Murder Mile High

by Lora Roberts

  “I could put him in the bus if your mom minds him inside.”

  “I want him inside.” Amy stuck out her lower lip, making one of those lightning changes from mature young person to spoiled child that teenagers can accomplish at will. Then she smiled. “I’ll shut the door to my room and then all the dog hair will stay in one place.”

  I felt a sneaking sympathy for Renee, despite her hostility and lethal mouth; she and Amy didn’t show each other their good sides very often.

  She was waiting inside the back door; had been watching us, evidently. “Have you finished your homework?”

  Amy rolled her eyes. “Yes, Mother.”

  “That dog shouldn’t be in here.

  “I’ll vacuum up each and every hair he loses, Mother.”

  Renee flicked a disparaging eye at the baggy overalls and turned to me. “Did you plan to leave that car of yours in front of our house forever?”

  “Where did you want me to park it?”

  “Down the block a little ways or something. It makes us look like white trash.”

  “Maybe we are white trash, Mother. Did you ever think of that?”

  I threw myself into the breach. “Could I use the bathroom, please?”

  “Yeah, sure.” Renee gestured down the hall. “And you didn’t wipe off the counter after you filled the dishwasher, Amy. Do it now, please.”

  Grumbling, Amy followed her mother. Barker followed Amy. I seized a few moments of noncombative peace in the bathroom.

  When I came out, I could hear the muted mutter of the TV from the room Andy called his den. Barker sat outside the kitchen, gazing expectantly at the door. After a moment Amy came out and gave him the extravagant petting he thought he deserved.

  I was still holding my transcript and the little tape that had the information on it. Amy led me to her room and dug out a couple of Priority Mail envelopes. “Some prospectuses came in them,” she explained. “It should hold your stuff.”

  “Thanks.” I addressed the transcript to my post office box in Palo Alto and the tape to Drake’s address. Not a very clever dodge, perhaps, but if it worked in all those mystery stories, probably it would work for me. While I was sealing the envelopes, the phone rang.

  “Sure,” Amy said blithely into the receiver, which she had sprung for after a warning bellow. “She’s right here.” She handed me the receiver, mouthing “Drake,” and then slipped tactfully from the room.

  “Hi.” I figured I might as well get a word or two in before he started scolding me. “Wish you were here.”

  “I’ll bet you do.” The sound of his voice caused a sudden stricture in my diaphragm that interfered with my breathing. “Can’t you be out of my sight for a week without getting into trouble?”

  “It hasn’t been that long.” I forced my vocal cords to operate, despite their momentary paralysis.

  “Are you okay?” Drake dropped the scolding tone. His voice deepened. “You sound funny.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I heard from some of your new friends out there.” He was making tea; I could hear his teakettle singing in the background. “First an e-mail message from the Homicide department, wanting a background check on you, and then a personal phone call just before I left from an Officer Gutierrez.”

  “You shouldn’t work so late.” I made myself sound casual. “What did you tell her?”

  “The truth, of course—that you don’t have the sense to keep your nose out of other people’s business, but you’re not violent, just weak in the head.” He waited a moment. “You’re supposed to laugh.”

  “Maybe later.” I didn’t like the way his voice was making me feel—soft and dependent, in need of his help. I told myself to get a grip. Instead I said, “O’Malley, one of the Homicide guys, already has me pegged for it.”

  “Has you pegged for—don’t be ridiculous. It’s an obvious hit. They’re probably looking into underworld or gang connections right now. The stooges are singing even as we speak.”

  His robust common sense was comforting. “O’Malley mentioned this morning that women who kill their abusive husbands get off light these days. He referred to my former attempt as the first time I tried to kill my husband.”

  Drake was silent for a moment. “He thinks you know something, and he’s trying to rattle it out of you.”

  I took a deep breath. “I’m rattled.”

  Another pause. “I never expected to hear you admit that.” He sounded worried. “This Gutierrez I talked to—she seemed okay. Just wanted the usual about any past interactions with our department.”

  “So what did you say?”

  “I told the truth, of course.”

  ‘Truth is so subjective, Drake.”

  I could hear his sigh. “Do we have to have this argument again? Truth is what’s written down in our files, Liz. That’s what I told your officer friend about.”

  I let it drop. “How are the roses?”

  He told me how my garden grew—although his descriptions didn’t make a whole lot of sense. We spoke of our friend Bridget, of his partner Bruno. I built a picture in my mind while we talked: my little cottage tucked behind the bigger house Drake was buying from me, the tall redwoods at the back, the orderly beds of vegetables and flowers I tended there.

  “I’m cutting the salad stuff like you showed me.” He smacked his lips. “Good, too. You’re really missing out.”

  “Thanks, Drake. I had fast food tonight.”

  “Was it your first time?” He laughed. “Can’t picture you in the plastic seats, Liz.”

  “I ate it before, on the way out here.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “Listen up, woman. I can’t do anything illegal for you, but I might happen to find something about your ex-husband in the databases. If I think you should know it, I’ll get it to you somehow.”

  “Don’t go Federal Expressing things.” Amy opened the door and peeked in. “That would just mean I’d have to pay you back, and I can’t afford it. Regular mail is fine.”

  Amy bounded into the room and pointed at her computer. Puzzled, I shook my head. She scrawled something on a piece of paper and handed it to me. Drake was offering overnight mail, but I interrupted him.

  “Amy has an e-mail address.” I read it to him over the phone. “She’ll pass along anything you send.”

  He understood the subtext there. “Anything confidential I’ll get to you some other way. And you won’t pay me back. I’m eating your designer lettuce, remember?”

  I hung up the phone after a rather lingering good-bye. Amy dove for the receiver practically before it left my hand, so I assumed that’s what she’d come back for. I headed for the bathroom with my bag of washing stuff. I needed a little time alone to sort through my reactions to that phone call.

  Chapter 15

  “Gramma is still feeling poorly,” Amy announced. She was just hanging up the phone when I came back into her room. “Aunt Molly is there. She says Gramma did eat some dinner, though. And Grampa won’t talk at all, Aunt Molly says. He just grunts when she speaks to him.” Amy faltered. “She—said some stuff about you, too, but, I—I don’t remember it.”

  “I can fill it in, thanks.”

  “Aunt Liz, why are they all so mad at you? Seems to me that you’re the one who should be mad.”

  I didn’t know how to answer that, because I agreed with Amy. Maybe that’s why they were mad. If I’d come and penitently admitted my mistakes, accepted their pronouncements on my poor judgment, perhaps I could have been forgiven. But for years I had felt that I would apologize when they did. I could perfectly understand their resentment—I shared it.

  “So is Drake going to send us e-mail?” Amy put one hand lovingly on her computer. “I love to get e-mail.”

  “Any kind of mail is fine with me, but the kind with a check is the best.”

  Her face clouded. “You’re not getting to pick up your checks while you’re here, are you?”

  I shrugged. Picking up checks wasn’t a
regular occurrence in my life. Vacation pay, insurance, sick leave—not the perks of my line of work, as Drake pointed out with irritating frequency. I’m used to working without the safety net; personal responsibility is an archaic concept in our culture, but I embrace it anyway.

  I didn’t dwell on thoughts of my disappearing savings. I would manage, as long as Drake didn’t let the snails get to my seedlings, which I depended on for next spring’s veggies.

  “Aunt Molly said you’ll probably be arrested again and drag the family through the mud even worse, because now you’re back to calling yourself Sullivan.” Amy was still worrying over her aunt’s conversation. “But there’s almost as many Sullivans as Smiths or Browns, so I don’t know what she’s kicking about. And you’re not going to be arrested, are you?”

  “Since I didn’t do the murder, they won’t be arresting me.” I tried to speak with a calm certainty. “The police will find the real killer.”

  Amy looked pensive for a moment, stroking Barker’s ear and reducing him to slit-eyed ecstasy. “So is Drake missing you?” She glanced slyly at me.

  “Why should he? He’s getting all my baby lettuces to himself. And there’ll be raspberries, too.”

  “Come on, Aunt Liz.” Amy made an impatient face. “You know he wants to jump your bones.”

  My face grew hot, despite a need to remain cool. I was at a loss for a reply. I could return a gentle reminder about making personal remarks, which would have a dampening effect on future communications. I could take some moral stance about how men and women could be friends without sex, but were Drake and I friends? Though we didn’t act on it, sexual attraction was an undercurrent in all our dealings.

  I elected a change-the-subject approach. “If we’re going to talk love lives, how about yours? Who are you dating?”

  “Dating?” Amy tasted the word, as if it were a foreign concept. “We don’t ‘date,’ Aunt Liz. We just sort of—” she gestured helplessly “—are. I mean, you know, we have coffee, we talk, maybe go to a show—”

  “You and your boyfriend?”

  “My friends and me.” She shook her head, and the long, shiny hair slid over her face. “You know—a bunch of us.” She shuddered. “I haven’t met a guy I want to date. I mean, that’s for the prom-queen crowd. Everyone would assume you were sleeping together, and it’s just too gross.”

  A few months ago I would have agreed. But now Drake was messing with my head. I made a determined effort to stop thinking about him.

  “I don’t know how to do Mom any good at all,” I said, finding something fresh to feel inadequate about. “Not without giving Dad a stroke, or Molly a conniption fit.”

  “I shouldn’t have made you come out here.” Amy sat up straight on the bed, gazing down at her knees through holes in the overalls. “I thought—” she looked at me, and tears glittered in her eyes. Barker scooted closer to her, his head on her knee. “I thought if you came out, if they saw what a great person you are, everything would be better.”

  “It’s not your fault, Amy.” I sat on the bed beside her and gave her a cautious hug. Despite living in California now, hugging is still not an everyday thing with me. “I was ready to approach them, and you gave me the reason I needed. Now it’s up to them. If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t. Anyway, I’m glad for the opportunity to see Gramma and Grampa again. And you.”

  “Well, you’ll see me lots if you want to.” Amy dried her eyes and smiled. “I like the Bay Area. I’m thinking of applying to Stanford and Santa Clara University and UC Santa Cruz.” She glanced at me. “That’s a couple of years away, of course.”

  “I’ll look forward to it.” I stood up. “But for now I’m tired. Think I’ll get to bed.”

  “You’re sleeping outside again?” Amy’s face was wistful. “I have this other bed.” She pointed to it.

  “I like the bus.” I snapped my fingers, and Barker jumped up. “And Barker likes it, too.”

  Amy pulled me into the kitchen on my way out to offer me a snack, but I declined on the grounds of just having brushed my teeth. I smiled at Renee, who sat at the table with a mug of coffee and a catalogue, and received a grudging nod in return.

  It was cold outside. I pulled the Z-bed out, fluffed my sleeping bag, got my sweats out of the cupboard, and put them by my pillow. Barker curled up under the bed, waiting until I was trapped in the sleeping bag before making his move to sleep next to me. My book and headlamp waited on the other side of the pillow.

  I was ready to shut myself in for the night when Officer Eva drove up in her patrol car.

  She came over to the bus. I climbed back out again, standing by the open side door. “So,” she said. “Going nighty-night?”

  “You got it.”

  She glanced over her shoulder at Andy’s house. Renee was at the curtain again. “They won’t let you inside?”

  “I prefer my own space.’’

  She looked at me. In the weak dome light, her face was impassive, her dark eyes unreadable. “You still have that tape?”

  “No.” I had left it in Amy’s bedroom. “My niece needed it back.”

  “You just gave it to her?”

  I shrugged. “It doesn’t take long to erase, you know. Didn’t your copy work out?”

  “It worked.” She took a breath. “I gave it to O’Malley.”

  “Thanks for putting me on the spot.”

  “You put yourself there.” Her glance slid away from me. “It’s evidence in a major case, even if improperly obtained.”

  “How did he like what Kyle said?”

  “He laughed.” She gave me the ghost of a grin. “Your friend Kyle is going to receive a visit first thing in the morning. Good thing you’re not keeping him up late.”

  “Everybody seems so interested in my social life all of a sudden.” I gestured to the dog, the sleeping bag. “You can see it’s a real lively one.”

  “Your friend Drake asked me about it, too.” She smiled more openly. “Man almost leaped down the phone line when I said you were mixed up in a murder case.”

  “Yeah, and then he leaped down my throat. You’re really making my life easy, aren’t you? I guess O’Malley will be here right after he gets Kyle out of bed, hmm? My brother will love that.” I nodded at the patrol car. “You’re bringing down the tone of the neighborhood, you know?”

  She lifted her eyebrows. “So are you.”

  “That’s already been pointed out to me.” I glanced at the kitchen window again. The curtain was back down. “But I’m not parking down the block tonight. Maybe tomorrow.”

  Her face changed. “They don’t want you to park in front of their house? Your family really knows from hospitality, Liz.”

  “Families can be strange. Say, did you get hold of Maud?”

  Her face sobered. “She was already gone, everything locked up. We’ll have to find that mountain cabin. I’m searching the property records tomorrow.”

  I shivered. “Is that all you wanted to talk about? It’s cold out here.”

  She studied me for a moment. “That’s all for now. I’ll be in touch.”

  Sitting on the Z-bed, I shut the door and the dome light went off. All the curtains were closed, so I couldn’t see Officer Eva leaving. But I heard her car drive away as I scrambled into my sweats and parked my old Birkenstocks by the door.

  I didn’t use the headlamp to read. While I was lying awake in the dark, a truck roared by, and I saw Tony’s body again, sprawled on the steps, his head dark against the welcome mat. And then the scene changed to Tony falling backward, staring in surprise, while I felt the heavy weight of the gun in my hand. Only this time, instead of a bright triangle of blood on his shirt, there was a neat hole in his forehead, and his eyes were fixed accusingly on me.

  I woke up, realizing it was a nightmare, but despite Barker’s reassuring warmth by my leg, I didn’t feel safe and invisible, like I used to when the bus was my only refuge.

  Chapter 16

  It was another gray mornin
g. At the neighborhood park, Barker strained to go after some squirrels. I let him off the leash and leaned against the slide, watching him flash across the damp grass, scattering the squirrels and birds as if life could hold no greater pleasure. And probably, for a dog who’d been neutered a few short weeks ago, that was true.

  I tried to think what in my life gave me that rush. Getting an acceptance from a magazine was up there, especially if a check was enclosed—usually by the time I was paid for my work, months, if not years, had passed from the time it was accepted. Another small but richly enjoyable experience was diving into the pool for my swim, cleaving the water, switching elements in an instant. And seeing a whole row of carrots pop up in the seedling bed was also something to savor. I resolved to notice such things more often. Without that kind of sweetening, the dull fiber of life gets mighty hard to swallow.

  Homesickness washed over me. Three years ago I would have scoffed at the notion that I could feel so grounded in one particular place. But now I wanted my house, my own bed, my kitchen full of rickety, last-legs appliances, my garden and flowers and redwood trees. I even wanted my neighbor—and maybe on more than a purely platonic basis, if my dreams were anything to go by. Besides, having Drake live in the house in front of me was like having a shield against the outside world. Not that I would tell him so, of course. It was too shaming to admit that after years of solitary vigilance, I liked having a man to guard my portal.

  Barker finished with the squirrels, driving the final tree-rat into the branches. He found a stick and brought it to me; I threw it several times before he decided not to play anymore and refused to drop it. I snapped the leash on. We walked back with him carrying the stick proudly, ears up, tail wagging.

  I took a circuitous route back to Andy’s, trying to decide what to do with my day. Since I had come to Denver in the first place to help with my mother, I thought I would give it another chance. If Dad wasn’t speaking to Molly, it shouldn’t bother me that he wouldn’t speak to me, either. At least I could wash dishes and do some laundry, maybe cook them a meal. My dad should enjoy seeing me do women’s work.