Unknown Means (25 page)

She shook her head. “He hasn’t got the guts. Once you get past his dimples, he hasn’t got much of anything.”

C H A P T E R

22

EVELYN WAS CONVERSING WITH THE AFOREMENtioned waste of flesh at that very moment. “I saw it on your refrigerator, Mr. Markham,” she explained, remembering Grace’s refrigerator, with its attached pizza coupon. “A picture in crayon on paper, like children draw.”

“Oh, yeah.” A blast of noise erupted in the background. “Excuse me if I shout, but I’m at the Flats project, and they’re breaking up the old slab here. That cop asked me about some kid’s picture too. I saw it last night when I packed up. Don’t know where it came from, though.”

“Would you mind if I took that for analysis?” None of the crayons from the children’s hospital had matched those used on Grace’s and Frances’s clothing. Evelyn did not know where it could lead her, but she had to follow the trail. The only evidence of crayons in either apartment had been the drawings.

“I don’t know where it is.”

“If you could have the building manager let me in—”

He paused for another spate of jackhammer noise. “Why didn’t you take it when you were there?”

“Because I didn’t know it was important.”

“Is it important?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what’s important, you don’t know who killed Grace, you don’t know how he got into my apartment . . . What do you guys know?”

“Look, Mr. Markham, it’s a long shot, but if you could just have the manager let me in—”

“You can check, but the apartment should be empty. I had the movers get all my stuff yesterday. I was up all night packing it. I just wanted to get out of there, you know?”

Yeah, to join Barbara. “What did you do with the picture?”

“I probably threw it out.”

“You did?”

He raised his voice, because of either the background noise or his frustration. “The cops said they were done with the place and I could do whatever I wanted. If you needed it, you should have taken it.”

She couldn’t argue with that. “Where did you throw it?”

“I put all the stuff in garbage bags. Then I had the door guy take them out to the Dumpster for me. Then I gave him the code and signed off on the lease and I was out of there. And I’m not going back. If you want to go looking for it, be my guest.”

“Thanks so much,” she said, too tired to keep the bitterness out of her voice.

“Hey, one more thing. That necklace that was on Grace when she was killed?”

“Yes?”

“When can I get that back?”

THE SMELL in Frances Duarte’s apartment had not improved much.

“The crime-scene cleanup place is coming tomorrow,” the building manager told her, unabashedly holding his nostrils closed with one hand. “You can’t believe what they charge, either. Thank heavens

the Phillipses are in Europe. I tried leaving the windows open one day, but then it drifted to some open windows upstairs and those people complained. Besides, it’s been raining every hour on the hour.”

“That’s spring in Cleveland.”

“I brought the reporter from the Sun Star papers in here too. He threw up.”

Evelyn pulled the curtains back, turning what had been a dim cave into an apartment, albeit one with every single item moved out of place from their searching and a large stain on the floor under the armchair. The carved wooden animals on the long shelves seemed to have migrated under their own power, their original positions indicated by gaps in the dust. Motes of it floated in the air. Frances Duarte’s apartment had at least one thing in common with Grace Markham’s—so well soundproofed that it might have been hermet-ically sealed. To Evelyn’s relief, the child’s drawing still hung on the bulletin board.

“Do you need me for anything else?” the manager asked and seemed greatly relieved when she said no.

The drawing, on its stiff buff-colored background, clung to the bulletin board with a single pushpin. The pin matched others on the board. Evelyn had no compelling reason to believe the drawing related to the killer, but he had left her crayons as a clue, and she could not ignore that. Plus, Frances and Grace turned out to have less in common than Evelyn had expected, but they both had drawings.

The child had drawn a flat surface in fluorescent green, with a lemon yellow sun emitting rays. Pink scratches in the sky could, she supposed, be birds. Three stick figures of various sizes stood along the green road or lawn or whatever it was. An amorphous black spot below the line defied identification. The artist had not signed his or her work.

What the heck am I doing here? Evelyn thought. Marissa’s in Intensive Care, OSHA is calling every half hour to come and see the clothing from the mine accident, and I don’t have a single forensic

clue to find this killer. And here I sit gazing at a child’s idea of a Sunday stroll.

She slid the paper, without folding it, into a brown paper grocery bag and sealed the top with red tape. Technically she should have gotten a search warrant to return for more evidence, since the crime scene had been released, but the crime rate in Cleveland had spiked with the end of winter and no one, certainly not Riley or David, had time to get her one. The odds of the picture yielding any real information were slight. If it became relevant, she’d have to hope for a sympathetic judge to get it admitted.

Then she did another walk-through of the apartment, reluctant, as always, to leave the crime scene. She knew the nagging feeling would set in as soon as she turned her back on it—did she miss something?

Frances Duarte’s office, unlike the rest of the apartment, did not remain as Evelyn had left it. File cabinet drawers stood open, and papers covered the desktop. Someone—perhaps her accountant?—had been reviewing her finances.

“Hello.”

She jumped and turned. A wiry man, his gray hair too old for his face, stood in the doorway, holding a cardboard box in both hands.

He’s older than I am and his hands are full, she thought. I can take him.

Then she realized that the killer wouldn’t have given her warning. This must have been the hanger-on, the friend who’d worked for years to be more than a friend to Frances and now come up finally, irreversibly empty. “Are you Beldon Aimes?”

“The very same. Who are you?”

She explained herself, watching him carefully. “What are you doing here?”

“I brought Frances’s ashes. I cremated her this morning.”

It would have been hard under normal circumstances to feel

afraid of the slight, almost silly-looking Aimes, but that comment nearly did it. She had a mental image of him flicking the burn switch at the crematorium, or perhaps setting a torch to a pyre, as if Frances had been some kind of Viking warrior. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you.”

“Did you have a service?”

His face grew more animated. “Oh yes. All the best and beautiful turned out, expressing plenty of sympathy for Frances and none for me. They hate it when one of their own dies, you see. It reminds them that, despite scientific advances, money still can’t buy immortality.”

He would have been one of their own, had Frances married him. Now that chance had been lost to him forever. Oddly enough, Evelyn found this very normal antipathy reassuring. “It was kind of you to bring, um, her here. Did the building manager let you in?”

“No, I have a key.” He placed the box in a space at one end of a shelf. “And I’m her executor. Well, her sister is her executor, but she’s not in town, so she asked me to take care of the details.”

“Like her finances?” Evelyn gestured at the desktop.

“I had to take all the recent statements to her accountant. He handles all that. I have no access to Frances’s money, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he added with a prim set to his mouth. “Have you found the monster who did this?”

“Not yet. I know Frances was active in many charities. Did she do a lot with Butterfly Babies and Children’s Hospital?”

“Probably. She worked with half the charities in town.” His chin trembled, and he placed one hand on the small cardboard box.

“She was so generous.”

“Did she ever mention it to you? Have anything good to say, or bad to say?”

“Not in particular.”

“Did she know a woman named Marissa Gonzalez?”

“No. Doesn’t sound like someone she would know either.”

Oh really, you sycophantic little pseudosnob? “What about Kelly Alexander?”

“That Alexander bitch! She didn’t even come to the service!”

“She’s in jail.”

“Probably just as well, as I’m sure the media would have followed in droves. Now that Frances isn’t here to lose any more money, I’m almost glad that explosion happened. I suppose that’s a terrible thing to say.”

“Seven people died.” So yes, it is.

He stopped.

“Why don’t you like Kelly Alexander?” she asked, though she could guess.

“Because she treated me like a lapdog. Her own husband was nobody too, wouldn’t have two pennies to rub together if he hadn’t married her, but that’s okay. But me she talks to with contempt wrapped around every word.”

“Frances lost a lot of money with her?”

“You better believe it.”

“Did Frances get angry at Kelly about that?”

“No,” he admitted. “I don’t know why, really. Frances was always so careful with her parents’ money and became upset if brokers mishandled it. But she didn’t get upset with Kelly.”

“Because they were friends?”

“I asked her once. Frances said she owed her.”

“She owed Kelly?”

“Yeah.”

“What for?”

He shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“Is there anything else you can tell me about Frances and Kelly’s relationship?”

“No. Why all these questions?” He sat across from her and leaned forward, somber and conspiratorial. “You think Kelly had her killed?”

“No, no. We’re just trying to find connections between Frances and Grace, that’s all.”

“And Kelly’s it.” He warmed to the idea, reaching out and patting her knee in his enthusiasm. “And she’s got the money to do it too.”

“But no motive.”

“Sure there is. Money is the oldest motive in the world.”

“But wouldn’t Frances have motive to kill Kelly? Not vice versa?”

“Maybe Frances demanded her money back.”

“You just said she didn’t seem upset about it, and there’s nothing to show that the mine investment had anything to do with Frances’s death. Look, since you’re here, I’d like to ask you about this.” She unsealed the brown paper bag and pulled out the drawing. “Do you recognize this?”

He studied the crude depiction. “No. Should I?”

“It hung on Frances’s bulletin board. Have you seen it before?”

“Yesterday.”

“I mean before her murder.”

“No. But then I hadn’t been here in a week or two. Why?”

“Do you know where it came from?”

“No idea. Probably one of her friends’ little brats.”

“Who? Can you give me their names?” She used Frances’s note -

pad to jot down a list of seven sets of parents. Aimes didn’t recall the names of the children, or even how many each couple had.

He waited until she finished writing before returning to the most interesting topic. “So you suspect that Alexander bitch, right?”

He patted her knee again, and let two fingers rest there.

“You know,” she said as she secreted the list of names in her camera bag, “when I processed this room, those shelves were completely full. With a gorgeous blue willow vase at one end, where the box is now.”

He removed his hand and pulled at his lower lip.

“It seems some objects have been moved. And some of the

animal statues from the living room are missing. Have you been packing Frances’s things?”

“Yes, actually. She had a number of rare first editions, and some of her carvings were one of a kind. Quite valuable.”

“And?”

“I took them to my place for . . . safekeeping. After all, you can’t trust anyone these days.”

“No.” She stood up, collecting her paper bag with the drawing in it. “Indeed.”

C H A P T E R

23

THERE IT IS,” JUSTIN TOLD HER. “YOU’RE IN LUCK.

Pickup is tomorrow.”

Evelyn squinted at the rusting green Dumpster. “Yeah, lucky me. Would you happen to remember what color William Markham’s garbage bags were?”

“White.”

She climbed the stepladder Gerard had reluctantly retrieved for her, to glimpse a sea of garbage bags. “They’re all white.”

“Yeah, a lot of them.”

The sun had managed to burn off nearly all of the gray morning clouds and now blazed against an azure sky. Cleveland office workers would emerge from their towers to find whatever patch of grass they could locate downtown, in the northerners’ eternal quest to brown up that winter pallor.

It figured. The one day she would have welcomed a heavy cloud cover to keep the heat off her back. Perhaps even rain—at least it would have tamped down the smell. She hefted a few white bags out of the Dumpster and climbed back out. The box had been filled too high to be able to work inside it, and the back alley gave her a more stable surface to spread out the material.

She might be working all by herself in a deserted alley next to

the building their killer frequented, but she had no cause to worry—murders only happened at night. At least they did on TV.

Except for Grace.

And maybe Frances.

She looked around. No one. She got to work.

Most of the Riviere’s residents, she quickly discovered, had the finger strength of trapeze artists when it came to tying knots in their garbage bags. She began to slash them open with a disposable scalpel. The tenants also tended to overstuff—whoever said Americans live in a disposable society had been right on the money. Instead of examining each item, she rummaged around for mail or other items to identify the bag as coming from the Markhams’.