by Leslie Caine
Totally unnerved, I took a seat on his mushroom-colored sofa. The sight of him convalescing was bringing out the nursing instincts in me, and I had to battle ludicrous fantasies about how I could distract him from his pain. I focused on the envelope in my hand, determined not to act flustered. “Look at this.” I handed him the pictures of Henry and Laura.
“Someone just shoved this under your office door?”
“Yes.”
He made a derisive noise. “You should have someone look at that door of yours, you know. Install a weather strip, at least. You’re wasting energy without one.”
With forced sweet tones, I replied, “I’ll take that into consideration. Thanks.” The good thing about his smug nit-picking was that Sullivan had already managed to wring the mothering instinct right out of me.
He studied the three photos, then returned them to the envelope. “This could be a setup of some kind. Maybe Laura’s killer just wants to throw light on another possible suspect. So he or she had some dirt on Henry, and is using it to full effect.”
“But if that’s the case, why not send the photos to the police? Why give them to me?”
“Good question. Did you tell your policewoman friend about this?”
Her name’s Linda. How hard is that to remember? “Not yet.”
Steve handed the envelope back to me. “When you do, you’d better explain that you assumed whoever sent them wore gloves and didn’t get fingerprints on the photos and envelope. We’ve both been handling them and have probably smudged any of the sender’s prints.”
I peered at him in dismay. Though I managed to keep the comment to myself, I considered saying: Maybe you should check the label of your pain medication and see if “tendency to behave like a pretentious know-it-all” is a known side effect of the drug.
“Granted, Sullivan, I should have been more careful handling the envelope and its contents. Till I opened it and saw the photographs, I’d assumed a client had just slipped an innocuous letter under my door when they happened to be downtown.”
Sullivan was drumming his fingers on the arm of his chaise, lost in thought. “Knowing Laura, she probably hired the photographer and set up Toben for blackmail. He’s been broadcasting his TV ads ever since I moved to the Denver area to start college—some twelve years ago— so we know that he was wealthy back whenever this liaison took place. Plus, he was married and in the public eye. My hunch is he paid big bucks to keep this away from his wife.”
“Probably so.”
Steve stared at me without comment.
“Are you okay?” I finally asked.
“Sure.” He shifted his position but continued to study my features.
“Why are you staring at me?”
Again, he said nothing.
I rose. “I should go. I’ll make copies for us and take these straight to the police . . . maybe see what Henry has to say for himself.”
“Gilbert. You shouldn’t mess with this. It’s my problem. And somebody knows we’re getting personally involved with the investigation. I’m sure of it.” He tapped his cast. “That’s how I wound up with a busted leg.”
And how I discovered a knife embedded in the front door of my home. I hadn’t told Sullivan about that yet. Now I’d missed my chance; he would just drive me nuts with his demands that I desert his quest to find Laura’s killer, and there was no way I was willing to do that.
I said, “You know, Henry made a good point as we were leaving for the hospital. It makes sense that he was the intended target, not either of us.”
“Yeah, unless Henry rigged the whole thing, sawing through the one stair himself.”
“But what would he have to gain?”
“Maybe he knows we’re poking around in the murder investigation, and he hoped to put one of us out of commission. You need to back off, Gilbert. Give those photos to the police and stay the hell away from Toben. Don’t tell him about the pictures, whatever you do.”
He was sure being fast and loose with the unsolicited advice all of a sudden, but, again, I decided not to bicker with him. “Right. Straight to the police.” I headed to the door. “Take it easy, Sullivan. Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you.”
“Actually, there is.” He gave me a sheepish grin as I turned back to face him. “You can stay and keep me company,” he said softly.
I gaped at him in surprise. The painkillers must be talking; Sullivan would never suggest that I “keep him company” of his own volition. “I would, but I have a full workday ahead of me. I’m sorry.”
He studied my features. “Not at Henry’s house, though, right?”
“Is that why you said you want me to stay? Because you assume I’ll run right over to Henry’s place?”
He gave me a slight shrug.
“I’m not an idiot, you know. There’s no need for you to do a Neanderthal protect-the-little-lady number on me.”
“Get real, Gilbert. Just how many Neanderthal men do you think pursue a career in interior design?”
I grinned. “Can’t say as I know enough Neanderthals to say. For all we know, that could have been the root of those first cave drawings, as in: ‘Dang it, Thor! Pay attention to your color wheel. Draw those woolly mammoths using reds and oranges, not cerulean blue! For God’s sake, this is a cave! Warm the place up a bit!’ ”
“Right.” Steve chuckled and gestured theatrically. “ ‘And that twig-and-sheepskin bed you bought positively screams Mesozoic! All the upscale, modern caves in town have switched to saber-tooth bedding! Get with the times!’ ”
I laughed, but had to look away when our eyes met. Even though John had obviously picked up on my signals that we needed to cool things for a while, he was the one I was dating, not Sullivan. To my horror, I felt my cheeks grow warm. Still avoiding Sullivan’s intoxicating hazel eyes, I stated, “I’d better run.” I waved the manila envelope. “I’ll drop this off at the police station on my way.” I opened the door.
“Gilbert, seriously, I . . .” He let his voice fade.
“Yes?”
“I appreciate your coming over.”
“No problem, Sullivan. I’ll give you a call tomorrow. Bye.”
I let myself out, trotted to my van, and started the engine. Tomorrow I would have to break the news to Sullivan that I fully intended to complete Henry’s install myself now. But I wasn’t going to tell Sullivan that I also intended to confront Henry with photocopies of these pictures today, after giving the originals to the police. It was not within my nature to sit back and wait. I was too enraged at the possibility that Henry had indeed jerry-rigged his own stair.
I drove to the nearest copy shop, called Henry’s cell phone, and said that I had something important to show him and was on my way. He’d taken a second day off from work and was at his house.
Henry looked like a trapped white-coiffed rat as he studied the grainy photocopies. “Where did you get these?” “Like I told you, someone anonymously slid them under my office door. I’ve already given the originals to the police. And I told them I was coming here now to see you.” The last line was, of course, a fib to discourage Henry from doing anything rash.
The muscles in his jaw were working. “I knew these damn things would surface, sooner or later.”
“Laura blackmailed you?”
“It would have destroyed my marriage . . . broken my wife’s heart. Not to mention that Laura was jailbait . . . not even sixteen. She looked so much older, but then she showed me her high school ID card. For ten thousand dollars, she claimed I’d get the film, the only copies, and never see her again.” He snorted. “One out of three. I did get the film.”
Her high school ID was probably a fake, knowing Laura. “Who was the photographer she was working with?” I asked.
Henry gave me an angry shrug. “I never found out.” He thrust the photocopies back to me. “You can do whatever you want with these. They can’t hurt me now. My wife’s gone. If someone thought they were going to blackmail me again over thi
s past history, they’re barkin’ up the wrong sassafras tree.”
Henry was convincing. And I’d seen enough of his ads on TV to know the man couldn’t act worth packaging peanuts. “Is this the first time you’ve seen the photos again in the years since Laura first blackmailed you?”
“Yeah. Good thing it was you showing them to me. Anybody else, I’d have ripped their head off. You, I gotta be nice to.”
“Because your home isn’t finished yet, you mean?”
He wiggled his eyebrows. “Because of the rain check I’ve got on the date with your landlady. I still need you to talk me up to her. She’s a great ol’ gal, that Audrey.”
And wouldn’t Audrey hate to be called a “great ol’ gal.” I grinned. “You should tell her that, Henry. Exactly like you just told me.”
He did a double take. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were deliberately giving me some bad advice.”
I lifted my palms. “Dating advice is not my territory. But fortunately for you, you’ve got Robert Pembrook for that.”
“True enough. So long as I don’t discuss specifics with that fruitcake.”
I bit back my ungenerous response.
I started for the door, photocopies in hand. “Have a good day, Henry.”
“But . . . my house isn’t finished yet. Like you said yourself. I don’t know where to hang the pictures or put the pillows, or anything.”
“I’ll get to it as soon as I can. After you show me some proof that you’ve taken that ashtray to the folks at the Fish and Wildlife Service and filed a full report.”
“How ’bout just the master bedroom, then?” He winked at me. “You never know, tonight might be the night Audrey says yes to the date, and I might get lucky.”
“Actually, I do—” I managed to stop myself from saying that I knew that Audrey would never let him “get lucky” on a first date. Needing a tactful way to complete the sentence, I said, “—have a few minutes free before I have to go.”
“Super. Everything’s already in the room. Y’all just have to put together the final touches . . . to make my bedroom look all sexy, like you said you would.”
“I said I would make it romantic, Henry. There’s a difference.”
He chuckled. “Yeah. To women, maybe. Anyway, I need to make sure my bedroom’s ready for Hammerin’ Hank, if you know what I mean.”
“I’m trying to ignore the fact that I do know what you mean. You need more than an image change, Henry. You need an attitude change. Audrey Munroe is way out of your league.” I clenched my teeth. I was never this sharp with customers. My nerves must be unraveling. Again, I started to head for the door.
“I was just kidding around,” Henry exclaimed. “I really want to have my bedroom put together today, just so’s I can start to feeling at home. I don’t know where things should go, an’ I don’t want to louse up your pretty design any more than I already have.”
The man was as close to sincere as he was capable of being. He’d already installed some of the rooms by himself, which was decidedly not what was normally demanded of my clients. I relented. “Okay, Henry. I’ll take care of that now. I’ll only have time for the master bedroom. Everything else will have to wait.”
Almost all of the small, breakable items in Henry’s bedroom were still in their packaging. The room install proceeded nicely, until I cut my finger on a sharp edge of a picture frame while I removed it from its box. I wrapped my finger in a tissue and continued to work, having to struggle to hang the damned picture without cutting my hand a second time.
Thirty minutes later, I began to feel hideously sick. My throat was burning, my head was pounding, and my vision swimming. I absolutely had to knock off for the day. I muttered a few words to Henry and left. I was practically staggering as I made my way to my van. To my utter surprise, Jerry Stone was sitting on the sidewalk in front of Henry’s property.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I followed your van.” He rose and brushed off his filthy jeans.
“In what? Where’s your car?”
“Near the main entrance to the neighborhood.” He stared at my injured finger. “Were . . . you hanging pictures on the wall just now? Stuff like that?”
“Yes. Why?”
He kept his eye riveted to my finger. “Did you hurt yourself?”
“I scratched my finger on a picture frame. It’s nothing.”
He cursed under his breath.
“Look, Jerry, I’d love to talk to you, but I’m tired right now and—”
“Feel achy?” he interrupted. “Like you’re coming down with the flu?”
“I s’pose.”
“We’ve got to get you to the hospital.”
“But . . . it’s just a minor cut—”
“Come on.” He grabbed me by the elbow and yanked the keys from my hand. “We’ve got to hurry. You’re starting to slur your words.”
Was I? I felt half-asleep on my feet.
He unlocked the passenger door. “Get in. I’m driving.”
I had a hard time getting onto the seat, but managed. As I fumbled with my seat belt, I saw that he was already behind the wheel. He started the engine. He looked tense, his thin lips set in a white line. “Jerry. Did you slip some photographs under my office door last night or early this morning?”
“Photographs? No. Wasn’t me.”
I didn’t believe him. Barely able to keep my eyes open, I asked, “But you sabotaged the picture frame? Put poison on a jagged edge of the frame?”
“Only because I was following . . . my heart. Trying to stop you from destroying Mother Earth. Back when I put the stuff on it, I didn’t even know you. We hadn’t met. Don’t take it personal.”
I shut my eyes. “The poison . . . am I going to die?”
“There’s an antidote. You’ll be fine.”
I nodded—and then nodded out. Next thing I knew, Jerry was half carrying, half dragging me through the front door of Crestview Hospital. I heard him say, “Just tell the doctors that . . .”
Maybe he said more, but I didn’t hear him. He dropped me into a seat and set my purse on my lap. I was having a hard time staying awake. I nodded out again, and next thing I knew, he was fastening a sticky-pad sheet to the back of my hand. Just then a nurse was approaching, demanding to know what was going on.
“Nurse,” Jerry said, “this woman needs help. Right away. She was babbling something about being poisoned.”
My legs felt heavy, too heavy to move, and there was a strange taste in my mouth. Jerry whispered into my ear, “If I stay with you, they’ll bust me. You’ll be fine. I’ll park your van near your home.”
He turned, said something to the nurse, then bolted for the door just as I blacked out once more.
The next hours passed in a throbbing-headed, wavery blur. I was dimly aware that Audrey was there, and I was able to grasp that I “was out of danger” but that the doctors wanted to keep me hospitalized overnight for observation.
When I awoke the next morning, it felt as though I had been drinking shots of tequila all night and now had the world’s worst hangover. I forced myself to sit up a little and looked around. This sterile, pea-green room was simply miserable. Surely they could make some effort to make the horrid place a bit less dreary. I spotted an elderly man skulking by the door, and at first thought he was visiting the patient in the bed next to me, a very old woman who was asleep most of the time. Then I got a look at his face just as he turned to leave.
“Jerry? What are you doing here?”
He gave me a sheepish smile. “If anyone asks, I’m your mother’s uncle. Sam.”
“Uncle Sam?”
He shrugged. “I’m your great-uncle Sam.”
“What’s with the stage makeup? You thought I gave your description out and you’d be arrested on the spot, didn’t you?” Actually, I had done precisely that last night, but I didn’t want to tell him so.
“I just wanted to apologize. And warn you to be careful
. You’ve been getting in the way, Erin. Of all the wrong people.”
“Why did you do this to me, Jerry? Why did you try to kill me?”
“Sam,” he corrected. “I just . . . wanted to get your attention, not put you in the hospital. Or worse.”
“Next time you want to get my attention, tap me on the shoulder. Don’t slip me poison.”
He hung his head and nodded.
“Thank you for saving my life, though. Even if you’re the one who nearly killed me in the first place.”
“That deed won’t exactly earn me the keys to the city.”
“It’ll get you leniency from the judge, though.” I sighed. “I gave your name to the police. If you killed Laura, you deserve whatever happens to you.”
“I didn’t kill her. I’d never kill anyone.”
“But you know who did?”
He nodded and tamped the perspiration off his forehead. “Probably too late for me to run.”
“Then go to the police. Tell them everything. They’ll protect you.”
He looked at the door. “I’ve got to get out now, while I still can.”
“You’re going home to Detroit?” I asked, pulling a location out of the air in an attempt to trip him up.
“Yeah. Maybe.”
“You never said you were actually from Detroit, Jerry.”
“Didn’t I? I can’t remember. I say a lot of things. Too many things to keep track of . . . get my stories all messed up that way.” He released a sad chuckle and shook his head. “You’d have figured I’d have learned more about how to pull off cons from Laura than I did.”
“Were the two of you partners?”
He let out a guffaw. “Me? Partners with Laura? No chance in hell.”
“Who have you been conning? Is this whole bit about your being homeless a lie, just like it was about your not having a car?”
“No, Erin. I live in my car. Have for the past couple of months. And I really do want Americans to get a better grip on what’s important in life. I just made a huge mistake in saying yes to something that looked too good to be true. Be real careful of who you agree to work for, Erin. You’re making the same mistake I did. Believe me.”
