In Plain Sight (8 page)

My stomach lurched.

I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Or maybe it was just that I didn't want to.

P
o and Pooh were sitting on the mantel of the fireplace facing each other. Two bizarre bookends with nothing but air in between them. Someone, and I was pretty sure I knewwho that someone was, had killed and stuffed them. The tips of their little pink tongues protruded between their teeth. One of the dogs was wearing a blue bandana around his neck while the other one was wearing red. Their fur looked stiff, as if it had a coat of shellac on it. As I drew closer I could smell a faint rancid odor. Looking at them made me want to cry, and then it made me very, very angry. I was just about to reach up a hand and touch what was left of Po's fur—a penance for things left undone—when I became aware of a movement behind me. I turned. It was Merlin. He'd lost the serious expression he'd assumed at the funeral home and replaced it with a jittery smile.

“Did it myself,” he said, pointing at the two dogs. “They look almost alive, don't they?”

“They'd look better if they were.”

Merlin's smile faded slightly. He ran his finger around the edge of his collar. “Hey,” he protested, fanning his hands out in a gesture of denial, “I admit this is a little weird, but Marsha asked me to do it. Really,” he told me when I raised an eyebrow. “It was in her note. Her dying wish. You got to honor someone's last request,” he whined. “She said that this way I'd always have something to remember her by.”

I folded my arms across my chest so I wouldn't be tempted to put my hands around his neck and squeeze. “I didn't think she'd left a note.”

Merlin's smile flickered and went out as if it had been a candle I'd blown on. His face looked puddinglike in the dim indoor light. “Are you calling me a liar?” he demanded.

“Among other things.” You had to give it to the man. Not much got by him.

Merlin's eyes got as dark and opaque as the black marbles in Po and Pooh's eye sockets. “Who the hell are you to come into my house on the day of my wife's funeral and say something like that?”

“I'm Robin Light.”

Merlin's face collapsed in confusion. “You've changed. I didn't recognize you.”

“Well it has been a while.”

“Is Murphy here, too?”

“He died a couple of years ago.”

“Oh.” I watched Merlin fumble around for something to say. He finally came up with, “I guess that gives us something in common.”

“Something,” I said dryly before pointing to the dogs on the mantel. “Didn't you get my message about them?”

“Well I ...” Merlin's voice faded off. Then he rallied. “What do you have to do with them?” he demanded.

“Marsha asked me to take care of them if anything happened to her.”

“She never told me that.”

“Well, she told me.”

“When?”

“On the Friday before she died. She came to see me at the store.”

“Store?”

“Noah's Ark. It's a pet store.”

“I see,” Merlin replied even though he clearly didn't. He gestured to the mantel. “You know those dogs always hated me. Marsha made sure of that. One of them bit me last month. Right here.” He showed me his wrist. “I had to get a tetanus shot. Check with the doctor if you want.”

I pushed a hank of hair off my face. “Is that why you couldn't wait to kill them? Because they bit you?”

“I got your message too late,” Merlin muttered.

“You sure didn't waste any time, did you?”

“They would have died anyway. They wouldn't eat for me. I bet they wouldn't have eaten for you either,” he said sullenly. “She cooked for them, you know. She made them steak and meat loaf. She made me TV dinners.” Merlin the aggrieved husband.

I pointed to Po and Pooh. “So you were really being charitable when you did this?”

“Yeah. Yeah I was.” Merlin brightened slightly at the new excuse I'd given him. “I didn't want them to suffer.”

“Because you're such a nice guy.”

“I am. Ask anybody.”

“I don't have to. I remember what you were like.”

Merlin flushed. “You can think what you want, but there ain't nothing illegal in what I done, and you can't say that there is. I know. I checked.”

And he was right. There wasn't. That was one of the things that made this so galling. “Tell me,” I said, taking a deep breath and changing the subject. “If you disliked them so much, why were you suing Marsha for custody?”

“For God's sake I didn't really want them. It was a negotiating strategy. All I wanted her to do was be reasonable. She wanted everything.”

“So that's why she took the papers?”

“What papers?”

“The ones she took from your office.”

“My office?” he scoffed. “She never went near my office.”

“She did this time.”

Merlin shrugged. “She was always getting crazy ideas in her head.”

“Like what?”

“Nothing worth talking about.”

“I see.” I leaned forward. “Divorces can be so messy. Such a drain on finances.”

“So?”

“Well, now you don't have that problem, do you?”

A vein started throbbing on the left side of Merlin's temple. “I don't like what you're implying.” He gestured toward the door. “Get out of my house.”

I ignored him and pointed to the dogs on the mantel. “Does seeing them turn you on? Did you hate Marsha so much that you had to kill the things she loved and stuff them and put them up there to gloat over?”

Merlin balled up his fists. He was taking a step toward me when Shirley Hinkel appeared at his side. I guess I'd been too engrossed to notice her entrance.

“What's the matter?” she asked Merlin, patting his arm as if she were a mother calming down an unruly child. “Are you all right? I was getting worried.”

“No, I'm not all right,” Merlin snapped. “I'm not all right at all.” He stormed out the door.

Interesting. I was wondering if those two were seeing each other and if so for how long when Shirley rounded on me.

“That man has high blood pressure. What did you say to him to upset him like that?” she demanded.

“Not nearly enough.” I reached for a cigarette.

A red flush crept over Shirley's face. The mottling made her look even more unattractive. When I'd last seen her Shirley had had a tight body and a ready smile, but time hadn't been kind to her either. She'd aged into a short, frizzy-haired woman with enormous melon-shaped breasts, a stomach that stuck out, and match stick legs.

She looked me over. “I remember you,” she said slowly. “You used to live next door to Marsha.”

I nodded. “You know Merlin well?”

“We're friends,” she answered, but the slight hesitation in her voice told me, if I'd had any doubt, that they were a lot more than that.

“You were Marsha's friend, too, weren't you?”

“Yes.” Shirley avoided my eyes.

“Her good friend,” I said, rubbing the words in. “You two used to go to the movies together.”

“That was a long time ago.” Shirley smoothed down the navy blouse she was wearing as if she wanted to smooth her guilt away. “I know what you're thinking, but Marsha wasn't the easiest person to deal with. A lot of what happened between her and Merlin was really her own doing.”

“How's that?”

“She was always snipping at him. Whatever he did wasn't good enough.” Shirley pursed her lips. “If you ask me, I don't think she wanted Merlin to succeed. I think she wanted him to fail. I think she liked being the one in control.”

Funny but Marsha hadn't sounded as if she'd been in control when she'd been sitting in my office asking me to help her. She'd sounded as if she had no one to turn to and no place to go, but before I could say that Shirley began talking again.

“She was never there for him when he needed her,” Shirley continued, reciting a litany she obviously knew by heart.

“But you're going to be?”

Shirley blushed.

I sighed. It was the same old tired story. There was nothing wrong with Merlin. Marsha just hadn't understood him. She hadn't handled him properly. But Shirley would. And Merlin would be eternally grateful, sweet, kind, and loving. I pointed to the mantel. “Don't those dogs say something to you?”

Shirley looked away from me again. “If she hadn't made such a fuss about them, he wouldn't feel the way he does. He wouldn't have done it.”

“Do you really believe that?”

Her eyes told me that she didn't, but that she wanted to. Desperately. She gave me an angry look and scurried off into the living room where she could play Merlin's hostess and not think about the things I was suggesting. Oh, well. I lit my Camel. No matter what I said Shirley would believe what Shirley wanted to. I could understand that. It wasn't as if I hadn't done the same thing myself with Murphy. When we were living together in New York I'd kept telling myself everytime I found another book of matches with the name of a restaurant we hadn't been to that Murphy had been there on business or that he'd been there with his friends. I didn't want to hear the truth—that he was out with someone else—because it was too scary. I didn't know what I'd do without him, so I was careful to look the other way.

The same thing was true the last couple of years we'd been together. There'd been the phone calls taken in the other room, the “I'm going out for a walk” when Murphy had never walked half a block in his life if he could drive, the coming to bed after I did. But whenever I'd asked him what was going on he'd tell me I was crazy. “Everything's fine,” he'd say. If I persisted, he'd get angry and storm out of the house. In the end I pretended everything was all right because I didn't know what else to do. I was afraid that if I pushed I'd lose Murphy. As it turned out I lost him anyway to the White Lady. I should have done something. At least then I could say to myself I'd tried.

But I couldn't say that to Shirley. She wasn't ready to listen. Instead I stood there smoking my Camel and studying the room I was standing in. The furnishings consisted of a “traditional” tweed sofa, two matching chairs and a wood and glass coffee table on which copies of
TV Guide
and
Reader's Digest
were neatly arranged. A large, dark wood desk stood against the far wall. On impulse I walked over and quickly rifled through the papers sitting on top of it. Maybe I'd get lucky. Maybe the papers I was looking for were here.

But a two-second search revealed that they weren't. The papers were mostly bills and circulars. I opened another drawer. This one was full of pens and pencils, a couple of writing tablets, and a box of tissues. An old picture of Marsha and her dogs lay off to the side. I took it out of the drawer and studied it.

The picture had been taken in this room. Marsha was sitting on the sofa. The two dogs were in her lap. She was laughing. How long ago had this been taken? A month? A year? And now everyone in the picture was dead. Somehow that didn't seem right. It didn't seem right at all. I slipped the picture in my backpack and glanced at Po and Pooh. They shouldn't be sitting there. It was obscene. Something should be done. Definitely.

Then I saw the can of lighter fluid sitting on the bookshelf and I knew what that something was.

I grabbed the can, walked over to the fireplace and moved the screen aside. A couple of pieces of crossed-over charred wood, leftovers from the winter, sat on the firebox floor. Good. I opened the damper and lit a piece of paper and held it underneath it. The paper flared. The chimney was drawing. I looked around. Nobody was in the hallway. Everyone was still chitchatting in the living room. I took the dogs off the mantel and put them on the two sticks of wood. Then I uncapped the lighter fluid, doused the Shih Tzus with it, took out my lighter, flicked it on, and held it to the fur. It went up with a whosh. The smell of burning shellac and hair and flesh filled the air.

I turned and quickly walked out of the room. The odor was traveling down the hall and through the house ahead of me. By the time I reached the living room I could smell the stench I'd created. Merlin, followed by several other people, went running by me as I headed for the front door. It was definitely time to leave.

I heard Merlin curse as I stepped outside.

I walked a little faster. I didn't want to be around after Merlin put the fire out. He was stupid, but he wasn't that stupid. As I went down the front porch steps I smiled, thinking about how angry he was going to be. I'd almost reached the sidewalk when Garriques came out of nowhere and touched my shoulder.

“We have to talk,” he said.

“Y
es we do,” I agreed. A gust of damp wind tugged at the hems of my silk trousers and blew strands of hair over my eyes. I thought it brought a whiff of smoke from Merlin's house, but that was probably my imagination.

Garriques loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt He looked exhausted in the late morning light. The funeral seemed to have taken his last bit of energy. “I'm sorry about what happened with Estrella. Are you feeling better?”

“Much.”

“You sound better.”

“It's lucky I have a hard head,” I said. “Come walk me to my car.” I turned and headed down the block. If Merlin wanted me, he'd have to come and get me.

Garriques nodded and fell in step.

For a moment we walked in silence. I watched the gray clouds floating in, covering up the blue. The temperature had dropped at least fifteen degrees in the half hour I'd been inside Merlin's house. We were in for a storm.

“You should have told me Estrella was dangerous.” I skirted a bike some kid had left lying across the pavement. “I would have acted differently if I'd known.”

“She's not.”

“Really?” I pointed to the back of my skull. “Then what do you call someone who does this?”

“Scared. Angry.”

“What is she scared and angry about?”

He shrugged. “The same thing most fifteen-year-olds are. Life.”

I made a retching noise. “Please spare me the sociological crap. Most fifteen-year-olds don't hit someone over the head.”

“She probably felt trapped. You were coming after her...”

“She could have just kept running. She didn't have to stop and ambush me.”

Garriques bit his lower lip. “Maybe her friend hit you. Maybe it wasn't Estrella.”

I stopped in front of my cab. “Why are you making excuses for her?”

“I'm not,” he protested.

“Oh, but you are.”

He sighed and adjusted the cuffs on his shirt. “You know, when I was a kid I got into a lot of trouble, serious trouble, the kind they put you away for. If it wasn't for my high school principal, I'd probably be in jail right now. Or dead. He went out on a limb to save me. He actually lied to the cops and told them I was in class when I wasn't. When I asked him why he did it, he said, ‘because everyone deserves more than one chance.' I've never forgotten that.”

I reached for a cigarette and lit it. “Well, I can appreciate the sentiment and I think what you're trying to do is very noble, but when you bring someone else into the picture and ask them to do you a favor, I think you owe it to them to tell them the truth.”

“You're right. I made a mistake.” A car drove by. Garriques watched it turn the corner before he spoke. “I'd like you to keep looking for her.”

“I don't think I want to do that.”

Garriques studied his shoes. They were highly polished. “I guess I can't blame you.” I turned to go. “Maybe if you heard the whole story...”

I turned back. “You mean there's more?”

“Yes.” Garriques glanced at his watch. It looked as if it was a Movado. I wondered if it was a knock off or the genuine article. “I have a meeting with the real estate agent in ten minutes, and then I have two meetings and three parent teacher conferences back at school. Why don't I drop by the store later? We can talk then. Maybe I can make you change your mind.”

“I doubt it, but I'm willing to listen.”

“That's all I can ask.” Garriques scratched the bump on his nose. “Listen, I don't suppose you know anyone who wants to buy an old house out in the country?”

“If your real estate agent isn't doing a good job, maybe you should switch.”

“I can't.” Garriques smiled ruefully. “The agent's family.” He started back to his car.

As I got into my cab and pulled out into the street I wondered what it was Garriques was going to tell me; but then after about five blocks my mind started drifting back toward Marsha and Merlin and Shirley, and I started thinking about how long Shirley had been seeing Merlin and whether or not Marsha had known about it and if so had that been the impetus for everything that had followed. And then I thought about what Merlin had done to the Shih Tzus. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. By the time I turned into the store parking lot, I'd decided that one way or another Merlin was going to pay for what he'd done to his wife.

Zsa Zsa came running toward me as I walked through the door. I bent down and scratched behind her ears. Then I picked her up and kissed her. “Nobody's going to stuff you,” I crooned.

Tim looked up from the discus he was feeding. “What is with you?” he asked. “You're getting weirder by the second.”

“You think?” I told him about my morning.

“Jesus,” he said when I was done. “Jesus. I never heard of anything like that.”

“Me either.” Zsa Zsa started wiggling and I put her down. I suppose there's only so much affection anyone can take at once. “So how did we do this morning?” I asked, changing the subject. “Any sales?”

“A few.” Tim capped the fish food and put it on the shelf underneath the aquarium. “Little Mike came in about ten. He bought the last two frilled lizards and a couple of anoles for his kids.”

“Good.” I made a mental note to order more. We'd really done well with them in the past couple of months.

“And Joe O'Malley called.”

“God, what did he want?”

“He wanted to know if we could get him a thorny lizard.”

“Did you explain why that wasn't a good idea?” I asked as I went over to the counter and began leafing through the day's mail. Trust Joe to pick a difficult keeper. The man had a positive genius for wanting species that were almost impossible to keep alive and well in captivity.

“Yeah, when I told him that thornies eat about a thousand ants per meal, he decided on a gecko instead. I said I'd save him the large tokay out in the back. He's going to come by this afternoon and pick it up.”

“Fine.” I opened up the telephone bill and scanned it. It was one hundred and fifty dollars. Which was par for the course. The only problem was that I couldn't pay all of it. I was standing there, staring at it, and trying to decide how much I could get away with writing the check for, when Tim came around behind me.

“We need some more pinkies; we're running low,” he informed me. “And Carolyn dropped off ten dwarf Russian hamsters—I took the money out of the drawer to pay her, and there's something else. A Mrs. Breen called up and wanted to know if we could come over and get a bat out of her bed room. I said we would.”

“Did you now? And who is Mrs. Breen?”

“A friend of Mrs. Rodriguez.”

“Great.” I threw the circulars into the garbage can and picked up the bills. “Now we're getting requests from people who aren't even our customers! If this keeps up, we should start charging people.”

“I told her we were,” Tim said.

I smiled. “How much?”

“Thirty-five bucks. It's not a lot, but I figure every little bit counts.”

“True. Especially these days.”

Tim twirled one of his earrings. “Do you want to go or should I?”

“You. I have some catching up to do.”

Tim saluted, gathered up the net and gloves and took off.

I spent the rest of the afternoon setting up a cage for the two ball pythons we were getting in the next day, calling in my orders to my suppliers, and fending off a salesman who wanted to sell me sanitary napkins specifically designed for bitches in heat. I'd just hung up the phone when Rabbit, one of Manuel's more moronic friends, came in.

“Look what I just got,” he said. Then before I could tell him I didn't want to see what it was he opened the brown paper bag he was carrying and dumped a diamondback rattler onto the counter.

I gasped and jumped back. For a second the snake just lay there. Then it slithered across the counter and fell off the edge onto the floor. It lay there furiously shaking its rattles.

“Keep away,” I warned Rabbit as he came over to take a look.

“It ain't coiled,” he said.

“So what?” I reached under the counter for my collecting stick. It wasn't there. I made a mental note to find out who had taken it and strangle him.

“I thought they couldn't bite if they ain't coiled.”

“Rattlers can strike from any position,” I informed him as I desperately rummaged for something I could use. One thing I did know was that this snake wasn't disappearing into a crack in the floor—at least not if I could help it. That had happened to me a couple of years ago and it wasn't going to happen again. Finally I grabbed a dust rag and a shovel I used for a pooper scooper. They weren't the best implements for this job, but they were better than nothing. “Open the bag,” I ordered.

“Why? What you gonna do?”

“Watch.” I threw the rag over the rattler's head, scooped him up with the shovel and plopped him into the bag he'd come in. I grabbed the sack and rolled down the top. Thank God he'd been small.

Rabbit wet his lips with the tip of his tongue. “That wasn't too bright of me, hunh?” he said, shuffling his feet from side to side.

My hands were shaking. I reached for a cigarette to steady my nerves and tried not to think about the last time something like this had happened. Someone had died then. “I suppose that's one way of putting it,” I said as calmly as I could.

“T.J. said if it bit anyone, it wouldn't be so bad.”

“And you believed him, a guy that sells uppers to his own sister?”

Rabbit hitched up his pants. “Yeah. Well, maybe you got a point,” he conceded. He cleared his throat. “Ah ... what would have happened if he'd snagged someone?”

“That person would have to go to the hospital.”

“Would they get really sick?”

“They could.”

“How about dying?”

I lit my Camel and took a puff. “If someone is young or old or sick, that's a distinct possibility.” I pointed my cigarette at him. “You'd just better thank your lucky stars that Zsa Zsa and Pickles weren't around. Because if they had gotten bitten, I can tell you now you'd be real sorry.”

Rabbit swallowed. “Listen, maybe you'd like to keep him.”

“The rattler?”

Rabbit nodded.

“Yeah, I can do that.” Actually I'd been going to suggest it.

Rabbit pulled on his ponytail. “I gave T.J. seventy bucks for him.”

“You made a bad deal.”

“See,” Rabbit explained, anxious for me to understand, “I was gonna milk the rattler for the venom and sell it. T.J. said I could make a lot of money doing that.”

I rolled my eyes. “Jesus. I don't know who's worse: you for believing him or him for telling you something like that.”

Rabbit started shuffling his feet again. “I don't suppose there's a chance ... you'd ... you know ... give me the sev enty bucks for it?”

“Are you nuts? It's not as if I can sell it.” Actually I could, but I wasn't going to. “I'm doing you a favor taking the snake off your hands.” You and everyone you know, I added silently.

Rabbit sighed. “I guess maybe you're right. It's just that I needed that money for my rent.”

“You live at home.”

“I still pay my mom something.”

I laughed. “Nice try. However I will give you twenty if ...”

“If what?” Rabbit asked eagerly.

“You can get me some information.”

“Okay.”

“It's about a girl named Estrella Torres.” I had Garriques's version of her. I wanted another view before I met with him again.

“What about her?”

“You know her?”

“Yeah I know her. She's a burnout.”

“Burnout?”

“Yeah,” Rabbit replied. “A burnout. You know. Someone who does too much dope.”

“What else does she do?”

Rabbit shrugged. “A little dealing. Nothing big. Just enough to pay for herself.”

“Do you know where she's staying?”

Rabbit shook his head. “I heard she ran away.”

“She did. Do you know where she went?”

“Why? Is she in trouble?”

“No. Her aunt wants to speak to her. She's really worried.”

“That's cool. Will you give me that twenty if I find out?”

I nodded.

“Then I can manage it.” Rabbit indicated the bag. “So what you gonna do with my snake?”

“I'll see if the zoo wants it. If they don't, I'll probably take it out to the woods somewhere and let it go.”

Rabbit leaned forward. “Can I come?” he asked eagerly, sounding like the eight-year-old boy in the sixteen-year-old body he really was. “I like the woods.”

I was just about to answer when the front door opened and Garriques walked in. Rabbit took a look and his mouth dropped opened. If he could have disappeared, he would have.

“Ah, Mr. Randazzo,” Garriques said to Rabbit in his most jovial voice, the kind of voice I remember my principal using when he'd caught me sneaking out of the building. “How's the leg?”

“The leg. The leg,” Rabbit stuttered. “It's getting better.” He turned and limped across the floor.

Funny, but he hadn't limped when he'd come in.

“I thought it was your right leg that got hurt,” Garriques observed as Rabbit passed him.