Secondhand Stiff (23 page)

Three strikes; we were out.

I checked back as far as I could on the iPad but didn't see anything else worth pursuing.

“Maybe they did just go to lunch,” Greg suggested.

twenty-four

When I waltzed into
the T&T office with Tiffany Goodwin in tow, Jill Bernelli was the picture of surprise. “I thought you were out all this week.”

“I am, but I need a favor.”

“From me or the boss?”

“From you.” I indicated for Tiffany to take a seat in a chair by Jill's desk while Jill and I retreated to my office. “That's Tiffany Goodwin. Can I park her here with you for a few hours?”

Jill gave me an odd look. “She's a little old to need a babysitter, isn't she?”

I gave Jill a quick rundown of the situation. “If you don't want to get involved, I'd certainly understand.”

She gave it some thought, then answered. “Tell you what, how about you and Greg run along and do whatever you need to do. It's Friday and quiet around here.”

“We'll be back as soon as possible, I promise.”

Jill put an affectionate hand on my arm. “Go look for your mother, Odelia, and don't worry about hurrying back. I'll take Tiffany home with me tonight. Might do the girl good to see a stodgy lesbian couple in their natural habitat.”

“I can't impose on you and Sally like that.”

“Sure you can,” Jill insisted. “No one would look for the girl at our place, and you can put your mind at ease about her. In fact, let's just plan on her spending the night with us. We have no plans this weekend, and I'm sure we can rustle up some fresh clothes for her.”

I wrapped my arms around Jill, giving her a warm hug. “Thanks, Jill. I owe you.”

She hugged me back, then said, “Now get out of here before Steele sees you. He's on a conference call right now.” I love Jill. She decent, kind, and practical, and dead right about me skedaddling before Steele got off his call.

Unfortunately, when we opened the door to my office to leave, Steele was standing by Jill's desk, chatting up Tiffany Goodwin. When he saw me, Steele started for his office, indicating for me to follow him.

“Can we do this next week, Steele? Greg's downstairs waiting for me.”

“Now, Grey.” He stood by his doorway, waiting for me to enter the lion's den. When I did, he followed me in and closed the door.

“Who's your little goth friend?” he asked as soon as we were alone.

“Down, Steele. She's only nineteen and she's gay. I brought her by to meet Jill. You know, for some mentoring.”

“Right.” He nodded in understanding, but his tone was that of an unbeliever. “And who is she really? And what happened to your face? It's bruised.”

“By the way, Seamus died yesterday.” I threw out the information hoping to deflect Steele's attention away from Tiffany and my injury and sent up a prayer to animal heaven for Seamus to forgive me.

“What?” Steele leaned back against his desk, his face crestfallen. “Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously.” Even though I was using the death of my cat to cover up my current activities, I barely got the words out without choking. “He had a stroke.”

“I'm terribly sorry, Grey.” From the tone and look on Steele's face, I knew his condolences were genuine. “I know how much that animal meant to you. And to Greg.”

I nodded, fighting back tears. My lower lip trembled. Steele stepped forward and gave me a hug, holding me in his embrace almost a full minute. It was the first time he'd ever done that, and I hugged him back, grateful for the sympathy. Steele was the first person outside the family I'd told about Seamus, and saying the words had opened the wound like a yanked scab loosens blood.

When he stepped back, Steele said, “Forget the work I brought you. It can be done later. Just relax and be with Greg and your mother.”

As soon as he said “mother,” I started weeping. Steele placed a comforting hand on my shoulder. “It's okay, Grey. You took that raggedy old cat in and gave him a loving home. His life was better because of you.”

I sniffed back the tears. “It's not Seamus—not entirely. Mom's missing.”

“What?” Steele removed his hand and fell back again against the edge of his desk. “Grace is missing? Did she wander off and get lost? Did you call the police?”

I gave Steele a quick rundown of what had happened since I last saw him. When I was almost done, he stopped me by holding up a hand.

“Are you telling me that you and Grace were in front of that store in Torrance when it was turned into a war zone?” His face was tight. Lasers of intensity shot from his eyes. “And now you're running down leads on drug traffickers?”

“No, Steele.” I reached into my bag, grabbed a purse pack of tissues, and started dabbing my face. “We were safely down the street when the bomb went off.” From his reaction, there was no way I was going to mention that I had been poking around behind the store just yards from the bomb or that I initially thought my mother had had a heart attack from the blast. “And right now, we're looking for my mother, not drug traffickers.”

Before either of us could say more, my cell phone gave off Greg's assigned tone. I dug it out of my purse and answered. “I'll be down in a minute, honey,” I said into the phone.

Steele snatched the phone from my hand. “Greg, this is Steele. I'm coming down with her. I want to help.” He looked at me, the phone still pressed against his ear while he listened. “She just told me about the cat.” Pause. “Yeah, she's a mess.”

I stuck out my chin in protest, but my defiance was cut short by the need to blow my nose.

“I think we need to come up with a solid plan,” Steele said into the phone. He listened again. “Great.” With that, he shut the phone and handed it back to me.

“We need to get going,” I said, wiping my nose and standing. “And I mean Greg and me, not you, Greg, and me.”

“What, Grey, you're not into
ménage
à
trois
?”

Without waiting for a response, Steele started closing down his computer and putting away his work with quick, efficient movements. Steele never left his desk a mess when he left for the day. “Quick, now: bring me up to speed with the rest.”

I shrugged, giving in. “Mom was researching three secondhand shops before she left the house with Bill Baxter. She could be headed to any of them, or even to none of them.” I took a deep breath to fight off fresh tears. “Or she could be having a nice lunch with a creepy old guy who looks like Bilbo Baggins. Who knows? We've left word at all three of the stores for her to call us if she shows up.”

Steele picked up a legal pad and a pen from his desk. “Do you have the addresses of those places?”

“Yes.” I dug around in my purse, then stopped. “I forgot. I left the list in the car with Greg.”

“Maybe I could go to at least one of them and see if they show up, and you and Greg go to the others.”

“You in Inglewood?” I almost laughed but felt too miserable.

“You'd be surprised where I've been in my life, Grey.”

I had to admit, Steele was always full of surprises. I gave him a quick update on as much as I could, including Tiffany's part in it.

“You were right to bring that girl to Jill.” He buzzed Jill from his desk phone and asked her to come in.

When Jill entered Steele's office, he said to her, “Stick to that girl like glue, Jill.”

She gave him a two-fingered salute. “That's the plan, Stan.”

“Is that work I gave you finished?”

Jill nodded. “Yep and already in the mailroom.”

Steele retrieved his suit jacket from the hanger behind his door. “Good, then take off for the day, but stay close to your phone.”

“But I have work to do for Jolene,” Jill protested.

Steele fixed his eyes on her. “But mine's caught up?”

“Yes.”

He slipped into his jacket and loosened his tie. “Then that's all I care about.”

I rolled my eyes in spite of the grave situation. Typical Steele. He'll gladly wear a white hat as long as his work is done first.

“Now take the girl and go,” Steele told Jill. “Tell Jolene you're doing something special for me out of the office. If her work has to go out today, she can have someone else take care of it. If she balks, have her call me.”

Jill gave Steele another salute before leaving. I could have sworn this one only contained one finger—the middle one.

Before I could stop him, Steele had stuffed his cell phone into a pocket and was heading for the elevator. “You really don't need to do this, Steele,” I said as I scampered to keep up.

“I know, Grey,” he said, holding the elevator door for me. “I want to.”

When we reached the van, which was parked on the street level of the parking garage in a disabled parking spot, Greg and Steele acted like two generals planning an attack.

“Don't you think we should get the police involved?” asked Steele.

“Not yet, Mike,” Greg answered. “We don't know for sure what's happened to Grace.”

“Grey just filled me in. I would think her mother missing would rate a call to the police—at least to Dev Frye.”

“No, Steele,” I said, backing up Greg. “We don't know if she's been taken by bad guys or simply running around playing geriatric detective with a nosy old guy. The police have their hands full right now with the drugs and piecing together the whos and whys of the murders.”

“If we find out Grace is in danger,” Greg added, “then for sure we'll call the police, and pronto.”

“Then let's hit the road,” Steele said. “You have that list of addresses?”

Greg handed the list I'd made to Steele. “Here—take this. I've already plugged all three into my GPS.”

Steele scanned the addresses. “How about I take Inglewood for starters and you guys take Pico Rivera. Lynwood is sort of in the middle. We can meet up there.”

“Sounds good,” Greg agreed.

“Bill's car is a tan Honda Element with his locksmith business logo on the side,” I told Steele. “And thanks, truly, for helping.”

With a salute containing all fingers, not just a single digit, Steele took off at a run for his car.

We were almost to Pico Rivera when my phone rang. It was Mom. I almost dropped it in my haste to answer the call. “Mom, where are you?” I looked over at Greg. Relief was written all over his face.

“I'm with Bill Baxter,” she told me, sounding annoyed. “I left you a note. Didn't you see it?”

“Yes, we saw the note, but it was difficult to read. Are you at lunch or following a lead? We weren't sure.”

“Both. Bill took me for a lovely lunch, then we decided to check out some of the secondhand stores you and I didn't have time to get to. We started with Otra Vez. When we got here, the man at the counter said to call you. What's the emergency?” There was a short silence followed by a choked, “Please tell me the other animals are okay.”

“They're fine, Mom. We tried calling you several times.”

“Somehow I managed to shut off the ringer on my phone. Didn't notice that until I called you. I see you and Greg left messages.”

My body sagged with relief. “We were worried about you.”

“Why?”

Not knowing where Bill was at the moment, I was concerned about saying something to Mom that might trigger a response from her to put him on his guard. I started rocking in my seat, worried about what to say to her. Greg reached out a hand and steadied me. “Mom, don't say anything, just listen.”

“Okay,” came a tentative voice from the phone.

“We're not sure how much Bill Baxter is involved. It could be that he was the one who planted the bomb.”

“Do you know that for sure?” she whispered.

“No, we don't, but don't you think it's odd he called you about lunch so soon with everything going on?”

“Actually, I called him.”

“You did?” The surprise in my voice only made Greg more concerned.

“Yes,” Mom answered. “Since he knows so much about Buck and is as curious as we are, I thought he might be interested in giving me a lift to the other secondhand stores. Didn't seem like he was all that busy at his shop. Lunch was his idea.”

“Oh, Mom. Why couldn't you just stay out of it?”

“If you're going to talk like that, I'm going to hang up.”

I gritted my teeth. “Mom, a lot has happened today that you don't know about. Bill might not be the harmless old man we thought he was, and Heide's son Eric and Kim Pawlak might be involved. We know for sure Kim is up to her neck in this. Who knows who else? Mazie Moore has taken off. And the police found drugs in at least one of the auction units today.” When Mom didn't say anything, I added, “Why don't you sit still and we'll come get you? I need to know you're safe, and I won't feel that way if you're with Bill Baxter.”

More silence, then a whisper, “But what do I say to him?”

“Geez, Mom, you're supposed to be the ace liar in the family.” I paused, trying to think of something. “I know, tell him Clark's been hurt. There's no way he can check up on that. Tell him Greg and I will pick you up so he doesn't have to come all the way back to Seal Beach.”

“But I told him Clark was out of town.”

“Then tell him Greg's dad was hurt and we're all going over there to make sure he's okay.” I looked at Greg, who was staring at me in disbelief. “Whatever you do, stay at Otra Vez and don't go off with Bill.”

Without being told exactly what was going on, Greg took an off- ramp and turned left at the bottom of it. He was making a wide U-turn, getting back on the 605 heading south to head for the 105 Freeway, which led to Lynwood.

“Okay, I'll think of something,” Mom told me with a sigh. “You going to be here soon? I don't want to wait around all day.”

“We'll be there soon,” I assured her. Greg flashed five fingers three times at me. “Greg says fifteen minutes.”