Thicker Than Blood

by Penny Rudolph

  “No,” the woman said, drawing a carefully folded lace handkerchief from the pocket of her black linen dress and patting it at her eyes—an exquisite wind-up doll. She stepped aside. “Please, come in.”

  The wall facing Rachel was entirely glass with a view over mounds of African daisies and graceful Japanese pines to a glimpse of the ocean. Other walls were a parquet of polished hardwoods. Beyond a banister, open space plummeted a dozen feet to a handsome living room arranged to grant ample room to a grand piano.

  “The music was magnificent. Was that you?” Rachel asked as they descended a suspended curving staircase.

  The woman gave a quick nod as they reached the final stair. “Thank you. Please call me Lily.”

  “The view is…incredible,” Rachel said. She hated that word, but couldn’t think of one better.

  Lily dabbed at her eyes again. She gestured Rachel to a seat on the nine-section sofa that curled through the room. “Excuse me,” she said and exited, returning a few minutes later. This time the odor of alcohol was unmistakable.

  “Now where were we?” the little woman asked.

  “I was admiring your home,” Rachel said honestly.

  “Jason was so proud to be able to buy such a fine house.” There was ever so slight a lisp to the woman’s words, and Rachel wondered whether it was natural or the booze.

  “He said it wasn’t a bad place for a dumb Polak,” Lily continued. “He always regretted that my parents were not alive to see it. He wanted to show them they were wrong. We were old Philadelphia. Jason was from Pittsburgh. His father made sausages and sold them in a shop on the riverfront.”

  Feeling huge and clumsy beside her hostess, Rachel was grateful the daughter had disappeared, sparing her the feeling she was old as well.

  “The family name was Karlinski,” Lily went on, to no one in particular, the way people in nursing homes sometimes do.

  Rachel wondered if grief had unhinged her. Or maybe the woman just wasn’t used to drinking.

  “To this day, I can’t imagine how we made it through those first years. Jason was at the university all day and tending bar half the night,” Lily reminisced dreamily. “But he wouldn’t hear of my working. He wouldn’t even allow me to drive. He bought this house to show my parents.” She was staring, seemingly unseeing, at the view.

  “They never did speak to me again.” She turned to Rachel on the sofa. “Mellie is right. I run on too much. You said you have something of Jason’s?”

  Digging into her handbag, Rachel produced the tie tack. Despite a few scratches, the face of the tortoise seemed proud.

  Lily took it, held it at arm’s length on her palm, and didn’t speak for a full minute. “He never liked this, but he wore it to please me. I bought it for him in New Mexico. I hardly ever bought anything. Jason bought things before I even knew I wanted them.”

  Rachel wondered if Lily had been bored with her life as a hothouse plant. What would that life be like now, with the hothouse suddenly gone? “I think I saw him wearing cuff links like this, too. Was it a set?”

  “Oh yes, the Indians wouldn’t sell just the one piece.”

  “I suppose you still have the cuff links.”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t been able to bring myself to go through his things.”

  Rachel waited for the tears to start again, but they didn’t. “That’s such an interesting tortoise.”

  “Really? Is that a tortoise? I thought it was a turtle. But thank you so much for returning it. Perhaps I can have earrings made. Of the cuff links, I mean. I wouldn’t need three earrings.” Lily gave a weak little laugh and stood up.

  Recognizing her dismissal, Rachel rose, too. Then, feeling loathsome and deceptive, she plunged into the reason for her visit. “I was wondering if you might loan it back to me. Just for a short time.”

  “Really? Whatever for?”

  “I’d like to show it to my father.” The words came as easily as if she had thought it all out.

  “He likes Indian jewelry?”

  “When I was a child, he used to read to me out of a book that had a story about a tortoise and the illustration looked very much like that. I realize you don’t even know me, but.…”

  Lily gave a real smile for the first time. “You would hardly have bothered to return it if you were dishonest. Of course you can borrow it. Jason won’t be needing it, will he? What a dear story. You must borrow the entire set. I’ll find them for you.” Before Rachel could reply, she was climbing the stairs.

  Feeling wickedly pleased with herself, Rachel sank back onto the sofa and waited.

  It didn’t take long. “They were right there on his chest of drawers. I remember now. You aren’t the first to return one of these. That woman he worked with found one in his office. I’ve been so addled, I paid little attention.”

  Rachel stared down at the silvery ovals in her hand. Three perfectly matched tortoises looked back at her. “I’ll return these very soon.”

  “Of course you will. But keep them as long as you like. I’m glad you like them.” Lily’s lower lip began to quiver again. “I just know that Jason would be pleased, too.”

  Rachel rose. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this. And I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  Lily’s tears were flowing again. She moved toward the piano as if it were a magnet, drawing her.

  “You play beautifully. Do you tour? ”

  “I did once,” Lily faltered.

  “Perhaps you would enjoy it again.” Rachel felt she should somehow be encouraging, that life would go on.

  “My parents never forgave me for giving up the concerts,” Lily was saying. “Now, well, Jason would never forgive me.” Gazing at Rachel almost apologetically, she raised her hands over the keys. Then it seemed to dawn on her she was forgetting something and she stood up again. “I’m sorry, I should see you out.”

  “Please, don’t trouble yourself. I can find my way.”

  By the time she had climbed three steps, the rippling notes of Liszt had begun again. Relieved, and a little sad, she closed the door behind her.

  333

  When Rachel got back to the parking garage, Irene was sitting in the glass booth, plump arms planted on the counter, gazing at the street like one of the stone lions that guard public buildings.

  She blinked at Rachel. “Nothing to this job. Not a thing went on aside from four fools who got it into their thick heads this was a public lot. I told them where they could park for free down by the river.”

  Rachel handed her two twenty-dollar bills.

  “For a couple hours just keeping a chair warm?” Irene tried to hand one back. “Best I don’t price myself out of this market, dear girl.”

  Rachel pushed the bill away. “So you owe me a couple more hours.”

  Irene rescued her cart from where it sat, a lost toy in an automotive jungle. Just before she reached the street, she turned and called, “Almost forgot. Two phone calls. Both women. Such a boring life you lead, dear girl. Look on the steno pad.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Rachel opened the pad of paper she kept by the phone. The first entry read only Charlotte, followed by 616-0001. She leaned her chin on her hand. So she had gotten the information on the car. That should be interesting.

  On the second line Alexander Millhouse was neatly printed. She didn’t know anyone named Millhouse, either. A possible client? She had maybe thirty slots left in the garage, and filling half of them would pay the electric bill. With the end of her pen, she dialed the number.

  “Friends of the Earth.” The person who answered sang the name as if it were a psalm.

  “Rachel Chavez,” she said into the receiver. “I have message to call Alexander Millhouse at this number.”

  “You sure you don’t mean Alexandra Miller?”

  “That must be it,” Rachel said, scratching her eyebrow with the end of the pen.

  “Rachel!” Alexandra’s voice was full of energy. “I have good news for you. We
are holding a parade on Earth Day—it’s a Saturday. How many can you park?”

  “On a Saturday? Nine-fifty or so.” A full house on a weekend could bring in ten thousand dollars. “Thanks for thinking of me.”

  “We must have lunch someday soon. I’ll call you.” Alexandra rang off.

  Rachel pushed the button and dialed again.

  “Rachel Chavez. I got a message to call you,” she said when the secretary put her through.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you find out who checked out that car?”

  “Yes,” Charlotte said again and paused. “I need to talk with you.”

  “All right. When?”

  “I’m not sure just now.” Was there a tightness to her voice?

  “Can you tell me who it was?”

  Charlotte hesitated again. “It was checked out to me that day. But I was not the one driving it that afternoon.”

  “Who was?” Jason was killed in the late afternoon.

  “I can’t say just now.”

  “When?” Rachel warned herself not to push too hard.

  “I’ll call you later,” Charlotte said and rang off.

  333

  After work, Rachel sat at her kitchen counter, a fork suspended over a microwaved dinner, trying to sort out the bits and pieces that cluttered her head.

  No question it was Jason’s tie tack she had found wedged under the hood of the DeVille. Which seemed to make it obvious the Caddy—owned by the water agency—had killed Jason.

  And Charlotte knew who was driving it.

  Or did Charlotte only know that she, herself, wasn’t driving it?

  Maybe she had checked the car out, driven it that morning wherever she needed to go, put it back in the garage, and someone else had taken it. Maybe Charlotte wasn’t sure who that someone was but was trying to find out.

  Rachel reached for a bottle of soy sauce and applied it liberally.

  The packet of selenium from Lonnie’s apartment looked like drugs. Apparently it could kill like a drug overdose. The envelope of selenium behind Jason’s executive toilet tank had looked like drugs. The broken packages in the downed airplane had looked like drugs. Two people were already dead, one from an overdose; the other, she was increasingly certain, was murdered.

  Related? Coincidence?

  If there were some new designer drug made with selenium, someone was manufacturing it, and probably not in a laundry tub. Probably in an existing laboratory, by a chemist who did some very lucrative moonlighting. Rachel left her tasteless bowl of vegetables and rice and went to the window.

  Across the street, the InterUrban office complex rose in the waning glow of the sun—a sort of geometric insect, spreading its rectangular wings toward the bordering side streets.

  Lonnie’s connection to InterUrban was minimal, but he did keep an eye on the cars in their motor pool and deliver packages from time to time.

  Jason’s connection to the water agency was obvious.

  As for the plane, well, it had crashed near an InterUrban reservoir. She couldn’t connect the dots better than that. And the line they made was weak.

  But Rachel was becoming more and more certain that under the guise of water quality, one of the best equipped laboratories in the world was producing designer street drugs.

  333

  It was well after midnight when for the third time that night Rachel stepped outside the side pedestrian exit from the garage and listened to the automatic lock click behind her. This outing would be riskier. Much riskier.

  The first time, she had walked over to InterUrban when the cleaning crew arrived. Goldie had agreed that when the crew finished up and left the building, she would leave a matchbook cover wedged over the tongue of the latch at the water agency’s north door.

  At eleven-thirty, a tense phone call had come from Goldie: all the building’s outside doors, except those that opened into the reception area, were fire exits. All were locked to anyone outside, but opened easily with a bar from the inside. A stenciled sign warned anyone leaving that an alarm would sound if the door was opened.

  So Rachel had crossed the street again, and together the two women had canvassed the exits. At the door that led from the cafeteria kitchen to the parking lot, they found the alarm wire held in place by steel staples. But when they traced the wire’s path, it came to an end just above their heads. “We’ve got to test it,” Goldie said.

  Rachel stared through the door’s small diamond-shaped window at the Dumpster just outside, counted to three, and opened the door.

  “Jesus!” Goldie hissed, just above a whisper.

  But no alarm sounded.

  Rachel said, “It was your idea to test it.”

  “I didn’t know you were going to just up and do it without thinking about it.”

  “What’s there to think about?” They stepped outside onto pavement covered with cigarette butts.

  “Kitchen help copping a smoke,” Goldie had concluded. “I’ll bet they kept setting off the alarm, so someone cut the wire.”

  Now, with only a few windows still lit, the building’s front offered an odd lopsided face to the street. The window washer’s platform, a few stories above ground, cut across one cheek like a scar.

  This time, instead of crossing in front of the garage, Rachel turned left, crossed at the corner, and followed Olympic Street until she could see the Dumpster.

  A small cardboard square fluttered to the ground as she opened the door to the kitchen and stepped carefully inside.

  Darkness, broken only by a weak glimmer through the window in the door, engulfed her.

  She switched on her Maglite and moved through the kitchen, then the dining room. The escalator, motionless now, climbed toward a pale light glowing from somewhere above.

  Something about the parallel steel treads on the stationary stairs made her a little queasy and she was glad to leave them behind on first floor, and take normal stairs, reached through a door next to the elevators.

  On the fifth floor, Rachel’s steps faltered when the beam of her flashlight bounced back eerily from the double steel doors that led to the lab. Did they lock those doors at night? She hadn’t thought of that.

  But the one on the right swung open when she pushed against it.

  Inside, the lab was as serene and neat as a church, as if a little disarray might denote a sloppy soul.

  Rachel glanced at her watch: seven minutes since she had crossed the street. This was going to be easy.

  She traced her way along the center aisle, between the rows of counters, to the wall where the storerooms were. The first was unlocked but appeared to contain only two sinks and rows of glassware. The second was not a storeroom at all, but a sort of locker room for staff.

  A rack held fresh lab coats. Most of the narrow metal doors stood ajar, and only one bore a lock. Flicking the flashlight beam along the shelves of the open lockers revealed little more than a worn pair of jogging shoes, a slim book of Shelley’s poems, a dusty King James Bible, and in a far corner on a top shelf, an unopened box of condoms. Like people everywhere, she mused: fitness, sex, religion, and forgotten hope.

  The third room was as it had been when Harry escorted her through the lab: locked. Was this the chemical storeroom?

  But when she opened some of the cabinets above and below the counters, her flashlight revealed dozens of brown-glass bottles, jars, and jugs holding liquids and powders.

  If they didn’t lock up the chemicals, what did they keep under lock and key?

  Rachel leaned against the wall in the dark to think. More than ten minutes gone. The guard probably made rounds, and she had no clue as to his timing.

  Outside, a strong wind was whipping up and she started at the sound of something scraping against glass. It seemed to come from the bank of offices that lined the front of the lab.

  Moonlight streamed through the windows, lending an eerie look to all the tidy desks. The scraping noise was loudest near the office where, a few days ago, she had begu
n her ridiculous performance for Harry Hunsinger.

  The desk there was as bare of papers as a stage set before the play. Was such meticulousness a trait of chemists?

  Whatever the noise was, it had stopped.

  Only the sound of the air conditioning turning on broke the stillness. The rush of air from vents on the floor made the drapery sway. Her eye caught a glitter to the right of the window and her mind flashed an image of Harry reaching behind the drapes for the key to the filing cabinet.

  She could hardly contain her excitement.

  A solitary key hung on a brass cup hook screwed into the molding. She slid it into the lock on the filing cabinet. The lock popped out, the sound exploding the quiet.

  She froze until the galloping of her heart slowed, then slid open a drawer: nothing but ordinary files with neatly typed labels, in hanging folders.

  The second drawer was more of the same. The third held a coffee cup, a package of disposable razors, and a supply of rubber bands. This was the drawer where Harry had locked the package she delivered.

  Returning to the second drawer, she thumbed the files there. Nothing seemed unusual. She went back to the first drawer.

  This time when she opened it, something rattled. She flipped through the folders, then pushed them back and slid her hand beneath them.

  Her fingertips struck a ring of keys.

  She rolled the drawer closed and made her way back to the door that Harry had said led to yet another storage area.

  The first eight keys she tried were either too big or too small.

  The ninth wedged itself in the lock and the entire ring jangled to the floor when she pried it loose. “Damn.” Her foot gave an impatient stamp.

  She began again. This time, the fourth key she tried fit snugly; the lock yielded.

  Her flashlight cast an uneasy, blotchy pattern of heavy shadows and brightness. The room was smaller than the others.

  Looking somehow naked and unaccustomed to light were a couple of boxes of new glassware, a bottle of Dawn dishwashing soap, two packages of clean utility towels held by brown paper bands, a case of paper towels, and half a dozen cardboard boxes.

  Two boxes were still sealed; Niagara Laboratory Supply was stamped on the side. The third held an unintelligible assortment of wires and equipment parts.