Break and Enter (22 page)

“Right,” Janet said, “but we were able to get some cooperation from the folks at the Tampa Post Office. When the guy turned up to sign for the envelope, they asked for identification and made a copy of his driver’s license.”

“The item was mailed to one of Lieutenant Sanchez’s relatives in south Florida,” I said, “and has been positively identified as having come from Mr. Jordan’s collection.”

“Why south Florida?” Mrs. Murchison said.

“If she had used a Jacksonville address, he might have gotten suspicious,” I said. “She used a relative’s eBay account so that the address on the check would match the shipping address.”

“What’s the bottom line here?” the sheriff said.

“We’ve issued an arrest warrant,” I said, “for one Wallis Mayhew, age twenty-two. He was the missing man on our list, and the postal clerk in Tampa can positively identify him.”

“The problem is,” Janet said, “that he’s a drifter. My people have a lot of man-hours invested in this case, and from what we’ve pieced together of his life, Mr. Mayhew doesn’t have a regular job. After he graduated from high school, he spent several years living with, and sponging off of, a number of different young men his age. After the last one got tired of it and kicked him out, he started preying on older men.”

“He’s never been fingerprinted,” I said, “so we have to catch him before we can match his prints to those at the murder scene or, for that matter, to the prints in the victim’s car. On the other hand, we found fingerprints on the item the lieutenant purchased that match prints found at the crime scene and in the car, so once he’s caught, we should be able to convict him. He’d tried to wipe the item clean, but we picked up one that he’d missed.”

“He has family here in Jacksonville,” Janet said, “but they kicked him out and pretty much disowned him years ago. Our plan is to have his photograph circulated around the gay bars in central Florida and hope someone will spot him. We’ll start with Tampa and St. Petersburg and work our way across the state.”

“We had hoped that when he deposited the check in his bank account,” I said, “that information might lead us somewhere.”

“But it didn’t,” Janet said. He somehow managed to get it cashed at one of those check-cashing places, so that was a dead end.”

“We think that he’s probably living with, and off of, someone in the Tampa area,” I said. “All we have to do is find him.”

“That won’t be easy from two hundred miles away,” the sheriff said.

“No, Sir,” I said, “but that’s all we’ve got. Hopefully, a heavily publicized search will flush him out of hiding.”

“Well, I think you’ve done well,” Mr. Murchison said. “We had pretty much given up hope that the murder would ever be solved.”

“Humph,” was Mrs. Murchison’s comment.

“We’ve also filed a notice with eBay,” I said, “advising them that the seller in question was dealing in stolen goods. However, even if they close his account, he’ll probably start again under a different seller name. We tried to trace him through the IP address of his computer, but he was smart enough to make all contacts using computers in libraries and Internet cafés.”

“Where is the item that the lieutenant purchased?” Mrs. Murchison said.

“In our evidence room,” I said. “It will have to stay there until the suspect is brought to trial.”

“Humph.”

The sheriff took charge at that point, thanked Janet for her hard work, and escorted the Murchisons to the elevator. Carl followed them, leaving Janet and me alone in the office.

“Boss,” Janet said, “that woman seriously gets on my nerves.”

“I know what you mean. To repeat what the sheriff said, ‘Well done, Janet.’”

“Thanks, boss.”

“I don’t mean to pry,” I said, “but how’s your social life now that you’ve been a free woman for a while?”

“Are you asking me if I’m dating?” she said.

“If I wanted to know that, I’d come right out and say so, but now that you mention it, are you?”

“Not quite yet, but soon.”

“Good. You know what they say about falling off a horse?”

“Yeah, but I’m not quite ready to get back in the saddle at this point,” she said. “Frankly, after all those years of marriage, it’s still something of a novelty to come and go as I please without having to answer to anyone else.”

“That’s a very good attitude, but sooner or later you’re going to get lonely.”

“When that happens, I’ll deal with it.”

“I’ve no doubt that you will.”

She left, and I turned off my computer terminal and did the same.

•
15 •

T
HE
burglar had chosen a spot on a side street near its intersection with the street on which his next target resided. His vantage point gave him a clear view of the target driveway, and his patience was ultimately rewarded when he saw an old Jaguar sedan back carefully down the driveway and head south in the general direction of downtown St. Petersburg. Remembering what had happened in a certain gated community in Jacksonville, he waited a full thirty minutes before he slipped into the shadows and down the alley toward his goal.

It took him only a couple of minutes to loosen enough of the glass louvers in the jalousie windows to gain entry through the sunroom of the house. Once inside, he quickly gathered two bags of expensive artsy-fartsy goodies, along with the stash of cash the owner of the house kept in his freezer.

His last act before leaving the house was to carefully restore the jalousie windows to their original state. Then he opened the door leading from the sunroom to the backyard, set it to lock behind him, and pulled it closed.

These old farts were even better targets than the ones in Jacksonville
, he thought as he drove away.

W
HEN
I got home, the welcoming committee was waiting. We had decided as an experiment to take Robbie with us to the wine shop, and he was excited about getting to go out with the grown-ups. We knew that he would be worn out long before we were really ready to call it an evening, but various members of the group had been asking to meet him, so we walked into the wine shop with Robbie between us. There was a small bar in the shop about twenty feet back from the checkout counter. It was all that remained of what had been a full-service bar back in the days before the shop’s owner had stopped selling alcohol by the drink and began selling wine and spirits only by the bottle.

This evening it was being used by a representative from one of the local distributors, and she was pouring samples of a couple of wines her company was promoting. I lifted Robbie off the floor and set him on one of the bar stools. He immediately discovered that it swiveled, and I had to press up against the stool to keep him from spinning around in circles. There was a plateful of cubed cheese on the counter, so I speared one of the cubes with a toothpick and gave it to him. Various members of our group wandered over to the counter for a freebie, speaking to Robbie as they did so, and I watched carefully as he interacted with more adults than was normal for any sign that he was having any problem with the situation. When he’d first come to live with us, he would have hidden behind Mike or me when faced with that many unfamiliar grown-ups, but he was holding his own and smiling as he answered their questions.

As was sometimes the case, nobody seemed interested in going to dinner en masse, so we took Robbie to the Pizza Italian for lasagna, which he loved. The minute we walked through the door of the restaurant, Robbie spotted two familiar faces. “Carl and Jim are here,” he said. “Can we sit with them?”

“They’re in a booth,” I said. “It only holds four.”

“Sometimes they put a chair at the end of the booth,” he said.

“Sometimes you’re just too smart, big guy,” Mike said.

We pulled a chair away from a vacant table and settled in the booth with Robbie occupying the chair.

“I guess tax season is over,” I said as we settled in the booth.

“You bet it is,” Carl said, “and I’ve had him all to myself for the past three weeks. It’s been wonderful.”

“And exhausting,” Jim said.

“Was your second tax season as a sole practitioner significantly better than the first?” Mike said.

“Was it ever,” Jim said. “I finally hired a helper, and it’s a good thing, what with new business, repeat business, and referrals.”

“Don’t tell them that,” Carl said. “Your rent might go up.”

We owned a small house near Five Points that Mike used as an office, and we had rented part of it to Jim.

“That’s why I have a lease,” Jim said. “It’ll be almost two years before I have to deal with my greedy landlords.”

We laughed at that, knowing it was a joke. Mike had given Jim extremely favorable terms, starting with a low-ball rent the first year with small step increases in each successive year.

“Are you guys going to go to the mountains this year?” I said.

“We’re not sure,” Carl said. “We both have families that want to see us, and right now we’re juggling invitations.”

“If you change your mind,” Mike said, “let us know. Our cabin sits there all by itself much of the time.”

We had brought a bottle of wine with us, and we shared it with our friends, which was just as well, given that Mike and I had shared more bottles than usual with our wine group that evening. On the way home, Mike said, “Don’t look now, but guess who’s sound asleep.”

“That’s hardly surprising. It’s more than a bit past his normal bedtime.”

Saturday afternoon, I settled down on the floor of what would be our new master bedroom to work on the wiring. I had to finish roughing it in so that it could be inspected on Monday, and it was going to take most of the weekend to finish the job. Robbie was acting as my gofer—I was teaching him to use the correct terminology for such things as junction boxes, and he was obviously getting a kick out of it. Mike was downstairs doing laundry, cleaning the house, and doing whatever else needed to be done. He was still my primary gofer for heavy items, such as bundles of shingles, and I had worked him very hard when I had done the roofing on the addition. We had compromised and allowed a subcontractor to remove a portion of the roof over the first floor so that the new second floor could be roughed in. This made them responsible for any water damage should it rain, but as soon as the second story had been framed in and plywood sheathing installed on the new roof trusses, I had taken a Friday off to get the protective layer of felt in place. Mike had then worn himself out carrying heavy bundles of shingles up a twenty-six-foot extension ladder all day Saturday and Sunday so I could get them in place as quickly as possible.

Robbie said, “Dad, someone’s coming up the stairs.”

I was in the middle of twisting two twelve-gauge wires together in a junction box using a pair of needle-nose pliers, so I merely grunted by way of reply.

“Looking good, George,” a familiar voice said.

I finished my immediate task and looked around. It was, of course, Chief Bridges. Mrs. Bridges was with him. “Hi,” I said. “Excuse me for not getting up.”

“Don’t be silly, George,” Sarah said, “we won’t disturb you. Mike is just showing us around.”

“I see you have a helper,” the chief said.

“That I do, and he’s turning into a good little gofer.”

“Carry on,” the chief said, “we won’t keep you.”

I returned to the task at hand and, without getting up, slid my butt over to the next wall stud that needed my attention, and by Sunday evening I was ready for the inspection. One of the good things about doing the wiring myself, other than the money saved, was the fact that we could have more outlets. Electrical contractors charged so much per outlet, which typically meant only the required minimum of one outlet for every so many feet of wall space was installed. I was installing double the minimum amount of outlets required, and in the case of the little office we were installing under the eaves, more than triple the minimum. Mike had questioned that when I showed him the plans.

“Babe,” I said, “look at all the shit we have to plug in around our desk. Who knows what kind of devices we’ll be using in our new office five or ten years from now?”

“Point taken.”

Mrs. Green had requested that we meet with her near the end of May to discuss Robbie’s progress, and when we arrived at the meeting, there were two other teachers present. She introduced them as the second and third grade teachers respectively and said, “We have a problem with Robbie, but let me hasten to add that it’s a very good kind of problem.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“Robbie’s intelligence is way above normal,” she said. “He came to us with a somewhat limited educational background, and he has progressed far beyond everyone’s expectations. The bottom line is that Robbie has been performing at a second-grade level for several months now and is almost ready to be moved ahead to the third grade, but there are a couple of areas that need work.

“So,” Mrs. Green said, “what we are proposing is that Robbie be placed in a special status next year.”

“What does that mean?” Mike said.

“We want to work out a schedule,” she said, “such that he will spend a small portion of every day with the second grade, and the rest of the day with the third grade. That way, by the end of the next school year, we’re confident he will be ready for the fourth grade.”

“So,” Mike said, “what you are saying is that he will, in essence, skip a grade, but it will take a whole year for him to do it.”

“More or less,” Mrs. Green said.

“Have you talked to Lydia Brannon, his psychologist, about this?” I said.

“Yes, I have, and she thinks that he can handle it.”

“If she approves,” I said, “then so do we, right, Mike?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Good,” she said, “then we’ll proceed accordingly.”

On the way home, I said, “That will solve one problem.”

“And that would be?”

“Sandy Fisher-Price. If Robbie moves ahead a grade, it will automatically create a gap between him and Sandy.”

“Not to mention that it will widen the gap between us and Sandy’s dads.”