by Cindy Brown
“I don’t want you to pay me back. As your mentor, I consider this an investment in your career—”
“But—”
“And a cheap investment at that.”
“Cheap? That car must be worth—”
Roger raised a hand to stop me. “Here’s what I want you to consider. The guy from Mooney Productions will be here next Saturday. I think your chances with him are really good. If things go well, you’ll be in New York soon. You won’t need a car there, so you can sell it and give me the money. I bet I won’t even take a hundred dollar loss. And the only way you’ll have to thank me is in the playbill of your first Broadway show.” He held the car keys out to me.
If things didn’t work out with the producer, I could pay Roger back eventually. And if I did go to New York, it would be like having a free car for a month or two. I studied Roger’s face. He looked sincere, almost fatherly. And I really needed a car. The doubt in the back of my mind faded to a niggle. Enough to ignore.
“Okay.” I took the car keys back from Roger. “Thank you.”
“All clear!” Roger said to the hovering actors. They ran back to the table like their beers were going to take flight.
“I’m keeping it,” I said to Candy. “At least for now.”
My cell buzzed in my shorts pocket. I looked at the display.
“Jeremy!” I said as I walked away from the thunder of balls hitting pins (and from interested ears).
“Hey, I just found out I’m going to have tomorrow night off. What do you say to a movie?”
“Aaah. I can’t. I have a voice lesson.”
“How about after?”
“My lesson is with Roger. He’s also going to help me with the pool. With both pools.” Yes, I left out the fact that I was cooking him dinner and that he had just bought me a car. Didn’t seem like the right time for that discussion.
“All right.” It did not sound like it was all right.
“I’ll make it up to you on Tuesday night. I’ll fix you dinner. And dessert. And if you want to come down here and play pool afterward, I’ll let you beat me.”
“Sounds good.” Jeremy did sound better. “See you then.”
One beer later, I’d just finished throwing a gutter ball (my specialty), when my cell buzzed again.
“Hey, Matt,” I said as I picked up.
Candy handed me another beer. “Why’s he calling you?”
I put my finger to my lips. It was hard enough to hear in the bowling alley without Candy adding to the noise.
“Ivy?” said Matt. “Are you on your way?”
Boom! “Woo hoo!” Hailey squealed. “Steee-rike!”
“Guess not.” Matt sounded pissed.
“On my way to?” Oh shit. “Are you guys at Encanto?” It was Sunday. Cody’s picnic date.
“Yeah. Guess we’ll eat without you. Too bad, Cody baked cupcakes and everything.”
“No. I, um, I’ll be there in…crap, with traffic it’d be—”
“An hour. Don’t bother. Sarah has to get home.”
“Tell Cody I’m—” I didn’t get to finish before Matt hung up.
CHAPTER 41
The next morning I made a big pot of coffee, extra strong. I needed it. I only slept about four hours between worrying about the car-Roger deal and feeling guilty about Cody.
But I had work to do, hence the coffee and the early-for-me rise time of eight a.m. I needed to go into the office in the afternoon, but now I wanted to work on my dead body map. I sat down at Marge’s kitchen table, spread out the large map of Sunnydale I’d bought, then went through the sheaf of reports Bitsy had given me. I found twelve dead body calls. I wrote down the addresses (such as they were), then pinpointed each location on my map, marking the blocks in red. After an hour and another pot of coffee, I had plotted a driving route past all the locations.
“C’mon, boy!” I said to Lassie. He followed me out the garage door and into my new car. It was parked next to Marge’s car, which Arnie had driven back here last night.
I rolled down the passenger window for Lassie, who stuck his head out the window and snorted with happiness. I felt the same way. How nice to have a car that just ran. That started right away when I turned the key. That stopped without me having to pump the brakes. That didn’t require a fire extinguisher, which was good since I never did find the one I’d bought. I didn’t realize how much my old car had stressed me out until I had one that didn’t. I’d figure out how to handle Roger. The car was worth it.
First stop, Jack in the Box. All that coffee was doing a number on my empty stomach. “I’ll have a Sausage Croissant, an order of hash browns, and a Junior Bacon Cheeseburger.” The burger was for Lassie. He didn’t seem like a breakfast eater.
Once we’d both wolfed down our meals, we began the trek past all the dead body locations. I planned to scope out the areas, then conduct a neighborhood investigation in each block so I could find out which house the dead body had been found in, and maybe even the manner of death.
After the fourth location, I noticed an interesting pattern. Each block had a house for sale. Well, not for sale any longer—all the signs had big “SOLD” stickers plastered across them. The fifth location did not have a house. It had a lot where a house had been razed. So did the eighth location. Locations six, seven, and eleven had “FOR SALE” signs with sold stickers. In locations nine and twelve, new houses occupied the lots. You could tell they were new because, like Carl Marks’ house, they were obnoxiously big, three times larger than the neighboring houses. They stood on the lots like bullies shouldering their way into the prime spots without regard for their neighbors, whose views would now consist of tall stucco walls instead of cactus and oleander.
“Lassie,” I said to the pug, who was licking the Jack in the Box wrappers for the third time. “I have an idea.” Most of the houses were for sale by the same Realtor, Jean Wilson, who was also the agent listed on the sign in Charlie Small’s front yard. I dialed Jean’s number and asked if I could talk to her about Charlie’s house.
“Sorry, we just closed that sale,” she said. “In fact, I’m at the house right now.”
“I’m a minute or two away. Could you hang on ’til I get there?”
“Well…alright. I have a few things to finish up anyway.”
I zoomed back to the Charlie/Bernice/Marge cul-de-sac. I’d just parked the car in Marge’s driveway and had opened the car door when Lassie decided to help with the investigation. He jumped out ahead of me and ran over to Charlie’s house, where Jean Wilson was smoothing a “sold” sticker onto the sign.
“Lassie!” I jogged over to get him, but not before he lifted his leg on the woman’s sign. “No!” I grabbed him by the collar and pulled him toward me, clipping a leash on his collar. “Sorry.”
“I’m sure most of my signs have been peed on.” Jean, a heavyset woman dressed in loose linen in shades of tan, straightened up as if she’d just been hit with an idea. “I wonder if I should hose them all down.”
“Probably a good idea,” I agreed as Lassie proceeded to water a yellow hibiscus.
Jean began walking toward a gold Cadillac parked on the street, so I trotted next to her, Lassie behind me on his leash. “I’m the one who called you about Charlie’s house. So it’s sold? That seems pretty quick.”
“We got our asking price,” she said. “And with this type of house, I don’t mess around.”
“What do you mean, this type of house?” I had an idea, but wanted to hear it from her.
Jean dropped her voice. “A house where somebody died. By Arizona law, I don’t have to tell interested parties about the history of the house, but around here, neighbors talk. It makes it tougher to get a good price.”
“I bet they talk even more about a suicide. Like Charlie’s.”
“Couldn’t stop the gossip if I tried.” Jea
n unlocked her car door with a beep of her little remote.
“So you sell those houses cheaper? Maybe there’s a particular buyer?” All of the monstrous new houses had similar designs.
Jean dropped ungracefully into her driver’s seat and looked at me with narrowed eyes. “Just who are you?” Sensing her change in tone, Lassie gave a low growl.
I pulled out a business card. “Olive Ziegwart with Duda Detectives.”
“Well,” she said, with a snort that sounded a bit like my four-legged associate. “You’re a detective. You figure it out.”
CHAPTER 42
So I did. Jean must have known it wouldn’t be difficult. Property ownership is public record. Once Lassie and I were back in the house, I booted up my laptop at Marge’s kitchen table and started investigating. First I went to an online homes-for-sale site and typed in the addresses of the for sale/sold/razed houses I’d circled on my map. After finding their selling prices, I looked up the comparables in the neighborhood. Sunnydale houses typically sold for $200,000-$300,000. Jean’s “dead body houses” had all gone for around $40,000 less. Using the Maricopa County Assessor’s site, I dug a little deeper and found that nine of the twelve “dead body” houses had been bought by Underwood Holdings, whose offices were in Bogota, Columbia.
The new owner of Charlie’s house wasn’t listed on the site. The sale was probably too recent. I called up the assessor’s office.
“Just a moment,” said the woman who answered the phone. “I may have it…yes, just came in. The new owner for that property is…”
I mouthed the words silently on my end of the line as she spoke them: “Underwood Holdings.” I didn’t know what all of this meant, but I was sure it meant something.
I patted myself on the back for a job well done, then patted Lassie on the head for good measure and told him to be a good boy while I was gone. I headed to the office, whizzing down the 101 in my new car, which would actually go the speed limit without smoking and shuddering and threatening to drop car parts all over the freeway. I felt great.
Then I walked into my uncle’s office.
“Cody called me last night. After you stood him up.” Uncle Bob leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms, daring me to say something that would exonerate me. “Nice, ruining your brother’s big date.”
I cringed. He was probably not exaggerating. When Cody got upset, he got loud and agitated, and had trouble sitting or standing still. Not the best atmosphere for a date. I dropped my purse on my desk. “I can explain.”
“You’d better.”
I told him the whole story, leaving out the part about my potential move to New York. My gut contracted as I explained, like someone was tightening a lug nut in my stomach. “That’s my new car right there.” I gave Uncle Bob an actor’s smile and pointed out the window at a nearby parking lot, where the afternoon sun bounced off the Taurus’ windshield.
Uncle Bob looked out the window, then back at me. “What does this Roger guy want?”
“I told you, he wants to give me the chance he never—”
“I don’t buy that. Not for a minute.”
My squeezed gut wasn’t sure about it either, but my head reminded me about the producer’s visit.
“You’d better figure out what this guy wants from you, and if you want to give it to him.” My uncle shook his head. “Or give back the car right away.”
I wished I could tell him that I’d probably sell the car in a month or two when I moved to New York. That fact made all the difference. Instead I nodded.
The office landline rang. “You answer it,” said Uncle Bob. “I gotta go. Client meeting.” As he walked out, he didn’t jingle his car keys the way he usually did.
I picked up the phone. “Duda Detectives. This is Olive. How may I help you?”
“Olive? Olive Ziegwart?”
“Yes?”
I rarely received calls at this number and didn’t recognize the tearful female voice.
“Thank God I found your card.” A still-unrecognizable snuffle. “I need to hire you.”
“Um, could I have your name?” I didn’t think Candy would play an un-funny joke on me, but I also couldn’t figure out who was—
“Oh, sorry. It’s Cheri.”
Still no clue.
“Cheri Marks. Carl’s wife.” Ah, the belly-ringed exhibitionist. My uncharitable thoughts slapped me in the face as the woman on the phone began crying in earnest. “He’s missing.”
CHAPTER 43
I was about to knock on the door of Cheri and Carl’s house when it opened and I was nearly bowled over by someone striding out.
“Whoa!” The someone caught me before I tumbled backward. I looked up into mirrored sunglasses.
“Olive.” Hank tipped his hat, then continued on his way without another word, like a black-hatted cowboy out of an old movie.
“What?” I said to Cheri, waving in Hank’s general direction as she ushered me in. It was all I could say, as if Hank’s “man of few words” thing was catching.
“He’s from the posse.” Cheri wore booty shorts and a sports bra, all black.
“But…” Again, nothing more. I really wished my mouth and my brain would reconnect ASAP.
Cheri didn’t seem to notice. “See, I called 911, but they said it wasn’t an emergency. So then I called the police and they filed a missing persons report, but they didn’t seem very helpful, so I called the posse. Then that nice man…”
“Hank,” I managed to say.
“Came over to see if there was anything he could do.”
“And?” I was beginning to enjoy this one-word conversation style, especially since Cheri was supplying me with good information.
“Once he found out that Carl wasn’t senile and that you were on your way, he said he couldn’t help me.” Her bottom lip started to tremble.
“Hey, it’s going to be okay.” Uncle Bob had warned me never to say that to a client, but it just slipped out. Cheri bit her lip and nodded.
I put an arm around her slender shoulders.
“Let’s go sit down and you can talk me through what you know.” I led her to a black sofa in the black room, where an eerily silent shark circled on the enormous flat screen. “Maybe you should change that to something less…” What’s another word for morbidly creepy? “Shark-y?” Cheri picked up a remote. The shark disappeared and the screen filled up with jellyfish: moon jellies glowing and floating and pulsing. Very relaxing, actually.
Cheri relaxed too. She told me how she wasn’t really worried when Carl didn’t come home Thursday night, since he “sometimes stayed over at one of his poker buddies’ houses if he had too much to drink.” On Friday she went shopping and to the gym afterward, but started to worry when she got back in the early evening and Carl still wasn’t home. “I heard somewhere you couldn’t file a missing persons report until three days or something”—that’s not actually true, but I didn’t want to interrupt her—“so I called today.”
I jotted down all the information in my black notebook. “You said you filed a report with the police? Was that the county sheriff’s office?”
“I don’t know.” Cheri sat up and her leg began jiggling. “I just called the number the 911 operator gave me.”
“You said they didn’t seem very helpful?”
“They took a report and stuff, but,” she bit her lip again, “they said they couldn’t do much since he’s an adult and…” Cheri squeezed her eyes shut, like she was trying to block something out. “It appears he left voluntarily.”
“What? Why do they think that?”
“His car is gone, his wallet is gone, his phone is gone…it even looks like he took some clothes with him.”
“But you don’t think he would leave—”
“Not the Carl I know.”
I looked around me, at the big n
ew house, at the enormous flat screen, at Cheri’s expensive workout clothes, and asked the question I’d wondered about ever since I met the colonel: “How do you afford all this?”
“Oh, Carl’s a really good insurance agent. Was a really good agent,” she said. “Plus we’re in debt. Big time.”
Ah. “Could Carl be trying to run away from his debts?”
“Carl would never run away from anything. He’s a retired Marine, you know.”
“Any chance he would have disappeared because someone was investigating him?”
“Who?”
“Me.” Cheri laughed out loud. I was startled by her change in mood, and also slightly offended. “I was investigating him in connection with Charlie Small’s death.”
“So he sold Charlie a policy. It’s not illegal.” She laughed again. Quite the mood swings. “You’re the perfect person for me to hire.”
“Why?” I had thought she might cancel the deal once she knew about my investigation.
“You’ve already done a lot of the work.”
I continued my investigation by asking Cheri more questions about Carl’s personal life, his background, and the debts he’d incurred. Then I asked her to find a recent photo of Carl and to make a copy of the police report while I checked out the house.
I didn’t find anything interesting until I got to the bedroom. “Cheri?” I shouted from the walk-in closet. “Could you come here a sec?” I heard the slap of her bare feet on the slate tile, then muffled footsteps as she entered the bedroom, which was carpeted in thick shag pile. Black, of course.
“Yeah.” Cheri pouted at Carl’s side of the closet, which was only half-filled with clothes. “He took a lot of his stuff with him.”
“It’s not that,” I said. “It’s that.” I pointed to the corner of the closet, which held video equipment: a camera, reflectors, lights, even a boom mike. “Carl was into filmmaking?”
“You could say that.” Cheri laughed.
I made a note to research “inappropriate laughter.”
