“If she remembers.”
“She was hunting for your card when we left. Maybe give her a call? Check that she has it?”
“She doesn’t answer her phone.”
“Ugh, that’s right. So what now?”
“I’ll go over, maybe?”
“Won’t help if she hasn’t remembered her dream.”
Jill almost hung up, but David was suddenly frowning and tugging at her phone. “Your elephants helped me figure what’s bugging me,” he whispered.
“Quick question, Kerri,” he said, his voice urgent. “That glass in Jody’s kitchen sink. Jill said it was printed and analyzed?”
“Oh yeah, first thing, it’s in the lab. It was rinsed out, and the tap was still dripping. Drops of diluted chocolate milk were found in it, nothing else. No prints. The kitchen had tons of prints from visitors.”
“No prints means it was wiped down.”
“Right.”
“Any prints on the sink and faucets? The near countertop?”
“None.”
David hunched forward. “Jody was crying and starting to feel sick - why would she rinse the glass and wipe it down? Much less wipe the rest?”
“Oh, you’re good. CSU searched everything including the counter tops, faucets and plumbing trap under the sink. No sign that glass held what killed Jody. Nothing. From the attack scene in the living room we’ve taken tons of fibers, glass shards, other stuff.”
“I want to see that sink again.”
“Come. We’ll find those elephants and be gone by the time you get here. The door seal will be cut. Ah, David?”
“What?”
“Keep the lights off. If you do find something-”
“You’ll say CSU found it. Make it admissible.”
“You’re a good man, Charlie Brown.”
Sam was pointing to the TV when David hung up.
The news was on. Deborah and Reid Wylie appeared on the screen with the voiceover too soft. Woody went to turn it up. It was file footage from three nights ago: the Wylies leaving the hospital, grimly pushing through the swarm of flashbulbs, the voiceover describing “Jody Merrill’s entertainment lawyers, now in seclusion.”
Jill was up fast, pointing to the screen. “Robin Abel was there, too. We hadn’t met her, so we didn’t notice.”
David stopped wiping Jesse’s sauce-sticky little fingers and stared. “They’re dressed alike. Two brunettes in dark pants suits.”
“Right, only Robin’s about ten years younger than Deborah. She imitates Deborah.”
“Except for the limp.” David rose, holding Jesse, and came closer. “That crowd must’ve roughed Deborah up.” The camera zoomed in on the bulky driver helping the Wylies into their town car. Robin let herself in on the other side and was fast out of the shot, another reason they hadn’t noticed a third person.
“Waydee,” Jesse piped in David’s arms, pointing at the close-up of Deborah Wylie.
“Yes, that’s a lady.” Jill patted his little cheek as Tricia came up with more baby wipes.
“She must have a nice personality,” Tricia said, nodding toward Deborah Wylie. Then saw the looks she got and shrugged. “My grandma says if the husband is really good-looking and the wife isn’t, she must have a nice personality. Why is she limping?”
David told her about Deborah’s sciatica. Tricia groaned.
Sam behind them started cussing and announced he’d been called.
“Woman just brought in, delivering now in the ER, no time to get her up to OB.”
Woody had been called for the same delivery. “A heroin addict in withdrawal,” he grimaced, reading his phone. “Oh jeez, fetal distress and we have like a minute to get down there.” He gave an emotional, jerky wave to Jill and David. “Stay safe. We gotta jet.”
David watched them go with Jesse snuggled to his chest, his thumb in his mouth. “I want to see that sink again,” he said tensely.
Jill met his eyes and nodded, ready to fly out of the building.
Tricia took Jesse from David. “So put your jackets back on and go,” she said as her armful reached happily for her glasses. “No, honey, those are Auntie Tricia’s glasses, you don’t need ‘em.”
To Jill and David she said, pushing her smeared wire rims back up her nose, “It isn’t even seven yet. Lil’ Wonder here never falls asleep this early. We’ll go get into jammies, and by the time he’s sleepy, you’ll be back.”
27
Nasal swabs, tongue depressors, IV tubing and test tubes from a supply closet. A spoon swiped from a patient’s dinner tray. Cop-quality Maglights, masking tape, and David’s sports bag yanked from their lockers, then down to Maintenance for some other things.
“What are you doing?” Jill asked for the third time.
David broke a little smile on their way back to the elevators. “Gonna tear things apart.”
And tear he did. Twenty minutes later they were in Jody’s dark kitchen with just their flashlights strobing the murk. They’d swabbed and examined the sink, then from below pulled out the Cascade and lemon cleaner and trash basket. David lay on his back in his parka, his head and arms up under the sink, his latex-gloved hands working a wrench. Jill knelt and held both their lights.
“On the trap.” David whispered.
“I’m lighting the trap.”
“Your beam is shaking.”
“Because my hands are shaking.” Jill looked behind her. Aiming both lights under the sink made the kitchen so dark she couldn’t see the doorway. The place was freezing. They’d re-locked and chained the front door and checked the boarded-up glass doors. One of the plywood boards was warped and emitted a cold blast of night wind.
Jill shivered, feeling again the first night’s horror. Nervously, she jerked one of her beams to David’s ankle again. He was wearing his Glock and its clip was full. Seeing it made her feel better for about a minute. She kept her light on it to feel better longer.
From under the sink: “The light.”
“Okay.” She scrunched down and aimed more carefully, her chin close to David’s waist as he squirmed onto his side, his hands and elbows working his wrench. Soft clunking sounded, and then: “Got it. First bolt’s free.”
“The trap?”
“Yeah. Next bolt’s gonna be harder. They didn’t go past the trap.”
“What’s past the trap?”
“You’ll see.”
More soft clunking and groans, and then a louder clunk. “Got it.” David eased himself out to the floor, got into a sitting position, and leaned against the closed cabinet door. Jill beamed both lights on his hands. Between them he held a two-inch-wide pipe, one of its ends curved into a J, the rest stretching straight for about seven inches.
“The segment beyond the trap,” he said, turning it. “The pipes do a roller coaster, down to the trap’s first J, then up through this next pipe’s upside down J to the plumbing behind the walls.” He peered into the pipe’s opening as Jill held the lights. “The first trap is supposed to catch non-liquid stuff, and probably does.”
“So?”
“I wanted to see this one too. Here, hold it for a sec and give me a tongue depressor.”
They’d laid the items they brought neatly – like a surgical table - on a stretch of Bounty on the floor. Jill held the pipe in one hand, leaned for a tongue depressor, and gave it to him.
“Ever do this?” David grinned in the dimness, using both hands to split the depressor lengthwise.
“Sure. I used to play with them.”
“Me too. They never split neatly, do they? They always come out uneven triangles - like this.” He held up what looked like a six-inch-long, balsa-type wooden blade, round at one end, tapering and pointy at the other.
“Hey…” Jill’s heart thudded as he took the pipe back and pushed his makeshift blade into it. Scraped the interior, rotated the pipe and scraped more.
“Oh lookey. Gunk,” he said, moving his wooden blade into Jill’s light.
A da
rk, tiny blob sat on the wood’s pointy tip, and some dark slime along its edge.
“Incredible,” Jill breathed.
“A tongue depressor’s better than a scalpel for this, because it bends. Give me the first test tube.”
She did, and the tongue depressor blade went into a wide test tube which she rubber-capped, and placed on the Bounty.
Overhead, a soft thud sounded.
Jill froze. “What was that?”
“What was what?” David was using his light to squint into the pipe.
“I heard something,” she hissed, gaping at the dark ceiling.
He looked up too; held his light to the ceiling. “I didn’t hear anything.”
“Something thudded. Like a footstep…”
“Maybe the cops left a window open.”
“No, I... Could somebody be up there?”
David peered into his pipe again. “You’re nervous. We’re both nervous. Pass the nasal swab?”
Shakily, Jill handed him the cotton-tipped swab. Alternated between gaping up to the ceiling and straining her hearing and watching him swab inside the J end of his connector pipe. With a jerky movement she handed him a narrower test tube for the more delicate swab, and beamed her light up again.
“I definitely heard something,” she whispered.
David got stiffly to his feet. “Ow, the back,” he groaned, and saw Jill scowling at the ceiling. “The house is old,” he said low. “Try to calm. Getting jittery doesn’t help.”
He opened the kitchen cabinet above the sink and peered in. Again. Glasses crowded in with plates. The glasses matched the one they’d seen in the sink.
It’s late, I’m tired and just hearing things, Jill stormed at herself, on her knees wrapping the two test tubes in bubble wrap, then moving them to a separate compartment of David’s sports bag, and then, shivering, starting to wrap pliers and one of three different-sized wrenches into towels they’d brought.
“Oh damn!” She’d placed the two flashlights on the floor next to her. Their beams cast frightening, moving shadows of her hands on the walls and cabinets. She wiggled her fingers, and they seemed to claw back at her. Great. Now I’m scaring myself.
David’s phone chirped and she looked over.
“Alex,” he whispered, and listened.
“Got the elephants, good,” he said low to the phone. Listened again, and straightened as he stood. “Coke residue, right, they probably shared it. So have it checked, find out if it’s just coke. Wait a sec.”
Jill was tugging at his pants leg.
“I want to take the dolls,” she said.
David looked at her, his face questioning in shadow, then relayed to Alex. Listened, then looked back to Jill.
“He says okay. CSU’s tossed upstairs, taken evidence. The dolls didn’t seem important.”
Jill’s hands stilled over a wrench. “Jody left them to us anyway. And probate judges are really slow.”
A few more words and David hung up, crouched to Jill in the dimness and started helping wrap their tools.
“They’re called howdahs,” he said.
“What?”
“Those fancy carriages that went on elephants’ backs for maharajahs to ride in. Jody’s elephants had howdahs that lifted to store drugs inside their bellies. Cops have seen antiques like that before, probably used in Victorian times to carry opium. Alex says there’s a big market for that stuff-”
“The dolls, David. We gotta get the dolls.”
28
They moved through the dark, their light beams sweeping past the hulks of Jody’s movie props to the plywood-covered glass doors.
“There’s a big draft,” Jill whispered worriedly, sending her light back over the mangrove’s swaying Spanish moss.
“Weather’s been damp. The plywood’s warped.” David beamed his light on one sheet of plywood, hefting his sports bag with his free hand. “Yeah, that one on the right is really bent. Letting the wind in, practically. They must have used guns.”
“Guns?”
“Nail guns that just shoot staples. Not as good as real nails. Come.”
Jill followed him up the dark stairs to the shadowy hall. Their lights beamed here, there, lighting the linen closet and bathroom on the right, the two bedrooms on the left. The larger one, Jody’s, looked ghostly with dark fingerprint dust covering her canopy bed, every shelf, open drawers, and the floor. The mess of clothes and makeup and books they’d seen were gone, probably bagged into evidence.
“CSU really tossed it,” David murmured. He sent his light over the bed. It was stripped bare of sheets and pillowcases. The white, frilly canopy hung as if pulled, and the mattress lay half off the bed. The room shrouded under police dust spoke the finality of Jody’s being tragically gone.
“It looks defiled,” Jill breathed, feeling heartsick as she shone her light on empty shelves, a yanked window curtain, the drooping mattress. “Jody was so proud of her things, so careful with them.” Her eyes stung with tears. “She’d be devastated to see this.”
David touched her arm. “She isn’t going to see it.”
They moved to the doorway of the smaller bedroom. In the sweep of their lights, Jody’s “dearest little friends” looked more bizarre than before.
They crowded the Victorian settee and the floor, cowering under ashes-like dust. Each tiny china face seemed to cry at them with horror: look what they did to us. Their elaborate lace and finery had been vacuumed; their skirts were blown shamefully up to their waists; they tumbled and sprawled as if struggling desperately to cling to each other.
David laid his sports bag down and stepped into the room, his beam sweeping from a tiny blown parasol to scattered teacups. Near his foot a once-fine lady lay on her back, her face broken, her glass eyes blankly sorrowful: your friends did this. Her baby nurse, arms outstretched toward what was once a fleeing toddler, lay near her.
Jill was in the dark doorway, beaming her Maglight. “The linen closet,” David said low, turning to her. “We can wrap these in a sheet, maybe there’s something-”
The closet door shot open and a dark shape lunged at him. Jill froze and screamed, dropped her light. “No!” David’s light hit the floor too as a dark blur like a crowbar came smashing down on him. He ducked and groaned and Jill couldn’t see; they were two silhouettes struggling and toppling, landing hard on the floor.
Her heart rocketed. Her whole body shook convulsively as she dropped to the floor too and scrabbled for her light, spinning crazily away as they fought and kicked. A man’s voice yelled in pain as the sound of David’s punch hit home. Then came David’s voice, groaning, as the pair with a whomp flipped and turned near Jill, shaking the floor. A man’s heavy shoe kicked her hand. She grabbed for his foot and missed as the pair slid away struggling. She sensed that the attacker was on top and ready to strike again. Where was her light?
There! Her shaking fingers found it, the beam still strong. David was pinned on his back with the dark-clad assailant on him, his crowbar high and about to crash down again. Jill leaped up and lunged with her light, bashing the attacker’s head with a furious thunk. He fell off David; tried, swearing like a madman, to heave himself up as David was up first, flipping him, forcing him back down with his knee on his back, his gun out and pressed to the side of the man’s head.
“You’re done, asshole! Hands out wide.”
He relaxed his knee just enough for the assailant to maneuver around. As he did, and Jill scrabbled her light on him, they were both stunned. Jill’s vision blurred and jumped from shock.
They were staring into the face of Jay Arender.
29
Blood streamed from his head and over his cheek. He’d been face down when Jill struck him. As he rolled onto his back, his blood flowed down his neck and over his ear to the side of his face.
David still had his gun on him. Arender grimaced at it under Jill’s bright light, then squinted past it to the two dark shapes behind it.
“Who are you?” h
e groaned.
David shoved him onto his side. Still trembling, Jill zapped IV tubing around his wrists, gave David his light, then got her phone out to call the cops.
“Who are you?” Arender groaned again.
David flicked his beam fast to his face, then back to the bleeding man - whose eyes widened.
“You?”
“Why did you kill Jody?” David demanded roughly.
“What?” Arender tried to squint past the light at him. Then his head fell back. His eyes slid away, squeezed shut, and his body tightened into a fetal position. “I didn’t. I just wanted…”
David pressed his gun hard to Arender’s temple. “Just wanted what?”
Jill touched his arm worriedly “The crowbar…”
“I’m okay. Shoulder’s smarting. You just wanted what?” he repeated to Arender.
Nothing. The assailant’s face was averted, squeezed in pain.
Strange lumps had brushed Jill’s hand in the struggle. Still shaking badly, she scrabbled around for them, gathered more, and held them out to David. “What are these?”
He held his gun on Arender and flicked his light quickly to her hand. In it were pebbles: different sizes, dirty-opaque with brownish, yellowish surfaces.
“They were strewn near that doll’s broken head.” With her light pressed under her elbow, Jill scratched the surface of one pebble, then another. Then she shone her light on them, peering at them more closely.
“Glinting,” she said, as something dawned. “Kinda like…oh God – diamonds?”
In the nervous shadows she looked at David. It hit them both, the whole story, like a sledgehammer. What else could explain this?
“Africa?” David said, furiously flipping Arender onto his back, pressing his gun hard between his eyes. “You went over there about Jody’s contract. Fought with her - and what? Gave her the doll as a ‘peace offering,’ big joke?” His voice rose. “Only, in it were diamonds you had her smuggle in unknowingly. Then the problem was how to get the doll back, right?”
A silence that seemed to tick forever, and then: “Yeah.” It came out as a whisper. Arender’s eyes opened to slits that looked past David at nothing. His voice was beaten. Then something in his face seemed strangely to relax. He’d been caught. Diamond smuggling wasn’t murder, his pained features seemed to say. He seemed wanting to talk.
EMBRYO 5: SILVER GIRL (EMBRYO: A Raney & Levine Thriller) Page 14
