Definitely Dead (An Empty Nest Mystery) (5 page)

He waited for me to leave the room, then followed me down the stairs and back into the living room where we found Craft standing in front of the fireplace. He’d removed one of the photo albums from the bookcase and was flipping through the pages. “Good looking family,” he said, placing the album back on the shelf.

“Thank you.” I walked them to the door and watched as they climbed into a black SUV parked at the curb and drove off.

Five minutes later the doorbell rang again. “Forget to ask me something?” I asked as I opened the door.

“Excuse me?”

“Detective Menendez! I didn’t expect you.”

Her in-need-of-a-good-plucking brows bunched together. “You called me, Mrs. Elliot. Remember?”

“But the FBI said you were taken off the case.”

“FBI?”

“Agents Remick and Craft. They came for Sid’s file. You missed them by minutes.”

Menendez stared at me as if I were speaking in Tongues. “Mrs. Elliot, my husband is a field agent with the FBI. I can assure you there are no agents named Remick and Craft operating in this state. And I was definitely
not
taken off the Mandelbaum case.”

THREE

I stared at Menendez and felt her words sinking to the pit of my stomach—like my mother-in-law’s lard-laden pie crusts. “But I saw their badges and ID,” I said.

She made a noise that sounded halfway between a grunt and a snort. “Bogus. Bought over the Internet, no doubt. It’s a huge problem.” She shook her head. “I don’t suppose you made a copy of that file before giving it to them?”

Contrary to what she thought of me, I wasn’t an idiot. Not only did I have a paper copy, I had the original records on my computer and a backup on a jump drive in a waterproof and fireproof lock box. I had an extreme fear of both natural disasters and IRS audits. And chances were, if we were struck by the former, that would be the year our name randomly popped up on the IRS roulette wheel.

Menendez followed me upstairs. “What did these guys look like?”

“Big.” I turned to her after we’d entered the office. She held a small pad in one hand, a pencil poised over it. “Like weight lifters or football players on steroids.”

Menendez looked up from her notepad and stared at me.

“All muscles. No necks.”

“No necks?”

“Haven’t you ever noticed you can tell whether an athlete is on steroids by his lack of neck?”

“Can’t say that I have.” She jotted something on her pad. “Anything else?”

“You don’t believe me, do you?”

“About the FBI agents?”

“About the steroids.”

She sighed. “I don’t think there’s any scientific proof to back up your theory.”

“If there were proof, it wouldn’t be a theory; it would be fact.”

Her steely expression told me she wasn’t buying it. “What else can you tell me about these men?”

“Check out the necks. You’ll see I’m right.”

“Sure.” Menendez sighed again.

She had no intention of checking out my theory. I could tell she was only humoring me. That’s the problem with most people. They’re too left-brained, afraid to think outside the box.

“Can we get back to what you remember, Mrs. Elliot? You didn’t by any chance catch the license plate of the car they drove off in, did you?”

“Why would I think to do that when I believed they were FBI agents?”

“Right.” She expelled a third sigh.

“I did recognize the make and model.” Not that I’m a car nut but Blake’s cousin Anthony owns a Mercedes dealership, and he’s always trying to get us to trade up. Every time we see him at a family function he just happens to have a new brochure for us. And everyone else. Like Blake and I could afford a Mercedes, with our two kids in college and being down to one steady paycheck.

“Which was?” asked Menendez.

“A Mercedes SUV. Black with tinted windows.”

She scribbled in her notebook. “Anything else you remember?”

While I offered what I remembered of the phony agents’ physical traits and attire—which didn’t seem to impress Detective Menendez, judging from her lack of jotting—I printed out a second set of Not-Sid’s records. “He wasn’t Sidney Mandelbaum, by the way,” I said, handing her the sheets of paper. “But I’m guessing you already figured that out.”

Menendez went all stony-faced on me. “How do you know that?”

I motioned to the computer. “The marvels of Google. I only wish I’d checked him out before I accepted him as a client.” I should have known all that Mandelbaum Moolah was too good to be true, especially with the financial U-turn my life had taken over the past year. “So who was he? And why was he pretending to be someone he wasn’t?”

Menendez remained stony-faced. Her lips barely moved as she spoke. “I’m not at liberty to discuss an ongoing investigation. Thank you for the files, Mrs. Elliot.” With that she turned on her low, sensible heels and headed for the stairs.

“That’s it?” I asked, trotting down the steps behind her.

She stopped in the foyer and turned to face me. “What do you mean?”

“
What do I mean?
Jeez, it doesn’t take an Olivia Benson to see there’s something odd going on here, Detective. I have some goons posing as FBI agents show up at my door, asking for stuff only you, me and my husband should know about, and all I get is a ‘thank you for the files, Mrs. Elliot’? I’m a little creeped out here, and I’d like to know what you guys plan to do about it. Is my phone tapped?”

“Not by us.”

“But maybe by the goon squad?” I planted my hands on my hips and went on the offensive. “Who are those guys? What do they have to do with Sid’s murder? Why did they want my files on him? If they’re not the good guys, I have a right to know what’s going on here. Was Sid—or whoever he was—involved in something illegal?”

She stared at me for nearly a full minute. Or at least it felt that long. In reality, maybe only a few seconds elapsed before she waved toward the living room and heaved yet another huge sigh. “Sit down, Mrs. Elliot. I could wind up with my butt in a sling for this, but I suppose I can answer a few questions.”

Crap!
I didn’t like the sound of that. My legs wobbled as I made my way over to the living room, and it wasn’t from wearing too-high Manolos or Jimmy Choos. I was barefoot due to the fact that more often than not, my feet rebelled against my fashionista sensibilities. Along with designer handbags, I loved designer shoes; they hated my slightly chubby feet. A fact I was always reminded of too late—after I’d bought a pair and worn them for a few hours. I slumped onto the sofa and held my breath, waiting for Detective Menendez to drop a bombshell or three.

She perched on the edge of the oversized tufted leather ottoman that served as our coffee table. “We don’t know who the victim was,” she said, letting loose the first bombshell. “We’re working on it.”

This filled me with all sorts of confidence about the local constabulary, especially considering Remick and Craft obviously knew Sid’s real identity. “Did you run his prints?” I asked, applying some of my
NYPD
,
CSI
, and
Law & Order
knowledge.

Menendez scowled. “The deceased had no prints.”

“Everyone has fingerprints. Even I know that much.”

“True, but some people go to great lengths to eradicate them. In the victim’s case, the evidence points to the use of acid.”

Acid?
Bombshell Number Two. Why hadn’t I noticed Not-Sid’s lack of fingertip whorls? I certainly had a more than passing association with the man’s hands.

“So whoever he was,” Menendez continued, “he went to drastic lengths to conceal his identity. And that’s all I can tell you.”

Which wasn’t much. “Am I in any danger?”

She tapped the papers in her hand as she stood. “I doubt it. Whoever Remick and Craft are, they got what they wanted. I don’t think you’ll hear from them again.”

I rose. “But how did they know about me?”

“They could have been tailing the victim for some time.” She headed for the front door.

“So you think Remick and Craft killed Not-Sid?”

Menendez stopped. Her hand poised on the doorknob, she turned to face me. “That’s one possibility.”

Great!
Not only had I let possible killers into my home, I now had to warn Blake about my morning visitors, something that until now I’d thought I might be able to avoid.

As I headed back upstairs after Menendez left, I glanced into the living room. Something half hidden beneath the back rung of the mission oak rocker caught my eye.

I headed back downstairs, picked up the snapshot, and pulled the photo album it had fallen from off the shelf. When I flipped opened the album to return the photo, Bombshell Number Three hit. Several pictures of Blake, me, and our twins were missing.

Blake was going to have a cow, and I wouldn’t blame him. What had I gotten us into?

I didn’t have to wait long for Blake’s reaction. He arrived home about half an hour later.

“Want a latte?” he asked after dropping his briefcase on his desk and planting a kiss on my lips.

I had spent the last thirty minutes staring at Not-Sid’s file, trying to figure out who the man was and why he wanted to meet so many women. What would a man who went to such lengths to disguise his identity want with me and Relatively Speaking? No matter how long I studied the pages, I came up blank. Some huge chunk of the puzzle was missing, a huge chunk that somehow involved Remick and Craft. And not in a good way.

“Sure,” I said and followed Blake downstairs. “You might want to spike those with something,” I suggested as he headed for the espresso machine we kept on the kitchen island.

He gave me
The Look
.

I opened a cabinet and pulled out a bottle of Hiram Walker. “I had a few visitors today,” I said, passing Blake the bottle.

“Am I going to want this straight up?” he asked.

“What I have to tell you or the whiskey?”

“Both.”

I cringed. “Maybe?”

Blake set the bottle on the counter and crossed his arms over his chest. “Let’s have it, Gracie.”

I took a deep breath and blurted out everything that had happened since he left that morning. Halfway through my tale, he sank onto one of the bar stools at the island, buried his head in his hands, and began cursing under his breath.

And I hadn’t even gotten to Bombshell Number Three yet. “You didn’t by any chance take any photos out of one of our albums, did you?”

Blake raised his head and stared at me. “That’s a pretty odd non sequitur, even for you.”

I bit my lower lip. “Not really.”

“What aren’t you telling me?”

“Craft stole half a dozen snapshots of us.”

Up until that moment I hadn’t realized my husband could swear in seven different languages. I knew he was fluent in French, Italian, and Spanish, and the man could bluff his way around a German knockwurst or opera. But who would have guessed his repertoire of foreign profanity included what sounded like Hungarian and Farsi? Granted, I didn’t know Hungarian from Bulgarian and Farsi from Afghani, but some of those words certainly sounded Slavic and others were definitely Mideast in flavor. At any rate, after all these years, my husband still surprises me.

“Finished?” I asked after he’d run through his entire repertoire of four-letter words three times.

He reached for the Hiram Walker and unscrewed the cap. “Not quite.” After taking a swig from the bottle, he passed it to me and reached for my hand. “Sorry for the outburst, Gracie, but you’ve scared the shit out of me.”

“I’m not doing so well myself,” I said. Then I took a swig. “I’m frightened, Blake. And the police don’t seem to be too concerned about our safety. I called Menendez as soon as I discovered the missing photos. She said she’d make sure someone patrolled the house, but she thinks Craft deliberately left the photo where I’d find it, so I’d notice the missing pictures. She thinks they just want to scare me, that they got what they came for.”

“I get the feeling you don’t agree with her?”

“Hell, no! They have no clues, no leads, other than my files. So how can she be so sure about Craft’s reason for stealing the photos?”

“There’s another possibility,” he said. “The files may have nothing to do with the murder.”

“Then why would Remick and Craft go to such lengths to get their hands on them?”

“To misdirect the police? Create false clues?”

I mulled over that for a minute. “Or maybe Remick and Craft are after something Not-Sid had and think he may have hidden it with one of the women he met through Relatively Speaking.”

“Or with us. Maybe this would be a good time for you to go visit your sister in Florida.”

“What? And leave you here alone? Absolutely not! Besides, what guarantee do we have that I won’t be followed to Florida?”

“So what do you suggest?”

I tossed Blake my most endearing smile. “You and I solve Not-Sid’s murder.”