I stopped my search for Aspirin, sat down, took the small, square shaped envelope and looked inside. A man’s gold wedding ring looked back at me. My PI mind kicked in, albeit if only on one and a half cylinders.
“Is this Nick’s?”
She nodded, pursing her lips together.
“Was he wearing it the last time you saw him?”
She nodded again.
“Was there anything else inside the envelope?”
This time she shook her head. I could see this was going to be more or less a one-sided conversation.
“Have you been to the police?”
She looked at me as if I’d suggested we eat the cat she cuddled in her arms.
“I can’t go to the cops.” This time her voice was loud and clear.
“Why not? It’s what they’re there for, among other things. We pay them to find missing people. I don’t mean to sound like a poster boy, but I am a big believer in using natural resources.”
“You don’t understand.” Her voice became small and childlike again.
“Then enlighten me.”
“Nick has been…we’ve been…there have been some money problems ever since he had to close the office…” She stopped speaking, sobbed, and buried her head again in Tugger. Looking a little soggy and cramped, my boy had apparently had enough and pushed free of her grasp. He hopped down from her lap and sauntered off toward the bedroom with a careless flip of his long, graceful tail. Baba followed, giving a toss of her luxuriant tail for good measure.
Maybe if I’d had a tail, I’d have done the same thing. But I didn’t, so I stayed put.
In that instant, I reevaluated Kelli’s persona. Once you got past a face looking like it had been drawn upon by the more colorful contents of a crayon box, she was quite pretty, with a gorgeous kind of coloring that takes your breath away. I’d put her hair down to Clairol’s finest but knew then it was a natural pale blonde. Her eyes, huge and round, were the bluest blue I’ve seen outside a Paul Newman movie, even when red-rimmed and surrounded by running black mascara. Barely out of her teens, there was a residual sweetness to her that bad taste had yet to tarnish.
Still, she was absolutely everything my classy, conservative, and well-bred mother would find appalling. Lila Hamilton Alvarez’s idea of bad taste hovers around the lines of an art gallery showcasing Andy Warhol’s work. I just had to get Mom and Kelli together one of these days. Then stand back and watch.
“So tell me about Nick,” I said, getting up for a second cup of coffee. “He’s a real estate agent or something?” I noticed I could move my eyebrows again. Things were looking up.
“He’s what they call a broker. And he was good. We had lots of money, even after the recession. He bought me a new Mercedes convertible for my birthday. Yellow. But something happened, and he had to close the office. And oh, I don’t know, everything fell apart about six weeks ago.”
“How so?” I said, resuming my search for Aspirin.
“Bills were piling up. We got behind in our mortgage payments. We had to sell my car.” She shook her head. “He wouldn’t let me go back to work, either. I offered, but Nick said no.”
“What type of work did you do?” Bingo! I found the Aspirin bottle hiding behind the sugar.
“I was a blackjack dealer at the Royal Flush Casino. That’s how I met Nick.” A fleeting smile crossed her lips for the first time, I guess at the memory.
“You don’t look old enough.” I crammed three pills in my mouth, took a slug of coffee, and sat back down.
“I’m twenty-two. I’ll be twenty-three in a couple of months.” I realized I was the same age when I married Nick. Glad to see I was part of a pattern here.
“Then he went to work for a bank as a courier or something, I could never figure out what, but when I asked him…”
Her voice faded out. Maybe she was talking, maybe she wasn’t. I couldn’t tell. I waited. She reached out a hand and touched one of mine. Still looking down at the floor, she began to pour her heart out, loud and clear.
“Nick told me you were the best thing that ever happened to him.”
I blanched. What kind of man makes a statement like that to a current wife about his ex?
“Nick said if anything happened to him, I was to come to you. He said you’re the only person in the world he trusts.”
I froze. What the hell is the matter with the man?
“He also said you were the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.”
Okay, it’s official. The man’s a bozo.
She looked up at me with appraisal in her eyes. “I guess I can see why he’d think that,” she said, her baby voice riddled with doubt.
“Now wait a minute.” I checked out my reflection in the stainless steel toaster and ran fast fingers through hair looking like it had been combed with an eggbeater. “I usually look a little better,” I said, with a feckless laugh that sounded like the death rattle of a soot-clogged moped. “I’ve had a tough night. I was up until two-thirty knocking back margaritas and tequila shooters with the girlfriend of a missing-in-action software designer, hoping to get her to tell me where the M.I.A. was.”
Kelli nodded a little too enthusiastically, as if she were the unwilling caretaker of the town drunk.
“And she must have had a hollow leg,” I went on, “or me a hollow head, because at last count, four shooters and three margaritas passed her lips and consequently mine before she uttered the magic words, ‘Bruce, South Dakota,’ and slid under the table.”
Out came another feeble laugh. This one sounded like the sucking noise made by a water buffalo’s leg when he pulls it out of a mud hole.
“You see?”
She nodded sagely. “You like to drink.”
“No, no! Last night’s bout was business. I had to get this 3D program, this little computer gizmo back, understand? It was vital to my client.”
“Is it like the 3D they do in the movies, like in the cartoons and stuff?”
She was finally with me. “Yes! But this 3D is on a computer. And being worth about fifteen mil, the client wanted it back pronto.”
Kelli inhaled a sharp breath at the amount. Money she understood.
“But let’s move on,” I said, feeling somewhat vindicated, even though I needed to work on my laugh. “What exactly do you want from me?”
“I want you to find Nick.”
I must have rolled my eyes or something because she grabbed at my hand this time. “Please, Lee. He once said you were the nicest, smartest person he ever knew.”
I’ll kill him.
Kelli let go of my hand and looked down at short, black fingernails. Hers, not mine. I don’t do nail polish. “Please help me. I don’t have anybody but Nick. My family disowned me after…after… Then I moved to Las Vegas, but I don’t have any friends, not real friends. None that could or would help.” She put those black fingernailed hands up to her face and started blubbering into them.
“Did you two have a fight or words?” She shook her head. “Did he seem unhappy or preoccupied about something?” Another shake.
“He has a cell, doesn’t he?” She nodded but continued to blubber. “What happens when you call it?”
A muffled voice spoke through her fingers. “Nothing, it goes into voice mail. I must have left fifty messages, and he’s never called back.”
“What about friends? Has he been in contact with any?” She gave her head another sad shake. “Credit cards? Have any been used during the time he’s been gone?”
“The only one not maxed out is in the bureau drawer. I got the statement yesterday, and there aren’t any new charges. None of his clothes are missing, and he didn’t take the car. I’ve got it; it’s right outside. But he’s got to be hiding somewhere.”
“Why do you say that?”
She shrunk into herself. “Oh, maybe he isn’t. Maybe he’s…” She broke off and suddenly leaned into me with such force, I spilled half my coffee in my lap. “I’ve been reading the papers loo
king for unclaimed dead bodies. I even called the morgue once.”
“Oh, I’m sure he’s not dead.” Only the good die young, sweetie.
I set the dripping cup down on the table and reached for several paper napkins to blot up the mess.
“And I’ve been calling the hospitals every day, too.” She went back to blubbering. I patted one of her shoulders with a limp, coffee-drenched hand, while the other dabbed at my wet, stained robe.
“Maybe he rented a car, took a bus or a plane. There are other ways of getting out of town.”
“No, he’s around. I can feel.” She wiped her eyes with her soggy, make-up stained napkin. I gave her a fresh one, noting to buy more at the rate we were going through them. She blew her nose into it and handed it back to me.
Gee, thanks.
Then Kelli looked up at me and smiled. It was a rather glorious, angelic smile and made you want to like her. Oh, God. I did like her.
I’m doomed.
“Sometimes I think he’s watching me.” She reflected. “Or somebody’s watching me.” She actually started to swoon at this point. I thought she was going to pass out and grabbed to steady her.
“When was the last time you slept? Or ate?” She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head in a dismissive manner. “Where are you staying?’ She raised the shoulders again, this time dropping them in a sad, waif-like gesture.
“I don’t know. The car, I guess. I don’t have much money left, only enough for gas, about twenty or thirty dollars. I spent the night in your driveway, because I can’t
afford a motel room. There was four thousand dollars in our savings last week, and it’s gone. All his stuff is still in the condo, but the money’s gone! All I have left is the car and Lady Gaga.”
“Beg pardon?”
“Lady Gaga’s my goldfish. She’s in her tank in the car. I can’t leave her out there when the sun comes up; it’ll get too hot. I had to keep the heater running in the car last night, so she wouldn’t get too cold. They’re delicate,” she explained, looking into my bloodshot eyes with the sincerity of a true animal lover. “They need a constant temperate temperature in order to maintain optimal health,” she said, as if reading from a manual.
She looked at me.
I looked at her.
“All rightie.” I stood, resigned to my fate as the world’s biggest chump. “Go get Gaga. We’ll find somewhere in the apartment where the cats can’t get at her. Then we’re going to feed you. I can only make scrambled eggs, so if you want something else, you’re out of luck. You can crash on the couch
for a day or two until I make some phone calls and see what’s going on. I’m not promising anything, but I’ll do the best I can.”
Kelli snatched at my hand and held it to her cheek in an act of gratitude and supplication. If I’d been wearing a ring, I think she might have kissed it. If this is what the pope goes through on a daily basis, you can have it. Wait a minute. It was more like the godfather.
I opened my mouth to speak when the landline rang. Pulling away from Kelli, I grabbed the phone after the first ring. Few people know this number, and each person who does means a lot to me. I’d turned off my cell and given the hour, I knew the call had to be important. I looked at the incoming number. Richard, my brother. He knew better than anybody what I’d been doing the previous night.
“What’s wrong?” I said, leaving the kitchen and crossing into the living room for privacy.
He paused and gulped. “I’m on my way over to the Big House. I’ll be there in about five minutes. Meet me there.”
Since we were kids, the Big House is what he and I have called the large two-story family home, an ode to the American success story, Palo Alto style.
“Where are you now?” I asked.
“D.I. I just left the office.”
“On a Sunday morning? What the hell were you doing there?” Silence. “Richard? What’s wrong?”
“Lee, there’s some…some news. Vicky just told me it’s in this morning’s Chronicle.” Vicky and he have been married less than a year, but she is the finest addition to a family any one could ask. I adore her. My brother’s voice cracked as he went on.
“That’s why I’m calling you. Mom didn’t want to wake you after the night you had. But I don’t want you to find out from the papers. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
“Find out what? Jesus, Richard, you’re scaring me. Just tell me.”
More silence.
“Richard! The paper’s in the kitchen. Should I go read it, or are you going to tell me right now?”
He let out air in a whoosh then said, “It’s Stephen. It’s about Stephen.” He hesitated. “It’s bad.”
“Stephen?” I tried to flip my mind around from Kelli’s mess to Mom’s only living relative, outside of us. My heart began to pound. Something happened to Stephen. Stephen, my older second cousin, who taught me how to ride a bike, play Scrabble, who’d stolen my Easter candy when he thought
I wasn’t looking, who tipped over our canoe on a disastrous but fun river ride; wonderful, gregarious, sweet-natured, joke-telling Stephen. Although he’d moved to Phoenix thirteen years ago, he was still a much loved, integral part of the family. I tried to steel myself.
“When you say ‘bad,’ how bad is bad?”
His voice broke. “The worst. There’s no other way to say it. He’s dead, Lee. He’s dead.” Richard became lost in sobs.
I gasped, drawing air into my lungs so fast it physically hurt. Then I half stumbled, half sank into a nearby wingback chair, glad it was there, glad it caught me.
“Dios mio!” I whispered.
Richard gulped. “Sorry, Lee. I didn’t mean to break it to you like that. But I didn’t know…I couldn’t think of any other way to say it. I’m sorry.”
“But he was only forty-three,” I said, faltering over the words.
“I know.”
“Maybe there’s a mistake.” My voice had an anguished, yet angry tone. “Maybe—”
“No mistake, Lee,” Richard interrupted me, his voice low and hoarse. “The medical examiner’s off-the-record comment was it probably was a heart attack. He was dead before he hit the ground.”
My kid brother began to cry full out, while I listened on the other end of the line. I sat still, trying not to breathe, trying not to move, warding off the inevitable rogue waves of emotion heading in my direction. I knew them only too well. They would be like the ones pounding at me when our father died. They would strike again and again, endlessly and without mercy. My mind fought off the oncoming onslaught and hid behind numbness and denial.
“Richard, this can’t be. I don’t understand. Stephen was in such good health. He had a physical every year. How could this…?”
“I’m searching for the answer to that question, myself. Meanwhile, you need to come.”
“Of course, I’ll come.” My voice broke. “Where are you?”
“About two blocks from home. Meet me in the driveway.”
“Why there? Why not inside the house?” More damned silence. “There’s something else. Something you’re not saying.” Fear grabbed me. I didn’t know why at the time. Call it premonition or something in Richard’s voice.
He took a deep breath, exhaling it in a rush but hesitating over the words. “It might be a lack of sleep, Lee, or shock; I don‘t know—” He interrupted himself. “No, it’s not any of those things. I’d thought, I’d hoped, but facts don’t lie. I’ve been up all night, checking stats, looking into this.”
“Looking into what?” I demanded. But the other end of the line went stony silent again. “Richard, are you still there?”
“I’m here,” he said. His voice was filled with grief, but there was something else besides the sorrow—something that reached out and clamped down on me as if it were a steel vise. For a moment, all I could hear was my brother’s staccato breathing and the sound of my own heart thudding in my ears.
“Oh, God, Richard, you don’t think his death wa
s accidental or from natural causes.”
“No.”
“You think Stephen was murdered.”
“Yes.”
Chapter Two
Grief Knocks at the Door
After a hasty, vague explanation to a wide-eyed Kelli, I left her to sort out Lady Gaga, while I threw on some clean sweats, and dashed out of the apartment. I took the stairs two at a time and ran along the circular asphalt driveway separating my garage apartment from the white colonial, two-story house, its pool and hot tub. I sprinted to where the driveway meets the street. Richard’s new green Prius was pulling in, his salute to the environment.
Richard flung open the car door and jumped out, his slim frame sheathed in the worn, faded T-shirt and jeans of the classic computer nerd. Barely half an inch taller than me, he seemed even more slight than usual, more vulnerable, as if this tragedy had taken something primal out of him. He looked at me. All the grief and shock I was feeling was mirrored in my brother’s light blue eyes, a color garnered from our mother. Yet unlike Mom, Richard’s were lit from behind with the same burning intensity as our Latino father.
From somewhere within I summoned up the strength to be the strong one. I tried to keep my stance tall and unyielding.
“We’ll get through this, Richard. I don’t know how, but we will.”
Shaking his head, my kid brother walked into my arms. “I can’t believe it. We were going to run a 12K next week. I can’t believe it.” His stifled sobs shook both our bodies.
“I know,” I whispered. “I talked to him just the other day about getting together for his birthday.”
I broke free and searched his strained face. “What happened, Richard? Tell me what you know.” I leaned against the car, feeling the warmth of the metal against my hip.
Richard looked away and into a sky still shrouded in its nightly gray cloud cover. Soon the sun would break through, and we would have another sunny California day, cool and delicious. But Stephen would still be dead.
Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries Boxed Set: Books 1-3 (The Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries) Page 47
