Sink Trap (21 page)

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Authors: Christy Evans

Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Mystery & Detective, #Women Sleuths, #Large Type Books, #Mystery Fiction, #Murder, #Crime, #Investigation, #Murder - Investigation, #Oregon, #Plumbers

BOOK: Sink Trap
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Barry looked at me, his brow furrowed. “As long as I can take the Fifth,” he said.
I grinned. “Nothing like that, I promise.” I shifted my toolbox from one hand to the other, stalling. Now that I had the chance, I hesitated. But I trusted Barry’s judgment.
“What do you think of Gregory Whitlock?”
“He’s smart,” Barry answered. “One of the best heads for business in this town. He knows his stuff, that’s for sure.”
“Paula doesn’t like him much,” I said.
Barry smiled, affection for his wife shining in his eyes. “Paula is a very loyal friend,” he said, as though that explained everything.
“Huh?”
“She thinks he’s taking advantage of Martha Tepper with this deal.” He motioned to the house, a gesture that seemed to encompass all of Miss Tepper’s property. “She thinks her friend Martha is being taken for a ride by a sharpie, and she is rather, um, indignant about it.”
“But you don’t agree?” I found it hard to believe Barry was defending Gregory, knowing what his wife thought.
“Martha Tepper isn’t a fool,” he said. He lowered his voice. “I’m probably not supposed to know, but I have
heard that Miss Tepper’s attorneys drove a hard bargain on the two properties. She gets a slice of the profits from both deals, in return for a smaller up-front payment.”
“So, why don’t you tell her that? Let her know that he isn’t taking advantage, that he and Miss Tepper are partners in the project?”
“Have you tried to persuade Paula Ciccone of anything?” Barry asked. “My wife, much as I adore her, gives a whole new meaning to the word
stubborn
. She is absolutely convinced that Whitlock is a crook, and nothing will change her mind.”
Barry sighed. “I have learned, over the years, to pick my battles, just like any man that’s been married very long.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he added hastily. “Paula is the best thing that ever happened to me. But under that sweet librarian, she’s still the Italian spitfire I married.”
I nodded. It had been a while since I had been in a serious relationship. There was one years back in San Francisco, and it had been a lie. But I remembered the part about choosing your battles. Some things just weren’t worth stressing over.
The trick was to learn where your own personal limits were. I had discovered there was something worse than standing up for yourself, even if it meant an argument—not standing up for yourself.
“Thanks, Barry. Appreciate you telling me.”
“No sweat,” he said. “Just don’t tell Paula, okay?”
I ran a finger across my lips in a zipping motion.
Ahead of us, the basement door stood open, a trail of dusty footprints attesting to the traffic in and out of the basement. The stairs descended into a murky blackness despite the morning sun.
Barry reached for the light switch at the top of the stairs and clicked it several times without success. “Bulb must be burned out,” he said, taking a flashlight from his tool belt. “There’s another light downstairs, but it isn’t on this circuit. Wait ’til I get it on.”
He started down the stairs, the bulky toolbox bumping against his leg as he took each step. The beam of the heavy flashlight bounced in the dark as he descended, and the stairs creaked under his weight.
Anyone else, I might have kidded about the noise, but on pizza night, Paula had told Sue and me how Barry was trying to lose weight. She said she hadn’t had pizza in weeks, and had dug into the Garibaldi’s box with gusto.
Besides, the moving crew had taken everything out of the basement earlier, dragging the oversized furniture, packed trunks, and heavy boxes up those wooden steps.
They had held a lot more than Barry already this morning. He was about halfway down when I heard another sound. Not a creak, but the distinct crack of splintering wood.
chapter 18
The beam from Barry’s flashlight flew around the basement, its light alternately thrown on the concrete floor, the exposed ceiling beams, and the bare walls, before it crashed against the concrete and went out.
At the same time, I heard several other sounds: the clang and crash of Barry’s toolbox, the clatter of tools spilling onto bare concrete, and the repeated muffled thuds of a large, soft object bouncing down the remaining steps.
“Barry!”
I reached for my own flashlight, playing the beam over the staircase and onto the floor.
At the bottom of the stairs I could see a Barry-shaped object in an unmoving heap.
My heart pounded and fear lanced through me, knotting my stomach into a fist.
I tried not to imagine the worst as I stood at the top of the stairs, but the still heap at the bottom turned my knees to jelly.
I forced back the growing panic and swallowed hard. Barry needed help, and that help was me.
I hurried down the stairs, silently cursing the fates that had seen fit to give us this job.
If we weren’t being deliberately sabotaged, we must have the worst luck in the history of indoor plumbing.
I was voting for sabotage.
I stepped gingerly over the broken tread and raced down the remaining steps.
By the time I reached the bottom, the Barry-shaped lump was stirring.
He sat up, and looked blearily back up the staircase at the broken tread.
Then I heard something I had never heard on a job site before. Softly, almost whispered, I heard Barry Hickey curse. Not just a single expletive, but entire strings of them, conjugated and concatenated in truly amazing combinations.
The man had an extensive vocabulary—including all seven of George Carlin’s forbidden words—and he was using them in ways I hadn’t thought possible.
I listened in awe for what felt like several minutes, though it was probably only a few seconds.
Barry slowed down. He looked up at me, his expression unreadable in the dark basement. “You will not,” he said, “tell Paula I said that.”
“Said what?” I deadpanned.
To tell the truth, it was a virtuoso performance, one I couldn’t have duplicated if I’d wanted to.
Which I didn’t.
I whistled, long and low. “I gotta tell you, though. That was a very thorough appraisal of the situation.”
“Thanks,” he said. “Good to know those Navy years weren’t wasted.”
“Ah, so that’s what swearing like a sailor sounds like. Good to know. But if you’re through for the moment, let me ask. Are you okay?”
Barry moved carefully, patting himself and moving each limb. “Nothing broken,” he said after several tentative stretches.
“I’m going to have some bruises, and I’ll likely be stiff tomorrow.” He glanced up. “Sort of like you are today.”
I grimaced. Yes, I was stiff and sore. And now Barry would be, too.
“This job is jinxed,” I said.
Barry waved off my offer of a hand and pulled himself to his feet.
With the help of my flashlight, we managed to find the cord for the single bare bulb in the basement, and turned on the light.
I helped Barry retrieve his tools, and we stowed them in the toolbox. Barry was favoring his right arm, and I put my hand on his shoulder to get him to stand still.
“Are you sure you’re okay? That was a nasty fall. Maybe you ought to go see Dr. Cox.” I consulted the battered plastic watch on my wrist. “He should be at Immediate Care about now.”
Barry shook his head. “Don’t need to,” he said. “I’ve been bruised before. I don’t need a doctor to tell me I didn’t break anything.”
“Ahem!” I cleared my throat loudly. “I beg your pardon, but didn’t we just have this same conversation—what?—two days ago? And weren’t you the one insisting that I had to go to the doctor because the injury occurred on the job?”
“That was different,” Barry growled. He wriggled his shoulders and did a couple deep-knee bends to illustrate his point. “I can move just fine.
“Besides, I’m the boss, and I get to decide who has to go to the doctor, and who doesn’t.”
I thought he was making a mistake, but there was nothing more I could do. “All right,” I muttered. “But I’m not going to be the one to explain to Paula why you didn’t go to the doctor.
“Choose your battles, remember?”
“Point taken.” He moved his toolbox over near the exposed drain pipes for the bathroom and began searching for a wrench in the jumble we had recovered from the floor. “I’ll stop in and see Dr. Cox after lunch.
“Now can we get to work on this drain?”
By the time we had finished replacing the corroded pipe, it was nearly noon.
Upstairs the movers had stopped, the sudden silence a welcome relief after hours of scraping and thumping over our heads.
We emerged from the basement to find the house nearly empty. All that was left were bags of open food packages from the kitchen piled in a garbage can and an invoice copy left on the kitchen counter.
Everything else was gone.
So much for my plan to continue searching. If there was anything to discover in Martha Tepper’s belongings, it was packed away in a storage facility somewhere under lock and key.
I glanced around once more, my heart sinking.
I turned to Barry, just in time to see him wince as he set his toolbox on the kitchen floor.
“You are going to Immediate Care, right?” I challenged.
“Yeah, yeah.”
He left the toolbox by the sink and walked toward the open front door.
We had more work to do, but Barry moved as though each step was painful. I watched him shuffle toward the door, and realized he wouldn’t be able to work anymore today.
“Barry.” He stopped at the door, and looked back.
“Yeah?”
“What say we knock off for today? We aren’t going to get finished here now, anyway. Let’s just come back in the morning, after you’ve had some rest.”
Barry hesitated.
“I could use the rest myself,” I lied. The moving van was still at the curb but the crew had left for lunch before taking the truck to unload, and a plan was forming in my brain. “You go ahead. I’ll clean up, and get things ready for tomorrow.
“I won’t do anything I shouldn’t,” I added. “No work. Just cleaning and putting stuff away. I know the rules.”
I waited, seconds ticking by. I didn’t know how soon the moving crew would be back, and I needed Barry to get going.
Finally, he sighed. “You’re probably right,” he said.
I didn’t give him the chance to change his mind.
“Good enough,” I said. “You go see Dr. Cox, and take care of yourself.” The hearty tone of my voice sounded fake to me. I hoped Barry wouldn’t think so.
I headed back to the basement stairs. “I’ll just get things ready for tomorrow, and I’ll be out of here myself.”
“Be sure it’s locked up when you leave,” he said.
“I will.”
I waited on the stairs until I heard Barry’s truck pull away, then ran through the house to the front door.
The moving van was still there, and the crew wasn’t.
So far, so good.
An adjustable wrench hidden in my pocket bumped against my leg as I hurried toward the back of the moving van. It was part of my hastily concocted cover story, if I was caught in the back of the truck—my missing wrench had somehow gotten into one of the boxes of Martha Tepper’s possessions.
The back of the truck was closed, but the padlock wasn’t shut, and it was a simple matter to open the door and clamber inside.
I closed the door most of the way. In case someone came by, I didn’t want to be spotted, but I wanted to be able to get it open again easily.
The truck was nearly full. Furniture lined the walls, and sealed boxes filled the spaces above, below, and in between the large pieces.
I wasn’t sure where to start.
The boxes were out. I couldn’t open them without arousing suspicion, and there wasn’t time to go through each of them.
I settled for the dressers and nightstands, in the hopes
of finding some clue as to where Martha Tepper had gone.
And who had taken her there.
The dresser was shoved against the side of the truck, its drawers locked in place by a stack of boxes in front of it.
I pushed the boxes aside as far as I could. They moved slightly, giving me room to pull the drawers out a few inches.
It would have to do.
The bottom drawer held nightclothes—flannel gowns and cotton pajamas, and a worn chenille robe—along with a quilted electric heating pad.
I shoved the drawer closed and opened the next one. Jeans, T-shirts, a sweatshirt. Nothing useful.
Two drawers to go.
The next one had sweaters and several small white boxes.
I opened the first box and found a hinged jewelry box, with a pair of gold earrings inside.
The rest of the boxes also contained jewelry. To my untrained eye, it looked like good quality, though not extremely valuable.
But no woman would leave even her everyday jewelry behind. She would pack her earrings, necklaces, and bracelets, the things she’d wear regularly.

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