Mystery of the 19th Hole (Taylor Kelsey, Mystery 1) (12 page)

His phone chattered in his pocket as he pulled into an apartment complex parking lot.  The complex where Aaron Cadell lived before his arrest.

             
“Chad here.”

             
“It’s Taylor.”

             
“Hey.”

             
“Are you there?”

             
“Just pulling in.”

             
“Good.  Let’s start our investigation there.”

             
“In the parking lot?”

             
“Trust me,” said Taylor, “I know what I’m doing.”

             
“Okay.”  He stepped out of his car.

             
“How does everything look?”

             
Chad looked around.  “Normal.”

             
“No.  I mean, describe everything to me.”

             
“Okay.”  He looked around again, this time trying to think of how to describe everything.  “There are a lot of buildings directly in front of me where all the apartments are.  On my right is a parking shelter thing.  You know, like the kind at apartments that residents can park their cars under for some shelter.”

             
“Aha,” said Taylor.

             
“On my left is a kid’s park.  Two kids are playing in the sand box.  That’s all.”

             
“How many cars?”

             
There was a pause as he counted.  “Well, the parking lot wraps around out of sight, but I can see… thirty-two cars.”

             
“Any suspicious looking ones?”

             
“What does that mean?” asked Chad.

             
“Like ones that are missing license plates.  Out of state plates.  Ones with numbers on the back window.  Junky ones.  Super expensive ones.  Any weapons in plain view of any of them.  Or perhaps the car that chased us yesterday.”

             
Chad looked around for any brown sedans.  “No, I don’t see it.”  Then he fast-walked through the lot and looked at license plate.  “I’ve got an Arizona plate here.”

             
“Look into the car windows.”

             
He looked in to see a duffle bag in the passenger seat.  He looked in the back seat.  “There’s a car seat, a duffle bag, and a baby bottle in this one.  I don’t think that’s suspicious.”

             
“No, it’s not.  All right, go to the apartment.  It’s apartment Z.  Most likely on the second floor if that’s how these complexes are.”

             
“Yeah, these are two stories.”  Chad followed a walkway that led into a breezeway that, at the far end, met a stairway.  He started running for it.

             
“Are you running?”

             
“Yeah.  How’d you know.”

             
“Your breath.  Don’t run,” said Taylor, “slow down, observe.”

             
Chad stopped where he was, looked around.  “There’s just a bunch of doors.  I don’t see anything.”  He started walking again, slowly this time.  “Okay, I’m approaching the stairway.  Okay, I’m on the stairway.  Metal stairs.  I’m walking up the stairs.”

             
“Chad, you don’t have to tell me what you’re doing.  Just tell me what you see.”

             
He nodded though she couldn’t see him.  “Got it.  There’s a light fixture on the wall as you go up the stairs.”  He was at the top of the stairs now, stepping onto the second floor thoroughfare.  “All the apartment doors are wood.  The walls are stucco.  There’re no doorbells that I can see, only door knockers on the doors.  There’re also peepholes.”

             
“Any cameras?”

             
He eyed the few doors he could see from his vantage.  “No.  Some of them have screen doors, though.”

             
“How about windows?” asked Taylor.

             
“No windows.  They must be on the backside.”

             
“Is there anyone on your walkway?”

             
“No.”

             
Chad came up to the door with the Z on it.  Aaron Cadell’s apartment.  “I’m here.  There’s a plant on the floor.”

             
“Good, that’s his.  He said there’s a key under the pot.  Not in the plant, but under the pot.”

             
Sweeping his head around to see if the coast was clear, Chad kneeled before the plant and moved it aside.  “There’s nothing here.”  He looked at the ring of dirt left from the pot.  He lifted the pot overhead and checked the bottom to be sure the key wasn’t stuck to it.  “No, there’s no key here.”  Then, “Wait, here it is.  He was wrong.  It’s in the plant.”

             
In the plant.  He emphasized the fact that he’d stuck it under
, Taylor mused.  “Good work.  Now, put on your video camera glasses before you go in.”

             
“Already on it.”  Chad replaced his goggle glasses with the stylish camera glasses, which were in fact prescription.  Checking to see if anyone was watching, he opened the door.

             
“Wait,” said Taylor.  “Look above the door.  Is there a camera?”

             
Chad turned up his gaze.  “Yeah, yeah, there is.”  He stepped back to see it more clearly.  “Yeah, it’s a security camera all right.  It actually looks quite nice.”

             
“Why would he have a camera?”

             
“Probably because that golden statue he said he inherited,” muttered Chad, who was studying the security camera.  He cocked his head and studied it from different angles, confused.  After a thoughtful minute, he walked into the apartment and looked for the video monitor.  Taylor’s voice was coming through his cell phone, but he paid it no mind.  Finally he lifted the phone to his ear and cut her off mid-sentence.  “This is weird, Taylor.  The camera has no wires coming out of it, and there’s no monitor.”

             
“Meaning?”

             
“Meaning,” he said slowly, “that it’s a dud.  It’s not recording anything.  It’s not even hooked up to anything.”

             
“Sometimes people put up cameras just to scare people, you know.”

             
“I suppose.”

             
“All right, let’s move on.”

             
Chad examined the apartment.  “There’s one room, a living room, and a bathroom.  Living room has one couch and a flat screen.”  He walked into the bedroom.  “Bedroom has a messy bed and a desk with a computer on it.”  Backpedaling, he entered the bathroom.  “Bathroom is normal.  Hardly anything in it…”  He threw back the shower curtains.  “Soap, shampoo, and some name-brand body wash.  Everything’s kinda messy.”

             
“Sounds like a bachelor.  What about a kitchen?”

“Oh, yeah, sorry.  I forgot about that,” he said, walking into the kitchen, which was next to the living room.  “Paper plates in the trash and over the counters.  Pizza boxes practically everywhere.”

             
“Okay.  Now, I need to verify a few things,” said Taylor.  She flipped open her own personalized
Case Notebook
which she called TCN (for
Taylor’s Case Notebook
).  She found a checklist she’d made earlier and read off the items.  “Is there a coat rack?  Aaron said he took his jacket off his coat rack the morning he was arrested.”

             
“Uh…  Check.  There is a coat rack.”  Chad saw something in the corner of his eye as he turned away from the coat rack.  He rapidly turned back.  “No way!”

             
“What?”

             
He knelt down.  “There are two little drops of blood on the floor.”

             
“Really?  Are you sure it’s not paint?”

             
“No, it’s definitely blood.”

             
“Definitely?”

             
“Definitely.  What do you think it’s from?”

             
“Well, is it by the coat rack?”

             
“Yeah,” replied Chad.

             
“I guess it means that…  I don’t know.”

             
A few beats.

             
“Okay, I need to verify the golden statue next,” said Taylor.  “He said it was by his bed and had a blanket over it.”

             
Chad eyed the living room just in case it was there; after all, Aaron was wrong about the key.  When he was sure the statue wasn’t in the living room, he went into the bedroom.  Looking at either side of the bed, he spoke into the phone, “No statue.”

             
“It’s under a blanket.”

             
“I know.  I don’t see any blanket.”  He walked to the far side of the bed.  “Wait a minute.”  There was a blanket on the floor.  Pulling it away revealed nothing but vacant floor space.  Looking closer, he spotted a large square imprint in the carpet where something used to sit before it was moved.  “I see an imprint in the carpet on the side of the bed.  There was a blanket there too,” he explained.

             
“So the statue is gone?”

             
“Yeah.”

             
“Check the other rooms again.”

             
He checked the living room, kitchen, and bathroom.  “Nothing.  The statue’s been moved.  What does that mean?”

             
Taylor sat back in her chair and pursed her lips.  “Well, it was supposed to be there…  How deep was the imprint?”

             
“Deep.”

             
“That means it was recently moved.  I think—I think it was stolen.”

             
Chad raised an eyebrow.  “Rea—”

             
“Chad, get out of there.  If it really has been stolen, the bad guys know where that apartment is.”

             
“I hadn’t thought of that,” he replied, already out the door and closing it behind him.  He dropped the key in the plant and started for the stairs.

             
“Are you out?”

             
“Yeah.  I’m on the stairs now.”

             
“Okay, I’ll stay on the line until you get to your car.”

             
“Okay.”

             
When he got in his car, he said, “I’m in.  I’m good.  What now?”

             
“Well, I still haven’t figured this thing out, but the stolen statue is too much for me to bear.  We need to go on a date.”

             
Chad went silent.  Was he hearing things?  Did Taylor just say they needed to go on a date?

             
“How about the Balsam Café?” asked Taylor.

             
“Sure.”  Whatever was fine with him.  By this point, he still didn’t understand that it wasn’t a real date.  Taylor only wanted to visit the café to investigate.  She knew she could get away with going there if she was on a “date.”

             
“See you in ten minutes.”

             
Taylor quickly phoned Susan and told her to meet her at the Balsam Café for milkshakes.  Susan, unlike Chad, knew “milkshakes” was just a cover for investigating.

             
“Fine,” she said.

             
“I think I’ve almost got this case solved,” said Taylor, “we just need to find out a little more.”

             
“Sure.”

             
“See you in ten.”

             
“Ten what?” asked Susan.

             
Taylor sighed in relief.  Susan was joking again.  She hadn’t joked since the incident, which, though it was only a day ago, was a long time for Susan to go without making a joke. 

“10-3,” Taylor said.

             
“10-4.” 

And they hung up.  Taylor threw on a jacket and was out the door in seconds.

             
Sunlight streamed through the wide-open blinds that draped the café’s wrap-around window.  Chad stepped inside, welcoming the warm interior over the chilly outside weather.

             
He’d made it to the café first, which was surprising as he had stopped off and bought flowers for Taylor.  In all fairness, however, he was closest to the café since he’d come from Cadell’s apartment.  Apparently the proximity was why Aaron frequented the café.  That and the waitress named Chelsea, Brad Ringer’s girlfriend.