Dead Lift (17 page)

Chapter Twenty-eight

“You know,” I said. “I’m starting to get a feeling in the pit of my stomach.”

“Nothing a salad and fettuccini can’t fix.” Jeannie drizzled raspberry vinaigrette over a bowl of baby spinach, walnuts, and feta cheese.

I used my knife to scoot a cherry tomato to the edge of my plate and rephrased. “No, I mean things are adding up.”

“Good!”

“Yeah, for the case. But it feels gross to me. I know somebody’s out there watching everything I do, or at least making me feel like he’s watching everything I do. I hate that he’s been in the apartment, and I can’t help but wonder what else in my personal life he’s screwing around with.”

“Hey, that reminds me about Vince—”

I raised a hand. “We’ll come back to him.”

She pushed a forkful of salad into her mouth and nodded. When she finished, she set her fork down and sipped from her water glass. “How do you figure things are adding up?”

“Monday night when I got stuck at Claire’s during that storm, a guy stopped by. Later Claire told me he’s a hanger-on ex-lover.”

“Bummer,” she said. “We’ve all had those.”

No, not all of us
. I let it go.

She angled her head down slightly and gazed up at me from under perfectly tweezed brows. “Why didn’t you tell me about that?”

I squinted at her. “Maybe I would have if you’d have answered any of the phones that night when I called.”

She grinned, apparently pleased I was still annoyed.

“Anyway,” I continued. “This guy who stopped by had a key, knew the pass code, and made his way around the kitchen like he owned the place. He was completely adorable and a real looker—” She grinned and her eyes crinkled. Any mention of handsome men got this response from her. “—But don’t get excited yet. The creepy part is that he looked like that manager’s description.”

Her smile vanished. “Ick.”

“Exactly. And it gets worse.” I took my own sip of water.

A waiter brought a fresh loaf of warm bread over and Jeannie began slicing it immediately.

“Did you tell the guy your name?”

“Of course,” I said. “At the time I thought maybe he was her live-in boyfriend. I mean, a guy walks right into the house, helps himself to a beer and offers you a drink. Doesn’t that seem like somebody who lives there? The entire encounter was bizarre. Totally awkward.”

She grabbed a saucer from my side of the table and put two slices of bread on it before passing it back. I buttered them and tried not to get ahead of myself in the story.

“He told me his name was Kevin Burke. When I asked if he lived there, he said it was Claire’s house.”

“Suitably vague.”

“Yeah. And then he walked over to the freezer…”

At this, Jeannie twisted her face into an expression best described as repulsion. “Stop. Just stop now.”

“Well it’s relevant, I think. He went to the freezer for you-know-what and tossed one into the sink and said he was doing Logan a favor by feeding the snake while the kid was at his grandmother’s house.”

She closed her eyes and turned her head away, presumably letting a wave of nausea pass. I was pretty sure this was all for show.

When she turned back, she took a bite of her own buttered bread and thought for a moment while she chewed. “The kid was there earlier in the day,” she finally said. “You suppose he forgot?”

“
Thank you
,” I said. “At the time I wondered the same thing. The weather was horrible…you remember.” She nodded. “You’d think an errand like that one could wait a day, until conditions cleared. I mean, can’t snakes go weeks without eating? What’s another day or two?”

“Please stop with the snakes and the eating.”

I smiled. “
Then
, when he pulled down the driveway, I remember watching his tail lights go and I’m positive he drove a Mustang.”

She brightened. “Like the fifty-eight dollar steak guy.”

“Yes, but there’s
more
.”

“You’re killing me. You’re like Nancy Drew today.” She chuckled. “Must be the clothes. I think she dressed frumpy too.”

“Just because an outfit isn’t skin tight and cut to my navel doesn’t make me homely.”

“Maybe we should get you a little pillbox hat to go with your sensible shoes.”

“I hate you.”

She laughed. “Tell me the rest.”

“No.”

“Come on.” She went back to cutting her salad.

I returned my attention to my own salad and ignored her. Why pick the middle of the story to insult me?

She tried again. “So he drove a Mustang
and
…”

I couldn’t help myself. “But I don’t think it was blue. Or vintage.”

“Weird.”

“When I went to the Heights on Tuesday evening to talk to Platt’s neighbors, William, the one who’s afraid of strangers, was wearing a shirt with a Mustang logo on it.”

“How do you remember this stuff?”

“I thought it was sad. He seemed to like cars but probably couldn’t drive.”

She shrugged, stabbed a bite of lettuce.

“Then I went to Platt’s house later, after Diana gave me the key, and somebody came home to William’s house as Vince and I were leaving. I saw the garage door going down.”

“Let me guess,” she said, “A Mustang.”

“Yep.”

“Blue vintage?”

“No. I think it was a later model.”

“Someone in this mess has a penchant for Ford, I guess.”

Two waiters came, each with a plate, and set steaming dishes of pasta in front of us. We were offered fresh cracked black pepper and Parmesan cheese grated off a huge block. I declined, wanting to be left alone, but Jeannie asked for both.

When we were alone again, I added the last detail. “The guy that takes care of William is called Mr. B.”

She twirled angel hair around the tines of her fork. “Mr. Burke?”

“That’s what I’m wondering.” Maybe I’d had too much bread and salad. My appetite was gone.

***

After the meal, Jeannie drove us toward Claire’s house in River Oaks while I tried to get through the convoluted phone system at the Harris County Jail. I needed to ask Claire where I might find a photograph of Kevin Burke to show the manager at Brewster’s. If I couldn’t reach her, or if no photos were at the house, I still wanted another pass through her records. Now that I knew what to look for, I hoped something new would come to light.

After a transfer and what felt like a half hour on hold, I learned that offenders in jail can’t receive incoming calls. Frustrated, I asked when visiting hours ended, figuring that maybe there was still time to go ask her in person.

“Attorneys on record can visit around the clock, seven days a week,” the attendant said. “Everyone else has until nine.” We still had a few hours. Computer keys clacked on the other end of the line. “Unfortunately, it looks like she’s already had a visitor. Only one visit per day.”

Of course. Young had sent her mother to break the news about Daniel.

I took an extended breath and exhaled slowly through my nose, letting my head fall back into the headrest.

An idea formed. I thanked the attendant and hung up.

“I can’t call her or see her. Young’s going to have to do it.” I opened my phone again. “I really don’t want to make this call.”

“Don’t call him yourself. Have Richard do it.”

I swiveled my head, still on the headrest, and looked at her. “That’s the call I don’t want to make.”

***

“Read it back to me,” I said.

Richard played along, but he wasn’t pleased. “You want to know if there are any pictures of Kevin Burke and where they are. You want to know how long she and Kevin were together. You want to hear all about the break-up, and whether anything sketchy was going on with her credit cards.”

“Right,” I said, a little louder than was necessary. “The break up’s the most important part. Make sure Young gets it right. I need to know
everything
she would have told me if they’d let me come see her. He’ll have to explain why I’m not there.”

“When are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

“Tell him to hurry too. He needs to go right now, no matter what. We’re almost to Claire’s house. Call me back after you’ve talked to him and I’ll fill you in.”

He hung up on me, his normal thing when I got too bossy.

I turned to Jeannie. “Claire holds stuff back. Sometimes she leaves out the most obvious details.”

Jeannie kept her eyes on the road. “Self-destructive?”

“Not sure. When I talk to her it’s like pulling teeth. This morning Young told me I got further with her than he did.”

“Weird.”

“I’m worried she won’t tell him what I want to know. She has a knack for glossing over the big points.”

Jeannie checked her mirror and changed lanes. “You’re doing everything you can with what you have.”

I looked out the passenger window and idly watched sidewalks, cars, and billboards stream by while thinking about that. She was right.

“Now about Vince,” she said, with a stern edge in her voice that meant there’d be no more avoiding the topic.

I rolled out my neck, its tension suddenly oppressive. With my chin still on my chest and the muscles at the base of my skull stretching, I took a deep breath.

“Here’s the thing,” I said, chin down, thankful to avoid her steely eyes. “Staying with Vince would be too awkward.”

“Because I’m there? Because I’ll get a hotel room, no problem.”

“No,” I said, aware my pulse was elevated. “Awkward because of tons of other stuff.”

“Richard was right, though. It’s a good idea to stay elsewhere until we figure out what’s going on with your cyber stalker.”

I didn’t know where to begin. “It’d be different if we were, um—”

“Sleeping together.”

I nodded.

“Because then you’d be staying over at each other’s places already.”

“Right.”

“Has there been any talk of this?”

“No.”

“You’re waiting each other out?”

“I think so. I don’t know.”

“Do you want to sleep with him?”

I hesitated, aware that my face was frozen in confusion. “That’s complicated too.”

She looked at me funny, like I’d just admitted that I couldn’t spell my own name. “Well, either you do or you don’t.”

“There hasn’t been anyone since Jack,” I said. “That’s a long time.”

Her lips curved into a wan smile. “It’s like riding a bike.”

I wanted to shrink and disappear into the space between my seat cushions. “So there’s that. And dealing with sleeping arrangements would be uncomfortable. I don’t want to put us in a position where we both have to pretend we’re not thinking about it.”

“He’d do anything to help you.” She nodded toward the phone in my hand. “When we get to Claire’s you can call him when I’m not around. I know how you are.” She let go of the wheel with both hands for a moment and wiggled her fingers in the air in a bewitching sort of way. “Wanting
privacy
, and all.”

I smiled, and the moment was interrupted with a vibrating buzz from my cell phone.

“Damn.”

I’d set it to vibrate
and
ring, but it was past making any noises at all now and Caller ID was still offering only garbage.

I flipped open the phone, determined to replace it within hours.

“Young’s headed to the jail now,” Richard said. “He’ll call when they finish. Guy’s keen to know what brought all these questions all of a sudden. I was a little hard-pressed to explain that I didn’t know myself.”

I checked the dashboard clock. “Can you meet us at my apartment in a couple hours? I’ll take care of dinner. We can go over everything.”

“Do I have a choice?” He didn’t sound put out. I figured the dinner offer had helped.

“Do me a favor,” I said. “Bring your laptop.”

“Sure,” he said. “See you then.”

Jeannie and I rode the remaining ten minutes in silence. I tried to mentally review what I remembered of Burke, but my thoughts kept returning to Vince. Our relationship needed definition but I’d been too distracted to take the lead and he’d been too polite. Between Annette and the new job, I’d been overwhelmed, neglected to do the normal new-romance womanly things. In three months, all I’d given Vince were pleas of confusion and mixed messages.

For weeks I’d told myself that once things settled down at home and work, I’d do my part to get us on a straight path. I’d imagined us sitting together one night, coming clean with everything. Maybe it would take a few talks.

My new problem was that I hadn’t laid the framework to seek any favors, particularly of the sleep-over-at-your-house variety. The undertones that had bothered me before would be nothing compared to what was coming.

Chapter Twenty-nine

There’d been no word from Mick Young by the time Jeannie and I arrived at Claire’s house. We used the hidden key and pass code to get inside, same as before, but this time I had an uneasy feeling when I walked through the door.

“Is it me or is something different here?”

Jeannie paused midway between the kitchen and foyer and sniffed lightly. “You mean that stale, empty house smell?”

“No.” I tapped a thin stack of mail waiting on Claire’s counter. “This is new.”

Jeannie shrugged.

I walked the perimeter of Claire’s wide kitchen, dragging a finger over her cool granite countertop. At the sink, I stopped in front of a window-sill herb garden. “Somebody’s watering these plants.”

“Sure,” Jeannie said. “Probably her mom.”

I recalled my earlier conversation with Claire and her uncertainty about the number of people who may have had access to the home. The memory made me restless and I wandered into the living room, vaguely aware that Jeannie was following.

A remote control, left on the arm rest of the couch, waited beside two throw pillows now compressed into a spot where there’d originally been only one. What had seemed like a sterile house before now showed signs of life.

I looked at Jeannie. “Surely, her mom doesn’t come over here to watch TV?”

“You’re forgetting the boys. We know they still come home.” She picked up the remote, examined it. “All kids do anymore is sit in front of the tube.”

I relaxed a little. “Do me a favor,” I said. “The extra room upstairs where we saw those photo albums…” I pointed overhead in its general direction. “Bring down any pictures in that stash that might be Kevin Burke…ones that match the description from Brewster’s. I’m going to have another pass through her folders.”

Jeannie headed for the stairs and I stepped across the foyer into the home office and flipped on the light switch, which also turned on a ceiling fan. I sat in Claire’s desk chair for the third time and it occurred to me that I should be the one looking for pictures of Kevin. I was the only one who’d seen him.

I called after her. “Be up in a sec!”

I pulled open a filing cabinet drawer again, this time paying special attention to anything financial. Separate folders had been designated for specific credit cards and for bank statements, but as I thumbed through their contents I found that the dates reflected records that were several months old in some cases, and over a year old in others. Why had Claire or Daniel kept meticulous records for years and then suddenly stopped?

Above me, fan blades whirled and little ornamental pull chains tapped the light fixture in irregular beats, giving the momentary impression that drizzling rain was falling. Realizing the source of the noise, I leaned back in the chair and took in the room again from ceiling to floor, stopping to think about the unplugged mouse, forgotten on its pad, and the disconnected printer, with its cord draped loosely over its top. For once, a conclusion arrived in my mind, clean and uncluttered, like the room I was sitting in.
Of course there are no recent records
, I thought,
The Gastons use on-line bill pay, same as me
.

Without use of their missing computer, I’d never be able to figure out when the spending habits had first changed on their credit cards. I lingered in the quiet, dim study, thinking. Spotting the handset on the corner of her desk, I wondered if anything useful might be in her Caller ID log. Platt’s had been a windfall.

I pressed the arrow that took me backward in time through sixty incoming calls and noticed that three in June and July had come from “Financial Card Services,” a familiar term after having spent so much time sorting my own credit hassles.

“Emily!” Jeannie thumped down the stairs. When she reached the bottom of the carpeted steps her footfalls changed from muffled thuds to loud clacks on tile. She came around the corner, breathless.

“Her jewelry’s gone.”

I set the phone down and dropped my chin into my hand. For a moment I felt like I’d reached the point where nothing could surprise me.

“When we were here on Monday,” she said, “There were rings and bracelets. All of it’s gone.”

I was too frustrated to move.

“My favorite was her blue topaz cocktail ring. You should have seen the
size
of that baby…” She frowned. “
Gone
.”

“I sent you up there to look for pictures in a different
room
. This isn’t dress-up time, Jeannie. A woman is sitting in jail and a crazy computer freak is after me. You’re worried about her jewelry?”

I ran my open palm upward over the right side of my face and then down the left, as if the face-washing pantomime might wake me up, conjure some ideas. With my head still low I grabbed my temples and squeezed. For the life of me, I couldn’t
think
.

I raked my fingers through my hair and sat up. “Her mom might have taken those things for safe keeping, but somehow I doubt it.”

Jeannie lowered her chin and stared at me, her skepticism evident. “There’s a painting missing too.”

I stood and followed her upstairs. The coincidence of Claire’s apparent jewelry theft in the same week as mine didn’t sit well.

“I don’t get to be around nice things like hers every day,” Jeannie said without apology. “Had to take a second look.”

She peeled to the left, where the door to the master bedroom had been left open. The room was as I’d remembered, and if Jeannie hadn’t pointed out the empty nail along the wall where a painting had once been, I wouldn’t have noticed it missing. She led me to Claire’s bureau. The jewelry box still had a few nice costume pieces, including an oval pendant embossed with delicate paw prints, but it was nowhere near full anymore. I was about to go look for photos in the guest room when my phone buzzed.

Expecting Richard, I flipped it open with a curt, “Yeah?”

“
Yeah
to you too, lady.” It was Vince. I mouthed his name to Jeannie and she gave me an encouraging nod before leaving the room and pulling the door closed behind her. “What kind of trouble are you girls up to tonight?”

“Funny you should ask,” I said. “Because you might get dragged into it.”

He chuckled. “How so?”

I sat lightly on the edge of Claire’s king bed and focused on my reflection in the mirror mounted over her dresser. “We need a favor.”

“You always need favors.”

“This one’s big.”

“Okay, let’s hear it.”

“It’s fine if you want to say no.” When he didn’t say anything, I continued. “I’ve been getting some…creepy e-mails and somebody broke into the apartment—”

“What? When?”

“Yesterday.”

“Were you there? What happened?”

“No. I didn’t figure it out until today. It happened when we went out for dinner.” On his end, a horn blared. “You’re driving?”

“On my way home. Did you call the police?”

“I don’t want to go into everything while you’re in traffic,” I said. “Can you come over for dinner?” Before he could answer, I clarified. “Richard’ll be there. We’re going to brainstorm the case.”

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll head over in a little bit.”

I told him to drive safely and we hung up. My phone buzzed again.

“You never told me what the favor is.”

“Richard doesn’t think my apartment’s safe anymore. He wants Jeannie and me to find a place to stay for a few days, starting tonight.”

Vince was quiet. I thought he was probably doing mental iterations of sleeping arrangements, stressing about the implications of each potential set-up the same way I had.

“I’ll have to get food,” he said.

Or maybe he was thinking like a guy.

“I’ll stock the fridge,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“And you won’t like what’s behind the shower curtain.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“No. Make Jeannie do it.”

I laughed. “Never happen.”

“There’s the dog hair,” he said.

“I get it,” I said, trying to find balance between being playful and reassuring. “It’s not like I’ve never been there.”
It’s only that I’ve never slept over
. “We’ll be low maintenance, I swear.” I paused. “At least I will.”

“And there’s a condition,” he added, as if he hadn’t heard me. “This is short notice so you can’t hold anything against me.”

“I love that you’re worried about making a bad impression.”

“Is it a deal?”

“Thank you
so
much.”

“I’m always bailing you out of trouble.” His voice made it sound more like a compliment than a complaint.

I grinned. “See you in a little bit.”

After the call, I found Jeannie sitting cross-legged on the bed in the guest room, going through photographs in a series of boxes and albums.

She looked up expectantly. “All good?”

“Yep.”

“Told you so.” She replaced the lid on a photo box and moved it to an empty spot on the quilt behind her. “These pictures are old. Unless she knew the guy ten years ago, he’s not in here.”

I shook my head. “He’s new. A short-timer.” I checked my watch and wondered how much Claire might be telling Mick Young. “Where else can we look?”

“If he was a short-timer, there might not
be
pictures.” A devilish smile crossed her lips. “At least…not of his face.”

It made me wonder how many summer flings Jeannie had had. Her point about not having pictures hadn’t even occurred to me. I shook my head in distaste and dialed Richard.

“Any word?”

“Pictures aren’t the least of it,” he said, “but we can talk about that in person later. She thinks there’s a snapshot in one of her handbags. Something juicy.”

I glared at my over-sexed friend. “I’m not going to find an x-rated photo, am I?”

“Huh? Oh. No, I meant the purse, not the picture. She told Young the purse is something juicy. I don’t know what that means.”

“Hold on.”

My face twisted into an impatient expression, the result of getting half-information from a totally clueless man. I looked at Jeannie. “A juicy purse?”

She nodded serenely, as I imagined the Dalai Lama might. “Juicy Couture. Claire has three.” Jeannie stretched her legs over the side of the bed and pushed herself up. “Be right back.”

I watched her disappear into the hallway. “Jeannie’s on it,” I said into the phone. “So did Claire talk? Did she say anything about Burke?”

“Young said the meeting was a test of his patience.”

“I don’t care what Young said. What did Claire say?”

“She gave him a bunch of flack but eventually acknowledged that they’d been together a couple of months before she broke it off. It wasn’t a cold turkey break, either. One of those long, arduous break-ups. She didn’t want to cut Burke out of her life entirely because she thought he was a positive influence on her sons.”

“Yeah,” I said. “She told me something similar.”

Jeannie returned, waving a snapshot. “A hottie!”

I snatched the photo from her and stared at it.

“We have his picture,” I said to Richard. “Head over to the apartment and remember your laptop.”

***

We swung by Brewster’s on our way to meet Richard. The manager confirmed my hunch with a single definite flick on Burke’s impossibly handsome face. “That’s him.”

He passed the photograph back with something like a remorseful shrug, perhaps sensing my mixed feelings about finally knowing who we were dealing with.

Forty-five minutes later, Richard sat at my kitchen table studying his computer screen while Vince and I lounged on the couch sharing mine. We were tapping keys, clicking links, buried deep in Google and Wikipedia.

I’d printed the last e-mail from my cyber spook and Richard busied himself with biographies of all the famous people Burke had cited in that message. He aimed to figure out what they had in common. Vince and I tried to learn what we could about William Henry Saunders the third so we could determine how he’d gotten unwittingly tied up in this mess.

We only found his name once, in a caption. He’d been photographed with his mother, the late Judith Saunders, a decade ago at a Houston Rodeo fundraising event. Apparently she’d been an avid volunteer for thirty years.

Vince pointed mid-way down the list of search results. “Click that one.”

An obituary from the
Chronicle
came up and I read it aloud so Richard could hear too.

“That’s scary,” Vince said when I’d finished. “A rich old lady died and her estate went to her mentally challenged son?” He rested an arm on the back of the couch. “Hardly makes sense. A reasonable person would have put it into a trust.”

I considered the timeline and shook my head. “He wasn’t always this way. It’s from a head trauma. When his mom died, he was perfectly fine, so it makes sense she’d leave everything to him.”

I started to tell Vince what I’d read in William’s medical records. The front door knob rattled and Jeannie battled her way inside with a precarious arrangement of soft drinks and too many sacks of Chinese take-out. I’d sent her out for dinner while waiting for the guys. They stood to help her and she closed the door with a bump of her hip.

“Hi, Richard,” she said, passing him the drinks. “Hey, Cowboy.” She handed off a wayward sack.