by Sam Cheever
“I’ll say you did.” Eddie’s gaze found mine and I saw new respect there. “If I ever decide to take up a life of crime, will you be my getaway driver?”
I shook my head. “Not a chance. I might be good at skid turns, but nobody beats Argh for high-speed pursuit.”
“Okay, no life of crime for me.” Eddie leaned against Betty, crossing his arms over his chest. “I’m worried about you staying alone.”
If I was honest, I worried about that too. “I’ll be fine. I have Shakes.”
His derisive snort carried me to the razor edge of my temper. “You aren’t dissing my dog, are you?”
“May, he weighs ten pounds on a good day. His nose is barely bigger than my thumb. A good-sized rat could take him down without even working too hard.”
I nodded, leaning a hip against my car. Reaching down, I laid my hand on her still warm hood. “You underestimated Betty.”
Eddie opened his mouth to argue and then thought better of it. “You’re right. I did.”
“You’ve been underestimating me.”
“I’m ashamed to say that I have. But that will never happen again.”
“Yet you’re going to underestimate my dog?”
He sighed. “Okay. I’ll keep an open mind. But I’d still feel better if Shakes weighed a hundred and ten pounds more and had a jaw that could crunch something bigger than my pinky.”
“Point taken. But I know how to take care of myself.”
Eddie lifted his hands. “I give up. You are woman, hear you roar.” He glanced toward the Mitner home, which seemed much quieter than the night before. I wondered if everybody had already gone home. “What did you really want from the Mitners?”
“You didn’t buy my returning the clothes story?”
“No. Although I can see why you’d want to get those carp clogs out of your house as quickly as possible.”
“Fish flops. And yes, that was a motivating factor. But I was thinking, whoever pushed me into the pool last night was most likely a guest at the wake.”
Eddie frowned. “I was thinking he’d snuck in just to give us a warning, but you might be right. It’s not implausible to think that the person who killed Josh knew the family.”
“I wondered if Mrs. Mitner was just organized enough to have had a guest list.”
“I like the way you think. Okay. You ditch the shark shoes, distracting Mrs. M at the same time, and I’ll sneak into the office and see if I can find a list.”
A woman in a maid’s uniform opened the door to us and stared blankly when I asked to speak to Mrs. Mitner.
Eddie slipped away as I was trying again. I quickly learned the woman spoke very little English. Her accent sounded like French to my professionally trained ear. It was just too clichéd for me. But then she wasn’t hanging out of her uniform at either the top or the bottom, so I assumed she was the real thing.
Though she had a dark cascade of gently curling hair, a smoldering gaze and lush lips touched with a soft pink gloss.
The young maid finally pointed toward the stairs. “Mrs.,” she said with a charming lisp.
I quickly jogged up the stairs, my head on a swivel to make sure I wasn’t seen. I didn’t know why I was on the lookout, but I had a burning need to just do what I came to do and get the heck out of there.
My recent experiences in the Mitner home hadn’t been great.
I reached the top of the steps and stood looking around. A balcony ran all the way around the top floor, looking over the large entryway below. The hallway sported way too many doors. Some I presumed were closets, at least one was most likely a bathroom. But I figured there were at least six bedrooms to search.
I expelled a weary breath. Nothing was ever easy.
I found her behind the third door I opened. Actually, the door was already ajar. When I clasped the knob, it pushed into the room.
She was sitting so still my mind didn’t register that it was her at first. I saw the slender woman, back ramrod straight, sitting on the edge of the big bed across the room, staring toward an open closet door. A few articles of clothing hung from hangers, some of them crooked and tangled on the rod. But most of the clothing appeared to be missing from the closet.
I looked around the room, seeing the discarded clothing strewn over furniture, taking note of the disheveled bed and the posters decorating the walls. It was a masculine room. And judging by the posters of bikini-clad women, a young man’s room.
Josh’s room.
“Mrs. Mitner?” I said softly so as not to startle her.
She didn’t move. Didn’t acknowledge me in any way. I waited a beat and tried again. “Mrs. Mitner, I brought your clothes back.”
Nothing.
I moved into the room, wading through piles of shirts and jeans and a wide variety of shoes to get to the grieving mother. As I rounded the end of the bed, I jerked to a stop. She was still staring into the closet, her expression filled with rage rather than sadness, and she clutched the tattered remains of a tee shirt in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other. Between her feet on the floor was a pile of chopped up fabric.
Mrs. Mitner was slicing and dicing her dead son’s clothes.
“Um, Mrs. Mitner, are you okay?” I spoke softly, my gaze darting from her face to the scissors in her hand.
She was clutching them so hard her knuckles were white.
“Mrs. Mitner?”
She blinked and finally looked up at me, frowning. “What are you doing here?”
I held up the bag of clothes and shoes. “I brought your clothes back.” She looked at the bag as if she had no idea what I was talking about. After a moment, I tried again. “I see you’re cleaning out some of Josh’s things. Do…” I swallowed hard, not sure if it was my place to step in. But the woman was so obviously struggling. “Would you like me to help box them up?”
She looked at the scissors and the remains of the tee shirt and opened her hand, letting the fabric fall to the floor. She lifted the scissors and stared at them.
I had a sudden, horrifying vision of her stabbing them into her own chest.
“Why don’t you let me take those.” I reached out slowly, easing my hand toward hers while keeping an eye on her expression. My fingers finally clasped the scissors and, with a gentle tug, I was able to pull them from her grip.
As soon as they were gone she seemed to collapse, her narrow shoulders rounding. “I hate him for leaving me.”
I closed my eyes. There it was. She’d jumped right into the grieving process.
I settled the scissors onto a nearby tall dresser and put the bag of clothes I’d brought back next to them. Then I sat down on the bed and wrapped an arm around Josh’s mom.
“I lost my mother a couple of years ago. I wouldn’t even say her name for six months. Every time someone tried to talk to me about her I shut them down. It does get easier in time. But nothing will ever completely fill that hole in your heart.”
She shuddered violently and then laid her head on my shoulder. “Thank you for not lying to me. Everybody keeps telling me that it will get easier. My brain knows that’s probably true, but my heart is breaking. The last thing I want to hear is that someday I’ll forget him.”
“No. You’ll never forget him. But the pain will ease, and you’ll eventually be able to remember the good things without your lungs locking up.”
She nodded, sniffling. Silvery tears slipped down her cheeks and landed on her hand, which were folded in her lap. “Why did they do this to me?”
My spidey senses perked up. “Who?”
“Why did it have to be Josh? It should have been Alex.”
Hooboy! “Mrs. Mitner, are you saying Josh was killed because of something your husband did?”
She didn’t answer me for a long moment. I bit my lip, unsure whether I should press.
“He never understood our son. Josh was gentle and sweet. But he was unserious. He had no ambitions other than to have that next good time.” She shook her head, straighten
ing up and blowing her nose on a tissue she pulled from the pocket of her sweater. “He wouldn’t have hurt anyone. Joshua saw what his father had become and didn’t want that for himself. Alex could never forgive him for that.”
“What had his father become?”
She expelled a weary sigh. “Look what a mess I’ve made of things.”
I realized she wasn’t going to expound on what she’d said and I didn’t have the heart to press. She was in so much pain. “How about I help. Between the two of us, it won’t take any time at all.”
She nodded. “Thank you, May.”
When I came back downstairs an hour later, carting a big box of Josh’s clothes, Eddie was nowhere to be seen. I placed the box next to the front door as instructed and went in search of him. I found him sitting in Alex Mitner’s study, drinking something amber colored from a cut-glass tumbler.
Alex was sitting behind his desk with a matching glass. Only his was empty. He looked up when I knocked on the door frame. “May. Come in. Would you like a scotch?”
I nodded. “Thanks.”
He poured two fingers and handed it to me. I sat down in the chair next to Eddie. “This is a great room. So solid and peaceful.”
Alex nodded, looking around as if seeing it for the first time. “I come here when I need to think.”
The hardwood floors shone under dense, black oriental rugs and the walls were covered in what looked like taupe colored leather. The industrial metal desk was an anchor in the center of the main space. An oversized fireplace was the focus of a small sitting room to the side, situated between two sets of French doors. A fire danced behind a glass screen in the fireplace, the cozy light making happy shadows on the overstuffed club chairs in front of it.
Heavy, black draperies were pulled back from the French doors overlooking the pool. I could still see the massive skeleton of the tree that had trapped me sprawled across the formerly tidy patio.
“We need to get that cut up and carted away,” Alex said as he saw me staring at it. He narrowed his gaze. “Are you okay?”
I nodded. “I won’t lie, it scared the stuffing out of me. But it all turned out okay.”
“Thanks to Eddie here and James.” Alex shook his head. “I appreciate you not making a stink about it.”
I shrugged. “It was an accident.” I took a sip of the scotch and nearly sighed as it slid warm and happy down my throat, exploding into pleasant heat in my belly. I couldn’t believe I was drinking so early in the day.
Alex held his newly refilled glass, rolling it from side to side between his hands, but he didn’t seem to be drinking it. He looked far away. Sad.
There was an awkward silence which I felt compelled to fill. “Your wife and I packed up some of Josh’s things.”
He lifted his brows. “Oh? It seems soon.”
“It is. But everybody grieves in their own way. Mrs. Mitner seems to need it right now.” I didn’t tell him about the scissors, or the trash bag full of tattered clothing I’d carried down to the kitchen and hidden among the bags of refuse gathered from the wake. I’d slipped the scissors into that bag, just in case Mrs. Mitner got inspired to grab them again.
“She might need to talk to someone,” I said carefully. “A therapist.”
I expected him to get hostile or argue. But after an initial surprised peak of eyebrows, he sighed, nodding. “I know. I’ll get her in first thing tomorrow.”
“Good.” I glanced at Eddie. He was still staring at the glass in his hands. I wondered what had happened before I’d come down. I’d planned to talk to Deitz about what Mrs. Mitner had said. He’d known the family a while and could probably shed some light on her strange half-statements.
But since Eddie seemed to have been struck mute, I decided to just plunge in. “Your wife seems to think Josh was killed because of something you were involved in. Do you know why she’d think that?”
Eddie’s head jerked up and he gave me a look I couldn’t decipher.
I got the impression I’d made a mistake, but I couldn’t take it back.
Eddie and Alex shared a glance.
“I’m sorry if that question was out of line,” I told Alex. “But that’s what your wife is thinking. I thought you’d want to know.”
He drained the crystal tumbler he’d just refilled and slammed it down on the desktop.
I winced.
“Everybody wants to blame me for this.”
“Alex,” Eddie said in a warning tone as he sat up straighter in his chair. “Don’t kill the messenger.”
Mr. Mitner scrubbed a meaty hand over his face. “You’re right. I’m sorry, May. That is important to know. I’ll talk to her.”
The cop genes engaged my mouth before the civilian genes could stop them. “Is there a good reason why she’d feel that way?”
Mitner spun his glass on the desk blotter, his expression sad. “I’m sure you can understand, with the business I’m in, people assume certain things about you.”
I cast my memory back to the dossier I’d received on Josh and his family. They owned Mitner’s Crime Clean, the largest and most successful post-trauma cleanup service in the country. Probably the world. Alex Mitner had offices in every major city in the US. He was a very wealthy man, with access to a very specific set of skills and knowledge that I assumed lots of unsavory people might crave. “You work closely with the police?”
His gaze shot up, fixing intently on me. “Sometimes. But ideally, the crime scene techs have already gotten what they needed by the time we’re called in.”
“Ideally? Not always?”
“Cops are like everybody else. They’re not all good at what they do. We’ve been known to uncover an errant cartridge, needle, or suspicious liquid they’d missed. Our record with the police is solid. We have protocols in place to address everything. When we find something that might be pertinent to creating a strong case against a criminal, we immediately stop work and contact the Officer in Charge.”
I nodded and let a moment skim by before I asked him another question. “Have you ever gotten pressure to ‘overlook’ something?”
He narrowed his gaze. “Did you miss the part where I said we come in after the police?”
“No. But as you said, not all police officers are good at their jobs. In fact, some don’t even try to be good. If you know what I mean.”
Eddie apparently couldn’t keep quiet any longer. “Are you talking about dirty cops?”
I shrugged. “It happens, unfortunately.”
“It probably does,” Alex agreed. “But I’ve never been asked to overlook evidence. My Crime Clean business is well-respected. My reputation is pristine. I have to say I resent your implications.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Mitner. But if Josh was killed because of something you did or didn’t do, it makes sense, given your profession, as you pointed out, that it might have something to do with Crime Clean. I’m just trying to help find Josh’s killer.”
He screwed up his face. “You do know I only hired you to mourn at my son’s funeral, right? You’re not a private investigator.”
“No. I’m not a PI.” I swung a glance toward Eddie who, other than clarifying my earlier point, had been suspiciously quiet. “But I come from a family of cops, and I’m afraid I’m used to asking a lot of questions when something doesn’t add up.”
Mitner glared across his desk. “Josh’s death was an accident. No questions are necessary. This is none of your concern.”
He seemed to have forgotten asking Eddie to get to the bottom of Josh’s death when I’d been standing there.
Alex pushed to his feet, his glower softening only a smidge. “Thank you for doing your job through all the drama. You’ve gone over and above. I’ll be sure to tell your employer.”
I knew a dismissal when I heard one. Reluctantly, I stood. “Thank you for the feedback, Mr. Mitner.” After one last glance at Eddie, who seemed to have slumped deeper into his chair and had the nearly empty tumbler attached to his lower lip, I
left.
I was still mad twenty minutes later when I arrived home.
My mood hadn’t been improved by the sight of the fish-flops on Betty’s passenger side floor. Apparently, they were a “gift” from Mrs. Mitner.
10
My doorbell rang as I was drying my hair while going over the dossier for my upcoming assignment. I didn’t hear it over the dryer, but Shakes jumped up from where he’d been curled on my damp towel, cocking his head at me in question.
Preoccupied with my thoughts, his sudden movement didn’t immediately register.
Despite my attempts to research my upcoming role, my mind kept wandering to Josh Mitner and his unfortunate and untimely death.
More specifically, I couldn’t help thinking about the absurdity of my being tangled in his murder like pepperoni in an extra cheese pizza.
Shakes started to bark and I yelled at him to shush.
He quieted for a beat but then started up again.
When he took off running toward the front door, I finally turned off the hairdryer. Just in time to hear the bell ring again. By the time I pulled open the door, Eddie was facing off with the pothead next door.
“Dude!”
I waved at my neighbor. “Hey, Doug.”
Shakes trotted out into the hallway and barked happily at Doug, his tail wagging.
Eyeing my little dog with suspicion, my neighbor shifted from one long, bare foot to the other and a smoky scent wafted my way. It was almost enough to give me a second-hand high. “I’m tryin’ to concentrate on my shows.”
“Sorry. I’ll try to answer my door faster next time.”
Doug nodded, dipping his weak, bristly chin to Eddie. “Dude.”
Eddie gave him a jaunty, sideways wave and Doug retreated back into his smoky abode.
Shakes bounced around Eddie’s feet, whining until Deitz picked him up and allowed him to anoint him with nose kisses. “Hey, buddy.”
I leaned against the door frame. “Did I know you were coming?”
Eddie cast a look over my white wife-beater and doggy covered boxers. “I hope not.”
