Shadow of Doubt (A Kali O'Brien legal mystery) (13 page)

“So don’t.” Nick’s been telling me for years I’m making myself old for nothing.

“At the moment, I don’t have much choice.”

“There’s always a choice, babe. But you didn’t call me for spiritual advice, did you?”

“Actually, I was hoping you might be able to get an address for me.”

He chuckled. “I figured it was something like that.”

I gave him Carla’s name and number, and he promised to get back to me as soon as he could. Then I sat and stared at the blank page I’d pilfered from Eddie’s office. Was Carla his companion on those nights he’d claimed to be staying at the tavern? Was she somehow tied in with the ten thousand? There weren’t many women who would lend that kind of money to a married lover. Not willingly anyway, and not without some pretty steep assurances. What about the tavern buy-out and Eddie’s self-proclaimed need for legal advice? Was any of it connected or was I simply chasing my tail?

I had questions. Lots of them. But I was short on answers, and there wasn’t a whole lot more I could do about it right then. I didn’t want to sit and brood about my future at Goldman & Latham either, so I decided to tackle my father’s desk, a chore I’d been putting off all week.

My father believed in the open drawer system of record keeping. His desk was an old fashioned oak roll-top, and every nook, cranny, cubbyhole and drawer was stuffed to overflowing. Bills, announcements, coupons, credit can receipts, empty match boxes—they were all jumbled in there together. There was clearly going to be no central record of what he owed or owned. He’d gotten along just fine, but the probate process required hard data, exact figures, and inordinate attention to detail. All three were in short supply. In order to come up with a schedule of assets and debts, I was going to have to piece things together myself, starting with the bits and scraps in his desk.

I found an old folding table in the back room, dragged it over next to the desk, and began methodically sorting the pertinent from the dispensable. First I emptied all the cubbyholes, tossing what I didn’t need into the meta trash can I’d dragged in from the kitchen. Then I
 
arranged what was left into piles, and started taking notes When I finished with the cubbies, I started on the drawers. I was more than halfway through when the phone rang. For a moment I held on to the hope it might be Ken.

“Hi, babe,” Nick said. “I got that address you wanted. Thirty-four Ponderosa, right there in Silver Creek.”

I grabbed a pen and wrote it down.

“Your gal’s a thirty-six year old registered Democrat with a good driving record. Five-foot-five, a hundred and twenty-four pounds, and single, at least at the moment.”

“Nick, you’re amazing.”

“It’s the database. This kind of stuff is easy. You want more?”

“Not at the moment, but thanks. As a token of my gratitude, I’ll buy you dinner when I get back to town.”

“I’ll let you, so long as you don’t go getting fancy on me.”

“Not a prayer,” I told him.

It was too late to go calling on a woman I’d never met, so I tucked the address into my purse and turned my attention back to the desk. Half an hour and another glass of wine later, I made it to the bottom drawer, where I found last month’s utility bill and a take-out menu for China Gardens on East Main.

I also found three shoe boxes filled with letters and cards, one box for each of us kids. Mine seemed to hold just about every letter I’d written since leaving home. Most were from my college days, when I still considered a long distance call an extravagance.

Pouring still another glass of wine, I settled onto the sofa and began to re-read some of the letters. They were pathetic. Filled with empty, impersonal chatter about class assignments, sporting events, even the weather, for God’s sake. And they were short, most of them barely a page. The birthday and Christmas cards I’d sent more recently were just as bad. Sometimes I’d penned a “Have a good day,” at the bottom, but usually I’d simply signed my name.

And yet he’d kept them all. Every single one.

My throat grew tight, and my stomach knotted over or itself. It was little consolation that my own box was fuller than either John’s or Sabrina’s.

I finished off the bottle of wine, which had been two thirds full when the evening began, then tumbled into bed, where I dreamed of my father. I saw him building the back yard tree house, a special hideaway we all three used right through high school. I saw him helping my mother stuff the turkey on Thanksgiving, humming under his breath. I curled next to him in the backyard hammock, snug and safe as a kitten, listening to the even flow of words as he read aloud.

A little after one, I awoke, soaked in sadness. As the night crept forward, I huddled under the covers and tried to clear my mind. I saw nothing, though, but the pictures I tried not to.

I finally fell back to sleep sometime after five, only to be awakened, what seemed like minutes later, by the screech of an electric saw. I checked the bedside clock — 6:45. My head was pounding, the fallout from too much wine and too little sleep, and my spirits weren’t so good either. But there was no getting back to sleep, not with that racket, so I stumbled out of bed and into my slightly rank sweats. I put a kettle of water on to boil, then remembered I’d run out of the special grind decaf I’d brought from home. The only thing in the cupboard was a jar of generic instant, but I was desperate. I made myself a cup, tasted it, then poured the rest down the drain. Maybe I wasn’t so desperate after all.

The saw continued to screech, my head continued to pound, and my mouth felt like the bottom of a bird cage. I took two aspirin, called to Loretta, whose spirits were as high as mine were low, and stomped angrily out of the house.

The racket seemed to be coming from the old Gallagher place down the road. I didn’t know who lived there now, although I was pretty sure it was no longer any of the Gallaghers. They wouldn’t have been hammering and sawing first thing in the morning. Or any other time for that matter. Two of the upstairs windows had been missing the whole time I was growing up, and when a falling tree had knocked a hole in the front door the winter I was twelve, Mr. Gallagher simply nailed a sheet of plywood across the whole thing. From then on, the family used the back door.

I walked up the rutted driveway, past the old orchard, and knocked. The front door had been replaced. It was a beautifully crafted, eight panel door with shiny brass trim. A real improvement over plywood.

After a moment, I knocked again. Up close like that, the rasp of the saw was piercing. There was no way a gentle knock would be heard, so I started pounding and kicking and hollering with a vengeance. The sawing stopped; my banging and kicking continued for a moment longer, a window-rattling ruckus almost as unpleasant as the sawing. Then the door opened, and I stood nose to nose with my brother’s friend Tom.

“You?” My voice was about as pleasant as everything else that morning. “What are you doing here?”

“Good morning to you, too,” Tom said, lifting the pair of protective goggles to his forehead. “I live here.”

“What happened to the Gallaghers?”

“Mr. Gallagher died. Mrs. Gallagher went to live with her daughter in Florida. Is that who you’re looking for? I’ve probably got her address somewhere.”

I pulled myself to my full five-foot-five and scowled. “Do you realize that it’s seven o’clock in the morning?”

“Seven-fifteen actually. And a truly lovely morning, too. You want to come in? I’ll make up some coffee.” Tom pulled the goggles all the way off, then brushed the sawdust from his bare arms. “It’ll take me just a minute to wash up.”

He turned and headed inside without waiting for an answer. I wasn’t about to be left talking to an empty door, so I followed. “No coffee,” I said tersely. “Caffeine makes me jittery.”

“I’ll make decaf then. Or herb tea. Jesus, are you always so surly?”

“Do you always wake the neighborhood with your God-awful hammering and sawing?”

“Ah,” he said, stopping midway through a room stacked with plywood and sheetrock. “I take it this isn’t a social call.”

I gave him one of those icy glares that’s intended to convey more than words. “Quite a job you’ve taken on here,” I said, surveying the gutted interior. The nasty tone I’d tried for was muted somewhat by grudging respect. Anyone who would tackle a job like that with the confidence it would end up whole again deserved credit.

“It is quite a job, taken on more by necessity than choice. I’m sorry about the noise. Your dad never minded, and I guess I didn’t think that with you here it might be different. I have to fit this construction stuff into the hours I’m not at work so I don’t have a lot of leeway.”

“What about Sunday?” I smirked. “That your day for golf?”

He looked puzzled.

“You didn’t work Sunday. It was quiet all morning.”

The puzzled expression gave way to a grin. “It was my weekend with my kids.” He tossed his goggles onto a make-shift workbench. “Cappuccino okay? Strictly decaf, I promise.”

We passed through the rehab zone and into a kitchen straight out of
House Beautiful.
A large, open space with hardwood flooring, granite counter tops, gleaming new appliances, and a profusion of sunlight.

“This is beautiful,” I said, genuinely impressed. “You did it yourself?”

“Not the finish work. I’m merely the grunt labor and gofer. It cuts costs considerably. It did turn out nicely though, didn’t it?” He filled the cappuccino machine with water, flipped on the switch, then poured milk into a small metal pitcher.

“Your weekend with the kids,” I said, repeating what he'd told me. “You’re divorced?”

“Just about” The machine began to gurgle. Tom pressed water through the coffee grounds, then frothed the milk and ladled white foam into the cups. “Lynn and I moved back here because we hated the phoniness and self-indulgent atmosphere of LA. We wanted a good, wholesome place to raise a family.” He offered me a cup and a crooked smile. “Eight months later she ran off with the contractor. A double whammy. I lost both a wife and a contractor. How about you, happily married?”

I shook my head. “Never married.”

“Never?” He seemed to find the idea amusing. “You one of those ambitious, hard-nosed career women we read about? Somehow I never pictured you in that role.”

“Well, that’s me,” I told him. Though in truth, I’d never thought of myself in quite those terms.

“Relationships, though. I bet you’ve had your share of those.”

“A few.”

“You got a boyfriend now?”

“I guess you could call him that.” I wasn’t so sure Ken would agree.

Tom sipped his coffee, watching me over the rim of his cup. He rocked back in his chair, started to say something more, then apparently thought better of it.

“What do you do when you’re not hammering and sawing?” I asked.

“I’m with
The Mountain Journal. ”

“Must have been quite an adjustment, coming from
The LA Time.
"
And a big step down, I thought.

He shrugged. “All depends on what’s important I guess.”

We were sitting in an alcove at the end of the kitchen. Sunlight filtered through the pines and cast the room in a soft golden glow. I licked at the foam in my cup and felt the sharp edge of tension that had been with me since last night begin to slacken.

“I’m sorry I came banging on your door like a banshee,” I said. “I had a rough night”

“I’ve had a few of those myself. From now on I’ll try to keep the noise down in the morning.”

“That’s all right. I won’t be staying here much longer.”