Deadly Interest (31 page)

Standing, I stretched out my back, humming
with pleasure as built-up tension dissolved in a scale of cracking
noises. I walked into the darkness of my back porch to gaze out at
the tiny yard and look up at the sky through the heavy double-hung
windows that rattled oh-so-softly in the early morning breeze.

Despite the fact that it was a real room
that opened to the rest of the house, the porch was always cold in
winter, hot in summer. Frosty air surrounded it on three sides now,
and the linoleum was nippy under my stocking feet. Rather than seek
out the warmth of my bed, I stood there, perversely enjoying the
chill. My body craved sleep, but my mind kept leaping from Mrs.
Vicks accounts, to Barton’s talk of reward, to my night out with
David.

And then, to William.

They say that absence makes the heart grow
fonder. On me, it was having the opposite effect. The longer he was
gone, with no word, the more I questioned what it was I expected
from him, and the more I questioned why I did.

Leaning my fingertips on the sill, I pressed
my forehead against the cool pane of glass and stared for a long
while at nothing. I thought about what Jordan had said about seeing
something that wasn’t there.

With the kind of clarity that can only come
when one is alone and staring at nothing at four in the morning,
emptiness washed over me, mixed with an unexpected sense of
relief.

In that moment, I knew Jordan was right.

Birds in the nearby trees chirped to one
another, back and forth, their high-pitched cries both lonely and
hopeful, as we all waited together for the sun to rise.

Glancing around the empty room, I suddenly
wished I had a pet. A cat, a dog. Maybe both. Lucy would like that.
Lucy loved animals.

With an ache, I realized that she’d be
headed back to school in another week and I hadn’t yet made any
effort for the two of us to spend time together. I vowed to rectify
that tomorrow.

* * * * *

I picked up Lucy on my way to Mrs. Vicks
house when I finally got myself moving at ten in the morning. So
much for that early start.

Aunt Lena placed a tin of still-warm oatmeal
raisin cookies in Lucy’s hands before we left. “So you’ll have
something to snack on,” she said. “And come back here when you’re
done; I’ll put together some sandwiches or something.”

I’d been about to say she needn’t bother,
when it dawned on me that this was Aunt Lena’s way to contribute to
the investigation. “That’d be great, thanks.”

“
And here,” she said,
thrusting a rubber-banded bundle in my arms. It must have weighed
seven pounds. “I’ve been taking in the mail.” Her careworn face
tightened, and she shook her head. “Always looks bad to have mail
piling up at a house. Tells the world that nobody’s home. In
Evelyn’s case, though . . .” she let the thought trail
off.

Uncle Moose accompanied us, to make sure it
was safe before letting his two nieces have the run of the place.
“Your folks called again last night,” he said on the short walk
between houses. “They thought maybe they should come back, but I
told them everything was okay and they should try to enjoy their
trip.” He gave me a man-look, the unsure, “did I handle that
right?” look that guys get sometimes when presented with confusing
matters of family and protocol.

I patted his arm and could feel the strength
of it, even beneath the spring jacket he’d put on. “I’m glad you
did,” I said. “Good job.” I meant it. They’d been looking forward
to this trip for over a year. Nothing would be served by having
them rush home from Luxembourg.

At Mrs. Vicks’, we used my Aunt Lena’s keys
and I swallowed a peculiar combination of tight gut and dry throat
that buzzed its way up from my feet when we first pushed open the
front door. The last time I was here I’d been brutally attacked,
and although I knew in my heart there was nothing to fear today, I
still felt shaken enough to be grateful for Uncle Moose’s burly
presence.

He pounded his steps through the small
house, moving his head from side to side, stopping to check out all
rooms, all corners, before pounding again.

“
Why are you stomping?”
Lucy asked.

“
If somebody’s here, I
want to make sure they know it,” he said, without turning toward
us. “Like cockroaches. You make enough noise, they hightail it
outta there.”

Lucy eyed Mrs. Vicks’s piano in the living
room, and I put a restraining hand on her arm. “Let’s wait till we
know everything’s clear.”

Moments later, Uncle Moose returned from his
full-house examination and pronounced it empty. “You want me to
stay?”

I’d pushed past my initial trepidation. “No,
I think we’ll be okay,” I said.

He pointed at me. “If not, you call.”

“
I will.”

* * * * *

Delighted to have an in-tune piano to play,
Lucy started in immediately on a Bach Minuet. Perfect music, I
thought, as I started toward Mrs. Vicks’ bedroom. The energetic
tempo was just what I needed to fuel my search.

After my wee-hour discoveries in Mrs. Vicks’
accounts, I knew just what I was looking for. I wanted to find her
reasons for subsidizing Diana’s visits to Dr. Hooker.

Standing in the center of Mrs. Vicks’
bedroom, I was caught again by the sadness of it all. A fine layer
of dark fingerprint dust covered her dresser tops. Judging from the
reading glasses, left upside-down atop a pile of books on her
nightstand, I assumed that the intruder who’d been searching her
home hadn’t gotten very far.

What he
had
done was pull out
almost every drawer in Mrs. Vicks’ two dressers. The drawers had
all been left open, and from the looks of things, the killer had
rushed through a search of each one. Her underwear was bunched into
a pastel-colored jumble of cotton, and I could see in my mind’s eye
how it must have gone down. Open the drawer, run hands through,
come up empty, move onto the next.

That told me something right there.

The murderer had been looking for an item of
bulk. Had he been searching for a tiny thing, like a ring, or a
key, then Mrs. Vicks’ underthings would have been shaken out one at
a time. I found it unlikely that the searcher would have cared
enough to replace the items into the drawer. No, this spoke of
quick movement and a cursory search.

Still standing in the room’s center, trying
my best to get a feel for what I needed to do, I played around with
another thought. This could also be the work of an amateur in a
hurry.

Not sure. Nothing was sure.

Although the overhead light was adequate, I
pulled at the hem of the vinyl window shade to raise it. It snapped
up, scaring me, whipping out of sight behind the blue-green valance
that matched Mrs. Vicks’ comforter.

Where would I keep important information if
I were Mrs. Vicks?

With Lucy’s musical accompaniment, I began
my own search. Under the bed I found only spare sheet sets and an
extra pillow. For a moment, in her closet, I thought I hit pay
dirt. On the floor, tucked into the corner, she had a large
fireproof filing box with a lid that opened upward. A silver key
sat in the lock, its mate dangled off the beaded metal chain that
connected them.

I struggled to pull it out of the closet.
This thing was heavy. The fact that it wasn’t locked didn’t really
surprise me. My parents had a box similar to this one. I’d asked
them why they never locked the thing and my mother had laughed at
my question. “Nobody’s going to steal my old papers,” she’d said.
“But I want them protected in case of fire. And if I lock it, then
I have to worry about losing the key.”

To some extent, I understood the reasoning.
The problem was, there’d been two intruders in this house before
me. Maybe the same guy both times, maybe not. If there had been
anything of value in here, it was probably gone.

Sitting on the floor cross-legged, I flipped
through the files. She kept the current year’s bank statements in
separate hanging files. I gave it all a quick look. Brown bank
statements, blue bank statements, a file full of personal things. I
pulled that one out, my heart racing with possibility, but after
I’d gone through it twice I shoved it back in the box with a sigh.
Other than her voter’s and social security cards and a few other
standard items, I came up empty. The rest of the files were related
to her utility and medical bills. Nothing else.

Returning to the drawers, I felt the wood
beneath each and every one, knowing how many people tape their
secrets in such a place where they believe no one will look.
Nothing.

Shaking my head, I blew my bangs out of my
face in frustration. I’d begun to work up a sweat, despite the fact
that my T-shirt was loose and light. Think, I told myself. Where
would my parents keep important documents?

After an hour of futile searching, I called
to Lucy to sit with me at the kitchen table while we shared some of
the cookies. Puzzled by the excitement in her eyes when we sat
down, I asked her about it.

“
I want to talk to you
about something really important,” she said, her smile
bright.

I had no idea what was up.

“
Sure,” I said.

“
Somebody likes me,” she
said.

I laughed. “Everybody likes you, Lucy.”

With a prim look of exasperation, she
explained, “I mean somebody at the residence. A guy I know.”
Turning red, she added, “He says he loves me.”

Words dropped away, rendering me speechless.
From Lucy’s reaction, a sudden apprehensive look that rushed to her
face, I could only imagine what mine looked like. A hundred
scenarios, none of them good, raced through my brain in the course
of the three seconds it took me to come up with response innocuous
enough not to alarm her. “Really? What’s his name?”

“
You don’t seem very
happy.”

“
You just took me by
surprise, Lucy, that’s all,” I lied.

“
Uh-huh.” She twisted her
mouth to one side. “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you.”

“
No, no,” I said, too
quickly. “I’m glad you did, really glad. What’s his
name?”

“
Bobby.”

“
That’s great,” I said. “I
can’t wait to meet him.”

Lucy had been unlucky in love ever since
she’d hit puberty. She’d developed a series of crushes on her male
teachers and, once, just before she turned thirty, she’d “dated” a
young man in her special-ed music class who’d broken her heart when
he got caught fondling another other girl in class, and then lied
about it when she confronted him. She’d been confused, angry, and
wanting to forgive him all at once. My appalled parents had
consulted with Lucy’s doctors and teachers and they’d come to the
unanimous conclusion to change her class schedule, so that she’d
never see old Romeo again.

While it’d been an efficient way to handle
the situation, I’d always wondered how Lucy had perceived it. As
hard as the male/female thing was, how much harder it had to be to
have such personal issues decided by committee—decisions lifted out
of your hands because those who know best believed you
incapable.

I worried for her, always.

“
Maybe when you drive me
back down next week his parents will bring him back too, and we can
all meet.”

“
That would be wonderful,”
I said. But all I could think of was “Oh, my God.”

“
We didn’t get a lot of
time to talk this week,” she said. “I know you’ve been very busy
with all the work about finding the person who killed Mrs. Vicks,
but I remembered you said we were going to go to lunch or maybe
downtown or something.”

“
That’s right,” I said,
with a forced smile, berating myself for forgetting I’d even said
that. She’d been waiting for me and I’d let her down, again. “When
do you want to go?”

“
Downtown?” she said, in
an almost-squeak.

“
Yeah, just you and
me.”

“
How about
tomorrow?”

Tomorrow. God, I so needed to make headway
on this story. I needed to get some answers fast. Bass was on my
butt and I felt the pressure of time from him, as well as knowing
that the longer this stretched out, the less likely we’d find Mrs.
Vicks’ murderer.

Lucy started to reach behind her head, ready
to twist her hair into knots at the delay in my answer.

“
Sure,” I said with a
profound feeling that this was the right thing to do, even if it
would cost me a fight with my boss. “Let’s plan to just have fun
tomorrow.”

My cell phone buzzed in the back pocket of
my jeans, and I jumped at the vibration.

Detective Lulinski’s voice barked at me over
the wireless connection. “Where are you?”

I told him. “Why?”

“
Good,” he said. “Stay
there.”

He hung up before I could say another word.
I shrugged at Lucy, shoved the last bit of oatmeal-raisin cookie
into my mouth and said, “I think we’re going to have company. How
about a little Mozart?”

Smiling, she jumped up from her seat and
headed back to the piano while I resumed my task of trying to get
into the mind of an elderly woman with secrets.

By the time the detective showed up at the
front door, I’d about exhausted every idea. I remembered a writer
friend who had her protagonist hide a valuable item in the fridge,
tucked into a carved-out head of lettuce. I tugged open the white
metal door and turned my head at the ten-day-old smell of rotting
food. When I found myself braving the stench in order to search
through Mrs. Vicks’ vegetable crisper, I knew I was starting to
lose it.