Relatively Dead (21 page)

I opened the door to Tom’s bedroom and shone the light inside. He had one of those old double beds that wasn’t king or queen-size. Quaint. It was neatly made, of course, and the room was immaculate. I opened the closet door and peeked inside. His clothes were hung on hangers with care, all facing the same way. Several pairs of shoes were lined up on the floor. Nothing of interest.

I opened each drawer of his small dresser. Socks, underwear, all in place. It occurred to me Tom was so neat he was helping me with my search. There was nothing hidden. I closed the drawers, exited the bedroom, and shut the door.

I went into the bathroom. I’d been in here earlier and seen a soap dispenser, an electric toothbrush, and a tube of fluoride toothpaste on the sink. I hadn’t opened the cabinet. I did now. Again his penchant for order helped me. I quickly spotted the bottle of prescription pills. I read the label. It was a form of penicillin and the date was recent. Here was evidence Tom was treating a problem. His hand problem, perhaps syphilis. Score one for Dr. Kemp. Nothing else caught my attention.

Next I went into the computer room. The computer was turned off. A two-drawer filing cabinet I’d spotted earlier stood against one wall. I opened the top drawer. It contained neatly labeled file folders. The tab of the first one said “Bank Statements.” Maybe I was getting lucky. At least he hadn’t gone paperless.

The newest statement was in front. Tom
was
into electronic banking. His paycheck was deposited automatically, every two weeks. His utility bills and cable bill were paid electronically. So was his credit card bill. I checked the manual deposits, looking for transactions in the five or ten thousand dollar range. There were several deposits of from one to several hundred dollars, but nothing larger. He’d only written a few checks, and those were relatively small.

I leafed through three other statements. They were almost identical to the first one. Tom was Mr. Bland, living a completely predictable life. If he’d paid for a plane ticket to Northern Ireland, he’d done it by credit card. I needed to find his credit card statements.

I didn’t have to search any further than the next file folder, which had “Credit Card Statements” printed on the tab. I opened it and looked at Tom’s most recent three statements. He hadn’t purchased any airline tickets, or anything else very expensive. He was living on a shoestring, just as he’d said.

If he didn’t deposit the ten thousand dollars, what had he done with the money? Hidden it? He was so neat, it would be difficult for him to hide anything. I went through the file folders to see if he’d slipped the bills into one of them. Nope. I was about to close the drawer when something jogged my memory. A piece of paper had looked familiar.

I went back through the folders until I found one labeled “Tickets.” I hadn’t been looking at the labels. Inside was the sheet of paper that had caught my eye. It was an e-ticket. Since I’d been flying a lot, recently, that’s why it looked familiar. I pulled it out. It was a reservation to fly roundtrip from Los Angeles to Edinburgh in about a week.

Jason IV lived in Edinburgh. Excited now, I tore a sheet of scratch paper off a pad beside the computer, and with a pencil also sitting there I copied the flight information and shoved it in my bra.

I still hadn’t found any proof of wrongdoing. The best bet was to find the money, or the cell phone he used—or a gun. I did a frenzied search of the whole house, looking in drawers, under furniture, and in all the cracks I could find. I even checked the kitchen cabinets and peered inside Tom’s cooking pots. After a lot of frantic but wasted effort I stopped and tried to get control of myself. I looked at my watch. It was almost midnight. I’d been here too long. I needed to leave.

I shone the flashlight on the kitchen counter and window to plan my escape when I saw footprints on the counter made by the dirt from the backyard that had stuck to my shoes. I checked the floor. There were prints where I’d landed on the floor before taking my shoes off. Tom would certainly notice the mess.

I picked up the shoes and dropped them out the window. Then I found a sponge and hastily cleaned the prints from the counter and floor and wiped them dry with a paper towel. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. With my flashlight in my mouth I climbed onto the counter and worked my legs out the window.

Everything went well until I tried to put my feet on the flowerpot. One foot hit the corner of it and while I was struggling for a foothold I knocked the unstable pot over again. This time it landed on some small rocks that formed the edge of a flowerbed, making a distinct crack. I dropped to the ground, landing on my feet but twisting an ankle, and then fell on my side.

“Who’s there?”

I looked at the window of the other half of the duplex and saw the head of a man sticking out and looking in my direction. I was in almost total darkness, so he probably couldn’t see me. However, I wasn’t going to stick around. I got up and limped toward the side of the garage as fast as I could go. I was visible for a few seconds, but only dimly.

Once I had the garage between us, I ran to the fence, fumbled with the latch, and quickly went through the gate. I ran down the alley toward the street where my car was parked, still limping. My ankle hurt and the pavement felt hard against my sock feet. I’d left my shoes and the flashlight, which had popped out of my mouth, behind, too panicked to try to pick them up.

I raced to my car and bent down to retrieve the key from behind the front wheel, praying it would still be there, even though I don’t pray. It was. I got the door open and fell in, shutting it behind me. I opened the window and listened for signs of pursuit. Hearing none, I started the car and drove to the corner without lights.

I turned right, away from Tom’s house, switched on the car lights, and drove away as fast as I dared, with the pedals feeling strange against my unshod feet.

CHAPTER 23

“Ice.”

I murmured the word in answer to the question from Frances about what I was doing for my sprained ankle.

“I’ll get you some right now.”

She bustled off to the kitchen. I was sitting on a couch in her back room with my right leg resting on the arm of a chair, which kept it elevated. It was neatly wrapped with a bandage Rigo had purchased. He’d also supplied a pair of crutches a member of his family used at one time. I was wearing shorts and had a stick-on bandage on my knee.

I was feeling grateful to Rigo. I could always count on him. The pain in my ankle had woken me early. I’d been waiting for the police to come and arrest me, knowing I couldn’t drive even though I’d somehow driven myself back to the motel last night, when he called from his parents’ house to find out where I was.

I was supposed to go there for breakfast. I must have drifted back to sleep. When I admitted I was in a bad way, he drove down and picked me up. I turned to him now and took his hand.

“Thank you for being my knight in shining armor.”

Rigo put his other arm around my shoulders. “Someone has to bail you out of trouble.”

“I’m afraid it’s too late for that.”

Frances returned with a bag of ice cubes wrapped in a towel. We applied the ice to the swollen ankle. She looked at it with concern.

“How do you know it’s not broken?”

“I can walk on it—a little. I drove myself back to the motel last night. Besides, the only doctor I know here is a dermatologist.”

Frances frowned. “If it’s not improving by tomorrow, I want you to go to an urgent care center for X-rays. Now, tell me why you’re going to be arrested.”

Frances was another person who’d always been in my corner. Without her and Rigo, I’d either be dead or on skid row, selling my body for food.

I told her about my debacle at Tom’s house, and then gave her a list. “I left my shoes and flashlight; I left fingerprints everywhere; I broke his screen; I even left a DNA sample of blood I wiped off my knee.”

Frances laughed. “You must be the world’s worst burglar. However, I have my doubts you’ll be arrested. I suspect this is what happened. The tenant called the police, who came and found your shoes and flashlight. The tenant probably called Tom Kelly at work. The last thing Tom wants is to have the police nosing around his house. Remember, the police have been to see him, already, and he didn’t let him in. You said the tenant got a glimpse of you running away, not carrying anything, at least not anything big. Tom may have used that as an excuse not to come home while the police were there so he didn’t have to let them into the house.

“Tom probably suspects you were the burglar, but he thinks you’re Aiko, and the only connection he has to that name is a video. You didn’t even give him a phone number, which was the smartest thing you did. If he happens to figure out you’re really Cynthia, he
definitely
doesn’t want the police involved. As far as the evidence you left, although the police took your fingerprints, that was when you didn’t have an identity. In addition, the only place your DNA exists is in my genealogy project, and the police don’t have access to that. Lots of women wear size nine shoes. So I wouldn’t worry too much. Incidentally, speaking of DNA, the lab received the DNA sample from Jason II. It’s being processed now.”

Rigo said, “What if the tenants had a key and let the police into the house?”

I’d already envisioned that. “They might have obtained my DNA from the trashcan. I didn’t leave anything else, except fingerprints. No cards with my name and address.” Then I remembered. “Oh, there is one thing. Tom took some pictures of me with his digital camera. The police may have found that.”

Frances shrugged. “Even with pictures, the police aren’t going to make the connection to Cynthia without Tom’s help, and as I said, he’s not going to point them in that direction, even if he figures it out. If you get indicted, everything you know about Tom suddenly comes into play.” 

Rigo wasn’t satisfied. “You need to give her the lecture on not breaking into people’s homes in the first place. She won’t listen to me. I thought everything was fine when she called me last night and said she’d left Tom’s place safely. I never dreamed she’d break in after he left.”

Frances smiled, faintly. “At least she won’t be doing that again for a few days.” She turned to me. “Let’s talk about the evidence you found. Which of course will never be admissible in any courtroom this side of Mars. Penicillin. Tom’s treating some disease; the scammer has a disease that might be treatable with penicillin. As I’ve said, I don’t believe in coincidences.”

I’d shown Frances the charts of the Boyd family genealogy Tom printed out for me. She looked at them now. “Tom knows the Boyds’ complete family tree and that Jason III was murdered. He has Timothy Boyd, who was also murdered, on his tree. And, perhaps most interesting of all, he’s flying to Edinburgh where Timothy’s brother, Jason IV, lives.”

I said, “He didn’t tell me that. I only know it because I found his e-ticket.”

I was about to say more when Rigo interrupted. “Why would he tell you? He’s very careful. He doesn’t know you. It’s not wise to tell strangers you’re going out of town for ten days. They might burglarize your house while you’re gone. Although why he would suspect an innocent girl like you of being a burglar I can’t imagine.”

Rigo and Frances had a laugh at my expense. I ignored them.

“He
did
tell me a lot about himself. The plane tickets haven’t shown up on his credit card statement yet. He must have just made the reservations.”

Frances said, “Or he could have paid cash he took from the ten thousand.”

Rigo, who had a masters degree in psychology, chimed in.

“One thing is interesting to me. From what you’ve told me, he has OCD—obsessive compulsive disorder. Everything has to be exactly in its place. If he’s so compulsive, why hasn’t he entered the date of death for Timothy Boyd on his chart?”

Frances nodded. “Probably because he didn’t kill Timothy Boyd and doesn’t know he’s dead. You didn’t find any evidence that he’s been to Northern Ireland. He couldn’t have paid cash for those plane tickets if he had gone because that was before he scammed Mrs. Horton.”

I thought about what she said. “So your theory that the same person killed both Timothy and Jason is wrong.”

“Not necessarily. The killer could be someone else. We don’t have any evidence that Tom killed Jason III. It happened on a Friday night, and he was supposedly working.”

I’d never told them about the letter he sent me, implying he’d killed Jason. My feelings were mixed. “His shift doesn’t start until eleven p.m. The murder took place about nine-thirty. He could have killed Jason and then gone to work afterward. However, he’d have to have some connection to Jason to know about the party. He claimed he’d never met Jason. I think he told the truth.”

“Okay, he
might
still be a suspect. But at the moment we can’t prove he did it.”

“Is there anything we can tell the police now?”

Frances shook her head, vigorously. “Nothing that won’t get you into hot water way over your head. Besides, your evidence wouldn’t hold up in court, even if it was collected in a legal manner. It’s true that some of these things, like the penicillin prescription, can easily be traced to find out what it was for, but you need warrants and subpoenas and stuff like that to get that information, and you need more than just theories to obtain them. You didn’t happen to see the name of the doctor who wrote the prescription, did you?”