Pushover (Iris Thorne Mysteries Book 5)

by Dianne Emley

  “Brown hair, brown eyes. On the slender side. Weighs about one-seventy.”

  “Do you have a copy of this photo?”

  “Sure. We’ve been handing out flyers throughout the county.” Proctor flipped open a file folder on his desk and handed both Iris and Tracy a color flyer. On the bottom it said: This man, Michael Allan Edgerton, is sought for questioning in the murder of his, wife Mona Edgerton. It was followed by a description of when and where he was last seen and his physical characteristics.

  “You’ve got everything down to the scar above his left eyebrow,” Tracy remarked.

  “Is it accurate?” Proctor asked with a hint of concern.

  “Oh yes.” Tracy folded the paper into quarters and put it in her purse. “He got that when he and Todd were about thirteen. They were fooling around on their skateboards on our street and Mike went face first into the curb. I drove him to the emergency room. Took ten stitches. Left about a two-inch scar. Slit his eyebrow in half. The hair never grew back there.”

  Proctor stood and handed Iris and Tracy his business card. “If either of you see or hear from Mike Edgerton, call me anytime, day or night.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  By the time Iris had returned Tracy to her house, her husband Richard had ordered a couple of pizzas to the delight of their two children. They invited Iris to eat with them and she accepted even though she knew it meant a long return drive over the pass in the dark. She wanted to prolong her visit with the Beales. They were the only connection to the Todd she’d fallen in love with. Over the course of the day, she’d concluded that her decision to withhold her horrible suspicions about Todd was sound. Tracy’s grief over Todd and the Edgertons remained pure, not tainted by the fox and the people who would lie and kill to own it.

  “Honey, let me cut that in half for you,” Tracy said to her daughter.

  “I can eat it like this.” Emily struggled to hoist a generous slice of pizza into her mouth, refusing to be treated differently from her older brother.

  Tracy watched her daughter happily chewing a bite of pizza, grease rimming the girl’s lips, taking a parent’s pleasure in the mundane aspects of her child’s life.

  They were all sitting at a redwood picnic table and benches on the backyard patio. The heat had broken with the setting sun and the streets came alive with kids on bicycles and skates and the barking dogs that ran alongside. Dinner dishes were washed and put away as the cool evening air settled across the dry land. The neighbor’s kids screamed and yelled as they played on a jungle gym in their backyard, the tallest point visible above the cedar-plank fence separating the two yards.

  A large avocado tree, its branches still weighed down with fruit, grew in a corner of the Beale’s rectangular yard. Bare dirt encircled its base where the shade was too dense for grass to grow. Judging by the toy cars, plastic farm animals, and dolls scattered there, the big old tree was a favorite spot for the kids to play during the heat of the day.

  “Rich, you still eating?” a boy yelled to the Beales’s son from the top of the jungle gym.

  “Pizza!” he yelled back, throwing the neighbor a thumbs-up.

  “I try to keep junk food to a minimum,” Tracy explained to Iris. “This is a treat for them.”

  “Have they had the F-U-N-E-R-A-L?” Richard asked, spelling the word in front of his children to prevent upsetting them.

  “No fair spelling,” Emily protested.

  “F-U-N…” ten-year-old Rich started spelling aloud.

  “I didn’t think to ask about it,” Iris said. “They found…I mean, the situation was revealed on Sunday. Maybe it’s this week.”

  “Funeral!” the boy happily announced. “Who died?”

  “Why don’t you kids take your dinner and eat it in front of the TV?” Tracy suggested.

  “You mean it?” Emily asked with delight.

  “Go ahead,” Tracy confirmed. After they’d run inside the house, she commented, “We’re breaking all the rules tonight. Oh well.”

  “Looks like you run a tight ship,” Iris said.

  “I try to. Todd and I grew up in chaos. I promised myself that if I ever had a family, that we would act like a family is supposed to act.” Tracy pushed her half-eaten slice of pizza around her plate. “The Edgertons were a real family to me. After my mom was murdered, Mike’s mother helped us out a lot.”

  “I’m surprised she didn’t tell us about Mona,” Richard said.

  “She’s probably in shock,” Tracy said. “It just happened.”

  “More iced tea, Iris?” Richard raised the plastic pitcher over Iris’s glass.

  “Thanks,” she said, wishing she had something stronger.

  “You try and try and things just go to hell anyway.” Tracy spoke to the empty seat across the table from her as if she was trying to explain to an unseen guest who had demanded an answer.

  Richard covered his wife’s hand with his. “We’re fine, Tracy. You, me, and the kids, we’re fine and we’re going to be fine.”

  “I can’t help but wonder if I’d been a better sister to Todd—”

  “Tracy,” Richard scolded, removing his hand from his wife’s. The abruptness with which his tone changed suggested that this topic was visited frequently. “You were just a teenager when your mother was murdered and you’d been taking care of Todd a long time before that. Your mother was never home. She was too busy chasing around to care about you and your brother. After she died, you had that drunken excuse of a father to deal with, until his liver finally gave out.”

  Tracy looked at him with hurt eyes, the truth still painful after all the years that had passed.

  Richard continued. “Todd was the one who threw away every opportunity he ever had. As soon as things didn’t go his way, he was out of there. You can only do so much for a person, Tracy. You did all you could.”

  “I know, but I think about the years when I didn’t try to keep in touch with him.”

  “You finally stopped trying to track him down all over the world and he didn’t make a single effort to contact you. We’re the ones who’ve lived in the same place for almost twenty years. He couldn’t find the time to call you? Todd was really good at doing a guilt number on you. It was like a test. I want you to show me how much you love me. And no matter what you did for him, how far you went, it was never enough. Isn’t that what Mona told you about why she left Todd? He wanted more and more from her. It was like he set up hurdles for her to jump. He was a bottomless pit. But when it came to her, he held back. Tracy, he’s got you in the same trap.”

  Tracy wept quietly. “Does anything good ever come out of a bad family? Or is it constant struggle to be normal? I feel like I’ve lived my whole life looking over my shoulder, sensing the family curse is waiting for me to be weak or careless so it can suck me down. I try to protect my family with rules, discipline, a clean house, church. To the outside world, mine has to be the most dull life imaginable, but no one knows how hard I’ve struggled just to have this and how much I fear that the whole thing sits on a precipice, ready to tumble over. I’m mad at Todd for that. I thought I had it beat.” She shook her head. “But it was only sleeping.”

  Richard reached his hands across the table to clasp his wife’s. “Come on, Tracy. Don’t do this to yourself. What happened to Todd happened to him and not to us. Okay?”

  Tracy managed, a smile but it seemed like it would take a lot more than Richard’s supportive words to convince her. “I’m mad at Todd for leaving me.”

  “You’re hardly alone, Tracy.”

  “I know that, Richard. But Todd was there back then. He saw it all. I feel like there’s no one left who understands what happened. I know you think you understand, Richard, but you can’t completely. It’s too big to explain in words. Unless you were there, you can’t really know what it was like. And now, my mother, father, and brother are gone. I’m the only one left.”

  Richard squeezed his wife’s hands and said nothing.

  After a while, I
ris asked a question that had been on her mind. “Do you think Todd was really in love with Mona?”

  Tracy nodded. “She was his first real love. You know Todd, women flocked to him. He had his pick. Then Mona came along. Todd never said much about it, but I could tell. He fell hard.”

  Iris recalled the attractive woman in the Christmas photo and then realized that Tracy was scrutinizing her.

  “It didn’t occur to me before, but you and Mona are very similar. Physically, I mean. Isn’t she, Richard?”

  He nodded. “When Iris came by for the first time last week, I had thought of that, but I didn’t want to say anything because it was kind of creepy.”

  They had Iris’s full attention now. “Why?”

  “We always thought that Mona resembled my mother,” Tracy said.

  “That is kind of creepy,” Iris said.

  “It wasn’t the only thing.”

  “Richard…” Tracy shook her head at her husband as she slid from the bench and began gathering the plates and silverware. “Iris, don’t get up. I won’t be but a minute.” She pushed open the sliding glass door with her foot and took the dirty dishes inside the house.

  When Iris was alone with Richard, she asked, “What did you find creepy about Todd?”

  Richard took a deep breath and folded his arms across his chest. “For all Todd’s charm and jokes and everything, there was something cold about him. Tracy never saw it. She thought the sun rose and set in her brother. It was as if a part of him was shut off. I think he was aware that he had a piece missing and he did a good job covering it up.”

  “Is this based on a gut feeling or experience?”

  He turned to look inside the house, making sure his wife was out of earshot. “Let me tell you a story about Todd. My wife doesn’t know this.”

  “I won’t repeat it,” Iris said.

  “When I coached Todd in high school, he had a buddy on the football team, a guy named Rocky. That’s what everyone called him. Todd, Mike Edgerton, and Rocky hung around together. Todd had his eye on this car that a guy who ran a deli in town had for sale. A sixty-nine Mercury Cougar. It was real cherry.”

  “The one he drove cross-country after he left Cal State Fresno.”

  “Tracy told you about that. That’s the same model car, but not the one I’m talking about. Anyway, Todd didn’t have the money but he wanted that car. Wanted it big time. He got a part-time job bagging groceries to earn money and asked the guy who ran the deli to please hold the car for him. The guy said he’d see what he could do. If someone made him a good offer, he’d have to sell it. He was a jerk that way. One day, Todd sees his friend Rocky tooling around town in this Cougar. Rocky got his father to buy it for him. It was the kind of thing where Rocky didn’t know he wanted that car until Todd wanted it. Right after Rocky got the car, he was coming out of the corner market, and three guys jumped him, beat the hell out of him, and stole his car. When the police found it a week later, it was completely stripped. The insurance didn’t pay enough to have it restored the way it was. No one could pin it on Todd, but I heard from a reliable source that Todd had paid those guys to mess up Rocky and the car.”

  “Rocky must have heard the rumors too.”

  “Everyone did, but no one believed that Todd had anything to do with it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Todd started a fund-raising campaign to earn the money to have Rocky’s Cougar fixed. Car washes, bake sales, you name it. Todd was a hero.”

  “He was covering his behind.”

  “Maybe, but what happened after that was the strangest part of the whole thing for me. During the next two years that Rocky and Todd were in high school, they were as tight as ever. Now, that takes a cold-hearted son of a bitch to pull that off. I never saw Todd the same way after that.”

  Neither of them said anything for a while.

  Iris could have added another chapter to Todd’s dark saga, but she didn’t. She changed the subject. “Do you know whether Mike Edgerton smokes?”

  “Like a smokestack.” Richard chuckled. “He started in high school. I used to catch him sneaking cigarettes. He’s tried to stop a hundred times. I smoked for twenty years, so I know how hard it is to stop. The best Mike could do was switch from Marlboros to some low-tar, low-nicotine phony cigarettes.”

  “Do you know what brand?”

  Tracy stuck her head through the opening in the sliding glass door. “Iris, would you like some ice cream? We have chocolate and strawberry.”

  “A little bit of each, please. Thank you.”

  “Honey, do you still have that pack of cigarettes that Mike left here the last time he and Mona came over?”

  Tracy responded sharply, “Why?”

  “They’re not for me. Iris was asking what kind of cigarettes Mike smoked.”

  “I think I’ve got them somewhere.” She disappeared inside the house.

  “Can I ask why you want to know, Iris? Sounds like something the police would ask.”

  She quickly thought of a lie. “The police found cigarette butts in the Edgertons’ house and asked if we knew whether Mike smoked.”

  Tracy returned carrying a tray which she put on the picnic table. Between the three bowls of ice cream was a package of True cigarettes. “I found them.”

  “Great,” Richard said. “Now you can tell the police detective.”

  “Tell him what?” Tracy distributed the ice cream.

  “When he asked us whether Mike smoked because they’d found cigarette butts in the house,” Iris said.

  Tracy winced. “He did?” She shrugged. “I’ve been so jumbled up, I couldn’t tell you half the things that happened today.”

  Iris smiled meekly. She didn’t like to lie. She wasn’t proud of having successfully pulled it off.

  Iris was running barefoot down a narrow street, its cobblestones slick beneath her feet. She peered through the front window of Le Café des Quatre Vents on which Madame Mouche had written the day’s specialties with a black crayon. The small room was crowded and filled with smoke. Todd was standing at the bar with a group of people, talking and laughing. When Iris opened the door and walked inside, everyone turned to stare at her. She looked down at herself and realized she was wearing only a slip. Todd held his hand out to her. She walked toward him and everyone returned to what they were doing, no one paying attention to her anymore. She reached to touch Todd’s cheek and scratched the stiff bristles of his beard with her fingernails. “You grew a beard,” she told him. He smiled as he stroked his facial hair. “It’s cold in Moscow. You need all the fur you can get.”

  Then they were no longer in the café but on the steps of the Metropolis Hotel in Moscow. He pulled her down to sit on the steps beside him and kissed her passionately. He pulled her on top of him, leaning back until they were lying across the steps. He slid his hands under her slip, caressing her bare skin. People walked by as if they weren’t there. There was the sound of rapid gunfire. Iris gasped and sat up. People began running. She realized her hand had blood on it. She turned to Todd, who was still lying against the steps. He was oozing blood from tiny holes that covered his face and body. She recoiled. Above his eyebrow, she saw a white scar that split it in half. At the sound of her name, she jolted awake and found herself in her own bed. She heard her name again and turned to see Todd standing by her bed, clean-shaven and whole. He leaned over her, his outstretched hands reaching for her neck.

  Iris awakened with a start, her heart pounding. She pressed herself against the headboard, scanning the darkness for the intruder but found no one. She gathered her nerve and went through the house, flipping on lights, and checking doors and windows. Todd Fillinger was only in her nightmares.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Iris pulled open the heavy glass door on which was marked in simple brass letters: McKinney Alitzer Financial Services. The suite’s décor was subdued but not staid, colorful but not frivolous, making a statement to employees and clients alike that this was a place
that was serious about money.

  Iris knew all about money, from not having it, to busting her butt to earn it, to having more than she’d ever thought possible, to wondering if it was all worth it. There was one thing about money that she would never take for granted: money is power. She might soon be getting more money and more power. She still hadn’t made up her mind about the regional manager position.

  “Morning, Louise,” Iris said to her assistant.

  Louise looked up from her computer with the same slightly harassed demeanor that she manifested regardless of the time of day. “Good morning, Iris. How are you feeling today?”

  Iris remembered that she was supposed to have been down with the flu yesterday. “Much better, thank you.”

  She walked into her office, hung her suit jacket behind the door, put her purse in the top drawer of her filing cabinet, and her briefcase on the credenza behind her desk. Louise brought in a mug of hot coffee, a gesture that used to embarrass Iris but that Louise insisted on and that Iris had come to not only accept but to expect. Yet another subtle shift in Iris’s transformation from hard scrabble junior investment counselor cold-calling for new clients to the queen of the roost. The mantle of authority which had chafed awkwardly at first now felt comfortable and correct.

  She sorted through her mail and phone messages, which would take her half the day to follow up on. As she prioritized them, she kept thinking about her strange nightmare. Was the left eyebrow of the man she thought was Todd really split by a scar or was the image in her dream the product of the power of suggestion?

  There was a bright rat-a-tat-tat on her door. She looked up to see Lisa Roman, the investment counselor who had asked for her own assistant last week. Iris had forgotten all about it.

  “Come in, Lisa. Have a seat.”

  “Hi, Iris. I was hoping to catch you this morning to see if you’ve had a chance to think over my request for my own assistant.” She crossed her legs at the ankles and tucked them under the chair.