by Cindy Brown
“Marge’s dog is named Lassie?”
“Yeah. But he’s a boy.” I wondered just how long Marge had been confused.
“Ha! The dogs who played Lassie, they were all male.”
“Yeah, but were they pugs?”
I said goodbye to my wonderful, lovely uncle, and went into the kitchen for another cup of coffee. As I stood at the counter, I remembered the safe, sexy feel of Jeremy’s arms around me as I cooked, the way his dimples deepened when he smiled at me, the tender heart he showed me when talking about the drowned little boy. I put the coffeepot down. I didn’t want coffee. I wanted Jeremy.
An involuntary half-sob escaped my lips. Tears blurred my vision, and I leaned on the counter, my head in my hands. The thing was, Jeremy was right. And I didn’t know what to do about it.
Theater had saved my life after Cody’s accident. It gave me a place where I was encouraged to express my emotions, where I felt appreciated, where I was part of a “family.” But theater was not necessarily conducive to long-term relationships. Not only did it come with all the baggage Jeremy had talked about, there was a bigger problem. If I wanted to make it big in theater, I’d have to leave Arizona.
Which I had never told Jeremy. Which meant I’d been leading him on. Which meant I deserved to get dumped.
Choking down another sob, I felt a moist nose nudge my calf. Lassie had woken up and was standing near my feet. He bumped me again, looking at me with concern. I gathered him up and went to the sofa, where I held his warm little body against mine and cried for the way I’d treated Jeremy and the breakup that I deserved.
CHAPTER 50
I never had a pet—too messy, my mom said. The depth of feeling people had for their dogs and cats had always baffled me. Sure, animals were cute and fuzzy, but c’mon, weren’t they just substitutes for real relationships?
After half an hour of unconditional love from an animal who barely knew me, I now understood how real that connection could be. Lassie had sat with me and cuddled me and looked at me worriedly while I cried. The pug had wormed his curly little butt right into my heart.
Now that I was cried out, I wanted to get to work, but I also wanted to be good to my new best friend, who was still curled on my lap. “How ’bout if I work outside this morning?” I said, gently scooting him off of me. “And you can water the plants and look for rabbits?” He seemed amenable, so I padded to the kitchen, grabbed a cup of coffee, put my laptop under my arm, and slid open the door to the back patio. “C’mon, boy.”
I set myself up at the patio table. A memory flashed into my mind: a smiling Jeremy sitting across the table. “Carl,” I said to myself sternly. Lassie, who’d been sniffing the concrete floor around the table, raised his head to look at me. “I am thinking about Carl.” Lassie went back to looking for old leftovers on the ground, and I went to work.
I first wanted to get a more complete picture of Carl Marks, figuring that knowing who he was might lead me to where he was. I searched my databases. No criminal history that I could find. Yes, he really was an insurance agent. He’d been investigated by the Arizona Department of Insurance Fraud Unit (for what I couldn’t tell), but not disciplined. Owned six houses so far. No word on whether they all had black rooms. He’d been married four times, no kids. Born and raised in Nebraska, then moved to Arizona.
Huh. At the craft sale, didn’t he tell Bitsy he was from the South?
The craft sale.
I went inside, grabbed my bag off Marge’s counter, and dug around in its depths until I felt the tissue-wrapped bundle the earring vendor had given me. Yes. Her business card was still taped on top. I called the number on the card. “Hi, you probably won’t remember me, but I bought some peacock earrings from you at the craft sale.”
“You’re right. I probably won’t remember you.” The earring vendor laughed at herself.
“Anyway, you said that Colonel Carl Marks had ordered some custom work from you.”
“Yes.” A change in her voice. Tight.
“Did he ever meet with you?”
“Yes.” Tighter.
I waited a few seconds. Nada. “Did he, ah, try to sell you anything?”
“Yes.” A pause, then the words spilled out. “He not only tried to convince me I needed a ‘life settlement contract,’ but he hit on me. Awful, all hands. Wouldn’t take no for an answer. Haven’t had to deal with that type for twenty years. Slimeball.”
“I’m really sorry. Thanks for the information.”
“By the way, I remember you now. I bet those earrings look wonderful against your blonde hair.”
After she hung up, I went back outside. The sun had warmed the concrete beneath my bare feet, but not my now-cool cup of coffee. I sipped it anyway, flipping through my mental snapshots and trying to remember what the earring vendor looked like. That’s right: late fifties or so, curly graying hair worn long, a bit more Bohemian-looking than most of the ladies I’d seen around here. Had Carl really been attracted to her? Was he just trying to sell her insurance? Or maybe he wanted her for one of his films?
I wondered if Bitsy was in a Marks production and nearly choked on my coffee. Eww. Couldn’t imagine anyone would want to see that. Wait. Maybe that was the point. Maybe Carl was not just into porn, but blackmail.
He was also still in the insurance business. Had he lied to Cheri about that? After all, she’d said he didn’t work as an insurance agent anymore.
No, she didn’t. I heard her words in my head: “Carl’s a really good insurance agent. Was a really good agent.” That could mean “retired.” Or it could mean “dead.” Was Cheri lying to me? Or had Carl been lying to her?
My coffee cup was empty, so I went back inside to the kitchen to make another pot. Lassie jingled and snorted behind me, probably hoping for some food. I didn’t disappoint him.
“Why did Carl leave?” I asked Lassie as he chomped noisily on a jerky treat. “If Bitsy was telling the truth and he was asking about me, he must be afraid I’m going to find something. Blackmail, maybe? Maybe Bitsy or some other woman had enough?” The dog stared at me as I poured water into the coffeemaker. “There’s also the Nebraska connection. Maybe Carl knew Bitsy’s family there. Maybe he found out about Bitsy and her husband, and she offed him. Or maybe Cheri wasn’t as okay with her open marriage as she said, and she took him out.” Lassie looked doubtful, in a puggish sort of way. “You’re right,” I said. “The fact that he came back to the house and got some clothes makes it unlikely he was the victim of foul play.” The coffeemaker burbled. “So what is it about Colonel Carl Marks?” Lassie tilted his head. “Do you think I should run his license plate?”
I hadn’t run the plate after Uncle Bob warned me it was a pain in the butt to get the records and it was unlikely I’d get much more than his name and address. But what the heck. I thought I might be able to get past the first problem.
“Hey, Pink,” I said into my cell. “Any chance you could run a plate for me? It’s one of Uncle Bob’s cases. There might be a beer in it for you.”
“Are you trying to bribe a police officer?”
“No! No. Shit.”
Pink chuckled. “Kidding. Give me the number.”
“D…OD…one five six eight.”
“Are you singing?”
I was singing, and I was right about the lack of info I’d get from the license plate. Pink told me the car was registered to Carl Marks at his Sunnydale address. No warrants. No outstanding traffic tickets. Everything about Carl Marks seemed aboveboard.
Wait. Everything about Carl Marks seemed aboveboard. But not about Colonel Carl Marks. None of the information I’d found included the military title he was so proud of. I went back to my computer and started searching through Carl’s military records. Or rather, I searched for his military records. He didn’t have any. No stint in Vietnam, no stateside service, nothing.
In Arizona, impersonating a public servant was a class one misdemeanor “if such person pretends to be a public servant and engages in any conduct with the intent to induce another to submit to his pretended official authority or to rely on his pretended official acts.” The federal Stolen Valor Act of 2013 also made it illegal to pretend to be a war hero to obtain tangible benefits. I wasn’t sure if posing as a decorated colonel in order to curry favor with potential insurance clients counted as breaking the law. I was sure that it was a low-down despicable thing to do, especially to all the real veterans Carl dealt with. Like Charlie Small.
CHAPTER 51
“Asshole,” Pinkstaff said when I called and told him about Carl. “I’ll check with the district attorney on Monday about the bastard’s legal standing and see what can be done.”
“Asshole” was apparently Carl’s new name, as it was the first thing Uncle Bob said when I called him too. Then he said, “Hope you find him. I’d like to take him down a peg, for all the guys who really served.”
“Like Hank?”
“What?”
Lassie snorted from under the kitchen table. Okay, it wasn’t the smoothest transition, but I had to know more about Hank. I’d run over to Trader Joe’s at lunchtime, and there he was. Hank wasn’t following me this time. He was loading up his cart with junk food while singing along (loudly) to “Good Vibrations” as it played over the store’s PA system. I don’t think he even saw me, but I couldn’t be sure since he wore his mirrored sunglasses.
“Hank’s a vet, right?” I remembered the Vietnam Vet cap he had in the fishing boat. Hank had checked in with Cheri “just to be nice.” Maybe he had found out about Carl the asshole too. Maybe he did something about it.
“Yeah.” My uncle’s voice sounded puzzled. “He was one of the last to serve in Vietnam. Got called up a few months before the war ended.”
“He have any problems when he came back? Pain from old injuries? PTSD?”
“I don’t think so. What are you—”
“Why does he always wear those mirrored sunglasses?”
“I think it’s something to do with his eyes. Maybe they’re prescription or something.”
Or something. I asked the question I’d been leading up to: “Do you think Hank could have a drug problem?”
“No.” My uncle was firm. “What’s all this about, Olive?”
“Okay, here’s my theory.” I looked at the photo of the whiteboard I so cleverly snapped before I left the office yesterday. “I think it’s suspicious that we have an abnormally high number of suicides—”
“These are old folks, right?”
“Wait, there’s more.” I looked at the photo again. I loved that whiteboard. “All of the people who supposedly killed themselves lived in houses on golf courses. Each of their houses sold quickly, way under value, most of them to the same offshore holdings company. Several of them were razed to make way for really expensive houses.”
“You’re thinking real estate is the motive?”
“Yeah.” Lassie snorted again. Everyone’s a critic. “I think Marge was an intended victim of the same scheme. She lived on a golf course, had her catalytic converter stolen, and was attacked in the garage near her car. She also sold her life insurance policy to Carl, as did Charlie.”
“Okay…” I could tell Uncle Bob was considering the case I made.
“And,” I took a deep breath, “Hank was on the scene in every single case.”
“That’s right,” said my uncle. “If you had been at that meeting the morning you burned down your apartment, you woulda known that Hank made sure to be at the scenes, because he was uncomfortable with all those suicides too.”
“What? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Hank’s always been a conspiracy theorist type. And to tell you the truth, he seems a little paranoid these days. Plus you were doing a good job investigating all by yourself,” I mentally patted myself on the back, “and I didn’t think you’d be silly enough to suspect Hank.” I stopped the mental patting. “Do you have any other suspects besides Hank and this Carl guy?”
“Maybe.”
My uncle sighed exaggeratedly over the phone. “I’ve said it before, you’ve got good instincts, but you can’t follow them alone. You gotta find actual evidence.”
“You’re right. And uh, sorry about suspecting Hank.”
“No worries. He has been acting a little hinky these days, so it’s understandable. But,” he said, cutting off my next question, “Hank would never hurt anyone.”
I hung up, stood up, and began pacing the floor, hoping the movement would jog something loose in my mind. Lassie got up and followed close behind me, snuffling and snorting.
Evidence. I needed evidence. I opened the door to Marge’s garage and examined the area where she had fallen. Jeremy and I had done a good job cleaning up the mess. Too good. Even if we hadn’t, I didn’t remember any fingerprints, and the footprints I saw probably belonged to the paramedics.
I shut the door, went back into the house, and paced some more, Lassie still at my heels. I suspected that the mysterious landscaper spotted before Charlie’s death and Marge’s attack was a fake. I figured that was the killer’s ruse: Look like he (or she) was on official-type business, break into the garage when no one was looking, somehow overcome the victim, and then put the unconscious person in the idling car. Oh, and I guess he would have had to steal the catalytic converter earlier.
Lassie snorted. It did seem awfully convoluted. I paced faster. Lassie did too, jingling and snorting, distracting the hell out of me. Enough. I couldn’t stop the snorting, but I could sure as hell do something about the damn jingling. I took Lassie’s collar off. He shook his head, maybe happy to be free of the collar or maybe trying to jingle all by himself. I went to put the jangly thing on the kitchen table, when I stopped. On the collar, amongst Lassie’s rabies and ID tags, hung the Pet Cam. Of course. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it earlier. Okay, okay, at the time I had been distracted by the discovery of Arnie’s surveillance system, but still.
I found a USB cable among a tangle of cords by Marge’s computer, connected the Pet Cam to my laptop, downloaded a bunch of photos Lassie had “taken,” and there it was.
Evidence.
CHAPTER 52
“You were right. Someone was in your house.” I called Marge as soon as I saw the Pet Cam pictures. “I have evidence.”
“Thank God!”
I examined the incriminating photos. Marge must have turned the Pet Cam on when she heard the intruder, setting the camera to take photos every minute.
“You have pink fuzzy slippers, right?” The first photo showed the back of Marge’s slipper-clad feet.
“Yeah.”
The second photo was the real evidence. It looked like it was taken just after Marge opened the garage door. “I’ve got a photo from Lassie’s Pet Cam that shows your feet and someone else’s.” In it, Marge’s slippered feet faced another pair of feet wearing white leather athletic shoes. “Do you know anyone who wears white tennis shoes?”
“Just everyone.”
“Yeah. I was afraid of that.” The photo showed only the front of the white sneaker. I could just see the tip of a gray identifying mark that could have been part of a letter announcing a brand name, or a Nike swoosh, or even a curved stripe.
“How do you know these pictures were taken the night I fell? I could’ve been talking to Bernice or something a few days earlier.”
“Well, these first two photos showed just feet, first yours, and then yours and the attacker’s. The next photo was of the doggie doorbell.”
“Still.”
“The next to last photo was of you, lying down in a pool of blood. And the last picture…” The fuzzy red image looked like a close-up of Marge’s face, taken by a camera smeared with blood. I swallowed the sentimental lump in my thr
oat and patted the very good dog at my feet. “Was Lassie, trying to save you.”
I hung up with Marge, but not before she told me her doctor was checking into the possibility of medication-induced dementia. “So I may not be crazy. And someone did attack me. Ivy, I’d kiss you if I could.”
I still had work to do. I could prove someone was in the house, but who? I thought about the tennis shoes and my list of suspects. Carl definitely had white tennis shoes, the really expensive ones that had set off my radar. Hank (who was still a suspect in my book) wore black shoes with his posse uniform. I tried to think if I’d seen his shoes when he was out of uniform at Trader Joe’s or in the boat at Lake Pleasant. Couldn’t remember. Arnie usually wore dress shoes, but probably had a pair of sneakers in his closet. Bitsy often wore white tennis shoes, but I couldn’t imagine her (or Arnie for that matter) having the strength to put an unconscious person in the car, the way Jeremy had shown me.
Jeremy. My heart actually hurt at the thought of him. Why so much? After all, we weren’t even all that serious yet.
The happy family at the firemen’s tug-of-war flashed into my mind. Was it our potential future I mourned? Maybe. That and the fact that Jeremy might be right. The “screwed-up” world of theater might keep me from having any sort of normal relationship.
I shook my head. No time to mourn lost near-love. I had a murder to solve, and the producer was coming to the show tonight.
A knock and Roger walked in the unlocked front door.
“What the—” I looked at the clock. “Shit.” It was time to go to the theater, I wasn’t ready, and I’d forgotten to call and find a ride who wasn’t Roger. My car was still in the theater parking lot. I waved Roger out of the room. “Just go. I’ll take Marge’s car.”
“Then you’ll have two cars at the theater.” I was about to tell him I’d deal with it when he said, “And I think we should talk.”
