Blind Dates Can Be Murder (36 page)
S
ome people will do anything to keep from having to go to work!”
Danny looked up to see his brother-in-law Ray smiling at him from the doorway. Once Jo and Chewie left, Danny had relocated to the living room, where he sat watching a show he didn’t even like for lack of a remote control. As he did, he couldn’t help wondering how much longer it would be before he could get that cast put on and be active again. He was going stir-crazy.
“Hey, buddy,” Danny said, genuinely glad to see Ray. “What’s up?”
“I got the clothes and things you wanted from your house,” Ray said, bringing two tote bags to the couch and setting them down. “Also, Denise sent some stuff over. She’s worried about you.”
Danny took a look to find that one bag held his clothes and toiletries, and the other had snacks and DVDs and a GameBoy.
“What does she think, I’m twelve?” Danny asked, pulling out the GameBoy. The bottom of the bag held about ten of his nephew’s games.
“She just thought you might like something to do.”
Ray turned off the TV and sat in the La-Z-Boy to chat for a while, accepting a piece of cake from Danny’s mother with enthusiasm and asking about Danny’s big photo sale. Danny filled Ray in on all of the details, but when he mentioned the message on his machine, Ray said, “Oh, yeah, that reminds me, when I went to your house to get your clothes, the message light was blinking.”
“Well, I’m not taking any chances,” Danny said, reaching for the cordless phone on the coffee table. “Excuse me a sec, would you?”
Danny dialed his home phone and was surprised that the message awaiting him was not from Stockmasters but from Jo’s grandmother’s personal assistant.
“Mrs. Bosworth asked me to call and give you the contact information for
Scene It
magazine,” the crisp voice said before rattling off a name and address. Danny asked for pen and paper and pressed the button that would repeat the message. This time, he wrote it down, but his eyes widened when the voice added, “They’re anticipating your portfolio, so don’t delay.”
At least Danny had something ready to send—if only he could get to his house, pick it up, and take it to an overnight delivery service.
“I’ll do it for you,” Ray said easily once Danny had hung up and explained the message.
“You don’t mind?”
“Nah. ’Course not. Just tell me where to look in that pigsty you call a home.”
“Pigsty?” Danny cried. “It’s cleaner than it’s ever been!”
“Oh, right,” Ray replied. “That’s like saying the Atlantic isn’t as big as the Pacific. Big or not, it’s still an ocean.”
Chuck and Mickey struck a deal.
Actually, Chuck proposed a deal and wouldn’t take no for an answer. In his weakened state, Mickey didn’t seem strong enough to resist.
Chuck said he needed a car, a cell phone, and the information on where to find his wife. In return, he would take over the search for the money, and he wouldn’t stop until he found it—whatever it would take to find it.
“Don’t forget,” Mickey reminded him, “even if you find the cash, it’s basically unusable. You show up anywhere—anywhere—trying to pass a dyed bill, and not only will the cops be all over you, the Zabagliones will too.”
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” Chuck said. “I’ll get that dye out if it kills me.”
“Yeah, that’s what Frankie said, and look where it got him. Viewing’s tonight. Funeral’s tomorrow at noon.”
Mickey opened a drawer and dug in the back for spare keys to one of his cars.
“Mickey, how do you know it’s not the Zabagliones who have the money now? Maybe they found out Frankie had it and they stole it back after he died.”
Mickey came out with a key ring and dug in another drawer for a phone. He looked at Chuck, shaking his head.
“The only people on this planet who know about that money are you, me, Ziggy, and Tank. About two years ago, Frankie carefully engineered a rumor, so the Zabagliones think their cash was taken out of Philly on a cargo ship and spirited away to Venezuela. They stopped looking for it a long time ago.”
“Clever.”
“It took the heat off. I just wish we’d thought of it sooner.”
“Yeah, like before my run-in with the Torturer.”
Mickey came out with a phone and pressed a few buttons, checking to see that it worked. Satisfied, he handed it to Chuck.
“Still didn’t fix the basic problem, though, which is that the cash is unusable—and now missing, besides.”
Chuck didn’t want to talk his way around in circles again. He urged Mickey to hurry up with the car. Right now reaching Lettie was the bigger priority. Once he had her back, he’d figure out the rest.
“It’s a Chevy Impala,” Mickey said, tossing him the keys. “Yellow, at the far end of the lot. Ain’t been driven in months, so the battery’s probably dead.”
“Then give me some jumper cables,” Chuck said, “and tell me where I can find my wife.”
Jo had a lot of work to do, so she settled down in her office, wrote out a list, and began.
First was a phone call to her agent, Milton, who had left two messages while she was out. She was able to reach him and they talked business for half an hour. He was intrigued by the press she was getting on the abducted-blind-date issue, but since there were still so many questions surrounding the event, he suggested that she keep a low profile, for a change, until all questions had been answered.
“We don’t want to end up with negative press,” he said. “Especially since most folks still think of you as a hero after you solved that murder last fall.”
He faxed over her list of upcoming personal appearances and project deadlines, and then they went down the page and finalized details on all of them. As she described the consulting job with Peter Trumble designing a “clean house,” Milton seemed very interested.
“I think this will be the final component I’ll need to put a book together,” Jo said. “It’ll be a helpful guide for busy people who want to simplify in such a way that it’ll be easier to keep things clean.”
“Sounds good, Jo.”
“Great. I’ll e-mail a full proposal to you this week.”
Once they hung up, Jo pulled out her notes and the house plan from Peter’s and wrote out some preliminary ideas. Despite all of the other things going on in her life, she found herself able to concentrate and was soon buried deep within the project. She had picked up Danny’s snapshots earlier, and now she spread them all over the desk, grouped by room.
Jo had already spotted a number of cleaning problem spots in Peter’s house, such as popcorn ceilings in the bedrooms, elaborate woodwork in the kitchen, and open shelving in the living room. Besides identifying problem areas and making recommendations, however, she also needed to research more of the gadgets he had in mind, such as self-cleaning windows and antibacterial counters. She began with the Internet, doing a series of searches that led her to all sorts of innovations in household cleanliness—not to mention a few worthwhile oldies like central vacuuming systems and laundry chutes. Some things never changed—and, sadly enough, no one had yet invented a way to get around cleaning entirely.
When Jo reached a good breaking point, she pulled out the business card she had received from Ming Lee, Peter’s architect girlfriend, and studied it for a moment. Jo had some legitimate questions to ask her about the house; it might be a good time to call and set up a get-together. If all went as Jo planned, they could discuss other issues as well.
Much to Jo’s surprise, Ming didn’t sound hostile on the phone at all. She suggested dinner at her parents’ restaurant in Moore City in an hour and a half. Jo was still full from lunch, but she seized the opportunity, got directions, and agreed to meet her there.
After Jo hung up she neatly organized her notes, slipped them into her briefcase, and made one more call. This time, she dialed Denise, Danny’s sister and her Lemon Pickers Bible study leader.
Jo needed advice on matters of the heart, and she thought Denise might be a good place to start.
Chuck looked at the clock on the dash of the Impala and pressed the accelerator even farther. He was on his way to Mulberry Glen to get his wife. Though it was only a forty-minute drive, it was the longest forty minutes of his life.
He still wasn’t sure what he’d do once he found her.
When he was taken away to prison, she had seemed sad to see him go. But when the first visiting day rolled around, she had surprised him by not showing up. He was allowed to make collect calls to certain preselected phone numbers, but the next day when he tried calling home, the number had been disconnected.
He wasn’t sure what to do at the time. There was no way to get to her, no way to find out what was going on. Those early days when he didn’t know where Lettie was or why she had disappeared were the worst. Sometimes, he was certain she was intentionally avoiding him, trying to get on with her life without him. Other days, he felt sure that something awful had happened to her, that she had fallen in the basement and broken her neck or something.
After the Torturer did his number on Chuck, he was out of commission for weeks. From his prison hospital bed, he had spoken to the chaplain, who promised to help locate his missing wife.
Eventually, the clergyman had been able to locate her and had convinced her to communicate. Chuck still had the letter, which said that she was sorry but she needed this time to think, and that she hoped he wouldn’t send any more priests to find her.
I’m working for Mickey now
, she had written.
I’m making ends meet the best I can
.
Thinking Mickey had hired her as a stripper, Chuck went nuts. He had called Mickey, ranting and raving, only to learn that Lettie had taken his old job as a skimmer.
Since then, he had received a card from Lettie each Christmas and on his birthday, but that was it. Signed
Love, Lettie
, there had never been a personal note or anything beyond that.
It was so confusing.
Most confusing of all was what Mickey had said about Lettie today, just as Chuck was leaving Swingers.
You should be sitting pretty even without the stolen cash
, Mickey had said, holding the jumper cables as Chuck unhooked them from the spark plugs.
Lettie’s been working like a dog for three years, pulling in twice as much money as you ever did. And it ain’t like she’s living large or driving a nice car or nothing. I would imagine she’s been stashing most of it away
.
