Relative Malice (4 page)

The restaurant had the “closed” sign turned toward the street when Kendall left Betty’s office, eager for the night air to sharpen her senses. The empty dining area had a TV mounted in the corner, set to a local station; breaking news showed a building in flames, surrounded by fire trucks.

Dear God, the setting looks familiar
. It was the motel where Kendall had been staying.

4

The Rat Pak, situated in the middle of a string of five businesses, sat on a side street abutting a wooded bluff. It was located only a short distance from the Chippewa River, which divides downtown Eau Claire. The building, mostly dark brick and limestone block, looked like it had been ensconced at the foot of the bluff since the beginning of the previous century. A hair salon on one side and a dry cleaner on the other hugged the tavern. A bead shop and a check-cashing place followed from the salon toward the corner. There were no lights on in the aging homes on the other side of the street.

Kendall drove past, noticing only two cars parked in front of the tavern. She turned around where the street dead-ended at the edge of the bluff. An apartment recommended by her uncle wasn’t high on her list of ideal residences, but with the motel closed, it wasn’t like she had a lot of immediate choices. Determined to bring a quick resolution to her living situation, she parked and walked toward the bar.

A dark figure stepped out from an unlit doorway next to the tavern as Kendall approached the door; in a heartbeat, she whipped out her gun.

“Kenny, put the gun down—it’s me!”

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

Kendall’s former roommate stepped out of the shadows. “It’s good to see you, too.”

Linda Johnson, now known as Natalie Drake among the Chippewa Valley theatre set, stepped out of the shadows. Nat wore a dark leather jacket and a black knit cap pulled over her waist-length, ebony hair. Ghost white in the dim streetlight, her face still bore the heavy makeup she wore in
The Bride of Frankenstein
, her latest thespian project.

Kendall holstered her gun, thinking how on edge she must have been to react the way she had. “You scared the crap out of me. What do you want, anyway? I got your message, Nat, loud and clear. Stuffing all my things in the car while I was at work? Real mature.”

“I’m sorry, Kenny. I shouldn’t have done that.”

That was an understatement.
“How did you find me?

“I was coming home from the theater and saw your car drive by. I wanted to talk to you, so I followed you here. I want you to come back.”

“Come back? You know it wouldn’t work. We don’t want the same thing.”

“We could go back to how it was.”

“I don’t think that’s possible, Nat.”

Natalie took Kenny’s hands in hers. “I am sorry. Promise me that you’ll consider it, anyway. I hope you’ll still think of me as a friend.”

Kendall had known Nat was gay when she agreed to be her roommate. She’d liked Nat and convinced herself many people of the opposite sexual persuasion were successful roomies. It had worked well for a long time; Nat was gone most evenings and Kendall days, so they seldom overlapped. Until the night Kendall went out with Nat and her theatre friends to celebrate the success of her latest play. In an alcoholic haze, Nat made a pass when they came home, and foolishly, Kendall spent the night in her bed. For Kendall it had been a spur of the moment, liquor-induced, sensual experiment, but Nat had perceived it as a beginning.

The next morning Kendall had to spell it out for her, and the message hadn’t been well received. When she came out of work that afternoon, she found her car jammed with all her belongings.

Now Nat thought they could still be friends? Leery, Kendall said, “Sure. I’d like that.”

Nat squeezed her hands and disappeared back into the night.

Kendall watched her leave. “I’m sorry, too,” she whispered.

In the intensity of their exchange, neither of them had seen the slight figure huddled in the doorway of the hair salon.

Intrigued by the conversation she’d overheard, Brynn Zellman waited in the doorway until the tall woman who’d wielded the gun disappeared into the tavern. Her stance had been that of a cop, but why would a cop be visiting the bar? Nearly closing time, there wouldn’t be more than a handful of the regulars still parked on the red-velvet bar stools.

Brynn unlocked the door leading to the floor above the storefronts, recalling as she scaled the stairway to her apartment, the only unfamiliar car out front had been a dark blue SUV. It was packed to the gills with things that even in the dim lighting looked like personal belongings. It seemed unlikely a cop would be here to look at the empty apartment so late on a Saturday night.

Brynn had been bugging Morrie to rent it out. It felt kind of creepy to have a vacant apartment right across the hall. She kept imagining sounds coming from the place late at night. It would be a relief to have someone living there again—even a cop.

The only patrons remaining in the bar were a heavy man in a dark suit sitting at one end of the bar, and at the other end, a couple that seemed to be avoiding each other’s eyes. A frowsy-haired woman in a red sweater and a white apron stood behind the bar, polishing glasses. Strains of Dean Martin singing
Return to Me
flowed from an old-fashioned jukebox with glass columns of rotating colors running up each side. When Kendall asked for Morrie, the tightly permed bartender gestured toward the back room. “In there.”

Morrie looked like an aging hippie in beads and silver earrings. He didn’t seem to go with the Rat Pak motif of the bar, but at least he wasn’t wearing tie-dye. He stood and held out his hand. “You must be Kenny.”

Kendall cringed. Would she ever get rid of the name Kenny? Although it was the obvious diminutive of Kendall, the name always brought up her mother’s disappointment at Kendall’s lack of femininity and her father’s anxious attempts to turn her into the boy he’d always wanted.

She shook Morrie’s hand, noticing a narrow strip of brown leather held back his salt and pepper hair in a short tail. “Detective Halsrud.” She didn’t add, “to you,” although at times when people insisted on calling her Kenny, she was tempted.

Morrie accepted the stiff greeting with a smile. “Let me show you the place.” He picked up a set of keys and led her though a door opening into a back hallway. “There are two ways to get upstairs. The doorway in front is always locked. The door to the parking lot in the back is open unless the bar is closed.”

At the top of the steps, on the side facing the bluff, a hallway ran toward the south. A short corridor branched off in front of them, on either side a door to an apartment. The upper half of each door had a windowpane of textured glass. Lettered with names of businesses, they’d obviously been in place since the ‘30s or ‘40s. The one on the right was made up of colored, leaded glass like that in a church window and in its center, a beveled crystal circle about ten inches in diameter. From the circle, chips of color radiated out, creating a brilliant kaleidoscope effect. Black lettering along a bottom panel spelled out, “Fortune-teller.” Backlit by light from inside the apartment, small shapes of colored light decorated the hallway.

“That’s been here forever and a day,” Morrie offered. “When I bought the place I found out a widow lady had it put in. She was a tenant for at least a hundred and ten years. Told fortunes for a living. Her sign’s still downstairs over the front door to the apartments—Madam Vadoma.”

Kendall raised her eyebrows.

“Seriously, she had to be more than ninety when she passed a couple years ago. Some of her clients kept coming even after she was gone. The new renter decided to follow in her footsteps. She’s been playing the suckers since she’s been here.”

“She tells fortunes?”

“Calls herself a psychic reader or some horseshit like that. I think she needed the dough, you know? She won’t bother you; she’s shy, keeps to herself unless she needs something.”

Morrie inserted a key into the door across from the psychic. Stenciled on its textured, glass window was PHILLIP J. PARKINS, PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS. “See? The place was made for you.”

Having a firm resistance to planting roots, Kendall wasn’t so sure. Before moving in with Nat, she’d spent nearly two years renting the lower level of a house belonging to a divorced salesman who travelled more than he was ever at home. Before then, it had been studio apartments in buildings that guaranteed anonymity.

The door opened into a narrow living room with two tall windows looking out toward the tree-covered bluff. A short utility bar sided by two rickety stools divided the room from the small kitchen area. The carpeting was a worn, institutional gray-green, and the walls were seriously yellowed. Not inviting. But painting supplies and carpeting samples were sitting on the counter; evidently Morrie planned to fix the place up.

“I’m putting in new carpeting and painting the whole place. Tell you what—stay for a week—on me. Then if you make it permanent, I’ll decorate however you want. You can pick the colors.”

Kendall moved to look at the other rooms. The bathroom had just had a makeover and still smelled of caulk. The larger bedroom faced the bluff and had a decent-sized window; the other was windowless but had a small skylight.

Morrie added, “The place comes partially furnished. But look at that bed—it’s brand new.”

The bed looked like the only piece of furniture not dating back to the Depression era. Right now it looked enticing. The mattresses at the motel left a lot to be desired—not that that particular motel was even an option any longer.

Kendall decided it wouldn’t hurt to take the guy up on his offer and stay for a week. When she said she’d try it out, he asked if he could help her bring some of her things up, making Kendall wonder if Uncle Al had ratted her out to the guy by telling him much more about her situation than she would have liked.

Morrie followed her to her car and helped carry up what she’d need for a temporary stay.

5

Kendall stretched out on the bed fully dressed and immediately drifted off. It felt like only minutes had passed when she was jerked awake by a dream—a dream starring a curly-haired baby and a young boy. Kendall shuddered, trying to shake off images of the Glausson family. Serious sleep didn’t seem like a possibility.

She changed clothes and went back out into the night. The Glaussons’ neighborhood bordered the Chippewa River north of Eau Claire; the street the house was on ended at a cul-de-sac that met the edge of a wooded area staked off for development. The Glausson house, whose lot bordered the river, sat lit up like a party was in progress. A black-and-white was visible at the curb and an unmarked parked in the driveway. She’d have company—one of the other detectives must not have been able to sleep either.

An officer she used to work with sat inside the door working a sudoku when she entered the house. “Hey, Halsrud. You caught a big one. Bet you’re missing Hank.”

News travelled fast in the department. She nodded toward the interior of the house. “Who’s here?”

He turned toward the back. “Alverson. I think he’s upstairs.”

At least the creep was showing an interest.
Kendall mounted the stairs and found Ross Alverson in the baby’s room. He’d changed out of his hunting attire, wearing jeans with a sport coat too short for his tall body. He stood holding a digital photo frame, handing it to her as she approached. Inside the frame, pictures of Philly Glausson flipped through at two-second intervals. All that innocence—snuffed out as quickly as a candle on a birthday cake. Refusing to get emotional in front of Alverson, she returned the frame to its place on the dresser.

“Sucks, doesn’t it?” he asked.

“She could still be alive.”

“What about the blood stains?” He pointed to the markers on the floor that outlined where the techs had found the blood.

“We don’t know it’s hers.”

“Right. Not yet.”

Kendall bit her tongue rather than argue. Was she the only one who believed the child was still alive? Remembering what Betty Ruffalo had told her about the little girl, she walked to the playhouse. Kendall lifted the flap and looked under the table. It was empty inside except for a brown teddy bear and a crumpled, pink blanket, both of them probably Philly’s. They bagged them and moved downstairs.

They stopped in the kitchen, Alverson’s height somehow incongruous against the cabinets with their telltale blood spatters.

“Do we know if anything’s missing?” he asked.

“Just cash and credit cards, so far. According to a friend of Chelsea Glausson, the doctor didn’t keep drugs at home. There’s nothing to indicate they’d come in here looking for anything in particular. With no survivors it’s hard to know what might be missing. The nanny’s going to go through here again in the morning; she may be able to tell us more.”

After they’d gone through the stacks of mail, letters, and notes on Chelsea Glausson’s desk, Kendall decided to call it a night. “It’s nearly three a.m. Let’s wrap it up for now. I’m going to get a few hours sleep before tomorrow’s meeting.”

Alverson held up a business card. “What about this?”

Kendall moved closer to read its face. “Callandra – Psychic Interpretations” was printed in the center of the card with a local phone number underneath. Another fortune-teller mention in one day—what were the chances?

“What do you think?” she asked. “Worth looking into?”

“Nah, probably not. I dated a chick that called those nine-hundred numbers and paid big bucks to psychics—it’s all a scam.”

“I suppose.” Kendall tucked the card into an evidence bag and jotted the information into her notebook.

She walked out into the night, Alverson trailing behind her. “You know, you’re looking good, Kenny.”

The bullet Kendall had taken to the abdomen right after she’d made detective had left her thirty pounds lighter. Though at 5’11” she hadn’t been grossly overweight, she had discovered she felt better without the added pounds and was managing to keep them off. But a compliment from a sleazeball like Alverson didn’t feel like praise.

She stopped and faced him. “Let’s get something straight. I told you once tonight, my name is Kendall. Use it. And any discussion of my personal life, including my appearance, is off-limits. You got that?”

He backed off, muttering, “Just making conversation.”

________

Kendall climbed the stairs to the apartment, wondering if Chelsea Glausson’s “Callandra” could be living right across the hall. A faint glow from behind her neighbor’s window scattered bright prisms of light onto the opposite wall. Inserting her key in the lock, she heard a door open behind her. A tiny woman in a white chenille bathrobe stood just inside the open door. She held a miniature silver tray with a teacup balanced in its center.

“I’m Brynn. I saw you on the news. I thought you might need this.” She offered Kendall the tray. The delicate china teacup, painted with purple pansies, held a silver filigreed ball. A tiny chain connected to it draped over the side of the cup. Kendall didn’t remember what the gadget was called, but her mother had been a tea drinker; she knew it held tea.

“I’m Detective Halsrud. Kendall.”

When Kendall didn’t reach for the tray, Brynn explained, “It’s a tea ball filled with a special blend of tea—it’ll help you sleep. Don’t worry, it’s made with all natural ingredients.”

She accepted the tray, noticing that although the woman handing it to her had a face unlined by time, her hair was pure white and as feathery as a duckling’s coat. Except for the colorless hair, she could be fourteen.

“Thanks. I’ll try it.”

Her neighbor turned back to her doorway. “All right, then,” she said, disappearing behind the glass-paned door.

She’d seen her on the news? How had she known the person she’d seen on the news resided across the hall? Morrie must have told her, but that would mean an awfully late communication. Odd. But it didn’t matter; Kendall only planned to stay in the apartment for a week. She could tolerate odd for that long. Her new neighbor certainly wasn’t talkative, so she wouldn’t take up Kendall’s time or try to be best friends. Kendall set the tea aside, not ready to accept offerings from a stranger.

Her bathroom, newly remodeled, still smelled of fresh wood and caulk. A mirror ran the length of the vanity, appreciably high enough for Kendall to see even the top of her head.

Alverson had said she looked good, not that a compliment from him meant a whole lot. She let her hair down and ran a brush through it. Just plain brown. With a positive spin, sandy. Nat had always encouraged her to put highlights in it, but she’d never gotten around to it, just like she’d never taken time to buy clothes to complement her new figure. She supposed the weight loss flattered her face, exposing her high cheekbones. And her eyes weren’t bad, a rich amber brown. Her nose, though, couldn’t be helped. It had a bend at the top that reminded her of a boxer who’d spend too much time in the ring. She hated it, although no one else had ever commented on it.

She stepped into the shower, hoping it would calm her frazzled nerves. Standing under the steamy water, she realized her neighbor must be an albino; it would explain the white hair. Kendall hadn’t gotten a good look at her eyes, but expected they would be very pale or colorless even, depending on the extent of her deformity—if albinism was considered a deformity. Kendall wasn’t familiar with albinism or if there was a politically correct term for it.

Refreshed but wide-awake, she reviewed her notes in bed. She needed some sleep before facing another day like the one she’d had. Reassuring herself she had no reason not to drink the tea she’d been given, Kendall got up and added boiling water to the tiny cup.

It didn’t taste half bad. Within minutes her nerves uncoiled as sleep washed over her. She drifted off thinking she’d need a massive supply of the stuff to get her through the Glausson case.