When All The Girls Have Gone (3 page)

In the end she had settled for lessons in meditation. The therapist had not been impressed.

The truth was, now that the trauma of the canceled wedding was fading, Charlotte was aware that what she felt was a surprising sense of relief. Ethel was right. She’d had a very close call. But that didn’t mean that she wasn’t still pissed at Brian. A woman had her pride.

She gathered up her papers and notebook and headed for the door. When she passed the Fireside Lounge she was pleased to see a large crowd. Music from a bygone decade played in the background. Voices were raised in conversation.

She wished that she was looking forward to an after-work drink with
someone. Usually she would have given Jocelyn a call and arranged to meet her at one of the popular downtown bars or restaurants. But Jocelyn was out of town for the month.

She paused at the memorial board to look at the faces of the recently deceased. The pictures on the board almost always featured the individual in the prime of his or her life. The men were often dressed in dashing military uniforms or well-tailored business suits and ties. The women were invariably garbed in the style of another era. Some were in wedding gowns, their eyes radiant with the anticipation of a blissful future.

Charlotte was pretty sure that none of them had expected to end up at the Rainy Creek Gardens Retirement Village. But the truth was that those on the memorial board had survived whatever life had thrown at them—tragedy, trauma, disappointment and heartbreak—and lived to tell their tales at Rainy Creek.

In the grand scheme of things, Charlotte thought, getting left at the altar was nothing more than a dramatic story that, with luck, she would be telling her friends and neighbors and, perhaps, her own grandchildren decades from now.

She went into her office, made a few notes about the next memoir writing session and then went over her schedule.

Sarah Jameson appeared in the doorway. She was in her late fifties, a trim, attractive woman who favored skirted business suits and black pumps. She lounged in the doorway, arms folded, and smiled.

“I hear there was a bit of a dustup in the Write Your Life group today,” she said. “Something about Ethel Deeping wanting to end the chapter on her marriage by saying that she killed her husband decades ago.”

“Word travels fast,” Charlotte said.

“Blame happy hour.”

“There appears to be some confusion in the class about the fine line between writing memoirs and writing fiction,” Charlotte said. “Ethel says her husband was a successful, well-respected man who gave back to the community, but I think she carries some residual anger toward him. He died when their kids were young and Ethel was left to raise them on her
own. I think she’s using a fictional ending as a way of taking revenge. Also, she says it’s more dramatic.”

Sarah chuckled. “Well, she’s got a point. Who are we to stop her from writing whatever she wants to write? Besides, you did say that memoirs are a kind of therapy.”

“True.” Charlotte glanced out the window. It was still raining. She retrieved her boots from under her desk and slipped off her heels. “The problem is that the rest of the class is upset with Ethel’s decision to embellish her life story.”

“I doubt if Ethel is the only one who is guilty of that.”

“Well, a pattern is emerging.” Charlotte tugged on the boots. “Most of the class prefers to write about the good stuff that happened to them and ignore the bad.”

“Where’s the harm in that?”

“I agree.” Charlotte got to her feet and took her anorak down off the coatrack. “There is definitely something to be said for denial. I’ve learned that much from working here at the village. Some of the happiest residents are those who seem to have done an excellent job of rewriting their own pasts.”

She took her handbag out of the bottom drawer of her desk and slung the strap over one shoulder.

“Any word from Jocelyn?” Sarah asked.

“No. Incredibly enough, I think she must be enjoying herself at that convent retreat. I never thought she’d make it through the first week, to be honest. Jocelyn is practically hardwired into the Internet. I bet her ten bucks she wouldn’t be able to go a full month without checking her e-mail.”

“Well, she’s only been gone for a week. You might win that bet yet. Got plans for this evening?”

“Not really. I’m going to stop by Jocelyn’s condo to water her plants and collect her snail mail on my way home today. That’s probably going to be the highlight of my night. You?”

“No, but I’m looking forward to the weekend. My husband and I are
going to drive over to the coast. There’s another storm due in. I love the beach during storm season.”

“Sounds great,” Charlotte said. “See you tomorrow.”

She made her way through the lobby, said her good-byes to the front desk staff and went out into the rain-drenched gloom of the fall afternoon. She paused in the wide, gracious entranceway and reran the conversation with Sarah in her head. She did not care for the ending.

I’m a single woman of a certain age and I’ve got zero plans for tonight and none for the weekend,
she thought. That was ridiculous. No doubt about it, she had spent more than enough time brooding about the Brian Conroy disaster. She needed to get a life.

She pulled up the hood of her jacket—only tourists carried umbrellas in Seattle—and got ready to step out into the steady drizzle.

One of the many advantages of her job at Rainy Creek Gardens was that it was just a twenty-minute walk from her apartment. Actually, when she thought about it, everything she needed was within a twenty-minute walk of the apartment. Seattle had big-city lights, good shopping and all the other amenities of urban life, but it was still, in many ways, a small town. Brian Conroy and the rain aside, she was glad she had heeded Jocelyn’s advice and made the move from Oregon.

An expensive-looking luxury car pulled into the small parking lot in front of the entrance. The driver’s-side door opened and a man climbed out from behind the wheel. He jogged toward the shelter of the covered entranceway. When he saw Charlotte, he smiled with just a polite hint of masculine appreciation.

“Really coming down,” he observed. “But at least it’s not too cold.”

“True,” she said.

“You look a little young to be a resident,” he said. “Visiting a relative?”

“I work here.”

“Yeah?” He glanced thoughtfully at the lobby entrance. “I was hoping maybe you had a family member here.”

“Why?”

“Because I wanted to ask your opinion of the place. The family has appointed me to shop around for a retirement community for my grandmother. Since you work here, though, I guess your opinion would not exactly be unbiased, huh?”

“I work here because I like this community a lot,” she said. “There’s someone inside who can answer all your questions, but you really ought to bring your grandmother here to take a look for herself. Moving into a retirement community is a major lifestyle change. She needs to be involved in the decision.”

Damn. She sounded way too earnest, even to her own ears. She could hear Jocelyn’s voice in her head.

That’s right, Charlotte, a good-looking man flashes you a sexy smile and asks a simple question and you go straight into lecture mode
.
You’ve got to lighten up, woman.

The stranger’s smile dimmed a couple of degrees.

“Right,” he said. “The thing is, I’m just trying to get a feel for the options that are out there. Grandma has lived in the same house for fifty years. She’s nervous about moving into a community full of strangers.”

Charlotte felt herself on solid ground now. Forget trying to flirt with him, she thought. Just stick to business.

“Does your grandmother play bridge, by any chance?” she asked.

He seemed surprised by the question, but he recovered quickly.

“Are you kidding?” he said. “She plays killer bridge.”

“Then she’s golden,” Charlotte said. “Trust me, as soon as the word gets out in the community that she plays, she’ll have no problem making friends.”

“Thanks, I’ll let her know.” He paused, as if trying to decide whether to engage in further conversation with her. “What do you think the in crowd will be playing when you and I are ready for a retirement community?”

“Video games, probably.”

He chuckled and some of the warmth returned to his smile.

“You’re right,” he said. “Well, thanks for the info.”

He went through the glass doors and disappeared into the lobby.

She went out into the rain and walked briskly along the sidewalk. She had managed to amuse him for a moment. That was the good news, she
thought. The bad news was that she had not been trying to be funny. She had blurted out “video games” in answer to his question because it was the first thing that had popped into her head.

She hadn’t exactly flirted with a stranger, but there had been a little whisper of the female-male vibe in the exchange and that realization boosted her spirits. Maybe whatever it was inside of her that had been crushed by the Brian Conroy fiasco wasn’t dead after all. Maybe it had just been hibernating.

A little flicker of awareness prompted her to glance back over her shoulder. She didn’t expect to see the man again. By now he would be at the front desk in the lobby asking for more information and perhaps a tour of the village.

She was surprised when she caught a glimpse of him on the other side of the glass doors. She could have sworn he was watching her.

The knowledge that he had apparently found her interesting enough to warrant a lingering glance should have given her another pleasant little rush of feminine satisfaction. But for some inexplicable reason, it didn’t. Instead it sent a shiver of unease across the back of her neck.

Great. Now I’m getting paranoid.

Maybe the experience with Brian had affected her nerves, as well as her confidence in her own judgment.

That was not a cheerful thought.

She walked a little more quickly, very aware of the damp chill of the fading day. She suddenly wished she had been able to accompany Jocelyn to the secluded island convent. There was a certain appeal to the idea of going off the grid for a few weeks. But she had been on the job at Rainy Creek for only a year. There was no way she could have taken a whole month off.

She promised herself that when she got home she would use the meditation app that she had bought after completing the mindfulness class.

Max Cutler stood in the middle of Louise Flint’s living room and absorbed the sense of emptiness. It was always this way in the personal space that had once been inhabited by the dead—at least it was always this way for him.

Early on in his career as a profiler he had been told by colleagues that it was his imagination that conjured the sense of gloom. If he had not
known
that someone had died in that particular place, they said, he would not have experienced any particular vibe.

But he did know that Louise Flint had died in the condo in which he was standing and he did feel the emptiness. Of course, the steady rain and the unrelenting cloud cover didn’t help matters, he thought. He had moved to Seattle six months before and he’d taken the notorious Seattle weather in stride. But today he was intensely aware of the atmosphere.

“The cops are convinced that she killed herself,” Daniel Flint said. “But I don’t believe that Louise OD’d, either deliberately or accidentally.”

“You think she was murdered,” Max said. He kept his tone neutral.

“Look around,” Daniel said. He swept out his hand in an exasperated gesture. “It’s obvious someone tore this place apart. Her computer and her phone are gone. I’m telling you that someone killed her and then stole her tech.”

Daniel was a senior at a local college. Max had run a routine background check on him before taking the case. He had discovered that Daniel was working part-time at a restaurant and living the starving-student
lifestyle. He had taken out far too many loans to pay his tuition and he was majoring in history, which meant he was going to be semi-unemployable when he finally graduated. That, in turn, meant he couldn’t afford the services of a private investigator.

But two hours earlier Daniel had come through the doorway of Max’s office looking sincere and determined; a young man on a mission.

Unfortunately, there was never any money in mission work.

I’ve really got to put up a sign
.
No Mission Work
.

But it wasn’t like he had any other clients beating down his door at the moment. He had finished the small insurance job the previous week with the usual unsatisfying result—the company had settled. The firm had paid out only a few thousand instead of the several hundred thousand that the lawyer had demanded, thanks to the information that Max had uncovered.

It had taken him less than fifteen minutes to discover that the dumbass threatening to sue the insurance company had helpfully posted photos of himself dancing half-naked at a party. Considering that he claimed to be wheelchair-bound with neck and spinal injuries, the company had held a very strong hand going into negotiations.

When confronted with the evidence, dumbass’s lawyer had immediately lowered the number and the company had quickly accepted the new figure in the interest of making the problem go away. As was the case with most corporate and business clients, “Settling is cheaper than going to court” was the company motto. He couldn’t argue with the financial logic.

But once in a while I need the mission work
.

He surveyed the interior of the condo. It wasn’t a penthouse, but it was, nevertheless, high-end real estate. Louise had been making enough money as a fund-raiser for a local charitable foundation to be able to afford a place in one of the new downtown glass-and-steel towers. The condo had undoubtedly cost a hell of a lot more than his little fixer-upper in one of the Seattle neighborhoods.

The interior of the unit was in shambles. It had been torn apart by someone who had been searching frantically for something. Max thought about that for a while.

The clothes in the closet all bore designer labels. Some of the jewelry looked valuable. According to Daniel, the car parked downstairs in the garage was a luxury model.

“You’re saying that whoever killed her took her tech but nothing else of value?” he asked eventually.

Admittedly it would have been difficult to smuggle a lot of clothes and jewelry out of the condo and it would have been risky to steal the car. But the thing that interested him the most was that the dead woman’s Italian leather handbag was still sitting on the coffee table. Her wallet, complete with credit cards and a couple hundred bucks in cash, was still inside.

“The cops told me that the tech—laptops and phones—is all that most thieves want these days,” Daniel said. “That’s the kind of stuff that moves fast on the streets. One of the officers said that most of the smash-and-grab guys are junkies looking to make enough for the next score.”

“People like that are usually looking for drugs, as well,” Max said.

He tried to say it without any inflection. Just an observation, not an accusation. But Daniel got mad anyway.

“I’m telling you, my cousin wasn’t using,” he said.

“Okay.”

Daniel looked hesitant. “But there is one other fact that bothers me.”

“What?”

“On the day she . . . died . . . she cashed in a bank CD. According to the receipt I found in her handbag, she withdrew ten thousand dollars.”

“Huh. Check?”

“No.” Daniel’s jaw tightened. “Evidently she took the money in cash. I know that looks bad. Who needs ten grand in cash, right? People in the drug business, that’s who.”

“There are other reasons why someone would withdraw that kind of money in cash,” Max said. “I assume you didn’t find any of it?”

“No. The killer must have taken it.”

“So he takes ten grand, but he doesn’t bother with the cash in her wallet.”

Daniel looked at the open handbag. “Maybe after finding the big money he simply ignored the little stuff. He would have been in a hurry.”

“Maybe. Any theories about why she took so much money out of the bank that day?”

“No.” Daniel shook his head. “I didn’t tell the cops because I was afraid they would see it as more evidence of a drug connection. They would have assumed she was laundering cash for drug dealers.”

“The police found an empty syringe next to the bed and a baggie filled with what they told you was probably some new designer street drug.”

“Yes, but—”

“There were no signs of physical violence. Your cousin was not beaten or shot or stabbed. There was no indication that she’d had sex before she died. But ten thousand dollars and her laptop and phone are missing.”

“Maybe she was set up,” Daniel said quickly. “Maybe someone slipped something into her drink and then tried to make it look like an overdose.”

There were no empty glasses sitting around, but Max decided not to mention that. It was possible, after all, that the killer could have taken time to wash a couple of glasses before leaving.

“What else did the cops say?” he asked.

Daniel’s eyes narrowed a little. “They didn’t actually say it, but it was pretty clear they think that Louise brought home the wrong guy. I think their theory is that she and her bad date did drugs and Louise OD’d. The bastard probably panicked. Instead of calling nine-one-one, he grabbed her tech, searched for any stashes of drugs she might have hidden, and then split. And that’s the most charitable scenario because it doesn’t include the missing ten grand.”

“What’s the other scenario?”

Daniel exhaled heavily. “It was suggested that Louise might have been working off the books as a high-end call girl. Drugs are often part of that lifestyle, they said. The conclusion would be the same—she OD’d and the client stole her tech and maybe her drugs, as well. Except that I know she wasn’t doing drugs, she was not hooking and she wasn’t laundering money for some dealer.”

“Tell me about Louise and why you’re so sure she wasn’t into drugs and prostitution.”

Daniel shoved his fingers through his hair. “She was my cousin, but I didn’t see much of her until she was in her teens. She was raised back east. Her father died when she was just a little kid. Her mother married an asshole who molested Louise for a couple of years. When Louise’s mother found out what was going on, she thought Louise was lying. But eventually she realized the truth. She divorced the creep and she and Louise moved out here to Washington. But Louise’s mom told her that she shouldn’t ever talk about the abuse.”

“That advice usually backfires.”

“Yeah. Louise was pretty messed up when she was younger, but none of the rest of us knew why at the time.”

“Was she into drugs at some point in her past?” Max asked.

Daniel reddened angrily and looked as if he was going to deny it.

“For a while,” he said finally. “In her late teens. She ran away from home a few times and finally just disappeared into the streets for months. I’m not saying she didn’t hook or sell drugs to survive in those days. It was a bad time and I think everyone in the family just wrote her off as a lost cause. Looking back on it, I feel guilty because I didn’t do more to help her.”

“She was several years older than you, which means you were just a kid at the time,” Max pointed out. “There wasn’t anything you could have done.”

“Maybe not,” Daniel said. “But someone should have done something.”

“Take it from me, you can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.”

“Yeah, Mom said that a few times, too.”

“If what you’re telling me is accurate, Louise did eventually get herself and her life together, right?”

“Yes, exactly,” Daniel said. “She’d been doing great for quite a while—years. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. She loved her work at the foundation. She got to travel and hang with celebrities.”

Max decided not to mention that celebrities were notorious for going in and out of rehab because of drug issues.

“Anything else I should know?” he said instead.

“She volunteered several hours a week at a local women’s shelter—because of her past, you see. She credited a shelter with saving her from the streets years ago. She felt very strongly about paying it forward. And she had good friends. Another sign of a stable person, right? She and a few of her pals formed an investment club. She was planning for her future. She wouldn’t have put it all at risk by going back to drugs.”

“Did she date? Was there a man in her life?”

For the first time, Daniel seemed uncertain. “I don’t think so. I mean, Louise dated from time to time, but usually just when she needed an escort for one of her charity functions. To tell you the truth, I don’t think she liked men. I know she didn’t trust them—except for me. Please say you’ll take this case, Mr. Cutler.”

Max took another look around the condo, absorbing the gloom. Then he looked at the earnest young man who was waiting for a response.

“There are definitely some questions here,” Max said. “I’m willing to see if I can find the answers.”

Daniel looked as if a huge weight had been lifted off his shoulders.

“Thank you,” he said. “I really appreciate this.”

“One thing you should know before I start turning over rocks.”

“What?”

“Sometimes, in situations like this, clients don’t always like the answers I come up with. Are you sure you’re okay with that?”

Some of Daniel’s relief faded. “You mean you might find out that Louise really had gone back to hooking and drugs?”

“All I’m saying is that sometimes people don’t like the answers that I give them. Sometimes the dead take their secrets to the grave for a reason. I want you to be sure you can live with whatever I discover.”

“Yes.” Daniel shoved his hands into the pockets of his windbreaker. “What I can’t live with is not knowing the truth.”

“All right, I’ll look into your cousin’s death.”

Daniel nodded once. “Thanks. About your bill. Louise left this condo and her car to me. I’m going to sell the condo. I’ll pay you out of the proceeds.”

Max decided not to point out that condos in which the former owners had been found deceased were sometimes very hard to market.

“All right,” he said. “I need to be alone here in your cousin’s place for a while. I want to take a look around. Make some notes. Take a few photos.”

“No problem. I’ll give you the keys to this place and the ones to her storage locker downstairs and the mailbox in the lobby. Stay as long as you want. I’ll let the door staff know that you have my permission to come and go whenever you want.”

“Probably best not to let them know I’m investigating Louise’s death. That will make everyone in the building nervous and that, in turn, will make them uncooperative. Just tell the people at the front desk that I’m helping you settle Louise’s estate.”

“Right.” Daniel nodded. “I can do that. And it’s even true in a way.”

“Whenever you’re telling a lie it’s good to go with as much of the truth as possible. Less chance of making a mistake that way.”

“Makes sense.”

“One more thing before you go,” Max said. “I want to take a look at Louise’s car.”

“Sure. It’s in the garage. I found the keys in her bag.”

“Let’s go take a look at the vehicle together.”

“Okay.” Daniel shot him a curious glance. “Mind telling me why you want me with you when you look at her car?”

“Condo owners and managers get very uneasy when they see strangers wandering around inside a garage. I’m not looking to get picked up for car prowling.”