Frost Security: The Complete 5 Books Series

by Glenna Sinclair

  I spotted a business card, old and tattered around the edges, for a pain clinic in Yellow Rose. Another one after that for an office in Durango, one that closed last year for being a pill mill, the kind of place that dished out opioid medications like it was candy and got reimbursed by Medicaid. There was another for here, in Enchanted Rock, that the Sheriff hadn’t been able to shut down yet.

  The guy must have been in a lot of pain. I put them on the counter and kept searching.

  There was an old, bent spoon scorched on the bottom side.

  Heroin. That wasn’t good. I tossed it on the counter next to the cards and kept searching.

  Nothing else really stood out. Just a roll of tape, a dried up bottle of white-out and an old dug out for smoking pot. Nothing illegal there. Everyone smoked pot now since they’d legalized it. Hell, it was big money, an engine of commerce. I personally didn’t care one way or another. I’d never had to wrestle someone that was stoned to the ground because they tried to pick a bar fight with the security guard.

  “Anything?” Elise asked.

  “Yeah, some. What about you?”

  “She was here, I think. Definitely her kind of underwear.”

  “You mean we think she was here based on the kind of underwear on the ground, right?”

  “Look, I know Eve. I lived with her almost her whole life.”

  “Don’t let that cloud your judgment of the evidence. Believe me, people can surprise you.”

  She came into the kitchen and looked down at my little pile of mementos. “What’s all this?”

  “Stuff I found.”

  She picked up one of the cards. “Pain clinic?”

  I shrugged. “I think it’s your sister’s boyfriend. Not hers.”

  “Yeah? Making assumptions right after you lecture me?”

  I shook my head and pointed to the address on one of the cards. “This one, here in Durango? That one got shut down by the DEA well over a year ago. Only way it would have been Eve’s is if she’d been sneaking up here without you knowing about it.”

  “What about the other two, though?”

  I shrugged. “Not sure.”

  Her eyes focused on the spoon. “That what I think it is?”

  “If you think it’s a cheap way to get high when your pain meds run out, you’re right. Assuming it wasn’t his go-to to begin with, of course.” I shut the drawer and moved on to the next.

  “Matchbooks?” Elise asked as I began to dig through random cooking utensils. “What’s so special about those?”

  “Don’t know yet. But one of them is from a town north of here. Might be a lead, might not. Might lead us to some people who know him, might not. Never know.”

  “Do you…”

  “Do I what?” I asked as I closed the drawer.

  “Do you think something happened to her, Jake?” She tucked a stray hair beneath her beanie as she twisted the bent hand of the spoon in her fingers, seemingly entranced by its burnt edges and dull metallic shine. “Do you think something happened to Eve?”

  I sighed and stepped closer to her. “I don’t know, Elise. I really don’t.”

  “But we’re going to find out?”

  I took the spoon from her hand, my fingers brushing against hers. “Yeah,” I said as I set it on the counter, “we’re going to find out.”

  And that was when we heard the footsteps on the stairs.

  Chapter Nine - Elise

  Jake pushed me down into a crouch and drew his gun. “Stay here,” he whispered in a harsh voice.

  I nodded, my eyes wide.

  He crept along, barely making a sound even in his work boots.

  “Hello?” called an old woman’s voice from the landing. “Kevin? Is that you, dear? Lilith?”

  Jake looked back at me as he quickly stuffed his gun away. He went over to the cracked door and opened it all the way. A little old woman was standing there with coke-bottle thick glasses.

  Suddenly, I felt very foolish crouched like that on the kitchen floor, and stood up.

  “No, ma’am,” Jake said, smiling down at her. “We’re friends of Kevin’s, some people he works with. He hasn’t been into work in a while, and we just came by to see how he was doing.”

  “Oh? Did he not tell you he was going out of town? A couple of his friends came by and picked him up. Nice young men, if I remember correctly. So polite. He said he was going on a trip for a little while, but that he hoped to be home before I even realized he was gone.”

  “A trip? About how long ago was that?”

  “Oh, I think five or six days ago. They went down to the trunk of his car and got some things, then they drove off just before the last snowfall started. Nice young men.”

  “And do you just rent to Kevin?”

  She nodded and clopped her cane down. “Yes, he’s been living here for a few years now. Always pays on time. His rental checks supplement my social security checks that I get from my dead husband, Wilbur.”

  I came out of the kitchen. “Did Lilith go with him, ma’am? Lilith, the girl that was living here?”

  She turned her attention to me and peered forward into the dim apartment. Even with the lights on, it was still dark as a cave in here. “Oh no, dear. She left about a month and a half back. She and Kevin had a spat. When I asked after her to see how she was doing, he said she’d gone to Yellow Rose to stay with some mutual friends up there. Are you her sister?”

  I smiled and nodded. “Yes, I’m Elise.”

  “Oh, your sister was so sweet. She helped Kevin keep this place so neat and tidy.”

  Not anymore, she didn’t.

  “Anything else you can tell us about who Kevin left with, ma’am?” Jake asked.

  She pursed her lips and looked down at the ground, like she was trying to remember all the way back to her childhood. God, I hoped I never got that old. I was honestly surprised she made it across the yard as well as she did without slipping and breaking her hip.

  “Both wore all black. Both very polite, even though they had heavy leather jackets on.”

  Jake gave me a look.

  “Anything else?”

  She shook her head. “No, no, I think that’s it. I’ll let him know as soon as he gets home that you came by looking for him.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Jake said. “Would you like any help across the yard? Or back downstairs?”

  “Oh, you’re a dear. Thank you.”

  I caught Jake’s eyes and shrugged. He led her from the apartment and started to take her back down the steps.

  I looked around the little studio apartment, at the piles of Eve’s clothes she’d left behind. I took off my beanie and tucked it away in my coat pocket. I shook out my curls and ran my fingers through them as I walked over to her underwear and stray bits of clothing she’d left behind.

  God, I hoped Jake was right, and that spoon wasn’t hers. I mean, smoking pot or drinking was one thing. But heroin? And getting wrapped up with a guy who would keep a spoon around in his fucking junk drawer? And who were these guys Kevin had disappeared with? Hell, who was Kevin?

  “What have you gotten yourself into, Eve?” I whispered to myself.

  But maybe that’s what the fight had been about. Maybe she’d just been manipulating the guy like I’d thought, and she left when she discovered what was going on?

  Or maybe I was just making assumptions, like Jake had warned against.

  I went into the bathroom and looked around some. Shaving cream, razor on the counter, a pump bottle full of soap by the sink. I opened up the medicine cabinet. There was an unopened container of floss, like he’d bought it one time because he thought he should have it. A little bottle of cheap cologne. At least it wasn’t Axe body spray. I don’t think I’d forgive Eve for dating a guy that wore Axe.

  There were a few other random odds and ends.

  Something seemed missing. Like there was something my mind had expected to see here, but didn’t.

  Then it hit me.

  No pill
bottles.

  I closed the medicine cabinet as I heard Jake coming back up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time.

  “Elise?”

  “Bathroom.”

  Jake came in as I was looking in the shower, staring down at a long strand of coal black hair next to the drain. “Whoa.”

  I turned around. “What?”

  He was looking at me, but I couldn’t decipher his thoughts this time. “Your hair.”

  I frowned, went to pull my beanie out.

  He made a face. “What are you doing? Keep it out.”

  I stopped. “It just gets in the way.”

  “It’s gorgeous, though.” He stopped himself. “Sorry, I mean it’s really nice. You should leave it down like that.”

  I felt the heat rise to my cheeks. I turned to the medicine cabinet, trying to take the attention off me. “Guess what I found in the cabinet?”

  He opened the medicine cabinet and stared at it for a moment. He looked back at me. “What?”

  “No pills. Kevin doesn’t have any pills. No empty pill bottles, no full ones.”

  “That’s weird, especially when he’s got the business cards of every pain clinic in the neighborhood. You’d expect more, wouldn’t you?” He shut the cabinet.

  “You would.”

  He smiled a little. “Good work, detective.”

  I grinned. “Gracias.”

  “Now what else?”

  “Get anything out of Granny?”

  He shook his head. “Same as what she told us up here. Almost exactly the same. I think she forgot who I was half-way back to the house, so she started to retell some of it when she realized someone was helping her.”

  “Where to now, then? Yellow Rose? That’s where she said Eve went, right?”

  “That’s what Kevin told her, yeah. Unless he wasn’t telling the truth. That’s always a possibility.”

  I didn’t want that to be a possibility, I realized. We’d had our first couple leads today, and I didn’t want them to start drying up all of a sudden. “How far away is it? To Yellow Rose, I mean?”

  He shrugged. “Couple hours. We could get there by nightfall, maybe, or just after. We probably need to shower and get a change of clothes, though.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Probably.”

  He led the way out of the apartment as I pulled my beanie back on and tucked my curls back into a more manageable place. We closed the door up as tightly as possible, then headed back downstairs to the street. When we got to Kevin’s Celica, Jake stopped so suddenly that I almost bumped into his back.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Can’t put my finger on it,” he said as he turned to the trunk of the car, “but there’s something that’s off. Remember what Kevin’s landlady said? About how they went out to his trunk and got something, then drove off?”

  I nodded as he crouched down right behind the car. He was starting to freak me out with the way he was acting.

  “No,” he said, staring at the trunk. “Something’s not right at all.”

  I looked from the trunk to him, and back again. I didn’t say a word. I didn’t ask a question, especially when I knew I didn’t want to hear the answer.

  “I think Kevin’s in there.”

  Chapter Ten – Jake

  We were lucky. Granny had a spare key for Kevin’s car.

  Too bad Kevin wasn’t as lucky as we were.

  “Stand around at the front, Elise. If he’s in there, you don’t want to see it.”

  The color drained from her face as she shuffled around to the front. I waited until she was all the way around before I popped the lid.

  The corpse didn’t smell all that bad. Probably because he’d stayed more or less frozen since his killers had stuffed him back there. Kevin stared up at me with his blank eyes, his jaw slack. Dark, dried blood covered the side of his face, streaming down from his scalp. I thought I’d smelled something when we first walked up, but the cold weather all week must have slowed down the decomposition.

  I shook my head. I did know the guy. I’d seen him down at The Nugget every now and then, tending bar. Never knew his name until now, though. I leaned in and gave the blood on his head and face a closer look.

  Bludgeon to the head? A .22, maybe? The gun might not have left an exit wound, and would have been quiet enough that neither Granny nor any of the neighbors would have noticed it with all this snow soaking up the sound. Either seemed likely. All in all, for someone dead for over a week, he looked remarkably well preserved. Almost as good as at the morgue. Not perfect, of course. But good enough.

  “Is he in there?” Elise asked, her voice almost a squeak.

  “Yeah. Yeah, he’s in here.” I straightened up, pulled my phone from my pocket, shaking my head slowly as I found the number in my contacts for the Sheriff’s Office. “Hey Glick?” I asked when the deputy picked up. “This is Jake over at Frost Security. You mind putting Sheriff Peak on the phone? I got something you guys need to come take a look at.”

  “That bad?” Glick asked, groaning.

  “That bad. Probably going to need to get the coroner out here. Whole kit and kaboodle.” I gave him the address. Sheriff Peak got on the phone and I told him what I’d found. After a string of curse words not fit for a man of elected office, he said he’d be there as soon as he could and hung up.

  I closed the trunk carefully and made sure to not latch it in place.

  “Guess that shower and the trip up to Yellow Rose is going to have to wait, Elise.”

  She made a face as she came back around from the front of the car, arms crossed. “How long, do you think?”

  I winced. “Few hours at least.” I hated to have her get tangled up in a murder investigation like this, but she’d been here when I found the body. “Now, Peak’s going to ask you some questions. You need to be honest with him. You don’t have anything to worry about since you were out of town.”

  “I know how to handle cops. I handled you, didn’t I?”

  I rolled my eyes. “You fucking hate cops. You act with them the way you did with me, and they’ll think something is up. It’s already going to be bad enough that I broke into this guy’s place.”

  She sighed. “What are you going to tell them?”

  “The truth. I thought your sister was in there.”

  “That’s not the truth, you knew that place was empty.”

  “Well, it’s close enough for a report.”

  “Isn’t that still breaking and entering?”

  I shrugged. “Peak and us, we have an understanding. We help people here, he stays off our back. Works out great, particularly when he doesn’t have to do much work. He loves that part of the deal.”

  I took the opportunity to text Peter the address and tell him, in as few words as possible and with as much vagueness as I could, what I’d found. What I didn’t tell was how I found it. No sense in making a record of that available. He texted me back moments later, telling me he was on his way. Of course, he only used the simple phrase “Roger.” But I knew what he was talking about.

  She stood there, her head lowered as we waited for the Sheriff to show up. Every couple minutes, she’d glance at the trunk.

  “What’re you thinking?” I asked, shivering against the cold.

  “Thinking about how bad I feel for his landlady. What’s she going to do now? Take in some other junky that’s not half as nice?”

  My stomach sank. She was right. I licked my dry lips and shivered again. “You know, I asked myself that same question more times than I could count while I was working on the force. How do the people left behind carry on? When people die, they leave a hole. Every life they touched, every person they loved, every person they pissed off. And that hole, it can never be filled in again, because that hole was uniquely for that person. A perfect fit.”

  Elise sniffled. I didn’t know if it was the cold or something else.

  I looked over and frowned as I watched a small tear roll down her cold face.


  “You okay?” I asked, putting an arm around her shoulders.

  She stiffened at first, and I almost moved my arm, but she relaxed after a moment and slumped into my side. “I miss Pops. That’s all. And Eve. The stupid bitch. I’m never going to forgive her for dragging me into this.”

  “Yeah. Family’s great, till it sucks.”

  “What’s going on, Jake? It just keeps getting worse and worse. First the junkie boyfriend, now this? How did my kid sister get wrapped up in this shit?”

  “No clue, but we’ll find out.”

  I kept my arm around her like that, both of us braving the cold and the wind, as we waited for Sheriff Peak to arrive.

  After he came and I showed him the trunk, I walked him through the apartment and told him that I thought Eve had been in there, being held against her will. I told him I thought I’d heard someone crying inside, so I shoved down the door.

  Peak just gave me a look with those beady little eyes of his as we stood on the landing at the top of the stairs. “Uh-huh, Jake. Guess you didn’t find her, did you?”

  I shrugged, keeping a straight face. “Guess not.”

  “The girl down there? She got anything to do with this?”

  “Thought it was the girl’s sister, so kind of. She just got into town last night on the Greyhound, though, so I’d say her alibi is pretty solid.”

  “That so?”

  “Yeah. She had to take care of her father’s funeral. Imagine she can pull together a witness list if you need it.”

  He nodded. “Agreed. Pretty damned airtight. Still gonna want to check it out, though.”

  Tires crunched on snow and slush as another car drove up. Peter. He parked his Bronco and went to get out.

  “Well,” Peak said, “I’m pretty satisfied it wasn’t you. No sense in you showing up to kill this guy days ago when you didn’t even know this woman Elise till this morning. Unless you had a bone to pick with him over something else?”

  “He poured a stiff whiskey and coke, Sheriff. Why would I have a bone to pick with the guy?”

  He nodded. “Old Reba still live up in the big house?”

  “The old lady?” I asked. He nodded. “Yeah. Spoke to her a little while ago, got the spare off her, in fact. Told me a couple guys came by and Kevin left with them.”