In Plain Sight (15 page)

I
sat straight up in bed. Now I was awake. “Where is she?”

“She's on the third floor. She's not moving. I think she's dead.” Traci started to sob. “I know I shouldn't be calling you, but I'm afraid to call the police. I'm afraid they'll think we did it. I don't know what to do.”

“Where's Mike?”

“He's with me.” I could hear Traci gulping for air.

“Okay. Both of you stay put. I'll be there in ten minutes.”

I was there in five. On the way over a voice in the recesses of my mind kept telling me I should stop at the nearest phone and call the police. I ignored it and kept on going.

Traci and Mike were waiting for me by the window I used to slip in and out of the building. I took an extra moment to stow the car under the overhang. Then I grabbed my flashlight from the glove compartment and ran to join them.

“Jesus, Jesus,” Mike kept muttering over and over again while Traci hovered around him.

“Okay, tell me what happened?” I ordered.

“We heard this noise,” Mike stammered.

“Like this crash, like things were falling,” Traci said. Even in the dim light I could see her face was streaked with tears. Mike's face was slick with sweat. “It woke us up.”

“And then we didn't hear anything.”

“I thought it was a cat,” Traci said.

“But then we heard this car backfiring.”

“Only I knew that it wasn't. I knew it was a gun going off.”

“So what did you do?” I asked.

Traci pointed at Mike. “He wanted to go down and see what was going on, but I didn't want him to,” Traci said. “I wanted him to stay upstairs with me. But he wouldn't listen.”

“See,” Mike explained. “I didn't want no one comin' up here and messin' with Traci. So I took out my knife and my can of mace and kind of crept down the stairs.” Mike pulled on one of his dreads. “Jesus. Estrella was just laying there staring up at nothing at all. There was all this black stuff underneath her. At first I thought I was looking at a doll, man. She didn't look real.”

“And then what?”

Mike looked abashed. “I was really freaked. I just ran back up the stairs. I was almost at the top when I heard something below.” Mike shuddered. “I saw this black shape running down the stairs.” His face looked yellow under the street light. “I coulda been dead, man. I coulda been dead just like Estrella. My heart was beatin' so fast I couldn't hardly breathe.”

“And then we were afraid to come down,” Traci said. “We hid under a desk 'cause we thought that this guy was gonna come up and get us. And we waited and waited. But then I couldn't stand it no more and we ran down as fast as we could and called you.” Traci pulled at her T-shirt. “I hope he ain't still in the building.”

I looked at the Colony. “I'd give you ten-to-one odds that he's gone. There'd be no reason for him to stay.”

“Man oh man.” Mike swung his head from side to side. “What we gonna do now? Nobody's gonna believe that we didn't have nuthin' to do with this.”

I took a deep breath. “I think the first thing we'd better do is take a look at Estrella.”

“I don't wanna go back in there,” Mike whispered. “I don't wanna see her eyes no more.”

“You don't have to look at her, but I need someone to show me where she is. I have to make sure she's dead.”

Mike let out a strangled sob.

“I'll show you,” Traci volunteered.

“No.” Mike squared his shoulders. “I'll go. It's only right. If it weren't for me, we wouldn't be in this mess right now.”

“We'll all go,” I said. “It's better than being out on the street if a patrol car comes around.”

The dark in the building was like a blanket. It wrapped us in blackness. The only sources of illumination were the beams from our three flashlights bobbing along the walls and the floor. Traci and Mike moved along on sure feet, but I kept on tripping over furniture and boxes. I heard scurrying and rustling all around us. Occasionally small yellow eyes peered out at us and I had to repress a shudder.

“They won't bother you unless you're eating,” Traci said.

“Or unless you get too near a nest,” Mike added. Then he fell silent.

The only noises were the rodents and the echo of our feet walking up the stairs. The climb seemed interminable. I kept thinking I heard someone coming up after us, but it was only my imagination. No one was there. Finally we reached Estrella. She was sprawled out on the hall floor. She must have been backing away from her killer. Her eyes were staring straight up, and for a moment I thought about the old belief that her murderer's image was burned in her pupils for everyone to see.

Then I put that thought away and studied the rest of her face. Her mouth was gaping open. A thin line of blood ran down her chin and onto her throat. Her chest was all blood. In the flashlight's glare it showed up as a black pool fouling her shirt and the floor underneath her. I swallowed to keep myself from throwing up and played the light over her body. Her shirt was rucked up and one of her sneakers had fallen off. I pulled her shirt down and put her sneaker back on. Then I went through her jean pockets. Except for a couple of coins they were empty. If she'd had the jewelry, she didn't have it now. Poor kid. All she'd wanted to do was get out of town. Now the only place she was going was the ME's.

I straightened up and looked around for her belongings. There weren't any. Whoever had killed her must have taken whatever she'd had. They'd followed her in, robbed and shot her.

“The cops are gonna think I did this,” Mike cried. His voice cut through the silence.

“Why should they do that?” I asked, even though I pretty much knew what he was going to say.

“Because I'm here, man. Because they know me.”

Traci started to sob.

The sound ricocheted through my head. I rubbed my temples. I knew what I should do. I knew what the right thing to do was. I also knew what I was going to do.

“How much money have you got?” I asked abruptly.

“Maybe fifty bucks,” Mike said. “Why?”

“Because you have to get out of here.”

But fifty dollars wasn't going to get them very far, that was for sure. I rubbed my temples while I thought. I had about two hundred and fifty dollars in petty cash at the store. I guess my creditors could wait another month if they had to.

“But what about Estrella?” Mike's voice was quavering. “We can't leave her here.”

“Don't worry. I won't.” I turned and led them up the stairs.

It didn't take them long to gather their possessions. Between the two of them they had two backpacks, a couple of shopping bags, and the bird.

“Where are we going?” Traci asked once we were out on the street.

“To the store and then to the bus terminal.”

“But what am I going to do about Annette?” she wailed, indicating the covered cage I was carrying with a nod of her head.

“If the driver won't let you take her on the bus, I'll keep her at the store until you get settled,” I promised. “You can give me a call and I'll ship her down when you're ready.”

“Thanks,” Traci whispered.

“Forget about it,” I told her as we hurried toward the cab.

No one said anything on the ride over to Noah's Ark. As I cleaned out the petty cash drawer and gave the money to Traci I tried not to think about the next round of bills coming due.

“We can't take this,” Traci said as I pressed the money into her hand. “It just ain't right.”

“I don't think you have a choice,” I told her. Then I bundled them back in the car and drove them to the bus station.

A Trailways bus was idling next to the north exit. A line of tired-looking people were straggling onto it. I pulled up and asked the bus driver where he was headed.

“Atlanta. In five minutes.”

Mike, Traci, and I looked at each other.

“I never been out of Syracuse,” Mike said. There was a quaver in his voice.

“You'll do fine,” I told him.

“Atlanta
is
pretty near Austin.” Traci's voice was quavering, too.

I didn't dispute her. This wasn't the time for a geography lesson.

Mike ran in and got the tickets.

I pulled the driver aside, pointed to the raven, and gave him thirty dollars. He shrugged and palmed it.

Mike, Traci, and I hugged in the chill spring air.

The driver tapped her on the shoulder and told her it was time to go. As they were climbing up the stairs Traci ran back. “I don't know if this is important or not,” she told me, “but right before she left Estrella said something about getting Ray to take her out to her mother's.”

“Did she say anything else?”

Traci shook her head.

“You have my card. Call me if you remember anything else, anything at all.”

“I will,” Traci promised.

“Come on,” the bus driver said. “We're leaving.”

Traci and I hugged again and she climbed on board.

A moment later the bus roared off. I wished I was on it. Then I smoked a cigarette and went inside the depot and did what I had to do.

First I called Garriques and told him about Estrella, then I called my lawyer, and then I called the police.

They were not pleased. Or pleasant.

I met them at the Colony and took them up the stairs.

Then they took me to the PSB for questioning.

I told them about Estrella and Garriques and about how she'd taken his wife's jewels and that I'd been hired to find them. Then they asked me why I was in there at four o'clock in the morning, and I told them I hadn't been able to sleep so I decided to check the building again because I figured Estrella might still be crashing there. And I explained about having followed her in and getting hit over the head. It was obvious they didn't like my explanation, but since Garriques had verified that he'd hired me there wasn't much they could do. Four hours later, at eight in the morning, they finally threw in the towel and let me go.

I met Connelly as I was going out the door. He must have been coming in for roll call. “What they get you for?” he sneered, looking me up and down. “Vagrancy?”

Joe, my lawyer, dragged me off before I could reply. “I don't even want to hear about this,” he told me when we got outside. His Italian silk shirt was wrinkled and he had pouches the size of laundry bags under his eyes, but then I probably didn't look too good either.

“Fine,” I said as we walked toward his BMW.

He dropped me off at my cab and bid me a rather surly goodbye. He didn't like losing sleep. Well, neither did I, but at least he was being paid for it. Handsomely. As he sped off I turned and stared at the Colony.

The building was quiet. The police cars and the crime scene van and the ambulance had all left. Everyone had packed up their equipment and gone home. The Colony once again belonged to the rats and the mice and the dispossessed. Yellow crime scene tape fluttered across the windows, a memento of the last few hours' activities. Soon someone from the city would come and board up all the windows. Then a few months later the boards would be wrenched off and another version of Traci and Mike would be living there. The place should be torn down and made into a park.

I was reaching for a cigarette and trying to decide whether or not I should go up to the fifth floor and see if Estrella had written her mother's address anywhere when a cop in a patrol car cruised by. He slowed as he passed me; then when he was about thirty feet away he made a U-turn, came back, stopped in front of me and demanded to know what I was doing.

“Leaving,” I said and I got in my cab and drove off. I could see him watching me in the rearview mirror. I briefly thought about waiting him out, but I didn't. I'd had enough aggravation for one night.

Instead I stopped at the Dunkin' Donuts on the corner of South Salina and got two peanut-covered chocolate doughnuts and a cup of coffee and headed off to the store. I knew I should go to sleep, I'd been up for twenty-four hours now, but I couldn't. I was too wired. I kept thinking about Estrella and Traci and Mike and wondering if I'd done the right thing, and then I started thinking about Ray Diamond and wondering if he had in fact driven Estrella out to her mother's house. And then I wondered if she'd left Enid's jewelry there. Even though I really didn't want to, it seemed as if I should get Estrella's mother's number off of Ray and talk to her.

I used the phone in front of the Mobil Mini Mart at Teall and Erie to call him. He wasn't home. He'd probably left for work. I looked up M & M Exterminators. Nobody answered, but according to the recording the business was supposed to be open. I went back to the phone book and read the address. It wasn't that far away. I decided to stop by on my way to work. Maybe I'd get lucky. Maybe Ray was in and he just wasn't answering the phone.

M & M Exterminators turned out to be a one-story wood structure located between a vacant lot and a burnt-out house. When I got out I could see two vans were still parked in the driveway. I walked over and rang the bell.

Merlin answered the door.

M
erlin's face, never a thing of beauty under any circumstances, turned even uglier when he saw me. “What the hell are you doing here?” he growled. “Don't you have anything better to do with your time than bother me?”

“I could ask the same of you.”

“I own this place.”

“You own M & M Exterminators?” This was news to me.

“That's right.”

“Since when? I thought you were a furniture salesman.”

“I am. I do that at night.”

“You have two jobs?”

“That bother you?”

“It just seems quite a switch from the old Merlin.”

“People do change,” he said shortly. “Now get out of here before I call the cops.” He slammed the door in my face.

Sleazy business, sleazy owner. It figured. For a moment I thought about knocking again and demanding to know how much he was making off his bat removal service, but then I thought why bother? It would be quicker to report him to the Better Business Bureau. Let them deal with his little scam—only the problem was that they probably wouldn't. They'd just tell him he'd been a bad boy, and he'd say he was sorry, and then he'd go on charging people who couldn't afford it a thousand dollars to lay down bat repellent in their attics which not only didn't work, but could poison them.

As I walked back to my cab I began wondering if maybe Merlin hadn't used some of his products on Marsha. After all, the stuff they used on bats could kill a person, too. Maybe Merlin had poisoned Marsha, then dumped her body in the LeMoyne Reservoir. The problem was that without a tox screen there was no way to prove that, and the ME sure wasn't going to dig her up again to do one without an awful lot of evidence—which I couldn't provide.

I sighed and got back in the cab and lit a cigarette. As I took a puff of my Camel I thought about Estrella. How did she fit into the picture? She had known Ray. Ray worked with Merlin. The connections were provocative. I began wondering if Estrella had been killed for the jewels after all. Maybe she'd been killed because she'd seen something she shouldn't have. Maybe she'd wanted to go to New Jersey to talk to Marsha's mother—Marsha had been there right before she'd been killed. Maybe acid hadn't fried Estrella's brain. Maybe she wasn't paranoid. Maybe someone really was after her. Maybe she'd stolen Enid's jewelry because she was hoping to sell the pieces to pay for a ticket out of town. I twirled a lock of hair around my finger and thought about how there were just too many maybes.

I spent the next half hour turning various scenarios over in my head while I waited for Ray to emerge from the store. I'd just about given up when he finally walked out the door, jumped in his truck, and took off. I caught up with him two blocks later when he stopped at Rocky's, a mom-and-pop grocery store. He was already in the store when I pulled up behind the van. I got out of the cab and waited. He came out a couple of moments later.

“Jesus,” he said when he saw me standing by the front fender. “You again. What the hell do you want?”

“To ask you something.”

“I already told you I don't have anything to say about Estrella.” He unwrapped the Danish he was carrying and took a bite. “You have any questions go find her and ask her them yourself.”

“I can't.”

“Why the hell not?” His mouth was full of food when he spoke.

“Because she's dead. Someone killed her.”

Ray swallowed. His eyes widened. “You're kidding, right?”

“Do I look as if I am?”

“Wow, this is heavy shit,” Ray murmured.

“That's one way of putting it.”

“Do the police know?”

“Yes, they do.”

He shook his head. The blond spikes he'd sprayed his hair into quivered as if they were porcupine quills. “I gotta go get me a smoke. This is too much.”

I put my hand on his arm. “One thing.”

“What?”

“Did you take Estrella to see her mother?”

A wary look crept across Ray's face. “Yeah, but she wasn't home. Why?”

“You drove all the way to Toronto and she wasn't there?”

“Toronto?” He looked as if he found the suggestion ludicrous. “Where'd you get that from?”

“Then where did you take her?”

“Estrella told me not to tell anyone.”

“I think you should tell me.”

“Why's that?”

I lit a cigarette. “You want to go home and get mellow, right?”

“Right.” Ray narrowed his eyes.

“Well, if you don't tell me what I want to know, you're going to be down at the PSB.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Because I'll call the police and tell them about your relationship with Estrella. They'll turn up at your door and drag you downtown for questioning. You'll be sitting there for a couple of hours at least—maybe even more.”

In reality the police were going to drag him downtown anyway—if I had found Ray, so could they—but from the expression on Ray's face I could tell he didn't realize that.

I watched as conflicting emotions warred across his face. “Okay,” he finally allowed. “I don't suppose it makes no difference now anyway, Estrella being dead and all. I took Estrella to this house near Manlius.”

“Do you remember the address?”

“No, but it's on Route Ninety-two.”

“Route Ninety-two is an awfully long road,” I pointed out.

“You turn off right after this big yellow house with a ‘Jews for Jesus' sign in the window.”

“And then what?” ,

“And then you go down this road and there it is.” A girl walked past us. Ray Diamond followed her with his eyes. “You know, the last time Estrella and I saw each other we had this big fight—I don't even remember what it was about. We was always fighting.” He shook his head regretfully. Then he got in his van and drove off.

I finished my cigarette and went home. Zsa Zsa was waiting for me. She was not pleased with me for leaving her alone the entire night—as the condition of the floor demonstrated. I petted her, fed her, mopped up the pee, and drove over to the store.

Tim was waiting for me when I got in. “I can't make change,” he informed me.

“I know.”

“What happened to the petty cash?”

I stifled a yawn. “It's a long story.” I wrote Tim a seventy-five-dollar check on my personal account. “Take this down to the bank and cash it,” I told him. Suddenly every bone and muscle in my body ached. Last night had finally caught up with me.

“So, are you going to tell me the story?”

“Later,” I promised. “I don't think I could put a straight sentence together now.”

I could hardly keep my eyes open. When Tim came back I headed for my office, closed the door, and lay down on the sofa. Zsa Zsa woke me two hours later. She was sitting on my chest and licking my chin. I pushed her off and closed my eyes again. She got back up and nipped the tip of my nose. I groaned, sat up, and put my head in my hands. All I wanted to do was go back to sleep. But I couldn't, I had a store to run. Finally I forced myself up, went into the bathroom and washed my face, combed my hair and brushed my teeth. Then I made myself a cup of coffee and changed into the spare jeans and T-shirt I keep at the store for emergencies. By the time I was done with the coffee I felt semi-human.

“Ah, sleeping beauty emerges,” Tim cracked as I walked into the front.

I grunted and got to work. I was in the middle of cleaning out gerbil cages when Garriques called.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I'm fine. I just feel bad about Estrella.”

“I know. It's terrible.” I could hear a student laughing in the background. “Did you know this is the second sixteen-year-old to be shot this month in the city?”

“No. I didn't know.” I lit a cigarette and pulled the Coke can I was using for an ashtray closer.

“He was a runaway, too.” Garriques coughed. “Bad things happen to kids on the street.”

The sentiment seemed too obvious to comment on, and I asked him instead if he still wanted me to keep looking for his wife's jewelry.

“Why? Do you have an idea where the pieces might be?”

“I might.”

“Good, because I checked the Torres house. Nothing. I'm beginning to think that whoever killed her took them.”

“They probably did,” I conceded. “But I just heard Estrella went up to visit her mother right before she died. I'm thinking maybe she gave the pieces to her.” Although now that I thought about it, it seemed an unlikely possibility.

“Her mother?” Garriques's voice went up. “Is she back in town?”

“Actually she's somewhere out in Manlius.”

“How'd you find that out.”

“Estrella's boyfriend told me. I figured I'd take a ride out and see if I could find the house.”

“That sounds . . .” The rest of Garriques's reply was drowned out by a loud clanging. “Damn,” he said when the noise stopped. “I forgot about the fire drill.”

“So you want me to go or not?”

“I do, but I don't.”

“Do you mind explaining?”

“Well, of course I want the jewelry back. I just don't want you to get hurt again. Some of those bosses on the migrant labor gangs aren't very nice to people who come snooping around.”

“I'll be careful,” I said, thinking of the money I was going to lose if I didn't find his stuff. Then I went out back and raided my chocolate cache, after which I went into the bird room and told Tim I was going to be out for a little while.

“Well, I hope it's something important.” He locked the door on the lovebirds' cage. “Because you seem to be forgetting that you have a store to run.”

“I know what I have to do,” I replied testily.

“Sometimes I wonder,” Tim muttered.

There was no sense in prolonging the conversation. I whistled for Zsa Zsa and went out the door. Surprisingly I didn't have as much trouble finding the place as I thought I would. Ray's directions turned out to be accurate. I found both the house and the turn off on the first try. The road I turned into was narrow. My tires kicked up gravel as I wound through a stand of birch, honey locust and sumac. A short time later the trees ended and the open ground began. It was warm in the cab, and when I rolled down the window the soft smells of spring flooded in. A little while later the road dipped, and I caught sight of five gravestones standing about ninety feet away from the road in an open meadow. The graves looked abandoned as did the cluster of old farm equipment in back of them. The people buried in the small graveyard must be the original owners. They'd built the land up, worked it, and been buried on it. It was something you didn't see anymore.

The road went by what must have once been grass but was now rapidly becoming meadow and stopped in front of an old farmhouse. I parked the car and Zsa Zsa and I got out. Aside from the chittering of squirrels and the gentle whosh of traffic back on Ninety-two the silence was absolute. No one was here. The farmhouse looked as if it had been empty for a long time. It was listing over to the left as if it was tired and wanted to lie down. Its disheveled appearance was increased by the white splotches on the blue clapboard. Someone must have scraped off the loose paint, primed the spots and then grown bored with the job and walked away.

When I walked up to the door the steps groaned beneath my feet. I tried the bell. When it didn't work I knocked. No one answered. I waited a minute, then walked back down. A hawk circled overhead, drifting on the currents, waiting for the opportunity to strike.

I called to Zsa Zsa and headed toward the barn. A For Sale sign lay on the grass next to a old, broken chair. A rusted car with four flat tires sat in the feeding pen, replacing the cows that must have congregated there in better days. The barn itself was missing pieces of siding here and there. There was nothing here. If Estrella's mother had ever been here, she was gone now. It looked as if I'd reached a dead end. When I got back to the store I'd have to call Garriques and tell him the news. I picked up a pebble and tossed it. It plinked as it landed on the rim of an old tire. On the way out I stopped and took a look at the gravestones, more out of curiosity's sake than for any other reason.

The graves hadn't been tended to in a long time. The markers leaned this way and that. The earth around them was overrun with weeds. I squatted down and looked at the writing on the headstones while Zsa Zsa sniffed around. The names had been shallowly etched and the weather had scoured the stone, making the letters difficult to read. I made out a first name on one. Louisa. The first letter of her last name looked to be an “m.” Then there was an “i” or maybe it was an “r” and an “a.” I couldn't make out the rest. I got up, wiped my hands on the back of my jeans, and looked at the machinery rusting in the sun. All that effort and for what? The thought raised questions I didn't want to think about, and even watching Zsa Zsa chase a pheasant she'd spooked didn't cheer me up. I drove back to Syracuse and spent the rest of the day working.

 

 

At nine o'clock I closed up the shop and went over to Pete's. It had been a long day and I wanted a Scotch and someone to talk to. George was already there and Zsa Zsa and I sat down next to him.

“I think I lost a seven-hundred-dollar sale,” I told George after I'd ordered a Black Label and given Zsa Zsa her saucer of beer. I proceeded to tell him about Estrella and Garriques and his wife's jewelry and that not recovering it probably meant Enid would reconsider her birthday present.