I shifted in my chair, glad that Luke found the situation amusing, and perhaps reassuring. But it seemed to me he’d lost sight of the reason we were there.
Dennis, however, had not. He again turned his attention my way. “You,” he snarled over the hum and gurgling of the aquariums. “What are you after, anyway?”
“Me?"
“When I saw you shopping for shoes the other day, I knew you looked familiar. And then next thing I know, you’re staking out my house, slinking along behind me like some two-bit Sherlock. What’s your game, lady? You got on some kind of twisted moral crusade?”
“Not at all, I’m simply . . .” My mind was still reeling, trying to make sense of the latest turn of events. Finally, I seized on the only piece of the whole mess that was within my grasp at the moment. “Why was there a letter addressed to Julie Harmon in your mail?”
Dennis was not about to be sidetracked. “Fooling with the mail is a federal offense, you know. I could have you arrested for that. I could have you arrested for harassing me, in fact. I could probably even have you arrested as a public nuisance.” His voice grew harsher with each threat.
Indignation rose in my throat. “Yeah?” I shot back. “Don’t forget you were snooping around my neighborhood the other day.” I bit back any mention of the plastic skeleton in my mailbox. If Dennis had put it there, airing my suspicions might not be smart.
“Snooping? What makes you—”
“Hold on,” Luke said. “Both of you. Yelling at each other isn’t going to accomplish anything.”
Dennis sighed, fingered the chunky gold bracelet on his wrist. “So, let’s cut to the chase,” he said. “What’s the bottom line, blackmail? Or are you one of those guiding lights from my folks’ church?”
“That’s what you think?” Luke asked, his voice rippling with amusement. “That Kate cares whether you wear flannel boxers or pink silk panties?”
It was actually an intriguing question, and one I hadn’t had time to consider in the rush of the day’s revelations. But Luke was right that I didn’t much care either way.
“You’re not a cop,” Dennis said. “I know because I checked it out.”
“I’m here because of Julie Harmon,” I explained.
He drummed his fingers on his knee. “She told you, didn’t she?”
“Told me what?”
His widely arched brows furrowed, his mouth pulled into a rose-bud pout. Dennis looked a lot like the drawings I’d seen of Cinderella’s stepsisters.
“Why was she getting mail at your address?” I asked again.
“Because she didn’t have any privacy at home.” Dennis stood and moved to one of the larger fish tanks, where he tinkered with the dials. “My father pries into everything. Thinks it’s his God-given right to read your mail, search your room, listen to your conversations.”
“Rifle through your bureau drawers?”
“Yeah, you got it.”
I waited a beat. “The same way you went through Julie’s?”
He rocked forward. “She did tell you. I knew it!”
“Seems to me you’re in no position to complain about your father’s behavior.”
Dennis glared at me, his eyes blazing through lashes heavy with mascara. “It wasn’t the same.”
“No?”
“I only wanted to have a look at her stuff. I was admiring, not prying.”
“I don’t see—”
He returned to his chair. “Julie’s things were silky and delicate. Some of them so tiny they’d fit into the palm of your hand. Different from the stuff my mother wears.”
“That’s no excuse.”
“It was only a couple of times.” His voice was soft, almost wispy. “And I never did it again after she caught me at it.”
Luke pressed his fingers to his temples, shaking his head. “Christ, Denny. It doesn’t matter the reason, you still went through her private possessions without asking. I don’t imagine she was happy about it.”
“She was pretty mad,” Dennis conceded, without looking at either of us. “Livid, in fact. Came storming in here to my place to have it out with me.” He paused to examine his nails, which were short and square, but polished in a crimson red. “That’s when she met Denise. I thought sure there was going to be trouble.”
“Trouble?”
“You know, that she’d freak out, tell my parents. Tell her friends and the kids at school, not that I really care about them. My dad, though, he’d rather see me dead. And I’m not shitting you, either.”
Having met Walton Shepherd, I thought that might be true. But it also gave Dennis a pretty good motive for wanting to make sure Julie wasn’t able to talk.
“Did she threaten trouble?” I asked.
Dennis brushed at a strand of hair. “We made a deal.”
“What kind of deal?”
“She promised to keep her mouth shut if I’d let her use my address for mail. That was fine by me. There weren’t all that many letters anyway. Although she sure was anxious about them. You’d have thought she was waiting to see if she won the national sweepstakes or something. Whenever I told her a letter had arrived, she’d come charging in here just as soon as she could manage it.”
A young woman’s understandable desire for privacy, or something more? “Who were the letters from?” I asked.
Dennis shook his head. “She never volunteered and I didn’t ask.”
“How about a return address?”
“A couple of different places, I think. To tell the truth, I didn’t pay much attention.”
“The letter that came today, can I see it?”
Dennis shrugged and gave a nod toward the table where he’d tossed it. “Help yourself.”
Luke, who was sitting nearest the table, picked up the envelope, and brought it to me. “You going to open it?”
“You think I shouldn’t?” It was, I suppose, technically a sticky issue.
He grinned. “No, I think you most definitely should.” The envelope was addressed with a typewriter rather than a computer. No return address. Although the postmark was blurred, I could read enough to know that it had been mailed from somewhere in Minnesota. I opened the envelope and pulled out a sheet of paper that matched the gray linen of the envelope. The message was short and to the point.
Dear Julie,
Sorry, wrong guy. Best of luck.
T. L. Wiley
Luke had pulled his wheelchair alongside and was reading over my shoulder. “Not exactly helpful, is it?” he asked.
“No, it’s not.” I read the letter aloud to Dennis. “Does it mean anything to you?”
He shook his head, giving an artful toss to the shoulder- length tresses. Dennis was watching the fish in the closest aquarium, and appeared to share none of my curiosity about Julie. After a moment he turned back my direction. “So if it’s Julie you’re interested in, how come you were following me the other day? And why did you come by the store when I was at work?”
So we were back to that. I took a breath. There was no easy explanation to the first of his questions, so I tried a pared-down version of the truth. “I came to ask you about Julie,” I explained. “When I saw you, uh Denise, leaving the house, I assumed she was a friend of yours. I was hoping she could help me. But then she, that is you, got on the bus before I had a chance to ask.”
It was a lame answer if you stopped to think about it, something I hoped Dennis wouldn’t do. I felt the need, in spite of everything, to proceed with caution. After all, Dennis had piqued my interest initially because I was worried that he might have had something to do with Julie’s death. And I still wasn’t certain that I’d been wrong.
Dennis compressed his lips in thought, cocked his head. “And Macy’s?”
That was easier. “Pure coincidence,” I said. “My friend and I were shopping. She wanted a pair of shoes.”
He appeared to mull this over.
“My friend was impressed with your talent for fitting shoes,” I added. “She t
hinks you have an unusual knack for it, and an impressive understanding of feet.”
“Thanks,” he said with the hint of a smile. He sounded more like Dennis than he had all afternoon. “Shoes are a passion of mine.”
And of the killer’s, I thought uncomfortably.
“Julie didn’t tell you about Denise, then?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Not even a hint.”
He moved his head slightly, as if easing a stiff neck.
“My turn,” I said. “What were you doing in my neighborhood the other day?”
“I wanted to catch a glimpse of you. After you and your friend left, I remembered where I’d seen you before. Or I thought I did. It was at my parents’ house. Then when I saw you following me, I wanted to see if you really were the same person.”
I wondered if his answer was as skewed a version of the truth as mine had been. “May I keep the letter?” I asked.
“Fine with me. I’ve got no use for it.”
I tucked the envelope into my purse and stood. “I’m sorry about disturbing you. And I’m not going to say a word to your parents. I’m only interested in Julie.”
Dennis nodded.
Luke wheeled himself over and held out a hand to his neighbor. “You want to come over and share a pizza again some time, you let me know.”
“Who are you inviting, Dennis or Denise?”
Luke laughed. “If it’s all the same to you, I think I’d feel more comfortable with Dennis.”
“That’s a hang-up you should get over,” Dennis said, not unkindly.
Luke laughed. “Maybe, but don’t count on it.”
Chapter 21
Rain had begun falling by the time I started back to Walnut Hills. Limited visibility and slick pavement slowed the commute to a crawl. As I inched along the incline toward the tunnel, I tried to make sense of the jumble in my brain.
The mail delivered to Dennis’s address, Julie’s Friday night foray into Berkeley, the book of poems, the older man at the reservoir. A veritable tapestry of secrets. I wondered if any of it pertained to her death.
Questions were plentiful, but what did I actually know? Despite the Shepherds’ tight reins, or maybe because of them, Julie had become involved in a romantic relationship. Sexual relationship, I amended, remembering the inscription in the leather-bound collection of poems. A relationship she hadn’t talked about and had, in fact, done her best to conceal from her friends.
I put Mario’s name on my mental list, although I found him an unlikely candidate. Brian Walker? Perhaps. But why would Brian and Julie feel the need to keep the relationship secret? A more probable prospect was the older man Julie had been with at the reservoir. Maybe he was someone she’d met on-line through her poetry connections, or through one of those discussion groups like Cindy Purcell belonged to.
Or maybe it wasn’t one single relationship at all, but several. A whole string of them. Men she met in Berkeley rather than on-line. Was it possible that she really had been turning tricks? Or maybe she simply enjoyed the excitement of picking up guys. That might explain the clandestine correspondence.
There was a roiling nervousness in my stomach, and my mouth tasted sour. Julie had been barely fifteen. Little more than a child. True, she had an aloofness that might, under certain circumstances, be mistaken for sophistication. But you didn’t have to look hard to see that it was a pretense. At heart, Julie was like a young colt, eager and a little unsteady. A girl on the brink of adulthood yet still possessed of the ingenuousness of youth.
Or so I’d thought. But perhaps there’d been another, radically divergent persona, as well. Was it possible?
The letter from T. L. Wiley was a new piece of the puzzle. Not that it meant much yet. If Michael could track down a phone number, talk with him, then we’d know why Julie had written, what the connection was. Sometimes that was all you needed, Michael had told me. It was like playing a game of singles dominoes. Turn over the right one and the rest of the game was all yours.
My thoughts were still on Julie when a trailer-truck merged from my left without signaling. I slammed on the brakes, holding the steering wheel firm against the oil-slick pavement, and then slowed further to give him ample room. My reflexes were quick enough to avoid a collision, but not to protect my windshield from the wet road muck of his tires. I hit the wiper spray and cursed under my breath. Neither effort had much effect.
By the time I reached home, my mind and my nerves were equally frayed. Luckily Anna was curled up on the couch with Faye, wedded to one of Faye’s afternoon programs. I waved at them both as I passed through on my way to the phone.
I called Michael and left a cryptic message about Dennis and the letters Julie had received there. I told him about Susie’s party as well, then took a long, hot shower and washed the stickiness and what was left of the stylized curls from my hair.
When I emerged, the television program had ended. Anna was standing with her back to me, rigid as the Tin Man, while Faye adjusted the seams of her princess dress. I thought from the tension in Anna’s shoulders that she was probably gritting her teeth in exasperation, but when Faye had her turn around, I caught instead a wide, unabashed smile—which she quickly reined in when she saw me watching.
“You look lovely,” I said.
Anna was noncommittal. “It’s prettier than I thought it would be.”
I nodded and left it at that. With Anna, I’ve learned it’s better not to push.
Before starting dinner, I pulled out the atlas and tried matching the postmark on Wiley’s letter with a name in the index. I came up with only two possibilities, and they were both a stretch. Nonetheless, I called Information. Neither locale had a listing for Wiley.
I’d gone back to the atlas for a second go-around, when Libby emerged from her room in search of a soda. She found me bent over the map with a magnifying glass. “Planning a trip?” she asked.
I shook my head, and told her about my visit with Dennis, omitting reference to Denise. “Julie was getting mail there,” I said. “It must have been correspondence she didn’t want the Shepherds to know about.”
Libby took a swig of soda. “Guess that explains why she went into Berkeley so often, and always by herself.”
I nodded and leaned back in my chair. “I don’t suppose you have any idea who she was writing to?”
Libby shook her head. “Could have been kids from her old school.”
“That’s a possibility, I suppose.”
“She was expecting something to change, remember? Something that meant she wouldn’t have to live with the Shepherds anymore. She’d want to keep that from them until it was settled.”
“They didn’t seem any too pleased to have her living there in the first place,” I remarked. “You’d think they’d be happy if she’d found another arrangement.”
“Except for the money.” Libby opened a cupboard and scanned the contents.
“What do you mean, money?”
“They got money for keeping Julie. From her inheritance.” Libby grabbed a handful of pretzels and plopped into the chair to my right. “Supposedly it was to cover the extra expense of having her live with them, but she thought they were probably using more than they were supposed to. Mr. Shepherd bought a new truck, and they were going to have the kitchen remodeled.”
And Walton had quit his job to open a new store. Had he used Julie’s money for that?
“Wasn’t there some way she could check on it?” I asked, more thinking out loud than posing the question to Libby.
Libby shrugged. “Maybe that was the change she was talking about, but I don’t think so. It wasn’t like a big deal to her or anything. In the beginning she was mostly just sad about her mother’s death and unhappy about living with the Shepherds. Then lately, it was like, well, things are going to change soon anyway.” Libby peered over my shoulder at the atlas. “You think she was planning on moving to Minnesota?”
“Not based on the letter I saw today.” I handed it to her.
“Have a look.”
“This Wiley guy doesn’t believe in wasting words, does he?”
“Any idea what he’s talking about?”
Libby took another swig of soda. “Haven’t a clue. I can’t even tell if he’s mad or just indifferent.”
I gave up on the atlas and started dinner. “One of Julie’s neighbors saw her at the reservoir with an older man. Did she ever mention anyone like that?”
“How old?”
“I don’t know. Probably early thirties at least, maybe older.”
Libby shook her head. “Unless it was someone she was interviewing for her class project.”
“The newspaper project? I thought you didn’t know what her topic was.”
“I don’t, but I know she was talking to people, or trying to talk to them anyway. It was all very secretive, like she was worried we were going to steal her idea or something.” Libby twisted a strand of hair around her index finger, then let it spring back. “Like we’d even care. No one else took the assignment as seriously as she did.”
It didn’t make a lot of sense to me that she’d interview someone at the reservoir, but Libby was trying to be helpful so I nodded without comment.
Libby bit her bottom lip and studied the soda can. “What did Michael decide about that plastic skeleton? Does he think it’s connected to Julie’s murder?”
“I don’t know that he’s decided anything. Most likely it was just a coincidence.” I gave her a hug. “You should stay alert, but try not to worry about it too much.”
“I’m not really worried, just curious.” She stood and looked out the rain-spattered window into the evening gray. “It’s really raining out there, isn’t it?”
I nodded.
“You think it will continue all weekend?”
“Probably not. It’s too early in the year for a major storm. Why, do you have plans?”
“I was just thinking about Skye’s fox hunt.”
And Brian Walker, I added silently.
Murder Among Us (A Kate Austen Mystery) Page 17
