Sweet Poison (34 page)

“No, we don’t.”

“Did he—”

“No,” said Kenzie. “He didn’t do anything like that.”

“Do you think you were hit with a taser?”

“I’ve never felt anything like it before.” She rubbed her arms, then her legs.

“Where were you standing?”

“Just a few feet away.” She started to get up.

“Wait.”

“For what?” Without a backward glance, she headed for the front door.

“You need to be checked out by a doctor,” called Jane.

“No, I don’t.”

Jane picked up the duct tape, wiping tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. Back inside, she found Cordelia and Melanie standing underneath the living room arch.

“Where’d she go?” asked Jane.

Cordelia lifted her eyes to the top of the stairs. “What happened?”

“She didn’t tell you?”

“Not a word. I don’t think she even saw us.”

Jane took the stairs two at a time. She found Kenzie in the bedroom packing her bag. “You’re leaving?”

“You bet I’m leaving. And this time, I’m not coming back.”

“Why?”

“You even have to ask?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“It’s your life, Lawless. I can’t take it. You want to mess around with criminals, that’s up to you. Me, I need something quieter, less
stimulating.”
She zipped the bag and carried it out into the hallway. “I hope you
and your crazy ex-girlfriend and your seventeen restaurants and your
Law & Order
cop buddy live happily ever after.” She trotted down the steps. “As long as I get away from here with my body and brain intact, I’ll consider myself lucky.” She passed Cordelia and Melanie without so much as a glance and slammed the front door on her way out.

L
ate the next night, Jane got on the train at the transit station on 38th and Hiawatha. She was alone and didn’t have any particular place to go or intent in mind other than to ride the light rail around the city in the dark. She did this occasionally, particularly if she was depressed. Sometimes, just sitting quietly, watching the lights float past, made her feel better. She hoped that tonight, somewhere along the way, she could shed the deep ache inside her. But it was probably asking too much. Too much, too soon.

She’d failed Kenzie. That was the given from which everything else grew. The rule was, no more rationalizations. She was selfish when it came to her time. She was used to having her own way. She didn’t always listen well. She heard what she wanted to hear. She’d always thought of herself as a good person, a kind person, but maybe that was just veneer. Maybe she was fundamentally unable to give the kind of time and attention to another human being that a love relationship required. If that was true, she’d better commit herself to some rigid mandate never to inflict herself on another poor, unsuspecting woman again.

Cordelia would say she was being too hard on herself.

Cordelia would say she’d simply hooked up with the wrong woman.

Cordelia would tell her to go home, take two aspirin, and call her in the morning.

Sometimes, Cordelia was right.

It was going on midnight when Jane found herself riding the freight elevator up to Cordelia’s loft. She’d spent the entire day floating around, not doing much other than thinking, brooding, moving from place to place. Why stop now?

Trudging down the long hall to Cordelia’s door, she realized she probably should have called first to see if Cordelia was home. But when she knocked, she heard a shout. A few seconds later the door flew back and Cordelia yanked her inside. It was Cordelia’s usual greeting, so it didn’t seem like anything out of the ordinary.

“Where have you been?” demanded Cordelia.

“Here and there. Mostly there.”

“You didn’t answer your cell phone. I’ve been calling all day.”

“I turned it off.”

“You’re not supposed to
do
that!” she shrieked.

“Who said?”

“The cell phone police, that’s who!” Rushing back to the window, she yelled, “It’s Jane. I gotta go.”

“I’ll be over a little later,” came Melanie’s voice. “Say hi to her for me.”

Jane noticed Tallulah, Melanie’s Yorkiepoo, standing on the dining room table, licking out a pizza box. After all the junk she’d managed to steal from people’s plates last night at the Halloween party, it was amazing that she wasn’t sacked out on the couch, burping, with a doggy bowl of Pepto-Bismol next to her. Jane assumed that Tallulah was over because Melanie was working.

“You look like you just got home from a party,” said Jane, nodding to Cordelia’s sequined gown.

“Oh, this old rag?” She adjusted the neckline. “So? Did you call the police this morning? Report what happened to Kenzie?”

Jane snagged the last piece of pizza crust while Tallulah was finishing off a blob of tomato sauce. Tallulah snarled.

Chewing slowly, Jane sat down in the living room, lifting her feet up on a footstool. “And what would I say? There was a woman here last night who was attacked with a taser just like Corey Hodge attacked Louisa Timmons and maybe even Charity Miller, except this woman wasn’t raped, thank God. But she’s not here and refuses to talk about it. And I have no proof except some balled-up duct tape. Oh, and by the way, my dad’s running for governor, so it could be a disgruntled citizen, or maybe, again, it was Corey, because the cops think he’s a sociopath, or maybe it was Gabriel Keen because he’s mean and nasty, but a tortured soul and we should all cut him some slack because his brother died, or maybe it was Luke Durrant who hates me and my dad because of unsavory—but entirely legal and necessary—lawyering practices. Oh, and when you come over to look at nothing and talk to nobody who saw nothing happen, could you check my furnace?”

“What’s wrong with your furnace?”

Jane groaned. “Nothing, but give it time.”

“Ah, I see,” said Cordelia, picking Tallulah up and installing her under her arm. “We’ve reached the self-pity stage.”

“Yes,
we
have.”

Fluffing her short pink hair, Cordelia turned on a couple more lights and sat down next to Jane. “Let’s change the subject.”

“Fine with me.”

“Have you heard anything more about Corey and the AMBER Alert?”

Jane shook her hand. “I talked to Mary this morning. She’s a basket case, as you might expect.”

“Has Corey contacted her?”

“No. Not a word.”

“I wonder if the kid’s okay?”

Jane laced her fingers over her stomach. “I can’t see him hurting a child, but I guess you never know for sure what someone is capable of. By now, they could be ten states away—in any direction.”

“It’s so scary,” said Cordelia, hanging her head. “And so sad. Say, something just occurred to me. Where did you say Luke and the minister live?”

“That new condo over by the river. Luke said they hadn’t been there long.”

“I thought I recognized the address. The woman who reads my feet lives there.”

Cordelia had not only her palms read frequently but also her feet. “How can a woman who reads feet for a living live in a place like that?”

“She married a surgeon.”

“And this surgeon thinks it’s okay for her to go around to strangers’ homes and apartments to read their feet?”

“She also does foot massage, and that thing with the feather.”

Jane didn’t even ask.

“You reach any new conclusions about Luke—or Charity?” asked Cordelia, brushing crumbs off Tallulah’s muzzle.

Actually, she had. “I believe they’re separate issues. Luke was responsible for all the Internet problems. I think he was getting even with my father for the part my dad’s law firm played in getting Gabriel Keen off the hook for the brutal attack he made on his partner. But here’s the thing,” said Jane, leaning her head back against a cushion. “Mouse and I went over to Charity’s apartment building the other night.”

“Without moi? You have to keep me in the
loop
, Janey. Otherwise, how can my superior investigative skills be of any use?”

“I’m sorry. I apologize. It won’t happen again.”

“See that it doesn’t.”

“But think about it. Charity has just filed a restraining order against her ex-fiancé. She’s terrified of him. And she’s just had a date with a guy she thought was a cop but who turns out to be a convicted rapist.”

“And?”

“She goes home. And what does she do when she gets home? She takes out the garbage. It’s late and it’s dark. The back parking lot isn’t
well lit. She has a maniac after her, perhaps two, but instead of staying inside where it’s safe, she decides to take out the freakin’ garbage. Does that make sense to you?”

“Well, when you put it that way—”

“That’s exactly what we’re supposed to buy.”

“But you don’t.”

“Not for a second.”

“So who did it? Hodge or Keen?”

Jane had been thinking about it for days. “I think it was Keen. Unlike Corey, he’s a guy who does a slow burn. It took him a week to go after Christopher Cornish after he came out to the congregation. And when Charity dumped him, it took him more than a month to begin his barrage of harassment. But when he gets something in his teeth, he doesn’t let go.”

“You think he attacked Kenzie last night?”

“Yeah, I do. Here’s why. When I talked to him at the cemetery on Monday, he said he thought I looked familiar. Asked if we’d met. Just like with Corey, I think he went home and did some checking around, maybe on Google. When he discovered who I was, which wouldn’t have been hard, he knew my interest in him probably wasn’t just the interest of a simple stranger. He must have been upset, maybe worried that he’d told me too much. So, to get me to back off, he watches my house and attacks the first person he can. I don’t think he cared who he hurt. Could have been me. Could have been you. He probably enjoyed it.”

“What an absolutely awful man.”

“The police know his alibi is crap, but without more evidence, they can’t get a search warrant. I think that’s the key. I think Keen likes to save little mementos of his conquests. He saved the bat he used on Cornish, and I’ll bet he saved something from the attack on Charity. Maybe the taser, maybe something else. But it’s there, somewhere, probably not in the house because of what happened with the bat, but somewhere on the property. When he’s feeling depressed, which I think he is a lot, he can take it out and look at it and remember that he does have some power in the world.”

Cordelia jumped up. “Let’s go look.”

“You really want to do that?”

“We’re a team, Jane. Your brawn and general cerebration, and my infallible instinct. Oh, but I need to take Tallulah out first.”

“Bring her along.”

“Really?”

“We might need a good attack dog.”

Cordelia parked her car along Gladstone Avenue, a block from the Keens’ house. Jane had been past the house once during the day. It was a typical Midwestern Prairie School box with a low-pitched roof and overhanging eaves.

Before they left, Jane had insisted that Cordelia put on a hat to cover her hair. Thus, walking along the darkened street, she couldn’t have looked more ridiculous in her sequined dress and black wool cape, topped off by a buffalo plaid hunting cap. She maintained that it was the only hat she currently liked—other than her silver lamé turban—and she refused to wear anything else.

Jane held a gloved finger to her lips. “Let’s just walk past the place once, see if anyone’s home.”

Cordelia tugged on the leash and pulled Tallulah and her nose away from a tree.

“That’s Keen’s black Saab,” said Jane. The street was full of cars, no doubt due to the fact that it was a fairly wealthy area with mostly one-car garages. Keen’s vehicle was a good fifty yards from the front door.

“I think we can safely assume the cops have already checked the Saab,” said Cordelia.

“If they did, it wasn’t legal.”

“Oh. Dear. Well. Let’s both put on our thinking caps, shall we? Now, if you were a crazed lunatic and wanted to hide something, where would you put it?” She raised a finger. “In your car. That’s where.”

“Too easy.”

“Occam’s razor.”

“What?”

“William of Occam. He was an English philosopher. Occam’s razor states that, all other things being equal, the simplest explanation is probably the correct explanation. Thus, what we’re looking for is probably in the trunk. Or pushed down into a seat crack.”

Jane trotted across the street, bent over, and looked through the driver’s side window. Taking a flashlight out of her back pocket, she shined the beam inside. “It’s pretty clean. I don’t know, Cordelia. Occam might be wrong.”

“It’s probably in the trunk.”

“How do you propose we open it?”

She marched over and reached for the door handle, but Jane stopped her. “If this were my car and I had to park it on the street, I’d protect it with an alarm system. You mess with the door and it could go off.”

“Oh. Occam was silent on that point.”

Jane was beginning to lose her sense of momentum. “Keen could have stashed the taser, or the lipstick, or whatever he kept anywhere. Or it could all be long gone. But you know—” She looked up. “There are boxes you can buy that attach to the bottom of your car. Some of them can hold up to a hundred pounds.”