“No problem,” she said, in an icy voice.
I headed for the coffee pot. “So, were you at Phil’s party on the night Dennis died?”
“Yes.”
“How long have you known Phil?” I set her cup in front of her.
She crossed her arms over the chest of her light purple top. “A few years.”
I went back for my cup, which wasn’t ready yet. “How did you meet?”
“His club.”
Which I’d believe after meeting her at the party, but would never have guessed from her daytime persona. “Did you know Dennis Welch, too?”
“No. I’d never seen him before.”
“So what did you see and hear that night?” I stirred my coffee and then walked it over to the table, taking the seat directly across from Millie.
“I heard Phil out in the parking lot arguing with the man that got killed, Dennis.”
“Tell me about that. What were they arguing about?”
“A woman.”
“Did you hear her name?” I sipped my coffee.
“No. Phil called her his wife.”
“So who was mad at who?”
She looked at the table. “Phil was mad. He said Dennis slept with his wife.”
“Did either of them say when or where or why?”
“Not that I heard.”
“What did Dennis say back to him?”
“That he was sorry, that he couldn’t help it if women found him irresistible.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Yeah.” Her lips tightened. “Pretty funny coming from a man dressed like that.”
“What happened next?”
“Phil pushed Dennis, hard. Dennis fell and I heard this loud crack. Phil ran off.”
I set my coffee cup down. “Which way did he run?”
“Toward the street.”
Which would have been both an awfully strange thing for him to do, since his car was parked on the side by the door to his apartment, and an almost impossible thing, since he’d run into the club hollering for help. “Did you see him again?”
She shook her head. “Not until after the police came.”
“Did either of them see you?”
She looked down again. “No. I was on the other side of some cars.”
“How many cars away were you?”
“Maybe two.”
I wondered if that was close enough to hear the two men, but I kept it to myself. Jack could use it for cross-examination at trial if he needed to. I made a note to check the video and see if Millie really had left the party and gone into the parking lot. “What did you do after Dennis fell?”
“I called 911.”
“Did you try to help Dennis?”
She stared at me, not moving.
I waited, but when she still didn’t respond, I said, “Millie? Are you okay?”
Her fingers wrapped around her crossed arms, like she was hugging herself, only they cut into her skin—more like restraining herself. She stayed that way for long seconds. Blood trickled from under one of her nails.
I stood, uncomfortable and a little uncertain what to do.
She whispered, “He was evil.”
“Who was evil?” I eased myself between Millie and the door.
“That man. Dressed like that. Carrying that thing he carried.”
This from a woman who had propositioned Jack and me not ten minutes before Dennis arrived? “Do you mean Dennis?”
She jumped to her feet. “I called 911. But I wasn’t putting my hands on that disgusting man.”
Her words ended in a shout. She grabbed her purse.
“It’s okay.” I used the soothing voice I usually reserved for spooked horses or injured animals.
“That’s all I know. I have to go now.” She pushed past me, knocking into me so hard it felt intentional, and I stumbled, catching myself on the counter.
“Millie, are you okay?” I called again.
But the door opened and shut and Millie was gone.
Chapter Twenty-one
I threw the lock on the door so Millie couldn’t change her mind. I wanted out of here, away from crazy people, the aura of Jack, away from Amarillo and the Hodges. But I needed to do something useful, something to help someone. Like Nadine, and Phil. I printed the property records on the Canadian River Ventures property in Sanford. For the first time, I noticed that the tax records were being mailed to Melinda at an address in Borger. Maybe this wasn’t the Amarillo Melinda Stafford? But how many could there be?
I Googled Melinda Stafford in Borger, Texas. Nothing but hits on Melinda Stafford in Amarillo, Houston, Longview, and a little town called Dime Box, but no crossovers to Borger.
I grabbed my purse. I’d just go check it out myself.
I had the red Mustang headed northeast five minutes later, and I rolled down the windows, letting the wind whip through the car and through me. Five minutes into the trip, I realized I’d forgotten to email my old Dallas boss to turn him down. I jotted it down on my mental to-do list and kept driving. I took the back road, 136 up toward Lake Meredith and hooked a right in Fritch. I rolled up the windows when I’d had enough hair to eat, and turned on the air conditioner for the first time of the season.
About the time I passed through Sanford, my phone made its voice mail tone. I held down the button for Siri. “Check voice mail,” I told her, and the voice mail came out at me through the stereo speakers.
“Mrs. BURR-nal, it’s Trisha at The Works about your car. We treated it once, and it still has a pretty bad odor. We guarantee our work at the price we quoted you, so we are going to treat it again, at no additional cost to you. We’ll call you when it’s ready.”
I groaned. They weren’t charging me more, but the rental car company would.
The second message played. “This is Burt Wilde returning your call.” Click.
I took a deep breath through my nose. Burt Wilde. Boy did I ever want to talk to him. I held down my button. “Call back.” It started to ring.
Someone picked up my call, because it stopped ringing, but all I heard was loud music on the other end for a few seconds. Then, “Shit,” and “Hold on,” and “Dammit.”
“Hello?” a man’s voice said. He sounded less than happy to be taking my call.
“Burt Wilde?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, good, this is Emily Bernal. We met at a party last week, and I—”
“I know who you are. I called you back.”
“Oh, that’s good.”
“I’m driving to work, so I don’t have much time.”
“Right. Where do you work?”
“Circle P Feedlot. Shoveling shit. Which I already told Jack.”
“That’s why I’m calling. I’m following up on some things for Jack, but he’s been so busy and distracted with this other case. I apologize if I’m about to make you repeat yourself even more.”
“Go on.”
“When you asked me to tell Jack you didn’t do it, you meant . . .”
“You sound like that stupid cop. Because I’d heard Jack was coming after me, blaming me, and I didn’t need that trouble. Again. Next question.”
“So how do we know you didn’t do it?”
“Because when I got denied parole—thanks to Jack—a guy came up to me back in the joint and said I couldn’t’ve done it because he knew who did.”
“Who?”
“Listen, lady, no offense, but you don’t sound like you’re working with Jack, because I told him all this. I got no way’a knowin’ if you are who you say you are, so, um, yeah, good-bye.”
The call ended and I bit my thumbnail, tasting blood. My pulse pounded in my temple, threatening a major headache. I drove on, barely noticing the road, my brain in turmoil over what Wilde had told me. A red fox ran across the road in front of the car, and I swerved violently. The Mustang squealed and ran off the road onto the gravel then into the tall grass. I let off the accelerator and concentrated on getting the
car under control. The engine slowed, and I heard the swish of the grass as the car ran over it. I checked my rearview mirror. No cars. I had slowed nearly to a stop, and I could smell the sweet odor of the crushed grass. I eased back over the gravel shoulder and onto the roadway. I wiped sweat out of my eye.
I had to concentrate on what I was doing, not on Jack, or I was going to kill myself. I tried desperately to think of a way to pull myself together and came back to my yoga breathing. In through the nose to the back of the throat, out through the mouth. I tried that for a while, then breathed into my lower back. My tension eased. My pulse slowed. My brain stilled to a functional level of activity.
Somehow I made it into Borger alive. When I pulled to a stop in front of the address listed for Melinda Stafford, I checked myself in the mirror. The wind had ripped the hair around my face loose from my ponytail and sculpted it and my bangs into a helmet. I looked as crazy as Millie Todd.
I leaned down and over and looked out the passenger-side window. The address had led me to a small one-story house, 1950s vintage, with white siding and a columned front porch that was extremely deep, at least for the size of the house. The yard was low on decorative plantings, but it was green and well kept. The flag was up on the mailbox out front.
I walked up the front sidewalk—concrete edged with red brick, although I saw no other red brick from my front view—and three broad steps. The door had a black pewter knocker in addition to the doorbell. I smiled and used the knocker.
Standing back a few steps, I waited. No one answered, so I rang the doorbell. Still no answer. I took a moment to analyze the neighborhood. The lots on either side were empty, with only old foundations marking the houses that used to stand there. Across the street was a fourplex with blackout curtains inside its front windows. On either side of it were old houses that needed some attention or to be put to rest like their across-the-street neighbors. No faces watched me from windows. No curtains swayed, no doors stood ajar. I walked to the mailbox and reached in. There was an envelope addressed to the electric company, but the return address blanks weren’t filled out. I put it back in, because it’s not truly tampering with the mail if you don’t steal it. Or it shouldn’t be, in my opinion.
I walked around the side of the house along a grassed-over driveway consisting of two stripes of concrete and back to a sagging detached one-car garage. It was closed. I pressed my nose to the glass with my hand shielded. Empty. The backyard wasn’t fenced, so I crossed from the garage to the door, which was on the side back. Again, I pressed nose to glass and hand over brow. From my vantage point, I was looking through the kitchen and into a hallway that led toward the front of the house and opened into a room that was probably the living room. I surveyed the kitchen. Half-full coffee cup on the far side of the sink. A bottle of Geritol liquid on the near side. A pair of earrings beside it, the kind that clip on. A plate with crumbs and a knife with butter on the countertop by the door. A clock with Roman numerals on the wall. A cat calendar stuck to the refrigerator.
I stuck my phone in my purse and discovered the pair of rubber dishwashing gloves from Phil’s. Perfect. I slipped them on. Then I jiggled the doorknob. It was locked, but it was only a flimsy hand lock. I debated. From all appearances, an older woman lived here. Was I really going to violate her privacy by breaking into her home, this woman who was so innocent and trusting that she didn’t have a modern door lock on her back door? I looked around again, checking out vantage points from the other yards. A German shepherd strained against a chain in the neighbor’s backyard, barking, but no one came to see why. My watch said it was noon. Most of the good people of Borger were at work. Or school. Running errands. Not watching me. I reached into my purse for a bobby pin, and thirty seconds later I shut the door gently behind me.
“Five minutes,” I whispered. “No longer.”
I headed into the bathroom for the medicine cabinet, the surest place I could think of to find the name of the occupant. Only there was no medicine cabinet. I opened the regular cabinets. No prescription bottles. I headed into the first of two bedrooms. I checked the top drawer of the dresser. Ladies underwear from three decades ago. I slipped my hands underneath them. No stashed papers or hidden treasures. Two minutes had gone by. A mirror perched on the top of the dresser. All I saw in it was me. I went to the nearest bedside table. Magazines. A book light. Lotion. A heating pad. I walked around to the other side. Finally, prescription bottles. Crestor, I read, for a Lisa Perkins. A framed picture on the table was of a woman in her sixties with a man of about the same age, but the photo looked positively ancient. Lisa? Her parents?
Perkins. Nobody related to this case had the last name Perkins. I left the bedroom and went into the other. It was nondescript. A double bed and dresser. Plaid comforter with too much hunter green in it. White ceiling fan with brass hardware. One bedside table with a brass lamp. I opened the single drawer. A pack of Marlboros and a lighter. Vicks cherry cough drops. Tissues. I went into the living room. Four minutes. I scanned the pictures on the hall wall as I passed them, looking for a man I barely knew. There were pictures of a young woman and a young man. It looked like the photo was of the woman in the picture on the bedside table, but I wasn’t sure.
The back door opened. “Lisa? You home?” It was a woman’s voice, high and tremulous.
My heart triple-timed. I tiptoed to the far edge of the living room. If the woman walked in there, I was a goner.
I heard the refrigerator open. “Oh, come now, what do you mean you don’t have any eggs either?” The refrigerator shut, then the back door re-opened and closed.
I put my hand over the racing heartbeat in my throat. “That was close.” It was time to be gone, but I saw a desk on the other side of the living room. I walked over and lifted its lid, exposing a mirrored inside face and two partitions. In the one on the right, a stack of papers. I thumbed them quickly. A page that read Last Will and Testament of Lisa J. Perkins caught my eye. It was a simple instrument. In it, she left everything to her nephew, Dennis. I snapped a photo with my phone, then looked for an itemization of her holdings, but didn’t find one. I finished going through the stack, hopeful for a property deed or something else juicy, but I got nothing. Which I could have predicted based on my batting average on this case.
I walked to the back door, thinking about Dennis’s aunt Lisa and the Canadian River Ventures mail directed to her house. How this connection to Dennis still didn’t tie back to Phil yet, other than an empty file folder in a storage unit and a picture of two best friends as kids, or to Melinda except for her name in a property record and on a mortgage. I checked that all the lights were out, then twisted the back door handle. When I pulled the door, it flew in toward me, because it was being pushed from the outside.
“Oh!” a woman exclaimed in the same high-pitched voice I’d heard a minute ago. Her blue eyes were big Os under a head of soft gray curls. “I was just going to—uh, excuse me, but who are you?”
With my purse hanging from my arm against my hip and my hands behind my back, I used one hand to pull the nearly elbow-high yellow dishwashing glove off the one, then reversed the process and held both gloves in one hand behind my back. I brought my purse hand to the front, eased my purse to the other hip, then slid the gloves in, hidden from her view by the kitchen cabinets, all while smiling with all my teeth and saying, “Oh, hello. Lisa’s not home. I just popped in to drop something off for her.” I stepped past the woman on the back steps and scurried down the driveway. I called back to her, “Have a nice day!” but kept moving.
She leaned away from the house, watching me go, her forehead crinkled. “Um, okay, you have a nice day, too.”
I got back in the red Mustang and pointed it toward Amarillo.
Chapter Twenty-two
As I cruised to a stop at a light, I checked my phone. While I’d been in Lisa Perkins’s house, a text had come in from Wallace: Where are you?
I resumed driving and looked out my window. I was passing a ti
ny wooden house with what looked like Jesus framed in the enormous front picture window. I checked my rearview mirror and there were no cars behind me, so I slammed on my brakes and backed up until I was in front of the house. Or box, rather. It was really small. On closer inspection it even had wheels. And, sure enough, there was a larger-than-life Jesus nailed to a cross inside the house-shaped, glass-fronted box/trailer.
“Oh Em Gee.” I pulled out my phone and took a picture.
I’d been frustrated with Wallace, but that paled in comparison to the chance to send him a picture of this. I texted it to him: Right here.
He called immediately. “Are you outside Fritch? I saw that Jesus in a Box on a placement trip recently.”
“Must be more than one. I’m near Borger.”
“You mean Fritch, don’t you?”
“If Fritch were a few miles to the east and went by the name Borger then I’d mean Fritch, but it isn’t, so I’m near Borger.”
“Know it all.”
I studied the Jesus figure, standing with his arms in a V over his head. “Hey, is it just me or does it look like Jesus just stuck the dismount on a vault?”
“Nailed it.”
It took me a second, but I groaned. “That was awful.”
“Hey, do you have time for a late lunch today? My treat.”
My stomach growled at the thought of it. “I can meet you at one-thirty.”
“Can I bring lunch to your place?”
“The office? Sure. It’ll be quiet as a tomb since Jack has spent the last two weeks on the lam.”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“Anyway, no, I meant your house.”
“My house? Why?”
“Whoops, here comes my boss. See you soon.”
Dead air.
***
When I got home, Wallace was already there. And by already there, I mean that he was arranging lunch on cute sea-grass placemats he must have brought with him, because he sure didn’t find them at our house. His fussing was portentous.
Hell to Pay (What Doesn’t Kill You, #7): An Emily Romantic Mystery Page 20
