Thicker Than Blood

by Penny Rudolph

  Chapter Fourteen

  “You telling me he was a dealer?” Goldie’s voice cracked with shock.

  “No.”

  “Then what are you getting at?”

  Rachel didn’t answer. She moved to Jason’s desk.

  Peter was shifting his weight from one ragged tennis shoe to another and flicking anxious glances from one woman to the other.

  “It’s okay,” Rachel said to him. “It’s nothing to do with you.”

  Goldie patted him on the shoulder. “The others are gonna be finished by now. You go on out to the van and tell them to get in and wait for me.”

  He nodded, clearly glad to be done with it. The door sighed on its hinges as it closed behind him.

  Rachel opened the desk drawers and began pawing through the contents.

  Goldie peered over her shoulder. “What the devil you doing now?”

  “They haven’t packed up his shaving mug. I thought there might be a schedule book in here. One of those things where executives write down every thing they do. But I don’t see one.”

  “You think he wrote down ‘Thursday, ten a.m., meet with Colombian drug dealer’?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Well, seeing as how you think he got himself killed because of something we just found, if it’s all the same to you, I’m gonna get the hell out of here.”

  Rachel closed the drawers. They both headed for the corridor. Goldie was pulling the door closed when a sharp voice behind them split the silence.

  “Who are you?”

  Rachel jerked upright and dropped the cuff link, which skittered across the floor tiles and landed at the feet of the woman who had spoken.

  Pale hair gleamed in the bright light of the hall as Charlotte Emerson, in a cobalt-blue cloak, bent over and picked it up. She looked tense when she straightened and, despite her size, formidable. “Where did this come from?” She eyed them both, then recognized Rachel. “Good heavens. What are you doing here?”

  Eyes meeting Charlotte’s, Rachel said with as much aplomb as she could muster, “This is Goldie—she’s in charge of the office-cleaning crew. Goldie, Charlotte.”

  “I lost something,” Goldie said.

  Rachel nodded. “While she was working here tonight. I came over to help her look for it.”

  “I see. Is this what she lost?” Charlotte held up the cuff link.

  Rachel paused on the edge of saying yes, but Charlotte probably had seen Jason wearing the cuff link. “No, that’s something we found on the floor while we were looking. We should’ve just put it on the desk. I didn’t realize I still had it.”

  Charlotte turned to Goldie. “What did you lose?”

  “A…ring.”

  “Well, it wasn’t just any old ring,” Rachel added. “It belonged to her mother, and to her grandmother before that. Goldie lost weight and the ring was loose. The last time she remembered having it was when she was cleaning the bathroom in there.” Rachel tapped the door to Jason’s office with one hand and smoothed her shirtfront with the other.

  The stiffness in Charlotte’s shoulder relaxed. “What does it look like, in case someone turns it in?”

  “Gold, with a…a red stone,” Goldie said carefully.

  “A garnet,” Rachel added smoothly. “Is there someone we could call to report it?”

  Charlotte smiled. “I’ll report it myself in the morning. When I turn this in.” She held up the cuff link.

  “Sorry to have disturbed you,” Rachel said.

  “Quite all right. I was just a bit startled to find someone here so late.”

  It wasn’t until later that Rachel began wondering what Charlotte was doing at the office at that hour.

  Outside, tiny drops of mist hung in the air and the pavement was damp.

  Goldie let out a low whistle. “You just may be the best liar I ever heard, and I have heard me some genuine champions.”

  “You weren’t so bad yourself.”

  “We are real lucky she didn’t come in when you were going through that desk. We would’ve been in shit so deep we would’ve been drawing flies for the rest of our very short lives.”

  “Funny,” Rachel mused, “I wasn’t even thinking about that. All I was trying to do was get out of there without her seeing this.” She reached under her shirt tail and drew out the envelope.

  A car passed, its taillights making red holes in the mist.

  “Christ almighty, girl. I forgot about that friggin’ envelope.”

  Rachel tapped a corner of it against her forehead. Her hair was damp, and not from the weather. “If what’s in this envelope is the same as what I found in Lonnie’s apartment, I think they got it from the same place.

  “Oh, my God,” Rachel said softly.

  “What?”

  “Lonnie hates garlic.”

  “You are making about as much sense as a valley girl on LSD.”

  “He couldn’t eat garlic. Said it tore up his stomach.”

  “So what?”

  “When I found him, he smelled of garlic.”

  Goldie frowned. “Don’t make sense. Nobody went in there and forced him to eat Italian sausage.”

  “But the whole bed smelled of it.”

  “So maybe he was doing an Italian hooker.”

  Rachel shook her head, trying to make sense of it.

  “You thought the stuff you found in his kitchen and what we found in that envelope came from the same place,” Goldie said.

  “They sure look alike. It’s possible they came from the same place.”

  “And where might that be?”

  “The water quality lab.”

  Goldie’s mouth dropped open. “You gotta be joking.”

  “Lonnie delivered a lot of packages to them. Come to think of it, the guy I talked to in the lab asked about him. Maybe Lonnie found out they were making some kind of drug and stole a couple of fixes.”

  Goldie’s right eyebrow and shoulder rose in unison. “Must be pretty potent stuff to just up and kill him like that. Mmm-mmm. A drug factory, right here in River City.” She looked back at the InterUrban building.

  “But that don’t explain the garlic,” Goldie went on. “And it sure don’t explain Mr. High-and-Mighty Jason getting himself offed by some maniac driving a car.”

  The crew had spotted Goldie and was beginning to pile out of the van. “It’s raining,” one of them called.

  “So what are you doing standing there? Waiting to drown?” Goldie called. “Get back inside. I’ll be there right quick.”

  Rachel was staring at nothing, hardly aware that the mist had become fat drops of rain. “Maybe it does explain about Jason. What if he found out his own water quality lab is making street drugs?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Goldie said it under her breath: “We gotta call the cops.” Raindrops were beginning to collect on her eyelashes.

  Rachel shoved the envelope under her shirt again to keep it dry, her eyes locked on Goldie’s. “I can’t. At least not yet.”

  Goldie cocked her head. “I guess that’s nobody’s business but yours.” As though defying the rivulets of rain that ran down her cheek to her chin, she crossed the street to the van.

  “Hey!” Rachel called. “Thanks for your help.”

  A hand waved as the van pulled away from the curb, the wipers sweeping across the windshield.

  When Rachel reached her apartment, she locked the door, stopping only to grab a towel for her dripping hair before taking a dinner plate from the cabinet and pouring out two tiny piles of granules, one from the plastic bag she had found in Lonnie’s teapot, the other from the brown envelope.

  “Bingo,” she said softly to Clancy, who was watching her intently from a bookcase shelf.

  The two samples looked identical.

  Oh, Lonnie, how could you do this to yourself?

  She drew a deep breath, let it out slowly and decided it probably wasn’t wise to leave this stuff lying about.

  Standing on a stool, she unf
astened one of the two light fixtures on the bedroom ceiling, removed the bulb, and inserted the packets. The room would be a little dim with only one light, but it would have to do.

  Exhausted, she shucked her damp clothing, left it in an untidy muddle on the floor, and got into bed.

  The first rays of sunlight on the bare windows woke her. Rachel rolled over and tried to go back to sleep, but her mind began to chatter about the tie tack she had found in the Caddy’s dented fender.

  Finally she rose, took the small piece of silvery, coin-shaped metal from the cigar box and gazed at it. The tortoise gazed back. Too bad she’d had to give Charlotte the cuff link.

  There couldn’t be many pieces of jewelry with that design. Perhaps she could find out where it was from. Hadn’t Jason said it was Indian? But there were dozens of Indian groups in the Southwest alone.

  Should she just go to Charlotte, tell her the truth? But she’d have to explain why she hadn’t called the cops, and that might risk her contract with InterUrban. She’d have to think it through.

  In the meantime, the old cigar box on her dresser would not be missed by a burglar. A few days ago, the notion that someone might ransack her apartment would have struck Rachel as silly. Now, she almost expected it.

  Opening her handbag, she tossed the tie tack in among the jumbled contents. Since she could never find anything in that purse, she doubted anyone else would either.

  After she opened the garage gates, and the cars had begun streaming in, Rachel sat in her glass booth, her thoughts as jumbled as the contents of her handbag.

  Jason’s murderer no longer seemed anonymous. It was as if he had done her some monstrous personal harm. Perhaps he had. Maybe he had sold that stuff to Lonnie.

  She knew little about Jason, but she was sure that behind his death was the lust for drug money. She understood too well the destruction bred by that lust. Lonnie would be only one of many casualties.

  Tears pooled in her eyes and leaked across her cheek. Angrily she brushed them away, ran long fingers through hair still damp from the shower, then reached for a pad of paper and began to fill it with scrawls.

  First, she would find someone to help out with the garage and locate a laboratory to analyze those packets.

  Then she would canvas nearby auto-body shops. What if the Cadillac was run off a cliff or something? But it was a company car, she thought. That might be a little hard to explain. Most likely it was being repaired, and whoever moved it wouldn’t have driven it far. The E plates used by the water authority, coupled with the huge dent, might invite attention.

  Then there was the water quality lab. She would have to find a way to search it. Her eyes fixed on a scratch on the booth’s glass.

  A chill prickled up from her toes until the top of her head tingled as it dawned on her she had something in her possession that could unleash treacherous forces. All of them aimed at her.

  She covered her mouth as if afraid she might say something reckless.

  Before, if she screwed up, she might have landed in jail. Now, it could be the cemetery.

  If only she could go to the cops…but she couldn’t. Unless.…

  She reached for the phone book, looked up the number for Merry Maids, dialed, and asked if she could leave a message for Goldie. Then she sat, almost frozen in place, until the sound of knuckles on the booth’s glass startled her.

  Between a shock of pale hair and a cleft chin, a mouth grinned at her. “Up late last night?”

  She tried to smile, but her face seemed stiff.

  Hank’s features melted into a look of concern. “Something wrong?”

  “No, I’m fine. Just a lot on my mind.”

  “It so happens, I know how to fix that.”

  “I bought a lifetime supply of snake oil years ago.”

  “No snakes, no oil, just a lake, a clear sky, the scent of pine trees, and a couple of fresh trout—prepared by a master chef—for dinner.”

  Rachel’s eyes skidded away. “I can’t be away from the garage. Especially right now.”

  “Not now, Sunday. I know you’re closed Sundays because I’ve had to park in the street.” He crossed his arms over his chest, and lowered his head as though peering at her over invisible eyeglasses. “Or do you swab the place on Sundays—maybe scrub it with a toothbrush?”

  The phone began beeping. She turned her back to him and reached for the receiver.

  “You going to the cops?” The voice crackled on the line like the squawking of a wet hen.

  “Goldie,” Rachel interrupted, “I need your help.”

  “No way. If somebody’s making drugs right there in that building where I take my kids every night, I am not going to get involved. You know how dangerous people like that are? You can’t do nothing on your own, girl. Maybe I’ll be calling the cops myself.”

  “What would you tell them?”

  The line went silent.

  Rachel bit her lower lip. “Can we have lunch?”

  “Why?”

  A hand touched Rachel’s arm and she almost dropped the phone.

  “I’ll pick you up Sunday, five-thirty. That’s a.m. If you aren’t down here, I’ll start yelling. Wake the neighbors.” Hank gave her a crooked grin and left the booth.

  “Five-thirty,” he called over his shoulder. “We have to catch the trout first, then cook them.”

  She frowned at his receding back until the voice on the phone began sputtering.

  “You know the Plum Tree, in Chinatown?” Rachel said into the receiver. “Please, Goldie, meet me there at two.”

  “This better be good.” Goldie hung up.

  333

  Rachel hurried past a store where large, rubbery sea creatures were splayed over crushed ice, past a dingy window with a poster taped to the glass lauding the merits of ginseng, and across the street to the yellow brick walls and blue awning of the Plum Tree.

  Inside, a few late diners still dawdled, but most of the tables, draped in forest green then topped with a square of white linen, were empty. A tiny woman in very high heels greeted her. “I’m meeting someone here,” Rachel said.

  The woman led her to an adjoining room where Goldie sat at a corner table drumming her fingers on a menu.

  Another woman, delicate and wispy as a feather, took their orders.

  “You said your brother is a cop,” Rachel began. “He might believe me if you told him.…”

  Across from her, the dark face of her friend was troubled. Slowly, as though she had missed a no-trespassing sign, Rachel said, “Maybe I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “He got shot,” Goldie said. “In the gut. A domestic dispute. The guy that killed Marcus was defending his right to beat his wife.”

  “Jesus. I’m sorry.”

  “He had friends on the force, I could call one of them.”

  Rachel shook her head. “Thanks anyway.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Wish I knew.”

  When they finished their meal, the waitress brought almond cookies.

  “Ask her for fortune cookies, instead,” Goldie muttered dryly. “We could use a little fortune.” She dug a ten out of her wallet and put it on the table.

  Rachel picked up the money and handed it back. “Don’t even think about arguing.”

  Goldie’s laughter came out like a snort. “Honey, if I was going to argue with you I would have done it when you asked me to meet you here. You ever take a hard look at what they sell in Chinese grocery stores? Those huge whatever you call ’em, naked clams, those black mushrooms, and seaweed, for God’s sake.”

  Back at the garage, Rachel anxiously surveyed each parking level. Although she didn’t guarantee someone would always be on duty, she hated to leave the place unattended.

  As she was leaving level B, a slender woman emerged from the stairwell and, with the grace of a dancer, moved toward a car on the opposite side. She looked familiar, so when the car had backed into the driveway, Rachel raised her hand in a small wave.
/>
  The woman rolled down the window. “Rachel Chavez.”

  Rachel tried to connect a name with the pale, heart-shaped face.

  The woman read her look. “Alexandra Miller. I probably look a little different in my jogging shorts.”

  “Of course.” Rachel put her hand on the car door. “Good to see you again. You probably saved my life. I don’t think I thanked you properly.”

  “Don’t be silly. Anyone would have run off those thugs and dusted you off. But as a matter of fact, I was looking for you.”

  “Yes?”

  “I mentioned my plane that day.”

  Rachel looked puzzled.

  “Flying?” Alexandra added.

  “Oh, right. But your plane? You have your own plane?”

  “I do. I fly every Thursday. Come with me. Day after tomorrow.”

  “Thanks.” Rachel straightened, a little surprised. “Thanks a lot. It sounds wonderful. But it’s really hard for me to get away.”

  “You’d be doing me a favor. Truly.”

  “I’d like to, but I’ve had some problems.…”

  “All the more reason to get away for a bit.”

  “I just don’t see how I can.” Rachel was beginning to feel guilty. The woman had certainly helped her out.

  “I’ve had some problems lately, too. I’d really welcome the company.”

  Two parallel lines appeared over Rachel’s nose as it occurred to her she not only couldn’t remember the last time she had any fun, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d spent any time just enjoying herself with a friend. A woman friend.

  “It’ll be fun. I promise.”

  Alexandra’s smile seemed so friendly and wistful that Rachel found herself agreeing.

  Chapter Sixteen

  As Alexandra drove off, Rachel stared after her, half annoyed with herself for giving in.

  A voice rang out on the level below: “Dear girl! Are you there, dear girl?”

  Rachel hurried down the ramp. “I’m here.”

  “Ah, good, good.” Irene’s stout body was planted at the main entrance to the garage, her foot propped against the wheel of the supermarket cart to keep it from rolling.

  “You know Rosetta?”

  “Should I?”

  “She’s a Gypsy, dear girl. A true Gypsy from Romania or Estonia or some such. But that don’t matter.” Irene was so full of news she sputtered. “She is teaching me to read palms. And I thought perhaps I could practice with you.”