The Scent of Murder (2 page)

Who was this girl? I wondered, as I put the aquarium on top of the counter. How had she known Murphy? And what the hell did she want from me? That's what I wanted to know. Every once in awhile, I'd stop what I was doing and go stand in front of the ferret and ask him, but he was too busy sleeping to reply.

P
ickles, the store cat, was draped across the cash register, the was the meowing for her dinner when the phone rang.

I picked up the receiver and did my standard, “Hello, Noah's Ark.”

No one replied.

“Hello,” I repeated. Still no answer. Just breathing on the other end. “May I help you?” Silence. I was about to hang up when I heard a soft “perhaps”. The voice was a woman's. It was nasal, with a slight trace of a Bronx accent. “Can I ask whom I'm speaking with?”

“Robin Light. The proprietor.” I glanced at the clock. It was almost five. Tim would be here soon.

There was a minuscule pause, then the woman continued. “I'm calling about my daughter.”

“Okay.” While I waited for more information, I tucked the phone between my chin and shoulder, got a can of tuna from underneath the counter, opened it, and set it on the counter. Pickles gave a last meow and began eating.

“Her name is Amy, Amy Richmond.”

“I'm sorry, but it doesn't ring a bell. Is she a customer of ours?”

“She might be. I'm not sure.”

“Do you want to buy something for her?”

“Not really.”

“Well, does she have a question she wants to ask?”

“I don't know.”

I stopped myself from asking what the hell she did want. First maxim in retail: Never insult the customer. While I was figuring out what to say next, my glance fell on Mr. Bones. Suddenly I had a pretty good idea why this woman was calling. “This daughter of yours, does she happen to have blue hair?”

“Then she
was
there.”

“About an hour ago.”

“Is she all right?” The anxiety the woman must have been holding in check welled up.

“Not exactly.” And I told her about the police.

I heard a sharp intake of breath on the other side of the line. I could imagine this woman standing there, clutching the receiver. A few seconds later she said, “They didn't catch her, did they?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“Did she say where she was going?”

“No. She just wanted to know if I'd keep her ferret.”

“Are you sure she didn't mention any place?”

“I'm positive. We just talked about the ferret.”

The woman sighed. “Listen,” she continued, “if she comes back, tell her she has to call me. Tell her it's very important.”

“And who are you?”

“I told you. Her mother.”

“I know. But what's your name.”

Was it my imagination, or did she pause for a few seconds before answering. “I'm Gerri Richmond.” Then she hung up before I could ask her what she wanted me to do with Mr. Bones.

Cute. I got out the phone book and paged through to the Rs. It didn't take me too long to spot a listing for a Dennis and Gerri Richmond. I was just writing down the number when Tim came in. He'd been working in the store since it opened. Luckily for me, he'd agreed to stay on after Murphy died. Tim's knowledge of lizards and snakes—Noah's Ark's
specialité
, as they say in France—had proved invaluable. Watching him walk towards me, so pale and thin in his black leather jacket, I realized he could have been Amy's soul mate. Although he'd taken out his nose ring and let his hair grow back (shaving it every four days had been a drag, he'd told me,) he'd recently, for reasons he either couldn't or wouldn't tell me, gotten his tongue pierced.

“What's up?” he asked, after he'd stowed his black leather backpack behind the counter.

“You're not going to believe this.” And I told him about Gerri Richmond's phone call and her daughter's visit.

Tim whistled when I came to the part about Murphy. “She used his name?”

“Yes.”

He shook his head. “Ain't that a blast from the past.”

“You could say that.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“What makes you think I'm going to do anything?”

He shot me a how-stupid-do-you-think-I-am look. “Because I've known you for a long time. That's why.”

“Okay,” I conceded. “I'm thinking of returning the ferret to Amy's mother.”

“And maybe getting a little conversation about Murphy going, while you're there?”

I conceded it was a possibility.

He reached for the phone and handed it to me. I guess he must have been as curious as I was, although he'd never admit it. I dialed her number. The line was busy. I hung up and tried again five minutes later. Still busy. “At least she's home,” I announced.

“And?” Tim asked. Monosyllabic comments were part of the new, hip, Zen-like persona Tim had recently donned. I wished he'd undon it, because talking to him was getting to be a real pain in the ass. But when I'd expressed that opinion, Tim had just said “yes” and turned and left the room. I guess when you're terminally hip, you don't have to do polite.

“Maybe I'll just run up to Gerri Richmond's house after I'm finished with the dog food deliveries and drop the ferret off,” I continued. Given the conversation I'd just had with her daughter, I had a feeling she wouldn't be pleased to see Mr. Bones, but that was too bad.

“Good luck.” And Tim gave Zsa Zsa a pat and went into the back to look in on the baby boas we'd gotten yesterday.

I took Mr. Bones out of his tank and put him in my backpack. He didn't seem to mind much, since he curled up and went back to sleep. Then I called for. Zsa Zsa and left the store. The windshield of my checker cab was flecked with leaves from the honey locust tree I'd parked under. It had been a long, hot, exceptionally dry summer, and many of the trees had been late shedding their leaves this fall. I brushed them off and got in. Zsa Zsa hopped in after me and curled up in the passenger seat. I couldn't have put her in the back even if I'd wanted to, because it was full of fifty pound sacks of dog food. A couple of months ago, I'd come up with the idea of free home delivery to boost sales. And it had worked. Over the past six months we'd increased our sales of pet food by twenty five percent.

The only thing I hadn't factored in was that someone would have to carry those fifty pound bags up people's stairs and that one of those someones would be me. By the time I'd dropped off my last load, my back was aching and the burn scars on my legs were itching and stinging. All I wanted to do was go home, pour myself a Scotch, and lay down, but I turned the cab onto Genesee and headed for Amy's mother's place instead.

Her house was located about twenty minutes away in one of those instant, pricey developments—the kind that look as if someone sprinkled it out of a bottle, then added water. This one was called Elysian Fields. As I drove through the stone pillars marking its entrance, I decided the place didn't seem like heaven to me, but I suppose we all have our own visions of that. Gerri Richmond's house was located in a cul de sac at the end of a narrow road called Sunkist Lane. Three carefully landscaped houses had been set down at equal intervals and even though one was a colonial, the second was plantation manor, and the third Tudor, they all had the insubstantial look of stage sets—here today, gone tomorrow.

I checked the numbers by the halo of white light shed by the mercury street lamp. One twenty one was the colonial on the left. It had the fancy door and windows that telegraph money. So did the Saab, Mercedes, and Caddie Coupe de-Ville in the driveway. As I pulled in behind the Caddie, I half expected one of the neighbors to come out and ask me why I was littering up the place with my car. But no one did. I told Zsa Zsa to stay, got out, and hurried to the door. A gust of wind insinuated itself through the fabric of my denim jacket, proclaiming the winter to come.

I rang the bell. The door chimes played the first couple of bars of “Fur Elise.” Beethoven would have been so pleased, I thought, as a woman opened the door.

“Yes?” she said. Even with the light at her back, she looked as if she'd gone one dance too many with her plastic surgeon. Her features were all perfect. Too perfect. Her face, like the house she lived in, gave no hint of comfort or warmth. She unconsciously brushed a strand of ash blonde hair off her forehead. Her light blue, cashmere turtleneck matched the color of her eyes. Her black silk pants fit as though they'd been made to order—which they probably had.

“Hello,” I said, as I wondered what she thought about the way her daughter looked. “I'm Robin Light. We spoke earlier.”

An emotion I couldn't read passed across her face. Then she recovered and asked me what I wanted.

“I've brought back your daughter's ferret.”

“Really?” She didn't look happy.

I stepped inside without waiting to be invited. The foyer was one of those two-story jobs that decorating magazines call “stunning” and I call pretentious. I wondered what Amy called it, as I studied the faux marble floor. “She left it at the pet store. I thought you would want it.”

“I'm sorry. You should have called first.”

I smiled. “I tried, but your line was busy and, since I was in the neighborhood, I thought I'd drop by and save you a trip.”

She touched the base of her throat lightly with her left hand: a gesture, I couldn't help reflecting, very much like the one her daughter had made earlier. “That's very nice of you, but this isn't a good time.”

I nodded towards my backpack. “Mr. Bones is in here. Let me give him to you and I'll be on my way.”

But before she could answer, a heavyset, fortyish-looking man came out from the room down the hall. He was dressed in an expensively tailored blue suit, but the cultured impression he must have been seeking to convey was offset by his bulbous nose, thick red lips, and double chin.

“You're not Charlie,” he barked, when he saw me.

“No. I'm not.” The man obviously had keen powers of observation. “Who's Charlie?”

“My stepson,” Gerri Richmond explained.

“Did he send you?” the man asked.

“No,” I told him. “I've come about Amy.”

He marched over, clamped his hands on my shoulders, and peered into my face. “You mean you've seen her?”

I took a step back. (I don't like being touched by people I don't know.) “She was in my store this afternoon.”

He flushed and faced Gerri Richmond. “Did you know this?”

She glared at him. “I don't have to tell you anything.”

“Have you told the police? Because if you haven't, that's called aiding and abetting.”

“My daughter has nothing to do with Dennis's disappearance, and you know it,” Gerri Richmond cried.

“That's not what the police think.”

She pointed a finger at him. “Brad, why don't you stop putting on a show. It's not convincing anybody. You don't care about your brother. You haven't spoken to him in five years. In fact, you're probably the one behind this whole thing.”

“You're one to talk,” the man spat back. “You goddamned slut. If it wasn't for you and that freak of a daughter of yours, I'd ...”

I never got to hear the rest of the sentence, because Gerri Richmond raised her hand and slapped him across the face.

He slapped her back. The force of the blow sent her reeling against the wall.

“Get out,” she screamed, as she brought her hand up to her cheek. “Get out now.”

“My pleasure.” He smiled, nastily. “Enjoy what you have, because you're not going to have it for long.” Then he turned and headed for the door.

“I'm sorry you had to see that,” she said as the door slammed.

“It's okay. I've seen worse. Who was that?”

“My brother-in-law, Brad Richmond.” Gerri Richmond gave a strangled little laugh. “Aren't families wonderful?” And she rubbed the side of her face. The skin where Brad Richmond had hit her was strawberry red. A phone started ringing somewhere in the house. “Excuse me,” she said. “I have to get that.”

And she was gone, leaving me standing alone in the drafty hall to ponder what I'd seen.

A
fter a minute or so, I got bored and wandered into the first room on the left. It was the den. The place had “decorator” stamped all over it. It was Southwestern decor from the pale peach and blue upholstery to the bleached wood to the steer's skull on the fireplace mantel, as well as the collection of bad Indian pottery sitting on the beveled glass shelf on the far wall. I walked over to the fireplace and lightly ran my hand over the rough stones. The floor of the fire box was immaculate, just like the room. I was willing to bet that it had never been used, either. The thought depressed me. I was trying to figure out why, when Gerri Richmond's voice floated in on the air. She sounded angry.

“I don't care,” she was saying to someone. Her Bronx accent had reasserted itself. Then her voice fell back down, and I couldn't hear her anymore.

I looked at my watch. All of three minutes had passed. Somehow it felt like ten. I peeked in my backpack. Mr. Bones opened his eyes, yawned, and went back to sleep. Watching him made me want to go to sleep, too. I made another circuit of the room instead, then sat down on the sofa, and put the backpack next to me. It was one of those soft, oversized sofas—the kind that doesn't want to let you get back up—and I had to reach to pick up the copy of the
Herald Journal
that was sitting on the coffee table. Usually I'm religious about reading the paper but it's been so busy at the store the past three weeks, I'd been lining the bird cages with it instead. This edition had been written three days ago on October fourteenth. I was scanning the front page, when a column midway down caught my eye.

“A week ago,” it began, “Dennis Richmond, part owner of the Syracuse Casket Company, told his secretary he was going out to lunch. He never came back. Yesterday his daughter, Amy Richmond, disappeared as well. The police are investigating both incidents, though foul play is not suspected at this time. Her uncle, Brad Richmond, co-owner of the Syracuse Casket Company, states he is worried that the stress of recent events has proved too great and that the fifteen-year-old has run away from home. She is undergoing medical care at the present time. If you have any information concerning either disappearance, you are asked to call the police at 555-5299.”

Two small, grainy photos accompanied the article. The one of Amy looked as if it were a yearbook head shot. I was willing to bet she'd been in seventh, maybe eighth grade, at the most, when it had been taken. In the picture, she had shoulder length hair, glasses, and a serious demeanor. I bit my thumb. She sure had changed a lot in a couple of years. As I gazed at her face, I wondered what had made her go from Miss Studious to the Queen of Punk. And then, once again, I wondered where I'd seen her before. There was something so familiar about her, but no matter how hard I concentrated, I couldn't place her and, after a moment, I gave up trying and turned to Dennis Richmond's picture. He had an elongated face, close-set eyes, and a long thin nose that twisted slightly off to one side. The only thing that linked him to his brother was a surprisingly fleshy mouth.

“Since you've read the article, I guess you can understand why this isn't a good time for you to be here,” Gerri Richmond said, taking the paper out of my hand.

I jumped. I'd been so engrossed, I hadn't heard her come up. Either that, or she moved very quietly.

She gestured towards my backpack. “I'm sorry, but I can't have that animal in the house. Especially now. You should have called before you came up.” She picked an imaginary piece of lint off her black silk pants with trembling hands. “If it weren't for that thing, Amy might still be here.”

“I don't follow.”

“I told Amy not to bring it into the house. But she did it anyway. One of her lowlife friends gave it to her. We got into a terrible fight.” Gerri Richmond began twisting her diamond ring around her finger. It was a good sized diamond, a little larger than the dictates of good taste demanded. “We were going to make a new start when she came home from the hospital, only it didn't work out that way.” She sighed. “I should never have listened to her therapist,” she murmured to herself.

“Sometimes they just make things worse,” I volunteered, thinking of mine.

But Gerri Richmond didn't want to chat about therapists or anything else. Instead of answering, she glanced at her watch, making sure that I noticed what she was doing. “Listen,” she told me, “I'm sorry, but you really have to go. I have things I have to do.”

I stood up. “Can I ask you something?”

“What?”

“How did you get my number?”

“I thought I told you. I found it.” Gerri Richmond brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes. “It was written on a scrap of paper that was lying on Amy's nightstand.”

The phone started ringing again. “Aren't you going to get that?” I asked.

She waved a hand in the direction she'd come from before. “The answering machine will.”

I was close enough to smell her perfume. It was Le Dix. I'd worn that when I was married to Murphy and working at the paper. Now I couldn't afford it anymore. The fact bothered me, even though it shouldn't have.

She gestured towards the door. “If you don't mind.”

“Just one more thing.” I took a deep breath and asked the question that had brought me up here. “Does the name Murphy mean anything to you?”

Gerri Richmond's face folded in on herself. “Why should it?”

“Because your daughter mentioned it when she came to see me.”

“I don't understand.”

“She told me he told her to see me if she were ever in trouble.”

“Look, I don't know Amy's friends. She never brings any of them home, which is probably just as well because ...”

I interrupted. “He wasn't one of your daughter's friends. He was my age.”

She wet her lower lip with the tip of her tongue. “I already told you, I never heard of the man.”

I studied her face. “You're sure?”

She returned my gaze. “Absolutely.” And she rose.

She was lying. I don't know how I knew it, but I did. I wondered why she was, as I stood up. I snuck a look at her as she walked me to the door. It occurred to me that for someone whose husband and child were both missing, she seemed remarkably composed. Or maybe she was just good at hiding her feelings. I wondered which it was, as I walked back to the cab.

Tim was starting to close up by the time I returned to the store.

“Did you go and see the girl's mother?” he asked.

“Yes?”

“And?” He abandoned doing cool.

“She didn't say much, except that she didn't want the ferret back.” I pulled Mr. Bones out of my backpack and scratched him under the chin.

“What about Murphy?”

“She claims she never heard of him.”

“Do you believe her?”

I shook my head. “No. No I don't.” I thought about the way Gerri Richmond's face had blanked out when I'd mentioned his name. “She knew him all right. The question is how?” I didn't spell it out, but then I didn't have to. Tim knew I was wondering if Gerri Richmond and Murphy had gone to bed together. God only knows, he'd gone to bed with everyone else: a fact everybody but me had evidently known about. I still don't know which bothers me more: my willful blindness or his conduct.

“Even if he had, that still doesn't explain the girl's coming in,” Tim pointed out.

“No. You're right. It doesn't.”

Tim nodded towards the ferret. “What are you going to do with him?”

“Keep him. Hopefully Amy will come back for him soon.”

“And if she doesn't?”

“I'll worry about it then.” And I told Tim I'd finish locking up. He left a few minutes later.

I fed Mr. Bones and played with him for awhile, then I put him back in his aquarium and went home. It was almost ten when I pulled into my driveway. By now I was exhausted. I gave Zsa Zsa the shortest walk I could get away with and went inside my house. James came running out to greet me—which was odd—because I could have sworn he hadn't been in the house when I left. But then, maybe he had been and I just hadn't noticed. It had been that kind of week. I checked the machine to see if George had called. He hadn't.

Oh well, I thought, as I went into the living room and poured myself a double shot of Scotch. There wasn't any reason he should have—but still, it would have been nice if he had. We had a funny relationship, George Samson and I. I contemplated it, while I went back in the kitchen and opened a can of cat food for James. George had been Murphy's best friend. Then, when Murphy had died, we'd become friends—sort of. The “sort of” had become more so, and then we'd ended up sleeping together. Which we were still doing. Which I liked. The sex was good. It was the relationship part I was having trouble with, but then that was the part I always had trouble with. Maybe, I decided, as I sipped my Scotch, we just shouldn't talk at all. Maybe we should just screw. I stretched, finished my drink, and went upstairs. It was time to take a bath and go to bed. Tomorrow was time enough to figure out what, if anything, I was going to do about Amy and her ferret.

But as I went up the stairs, I began to get increasingly nervous. It was dark on the landing and it shouldn't have been, because I kept the light on. I told myself the bulb had probably blown. Nevertheless, I found myself reaching for the box cutter I carried in my pocket. I had it out and the blade opened by the time I reached my bedroom. That light was off, too. The problem was: I couldn't remember whether I'd left it on or off. My heart was pounding as I tried to decide whether or not I was being paranoid. After all, the front door was locked when I came in. I'd used my key to open it. And nothing had been messed up downstairs. No. Things were okay. I was just getting twitchy in my old age.

I was reaching for the switch when I heard: “You sure as hell took long enough getting up the stairs.”

By the time my heartbeat had returned to normal, my eyes had adjusted to the dark. George was sitting up in my bed, wearing a grin and a bed sheet. I felt like killing him.

“You son of a bitch,” I hissed.

“I told you, you should get a security system in here.” George had picked up his knowledge of breaking and entering during the seven years he'd worked as a cop. He patted the empty space next to him. “Why don't you put that box cutter away and come on over here?”

“What if I come over and keep the blade out?”

“We can do that too, if you want.”