Scot Free

by Catriona McPherson

  “Be my guest,” said Noleen. “Can you move it without anyone knowing what it is?”

  “It’ll be in something as innocent as a cooler,” Cindy said. “It’ll look like a picnic.”

  Noleen gave her a sickly grin, and I managed one too.

  “It’s okay,” Cindy said. “I know I should be grossed out and it grosses you out that I’m not, but it’s just like being an eye surgeon, you know?”

  It was a good analogy, but when your stomach’s turning somersaults from putrefying raccoons and bluebottles laying eggs on them, thinking about surgeons slicing eyeballs doesn’t really help much. We left her to it, stopping to pick up a t-shirt, and went back to the office.

  Noleen’s face was as grey as her hair when she flumped down into her Barcalounger.

  “What’s going on, Lexy?” she said. “Is it Todd? You understand more about these things than I do. What do you think? Is it Todd and Kathi?”

  “Kathi?”

  “If we look at this video, will we see one of them going into your room with a garbage sack?”

  “I have no idea what would make you think that,” I said.

  “It doesn’t seem too big a leap to me,” said Noleen.

  I knew where she was pointing. Pathological cleanliness and cleptoparasitosis seem so disordered to anyone who doesn’t suffer from them. Why not sprinkle a little Münchausen dust on top and have Kathi douse a bathroom in mysterious ketchup to prove that life is crazy and the world is filthy, like she’s been saying? Why not have Todd lure a thousand bluebottles with a dead raccoon, and a million Anoplura with whatever nasty little treat they’d been lured by? I took a deep breath and prepared to explain why it couldn’t happen in a hundred years and I was personally willing to guarantee that it hadn’t happened here.

  “I know you argue about dirt,” I said. “And I know Todd and Roger argue about bugs, and it must seem as if they’ve won a round with all this happening. But the thing is, their problems are their problems—all the time, twenty-four-seven, whether you’re arguing or not, whether you’re there or not. They could no more do those things than you could … what? I know you don’t have a pathology like Kathi, but there must be something you hate. Cotton wool, nails on blackboards?”

  “Worms,” said Noleen. “Bait worms. I used to have to bait my daddy’s fishing line, sitting in that little boat, heaving up and down on the swell, sick as a dog. It’s one of the house rules here: no bait in the rooms. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t have you pegged as the fishing sort, but if I see a man in the right kind of hat, I tell him straight away.”

  “Okay,” I said, “so worms. You wouldn’t go and get a bucket of them just to win an argument, would you?”

  Noleen shuddered. “I need a drink,” she said. She leaned over sideways and got a bottle of Jack Daniels and two glasses out of a low drawer. She held it up to me enquiringly.

  Now I shuddered. “Whisky is my worms,” I said. “First time I ever got drunk was on whisky at a school disco. I’ll never forget it and I’ve never drunk it again. I’d die for a cup of tea, though.”

  I did my best with the microwave, Lipton’s, and powdered creamer while Noleen found the file we needed from the security camera.

  “Funny how we still say ‘tape’ when it’s not even a disc anymore,” I said, settling down beside her. “Okay, you’re in charge. You’ll know who belongs and who doesn’t.”

  God, it was dull. We sat there looking at a grainy picture of a car park, a fence, half a dumpster, and the bottom of a metal stairway. The most excitement was when I left, then when Todd left, then when three sets of tourists left. And that was exactly as exciting as it sounds.

  Kathi crossed the frame a few times, once going upstairs wiping the banister rail with her cloth and once coming down, wiping the underneath of the banister rail with a different cloth. Then nothing. A blue jay sat on the dumpster lid for a while but flew off again.

  “Aren’t these usually motion-sensitive?” I asked.

  “The expensive ones are,” Noleen said. “This just loops. And the loop’s going to run out pretty soon. We’re at lunchtime already.”

  We sat, stupefied—her by whisky and me by the truly godawful cup of tea—and kept watching. I started glancing at the little sideyways egg-timer that showed how much tape was left to play. It was getting tight.

  “If it runs out, we can always ask around the other rooms,” I said.

  Noleen shook her head firmly. “I’m trying to run a business here,” she said. “How would you feel about a place where you were asked if you’d seen strangers running around with bloated animal corpses? Would you book for same time next year?”

  “I’ll make something up,” I said. “I’ll say … ” I stared up at the ceiling, hoping for inspiration.

  “That you’d ordered take-out and they swore they’d delivered and charged your credit card, so they must have gone to the wrong room?”

  “Kind of a big take-out order,” I said. I looked back at the monitor but Noleen was rewinding, the screen a Missoni scramble. “Have you seen something?”

  “Watch,” she said grimly.

  The grainy car park, fence, half-dumpster, and stair-bottom sat there for a moment or two and then from the right we saw a small figure with a logo on the back of his striped shirt that matched the logo on the front of his baseball cap and the logo on the top one of five pizza boxes he carried. He bustled to the bottom of the stairs and took them two at a time without pausing or raising his head.

  “That’s a lot of pizza,” I said.

  “That’s five fake pizza boxes with a dead raccoon inside,” said Noleen firmly. “I know every pizza joint in Cuento, and that ain’t any of them.”

  “Did you recognise the guy?” I said.

  “Sure I did. He’s the guy small enough to fit through the bathroom window and he’s a pro. I recognize that much.”

  “How do you know he’s a pro?”

  Noleen rewound the tape again and this time, as she let it play, she hunched forward and pointed to the clues. “He knows where the camera is. Look at the angle of his hat! And then when he turns at the bottom of the stairs, he twists his head away. He’s not looking where he’s putting his feet and he’s not looking up at where he’s going. He knows where he’s going, because he scoped it out. He’s done this plenty.” She sat back. “Now let’s wait for him coming back down.”

  It was only five minutes later, right at the end of the loop. With his head bowed even lower and the cap pulled down like a Fedora, he came skipping down the stairs and, face turned away, he disappeared from view. And he was still carrying the boxes.

  “But they look lighter,” Noleen said. “They look one big-ass decomposing raccoon lighter to me. How ‘bout you?”

  “Why didn’t he take the boxes out the window?”

  “Huh,” said Noleen. “Would they fit?”

  “Oh, right. No. Or not without folding them.”

  “And they tell you not to do that at pizza-delivering school, don’t they?”

  “Play it again,” I said. “I know we can’t see his face but let’s look at his ears and hands and feet. There must be something somewhere.”

  Noleen gave me a look. “You think we’re going to zoom in and see his irises reflected in the shine on the pizza label?” she said. “I couldn’t afford motion sensors, Lexy; this is not high-def.”

  “Just humour me,” I said. “I’ll look at the head and you look at the outline. Look at the walk. See if this is anyone you’ve ever seen before.”

  “Me?”

  “You. Because this is a vendetta, Nolly,” I said. “This is no prank. This is a message. And it’s your motel. Who else are they sending it to?”

  “Todd? It’s bugs, isn’t it?”

  “Or Kathi?” I said. “Because it’s not the height of hygiene.”

&n
bsp; “But if it was Kathi, it would be in the laundromat. And if it was Todd it would be in his room or in his car. Wouldn’t it?”

  “How would they get in? Mind you, how did he get in?”

  “Like I said, he’s a pro.”

  We stared at one another for a bit. And then Noleen smacked her hands together and said we had nothing to lose from trying. She played the footage five more times. I saw that the guy had no visible tattoos, jewelry, piercings, bruises, scars, or unusual brand of cigarette tucked handily behind his ear.

  “Well?” I said to Noleen, when she froze the frame for the last time. “What’s your gut reaction?”

  “Never seen him before in my life,” Noleen said.

  “Describe him in three words.”

  “Pizza. Delivery. Guy.”

  I sighed. “Time to call the cops,” I said. I didn’t add that I had offended the formerly friendly Detective Mike. I’d fade away in the background and hope that if she didn’t see me, I wouldn’t occur to her.

  But Noleen wasn’t having it. “You’ve got to be kidding,” she said. “They would shut us down in a hot minute. And even if they didn’t, the report in the Voyager would do it for them.”

  And it was while we were sitting there, clueless, that Kathi suddenly spoke behind us.

  “What the hell’s he doing here?” she said. When I spun round she was staring at the monitor screen with angry blots of colour rising up from the open neck of her overall towards her jaw.

  “You know this guy?” said Noleen.

  Kathi came forward and peered closer at the screen. Then she straightened up and laughed. “Jeez, flashback!” she said. “He looks like someone I used to know. But it’s not him. No way the guy I’m thinking of would be delivering pizzas.”

  “Kathi,” I said, “who did you think it was? It’s really important.”

  “Why?” said Kathi, looking from one to the other of us. “What’s happened?”

  “Nothing,” said Noleen.

  “Oh sure, it looks like nothing. You drinking in the daytime and watching the security feed.”

  “Okay,” I said. I held out a hand to quell Noleen before she could stop me. “It’s not nothing. He broke into my room and left a dead raccoon in the bath.”

  Kathi looked over her shoulder and up towards where my room sat, as if she had X-ray eyes. “How dead?” she said. “Decomposing? Sloughing off on the floor and seeping down the cracks in the tile?”

  “In the tub,” I said. “Right in the tub.”

  “Hey, hey, hey,” came a voice from the front office. It was Todd. He appeared with a cardboard tray of coffee cups. “I took a chance and here you all are,” he said. “Thank you, universe! Lexy, your large English breakfast tea, with whole milk. Triple latte, Nolly. Kathi, a salted caramel iced macchiato with extra sprinkles and a shot of insulin. And for moi … What is it?”

  “Someone put a dead raccoon in Lexy’s bath,” Kathi said.

  “How dead?” said Todd. “Dead enough to attract egg-layers? Because those larvae hatch quick.” He put the tray down and went to stand beside Kathi.

  Noleen gave me a look that spoke. It was your bright idea to share the news, the look said, it’s your problem to contain it, sweet cheeks.

  “Not very dead at all,” I said. “Fresh, fresh, fresh. Practically still alive. No decomposing, no egg-laying, and definitely no sloughing. And it’s gone.”

  Then Cindy joined us and ruined it all.

  “I got most of the bluebottles and almost all of the putrefying host material,” she said. “Just one tiny spill and not on the carpet.”

  Todd and Kathi shrank back against the filing cabinet, faces white and eyes wide.

  “Great,” I said. “Cindy, this is Todd, who suffers from cleptoparasitosis, and Kathi, who suffers from severe germaphobia. They both live here.” You clueless freak, I chose not to say.

  Cindy nodded slowly a few times. When she opened her mouth to speak I cast my eyes about, wondering whether to ring a fire alarm to drown out the sound or just hit her with the whisky bottle. But she surprised me.

  “I’m afraid of kneecaps,” she said. “Genuphobia. I’m truly sorry to have caused you distress.”

  “Is that why you went into entomology?” said Kathi. It seemed a silly question to me, but what did I know?

  “It took me into the sciences, certainly,” Cindy said.

  I blinked. Nothing, that’s what I knew.

  “Everyone has to wear long pants in the lab and in the field. It’s the only way I can live in a warm climate. I take my vacations in the Dakotas. In February. Again, I’m very sorry.”

  It was a moment of peace and fellow-feeling, like a little oasis in the middle of chaos.

  “Excuse me,” said Todd, wrecking it. “I happen to have had a run of bad luck with infestations, but I don’t suffer from anything except being married to a dork.”

  “And I happen to like things tidy,” said Kathi. “I’m a psychobabble-phobe, but that’s all.”

  “Let me make it up to you both,” I said. “Come to the pet shop with me and help me choose fish for Diego, then I’ll take you for ice cream.”

  “But not Pet Planet out at the strip mall,” said Todd, “because those filthy freaks have stick insects. In a pet store!”

  “And let’s go in my car,” said Kathi. “No offence, Todd, but your Jeep hasn’t been cleaned for days.”

  I thought of the pristine Jeep—which was still sitting at the police station, damn it!—and had to bite my tongue down on a torrent of scorn, but I managed to say only, “See you out front in five.”

  Seventeen

  Is it okay to leave the launderette unattended?” I asked as I buckled myself into the back seat of Kathi’s SUV and sank back waiting for the a/c to kick in.

  “It’s self-serve,” Kathi said. “And there’s a drop-off for the dry cleaning. You’d know if you’d been in there.” I wasn’t sure if she was chiding me for being slovenly about washing my clothes or just for being unfriendly and not dropping in to chat. I caught her eye in the side mirror and couldn’t get any clues. She was hard to read. Hard to warm to. Fierce as Noleen was, I felt closer to her after our few action-packed days than I did to this enigmatic woman who was staring back at me.

  I smiled at her and she snapped her eyes away.

  “So,” said Todd, “you’ve got a new job, huh?”

  It wasn’t until he twisted round in his seat that I realized he was talking to me.

  “What? I’m on my way to the airport as soon as I’m finished with Mizz Visalia,” I said. “Where’d you hear I’d got a job?”

  “You said you were at an interview and you’d excused yourself to go to the bathroom,” Todd said, speaking a bit too loud. “You said the company was community-minded with great benefits. Have you ever considered an MRI, Lexy? Just to be on the safe side?”

  “Oh that! I was listening to Mizz Visalia’s summary of her late husband’s business practices,” I said. “Have you ever considered reality as a location, Todd?”

  “Some therapist you are,” he said.

  “You declined my services,” I reminded him.

  “Don’t make me pull over,” said Kathi, and we both laughed.

  “So was it one of his employees who killed him?” Todd said. “In spite of him being such a great boss?”

  “I have no idea who killed him,” I said. “And I’ll tell you this for nothing: it doesn’t look good for Mizz Vi. She was his wife and she inherits. She’s got an alibi, but it doesn’t clear her because they think it was done on a tim—I mean, remotely. And he was cheating on her. But then it doesn’t look good for his girlfriend either. Barb Truman. Because he was getting ready to dump her. But she swears she didn’t know that. And she’s got an alibi too. But it’s not a good one. She was sitting alone in a busy airport but she ha
dn’t checked in for her flight or gone through security. But she was wearing quite distinctive clothes. And speaking of flights, Clovis’s niece got here from Texas licketier-splitlier than seems reasonable. And she’s been acting dead weird ever since she arrived. And she’s just married his arch rival and they’re plotting to run down Clovis’s business until the Dolshikovs control everything, coast-to-coast. Which sounds mad, but she has brought two Dolshikov cousins with her for no apparent reason and these guys could walk on as Henchman 1 and Henchman 2 without make-up. But then maybe she’s not plotting against the business at all and it’s just that the firework factory foreman made it sound as if she was and freaked everyone out. And that might be because he was trying to point to her to mask his own guilt. But it might just be because he’s got a problem with powerful women. Or maybe just women in general. And Mizz Vi just keeps on and on about going back to Sicily, despite a blood feud back in the old country with some people called Poggio.”

  I paused, pretty impressed with myself for the clarity of my roundup. I waited, but neither Kathi nor Todd said anything.

  “I suppose I just need to leave it up to the cops to straighten it out. They’ve taken a wheen of stuff out of her safe: his will and plane tickets and house deeds. Between those three things they could clean the whole thing right up. Because if the plane tickets are for the Caymans, Barb’s in the clear. If the will leaves the whole shebang to Visalia, Serpentina’s good. And if the house deed is for Sicily, then Mizz Vi can breathe easy. It’s frustrating, because I know there’s a receipt in the safe in her bedroom that would reveal all, but she’s forgotten the combo. Poor old soul. So. Let the cops do their job and I’ll do mine, I suppose.”

  I paused again. Still, they said nothing.

  “Not that I’m the biggest fan of the cops.”

  Nothing.

  “By any means.”

  I leaned forward and looked at Todd. “I was a bit of a plank to Roger, actually. I don’t know if he told you. Acted like a proper straight white doofus. I need to say sorry.”

  “I was born in Cuento,” said Todd. “Did I tell you that?”