Swingin' in the Rain (15 page)

  We walked to the front door. Randy’s house wasn’t too aesthetically pleasing. It had to have been built in the eighties and even the exterior reeked of bachelor circa 1985. I guess I expected some yellow police tape, or a police seal on the door, but there was nothing. Most likely that was because the actual murder took place in the backyard, and cops had taken whatever they wanted or needed from the house, already.

  “Do you have a key?” Jakes asked.

  “No, but I think I know where one is.”

  Randy was a horrible husband, a thief and apparently a swinger. He was also a creature of habit. I looked around the yard and saw several large rocks. One looked a little different from the rest. I walked over to it and picked it up. Sure enough there was a nice shiny house key lying on the ground under it.

  “How did you know it was there?” Even in his bad mood Jakes couldn’t help but smile a little.

  “He always used to have a hide-a-key rock like this when we lived together. I figured he still would.” I wanted to say he never had any imagination, but he had enough to steal, didn’t he?

  I tossed Jakes the key and let him open the door. He handed it back to me as we stepped inside.

  “Do you know your way around?” he asked.

  “Sort of. I checked the place out once to make sure it was safe for Sarah to be here.”

  We left the entry foyer and went into the living room.

  “I don’t have to worry about fingerprints, do I?” I asked.

  “Probably not, but let’s wear gloves, anyway.” He took two pairs of latex gloves from his pocket and passed me one.

  “Okay,” he said, “I don’t think there’s any point in searching this room, or the kitchen. Let’s do his bedroom. Is there a home office?”

  “Yeah. Straight down this hallway and to the left.”

  We walked down the hall and came to the bedroom, first.

  “I’ll take the bedroom and you take the office.” Jakes said.

  “Okay.” And I headed down the hall and took a left.

  It was a big room with a large desk and a bunch of file cabinets. I walked over to the desk and could see, from the dust marks, that a computer had been there. It was gone now. I opened the cabinet drawers and it was obvious someone had taken several files out of there, too. I turned toward the closet and saw a large 8 X 10 photo of Randy and Sarah hanging on the wall. It had been recently taken from the looks of it. I hadn’t realized how much Sarah favored her father until I saw the picture of the two of them, together. There was a window overlooking the back of the house. I looked out at some yellow police tape flapping in the wind and rain, then turned away.

  There was nothing in the closet of any consequence. Just some old clothes and office equipment. I headed back to the desk.

  There were three drawers on the left, three on the right, and one right in the center. The top three drawers across were all shallow, holding mostly pens, paper clips, small pads of paper, rubber bands, tape, scissors, rulers-- supplies you’d find in most desks. The rest of the drawers were deeper.

  Jakes entered the room and said, “Find anything?”

  “Nope. Computer was taken. I’m assuming by the police. The filing cabinet drawers are empty.

  “I’ll go through the desk drawers.” He crouched down next to me to look in the drawers on one side. I was reminded of just how much I liked the way he smelled.

  “So you haven’t found anything at all? Not even a phone book?” he asked.

  “Nope.”

  He switched to the other side and started going through drawers.

  “I didn’t see anything that had to do with the club,” I said.

  “No, me, neither,” he said. “Nothing with a fleur-de-lis on it.” He looked exasperated. “This is a bust. Nothing. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Wait,” I said, as we left the office.

  “What?”

  “I told Rockland I’d be picking up some of Sarah’s things,” I reminded him. “I really would like to do that.”

  “Then we better do that.”

  We reversed direction in the hall, went past Randy’s room and found the one he had set up for Sarah. I was shocked. It was really cute. Randy had gone to a lot of trouble for his daughter since the last time I had been here. He obviously had planned on staying in her life. It made me like him a little more. He had gotten her a four poster bed with a gauzy canopy hanging overhead. Everything was in pinks and purples. It was sweet. . .really sweet. He even had a matching dresser and a little desk with a box of markers and a coloring book on it. A flat screen TV was on the wall next to the window and some DVD’s were stacked under it. It looked like Randy had gotten her the Disney classics, the Shrek movies, even “How to Train your Dragon” and “Tangled.”

  “Wow. We can’t take all that.”

  “We’ll just take what we can.” I glanced at a clock by her bed. “I have to get Sarah, soon. Could you find me a box? Please?”

  “Okay,” he said. “A box.”

  I collected a few toys and stuffed animals I knew I didn’t have for her at my place. I also grabbed a cute sweater and the DVD’s under the flat screen. What was taking Jakes so long to find a box? Everybody has boxes in their house, don’t they? Maybe in a pantry or something?

  I left the room, went down the hall. “Jakes?”

  No answer.

  ”Jakes! Where are you?” I called, louder.

  I started to walk a little faster, looking for the kitchen. Something felt off. Maybe it was just the fact that today had been so weird. He was probably fine, had probably stepped outside for a minute, but still . . .

  I found the kitchen.

  Jakes was lying on the floor, his blood staining the blue-tiled floor.

  “Jakes!”

  I rushed to him, becoming aware too late that someone else was in the room. I started to turn, and then something hit me.  Before the lights went out I looked down and saw turquoise-tipped cowboy boots . . .

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  I opened my eyes and looked up at Jakes. He had blood on his forehead.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Take it easy, Alex,” he said. “We both got hit from behind.”

  I realized I was lying with my head in his lap. He was holding a gun in his right hand.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “I came to a few minutes ago. How do you feel?”

  “I have a headache.”

  “Me, too, but you have a bump, no cuts. Do you feel like standing?”

  “No,” I said, “but let’s give it a try.” He started to help me up, but I stopped. “Wait! What time is it?” I asked.

  “Ten to two.”

  “I have to get Sarah at two forty-five.”

   He helped me to my feet gently. I thought I’d get dizzy, but I didn’t.

  “Where’d he go?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Should we look for him?”

  “Not ‘we’.” He looked out the window. I looked at his gun.

  “I thought they took your gun away?”

  “My service gun, but I had my off duty gun, here.” He pulled up his pants leg and showed me his ankle holster. “I don’t have anything to identify myself as a police officer, though.”

  “Jakes, who would be in Randy’s house and why would they want to knock us out?”

  “Could be a burglar, I guess, who saw Randy’s obit in the paper.” We looked at each other skeptically.

  “So he just happened to come along the same time we did?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Kind of a coincidence, right?”

  “Yeah, too much of one.” Jakes said.

  A drop of blood dripped from just above his eyebrow to the floor.

  “I should take care of that.”

  “First let’s find out if he’s still here,” he said. “Stay behind me.”

  We crept through the house, Jakes with his gun held ready, but we didn’t find anyone in any of the rooms.

  “He’s gone,” Jakes said, lowering his gun.

  “What did he take?”

  “Let’s look around.”

  We didn’t see anything obviously missing.

  “There was some jewelry in the bedroom, and some cash.”

  We went to the master bedroom and he showed me. It was all still there.

  “Why would somebody break in and not take anything?” I asked.

  “Maybe because...”

  “Because . . . what?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, “maybe someone’s trying to scare us. Or warn us. I have a feeling we should get out of here.”

  “Let’s go to the bathroom. I’ll clean your head, and then we gotta go.” Jake’s brow was furrowed. “What’s wrong, I mean besides the obvious?”

  He put his gun back in his ankle holster. Shaking his head he walked into the bathroom with me behind him.

  “Don’t like it.”

  We found a box in a closet off the kitchen.

  “Thanks,” I said, still trying to get a read on him. He was a sphinx. I took the box. It was big enough. I set it on the floor and placed the toys and animals from the bed into it. I threw the sweater in, too. They fit with room to spare so I grabbed all the DVD’s and put them in, as well.

  “That it?” he asked.

  “Pretty much.”

  He picked it up and said, “Let’s get out of here.”

  We went out the front door. Jakes handed me the box and I hurried to Marilyn.

  “Call me later, okay? We need to talk.”

  I wanted to talk right now but I had to get Sarah. I started to get into my car, but I was too late.

  A siren started to whoop, and there were flashing lights behind us.

  We were busted.

  Jakes walked over and joined me by my car. He turned away from the officers and faced me.

  “I don’t want to identify myself if I don’t have to.”

  “I understand,“ I said. “You don’t need any more trouble. Besides, you can’t prove you’re a cop, and you have a gun on you.”

  “Yes,” he said. “None of this is good news.”

  Two uniformed cops got out of the cruiser and walked up to our cars, one on each side. They had their hands on their belts. They both looked like they were still in high school. I mentally named them “Young and Younger”. “Younger” actually had an extra stripe, which put him in charge.

  “Ma’am, do you have some identification, please?” he asked.

  “Of course.” I gave him my driver’s license, noticing that his nametag said Simpson.  The other cop’s tag said Hailey.

  “This is not your house,” he said, “yet you came out carrying a box.”

  “Yes,” I said. ”The house belongs to my ex-husband. I was picking up some things that belong to our daughter. As a matter of fact, she’s going to be getting out of school very soon, and I need to pick her up.”

  “Well you’ll just have to hold on,” Officer Simpson said. “We got a call from someone who said they saw someone suspicious loitering by the side of the house. Were you two outside for any reason?”

  “Who would want to be outside in this weather?” I gestured to the sky and of course it was clear as a bell. “Well, you know what I mean. It’s been raining pretty much all day.”

  Jakes jumped in. “Officers, we came to retrieve her little girl’s possessions and that was it. Just what’s in the box she carried out.”

  “Can you both step away from the car, please?” he asked.

  Great. If they searched us they‘d find Jakes’ gun. Then he’d have to explain who he was, and have to prove it.

  “Sir,” Officer Hailey said, “your head is bleeding.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Jakes said, touching his wound.  “I . . . hit it when we were in the house. An accident.”

  “Please,” Hailey said, ”both of you, put your hands on the car.”

  We obeyed.

  Simpson leaned in and looked in the box.

  “Whataya got?” Hailey asked.

  “Toys.”

  “That’s it?”

  ”Yup.”

  “The house belongs to Randy Moore,” Simpson said. “Your name is . . . Alexis Petersen.” He read it off my license.

  “Yes,” I said. “We were married; I just never took his name. Look, I really have to get my daughter!”

  “Wait a minute,” Hailey said. “I know her.”

  “What?” Simpson asked.

  “Yeah, now that you said her name,” the other man said. He looked at me, smiling. “You’re on the Bare and the Brazen.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Wow,” he said, “wow, I’m a big fan.”

  “Oh, no,” Simpson said. “Not your soap operas.”

  “Only the best soap opera,” Hailey said. “And she’s Felicia.”

  “Felicia,” Simpson said, staring at me with a bored expression.

  “Hi,” I said, with an anxious smile.

  “I think we should pat them down,” Simpson said. “Maybe they took something else.”

  “But why?” Hailey said. “I told you who she is.”

  “Yeah, well, if Lindsay Lohan can steal a necklace, I guess a soap opera star can steal something, too.”

  Oh my God, I thought, he just compared me to Lindsay Lohan!

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  I was in my car driving to Sarah’s school 5 minutes later. The two cops halfheartedly frisked both of us, but didn’t search the car. Officer Hailey’s fan-boy geek-out continued to get worse until his partner got tired of it and gave up. They wished us both a good day, then returned to their cruiser.