Hot Flash (10 page)

“Thanks for your help, Mrs. Crowley, I'll check that out.” I captured her arm and escorted her out with her pulling against my hold all the way.

“Now, you be sure to tell John he can call me to help clean this mess up. I have some oatmeal-raisin cookies for those little darlings, too. And tell Nareece she can count on me for the girls' school bake sale. You know, I bake my cookies and red velvet cake every year for them. They always tell me my baked goods are the first to sell every year.” She chuckled, then shook her head and ranted on in a different direction with a darker expression.

I ushered her down the driveway and released. She muttered the entire distance to her door, snatches about how the devil had the neighborhood in his grip, and now the children needed protection from the devil's fiery breath.

Bates was sitting at John's desk in the corner of the room when I returned. “Is there anything missing? Because they were definitely looking for something.” Papers covered the top of the desk and the floor around it. He sifted through some of them. “I don't think they found what they wanted, though. You must've interrupted the search.”

I went to the couch to check on Dulcey, who had dozed off. She slept with a pained expression, which gave me pause about her decision to forgo the hospital. I threw a blanket from the back of the couch over her and headed to the kitchen. Bates followed.

“Want something to drink?” I offered, busying myself at the sink to keep my back to him. “Water, maybe.” He ignored me.

“You might want to know that we have a lead on your friend's location. She used a credit card at a motel two days ago, the Doubletree in Cambridge. The clerk said she was alone. At least she checked in alone and stayed two nights. That's it. Still nothing on her car, so it must be off the street. Her husband never filed a missing person's. If she's okay and doesn't want to be found, well, the odds change.”

I stayed silent.

“Look, Muriel. If you want this to go further, you're going to have to file a missing person's report yourself. I can't authorize any more man-hours on this, officially, anyway.”

When I turned around, Bates was in my face—nose-hair close. A dry mouth made me swallow hard. Cornered with the sink behind me, I leaned back, not sure if he was hitting on me, which I did not want, or if I felt guilty about lying to him. Technically, Reecey was still in the witness protection program and I wasn't sure sharing that information with Bates was best for her safety. A glass of water seemed an appropriate distraction. I turned around to the sink. When I turned back, glass in hand, Bates was still staring.

“I'll keep checking and write this incident up so it will remain open. It might lead to something useful. I don't think we're going to find any unusual fingerprints.” He didn't move his body or his eyes. I gulped water, pretending I didn't notice. When I finished, I sidestepped his position and moved toward the front door, hoping he would follow my lead.

When I reached the door, a straight shot from the kitchen sink, Bates was still in the kitchen, turned around and staring after me. A twitch took over my right eye. I held his stare until he gave in and made the move toward me, to leave, I hoped.

“Thanks, Bates. I owe you. If you ever have issues in the Philly area, I got you.”

He pecked my cheek and left.

I closed the door and went back to the kitchen to find something to eat. The refrigerator contained a bottle of soda, two sticks of butter, a half dozen eggs, and a half gallon of milk. The end date stamped on the milk carton was two weeks ago. Some canned goods, Smartfood popcorn, a box of Honey Nut Cheerios, and Cinnamon Toast Crunch were all that filled the pantry cabinet. The kitchen was clean with everything in place—even the dishwasher was empty. It seemed like there hadn't been any cooking going on or planned for some time. I tore into a bag of popcorn.

After a few handfuls, I went upstairs to John and Nareece's bedroom. A borderless king-sized bed set against a redbrick wall. The bed was covered with a beige down comforter that puffed up as though being fed by a blower. Large earth-tone pillows made up the headboard, and a reddish-orange throw adorned one bottom corner. At the opposite end of the room, a large redbrick fireplace extended up to the ceiling and the width of the wall. A light oak mantelpiece held several photographs of the girls, and John and Nareece. Mom's old Windsor rocker sat in front of the fireplace. It was the one keepsake Nareece took with her when she moved. I went into the master bath and opened the medicine cabinet. The three shelves were empty, except for a few cosmetics and some Q-tips. What nagged at me was that the house was too clean, almost unlived in.

I went back downstairs to John's desk. It was John's when he needed to work, and the twins' desk when the Twofer Detective Agency was on a case. The phone, which sat on the right corner of the desk, showed there were messages, but I couldn't access them without a password. I went through the papers spread across the desktop and rifled through the drawers, which contained mostly papers with drawings the girls had made. A picture envelope, pencils, pens, and paper clips filled the middle drawer of the desk. I accidentally pulled the picture envelope out by the wrong end, emptying photos on the desk. Travis and Kenyetta stared up at me. I was stunned. The photos showed them going in and out of my house, at school, and in an unfamiliar location, the twins playing in the backyard here, and my mother and father leaving out the front door of our family house. Though no dates or other distinguishing marks on the pictures provided any clues, my parents' clothing was the same as the night they died. I was positive about that. Tears stung my eyes.

I flipped the envelope over, looking for markings or Carmella's name. Nothing, just a plain white envelope. I rifled through the drawer again, looking for a note or something to indicate who had taken the photos, or where they'd come from. The only thing I came up with was a photo of me and Nareece when she was about seven or eight. I would not have remembered when or where it was taken except that I had my cap and gown on, so I knew it was at my high school graduation. Still, I don't remember the picture being taken, or rather I had a mental block about it. About Nareece back then.

Now losing Nareece was not an option.

As close as I thought Nareece and I were, there was a canyon between us. Yes, we talked on the phone every day, or we used to anyway. Yes, we said we were each other's best friends, that we would always be there for each other, and that we'd always love each other—no matter what. And I knew we would. But we never talked about our parents, we never talked about their death, or the attack. We never talked about our feelings or changes we'd gone through after they died. We never talked about Travis, really
talked
about Travis. Five years ago, she'd started making inquiries, more like that of an acquaintance being polite. Now, suddenly, she wanted to know everything about him and she wanted him to know everything about her.

Dulcey stirred. “I guess the excitement wore my butt out,” she said, peeking over the back of the couch at me. “What's up?”

I got up and brought the photos to her. On my way across the room, the front doorknob jiggled. I dashed to the door, gun in hand, and hid behind the entryway retaining wall with a visual of the doorway. Dulcey dropped to the floor behind the couch.

“Muriel,” John called as he entered.

I exhaled and stepped out of hiding. “I'm here.” He turned and faced me.

“I saw your car in the driveway and wondered what the hell you were doing here at this time of night. You should have called—” He stopped short, focused on the mess in the living room. “What the hell happened?”

“You had visitors.”

John stepped farther into the room and perused the damage, then picked up a couple of tchotchkes and put them back in their place. He looked around with a blank expression, then stumbled over to his desk, fell into the chair, and began opening and closing drawers and shuffling around papers.

“Why haven't you been returning my calls? First you ask me to check into Nareece's disappearance, then you and the girls disappear.”

“I haven't received any calls from you.”

“John, I've called you at least five times.”

He continued looking through his desk drawers and ignored me.

“Is something missing?”

“What? No, nothing's missing, I mean, uhhh. I think maybe some important papers I had gathered for a job I'm doing is all.”

“Are they there?”

“Ahh, no, I don't see them.” He shuffled through the piles of papers on the desk and then through the drawers. After a time, when he had straightened the piles and closed all the drawers, he sat straight up and forward in the chair. “I just remembered I left them at my office,” he said as if he'd just experienced an aha moment.

I wanted to choke the life from him, but I felt a little tender physically, so I reeled in my emotions and backed off my aggressive intentions.

Calmly, I asked, “What's going on, John? I came down here to check on you and the girls and look into Nareece's disappearance. When I got here, the house was like this and someone was hiding in the twins' room. Almost killed Dulcey.”

His eyes got big and darted around the room until they landed on Dulcey.

“Hey, John,” Dulcey said, waving her hand from her perch on the back of the couch. He just stared at her like he didn't know her.

“Did you call the police?” he asked, still staring her down.

“No, Mrs. Crowley did when she heard gunshots,” I told him. He looked big-eyed, then got up and headed to the staircase. I stayed at his back. “Whoever was hiding in the twins' room caught me by surprise and caused my gun to go off.” I followed him up the stairs and into the master bedroom. He ignored me as he searched through dresser drawers and the night table drawers. I walked across the room and pulled his arm so he would face me. “Where are the girls?”

“They're at my mother's in Newton. She's taking care of them while I'm trying to work and deal with Nareece.” He pulled his arm away, releasing my hold, and hastened out the door and down the stairs. I caught up with him again in the kitchen, all control lost.

“What do you mean, ‘deal with Nareece'? You've talked to her? You know where she is? Tell me that's why you didn't report her missing, even though you told me you did?” The heat welled up inside me, this time anger feeding it.

John opened and closed cabinet doors, keeping his back to me. “I lied because I didn't want you to insist on telling the police. No sense getting them involved. She's not missing, just off on another one of her mental escapades, I'm sure.”

“That's not how you felt a few days ago. A few days ago, you were hysterical about whether she was alive or dead. What changed your mind?”

“Muriel, if we get the police involved, they are going to ask a lot of questions and get in our business.”

“
What
business?”

He turned around so he faced me. “I'm sorry you made the trip. You should have called me first,” he said and stormed away.

“I did call. You didn't answer!” I was yelling by this time.

“You are welcome to stay the night in the guest room. I'll call the housekeeper in the morning.” I followed him to the stairs and stared at his back until he disappeared into the bedroom again and closed the door.

“What the hell?” Unable to swallow his last words, I hauled ass up the stairs and banged on the bedroom door. “John, we're not finished.” I banged harder and kept banging until he opened the door and almost lost his face to my fist.

He grimaced at me. A snap later his eyes softened and welled up with tears. For the first time, I noticed how whipped he looked. He wore a rumpled suit, like he had worn it for a week nonstop, sported scraggly chin growth, and blinked through crusty eyes. John was an attractive Vietnamese man with a dark complexion, long straight black hair that he wears pulled back in a ponytail, and a scanty beard. His puffy eyelids covered dark, seemingly black eyes, and added a mystique that I imagined was what had caught Nareece's fancy. That and his sleek muscular build and dignified stature, which right now looked unsteady and ready to collapse. He backed up to the bed and sat down, tears streaming down his cheeks.

“Talk to me, John. I haven't heard from you in weeks. Then I come here and Dulcey and I are almost killed by some guy. What the hell is going on?”

He wiped his tears with his forearm, got up and went over and into the bathroom, then closed and locked the door. A few minutes later he returned, his composure regained and with a determined expression on his brow.