A Body to Spare (The Odelia Grey Mysteries) (6 page)

“Yes,” Dev answered. “From what I’ve read about this Finch guy, he’s a big wheeler-dealer but likes to remain behind the scenes pulling strings. He almost never grants interviews.” He turned to Clark. “Is that the same guy?” Clark nodded.

“Something’s been bothering me,” I announced to the table.

“You mean something besides finding a dead body in the trunk of your car, sis?” Clark stared at me with amusement. “Or are you getting used to this sort of thing?”

Dev nudged Clark with his elbow. “Just wait for it, Clark. This is normal procedure for Odelia.”

Next to me Greg laughed, but when I shot him a death ray glance, he shoved a bite of food into his mouth.

“We’re all ears, Odelia,” Dev said, urging me to continue.

I continued toying with my food as I formed my thoughts into a clear picture. “If this Zach was kidnapped so many years ago and his father is such a big deal, why hasn’t his death been on the news yet? All they’ve said is that an unidentified body was found in a car in a Long Beach car wash. It’s being treated almost as non-newsworthy as a kitten up a tree.”

“Are you complaining that your name’s been kept out of it?” asked Dev with surprise. “Wasn’t it enough that your backside and car were all over the news last night and today?”

“No, not at all,” I quickly added. “The more they forget about me, the better. But the finding of a kid, long missing and thought dead, is very big news. Look at all the media around those kids that pop up years after they’ve been abducted.”

“I’m not involved in this case,” Dev said after taking a drink of his beer, “but I can offer up a possible explanation.” Our attention turned to Dev, giving him the floor. “Nothing about Zach’s identity would be given to the press until his family is informed of his discovery.”

“Dev’s right,” Clark agreed. “From last night’s digging, I also learned that Zach’s mother went into a deep depression after the kidnapping and committed suicide a couple of years later. So until they can reach Alec Finch, the identity of the body will not be released to the news.”

“Is that why they’ve kept Odelia’s name out of the news too?” asked Greg.

“Most likely,” answered Dev. “She knows it’s Zach from the questioning, but the police don’t want the press hounding her for information.” Dev looked at me. “You didn’t tell anyone about Zach, did you, Odelia?”

As I thought about the question, I felt a blush creep up my neck and over my face like a quickie fever.

“Uh-oh. From the look of her,” said my husband, “I’d say she did.”

Now everyone’s eyes were on me. “Yes,” I said, confessing to my sin. “I told Jolene and Jill at work, and Zee.” Then I quickly added, “But I told them all not to say anything to anyone. And Mom knows, of course.”

“I’d say you can count on Jill and Jolene telling their spouses,” said Dev. “What about your mother, Odelia? She has that gossipy blog.”

“I threatened to lock Grace up if she blogged about it,” said Greg with pride.

“And I reminded her before she left our house last night,” I added, “that she could not talk about it on her bus trip today either. She wasn’t happy about any of our warnings, but if we’re lucky and she’s smart, she’ll comply.”

Clark snorted. I turned to him. “What?”

“Nothing,” Clark said and pushed the last of his meal between his lips and chewed.

“Considering that the press has yet to come calling on Odelia,” noted Dev, “it might be safe to say that they still don’t know about Zach, but that won’t last long. Someone somewhere is going to talk. It might even be a leak inside the police department or another video could pop up with a clear photo of Odelia or of the corpse. Hopefully, they’ve been able to contact Alec Finch by now, so expect the news to explode any time.”

“And Odelia’s name with it?” asked Greg with concern.

“Maybe. Maybe not,” answered Dev. “Depends on how much information is released.” Dev looked at me. “Do the car wash
people
know your name?”

I nodded. “Maybe not off the top of their heads, but I’m a regular and belong to their frequent wash program, so I’m in their computer system. If they go through that day’s sales, they could figure it out.”

“A few dollars slipped to one of the car wash people and your name is out there, sis,” said Clark. “So expect it to go public at some point.”

I put my fork down and played with the stem of my wine glass. I needed to get my mind off of future media harassment. So far my name had been mentioned very little when it came to my escapades, and I wanted to keep it that way. I brought up another subject. “Maybe this does have something to do with Willie.” The three men kept eating on autopilot, but their eyes were on me. “I mean,” I continued, “if Zach’s dad was some big mover and shaker in investments, maybe he and Willie did cross swords at some point. It still doesn’t explain why anyone would know my connection to Willie, but it might be something worth looking into.”

Clark shook his head and swallowed his food. “Willie’s never met him. I checked.” He shot a sideways grin at Dev before continuing. Dev looked at him without so much as a blink. “He says he knows of the guy,” Clark continued, “but they’ve never met in person or on a business level, so he can’t imagine this having anything to do with him. But he did say this Alec Finch has a far reach.” He looked around the table at all of us. “Willie is as concerned and perplexed by the kid ending up in Odelia’s car as the rest of us.”

“And what about the other possibility?” asked Greg. “Any word there?”

“None,” Clark said. “We’re still working on that connection.”

“And what, pray tell, is that connection?” asked Dev. He put down his fork, wiped his mouth with the napkin from his lap, and waited. Dev was not someone who could be sidestepped. I knew from experience that he wouldn’t budge until he got an answer.

Clark started to say something, but I held up a hand like a low flag. “It’s no secret,” I said to Dev. “It’s something Fehring and the FBI are also looking into.” Dev’s blue eyes settled on me with expectation. “It’s Elaine Powers,” I finally admitted in a low whisper. “They’re wondering if this has something to do with her.”

A hush fell over the table as if I’d just tried to conjure up Beelzebub in a dark room. After nearly a full minute of silence, Dev picked up his fork and took another bite of his food. Greg chewed on bread. Clark drank some club soda. Finally, Dev asked, “And?”
I remained still, hoping Clark would field this one.

“And nothing,” my brother answered. “We’re trying to contact her, but no one has a direct line of communication.” Everyone turned to me, even Greg.

“I have no idea how to reach her,” I answered, a smidge of defensiveness in my voice. “She just seems to pop up in the oddest places and at the weirdest times.” Finished, I pushed my plate away. “But like I told the police, this really doesn’t sound like her.”

“No, it doesn’t,” agreed Dev. “Hitmen don’t advertise their work, not to mention she seems oddly protective of Odelia.” He paused. “Unless someone is trying to flush Powers out.”

“That’s another theory,” I told Dev. “Since there doesn’t seem to be a direct connection to me yet, the cops are wondering if someone is trying to force Elaine or Willie out of the shadows.”

“The cops are also going back and looking at all of our past run-ins with criminals,” Greg told him. “Just to see if anything clicks there.”

Also finished with his food, Dev pushed his plate away and took a sip of his beer. Clark and Greg finished their meals, and the waiter came and cleared our plates. When he asked us about dessert and coffee, we waved him off. The check came. Greg grabbed it, but Dev snatched it out of his hand. “I did the inviting,” he said to Greg. “I’ll do the paying.” We knew better than to argue.

After the waiter took the check and Dev’s credit card, Dev turned to me and said in a quiet, even tone that meant business, “Willie is one thing, but if I catch sight of Elaine Powers, she’s going down. Got that? And I won’t care if it’s on my final day on the job.” He swiveled his head around the table, letting his eyes rest on Greg and Clark in turn before finally coming back to me. “You all got that?”

seven

The next morning as
I was cleaning up from the impromptu party of the night before, Clark showed up at my front door. “Got some coffee, sis?” he asked as soon as I let him in.

“It’ll just take a sec,” I said as we headed into the kitchen.

Clark took a seat at the kitchen table. “I’m assuming Greg’s off to work already since Wainwright wasn’t at the door.”

“You assume correctly,” I said with a smile as I started a cup of coffee for him. “It was tough getting Greg out of bed this morning, but he was a trooper.”

Clark eyed me up and down, taking in my sloppy attire. “Nice outfit,” he quipped. “I can see why Greg has the hots for you.”

I stuck my tongue out at my brother. “You want that coffee or not?” That shut him up.

The party had been fun and had lasted past midnight in spite of the fact that most of the guests had to be at work this morning. But at least today was Friday so they only had to suffer through one day before the weekend. The surprise guest the night before had been Steele. He’d called from Switzerland to give Dev his personal good wishes after receiving an email from Jill about Dev’s retirement and move. For Steele it was early morning, and he sounded fresh and chipper voicing his congratulations over the speaker on Jill’s cell phone. In spite of saying he didn’t want any fuss made, I could tell that Dev was touched by the outpouring of affection from the small gathering.

Near the end of the party I saw Clark, Dev, and Fehring in a corner, their three heads together, brows furrowed with concern. I had no doubt it was about Zach Finch and my involvement, since every now and then one of them would look my way. Had Clark not been in the mix, I would have thought for sure that Dev and Fehring were discussing me as the top suspect. I also wondered if Clark was picking up anything useful. He might once have been a cop and he might be a close friend of Dev’s, but the bottom line was that he was no longer law enforcement in the legal sense. Whatever they told him would only stretch so far.

“So what was that pow-wow about last night?” I asked Clark as I placed a mug of fresh coffee in front of him.

“What pow-wow?” Clark asked before taking a large gulp of the hot coffee without so much as a flinch. His palate must be made of the same stuff used to line oven mitts.

I grabbed a mug of my own and joined him at the kitchen table. “I saw you, Dev, and Fehring clustered together in a corner last night.”

“Just swapping war stories, sis.” He looked around the kitchen. “Got any eggs on ya?”

I blew over my coffee and took a small sip before getting up. “If you wanted breakfast, you just had to ask,” I told him. I went over to the fridge and pulled out a carton of eggs. “Omelet? Fried? Scrambled? Name your poison.”

“Scrambled with some onions and mushrooms, if you’ve got them.” He gave me a wide smile. “Any bacon in that fridge?”

I turned to my brother. “Did you see a Denny’s sign in front of this house?” Instantly, I was reminded of Special Agent Shipman’s snotty remark to me about Starbucks. Oh well, what can I say? I’m a plagiarist.

In response, Clark’s smile turned upside down. “Mom only has high-fiber cereal and soy milk on hand for breakfast.”

“And that’s why she’s skinny and we’re not,” I shot at him as I grabbed a few veggies, bacon, and some cheddar cheese from the fridge to go along with the eggs. “Sourdough good for your toast? And we only have turkey bacon.” Clark nodded and winked at me. He knew I wasn’t really peeved at being pressed into service as a short-order cook. I loved spending time with my half brother, even if it did mean wielding a spatula. I chopped some onion and sliced a couple mushrooms, throwing them into a skillet sizzling with a bit of butter and crushed basil. Before I cracked an egg into a bowl, I zeroed my eyes in on Clark’s. “Eggs for information.”

“What information?” he asked.

“What were you, Dev, and Fehring talking about last night?” I tapped the egg gently on the side of the glass bowl, emptied its contents into it, and grabbed another egg. “Two or three eggs?”

“Just two, sis.” He patted his middle. “Gotta watch my girlish figure.” My brother wasn’t skinny, but neither was he fat. When we first met, he was battling a hefty bulge around his middle. Since then he’d lost his gut and had settled into a stocky but solid physique that he maintained with regular exercise and semi-healthy eating. “Oh, what the hell,” he said, “let’s live dangerously. Make it three.”

I gave the cooking veggies a stir and beat the eggs with a little milk, hot sauce, salt, and pepper. The bacon was the precooked microwavable kind. I placed a few slices on a paper towel and slipped it into the microwave. As soon as I had the eggs in the pan, all I had to do was poke the button to get it going.

A few minutes later, I placed Clark’s breakfast in front of him, refreshed his coffee, and joined him again at the table. While I’d been cooking, Muffin came in from the bedroom, where she’d been having her first nap of the morning, and said hello to Clark. The small animal loved attention and my brother, and she had whined until he’d put her on his lap and stroked her until his food came. When he put her back down on the floor, she went in search of a suitable place for her next nap. Being a much-loved and well-fed cat in our house was exhausting business requiring no fewer than a dozen long naps a day.

“So,” I prodded, “what was the pow-wow about last night?”

Clark swallowed the eggs in his mouth and looked at me. “Tell me, sis, would you mind terribly if I asked Andrea Fehring out?”

My coffee cup was to my lips and coffee was flowing into my mouth just as his question hit my brain. I didn’t know whether to spit the coffee back into the cup, try swallowing it without choking, or just spray it all over my brother. It was a toss-up, with door number three in the lead. At the last minute I swallowed the coffee in my mouth slow and easy to avoid a coughing fit. The exercise took several starts and stops while Clark continued shoveling eggs into his mouth like he hadn’t eaten in a week—or just dropped a big-assed bomb in the middle of my kitchen table.

“You’re kidding me, right?” I finally squeaked out.

He shrugged like he couldn’t see the problem. “Dev says she’s currently unattached, and I think she’s pretty interesting and attractive.”

I put my coffee cup down on the table and stared at my brother with my right eye closed as if that might help me focus better. Obviously, one of us was seeing a box of demons and the other a fistful of daisies. “The fact that you live in Arizona and Fehring lives here aside, you don’t see even a teensy-weensy bit of a conflict?” I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms over my chest. When he didn’t answer, I tacked on, “You know, like the fact that she’s trying to nail my ass for murder?”

Clark tore off a piece of buttered toast and popped it into his mouth. He chewed and washed it down with coffee. He held up his mug. “Got a refill?”

I got up and fetched the glass carafe from the coffeemaker. Day to day Greg and I used our little Keurig coffeemaker, but since our bigger coffeepot, the one we used for large gatherings, was still out from last night, I had brewed a whole pot when Clark showed up this morning. I knew my brother was a coffee hound. Now I was considering using the heavy glass pot as a weapon to knock some sense into his thick skull. That would really give Andrea Fehring something to question me about. As if reading my thoughts, Clark held out his coffee mug to me but leaned his head and body backward as if offering a placating treat to a growling dog. I poured the coffee and put the carafe back in the kitchen to remove any temptation to violence.

“Andrea is not trying to nail you for that murder,” Clark said after taking a swig from his full mug. “It’s pretty clear to both Dev and me that she doesn’t think you did it, though I can’t vouch for the feds. If Andrea had any proof at all about your involvement, you wouldn’t be here making me breakfast.”

I returned to the table with my ears pricked with interest. “Did she say they are no longer considering me a suspect?”

“Not in so many words,” Clark answered. “One thing is for sure: I don’t think she likes that Greg Shipman much.”

“That makes two of us,” I huffed. “What did she say about him?”

“Again, not much. It was more of what she wasn’t saying. I got the definite feeling Andrea is being shoved aside by Shipman on this investigation. Dev got the same feeling.” He polished off his eggs and wiped his mouth with a napkin he pulled from the holder we kept on the table. It was a blue and white ceramic windmill with
Solvang
printed along the bottom. It didn’t match anything in our kitchen, but we’d picked it up on our first day trip together after we’d gotten married—a kitschy but useful doodad representing our new domesticity.

“Did you tell her last night that Willie had nothing to do with this?” I asked.

“I wasn’t sure how to,” he answered, “without tipping her off that I might be connected to him, along with you and Greg.” He selected a banana from the bowl we kept on the table and started peeling it.

While he bit off a third of the banana with one bite, I went back to staring at him in disbelief. “And you don’t think that little bit of information—you know, your connection to Willie Proctor—might be a deterrent to your dating life?”

He shrugged. “Could be if anything came of it.” He took another bite, chewed, and swallowed. “I was just going to ask her to dinner, Odelia, not ask her to move to Arizona and live with me. Besides, I work for a solid and legitimate company. I don’t work for Willie directly.”

“Right.” Again I crossed my arms and gave him a one-eyed stare, wondering how such a smart and accomplished man could be so dense. “Do you think, Clark, that maybe you could put your libido on hold until after I’m no longer a suspect in a murder investigation?”

“Sure, sis,” he answered with a grin. “But I really don’t think you’re a suspect. At least I don’t think you’re near the top of the list, if there is one. Besides, I didn’t plan on asking Andrea out immediately. If she’s half the cop I think she is, she’d never say yes while all this was going on.” He tossed the banana peel onto his plate and wiped his mouth again.

“Nice to know,” I said with thick sarcasm as I picked up his plate and took it to the kitchen sink. On my way back to the table, I asked, “Is that why you came over this morning—to ask my blessing in your pursuit of Detective Fehring?”

He grinned. “I also wanted a home-cooked breakfast.” He leaned back in his chair, stretched out his legs, and patted his full stomach. “And there’s something else.”

I raised my eyebrows in anticipation. “You found out more about Zach Finch?”

He shook his head and took another swallow of coffee. “No, but I did get a lead on Elaine Powers.”

I sat up at attention. “You’ve made contact with her?”

“Not exactly, but I found out how to make contact—or at least how potential clients make contact.” When I waved my hand in a circle of encouragement, he continued. “Most of her jobs come from referrals.”

I nodded. “She told me that once.”

“And also from a guy who works at a dive bar in Redondo Beach.”

“Redondo Beach?” I asked with surprise.

“Yep. I’m betting this guy isn’t the only contact Powers has out there,” Clark said. “She probably has a few other slimy associates throughout Southern California that help her connect with potential clients, but I uncovered the one in Redondo.”

My skin crawled at the thought of a killer hotline. “Did you see this guy and ask him to have her contact us?”

“It doesn’t work like that.” Clark sat up straight. He was moving from casual into a more serious mode. I’d seen him do it many times when he was about to say something he wanted to make sure people heard and understood. “We pay him to place an ad.”

“An ad? Where?”

Clark shrugged. “Who knows. It’s probably some online message board. Anyway, we ask this guy to place an ad explaining what we want.”

I felt the top of my head levitate in disbelief. “Right out in the open, people say ‘hey, I got someone I need to have whacked; call me’?” I held a hand up to my mouth and ear like I was holding an old-fashioned phone.

“Not exactly,” Clark said, chuckling softly. “I’m sure the guy has some special code or wording to fit the types of jobs requested. If Powers is interested, she’ll make contact with us through the ad, but there’s no money-back guarantee she will.”

“What does it cost?”

“A couple hundred just to place the ad and hope she answers,” Clark said.

I got up and went into the kitchen. Turning on the water in the sink, I rinsed Clark’s breakfast dishes and those I’d used to make the food and placed them in the nearly full dishwasher. I added dishwasher detergent, shut the door, and turned the knob to get the machine going. Then I stood in front of it thinking while I listened to the water flowing into the stainless-steel box.

“Are you thinking, sis, or taking a nap?” Clark asked from his perch at the table.

I turned around and leaned back against the counter. “Let’s place that ad,” I told him.

“And what should we say?” He drained his coffee and got up to bring the mug to me. I motioned for him to bring mine, too. He grabbed it and placed both on the counter. I opened the dishwasher, put them both on the top rack, and shut the door with determination.

“Just say,” I told Clark after turning back to him, “‘Mother, call Dottie. Urgent.’”

“Dottie?” Clark asked. His left eyebrow arched with curiosity.

“Elaine once told Greg and me that I reminded her of Dottie, her dead sister,” I explained. “She’ll know immediately it’s me.”