Keeping my eyes glued to the mirror, I took the interstate then started working my way back over to the Burbanks’ house. But I saw no sign of the Cadillac. Was this another overreaction?
I found the Burbanks’ gate open again and couldn’t help wondering if they ever closed it. Of course, I was happy to find it open, because I wasn’t sure Mrs. Burbank would open it for me otherwise. I parked and then went to the door. She answered a short time later.
“Oh, it’s you again.” She couldn’t quite keep her nose from turning up as she said the word “you.” “I told you on the phone, Mr. Burbank is at his office.”
If I’m ever married someday and refer to my husband that way, someone needs to smack me.
“Yes, I’ve already been to see him. It’s you I wanted to see.”
“Oh? And why’s that?”
“Well, Mrs. Burbank,” I said, reaching into my pocket, pulling out the new photos of Dillon, and holding them out to her. “You lied to me. That’s a pet peeve of mine.”
“How troublesome for you.”
She was starting to piss me off. It was rich, stuck-up people like her who had caused me to run screaming from my six-figure income and lifestyle a few years back. I didn’t like them then, and I can’t stand them now.
“Actually, it’s going to become troublesome for you if you don’t start telling me the truth.”
She sucked in a breath and put a hand on her chest where it fluttered.
“How dare you!”
“Now, let’s try this again. Do you recognize this woman?”
“I will not stand here and be treated like this in my own home!” She started to back into the house. “I’m calling the police.”
Irritation bubbling over in me, I held the capture paperwork up in my right hand.
“Danielle Dillon is a fugitive. This is a legal document authorizing me to arrest her. It gives me the right to enter and search any premises I think she might be in. She is associated with this address. Your husband confirmed he’s seen her here. That’s more than enough for me to spend the better part of the day tearing apart your house looking for any clue that might lead me to her. And just in case you’re unclear, the police will not help you, because I will not be breaking any laws.”
That isn’t true. The capture paperwork gets me in the door; it doesn’t give me the right to tear anything apart. I can go in and look any place that might reasonably hide a person—nothing more. But this is one of those technicalities I don’t like to burden people with.
Mrs. Burbank’s eyes were big, and her hand was fluttering over her chest like a hummingbird.
“What is against the law is aiding and abetting a fugitive,” I went on. “You’re lying to me, and I can prove it. It looks a lot like you’re lying to protect Danielle Dillon. So when I call the police, they will arrest you.”
I watched Burbank’s hand flutter against her chest for a beat while she processed my threat. It was a gamble, because I’d stretched some truths, but I thought I now had a pretty good read on Virginia Burbank.
“What’s it going to be?” I asked, taking a step forward, as if to enter the house.
“All right!” she said quickly, blocking my path. “All right.”
I stepped back and held Dillon’s photo out to her.
“How do you know this woman?”
“She came around the house a couple times several months ago. I thought she was having an affair with my husband.”
“He said he thought she was working in the house. Why did you think they were having an affair?”
“She’s beautiful. Not in that picture, of course,” she said, looking down her nose at the photo. “She’s all … bruised. But normally she is. And I only ever saw her leaving. My husband had been home each time I saw her.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s all I know.”
“I mean, that’s why you thought she was sleeping with your husband? Because you saw her here?”
Mr. Burbank was right about her not thinking.
“She’s a beautiful young woman. Better men than my husband have fallen prey to the wiles of beautiful, young women.”
I shook my head. “When did you see her?”
“Last summer. May, maybe.”
“What else can you tell me?”
“Nothing. That’s all I know.”
“All right,” I said, putting the photo back into my pocket. “Why did you lie to me the first time?”
“How could I have known what you wanted, why you were asking around about her? For all I knew, she’d gotten pregnant, and you were a private investigator trying to help some lawyer get her a big settlement.”
“So, when I said I was a bond enforcement agent trying to locate Danielle Dillon, you were confused?”
“The card you gave me said Sideline Investigations.”
“And Bail Bonds.”
She just shrugged.
I rolled my eyes and left.
__________
I drove south on Timberline to Horsetooth then cut over to Zeigler and took it south to the McKinnons’ house. When I arrived, the garage door was open and the couple was working in the backyard. Mrs. McKinnon got up from the flowerbed where she was pulling weeds, and Mr. McKinnon stopped the lawnmower and came over. After introductions, I showed him Dillon’s picture.
“I’m wondering if you’ve seen this woman, Mr. McKinnon.”
He looked at the photo then shrugged. “I’m not sure. She looks familiar, but I can’t say why. Honey, you didn’t know her?” He tipped the picture to her.
“No, I—wait,” she said, taking the photo from him. “This isn’t the same picture you showed me. I know this woman.”
“You do?” Mr. McKinnon asked.
“From where?” I asked.
“From the cleaning company. Don’t you remember?” she asked, turning to her husband. “She was the one who never did the bathroom right. I was always complaining.”
He looked at the photo again then nodded. “Yeah, okay. I do remember now. I only saw her once or twice.”
“Which cleaning company was this? House and Home or Clean Sweep?”
I already knew the answer, but I had to hear it from her. No way in hell Amy would hold on to an employee who didn’t clean something so well you could eat off of it, toilets included.
“House and Home.”
“We actually had a lot of problems with them,” Mr. McKinnon added.
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“Well, we fired House and Home last spring,” she said.
“That’s right,” her husband confirmed. “In April.”
I thanked them for their time then left.
I still wanted to see the Burbanks’ housekeeper and gardener, but I made my next stop Martha Porter’s house. If the scene was quiet enough, I wanted to have a quick look around. I wasn’t sure what I would find, but I was still regretting never having a chance to speak to her again. I felt compelled to at least visit her house. Maybe I could garner some insight or inspiration.
I found Grandma’s house free of any lingering police officials and others loitering about. I parked around the block then walked back. I didn’t even bother with the front door. It may have been left unlocked, though that was doubtful, but there was a police crime scene sticker over it, which, if tampered with, would alert the next cop to come by that someone had been inside. Since I didn’t have any gloves and would be leaving prints all over the place, I didn’t want the cops to have any obvious reason to go looking and find I had been in the house. That would unnecessarily complicate a lot of things for both the police and me.
The backyard was small and neat. There was no lawn or patio furniture, no figurines, nothing of a personal nature. I tried the door to the garage and found it locked. Next, I tried the sliding glass door leading off the kitchen. It was unlocked, and there was a broom handle in the track. Charlie bars are an effective, unbeatable way of preventing sliding glass doors from
being forced open, but only if they are mounted on the frame. Broom handles dropped in the track actually aid the break-in process.
I’ve made mention of my troubled past. I did a lot of things I wish I hadn’t. I did a lot of things I’m lucky I never got caught for. A lot of those things, though, taught me lessons that have served me later in life. One of those lessons was how to get the sliding glass door open using a broom handle.
It took me a couple minutes, but I got it open. This, like my lock-picking skill, had suffered since I’d become a law-abiding citizen. I slipped inside then struggled to get the door back in place. Whenever I did this before, I had never bothered with replacing it; I left that to the homeowners or the cops or somebody to do later. Now I better understand the reason for that. It takes for-freaking-ever to get those damn doors back in the track. I was sweating and cussing colorfully by the time I finally succeeded.
Wiping the sweat off my forehead and working my left arm in a circle against the ache in my shoulder, I wandered farther into the kitchen. I froze when I got to the end of the counter separating the dining area from the kitchen. There was blood everywhere. The dark red stains looked horrible and grotesque against the white of the floor, cabinets, and countertops.
After taking a moment to compose myself, I started thinking again. The blood on the countertops and cabinets looked like sprays and splatters. The blood on the floor had drips and several smears, as if from shoes, but there were also large pools. It was obvious where the center of the attack was. Also quite obvious was a square-shaped blank spot in the middle of all the blood. I looked more closely and spotted a perfect circle of white in one pool of blood near one corner of the square. It seemed like it could have come from a chair leg.
I looked behind me at the rectangle table and noticed chairs on each side except the end closest to me. That chair was missing. The legs of the remaining chairs were circular, and, I guessed, exactly the same size as that circular mark in the blood. Whatever had happened to Grandma had happened in the kitchen on a chair. If the blood was any way to judge, I was pretty sure it had been terrible.
I left the kitchen and went from room to room throughout the rest of the house. Each room was neat and tidy; everything had a place and everything was in its place. I found everything to be surprisingly modern. My vision of the homes of the elderly is a collection of heirlooms and hand-me-downs from generations past. Martha Porter didn’t seem to have anything like that. Really, she just didn’t have a lot of stuff—something else the elderly often wind up with. The furniture in each room was minimal, and the personal and decorative items were sparse.
Upstairs, I found her bedroom and a guestroom. Her bedroom appeared to be the most lived-in room in the house. There was a nightgown tucked behind a pillow on the bed, a housecoat draped over the back of the rocking chair in the corner near the closet, and slippers in the bathroom. In the bedside table drawer I found a small photo album. I pulled it out and flipped through it. The photos were entirely of Danielle Dillon, from the ages of about thirteen to eighteen. Mrs. Burbank had been right about one thing: Danielle Dillon was a beautiful woman. I knew this must be true, because she had been a gorgeous girl. As I put the album back, I wondered why there were no photos of Desirae Dillon.
In the guestroom, I found a couple items of clothing hanging in the closet. They appeared to be roughly Danielle Dillon’s size and perhaps five or so years out of fashion. On the floor of the closet I found a trunk. Inside were dozens of trinkets and keepsakes. There were no personal items about the house because they were all stashed in this trunk.
I looked through them, finding more photos of Dillon, though in some of them she was much older, in her twenties. Near the bottom, there was a blue box, about eight-inches square, with a sweet little teddy bear on the top. I lifted it out and peeked inside. There was a stack of photos, all of a dark-haired baby boy. The earliest photos appeared to have been taken at the time of his birth. The latest ones showed a boy of about a year. There was a blackened piece of something in a plastic bag. I was guessing that something to be foreskin. (I can’t understand some of the things people save.) There was also a small lock of dark hair and a baby bracelet from the hospital. The baby’s name was Jonathan Russell Porter. This was Martha Porter’s son.
I replaced everything then went back downstairs. I couldn’t help but stare at the kitchen as I walked through to the door. Who would have wanted to kill Martha Porter? Why would that person prop her up in a chair to do it? Deeply saddened by the fate of my kindred spirit Martha Porter, I let myself out.
13
Before my next stop, I decided to break for lunch. I felt depressed and more than a little discouraged after my visit to Grandma’s house. I drove to Amy’s house to ask her to lunch. I needed a pick-me-up, and I wanted to ask her about the McKinnons. As an added bonus, it was possible she had some cookies left from the bake sale fundraiser.
I’d seen no sign of any silver Cadillacs since leaving the brewery, but as I walked down the sidewalk in front of Grandma’s house, I noticed one parked at the far end of the street. It was too far away to make out the plate, and the windows were so dark I couldn’t even determine if there was anyone inside. But there was. As I pulled into traffic a couple blocks away, I watched in the rearview mirror as the Cadillac stopped at the end of Grandma’s street.
Ellmann’s warning rang in my ear. Being so near the police station anyway, I pulled into the King Soopers shopping center and drove around until I came out on Drake, then I turned right. The Cadillac kept with me, though it stayed way back. Had I not been looking for it, I don’t think I would have spotted it. I turned left into the police station lot and slowed, watching the mirror. Behind me, I saw the Cadillac cruise by. I turned around and left the lot, quickly heading in the opposite direction before the Cadillac could turn around and catch back up. Tail-free, I drove to Amy’s house.
When I arrived, I was glad to see only Amy’s car. I don’t mind Brandon, and sometimes I even think he’s sort of fun, but he gets Amy all to himself pretty much every day. When I come to see Amy, I want her all to myself. In fairness, he’s normally pretty good about this. But not always. And I was glad it wouldn’t even be an issue today.
I let myself in and called for Amy. She didn’t respond, and I heard the water running. I went upstairs and into their bedroom. I smiled to myself as I stepped over articles of Amy’s clothing strewn across the floor. Amy has never been much of a neat freak. Ironic since she is such an outstanding cleaning lady. Brandon is a bit of a neat freak, though, and I know this is a point of contention in their relationship.
I called her name again. This time I heard her answer.
“In here!”
I went into the bathroom and sat on the toilet.
“How long you been in there?” I asked.
“I’m almost finished. How’s it going? Oh!” She stuck her head around the shower curtain. “You didn’t see Priscilla Casimir again, did you?”
“No, fortunately not.”
She shrugged and disappeared behind the curtain again. “Someday you’ll come tell me she developed a horrible flesh-eating rash. Or that she has boils all over her face. It’ll be a glorious day, so I’m content to wait.”
I smiled. “Have I told you recently how much I love you?”
She laughed. “So, what’s going on?’
“I wondered if you’d had lunch yet.”
“You could have just called.”
I told her about my cell phone going to cell phone heaven.
“That’s disgusting,” she said. “And what are the chances of it happening to you twice?”
She twisted off the water, and I pulled her towel off the rack, handing it to her as she pushed the curtain aside. I sat on the toilet, and we chatted while she brushed her teeth and put stuff in her hair. Then I sat on the bed, and we chatted while she got dressed. It was the same thing we’d done since grade school.
“Where do you want to eat?” she asked as
we piled into the truck. “Did you have somewhere in mind?”
“No. Suggestions?”
“Let’s grab a salad. I think I even have a coupon in here.” She pulled her purse onto her lap and started digging. We were halfway there by the time she found it.
Mad Greens on College was pretty crowded since it was lunchtime on a weekend. When we were through the line, we carried our food outside and snagged a table. Amy sat in the sun because she doesn’t burn, and I sat in the shade of the umbrella because I do.
“Did you find your guy yet?” she asked.
“No, that’s on hold for the moment. My time is running out to find Dillon, anyway, and I need some kind of plan to get Dix, the slippery son of a bitch.”
“How’s it coming with Dillon?”
I shrugged and took a drink of water.
“I’m making progress, but I don’t have much hope of finding her by six a.m. tomorrow. Actually, I wanted to ask you a question. One of the addresses I have for Dillon belongs to Linda and David McKinnon. They’re clients of yours.”
“The name sounds familiar. Where do they live?”
I told her and added, “They fired House and Home before they switched to you.”
“Oh, that’s right! How could I forget? I think I’ve only talked to the husband once, but I like the wife, and she’s a great client.”
“Why are they so memorable? Don’t you get a lot of people who switch from House and Home?”
“Quite a few, yes. But Linda sticks in my mind because of what happened with House and Home. She told me she’d had a lot of trouble with the girls doing shoddy work, and she said quite a few things got broken. Then a painting was stolen from their house. I guess it was something small by some French impressionist or something; her husband is quite the art nut, and they do have quite a few collectors’ pieces. They still don’t know who is actually responsible, but she suspects someone on the House and Home staff had a hand in it. House and Home is a national chain, otherwise that lawsuit would have put them out of business.”
Catherine Nelson - Zoe Grey 02 - The Trouble with Theft Page 16
