Dead Lift

by Rachel Brady

  The house reeked.

  Its air conditioning had been turned off, leaving the place stuffy and grotesquely hot. I didn’t know in which room Platt had been killed, but I hoped the sickening odor of violence I smelled wouldn’t worsen as we got deeper into the house.

  “No one’s hiding here,” I said. “Too foul.” I closed the front door.

  Vince casually peeked into a coat closet on our left anyway. He flung the door open wide to show me its contents—sports jackets on hangars, wing tips neatly paired below.

  Platt’s furnishings were decades old but, like the cottage itself, impeccably maintained. The stoic feel of hardwood floors was softened somewhat by a large oriental area rug he’d chosen for the front room. Opened letters waited on the oiled surface of a walnut coffee table and I skimmed the envelopes, all utility bills.

  A sofa and chairs lined the perimeter of the expansive rug, the sofa facing the front door and the chairs angled in near the corners. The chairs, I thought, hadn’t been used much but the sofa cushions had wear marks in their centers. Throw pillows crowded the left end of the couch, one wedged between the armrest and seat. A smallish flat screen TV had been mounted on the opposite wall. I imagined Platt winding down on the sofa after a long day and wondered if his had been a lonely life or one of intentional solitude.

  An ornamental mirror and two nondescript paintings decorated the walls, but I found no portraits, which struck me as a little sad. Then, on an end table, I spotted a framed 8x10 wedding picture of Platt and his late wife, who’d been mentioned at his memorial service. The photograph added the only real personality to his otherwise utilitarian living room.

  Ahead of me, Vince roamed toward the kitchen and dining areas, two narrow, connected rooms running left to right across the back of the house. I noticed the back door Claire had used a week ago when this whole affair had started, and tried to picture her hesitantly pushing the door open, calling for a dog that didn’t exist. Black fingerprint dust remained along the doorframe and knob, probably forgotten among the more obvious cleaning priorities.

  Vince opened the pantry and found only canned vegetables and the usual staple foods.

  “Come on.” I headed for the hall.

  The little bungalow had only two bedrooms and a single bath. I looked under the bed in the first room while Vince stuck with checking the closet. As expected, nobody was there.

  Across the hall, a smaller room facing the street served as a simple, no-frills home office. The centerpiece, a plain wooden desk, faced the only window and, although a keyboard and mouse pad had been left, his computer was absent.

  On the other side of the glass, my old Taurus baked outside in the drive. I was glad I’d remembered to leave its windows down.

  Platt’s bookcases held more papers than books and his walls were bare except for a deep beige coat of paint. When I noticed the dark smear stain on the floor planks, I stopped, feeling strangely more determined.

  Platt hadn’t left legions of friends and loved ones behind to rally for the truth about his murder. Everyone assumed his killer had already been caught. I’d come to the investigation aiming to clear an innocent mother, wanting foremost to reunite her with her kids. Standing where Platt had died strengthened my resolve. Not only did Claire’s boys deserve their mom, Platt deserved justice.

  Being near his personal things moved me. Walking his floors, seeing his wingtips, I knew a simple man had lived here. Near as I could tell, he’d kept to himself any time he wasn’t out helping people.

  “Bathroom’s clear too,” Vince said, stepping into the room. I hadn’t noticed he’d left. “What now?”

  I turned to him, sickened by the lingering smell of washed-up blood and sorrowful for a man I’d never met. “I have to figure out who did this to him.”

  He stole a glance at his watch. “Eighteen minutes. I’ll take the bedroom.”

  I watched him turn and leave. In three strides, he was in the room across the hall.

  I started with the desk. Its top drawer was for pens, pencils, and sticky pads. The middle was for a stapler, tape dispenser, and spare computer mouse with a cord so tightly wound around itself that it was disturbing. And the bottom contained extra printer paper. At my own desk, all these items would have been crammed into a single drawer.

  His closet was equally neat. Instead of jackets and shoes like we’d found in the foyer, this one was filled with the components of a model train set. A plywood base rested on-end against the closet’s wall. The shelves were stacked end-to-end with small, meticulously arranged boxes containing individual rail cars. Segments of track, capable of snapping together in interchangeable patterns, were nestled in an opaque Rubbermaid tub at the foot of the plywood base. And that was it. There were no rolls of wrapping paper jammed in the closet’s darkest corner, no forgotten knock-around shoes, and no board games. There wasn’t even a winter coat for Houston’s fluke cold days. Just trains.

  Apparently, Dr. Platt didn’t believe in Miscellaneous. Even the papers on his bookcases were categorized: back issues of professional journals, Xeroxed articles, manuscripts in-progress, and sheet music for an instrument I hadn’t yet determined.

  As I was about to give up on the room, I caught sight of his phone. It was a standard cordless model made to stand upright in its base while charging. The display said READY and its prominent capital letters got me thinking. I lifted the handset and pressed the Caller ID button with my thumb. Forty calls were in the log. I helped myself to a pen out of Platt’s top drawer, a sheet of paper from his third, and got busy writing down names and numbers. When a repeat entry appeared, I kept track by adding checkmarks.

  “Found something here,” Vince called from the bedroom.

  I noted the final entries from the log, folded my list, and tucked it into the back pocket of my shorts. Across the hall, Vince waited in a reading chair that occupied the far corner. A manila folder was open on his lap.

  “You’re going to want to take these.” He indicated the stack of papers inside the folder. “There’s no time to read them here.”

  I didn’t like the idea of removing property, but Vince was right. We’d run out of time.

  Then I noticed something on the end table next to Vince’s chair. “I know that geode.” It was impossible to miss.

  He turned. Prominently displayed on the nightstand between Platt’s bed and armchair was an enormous amethyst identical to the one I’d seen at the club.

  “The other half’s in Diana’s office.”

  Vince pulled open the drawer in the same end table. It was empty.

  “This is where I found the folder. It’s full of letters from Diana.”

  My shock must have been visible.

  “Old letters,” He added, quickly. “From back in the eighties.”

  I couldn’t wait to see them. Probably sensing as much, Vince snapped the folder closed and stood to leave. “Later,” he said. “I have to get back to the site.”

  We backtracked through the short hall and were nearly through the kitchen when I noticed a neglected fish bowl in Platt’s recessed window sill. Olive algae adhered to the sides of the little bowl and a red Betta fish hovered in the murky water, probably afraid to move and stir up any funk. I imagined the poor guy hadn’t eaten for days. I crossed to the window and lifted the bowl, figuring there was no sense losing two lives in that house.

  My car was obnoxiously hot despite its open windows. I settled behind the wheel and passed the bowl to Vince. Ahead, William Saunders’ automatic garage door lowered. I didn’t figure William had a driver’s license, so that meant his caregiver Mr. B. was probably home and that I’d missed him again. Mentally, I started to prioritize a growing list of people to call and ideas to follow-up, but my focus was lost when my phone squawked to indicate a new voicemail. This was a surprise because the phone hadn’t rung.

  The message from Richard was so distracting that for a moment I stopped blaming him for ruining my phone.

  “We should t
alk,” he’d said. “Diana King is named in Platt’s will.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  I didn’t feel like returning Richard’s call.

  I dropped Vince off, killed the radio and drove away in silence. The chatter in my head was overwhelming again, demanding that further input of any kind be stopped—whether that was the Top Forty on my radio or Richard’s theories about Claire’s case. All rooms full, my brain said. Try again later.

  Bothered, edgy, and physically tense, I wondered what was wrong with me.

  On autopilot, I turned toward the YMCA and, when I realized my mistake, I figured my subconscious was trying to tell me something and decided, for once, to listen to it.

  It was almost two o’clock, way too hot for an outdoor run, but I did have a swimsuit, cap, and goggles in my trunk. The mindless repetition of dozens of laps would free me to think. Exercise, I knew, would bring me out of my worsening mood.

  The pool turned out to be packed. In the shallow end, kids tossed diving sticks or clung to kickboards. Four lane ropes had been removed to make room for a water aerobics class—all stocky grandmothers, near as I could tell. Two lanes remained, both occupied, but I knew the etiquette for sharing. I lowered myself into a lane, disappointed to find the water temperature almost as warm as a bath.

  I stretched my latex cap around my head and pushed my ponytail underneath it. My goggles, scratched since the day Annette had commandeered them as space-explorer lenses, were tinted and water tight. Wasting no time, I pressed them over my eyes and submerged. My feet got a strong push off the wall, and I headed out for Lap One, which I’d decided would be devoted to Platt’s fish.

  Nobody had questioned my walking into the gym with a fish. I didn’t want him to boil in the car, so I’d carried him inside and put him in my locker, along with my purse and clothes. Fish, I figured, would be neither claustrophobic nor afraid of the dark so he shouldn’t mind. There’d be time to clean the bowl before Jeannie and Annette got home from their movie. I hoped the surprise pet would earn some points.

  My breathing found its rhythm and I began to reach longer on my stroke than usual, really working on stretching out my back muscles each time. I gave myself over to the buoyancy of the pool and let my head relax. The muscles in my neck relaxed too. It was quiet in the water. Except for bubbles when I exhaled, the pool was silent. I started to form a list.

  Webmail. Later that day I’d explore Claire’s e-mail history. If possible, I’d do it without Jeannie reading over my shoulder proffering her wild theories.

  Old letters from Diana. Diana and Platt may have been lovers thirty years ago or as recently as last week. Did it matter either way?

  Platt’s will. She’d been named in his will, so maybe it did matter. If Platt had left her a large sum, and if she’d known beforehand, maybe she killed him for the money.

  His Caller ID log. Making cold calls to a bunch of strangers didn’t excite me—I was fairly sure I’d botch it—but unless I wanted to bring Richard into the mix, this job would fall to me. The prospect would be less frightening if I could assume all the people on the list already knew he’d died. What worried me was ringing up those who had no idea.

  Mr. B. Even as my tension surrendered to the work-out and mental clarity made its slow return, I knew I should have gone back to Mr. B’s house instead of coming to the pool. He’d been home this afternoon and I’d passed up a perfect opportunity to approach him. There was no guarantee he’d have anything useful to offer, but I berated myself for not following through. Mr. B was a lingering stone I meant to turn.

  My spooky e-mail. Learning someone’s e-mail address was neither difficult nor expensive, but last night’s e-mail put me on high alert anyway. If someone from last spring’s ordeal were involved in this case, no matter how remotely, through an association with Mick Young, it was possible I was dealing not with a single menacing criminal but with a network of them. I wanted to believe I was being paranoid, but if I’d learned anything from working with Richard, it was not to underestimate paranoia. I lost count of my laps thinking about that e-mail.

  Then two girls ducked under the lane ropes to cross the pool and my rhythm was broken. I stood and moved to the wall, watching them, and took a moment to catch my breath. My own little girl would be their size in a couple years. With a strange mixture of shame and regret, I realized she was also on my list.

  Annette. I pushed off the wall and resumed. The world fell silent again except for my breathing. The world, I remembered, was twenty-five thousand miles in circumference. I pictured my daughter and me on the Earth, only a few feet apart. Rather than close our gap by walking toward each other, it seemed we’d head opposite directions and meet thousands of miles later, clear on the other side of the planet. Loving her, I feared, would always mean taking the long way.

  ***

  My apartment smacked of acetone and I knew Jeannie had given Annette a full-service manicure, pedicure, or both. I was relieved to find her note: At movies. Back for dinner. It meant I still had a few hours to deal with Diana’s old letters, Claire’s e-mail, and Platt’s call list.

  I took care of the nasty fish bowl first so Annette would come home to a cheerful pet. Then I set it next to me at the kitchen table, among used-up cotton balls and assorted nail polish bottles, and booted up my laptop. Logging into another woman’s e-mail account felt vile.

  I typed “Wendell Platt” into the search box and nothing came up. That didn’t necessarily mean anything though, because everyone seemed to use some form of alias these days. With millions of people using these free accounts, any given name was likely already taken. I tried variations but nothing hit.

  For good measure, I scrolled through her Sent and Deleted folders and read an exhaustive series of messages, but nothing to or from Platt. I checked her Contacts list and it was equally useless. If she’d ever e-mailed him, the messages had been purged. It’d take a subpoena to pull them off Yahoo’s servers.

  I weighed Diana’s statement that Claire had been pining after Platt, haranguing him with e-mails. She’d either tried to mislead me or she hadn’t. I was more bothered by the possibility she’d told the truth. Claire denied ever having written Platt, a claim her e-mail history supported, and I believed her. If Diana believed otherwise, her information had come from somewhere and the only sources I could think of were Platt or someone in the HPD. So either I was a fool or someone was spreading rumors.

  Taking that a step further, it didn’t make sense that Platt would tell Diana about e-mail messages that didn’t exist. The only reason to do that would be to garner sympathy or jealousy and Platt seemed too mature for either. That left someone involved with the investigation. If a detective had leaked this information, I could hardly draw a conclusion. I’d heard of officers holding information back from the public, but I didn’t think they ever leaked false details. That was a question for Richard.

  I dismissed the remaining possibility, that Claire had known Platt after all and did, in fact, e-mail him. By all indications, she was an adept liar, but my operating assumption was that she wasn’t lying to me. It didn’t fit that a guilty person would offer full run of her house and free access to her e-mail account. Most innocent people wouldn’t do that.

  Then it occurred to me that she might have multiple e-mail accounts. Perhaps she’d offered up access to one that was clean. The house, too, could have been volunteered for my search if she knew that nothing inside would be linked to the crime.

  I studied the Betta and envied his grace. The Claire-Diana-Chris love triangle, squirrelly history between Diana and Platt, and unsettling e-mail from the night before squelched my second-guessing. No, no, and no, I told myself. Claire was not lying. Something fishy was going on, and not just in the bowl beside my keyboard.

  I moved on to Diana’s letters, struck by the difference in how Claire and Platt stored their special papers. Claire had stashed hers in an elaborate curio box lined with purple velvet, probably an antique. Platt had opted for
a twenty-one-cent office folder.

  Reclined on my sofa, legs stretched, I made my way through Diana’s old notes.

  September 19, 1981

  ¡Hola, Wendell!

  Today I saw El Palacio Real, The Royal Palace, and it was indescribable. There are 2,800 rooms!

  Afterward I stopped for lunch. I understand so little of the menus here. The waiter said I could have “un hamburguesa con potatos” and I thought it was weird that the Spanish put potatoes on their hamburgers but, since I want to give new foods a try, I said okay. When the meal came, it was a burger and fries.

  It would have been so much funnier with you. I think about you every day, always moving backward in time seven hours from whatever I’m doing. When the burger and fries came, your alarm clock was about to go off. Last night, when I walked the bustling streets, I knew your workday was only halfway over. At midnight when I turned in, I imagined you at your little stove, fixing dinner. Probably something out of a can. Baked beans?

  Please write soon. I miss you.

  Love,

  Diana

  September 21, 1981

  Hi Wendell,

  Today was our last day of fun before we start gearing up for the show. We spent it in Toledo, about fifty miles from Madrid. I went inside my first cathedral. There were spires and carvings in the stone, and there was a beautiful tower clock. No pictures were allowed inside. I thought of you and how you always said that “No Flash Photography” rules are scams to make people buy stuff in gift shops. Maybe so. I got you a little something, so the scam worked.

  Heard from my father. Fall semester’s underway and he still worries I’ll never go back to school and make something of myself. Would love to phone and talk to you about it…I resist only because I promised. Tomorrow morning we’ll catch a train to Barcelona. Pasarela Gaudí kicks off the day after tomorrow. Models could tell my dad that being in this show proves I’ve made something of myself, but I don’t suppose he’d value their opinions. What could a bunch of pretty young girls who’ve never been to college possibly know?