Murder Likes It Hot

by Tracy Weber

  “I’m connected with Teen Path HOME, too,” Rene said. “My husband and I founded the technology program. I’m here to evaluate whether or not your stepdaughter still meets our scholarship requirements.”

  “Scholarship? You mean you’re giving the little tart money?”

  “We’re considering it. Rainbow has shown promise, but I understand she’s had some trouble recently. None of the youth we work with are completely free of challenges, of course, but this seems to be of a more serious nature.” Rene pulled a hundred-dollar bill out of her wallet and held it up where Dean could see it. “We’d be willing to pay for your time.”

  Dean nudged the door open and stepped through it. “The house is a mess. I’ll answer your questions out here.”

  “We’d rather come inside where the conversation will be more private,” Rene replied. “We’d also like to speak with the child’s mother.”

  “My wife’s not here.”

  “We can wait.” Rene’s eyes widened in coquettish innocence, but the smile she flashed was predatory. The lashes of a kitten, the fangs of an alley cat.

  Dean’s knuckles whitened on the doorknob. “You’ll be waiting a very long time.”

  We stood on the doorstep in silence, Rene and I staring at Dean, Dean at the C-note. After several seconds, Rene pulled out her billfold and opened it. She slowly slid the money back inside.

  Dean released his hold on the door and backed away. “Fine. You win. We’ll talk inside.”

  He led us to a small, threadbare living room cluttered with pizza boxes, beer bottles, and a thick layer of dust. The scent of his body odor diminished, replaced by cigarette smoke and mildew. “Excuse the mess. My wife hasn’t been home to clean for a while.”

  He picked up a pile of mail stacked on the couch and tossed it onto an end table. He gestured for us to sit, then crossed his arms and leaned against a worn leather recliner. “So tell me again. Exactly why are the two of you here?”

  “Before we launch into all of that, would you mind getting me a glass of water?” Rene asked. “I’m parched.”

  “My dishes are all dirty.”

  Rene stared at him, expression deadpan. “Well then, I guess you’ll have to wash some.”

  Dean scowled at me. “I suppose you’re thirsty, too.”

  “Yes, water for both of us, please,” Rene replied. “And ice would be lovely.” I halfway expected her to add a lemon slice to the order, but she simply flashed that predatory grin again.

  As Dean disappeared into the kitchen, I leaned toward her and whispered, “What are you up to?”

  “Snooping,” she whispered back. “Are you going to sit there like a doofus or join me?”

  I chose option two. While Rene thumbed through the mail on the end table, I wandered around the living room and tried to absorb the space’s energy. I was surprised, and not completely in a bad way. The room hadn’t seen a dust rag in months, but before that, someone had lightened it with personal touches. Colorful throw pillows decorated the threadbare couch, and half-burned candles sat inside the nonfunctioning fireplace. Photographs of Rainbow and her mother in younger, happier days dotted the walls. The two played in parks, posed with Santa Claus, and visited the Point Defiance Zoo. In spite of her mother’s addictions, Rainbow had been loved, at least at one time. But as the years passed, the photos grew less frequent, and the mother aged at three times the rate of her child. Her hair grew coarser; her skin more sallow, her smiles less frequent. Rainbow was about ten in the most recent photo, which meant that April must have been in her mid to late twenties. Crow’s feet and sagging skin made her look at least forty. After that, the photos stopped. Either no one took them anymore, or they were too dismal to display.

  I heard the telltale sound of ice plunking in water and scooted back to the couch. Rene opened her bag and dropped something inside it. Had she found something in the mail pile? Before I could ask her, Dean returned, balancing two opaque, lime-green glasses and a bottle of beer.

  He handed one of the glasses to Rene. “Here’s your water.” He pointed with his chin toward her purse, and she tensed. “If you don’t want to bathe in it, that hundred dollars you promised me had better start finding its way from your wallet to mine.”

  Rene’s tension melted into a placid smile, but she didn’t reply. She took a tiny sip of water, then set her glass on the end table. I abstained, dreading the inevitable aftertaste of cheap plastic.

  “And while you’re at it,” Dean continued, “it’s time you told me why you’re really here. And drop the scholarship nonsense. A real school wouldn’t bribe me to get information.”

  “Like I told you outside,” I said, “I want to find Rainbow.”

  He took a deep pull from the bottle. “Join the party. So do the police. She’s gotten herself into real trouble this time.” He ran his fingers through his crew cut. Large dandruff flakes snowed to the carpet. “Rayne’s a runaway. What makes you think I know where she is?”

  “You found her once.”

  “You mean the other day at that soup kitchen? That was a fluke. I found a photo she posted online. Rayne’s a devious little troublemaker, but she’s smart. She won’t make that mistake again. You still haven’t told me why you want to find her.”

  “Like you said, the police are looking for her,” I replied. “I have a friend—an attorney—who might be able to help her, but we have to find her first.”

  Dean gestured around the small, dingy living room. “Take a look at this place. Do I look like I can afford some fancy attorney?”

  “My friend sometimes takes pro bono cases.”

  “Well, la de da for him. Some of us have bills to pay.” He whisked his hand through the air. “Doesn’t matter. I already told you: I have no idea where the little she-devil’s gone off to this time. Stumbling across that photo was a fluke. I’d been looking for her for over a week before I found that.”

  My indignation went up several notches, taking my vocal volume with it. “You’d only been looking for Rainbow for a week? She’s sixteen and she ran away months ago! Why on earth did you wait so long?”

  Dean’s fists clenched. “Is that a question or an accusation?”

  Rene leaned forward, expression locked in one-hundred-percent charm mode. “Sorry, Kate can be a little abrupt sometimes. What she means is, did something happen that made finding your stepdaughter more urgent?”

  Dean’s fists relaxed, but his jaw remained tense. “My wife came home, that’s what happened. April showed up here on Halloween, finally sober, and she was pissed as hell that the little brat wasn’t here waiting for her.” His eyes flicked toward the ceiling. “I’ll tell you the same thing I told her: If she’d stayed home for a change, she could have taken care of her own progeny. I didn’t sign up for this shit.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Your wife was home on Halloween? I thought she’d been gone for months.”

  “Except for that one day, she has been.”

  I frowned.

  “Look, April’s a partier. I knew that when we got married, but it’s gotten worse. A few drinks, I can understand. A joint or two, fine. I don’t like it, but fine. But she moved on to coke. Then it was heroin. I told her loud and clear: I will not allow that poison in my house. If I find it, it goes straight down the toilet. So when she wants to shoot up, she takes off.”

  “You don’t stop her?” Rene asked.

  “How am I supposed to do that? April’s not my prisoner. Neither is Rayne, for that matter. You can judge me all you want, but I’m not a bad guy. When the kid took off, I thought she’d gone to stay with her mom. When April finally sobered up and came back alone, I realized I was wrong, so I started looking for her. I found her at that soup kitchen.” He shrugged. “Not that anyone appreciated it. April took off again before I even found Rayne, and the brat refused to come home.”

  “Can’
t you report her missing?” I asked.

  “Who?” he snorted. “The kid or her mother?”

  “Both, actually.”

  “What good would it do? The police already know about Rayne. As for my wife, I called the cops the first time she took off, and they didn’t do crap. Evidently it’s not against the law for an adult to leave home. And what would they do if they found her? Throw her in the drunk tank? Try to force her into rehab? Been there, done that. It always ends the same.” He pantomimed shooting up in the crook of his elbow. “Believe me, April will come crawling back when she runs out of money. She always does.”

  I didn’t buy Dean’s story, at least not all of it. He was hiding something. Rene’s expression told me that she thought so, too.

  “I’m not so sure I believe you,” I said. “If I came home and found out that my daughter was gone, I’d sure as heck try to find her. Addiction or not, I wouldn’t disappear again. Not if I had any choice in the matter.”

  Dean smirked. “I don’t give a rat’s ass what you believe. And if you think heroin addicts care about anyone but themselves, you haven’t spent any time with one.”

  “You’re right. I haven’t. But I’ve met a few battered women.”

  Dean flinched as if he’d been slapped. “Battered? What are you talking about?” He paused, then his eyes widened. “Oh, I get it. The little troublemaker told you that I slapped her mother around.”

  “Did you?” I asked.

  “Of course not. Rayne’s pulling your chain. She’s a blue-eyed, angel-faced con artist, almost as good at manipulating people as her mother.”

  He thunked his beer bottle next to Rene’s glass on the end table. “You want the truth about why Rayne took off? Fine. Here’s the truth. That girl’s nothing but trouble. Always has been. Sneaks out every night doing god knows what. After April took off this last time, I put my foot down. I told Rayne that her partying days were over. She had to be home no later than eleven on school nights and stop sneaking out after I went to bed. I even took the lock off her door and started checking her room every few hours to make sure she was home.”

  Unease churned deep in my belly. Rainbow said she’d caught her stepfather staring at her while she was sleeping. She’d hinted that physical abuse was about to turn sexual. Was that the truth or a terrible misunderstanding … or was it a lie told to deliberately deceive? Dean claimed that Rainbow was a master manipulator. Had she manipulated me?

  “The night before she took off, we had an argument.” Dean’s voice grew firm. “I finally told her, if you live in my house, you play by my rules. If you don’t like it, you can leave.” He shook his head, almost sadly. “I honestly didn’t think she’d call my bluff.”

  He stood and took the glass from my hands. “It doesn’t matter anymore. Rayne chose her path. Now she has to walk it.” He turned to Rene. “I’ve already given you more time than I wanted to. Give me my money and get on your way.”

  “We will,” I replied. “But before we go, I’d like to look around in Rainbow’s room.”

  “Why?”

  “In case there’s something inside that will help us find her.”

  “There’s nothing there. I already looked.”

  Rene lowered her eyes to her purse, then lifted them back to Dean’s face. She arched her eyebrows, implicitly asking, Do you want it or not?

  Dean sighed. “Fine. It’s a waste of your time, but fine.” He strode down the hall and gestured to a closed door on the right. “Have a party.” He marched back toward the living room without following us inside.

  “What a sweetheart,” Rene whispered.

  “You were right. He’s a real charmer.” I pushed open the door, flipped on the light, and froze.

  Rene almost collided with my back. “Kate, what’s wrong?”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them again. “Nothing. Sorry. It’s just, I know this room.”

  This was the bedroom depicted on the right side of Rainbow’s missing drawing, Another Life. The baby blue curtains had faded to gray, and the princess bedspread had been replaced with a solid blue comforter, but everything else was unmistakably familiar.

  I wandered around the small space, searching for traces of the violence Rainbow had portrayed on the left side of her drawing. There were none. No beheaded teddy bears, no bloodstained bedspreads, no signs of decay. The only hints of trauma were the drawings taped to the walls—desolate, photograph-quality charcoals of cocaine addicts, discarded needles, and shredded, blood-soaked toys. Each work had Rainbow’s unique style but was signed with overlapping capital R’s. For Rayne Rhodes, I assumed.

  “Did Rainbow draw these?” Rene asked.

  “Yes. I recognize the style.”

  “I’m impressed. And terrified. She’s got talent, but … ”

  “I know. It’s pretty dark stuff.”

  Rene pointed to a sketch taped above the bed. “What’s up with that one?”

  Honestly, I couldn’t answer. The drawing was of a house, or at least what was left of it. The two-story structure was half submerged in an ocean of quicksand. The top half of a For Sale sign peeked above the surface. The windows were boarded over. The dark green siding was cracked and covered with mildew. The drawing was titled Refuge.

  “That’s not this place, is it?” Rene asked.

  “Wrong color. The architecture is wrong, too. A friend’s house, maybe?”

  Rene stared over my shoulder, then stepped away. “She probably made it up.”

  I continued staring at the drawing. I couldn’t know for sure, but I suspected this was a place Rainbow knew well. She clearly borrowed from her life when she drew. From where had she borrowed this? And why?

  Rene interrupted my thoughts. “I’ll say this for the kid, she’s smart.” She gestured to a collection of books piled on the room’s wooden desk. College-level texts on biology and calculus, an ancient copy of Merck’s Veterinary Manual, a hardcover book titled Canine Rehabilitation and Physical Therapy. No angst-filled dystopian novels. No teenage romances with bare-chested men on the covers either. No high school yearbook. No diary. No address book. Nothing that could lead us to Rainbow or anyone who knew her.

  We searched her closet, rummaged through drawers, sorted through papers in the garbage can, and slid our hands between the bed’s mattress and box spring. If Rainbow had left any clues in this room, she’d either hidden them thoroughly or her stepfather had already confiscated them.

  Dean’s voice came from the hallway. “Told you there wasn’t anything interesting in there. Happy?”

  “No,” I said honestly. “I’m not happy at all.” The more I learned about my new teenage friend, the more confused I became. I pointed at the drawing of the house. “Does that mean anything to you?”

  He hesitated. “No. Should it?”

  “She titled it ‘Refuge.’ I thought it might be a friend’s house or a place from her past. Some place she might go if she was in trouble.”

  “I don’t think so, Kate,” Rene said. “It doesn’t look like a place you’d go to feel safe.”

  “You never know with this kid.” Dean tapped an index finger against his temple. “She’s not right in the head. I told April that Rayne needed help, but she refused to see it.” He gestured at the rest of the artwork. “Does that look like the work of a well-adjusted teenager?”

  “Probably not,” I admitted.

  He leaned against the door jamb. “I told you, there’s nothing here. No matter what lies Rayne told you, I’m not a monster. If there was an easy way to find the kid, I’d have done it already.”

  Rene placed her palm on my arm. “Come on, Kate. Let’s go. There’s nothing here that can help us.” She handed Dean the money she’d promised him. “Before we go, can I use your restroom?”

  He shrugged. “It’s down the hall to your left.”

  Dean an
d I loitered by the front door while Rene powdered her nose. When she re-emerged from the restroom, she had a surprisingly triumphant look on her face. “We’ll get out of your hair now. Let me grab that water glass and put it back in the kitchen.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Dean said.

  “Thanks, but I’m thirsty.” She picked up the glass and, in an uncharacteristic moment of clumsiness, dropped it. Water splashed across the mail and poured onto the carpet.

  “Oh my gosh!” Rene exclaimed. “I’m so sorry. Get me a towel, quick!”

  Dean jogged to the kitchen. Rene pulled an envelope out of her bag, presumably the one she’d swiped earlier. She slid it in the middle of the mail pile and winked at me. “I can be such a klutz sometimes.”

  Dean arrived back at the table and handed Rene a worn terry towel. She blotted the wet carpet and papers, tossed several half-melted ice cubes into the glass, and handed it to Dean. The towel came away gray. “I’m sorry about the mess.”

  She pulled a business card out of her billfold. “We’ll get out of your hair now. That has my business number. If Rainbow or her mother show up again, call it. There’s another hundred dollars in it for you.”

  Dean took the card from Rene but he spoke to me. “Can you really get Rayne a good attorney for free?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then if I learn anything, I’ll call. I meant what I said before. I’m not the monster Rayne made me out to be.”

  Halfway down the sidewalk, Rene whispered, “Drive a few blocks then find someplace inconspicuous to park. I have something to show you.”

  She pulled a bottle of hand sanitizer out of her purse and rubbed her palms vigorously together, removing all germs and the top layer of skin in the process. “If I didn’t get hepatitis from that water glass, I for sure got MRSA in the bathroom. No one’s cleaned that toilet in months.”

  “What was the water-spilling charade about?”

  “I’ll show you once we’re parked.”