The Trouble With Murder (11 page)

She has blue eyes, and her choice
of makeup during these states is to wear night-out makeup during the day and even
racier styles at night. Her side of the family is all rail-thin and not
particularly strong, in any sense of the word; they traded capability for
appearance, something I’d noticed none of them really minded. No exception, my
mother had worn a size three before having children and now wears a four.

Today she was dressed in an
expensive black pencil skirt split up the back to mid-thigh. She wore a pushup
bra, a red scoop-neck blouse with strategically placed ruffles calling
attention to her cleavage, and a tailored black jacket that cut her narrow
figure and accentuated all of her best features. No one can say the woman is
anything but gorgeous.

She wheeled around and marched
forward, her attention wholly focused on me now, much to the relief of Ellmann
and Troy. Ellmann was still on alert, however, and watchful.

“How dare you question me! It’s my
house! I’ll come and go as I please! The better question, young lady, is what
the hell is going on here? Why are these men here tearing my house apart? Who
gave them permission to do that?”

I was familiar with this routine.
She could fire off questions so quickly she seemed to have no need for breath.
But I could assert myself enough to interrupt. Whether there was wisdom in that
or not.

“I gave them permission.”

“How dare you!” She spun back
around and pointed an angry finger at Ellmann, who had trailed her across the
kitchen. “This is
my
house! How can
she
give permission? It has
to be
me
. And, I don’t give permission. Get out!”

Ellmann was catching on.

“If we leave now,” he said quickly,
“we’ll come back with a court order, and you won’t be able to keep us out. That
looks much worse.”

She swung back around to me.

“What are they looking for?” she
snapped. “What have you gotten mixed up in now? You know, you’re such a
troublemaker. The police are always looking at you for something. When are you
going to straighten out your life? Your brother, now
he’s
making
something of himself.”

The same record, spinning ’round
and ’round. Always the same few lines.

“They don’t actually think I did
anything wrong.” And this whole little act of hers wasn’t entirely about me.

“This is my house!” she said again.
“Get out! All of you, get out! Including you, you little brat.” She stomped over
to me and slapped me, her open palm smacking hard and sharp against my cheek. The
stinging sensation lingered.

Before I could respond, Ellmann
clicked handcuffs on her wrists, against her wild and ugly protests. She flung
and jerked and kicked, but Ellmann easily guided her to the door and out of the
house. I could still hear her screaming after the front door closed behind
them. She was screaming about calling her lawyer. I really hoped she didn’t do
that. She had reason to worry about the police searching the house, though. Who
knew what they would find in her room?

I looked at Troy, who still stood
against the kitchen counter wide-eyed and open-mouthed.

“Are you almost finished?”

Maybe I should have been more
worried about her, about what she kept in the house, about what kind of trouble
I might get into for it, but I found I was beyond all that.

“We, uh, we still need to finish
most of this level, and the garage. But . . . with the lady of the house
revoking consent, we won’t be able to move forward until we have a court order.
Despite how sure Ellmann made getting one sound, it’s highly unlikely we will,
given the circumstances.”

The front door opened and closed.

“Go ahead and finish. I gave
consent, and I haven’t changed my mind.”

“But it isn’t legal if the house
doesn’t belong to you,” Ellmann said from behind me.

“Then it’s legal,” I said. “I own
the house.”

I left the kitchen and returned to
the basement to resumed packing. The clock had started ticking, and it was
counting down fast. And I still had quite a bit of work to do.

“So, you own the house, huh?”

I looked up and saw Ellmann leaning
against the doorjamb of my bedroom, his hair brushing the top.

“Yes.”

I was standing in front of the
closet, stacking more clothing into a plastic bin.

“If you own the house,” he tried
again softly, “why are you the one moving out?”

“It’s complicated. Let’s just say
it’s easier.”

Once the bin was full, I crammed
the lid on and lifted it. Ellmann came over and took it from me, carrying it
out of the room and setting it near the door. He used tape to reinforce the
lid.

“Thanks,” I said, pulling the next
bin over and reaching into the closet again.

“What did she mean when she said
you’re a troublemaker? That the police are always looking into you?”

He took up his place in the doorway
again.

“She resents me almost as much as I
resent her. She hasn’t been able to see things fairly where I’m concerned for
the past thirteen years. Maybe longer.”

I hauled hanging items out of the
closet by the armful, dropping them unceremoniously into the bin.

“Is that when she started comparing
you to your brother?”

“No, she’s been doing that since the
day he was born. The resentment started when I was twelve.”

“What happened?” he asked.

I stuffed one more armload into the
bin, squashed the lid on, and held it closed while Ellmann taped it. I let him carry
it out and set it on top of the other. Then I retrieved another bin and resumed
my task.

“I know if I don’t tell you, you’ll
just look it up, but that’s fine with me. It’s not something I talk about.”

“All right, change of subject. Why
are you in such a rush to pack?”

“Because anything I want to keep I
need to have out of here by the time she gets back. She doesn’t respond well to
being slighted, especially in her current condition, and especially by me.
She’ll retaliate. Maybe she’ll have a big bonfire in the backyard, maybe she’ll
drench everything in gasoline or bleach.” I shrugged. “Hard to say. She’s done
that and a lot more.”

“No pressure, then, right?”

“You don’t have to help me. I’ve
gotten pretty good at packing over the years.”

He shrugged. “I’m here, and I’ve
got nothing better to do.”

“By the way, what did you do with
my mother?”

“Put her in the car. But don’t
worry,” he said. “I cracked the window.”

“This is a great place. How’d you find it?”

Joe Pezzani and I stood in the
kitchen of my new place off Drake, east of College, sipping bottled waters, the
only edible thing in the house.

I had nearly finished packing
everything when Ellmann had called to say my mother had just spoken to her
attorney. Knowing her release was imminent, I’d asked Pezzani for help with the
move. There had been more to do than I could do alone, and I’d wanted to avoid
another run-in. 

Amy would have come to help me had
I asked, but I knew this thing with Brandon’s family was pretty important. My
friend Mercedes Salois is a nurse and works nights at the hospital. She’d
worked the night before and was sleeping. I couldn’t call my brother, whose truck
I was already borrowing. And Donald isn’t big on physical labor. So, to both
his surprise and mine, I’d called Pezzani.

“I went to another management
company in town and asked what they had available. Finding this place was just
luck.”

“Didn’t want to take something your
company manages?”

I shrugged. “It was an option. But
sometimes that’s complicated. This way is usually simpler.”

Working with Margaret Fischer was
certainly simple. She was predictably by-the-book. But it wasn’t pleasant. For
either of us. I wasn’t fond of her and, sadly, I didn’t think she liked me.

That morning, after the search team
had left, I’d had to call Fischer because I was running late for our
rescheduled appointment. I’d thought she would be in good shape if that was the
worst thing that happened to her today. Still, she’d done a lot of glaring and
sighing until I’d given her a check and she’d given me the keys.

“And you like simplicity?”

“Generally speaking, yes.”

We made dinner plans for the
following evening, my treat as a thank-you for the moving help, then Pezzani
left. I grabbed a fast shower, threw on jeans and a top, and hit the road. The
one thing I hadn’t been able to spend a lot of time packing was food, and that
was something I was going to need. I began compiling a grocery list in my head,
the total adding up quickly by my mental math. I wasn’t getting paid for my
vacation. For the next two weeks, I would be living off my savings. Not the
most ideal situation considering I’d just taken on the expense of an additional
household. Maybe I needed to go back to work and accept White’s promotion.

No,
I thought.
What I
need is money.

Immediately, my thoughts drifted to
Tyler Jay and the fifteen-thousand-dollar reward. I would soon be burning
through my savings; another fifteen large would go a long way in reducing my stress
level until I got things figured out. Grocery store forgotten, I pulled the
pages of notes out of my bag, glancing over them as I drove. I had a few
possibilities, but the best bet seemed like his mom’s house. If Tyler Jay was
still in town, I thought the chances were good his mother would know where he
was. It seemed pretty likely she would know where he was even if he wasn’t in
town. What I didn’t know was if she would tell me.

I knew nothing about Tyler Jakowski,
aside from the fact that he was dating Stacy Karnes and was Larimer County’s
Number One Most Wanted Fugitive for a whole slew of violent crimes. Tina
Shuemaker had said he had a scar and a lot of cheap-looking tattoos. I wondered
now if he’d gotten any of those in prison. At a stoplight, I quickly went over
the information I’d pulled off the Internet about the names Tyler Jakowski and
Tyler Jay. There wasn’t much aside from a few newspaper articles, primarily
from the
Fort Collins Coloradoan
, regarding Tyler Jakowski and his
suspected involvement in various crimes. I hadn’t made note of any reported
gang affiliation, but I suddenly wondered if that was because I’d overlooked it
or simply hadn’t dug deep enough.

I found the house I believed belonged
to Tyler’s mother and parked a couple doors down. I sat for a moment taking in
the neighborhood. Located in the center of town, just off Prospect, this
subdivision is middle-class. The driveways have minivans and SUVs parked in
them, and the yards are full of bikes and toys.

The lots in this neighborhood are
slightly larger, the houses having been built in the ’70s, before cookie-cutter
designs. The house was a tri-level, painted a cheery yellow that had faded over
the years. The windows and gutters appeared clean, and the yard was maintained.
There was a late-’90s
Honda
Civic CRX parked in the driveway with aftermarket exhaust, rims, and spoiler,
the windows tinted beyond legal limits, and twin white racing stripes splitting
the shiny black paint from bumper to bumper. I didn’t think Tyler’s mom,
whatever kind of woman she was, would drive a souped-up Honda with such
horribly atrocious rims. At least, I
hoped
she wouldn’t.

Taking a deep breath, I exited the
truck, walked up to the front door, knocked, and waited.

I saw movement behind the curtains
in the windows on all three levels of the house. It confirmed I was on the
right track. A woman a few years older than my mother, dressed in worn and
comfy-looking jeans, opened the door and stared through the screen at me,
taking in even the most minute details. Her entire demeanor was guarded,
cautious.

This was definitely the right
place.

“Can I help you?”

“I really hope so. I’m a friend of
Stacy’s, and I’m trying to find Tyler. Is he home?”

I watched her face closely, seeing
her eyes flick involuntarily to the left, at something inside the house.

“Tyler who?” she asked. Mom wasn’t
a very good liar.

“Tyler Jay. Stacy told me to find
Tyler if anything ever happened to her.” I was pulling this out of my ear on
the fly, hoping anything I learned would be more than I’d had before, even if I
didn’t hit pay-dirt straight away. “She’s in the hospital. It’s serious.”

Something in her shifted, softened.
I wondered if she’d met Stacy. Either way, she seemed saddened by thoughts of
Stacy’s injuries.

“I’m sorry to hear that, but I
don’t know any Tyler.”

Her eyes flicked to the side again,
and this time they lingered for a second or two. Then I heard movement. A large
man came into view, blocking the woman from sight. He pushed the screen door
open and stepped out onto the small porch, forcing me back down the steps and
onto the sidewalk.

He was about my age, well over six
feet tall, built like a refrigerator, and dressed in baggy, black shorts and a
black tank top. His chest, arms, and neck were tattooed with symbols and designs
largely meaningless to me, though I got a distinctly “gang” vibe from them. He
was of Hispanic descent, though not wholly. His skin was more tanned than
brown, his hair and eyes brown but not dark. His hair was short and slicked back
from his forehead. It looked like he was trying and failing to grow a moustache.
I stared up at him, struggling to keep all signs of intimidation hidden,
wondering who he was and what he planned to do to me, because he wasn’t Tyler
Jay, and I suspected he knew where Tyler was.

“Who are you?” he asked. His voice
was surprisingly soprano for his size.

“My name is Jennifer. I go to
school with Stacy. Are you Tyler?”

My go-to fake name is Jennifer. It
had been ever since I’d started sneaking into clubs during my unruly teenage
years. In my high school class, practically one out of every three girls was
named Jennifer, half of them brunette.

“Derrick,” he answered. “You go to
CSU? Aren’t you a little old to be in college?”

Old? Old?!

I’d been getting this old bit a lot
recently. Starting immediately, I’d need to be more aggressive about getting my
stress level under control. Because obviously it was the stress that had aged
me.

“I got a late start,” I said
lightly, shrugging. “Took some time off after high school. Do you know where
Tyler is?”

“Look, little girl, you better run
along, now.”

“I’m sorry to bother you; I’m just
trying to help out a friend. She’s not doing well. The doctors don’t know if
she’ll make it. I really need to find Tyler. Can you help me?”

I’m not sure why asking, “Can you
help me?” tends to soften people, but it does. It doesn’t always mean they’ll
do what you want, but it almost always means they’ll feel so bad about
not
doing what you want that they try to make up for it by doing something else.
Whatever the reason for the response, I take advantage of this phenomenon
regularly. Even now I saw this big man’s face relax and his eyes soften. His
stance was less confrontational, and he was obviously trying to decide how to
respond.

“Look, girl, Tyler knows about
Stacy already, okay? You can’t tell him anything he don’t already know. So, don’t
worry about it no more. That’s the best thing for you. Just walk away.”

“He already got the message?” I
asked, hopeful. “Maybe she asked more than one person to give it to him. She
said it was important, I think about money, but I’m not really sure. I’m just
glad he knows. I know it was important, and I’d feel really bad if I didn’t do
this for her, especially if she dies. Gosh,” I said suddenly, as if realizing
this was a possibility for the first time. “I really hope she doesn’t die.”

I shifted my weight between feet,
sniffed, and quickly blinked my eyes a few times. I wanted to give the
impression that I was emotionally distraught at the thought of Stacy Karnes
passing away. I might have just looked like a girl too old to be in college who
had to pee and was fighting an attack of allergies.

The man sighed and stepped off the
porch to stand in front of me, lessening the difference in our heights almost
imperceptibly. He was suddenly very uncomfortable, no doubt worried I would
burst into tears. He obviously wanted to avoid that outcome.

“Hey, it’s too soon to know
anything for sure,” he said. “Stacy’s strong; she could pull through.”

I nodded and sniffed again.

“Now, since it was so important to
her, why don’t you tell me the message, and I’ll get it to Tyler?”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, but
she was very clear: speak to Tyler directly. She said there would be others who
would want the information. She said to ask for him here because his mom would
always know where to find him.”

It was a huge gamble. Everything
could blow up in my face if the woman who lived in this house was not actually
Tyler’s mother. All I really had to bolster my guess was the fact that Tyler
was about my age and the woman who had answered the door was about my mother’s
age. It was thin, so very thin. I held my breath while the man took in my
words.

Through the open screen door, I saw
another man step into view. He glanced at me then took in the street with the
eye of an experienced fugitive. This man, tall and lanky, with cheap-looking
tattoos and a scar over his eye, was the same man from the photo on the wanted
poster. This was Tyler Jay.

“I’m Tyler,” he said in a deep
voice, husky from cigarettes. “What’s the message?”

“If you’re really Tyler,” I said,
“tell me what Stacy’s tattoo looks like.”

“She doesn’t have any tattoos.”

From the way he said it, I was
fairly sure he was telling the truth. Of course, I was all too aware this was
also a gamble, since I didn’t actually know the answer.

“All right, then,” I said, satisfied.
“She said if anything ever happened to her, I was supposed to find you. She
wanted me to tell you she tucked something away for safekeeping in your spot.
That’s it, nothing else. I sorta guessed it was money, since I know she works
so much, but she never did say.”

Something I’d said hit home with
him; I could tell by the small change in his eyes. Wasn’t
that
a stroke
of luck.

“How do I know this is a real
message?” he asked. I resisted the urge to panic. “Why would you deliver a
message for her anyway? She never mentioned you, so I doubt you two are very
close.”

I cleared my throat and shuffled my
feet nervously. “Uh, well, she sort of walked in on me with a certain professor
once. We were . . . well, you know. Anyway, she said she would spread it all
over campus if I didn’t do her a favor. Hey, look, if that sort of thing got
around, I’d be kicked out! The professor would be fired, and she’d probably
never find another job. I figured doing this one little favor was a small price
to pay.”

I have no idea where I come up with
this stuff.

“Wait,” Derrick said. “
She
?
The professor was a woman?”

I looked at him innocently. “Yeah.
Why?”

A stupid grin spread over his face
and he shook his head. “No reason.”

I turned back to Tyler, who was
also grinning slightly. Boys are so dumb. “So, listen, I’m sorry to come over
like this, but I just wanted to deliver on my end of the bargain. I’m really
sorry about Stacy. I actually like her. You know, she’s okay when she’s not
blackmailing you.”

Tyler chuckled softly. “She must
have picked up a few things after all, little Miss Goody Two-Shoes. Thanks for
the message. I’ll make sure she knows you came through if she . . .”

He couldn’t bring himself to say
what I struggled to think about myself, and I didn’t even know the girl. Tyler might
have been a bad and dangerous guy, accused of all sorts of horrible crimes, but
he was just a man underneath all that, and he seemed to really love Stacy. I
kind of felt bad for him; it hurts to lose someone you love, or to worry about
losing them.

I just nodded. “Thanks.”

I turned and walked back to the truck,
got in, and drove away as fast as I could without appearing to be running for
my life.

_______________

I drove to King Soopers on College and sat in the truck while
I dialed the phone number that had been listed at the bottom of the wanted
poster. I had been expecting to speak to a real person, given the fact that Jakowski
was such a wanted man, but instead I reached a recording and was instructed, in
detail, about what to leave in my message. I recited all the requested information
and hung up. I wondered how long it would take for the reward money to be paid.
I also wondered why the police and sheriff’s office had been unable to find
Tyler. After a few minutes on the computer, I’d had a few doorbells to ring.
Tyler had answered the first one.