B. was probably home and that I’d missed him again. Mentally, I started to prioritize a growing list of people to call and ideas to follow-up, but my focus was lost when my phone squawked to indicate a new voicemail. This was a surprise because the phone hadn’t rung.
The message from Richard was so distracting that for a moment I stopped blaming him for ruining my phone.
“We should talk,” he’d said. “Diana King is named in Platt’s will.”
