by Kara Lennox
She was right. A group of young men who’d been walking by with their basketballs had stopped to ogle the car, which did stand out.
“Just stay behind me, Elizabeth, okay?” Joe had paused at the top of the stairs to put in his two cents. “You have your phone handy?”
“In my hand. I’ve already dialed the nine and one of the ones.”
Hudson ushered her ahead of him so she’d be sandwiched between the two men. But the manager had said Munch wasn’t answering his door. Sensing the noose tightening around him, he’d probably gone into hiding. If Hudson had killed someone, he wouldn’t just sit around his apartment, waiting for the cops to show up.
Hudson detected the smell in the air before they even reached the door. Oh, God. He knew that smell.
Joe stood before the door, took a deep breath and knocked decisively. “Munch? Hey, Munch, it’s your lawyer. Open the door—we gotta talk.”
“Lawyer?” Liz looked back to Hudson.
“Project Justice doesn’t condone kidnapping or beating people up,” Hudson whispered, “but lying is apparently fine.”
Joe pressed his ear to the door. “I don’t hear anything.”
Hudson didn’t, either. “I say we go in anyway. Search the place.”
Joe took a quick look over both shoulders to make sure no one was watching. “You two shield what I’m doing.”
“Are you going to pick the lock?” Liz asked as she and Hudson moved to stand between Joe and the balcony railing.
“I’m not that patient.” With that, Joe took one step back and kicked the door. The wood splintered, and the lock broke and the door bounced open.
“Damn,” Hudson said, “they teach you that in Secret Service school?”
“Special Forces,” Joe answered matter-of-factly. Then no one spoke for a few moments, because they were too busy gagging. A hideously fetid stench billowed out of the apartment, along with a cloud of flies.
“Sweet Jesus,” Liz said, her eyes huge. “I’ll just wait out here.”
“If this is what I think it is,” Joe said, “none of us is going to stay long.”
* * *
HUDSON BRAVELY ENTERED the apartment and Joe followed, dragging a reluctant Liz with him. He didn’t particularly want her to see whatever was dead in here. But they couldn’t leave her standing outside by herself. The men who’d been admiring the car had shifted their attention to her. Liz’s stunning looks provoked attention wherever she went, but even in jeans and a sweatshirt, she really stood out in a place this mean and ugly.
Liz pulled the hem of that sweatshirt up and over her nose and mouth. “I’ll just wait here by the door,” she said.
“Okay, but don’t touch anything,” Hudson warned her. He wanted no chance that any of their DNA would be found here.
“Not to worry.”
“Don’t shed any hair or leave a footprint in anything, either.”
Munch’s apartment was piled high with junk—boxes full of God knew what, broken furniture, stained rugs, holes in the walls. Still, in all that mess, it was easy to find the dead guy—just follow the flies. He was in the bathtub, along with a lot of congealed blood and decomposing body fluids. The maggots had done a pretty good job on him. Hard to even tell what had killed him. But the remnant of a fishtail could be seen on the back of the victim’s hand.
“This him?” Joe asked.
“Pretty sure it is.” Shit. There went their best hope of finding out what Mandalay had been mixed up in. “He’s been here awhile, too. Days, maybe a week.”
“Whoever killed Mandalay might have done this, too,” Hudson said. “Some kind of business deal gone awry?”
“Or Munch could have killed Mandalay, and some third party—an ally of Mandalay’s, perhaps—killed Munch,” Joe said. “Can’t rule that out.”
A short shriek from Liz had Hudson sprinting back to the main room.
“Liz. What’s wrong?”
“There, on the coffee table.” She pointed at the table, covered with old newspapers, empty beer cans and petrified pizza, as if a snake might be lurking there. Frankly, he wouldn’t be surprised in this mess. “What is it?”
“That gold watch.”
Sure enough there was a gold watch. Hudson couldn’t believe he hadn’t spotted it at first. He leaned down to inspect it more closely. “Looks old. Looks like real gold, too.”
“It’s both. A vintage Hamilton Barton nineteen-jewel watch in a fourteen-karat-gold case.”
Finally Hudson figured it out. “It was your father’s?”
“Yes. Used to be my grandfather’s. Dad was obsessive about that watch. Is there— Did you find a dead body?”
He nodded grimly. “It’s Munch. Probably murdered. We’re waaaaay too late to get any information from him. We’re just going to take a quick look around and then get out of here.”
“Shouldn’t we call the police?”
Hudson grimaced. “It won’t look good, us being here. We’ll call it in anonymously. Or get the manager to call.”
“Hurry and finish looking around. If I don’t get out of here pretty soon I’m going to hurl.” She put the sweatshirt hem over her face again.
Joe returned from the bedroom. “I took a quick look around. Didn’t see anything except some overdue phone bills. It’s possible our guy’s real name was Calvin Bean.”
No wonder he’d taken a nickname.
Hudson made a quick sweep of the kitchen, dining room and living room, snapping pictures with his phone as he went. It wasn’t the thorough, methodical search he wanted to do, but they couldn’t disturb the scene any more than they had without risking an obstruction-of-justice charge.
Finally they left the apartment. Hudson closed the door behind him as best he could.
The apartment manager was striding down the balcony toward them, his eyes stormy with anger. “Who’s gonna pay for that door, huh?”
Guess he and Liz hadn’t hidden Joe’s entry method well enough.
Joe reached into his back pocket, extracted a wallet and pulled out several bills, handing them to the angry man. “That should cover it, along with the cleaning bill. And...” He pulled out a few more. “You got a dead guy in the bathtub. When you call the police, I’d appreciate it if you don’t remember us being here. We didn’t do anything wrong, but we don’t want to get involved.”
The man made a quick count of the money and smiled. “Madre de Dios!”
“Next time an apartment starts to smell, check on it sooner.”
The manager watched them walk away, looking as if he had mixed feelings about the way his day was going.
None of them said anything for a good five minutes, until they were back on a main road and headed for a better neighborhood. Hudson had got in the backseat with Liz, sensing she might need someone to hold her hand or at least make eye contact with her. She looked pretty shaken.
“Why was my father’s watch there? Did this Munch person rob him?”
“We’re gonna find out, Liz,” Hudson said. “I promise you.”
“Maybe someone was blackmailing him,” she said. “He got tired of it, confronted them, and...it didn’t go well.”
“That’s a possible scenario,” Joe said. Without asking, he pulled into a Pepe’s Tacos drive-through and ordered a dozen tacos.
“How can he even think about food?” Liz whispered. “I’m pretty sure I won’t eat for a week. Ugh, I can still smell it. And you guys saw him.”
“You do get used to it after a while,” he said. “You just have to find a way to tune out the emotions, to forget about the smell and the gore and the maggots—”
“Oh, thank you—you had to mention maggots?”
“—and look at the case clinically. You want to have compassion for the victim and family, of course, but you have to get past being horrified. I still remember my first dead body, though. I was a green patrol officer. Guy tried to cross the freeway on foot. The results weren’t pretty. I lost my breakfast.”
Jo
e laughed.
“Stop talking, both of you. I don’t want to hear another word. And for God’s sake, keep those tacos away from me.”
Hudson felt bad for Liz. It was awful enough to lose a parent, even if he’d been a bastard. Liz had probably pictured his death in her mind a hundred ways. But to come face-to-face with violent death, then to see undeniable evidence that her father had been mixed up with the dead man—to be standing in the apartment where he might have been killed—had undoubtedly brought the crime to life for her.
She’d been ashen-faced on the ride home, hadn’t said a word after yelling at Joe to keep the tacos away from her. Hudson’s attempts to distract her had been disastrous. He supposed what was funny to people in law enforcement didn’t necessarily translate to a civilian.
Once they’d reached Daniel’s house, she’d excused herself, leaving Joe and Hudson to explain to Daniel about finding the body.
The news hadn’t exactly thrilled Daniel. The three of them were sitting out on the flagstone patio, the sparkling blue pool and landscaped greenery a stark contrast to the ugly subject of conversation.
“How long do you think he’s been dead?” Daniel asked.
“A long time,” Hudson replied, and Joe nodded. “It’s going to be hard to pinpoint. Maybe a scientist can figure it out based on insect larvae or something like that. But my guess is, he didn’t live long after he tried to break into my house.”
“Did you call it in?”
“We asked the apartment manager to do it,” Joe said. “And I called Billy Cantu, gave him the whole story. He said he would keep our names out of it if he possibly could.”
“If it gets out that you were there,” Daniel said, “Montgomery County is going to go after you for messing with their investigation.”
Hudson shrugged. “I can’t help it if my own colleagues are incompetent. They should have been looking for Munch. They should thank me for doing their damn jobs. I have a right to try to prove my innocence.”
Daniel nodded. “Your actions are entirely defensible. I’m not criticizing. Just saying, cops sometimes get unreasonable when they’re trying to defend their position. Knightly and your partner are going to look foolish for pursuing you as a suspect when we prove who really committed the murder.”
Hudson knew how he would feel if he were in Knightly’s or Carla’s shoes. He supposed he couldn’t totally blame them for butting heads with him.
“Is Elizabeth okay?” Daniel asked. “Did she see the dead body?”
“No, but what she did see was bad enough. And what she smelled was worse. We told her to stay in the car, but she wasn’t keen on that idea. She was pretty shook up, especially when she spotted her father’s watch. Almost certainly her father’s killer was in that apartment at some point. Munch might have killed him, or whoever killed Munch might have done the deed.”
“I sent you some pictures,” Joe said. “We didn’t touch anything, but I took a lot of pictures with my phone. I figure you could blow them up and go over them inch by inch.”
“My specialty.” Daniel looked as if he relished the prospect. He was a master at pattern recognition—and finding that one detail that didn’t fit.
The French doors opened, and Elena stepped out looking her usual stylish self. “Daniel, I just went to check on Elizabeth like you asked me to, and she’s not in her room. I checked all the public rooms, too.
A frisson of alarm shot through Hudson. He’d assumed that she’d gone to her room to rest. He was relatively sure nothing bad could happen to her behind the protective gates and fences of Daniel’s estate, but in her current state of mind, what if she wandered off? Injured herself or went for a walk and became lost?
Daniel didn’t look too worried. “She probably just went for a walk. Nothing like spending time in nature to soothe jangled nerves.”
“Do we need to cover anything else right now?” Hudson asked, eager to take his leave. He wanted to find Liz. He wanted to know for sure she was okay.
“My metal-detecting team did find a bullet in the leaf litter, in that little group of trees near your house.”
“At least that’s some good news.”
“I’m working on getting it entered into the ballistics database. It takes some creative favor-calling, but we might know something soon.”
With that, the meeting was over. Hudson tried to imagine where a distraught woman might go on this enormous estate to clear her head. Then it hit him. What was the most idyllic spot on the grounds?
“A walk sounds like a good idea,” he said to the others.
“Dinner’s at seven,” Daniel announced.
That would be plenty of time. Maybe. Hudson knew he ought to be out there, shaking the bushes, trying to find a crazed killer. But right now, he could think of nothing more important than finding Liz. If he was going away for a long time, he needed to make things right between them. He had to tell her... He wasn’t sure what to tell her. He just didn’t want her to be mad at him anymore.
The rose garden didn’t look quite as spectacular as it had for Jillian’s wedding. But maybe that was because he was looking at it without Liz. She had made the place more special, and she definitely wasn’t here. He plucked a soft peach bloom from one bush, managing to prick his finger in the process.
He pushed through the picket-fence gate into the lush, untamed growth of the hummingbird garden, and his heart almost stopped. There she was, sitting on the stone bench.
Liz was the picture of grief. She’d changed out of her jeans and sweatshirt into a simple dress that flowed over her body like water. Her hair was loose, her face was in her hands and her shoulders trembled every so often. Her sobs were silent—and more heart-wrenching because of it. She didn’t want anyone to hear, didn’t want to be found.
He should just creep away and not violate her privacy. But he couldn’t see someone in that much agony and not try to ease the pain.
“Liz.” He spoke softly so as not to startle her, but she jerked her head up anyway.
“Oh. What are you doing here?”
“I came looking for you. Thought you might come here.”
“I wanted to see the hummers again. But they aren’t here.”
“Maybe they went south for the winter or something.”
“I thought, ‘How could I think about death and sadness while watching one of those precious little birds?’ They’re so incredibly alive.”
“I’m so sorry, Liz. I keep forgetting that you’re grieving. I don’t mean to say things that hurt you. I don’t mean to be disrespectful regarding your feelings. I know you see things differently than me, but I’m going to try harder to respect your worldview.” He sat down beside her, half expecting her to jump up and flee. But she didn’t. She seemed in a listening frame of mind, so he kept going.
“I’m sorry for getting you into trouble with your client, too. I never would have come into the restaurant like that if I hadn’t been worried about you. You went silent.”
“I would have let you know if the situation wasn’t safe.”
“And I didn’t trust you. I know.”
“Tonda can be emotional. She’s been mad at me before. She’ll get over it.”
“You want me to talk to her?”
“No, I don’t think that would help. I’ll give her a little time to sulk, then I’ll try to make it up to her. A year ago, she wouldn’t have stood up to me. She had no backbone. No identity beyond what others assigned to her. Now she’s her own person. It’s actually gratifying to see that growth.”
“She’s a tough cookie.”
“No, she’s not. She puts on a brave front, but she’s barely nineteen.” Liz looked down self-consciously. “I shouldn’t even be talking about her to you.”
“Talking about who?”
That got a watery smile out of her.
He held out his hand. “Friends again?”
She took his hand, her touch tentative at first, then firmer. God, her skin was soft. He realized he
was still clutching the stolen rose in his other hand. He offered it to Liz. She smiled again but didn’t take it from him, instead folding his hand between both of hers. He tucked the rose behind one of her ears, careful that no thorns would jab her.
They sat like that for several heartbeats, and Hudson could almost feel the frayed ends of their connection meeting again, becoming enmeshed. He became suddenly more aware of her in a sexual way, too. Not that he wasn’t always aware of how beautiful she was, but now visions of naked flesh and the sound of heated breathing flashed through his mind’s eye. His mouth became dry and his jeans too tight.
“Liz...”
“Hudson...”
They’d spoken at the same time. He was almost glad that he didn’t have to continue, because he wasn’t sure what he wanted to say anyway. He leaned in closer. It felt just like a first kiss, but with someone he’d known his whole life. He already knew the texture of her lips, the scent of her skin, the feel of her body wrapped around his.
When their lips actually met, Hudson went all light-headed. He wanted to laugh. He hadn’t blown it totally with her.
He allowed his hand to wander over her slender back, noting the sharp contours of her shoulder blades, the frailness of her shoulders. He circled her upper arms with his hands. She was so slender—stronger than she looked, maybe, but still no match if any man wanted to overpower her, hurt her. No wonder he felt so protective of her.
Suddenly Liz broke the kiss, pulled away, a look of torture on her face.
“Liz. What? What’s wrong?”
“We can’t do this.”
“No one can see—”
“It’s not that. We shouldn’t let ourselves... There’s no point...”
“No point?” he repeated incredulously. If there was no point in this, was there a point to anything?
“I can’t see a future in this.” She indicated with her hand the connection that ran between them. “I get my hopes up, and then—”
“And then I blow it by saying something so totally insensitive that you’re sure there’s no hope for me.”
She shrugged. “You’re not hopeless. You’re just...you. And I’m me, and we are so different.”
Just then a hummingbird appeared, leisurely sipping from the flowering bush behind Liz’s head.
