The Scent of Murder (13 page)

M
anuel was right: I didn't. And then looking at the expression on his face, I did. A surge of anger ran through me. And then relief. And then anger again. And then for some reason, I started to laugh. How classic. You run all over God's creation and the answer is in your own kitchen. And then I went back to being angry and stormed into the kitchen. Amy was sitting at the table petting the cat. James's eyes were closed. His ears were back. His tail was draped over the table's edge. Next to him were the empty take-out cartons of the Chinese food I'd bought earlier. A strip of white paper from a fortune cookie lay nearby. My fortune cookie. The one I hadn't had time to eat.

She looked up when she saw me. “Who was killed?” she repeated.

“Melanie.”

She paled. “You're lying,” she cried. “You're just saying that because you're mad at me.”

“Why should I do something like that?”

“I don't know,” she whispered.

She remained perfectly still while I talked. She was even paler now, her hands showing a ghostly white against James's black fur. I had the feeling she'd fade into the wall if I took my eyes off her. She began to sob before I was finished. The sound of her crying filled the room, pushing my anger out. I went over and put my arms around her, but she froze at my touch and I moved away.

I waited until she was done before I said anything else. “You have to tell me what's going on.”

She grasped her cross and looked up at me with tear-puffed eyes. “I don't know what you mean.”

“Yes you do.”

“I just met Melanie a couple of months ago,” Amy wailed. “We talked maybe three or four times. That's all.”

“Really?” I put my hands on my hips. My anger returned. “Then I don't suppose you know how come your boyfriend was fighting with her? Or how come he broke into my store?”

“I don't,” she stammered.

“You know,” I said. “Fuck Murphy. I should have thrown you out when you walked into my store.”

Her jaw dropped.

“I would have been a lot better off. Since you came into my life, my house had been robbed, my store has been trashed, I'm an after-the-fact accessory to a homicide, I was almost blown up, and I've left the scene of another homicide—one the police are going to be here to question me about very soon. And every single one of those incidents is tied up with you in some way.” I placed my palms on the kitchen table and put my face into Amy's. “Now I want an explanation, and I want it now.”

“I don't know anything,” Amy cried.

“Tell that to the police.” I went over to the phone and dialed. “Maybe by now they'll have picked up that charming boyfriend of yours, as well.”

Amy shook her head from side to side. “He didn't kill Melanie. He wouldn't do anything like that.”

“I'm sure they'll be interested to hear what you have to say.”

Amy half rose out of her chair. “Put the phone down.”

I ignored her and kept the receiver to my ear. “Yes,” I said when an operator came on. “I'd like to ...”

“Wait,” Amy cried.

I turned towards her.

“You win,” she said, slumping back in her chair.

I told the operator I'd made a mistake and hung up.

Amy nervously turned her bracelet made of bones around her wrist. “What do you want to know?” she asked. She seemed spent, as if her last outburst had sapped all her energy.

I leaned against a kitchen cabinet and crossed my arms over my chest. “Let's start with the fight Toon Town and Melanie had outside of Club 666 a while ago. You wouldn't happen to know what it was about would you?”

“Melanie owed him some money.”

“For what?”

“Some stuff.”

“Drug stuff?”

Amy looked down at the floor and nodded.

“She didn't look as if she had enough money to buy a stick of gum.”

“She was going to get some from Justin.”

“Justin must be a generous guy.” I shifted my weight from one leg to another.

Amy didn't say anything. Her silence filled the room. James yawned, his fangs gleamed under the kitchen light. He stretched, jumped down from the table, and sauntered into the hallway.

“What kind of drugs are we talking about?”

Amy shrugged. “The usual—Acid. Weed. Ecstasy.”

“Your boyfriend deals?”

“No,” Amy retorted sharply. “He was just doing Melanie a favor. But then she wouldn't pay him and he got angry 'cause he'd fronted the money.”

“So he went looking for her?”

Amy nodded.

“How'd he know where to find her?”

Amy looked down at her hands and back at me. “He told me he just wanted to scare her a little, that's all.”

I thought about Melanie sprawled out on the warehouse floor. “I'd say he's done a lot more than that.”

Amy folded her arms over her chest. Her eyes were smudged black from her makeup. “He didn't kill her,” she insisted. “He wouldn't do anything like that.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“I just know.” She glared at me defiantly. She'd obviously managed to convince herself that what she was saying was true. Whether it was or not was something else.

“All right.” I walked around the room, ending up in back of her. “Let's change the subject for a moment.”

“Fine with me.”

I placed my hands on the back of her chair and leaned over. “Tell me how you found out about your father's apartment?” Amy didn't answer. “Okay. If that's the way you want it,” I said, after a minute, and headed for the phone.

“Wait,” she cried.

I stopped where I was.

She narrowed her eyes. “I was following him, okay? Is that what you want to hear?”

“It's a beginning. Why were you doing that?”

Amy looked down at the floor and then back up at me.

“Come on,” I urged. “It can't be as bad as all that.”

She picked a speck of lint off her skirt.

“Murphy thought you could trust me.”

She favored me with a big smile—or it would have been a smile if her lower lip hadn't been trembling and her eyes weren't misting over. “They say confession is good for the soul.”

“So I heard.” I waited to hear what she had to say.

Once she began, her words spilled out one after another as though she were afraid to stop, now that she'd started. “My dad and I got into a big fight after I got back from Cedar View. I wanted him to send me down to New \‘brk—they've got this really neat high school down there that specializes in the arts—but he said he wasn't going to spend another fuckin' cent on me. He said he'd done enough. So I called him an asshole—it's not like he doesn't, didn't,” she corrected herself, “have the money, 'cause he did. He just didn't want to spend it on me.”

“What happened?”

“He told me to get out of the house. What else is new?”

“Tell me about it!” Manuel chimed in. He was standing in the corner. “That jerk-off my mom married is always booting me out. I think he'd be happy if I died. That way, he wouldn't have to never spend no money on me.”

“Manuel,” I hissed.

“Right. Sorry.” He put his hand to his mouth and stopped talking. Amy continued. “I told my mom, and she went to talk to him, and they got into this big fight.” Amy scratched her cheek. “It was pretty intense. They started calling each other names.”

“Then what happened?”

Amy shrugged. “I don't know. I left. I just didn't want to hear it. I don't think they even noticed I was gone.”

“Then what?”

“I hooked up with some friends.”

“Toon Town?”

“Not at first. I just hung out.”

“Where?”

“The mall. People's houses. We'd sneak in when their parents went off to work and smoke out.” Amy started twisting her bracelet again. “Then I got to thinking about something I'd overheard my mom say about how she knew my dad was taking money out of the company, but she figured it was okay because she was going to make him give some to her.”

“And that's why you were following him?”

She nodded. “It was easy. I found out about his apartment.”

“How'd you do that?”

“I staked out the factory.”

“Staked out?” I raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah. Well.” Amy gave an embarrassed shrug. “I like the word.”

“But you don't have a car or a license. How could you follow him?”

“Toon Town has a car.”

“I would think a lime-green car would stand out a bit.”

“We borrowed one of his friend's car, okay?”

“Then what? Did you go up there?”

Amy fiddled with her bracelet. “Just the night he was killed.”

What she was telling me didn't make any sense, but I let it go, because I didn't want to antagonize her by calling her a liar. “Why'd you do that?”

“I wanted to talk to him about something.”

“What?”

She looked away.

“Tell me,” I insisted.

“I was going to ask him for money. So I could get out of here.”

“Why should he give you any?”

“Because I was gonna tell him if he didn't, I was gonna tell my uncle what he was doing.”

“So you were trying to blackmail him?”

She swallowed and studied her nails. “Yes.”

“Go on.”

“When I got up to the apartment, the door was open. I went inside. I saw him lying there.” She paused and swallowed. “And I ran. When I calmed down, I called you.”

“Where was Toon Town during all of this?”

“He dropped me off and went to do an errand. He was supposed to meet me back there.” Tessa began to cry again. “It was so awful seeing my father like that. I didn't like him, but I didn't want him to die.”

I went over and put my arms around her again. This time she let me.

“I want to leave,” she moaned. “I want to go somewhere else.” I stroked her hair. “I don't know what to do anymore.” And then the sobs took over—wracking ones that made her body shake. “I don't feel well. I want to lie down,” she told me, when she could talk.

I maneuvered her into the living room and sat her down on the sofa. Then I went back into the kitchen to get her something to drink. Manuel was leaning against the counter. He didn't look too well either.

“What's up?” I asked, as I turned on the tap.

Manuel fidgeted. “I was just thinking about Melanie.”

I waited.

“The warehouse ...”

“Yes.”

“Well, Rabbit tipped her to it. He thought he was doing her a favor.”

“He was.”

“It doesn't seem that way now.” He began twisting a button on his flannel shirt.

I filled up a glass with water and turned off the tap. This evening was turning out to be endless. “Why don't you ask around and see if you can come up with her last name,” I suggested. I knew the police would get it eventually, but Manuel might accomplish it faster, plus, doing something might make make him feel better. I was about to say something else when I heard the front door slam.

Manuel and I looked at each other.

We ran for the hall.

“S
o she just disappeared?” Connelly asked me. He was wearing brown slacks, an off-white shirt, a blue tie with yellow flowers, and a too tight grey jacket that couldn't contain his expanding paunch.

“That's right.” The guy must have gained thirty pounds since I'd seen him last year, and he hadn't exactly been Mr. Slim Jim then. Now he looked like the Pillsbury Dough Boy on steroids. “Manuel and I searched the neighborhood. We couldn't find her.”

Connelly intertwined his fingers, turned his hands so his palms were facing me, and cracked his knuckles. “Maybe the aliens came down and beamed her up?”

“Actually, I think she went through the woods behind my house and up over the hill.” Though my house is in the city, it's built into the side of an old, overgrown orchard. The area, which covers the upper part of the entire block, houses raccoons, pheasants, and a variety of song birds. Even in the fall, when the leaves are off the trees, the thick underbrush makes it a good place to hide.

“How long did you spend looking?”

“About twenty minutes. Then your guys came.” I shifted my weight from one hip to the other. The wooden chair I was sitting in was uncomfortable when I'd sat down in it four hours ago and it was more so now, but then again, I don't suppose the people that furnished this room considered comfort when they were decorating—and I use that word loosely—the interrogation rooms at the Public Safety Building.

Connelly cracked his knuckles again.

I rubbed the back of my neck. My headache hadn't gone away.

My lawyer, Joe, stifled a yawn and checked his watch. Then he straightened his tie. I knew the signs. In another five minutes or so he was going to give Connelly his “charge her or let her go” speech. Connelly knew the signs, too. He should. We'd played this game often enough, too often, by my lights. Which was why he probably started talking faster. He must have figured he wanted to get in as much as possible in the time he had left.

“All right,” Connelly said. “Let's go on to something else.”

I waited to see what was coming. So did Joe.

“The girl at the warehouse.”

Joe jumped in. “What about her?” he demanded. If Connelly was a bulldog, slow, fat, and tenacious, Joe was a cairn terrier, small, yappy, and aggressive.

“I just want to see if your client knows her last name,” Connelly snapped. “Any objections?”

“None.” Joe leaned back in his chair and fingered his tie. It was Italian, silk, and expensive—the kind you buy on Madison Avenue.

Connelly turned to me. “So,
do
you know her last name?”

“I already told you, I don't.” My left foot had fallen asleep. I moved it from side to side and wiggled my toes.

“And you don't know the full name of the other girl you saw in the warehouse the first time you were there?”

“No. I just know her first name: Cindy,” I repeated, for what must have been the hundredth time.

“How about this boy, Justin, the one that was supposed to take them to Chicago?”

I shook my head. “I don't know their last names. I don't know their addresses. I don't know anything about them. I would tell you if I did, but I don't.”

Connelly glared at me. I ignored him and checked my watch. It was five in the morning, not a good hour for me, under the best of circumstances, and these were definitely not the best of circumstances. I'd been in my clothes for almost twenty-four hours now. During that time, I'd gone to work, talked to a stripper, seen a dead body, got caught in an explosion, found Amy, and lost her again. I needed a vacation, I needed to go someplace with a beach. Short of that, I'd settle for going home, getting out of my clothes, and going to bed.

Connelly pulled on his earlobe. Both his ears were red around the edges. I was wondering what, if anything, that meant, when he said, “Tell me about Wallace Gleason again.”

I glanced at Joe. He nodded. I repeated my Toon Town story, leaving out the part where I sliced up his arm and ending with my losing the Tracker.

“And then poof!” Connelly raised his hands, spread his fingers out, and inscribed two half circles in the air. “They were gone.”

“That's right. What's your point?”

He looked at the manila folder on his desk, then looked back up at me, and cracked his knuckles again. “I don't know. It seems to me like we got a theme going here.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning the Amy disappearing theme. The girl just keeps vanishing. It's amazing.”

“I think so too.”

Connelly slammed his hand down on the folder. I would have jumped if I hadn't been so tired. “I want to know what the hell is going on,” he yelled. His earlobes were getting redder.

“I'm telling you. It's not my fault if you don't believe me.”

Connelly narrowed his eyes. “You're leaving something out. I want to know what it is.”

Connelly was right. I was leaving something out. Actually I was leaving a lot of things out.

I wasn't telling him about Amy following her dad. I wasn't telling him about Amy discovering her father's body.

I wasn't telling him about my being in the apartment.

And I wasn't going to.

Ever.

I had no intention of landing myself in more trouble than I was in already.

Connelly thwacked the manila folder on the table with his palm again. I hoped he hurt his hand. “You know, you could be charged with aiding and abetting.”

“Abetting who?”

“Amy. In the commission of her father's homicide, possibly even her friend's.”

I rose from the chair. “That's a crock of shit, and you know it. She hasn't been charged with anything.”

“Not yet.” Connelly smiled. He was enjoying himself. I was about to say something else, when Joe motioned for me to sit back down. Losing charge of the show was not what he had in mind.

“At the very least, we can charge you with leaving the scene of a crime,” Connelly continued. “You should have stayed at the warehouse.”

Joe sat up straighter, put his hands on his knees, and leaned forward slightly. “My client was very upset. Disoriented. She wanted to clean up after what she'd been through. Since when is that a crime?”

Connelly glanced at me and snorted. “Come on,” he said to Joe. “Give me a break. We're talking about a person who blew someone's brain's all over the wall a couple of years ago. I don't think what happened at the warehouse would make her blink.” Connelly snorted again. “Disoriented my ass.”

“Excuse me,” I interjected. “Should I have just stood there and let myself get shot? Would that have been better?”

Joe shot me a look, and I shut up.

Connelly pretended he hadn't even heard me and continued talking to Joe. “You know what I think? I think she wanted to get rid of something.”

“Like what?” Joe snapped. Exhaustion was making him irritable. “Come on,” he continued, when Connelly didn't reply. “Admit it. You're reaching here. You don't have anything. Give it up. Let's just end this thing and go home.”

Connelly swallowed. His complexion had that ashy undertone people get when they've had too little sleep. Joe's looked a little on the grey side, too. I'm sure mine probably looked the same. “I got some more questions,” he insisted. “You've been asking the same ones for the past four hours.”

“Yeah, and I don't like the answers I've been getting.”

Joe smoothed down his tie. “Do you have any new ones?”

Connelly did his glare.

Joe seemed unmoved. “Because unless you do ...” His voice trailed off, and he gestured towards the door.

Connelly rubbed his nose with one of his knuckles, then he scratched his earlobe. I watched emotions wash over his face as he made up his mind and listened to the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside. “All right,” he growled, after a minute had gone by. “Go on. Get out of here.”

Joe stood. I followed suit. It felt good to be on my feet. “It's been fun, as always,” I told Connelly, as I headed for the door.

I was passing him, when he pushed his card at me. “Take it,” he ordered. “It has my beeper number. You find out Melanie's name, or Amy shows up, you call me right away.”

“I will,” I lied.

“If you don't, you're going to be very, very sorry.” He emphasized the “very, very.”

“Right.” I put it in my pocket and headed for the door.

“He's not kidding,” Joe said, when we got in the elevator.

“I know.”

Joe didn't say anything else until we got outside. “It might be better for you if she came in.”

“Well, I'll tell her that when I see her.” He'd parked his Saab down the block. We started towards it.

“I'm serious, Robin.”

“Me too.” I studied his face under the streetlight. “You think I know where she is, don't you?”

“It doesn't matter what I believe.” Joe buttoned his trench coat. It looked starched. Mine was stained and wrinkled. But then, he had a wife to keep him all clean and tidy, and I only had myself. “What matters is what Connelly believes. He can have you arrested, you know.”

“So you told me.” I wondered what Connelly would do if he knew I'd been in Richmond's apartment. Actually, I didn't have to wonder. I knew.

But maybe being arrested wouldn't be so bad.

At least then I'd have time to sleep.

 

 

It was almost six when Joe dropped me off in front of my house. “One last thing,” he said as I got out of the car.

“What?”

“Try and get picked up during the daytime for a change. I'm getting too old for this crap.”

“I guess that's what happens when you marry a young wife. You don't have any extra energy.” But I was talking to the air, because Joe had already taken off.

Zsa Zsa was waiting for me when I opened the door. I let her out for a quick pee, then we both went inside. Manuel was asleep on the sofa. The TV was on, the remote was in his hand.

He woke up when I removed it.

“I'm back,” I told him.

“Great.” He closed his eyes and turned over.

It would be so nice to be able to sleep like that, I thought, wistfully. Somewhere along the way, I seem to have lost the ability. I clicked off the lights and went upstairs to bed. An hour and a half later, I was finally dozing off when my alarm sounded. I turned it off and lay there. I thought I'd be able to make it into work, but I'd been mistaken. I felt as if I'd been tossed out of a moving truck. Short of ordering an ambulance and a wheelchair, there was no way I was getting to the store this morning. Tim was going to have to open. I called and told him. He wasn't pleased, but that was too bad. I just hung up, rolled over, and went back to sleep. I was still sleeping at two, dreaming about swimming in water so blue it seemed bottomless, when George called and woke me up.

“I called the store,” he told me. “Tim said you were sick.

What's the matter?”

“Nothing.” I yawned. “I was too tired to get up.” I noticed the stain on the ceiling had gotten worse. The leak in the roof was getting bigger. I'd have to have someone fix it before the snows came.

“How come?”

“It's a long story.”

“I'm listening,” George said.

But I didn't have the energy to go into it then. “Let's talk later,” I suggested.

We agreed to meet at Pete's at nine thirty. Maybe by then I'd feel semi-human. I took a quick shower, dressed, and went downstairs. Manuel was talking on the phone in the kitchen. He startled when he saw me. Then he said, “Got to go,” into the receiver and hung up.

“I waited up for you,” he told me.

“I figured as much.”

“So what happened downtown?”

“The usual. They asked questions I couldn't answer.” I gave him a rundown of my conversation with Connelly. I opened the refrigerator door and closed it again. “I was right, wasn't I? You don't know Melanie's last name.”

Manuel frowned. “I already told you that. I don't know her friends' last names either. It's not like I'm sending a letter to them or anything.”

“Have you asked Rabbit?”

“He's not back from Watertown yet.”

I opened the door of the refrigerator, leaned against it, and studied the contents. It was a depressing sight. The only things in it were a liter bottle of Pepsi and a Mounds bar Manuel had somehow missed. I took out the soda and the candy bar.

“Have you called anyone else?” I rinsed out a dirty glass.

“It's too early.”

“Right.” It was only almost three in the afternoon. I took a bite of the Mounds bar and put the soda back in the fridge. “So who were you talking to?” I asked more out of a desire to keep the conversation going than because I really cared.

Manuel hesitated a fraction too long before replying. “No one you know.”

Now I was interested. “Would you like to try that answer again?”

Manuel tugged his pants up. “Okay,” he admitted, looking away. “I was talking to TJ.”

Ah. My favorite dealer. Actually, I liked TJ. He'd bought a Burmese from me last year and was saving up money for a Haitian boa. I just didn't like what he did. I gave Manuel a long hard look. “Are you trying to score?”

Manuel did injured innocence. “Hey man, I don't do that stuff no more.”