The Stiff and the Dead

by Lori Avocato

  My fear of getting caught breaking and entering was nullified as I kept telling myself that Jagger might be FBI or a cop or whatever. He did have Lieutenant Shatley on his side. He’d never arrest us. As Jagger jimmied a lock on the backdoor and managed to open it without a sound, I told myself that Lieutenant Shatley had probably said, “Sure. Go take a peek at Leo Pasinski’s house. No problem, my friend Jagger.”

  Jagger didn’t turn on his flashlight but took my arm and guided me into the darkened hallway, where he fiddled with the burglar alarm on the wall as it made a little beep-beep sound. I hoped he was shutting it off. I surmised he didn’t know the code, but also figured Jagger knew how to get around something like that.

  The night was about to begin.

  I soon stood in the kitchen still marveling that Jagger was so smooth. So knowledgeable. So adept. Adept at breaking and entering without a trace. That shouldn’t be a good thing, but in our business it sure as hell helped.

  He leaned close to me. “Don’t try this on your own.”

  I should have been insulted, but he was right. I could just imagine the cop’s lights and them calling on a bullhorn for me to come out with my hands up, and Goldie and Miles crying in the parking lot while my mother yelled at the police all the while serving sandwiches made of leftovers. My heart started to beat a bit faster. Then I looked at Jagger’s silhouette. He still hadn’t put the flashlight on.

  My heart slowed.

  “What makes you think I couldn’t do this on my own?”

  In the dim lighting, his eyes sparkled as he grinned.

  “Bite me,” I muttered.

  I turned to look around the kitchen. It was even eerier than Mr. Wisnowski’s house, since dishes still sat in the sink. The timer must have been set on the Mr. Coffee machine, because it had made a pot and turned itself off. How sad. Leo left for work one day and never came back—but the coffee got made.

  A sad life indeed.

  Jagger took my arm and led me down the hallway and up a circular staircase. “Investigators are not above the law, Sherlock.”

  I knew that was a warning. And a damn sensible one at that. But I also knew that doing something like this with Jagger, although illegal, could only be a good thing. He really was trying to teach me the business, but his needing my help meant we did things his way—not the way I’d be doing them by myself.

  I didn’t even own a gun.

  Jagger, however, did. Probably more than one.

  We walked into a giant room with glass walls overlooking the water. In the center of the room was a circular bed, covered in a black silken bedspread with white pillow shams and a mirror above.

  I felt my face grow hot and hoped Jagger hadn’t noticed the mirror.

  Jagger not notice something, and I did. What a joke.

  “Swinger Leo,” he mumbled.

  I forced a laugh. It was truly embarrassing, talking sex to Jagger even if in the line of duty. He opened drawer after drawer. Having no clue as to what to look for, I turned around. And gasped.

  In the corner of the room was a huge porcelain tiger standing on its hind legs. Bigger than Jagger’s six plus feet.

  Jagger’s hand grabbed mine. “It won’t eat you, Sherlock. Try to keep the hysterics down.”

  “Hysterics!” I yelled hysterically. Then I decided to take a few deep breaths.

  I didn’t need to look back to know he was shaking his head. “Stop doing that.” I walked toward the tiger. “This one’s face looks like the one Goldie has on his sparkly shirt. Did I ever tell you that the tiger’s eye on Goldie’s shirt is a mini video camera?”

  I felt Jagger close behind me. His flashlight clicked on, aiming at the tiger. “You don’t say.”

  “I do say. It was funny. One day he took a video of me with his shirt. Well not the shirt per say. The eye of the tiger was a big gem that popped out. Well, the eye was a camera, not a real gem. It’s amazing what technology can do nowadays.”

  “That a girl, Sherlock.”

  I turned around, but Jagger eased past me, still shining the light on the tiger. Its eyes, actually. He reached up and touched the left one. Nothing.

  “Oh, my! You don’t think . . . Do you think the eye . . . ? Naw. That’d be way too coincidental . . . . Do you really, Jagger, think—”

  Before I could finish my nervous rambling, Jagger touched the right eye. The silence in the room was deafening. Then there was a pop. I looked down to see the “eye” in Jagger’s hand.

  And behind us a wall safe’s door flew open.

  Jagger leaned over and whispered in my ear, “We’ve never been here.”

  Again with the warning as if I was going to call the Associated Press to tell them we broke in to a dead man’s house.

  “What do you think is in the safe?”

  He looked at me.

  “Okay. So we should go look to find out.” I was beginning to think Jagger just liked looking at me. At least I told myself that foolishness in order to save face.

  I followed him to the safe. He kept the flashlight on now.

  “Jesus. Look at this.”

  I leaned closer. Momentarily, I couldn’t comprehend what I was looking at.

  “What . . . what is it?” I managed to ask as if I’d never spoken the English language before.

  The flashlight remained aimed inside the safe. “Leo had quite the business here. There is a downside to being a nerdy perfectionist though.”

  “Like what?”

  “The fool has notes here, spelling out his entire scheme. Even graphs of revenue and sales. What a shit.”

  Hildy.

  That made me think of Hildy.

  “Is anyone’s name . . . on anything?” Please, not Hildy’s.

  Jagger went about taking pictures of everything. This time he had a tiny camera that looked like a tiny camera. “Hildy’s name is not on anything, Pauline.” He took the papers, spread them on the bed and clicked away.

  I stood in a huff for a few seconds. “I was thinking about Sophie. Sophie Jones.”

  Without looking up, Jagger muttered, “Banko. Sophie Banko.”

  And Hildy Jones.

  I couldn’t get the kid out of my head and said a silent prayer that we were wrong about her.

  But as much as I believed in miracles, this time I didn’t think even my Saint Theresa could right Hildy in this one.

  While I stood there stewing about my concern and admitting I really shouldn’t get so involved or care so much about someone like Hildy, a possible murderess, Jagger cleaned up the bed and put the papers back.

  He took out a stack of bills, still in their wrapper. Next to it was an empty one. Obviously some of the money had been taken. By Leo?

  Or Hildy?

  “Pasinski was two-timing the insurance companies,” Jagger said. “He’d send in the fake prescriptions Sophie gave him, then ‘fill’ other prescriptions with the medication and sell it to someone else.”

  “We knew all that already.” I felt my chest poof out, pointing that out to Jagger.

  “But what we didn’t know was that the reason he ‘filled’ the empty prescriptions was to let someone working in the pharmacy know which ones they were.”

  Damn. I stood there a few minutes, hoping that the epiphany Jagger just had would sink in. But for the life of me, I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. And, I hated to say “I don’t follow,” so I bit my lower lip.

  He shut the safe, returned the tiger’s eye and led me to the bathroom. “There’s a mole in the pharmacy.”

  My mind flashed to those tiny furry creatures without eyes. At least I didn’t think they had eyes, and I surely didn’t need them to burrow through people’s yards, ruining their grass. Then I shifted back into investigator mode.

  It wasn’t easy being in this house alone with Jagger—with no one knowing where we were.

  And that big bed with the mirrored ceiling.

  Jagger could take advantage of me, and I’d be helpless.

&n
bsp; Make that hopeless. I was hopeless.

  Switching gears, I said, “A mole. There is . . . you think it’s Hildy. You think she was the one he was giving the clues to, and she’d know what to do to commit the fraud. And you think she either messed up or got greedy. You think she killed him to keep all the profits.” I stepped further into the luxurious bathroom—

  And fell splash into a sunken tub.

  “Shit!”

  Jagger started laughing.

  I was hollering for him to get me out. My boots, soaked through and through now, weighed a ton. Cement shoes were like Air Nikes compared with these.

  “Give me a damn hand and a damn towel!”

  He switched on a small night-light near the sink, opened a cabinet below and then threw two fluffy black towels at me.

  I caught them in midair.

  “Use them, fold them up and put them back were we found them.”

  Clever. Who would check Leo’s cabinets? “I’ll turn to ice when I go outside,” I mumbled as he helped me out of the tub. My first thought was that I was glad to have on all black and a heavy-duty winter coat. I looked down at my clothes just to make sure nothing was transparent.

  “Not going to win any wet tee shirt contests tonight, Sherlock.”

  “I’m not . . . ha, ha.”

  Did he mean I could win one if I had on summer clothes? Pauline! I screamed inside my head until it hurt and brought me back to sanity. I did as Jagger had said with the towels and stood for a few minutes feeling sticky and wet. Material clung to every part of my body.

  “We’ll get out of here so you can slip into something more comfortable.”

  There were two ways I could take that suggestion. Remaining professional, I went with changing to dry clothes.

  “Why do you think Leo filled the tub and left it like that before he went to work . . . and never returned?”

  Jagger leaned against the counter. I could see pride in his eyes. He nodded this time. “Good question.”

  I beamed.

  “Maybe he was going to take a bath and was running late.”

  “Shit. How un-mysterious. How unromantic. How logical.” I curled my lip and bent to wipe up the floor.

  Jagger chuckled. “Ready?”

  “Well, we didn’t look in his medicine cabinet yet.” I actually had thought of something before Jagger had! I leaned past him and opened the medicine cabinet above the sink, certain we were going to find a gigantic bottle of Viagra.

  A box of Tampax fell out.

  Jagger lifted it up and shoved it back on the shelf. “Did you really think someone as smart and crafty as Leo Pasinski would keep anything in this cabinet that could get him found out?”

  I would have. “No, but shit, Jagger. Whose are these?” I pointed to the blue box. “And these?” A round container of birth control pills were next to a Lady Schick razor.

  “Leo lived with someone.”

  I swung around. “Who?”

  “If I knew that, we wouldn’t be here unless she died with him and no one’s found her body yet.”

  “Ah. You don’t know who he lived with then.”

  “Or that he lived with anyone.”

  Slam.

  Jagger looked at me.

  “Do you think . . . Leo’s house has mice?”

  He pulled me so fast, we forgot the night-light when we went hurrying down the hallway. “Jagger,” I whispered. “The night-light.”

  “Christ.” He pushed me into an alcove in the hallway. “Stay put.”

  “I’m not sleeping in any shed, you know.”

  I leaned out and turned my head so I could hear if someone was really downstairs.

  Click. Click.

  His girlfriend.

  Jagger came up behind me and before I could scream from fright, he had the foresight to cover my mouth.

  I pushed his hand away and whispered. “It’s a she. She’s an it. She’s down there.”

  “Slow down, Sherlock.”

  “She’s down there, Jagger. A lady. Leo’s lady.”

  “You saw her?”

  “No. I stayed put. I heard her clicking across the tile floor.”

  “Clicking.”

  “Heels, Jagger. Someone wearing spike heels is down there. Unless Goldie has a clone, I’m guessing it’s a woman. Leo’s woman.”

  Jagger shoved a finger over my mouth and pulled me toward the stairs. He never gave me the time to question him.

  What could I say? I trusted the guy.

  Despite my legs feeling as if they had no bones in them, he pushed us up close against the wall across from the banister.

  Before I knew it, we were through the living room and near the front door. I noticed a light blinking on the alarm system next to the door.

  “Fuck,” Jagger mumbled.

  He’d noticed it too.

  He motioned for me to move to the side, and without even a thought, I found myself inside the foyer closet, amongst moth-scented wool coats and two full-length minks—and Jagger’s shoulder crushing my left breast.

  Pain and pleasure really were a hairline away from each other.

  Click. Click.

  In the darkness of the closet I could hear my heart beating and figured it’d race itself into some life-ending arrhythmia.

  The footsteps passed us.

  She must have walked into the carpeted living room and, hopefully, up the stairs.

  Jagger eased to the side and opened the door a crack.

  We looked through it together.

  Yikes.

  On the landing of the stairway, reading some mail, stood Lois Meyers.

  Twenty-four

  “Lois the pharmacy tech? What the hell is she doing here?” I whispered to Jagger.

  In the darkness of the closet he said, “That’s what we need to find out. Maybe she’s his accomplice at the pharmacy.”

  “That would make Hildy not guilty.”

  “Where’d she get the money for her car, to pay her rent and to leave?”

  I felt his shoulder press into mine. Forget it, I told myself. I had to keep my wits about me for the case. To get it done and over with. To get paid. To help the police catch a murderer.

  I whispered, “You need to pay me for helping you.”

  “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

  Shit. “Of course not.”

  Jagger eased me to the back of the closet. “When I give you a signal, follow me without a word, and fast.”

  I nodded, then realized that more than likely he couldn’t see me in the darkness. So, I whispered, “Okay.”

  Suddenly footsteps came down the stairs again. This time they weren’t heels, but it still had to be Lois. At least I hoped no one else was here. Jagger took me by the shoulders and held me tightly as if he expected me to run out of the closet and get caught.

  Shit. Sometimes he didn’t give me any credit for brains.

  The front door opened. The burglar alarm beeped until she must have put the code in. Then the door shut.

  Silence.

  Jagger eased open the closet door only enough to see out and listen. He stood for several minutes that way. In the distance a car door shut, an engine cranked and a car pulled away.

  Jagger opened the door all the way, grabbing me at the same time. Not taking any chances, he pulled me across the living room, into the kitchen and to the back hallway, a kind of mudroom.

  The way we came in.

  We were just about to open the back door as a car pulled into the driveway with its lights beaming right at us!

  He shoved me back, and there I was, in the laundry room, right off the mudroom. At least it was lighter than the closet and much bigger. Piles of clothes covered the floor. There was a bit of light shining through the curtainless window from an outside floodlight.

  Jagger held his finger to his mouth.

  I curled my lips, yet again, at him. Any dummy would know not to talk.

  The backdoor opened, footsteps followed, the door shut. Thank goo
dness the door to the laundry room was closed. Nevertheless, my breath held in my chest until I thought I was going to pop like the tiger’s eye.

  Woof. Woof.

  A dog! Lois had brought a dog back with her, and it sounded big. I could only hope it had a cold and stuffy nose so that its sniffing abilities were impaired.

  Footsteps came closer to our room. Jagger pushed me to the floor and covered us in the laundry.

  Yuck! Dead Leo’s dirty clothes on us! I gagged but kept my mouth shut, which didn’t seem humanly possible. I was learning a lot in this business. And one thing was that the dirty clothes helped cover our scent.

  A loud sniffing sound came close to the door.

  Maybe not.

  “Get the hell over here, Bruno. You’re not getting in the laundry to play no matter how good it smells to you. Come.”

  I said a fast, abbreviated prayer.

  The footsteps then grew distant. She must have gone upstairs with the dog.

  But was it for the night?

  Would the pooch come back? Did it have free reign of the house so it could?

  “Do you think she’s gone upstairs for the night?” I whispered, praying she had since I was about to scream, wearing these wet clothes.

  Jagger shrugged. “Stay here.”

  He opened the door, stuck his head out and walked toward the backdoor.

  Good. He’d fiddle with the alarm system again, then we’d be home free.

  “Fuck,” Jagger muttered. He came back in, shut the door and looked at the pile of laundry. He checked the window and cursed something about the alarm system. “Make yourself comfortable,” he said.

  I looked down. “What? What the hell are you talking about? I have to get home and change.”

  “Look, Sherlock. I’d like nothing more than to be home in my own bed right now too. But Lois did something to the freaking alarm. I can’t bypass it without the entire system sounding full force and notifying the cops, not to mention the neighbors, her and the mutt. We’d never make it out the door before she or her dog came at us.”

  I readied to ask where his bedroom was since I thought maybe he lived in his SUV, but there is a time and place for everything so I asked, “Do you think the dog will come back down?”