Bait & Switch (Mayfield Cozy Mystery Book 1) (9 page)

CHAPTER 12

Matt’s face was grim, jaw clenched, as he went about the correct handling of evidence. He’d shone his car headlights across the patio and was casting an impossibly tall shadow as he inspected every inch of the cracked concrete around the plastic bag. He’d already dusted the door knob and bordering wood doorframe for fingerprints.

I shivered, hugging my arms across my body, as I sat on the Subaru’s back bumper.

“Go inside, Nora. I’ll come in when I’m done.”

“Whose is it?” I didn’t budge.

“No idea.”

“Do you think they were watching us and waited until we left to deliver it?”

“Could be.”

“Maybe they got the wrong house by accident.”

He either didn’t hear me or didn’t think the question was worth answering. I didn’t think so either, but I wanted to hope it was all a sick mistake.

A huge raindrop landed on my thigh and instantly soaked through my jeans. Then another.

Matt muttered something and dashed to the open trunk of his car. He hurried back with a large brown paper pouch and gingerly slid the plastic bag and its contents inside. “There’s nothing else here. Go on.” He tipped his head toward the kitchen door.

“Is that young man staying for dinner?” Clarice asked as I shed my windbreaker and hung it over the back of a chair.

She was stirring a couple bubbling pots on the stove, the ruffly red apron in attendance. The brusqueness of her movements, her tone of voice indicated she was back to her normal self.

“He’ll stay long enough to take our fingerprints for elimination purposes. What are you cooking?” I moved to peek into the pots. “I think he’s a picky eater.”

Clarice grunted. “He’s going to find my fingerprints are already on file.”

My mouth fell open and I blinked a few times. Must have been the steam. “Anything serious?” I finally managed.

“Disrupting the peace, assaulting a police officer.” She shrugged. “I was a college student in the ‘60s. You could meet cute guys at protests. Sometimes the cute guys were in uniform.”

“You assaulted a cute policeman?”

“He made me mad. Had me in handcuffs lying on the sidewalk, so I bit him in the ankle. Only place I could reach.”

I blinked a few more times. “What were you protesting?”

“I don’t remember now. It hardly even mattered then. Protesting was fun — beat going to class.” She eyed me with a sly smile. “He asked me out later.”

I was suddenly exhausted — and completely out of questions. I sank into a chair.

The phone in my pocket rang, and I fished it out. The caller ID showed Leroy Hardiman, the VP of operations for Turbo-Tidy Clean, who’d promised to call back when I’d asked for explanations earlier. About time.

“Nora?” His voice was muffled, as though he was speaking into his hand cupped around the phone. “Nora, where are you?” He was also panting. “Did you receive something today?”

All the bile in my digestive tract felt as if it was about to explode. “Was that you?” I shouted. “You disgusting, cruel—” I ran out of words horrible enough and banged my fist on the table. “Where is he — the man you mutilated?”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Not me, Nora. I got one too,” Leroy whispered.

“Got one what?” I snarled into the phone. Leroy was already on my questionable list. I didn’t want to give away more than I already had.

“A finger.”

“What’s it look like?”

He described a twin to the finger I’d received.

“Where are you?”

“My cabin — Big Bear.”

So the courier had found us both in remote locations. Which also meant the bad guys did not yet know who was responsible for the money going missing. I hated to put Leroy at risk, but I hadn’t known I was, which meant he was involved in some way. “What did you do?” I asked.

“What do you mean, what did I do?” Leroy switched to shouting. “I threw it in the trash, that’s what I did. Then I washed my hands about ten times.”

“You didn’t tell the police?” I hunched over the phone with my elbows on my knees.

It was so silent on the other end of the line I thought he’d hung up. “Well, I just — it could have been a mistake, you know.”

“It wasn’t a mistake. It’s a message.”

Leroy whimpered. “I’m leaving. I have to get out of here.” Panic rose in his voice, and there were thumping noises as if he was lugging a suitcase out of a closet, or repeatedly walking into a wall.

“Did you betray Skip?” I blurted. A shadow passed over, and I glanced up to see I had an audience — both Matt and Clarice wide-eyed and leaning on the kitchen table on either side of my chair. I pushed the speaker button.

“What? No. No, no, no. I just needed a little more, what with the kids being in college and all, and Josie wanted vacations to someplace warm. I just, you know, collected a commission. Not enough anyone would notice.”

“The finger says they noticed.”

“I’m sorry.” Leroy had sunk to whining. “Tell them I’m sorry, Nora. I can pay them back, with interest. I just need a little time—” More thumping and ragged panting.

“Where’s Skip,” I asked through clenched teeth.

“I don’t know. How am I supposed to know? That wasn’t supposed to happen. Everything was going smoothly. No complaints, a couple meetings. Mixing business with pleasure, no worries. Something happened. I don’t know. And now they’re after me. I never did anything. I’m not the mastermind—” There was a horrible metallic screeching.

“Leroy?” I shouted.

“Garage door’s jammed. I gotta go, Nora. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he whispered and hung up.

Matt grabbed my phone and pushed buttons to see the caller ID. “Does that answer your question about Skip’s innocence?”

“No.” I scowled. “How can it? You heard him. Skip’s disappearance wasn’t planned.”

“And Leroy is a credible source?” Matt snorted.

Clarice was madly thumbing through her Day-Timer. She pounced on an entry and jotted a note on a scrap paper which she handed to Matt. “The address for Leroy’s cabin. I understand the electricity is from a generator and they have well water. It’s way out.”

“Check the trash cans for another finger,” I added. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he tries to leave the country, and I’d also be willing to speculate that he won’t go to Mexico because of what happened to us there.”

Matt made a few terse phone calls. Clarice handed me a stack of plates and silverware to set the table for dinner and returned to the stove.

We devoured the creamy casserole and green beans. Matt wolfed down three servings, seemingly unperturbed by the Hamburger Helper nature of the dish or by his handling of a dismembered finger earlier.

When he came up for air and sat rotating his mug of after-meal coffee in slow clockwise circles on the tabletop, he turned to me. “Why are you so set on defending Skip?”

I choked on the last of my beans. “It might have something to do with the fact that I’m married to him.”

“But the evidence—”

“Is inconclusive, at best,” I snapped. “You don’t know him, his kindness. Look at me. Would you call this trophy wife material? Yeah, me neither. Considering Skip’s wealth and reputation, he could have married anyone, and yet he picked me.”

Matt stared at me for a long minute. “What if he picked you because you’re loyal? Because you know your way around international banking? Because you don’t fold under pressure? Because you have spunk?”

“You’re saying Skip’s playing me?”

“He’s conned some of the shiftiest criminals in the business. Maybe he’s conning you too.”

Clarice nudged my knee under the table.

I knew what she was asking and nodded. “It’s okay. I want to get to the bottom of this.”

She retrieved Skip’s journal from her handbag and tossed it to Matt. I explained where I’d found it while he flipped pages. I couldn’t read his face, but he didn’t seem surprised. He slipped the journal into his shirt pocket and pushed away from the table.

“You have a gun?” he asked.

“No.” My face must have registered my disgust.

“I don’t like leaving you here alone, but I have to get the finger to the lab. Chain of custody — can’t just drop it in a mailbox. I’ll be gone at least twenty-four hours. Block the doors. Check the windows. Keep your phones with you. The local sheriff’s name is Des Forbes. I talked to him yesterday — good man. His people would be the ones responding to a 911 call.”

Matt rose, grabbed Clarice around the waist and bussed her cheek.  “Thanks for dinner.”

“Well,” she huffed and shoved him away. “Get out of here.” She latched the door behind him and rammed the table against it.

oOo

I don’t suppose I slept the sleep of the righteous — more like the dreamless repair mechanism of the utterly exhausted. And it wasn’t enough, not even close, but daylight — I won’t say sunlight because the cloud layer acted as a spectrum filter — streamed through my uncovered window. It had been my first night in a real bed in longer than I had groggy brain cells to count.

Given the circumstances of last night, I shouldn’t have been able to sleep at all, but absolute necessity trumped squeamishness and worry. Apparently no one had tried to kill us while we were unconscious because syncopated snoring emanated from Clarice’s room across the hall.

I snuck down to the kitchen and opened a new package of Oreos while coffee brewed. Breakfast of champions, at least when Clarice isn’t around. She must have washed the window over the sink, because a shaft of light backlit my ring lying on the sill and cast rays of sparkle across the ledge.

I picked up the ring and bobbled it in my palm. It was inordinately heavy for its size, a small but meaningful bond between Skip and me. Matt’s comments from last night rattled around in my head. I thought I knew Skip. How could anyone be so good at separating his two lives that the one side (me) would have no suspicion of the other (a life of crime)? The warning gift last night was a clear indicator that the crime side knew about me. What if Skip had three lives, or four?

I smacked the ring back on the ledge. Entirely impractical to wear outside the cushy environment of my old life. Besides I might need to pawn it for cash if things became desperate.

Who was I kidding? I’d already reached desperate.

I scribbled a note for Clarice and slid the table away from the door for enough gap to wriggle through.

I set off on a ramble, sticking to the tire-track lane that wound deeper into the property and wondering if I’d collect a companion.

Sure enough. The kid seemed to have a sixth sense about any kind of interesting activity. Eli joined me within fifty yards, which made me wonder if he’d been watching the mansion, and for how long.

Maybe he’d seen something last night, and I itched to ask him. But the soft, twinkly dew on grass blades and dripping trees demanded silence and contemplation. And for all his curiosity that bordered on prescience, I worried that Eli was also fragile.

He had not endured any grooming ministrations this morning. His hair clumped in tufts and stuck out in short wings above his ears. There was a trace of something reddish and crusty about his lips — I guessed from a tomato sauce based dish for dinner last night, chili or spaghetti. He crunched along the graveled ruts beside me, one sneaker trailing untied laces.

Thinking Eli would disappear again if I got too close to the bunkhouse, I chose the other branch of the road at the first fork. He needed time to reveal what was on his mind.

The trees closed in, arching over us, and an intense quiet enveloped me like a balm. It was the kind of quiet you feel in your bones — a deep hollowness that isn’t empty, just permeating. This was nothing like San Francisco — no ubiquitous dull roar of traffic, no dogs barking, no doors slamming, no trolley bells, no sirens, no people shouting on cell phones, no helicopters chattering overhead. I was grateful for Eli’s footsteps and steady presence, or the aloneness of the setting might have spooked me.

Finally he spoke. “Do you have kids?”

“None of my own. But I sure like other people’s kids.”

“What about kids who don’t belong to anybody?”

“My favorite kind.”

“The lady who came yesterday is going to have a kid.”

I grinned. “Two, actually. Plus she already has a little girl. What did you think of her?”

Eli cast a brief glance up at me, his nose wrinkled, then shrugged. “Okay, I guess. Smells like flowers — a lot.”

“She lives just over there.” I pointed in the general direction. “I talked to her for a while. She’s kind. If you need help, I’m sure she would be safe.”

“Do you need help?” Another worried squint from those blue eyes and the uncanny ability of a child to get straight to the point.