An Intimate Murder (The Catherine O'Brien Series) (23 page)

“I’m sure it’s fine.” Jane shoved her hand out and wiggled her fingers. “Give it to me.”

“Hold your pony.”

Annoyance rippled through me at Jane’s insistence. I was trying to help, and I was prepared to make good on my word. If the tape player didn’t work then I would have Louise stop at the nearest Target Superstore, and I would buy her a new recorder. My guilt was so great, I would have purchased one that was four times nicer.

I pressed play. The tape slowly whirred to life, the voices at first too slow.

“It works,” Jane said. “Give it to me.”

I slapped the player against my palm. The tape wound up to normal speed. A good smack worked every time. Any electronic equipment could be righted with a slap as long as you followed the golden rule of electronic repair, once is maintenance; twice is abuse.

Suddenly I recognized Louise’s voice. “
It’s a ring.”
Then Digs said,
“Well, the setting for one.”
Then my own voice.
“Where did you find it?”
Digs again.
“Embedded in Susan Luther’s throat.”

My mouth dropped open. Our conversation from the lab. The one that took place
after
Jane had left the room.

I turned toward Jane. She shrank back against the seat and made no effort to explain herself.

“You baited us,” I said. “You knew Digs had more to say but he wouldn’t talk in front of you.”

Jane turned her eyes to the roof of the car, but didn’t say a word.

“So you baited us with your convenient bathroom break.”

“Of course I knew.” Jane smirked at me. “I told you, I know when people are lying. Your friend Digs isn’t exactly a professional actor.”

“We had a deal,” I said.

Jane scoffed and leaned forward. “Which you broke.”

“We broke?” Louise said. “How do you figure?”

“When were you going to tell me about the ring found in Susan’s throat?”

Louise looked at me and I shrugged.

“We weren’t,” I said.

“Exactly, you broke the deal. I was supposed to have all access. You’ve already got editorial approval over what I publish, so you had no reason to keep anything from me.”

“Yes, we did,” Louise said and wheeled her car to the curb. She jammed the transmission into park and then turned toward Jane as much as her seatbelt would allow.

“What you don’t seem to understand, Ms. Katts is that we’re conducting a murder investigation. There is some information that we have to keep close to our chest.”

“Why? It’s not like you’ll let me publish the information.”

“But you’d still have it,” I said. “You might have no intention of publishing the information, but let’s say you’re having drinks with a few friends tonight. Alcohol loosens lips. You tell two friends, and they tell two friends,” I mimicked the old shampoo commercial. “And so on, and so on, and so on.”

“I wouldn’t,” Jane protested. “Confidentiality is part of my job too.”

A laugh burbled out before I could stop it. Even Louise smiled at Jane’s denial.

“No offense, Ms. Katts,” Louise said. “But your job is to tell people everything, not hold back.”

“Yeah, wasn’t it you who said, the public has the right to know?” I shook the recorder. “We could check the tape.”

“Fine. Whatever you say.” A flush rose high on her cheeks. “Let’s just go.”

“No,” I said. “Let’s have this out, because I don’t want to keep running up against this topic.”

A yellow school bus passed us with lights flashing and stopped a half a block up the road. The doors folded open. Five kids hopped down the stairs, happily released from school for at least another day. Four of the kids went up the block away from us but one young girl, maybe fourteen or fifteen years old, headed down the sidewalk toward Louise’s car.

“Take her for instance.” I nodded toward the girl.

Jane turned to watch her. “What about her?”

The girl noticed the three of us watching. Her pace slowed and she clutched her books close to her chest. Her wary eyes darted between the sidewalk and our car.

“Why does she need to know all the gory details of a murder?” I asked. “Look at how she carries herself and watches us. That girl knows the world is a bad place, and that murders happen. Her parents have probably drilled that fact into her since the first day she rode the bus to school alone.”

I placed my left hand on the back of Louise’s seat and looked over my arm.

“Tell me Jane, why does she need to know the details of a murder that doesn’t directly affect her? Isn’t it enough for her to know that there was a murder? Isn’t she frightened enough of the world?”

Jane glanced at me and then back toward the young girl. The girl gave the three of us a wide birth, walking on the edge of the far side of the sidewalk.

“She probably doesn’t even read the paper,” Jane said. “
Teen Beat
or
Tiger Beat
maybe, but not the legit press.”

I wondered what made her brand any more legit than the stuff printed in celebrity gossip magazines. Apparently a masthead that read,
Proudly Serving the Community Since 1898
, was all one needed to legitimize trash.

“Say her parents read the legit press.” Louise had detected where I was going. “Why do they need to know what horrors could await that little girl every time she steps outside the door?”

“Or, say her parents are reading the paper and she happens to see a news story with a sensational headline that is even more interesting than one of her teen magazines. Sort of like one of the headlines your paper prints every day.”

I waited for some sort of revelation to hit Jane, but I’d watched one too many Jimmy Stewart movies as a kid. Hardened by the demands of her career, there would be no redemption for Jane Katts today, or possibly ever. Not even three ghosts or Clarence the wingless angel could soften her.

“Are we done with the maudlin stuff for today? Or do you want to show me some puppies that could see a story about a runaway dog because their owners happened to leave the paper lining their kennels open to the story.”

Louise shrugged at me. “Well, we tried.”

“Maybe we could find some puppies,” I said.

Jane shoved her hand forward again. “Give me the damn tape recorder.”

“Sure.” I popped the tape out and handed her the device.

“What are you doing?” She made a vain attempt to snatch the cassette from my hand.

“You asked for the recorder back and that I’m giving you. The tape is confidential and will be locked up until the investigation is over.”

Jane grunted her disgust and fished through her purse, which was slightly less diaper-bagish than mine, but still large enough to hide anything she needed to find quickly. She finally came up with a small case with a fresh tape.

“I’ll be talking to my boss when I get back to the paper tonight.”

In the vanity mirror, I saw her push her pointy little chin forward in defiance.

“I think our deal is void and I’ll be filling him in on everything that’s happened so far.”

A shift of unease in my gut verged on the edge of panic. I wondered what chief would do to me if Jane Katts made good on her threat. The paper would slaughter us in the morning edition and I’d be on the hook. The part of me that wasn’t wading into panic mode, my Rhett Butler side, won the battle, and finally declared,
‘Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn’
.

My Rhett side usually dominated my personality, gratefully. I couldn’t imagine stumbling through life worried what people would think of me at every turn. Sounded like a recipe for schizophrenia to me.

Maybe Rhett was feeling so confident because of the look on Louise’s sphinx-like face. She betrayed no hint of concern with Jane’s threat.

We drove in grudging silence for a long while, leaving the campus but staying close to the outskirts, still in college country. Coffee houses tucked into old storefronts, cafés, sandwich shops, and books stores. Louise slowed at every building to read the street numbers.

She stopped in front of an old, three-story brownstone. What used to be respectable family housing some time in the early nineteen twenties were now run down college apartments that the landlord barely bothered to keep up to code. Gavin would come home furious when some slumlord would hire him to remodel one of these places, and wouldn’t allow him to do a proper job, claiming it wasn’t worth the money.

He’d quit taking the jobs near campus all together after one house burned down, and the contractor, as well as the owner, were sued by the families of the four victims who didn’t make it out.

Each unit in this particular brownstone had a bay window, and a balcony off the side, which gave the building more character than most.

My curiosity finally got the better of me. “Who lives here?”

“Marcus Vincent.”

Louise headed up the steps to the secure entry of the brownstone. Jane and I followed.

“Who?”

“V.”

She scanned the names on the tin mailboxes inset on the wall in the entry. Louise pushed the call button below a large V written in black marker. Apartment 302.

Several seconds passed before my angry, adrenaline filled brain put together who V was and why we needed to meet with him.

The security latch on the front door buzzed open. So much for all the parents who believed their children were safe just because there was a secured front door.

I yanked open the door and stepped in front of the jamb, holding the door with my back so Louise and Jane could enter.

Curled in the corner of the entry, facing the wall, was a shaggy man in dirty clothes. He glanced over his shoulder at us and grumbled something under his breath about cold air.

I fished a ten-dollar bill from my wallet.

“Hey.” I tapped him on the shoulder. “Go get yourself a warm meal.”

He snatched the bill as if afraid I would take it back, like a tease. He grunted thanks.

I nodded.

Louise and Jane reached the second-floor landing before me. At the top of the third-floor steps, leaning on the rail and gazing down at us, was a gangly, zit covered man in his early twenties. His eyes fixed on me.

“You gave that skid money?”

“Skid?” I said.

“That human trash in the entry. We keep throwing him out but he keeps getting back in somehow.”

Considering he buzzed us in without inquiry, it didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to solve the mystery of his reappearances.

“What I do with my money is my business.”

“True.” He stuck his thumbs in his belt loops and hiked up his droopy pants. “Step inside my parlor.”

The apartment was everything you could possibly want from a cliché bachelor pad. A ragged plaid couch. Milk crates with a board over the top for a coffee table. Vincent even had a small wire-spool set up as an end table, a sight I hadn’t seen since I married Gavin.

Gavin and his three roommates had lived in a two room, brownstone apartment eerily similar to this. Markus Vincent even had a two-by-four nailed to the wall next to the door to hold keys and an oversized leather coat like Gavin did, though Gavin’s coat had leather fringe dripping from the sleeves, like Bon Jovi.

The apartment had the vague air of a recent trashing. Stale beer and cigarette smells permeated the room. Empty Summit, vodka, and whisky bottles littered any surface that would hold them. Cheese Doodles were ground into the worn area rug, covering the hardwood floor of the living area, in wide orange spots every few feet.

The only new piece of furniture in the room, which stuck out like a pig in a beauty pageant, was a large flat screen television mounted to the wall. The TV probably cost more than all of Markus Vincent’s furniture and his clothing combined.

“Well what can I do for you ladies? You need blow? Pot? E? You don’t look like the type for Crystal Meth.”

He sprawled across the couch and spread his arms wide.

“But I have it if you wanted to explore the darker side.”

I leaned against the wall. “Well, you’ve got a regular smorgasbord here, don’t you?”

“I’ve got it, if you need it.” He leaned forward. “If you have the cash. I don’t give credit. Even to pretty ladies.”

He turned his gaze toward Jane and dragged his tongue over his upper lip.

“But I have been known to take trade, if the goods are primo.”

Jane pulled her jacket tight around her chest. Her jaw clenched with disgust.

“Mr. Vincent,” Louise said. “We came to ask you a few questions about a friend of yours.”

“Ladies, I don’t answer questions. If you’re not here for business, there’s the door, and I could give a shit if it hits you in the ass on the way out or not.”

Louise and I both badged him at the same time. The look on his face went from the poker ace, holding-all-the-cards, to a guilty child.

“You can either answer our questions about your friend here,” I said. “Or we can take you to our office and you can answer the DEA’s questions.”