Dusted (18 page)

More money, less calories.

I thought the trade-off was worth it.

On a day like today, I didn’t just want new shoes—I needed them. So, I grabbed Mr. Banning’s printout from Theresa’s folder. I was anxious to finish this last job.

Mr. Banning’s was a BWP/wL.

A basic-weekly-pickup, with laundry.

I knocked on his door, even though the file said the odds of him being home at three o’clock in the afternoon were slim to nil.

I used our key and let myself in. I surveyed the living room with disgust. There was nothing basic about this job.

The place was a mess.

I mean, a real pigsty. Worse than my boys’ rooms...and that’s saying something. Teenage boys are very toxic.

Mr. Banning was a whole new level of toxicity, though. Underwear was hanging from a chandelier, empty glasses and plates were scattered through the room.

Oh, geesh. Mr. Banning had a Mortie. All TV Network, ATVN, had begun to hand out the award ten years ago and it had quickly become one of the premier Hollywood awards.

Hey, I might not be an actual actress, but I know stuff.

I noticed not out of some sort of awe that I was cleaning a Mortie winner’s home, but rather because the award was sitting in the middle of the leather couch, covered in something. Maybe someone had dipped it into some of the food. Ugh. It looked like they’d tried to wipe it off before throwing it on the couch, but they didn’t wipe hard enough.

To top it off, there were footprints on the light beige carpet. Big footprints. Whoever wore those shoes had really big feet. Thankfully, there were only two. As if whoever made the prints realized they’d tracked in mud and took off their shoes, because those two prints were it.

Well, there’d been at least one considerate person.

I tried to make a mental list of how best to approach this job.

In the end, there was nothing to do but start. I gathered dishes and cups and the pots and pans in the kitchen and had the dishwasher running minutes later. I even hand-washed the Mortie—which was about as heavy as a bag of sugar, heavier than I’d thought the old-fashioned silver television would be—and gave it a thorough polish. When I was done, the inscription on the silver television screen really stood out. Steve Banning.
Dead Certain
.

I remembered that show. It was a comedy about a medical examiner’s office.

I set the Mortie on the mantle, thinking that was a more appropriate place for it than the couch.

There was a desk next to the fireplace. It had an old relic of a computer on it. The keyboard’s cord dangled over the edge of the desk. Yeah, that wasn’t going to work well.

I plugged the keyboard into the back of the tower.

Next, I dragged a garbage can around the room and made short order of the rest of the mess.

I debated whether I should toss the chandelier’s panties out, but opted to put them in the wash with a load of clothes. At least when Mr. Banning returned them to whoever they belonged to, they’d be clean.

Maybe they belonged to him?

The thought was enough to make me decide to concentrate on the job at hand rather than on the underclothing our Mortie-winning client wore.

There was a small steam-cleaner in the back of the Mac’Cleaners van. It made short work of the footprints. I worked on the laundry as I vacuumed and dusted. By then the dishwasher was finished, so I unloaded it then cleaned the kitchen.

I found the bra that matched the panties under the sink.

Personally, I didn’t want to know why there was a bra under the sink. Maybe Mr. Banning had a dishwashing fetish and the mystery naked woman helped him out? The mental image was disturbing.

I knew walking into the place that Mr. Banning liked women.

It said so on his file. Right after BWP/wL it said
DOG.

That’s our code for he liked women a lot and liked a lot of them.

Yes, Mr. Banning is a dog...a letch.

But he never bothers the staff, so it didn’t bother us.

Mac’Cleaners is an equal opportunity employee. We stake our reputation on good service and discretion.

This job was going to require a lot of discretion on my part. I wondered if Theresa’s illness had anything to do with knowing that Mr. Banning’s place was this bad and that she’d have to clean it up?

Kitchen done, I moved onto and finished the bathroom as well. Then I folded a load of laundry and put another one in the dryer. With the job almost done, I was getting excited about shoe shopping, which in LA is a unique treat. So many shoes, so few feet. I headed to Mr. Banning’s bedroom.

If his living room was a pit, I really didn’t want to know what condition his bedroom was in. Knowing that all that stood between me and some Santee Alley bargain shopping was this bedroom, I opened the door, took all of one step in and...screamed.

It wasn’t a frustrated scream.

It wasn’t even a this-guy-is-such-a-pig sort of scream.

No, it was more like a there’s-a-bloody-dead-body-on-the-bed sort of scream.

Loud, long and more than a little crazed.

I wanted to keep screaming and run right out of the house, but I managed to get myself under control. The killer had to be long gone, or else he—or she—would have attacked me as I cleaned. I was safe. I couldn’t say the same for poor Mr. Banning.

I reached in my back pocket, pulled out my cell phone and called 911.

“You’ve reached Los Angles emergency dispatch.”

“I need help,” I blurted out.

“What is the nature of your emergency?” the man on the other end of the phone asked.

“Mr. Banning’s dead. There’s blood on his head and his eyes are open.”

Those eyes were going to give me nightmares for the rest of my life.

“Your address ma’am?”

“I’m at, he’s at—” I had to think a moment, but then I somehow pulled his address from the fog that was my mind and blurted it out.

“Who are you?” the operator asked.

“I’m the maid. Quincy Mac.”

Now, some people prefer the term domestic engineer, or some fancy title. I call it like I see it. I’m a maid.

I had no idea why I thought of what to call myself at that moment. Maybe it was nerves. After all it’s not every day I find a dead client.

Thinking about my job description was easier than thinking about those eyes and all that blood.

“Ma’am are you sure he’s dead?”

“I don’t think there’s any way someone could look that bloody and blue and still be breathing.”

This was the ultimate topper to my day from hell.

A dead man in the bedroom.

As I talked to the operator, I walked outside. Not really walked, trotted. I moved fast. I mean, no way was I staying in a house with a dead guy.

I was thankful for my cell phone as I stepped out onto the bright sidewalk.

Perfect.

All that LA sunshine made it hard to believe that someone was dead a short distance away.

The emergency operator continued asking me questions. The company’s name, my name and address, etc...

Personally, I sort of zoned out. I think I answered him all right but couldn’t be sure.

Actually, I didn’t want to be sure.

I just wanted to go home.

The police arrived, followed by an ambulance. They stopped and talked to me a minute, then hurried off to check on Mr. Banning.

I wondered how long I had to wait around.

I wanted to go home now.

I mean, I didn’t even want to hunt for the perfect pair of bargain shoes or stop for Ben and Jerry’s. That just shows how hard I’d been hit by this.

Anytime a woman passes up Ben and Jerry’s or new shoes...well, it’s moved beyond a bad day and turned into a found-a-dead-body-on-the-bed sort of day.

I was wondering if I could just sneak out. The authorities had my information already, so they didn’t need me. But then
He
walked up to me.

He
was tall, lean and oh-so-yummy. Dark hair with just a touch of grey at the temples.

Not one of LA’s boy-toys who are a dime a dozen.

No, this was a real man walking toward me like some hero out of a movie.

Maybe he was here to take me away from all this.

Maybe he’d seen me from across the street looking fragile, yet still beautiful.

Okay, so beautiful was a bit unattainable. I’d settle for fragile and cute. Yeah, I could pull off cute on a good day and I felt very, very fragile at the moment.

Ah, my hero.

I sucked in my baby-pooch, pulled out my old acting class skills and concentrated on looking even more fragile and cute. It worked. He walked right up to me, shot me a concerned look, then...he flashed a badge.

I realized that his concerned look was more of an assessing look.

My hero was a cop.

Okay, so maybe
He
was a cop who was concerned because I looked so fragile?

“Ma’am? You’re,” he flipped open his little notepad in a very Adam-12 sort of way, and that particular mental-analogy really dated me I realized morosely as he finished, “Quincy Mac?”

“Yes.” I thought about fluttering my eyelashes but decided to give up before I embarrassed myself.

“You’re the one who found Mr. Banning and called 911?”

“Yes.” I wanted to say more, so much more. But even a gorgeous knockout cop couldn’t make me forget I’d just found a dead body, at least not for long. And thoughts of Mr. Banning, sitting on his bed, covered in blood with his eyes open, well, that sort of froze the words in my throat.

“The officer over there said that the house has been pretty much wiped clean.”

I had professional pride in my job well done. “Not
pretty much
, all the way. Other than the bedroom, which I didn’t clean for obvious reasons.”

The cop quirked his eyebrow. “He said the bedroom was wiped clean as well.”

I think the hunky cop just called me a liar.

Actually, I didn’t just think it, I could see it in his eyes. The man actually thought I’d gone into a room with a dead body in it and cleaned it up?

My attraction to him slipped more than just a notch. It evaporated.

“Not by me,” I assured him. “I took one look at the body on the bed, called 911 as I got the heck out of there. I guarantee that I didn’t stop to clean the room first.”

“But you admit you cleaned the rest of the house?” the cop asked.

“Of course I admit it. I’m the maid. That’s what they pay me to do. Don’t you think that if I’d have known someone had died, I’d have simply called the cops first? If you’d seen what a state the house was in when I arrived, you’d know I’d have welcomed an excuse not to clean it. But I did clean it and I did a fine job of it.”

Cleaning houses is an honest profession. I might have been a bit befuddled, but even in my present state I wasn’t going to let some cop make me feel less than the professional that I am.

He didn’t answer my question. He simply asked, “And the other officers said there were footprints you steamed off the carpet?”

“Yes. I’m good at what I do. When Mac’Cleaners cleans a house, it’s totally clean.”

“Ma’am, the coroner says that Mr. Banning probably died sometime last night.” He paused a moment and sort of gave me a hard stare with his charcoal grey eyes.

That stare did things to me...my knees felt rather weak and my heart rate sped up. I don’t think it was shock.