by Kate Flora
No one in the living room, so I stepped into the kitchen. It had a small gas stove, a few open shelves for food and dishes, an empty space where a refrigerator would go, and a rust-stained white sink. There was a meager stack of cobalt plates and bowls and a few battered pots and pans. How could she be so vibrant and positive, living with this? Had it all been an act?
No. The colors of those quilts and pillows were completely her, and her comments about the baby, about Amy, were those of any excited, anxious mother-to-be. I stood in that threadbare kitchen, trying to remember what she’d said about the baby’s father. He wasn’t in the picture. But there had been that hesitation, that careful choosing of the words. She’d definitely wanted him in the picture. The way she’d described him choosing their baby’s name told me that.
I had no basis for it, but I could conjure up a man, an American, held hostage somewhere, or hiding somewhere, and someone else who wanted to find and use Charity for leverage. Charity and the baby.
If that was the case, why had she thought she’d be safe here, and how had Davenport found her? How had he found her, who had killed him, and where had poor Charity gone? Or was she upstairs, injured or worse? Had Charity killed him and then fled? But she’d left me the note indicating she was leaving while Davenport was still alive. I was relieved to turn Davenport and his death over to the professionals, but I couldn’t also turn over my worry about Charity.
Suzanne calls them my “waifs,” the people I find in my travels whom I believe I have to help. I was supposed to be leaving all that behind now. Living a far more careful life and working on thinking ahead to my new job as MOC’s mother. But here I was, standing in a grubby kitchen, speculating about a woman I’d only met twice. Three times, if you counted the brief moment when I handed over those flowers. Time to finish my search and get out of here, back to my own pretty kitchen. Back to my new safe and careful life.
The bathroom had an iron-streaked cream-colored plastic stall shower with a wildly colored curtain that smelled new, a toilet, and a mirror with half the silver gone, so it gave a distorted reflection. There was a hole in the worn linoleum floor. The shower was barely big enough to fit a pregnant woman, but there was shampoo and conditioner and soap, towels on the rack, and a thick melon-colored terry robe hung on the back of the door.
Mentally, I contrasted the vibrant and vivacious woman who had knocked on my door with this sad place, which she had pretty accurately called a hovel.
Hoping all I would find up there was dust and empty rooms, I climbed the narrow, uncarpeted stairs with trepidation. Upstairs, I checked out the room with a double bed that must have been hers. Here, some effort had been made. There were clean white curtains on the windows, the windows had been washed, and there was a pretty patchwork quilt on the bed. The floor was bare, but clean. The bedside tables were empty except for one flimsy lamp, a clock, a box of tissues, and a paperback novel. The dresser drawers were pulled out and looked empty.
I knelt down and peered under the bed. No dust. No anything else, either. I was straightening up in my slow and awkward way when I spotted something that had fallen down behind the bedside table. I moved the table away from the wall and picked it up. It was a framed photo of a man in what looked to me like full combat gear. An expert would know. I was just someone who occasionally watched TV. Even though it was nosy and interfering and I might be smudging important fingerprints, I sat on the edge of the bed and worked it out of the frame. Nothing on the back of the photo except the scrawled words, “Charity. Keep me in your heart. D.”
Not something she intentionally left behind, I was sure. I put it back in the frame. Carrying it with me, I headed for the room across the hall.
In the small second bedroom, the one that would likely have been the baby’s room, I found a still life. At the end of the twin bed, there was a small cardboard box of baby things, mostly pink. In the corner by the window, the crib we’d bought was half-constructed. Tools still lay on the floor next to the instructions to assemble it. I stopped, struck by the sadness of that, and by the sense of an urgent departure it conveyed. One minute she’s building a crib, the next she’s grabbing her things and running.
Or was I making up a story to fit what I was seeing? I remembered in our brief conversation that she’d said she was struggling to put the crib together, and I’d offered to send Andre’s dad to help her.
There were new curtains here in a pink floral print, echoing the bits of pink in the cardboard box. A room for baby Amy. There was no sign of the bags of things we’d bought, nor the giant package of disposable diapers. Might they have been in the black plastic bag I’d seen her putting in the Volvo?
Also, no sign that the real Jessica Whitlow was staying here, despite the car downstairs.
I was ready to be gone. This was just so sad. There was no rocking chair. No bedside table or lamp beside this twin bed, only the bed and a small cheap dresser. On top of the dresser was a can of paint and a brush. I was sure, if I looked, the paint would be pink.
Just to be thorough, I slipped past the tilted, one-sided crib and the large cardboard box it had come in to check the far side of the bed. I was very sorry that I had.
There was a woman’s body wedged between the bed and the wall.
Nine
I trudged back down the stairs, clinging to the railing. Shock had turned my legs into unreliable noodles. I ordered them to keep working. I was Thea the Great and Terrible, after all. The reminder didn’t help. I couldn’t catch my breath and barely made it back to the public safety trio, all still on their phones, before I burst into tears. Hormones, I reminded myself. I hadn’t really lost my edge just because there were two homicide victims only steps from my front door, had I?
Andre lowered his phone. “What’s the matter?” he said. “What’s happened? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said, which was obviously a lie. “But a woman who may be Jessica Whitlow, the real Jessica, blonde Jessica, is in one of the bedrooms upstairs. And she’s…her body is…”
I stopped. I wasn’t sure she was dead. I’d just assumed it. The professionals could check. “I think she’s dead.”
Then, even though it was totally irrational, I said, “Why did this have to happen here, when we’ve just found our perfect house. Dammit! I am not going to let a second house be ruined.”
The last time I’d found our dream house, I’d also found our realtor, Ginger Stevens, dying in the beautiful living room. It had tainted that house forever and plunged me unwillingly into investigating her death.
Andre put his arms around me and pulled me close. “This is not going to ruin our house, Thea. This has nothing to do with our house.”
Right. I really wanted to believe that. It was a lot better than thinking it was my fate to find bodies wherever I went. The Jessica Fletcher of my generation. Hadn’t she lived in some fictitious Maine town?
“Where is the…where is she?” he asked.
I swallowed. “On the second floor, in the smaller bedroom. The one with the half-built crib. She’s wedged between the bed and the outside wall.”
“You recognize her?”
“She looks like the picture in that Marshals Service badge. Jessica Whitlow. Like the woman I saw arguing with Jessica…uh…Charity.”
“I’ll check it out,” he said. “There’s no sense in keeping you here. We’re going to be tied up for a while. Why don’t you go home? I’ll come along as soon as I can. But you know—”
“How crime scenes can be? Of course I do. I’ll just bustle around and do the dishes and fluff up the nest.”
I wanted to scream and break things. Have a good cry and hit the bottle. I would do none of those things. Well, I could cry. Sadly, any alcoholic drink has been sidelined until after MOC’s debut. And lacking a staff of devoted servants, if I broke something, I’d just have to clean it up myself.
He put a finger under my chin and gently lifted my head. “I’m sorry about this, Thea. Will you be okay?”
Even if I wasn’t going to be okay, he wasn’t going to abandon a dead body practically on his front lawn to take care of a scared little woman. Two dead bodies. Anyway, I wasn’t scared. Not in the shaken up, out of control, hysterical way someone else might be. This wasn’t my first rodeo. I might hate that that was true, but it was my reality. Being Jane Wayne had brought some ugly stuff my way, and being in a relationship with a cop had brought some more. I might be trying to paper my external life with lettuce and calendulas and a baby’s room done in cool green paint, but the inside of my head contained more than an ordinary civilian’s share of ugly images.
I do have a tendency, in my avatar as Thea the Human Tow Truck, to collect people in dire circumstances or badly in need of help. But just because I was a tough guy and could handle adversity, it wasn’t fair for the universe to drop it right on my doorstep. Still, I stepped back from him and said, “You know me. I’ll be okay.”
“I know you,” he agreed. “And I wish you didn’t have to be okay about something like this.” Then, because he can be romantic, even at a crime scene, he kissed me. One of those “Damn, I’d much rather get a room than deal with this” kisses. The one that said we’re still alive and we’re okay. The one that said be there because I need you.
I realized I was still holding the photo I’d found. I held it out to him. “I found this in the bedroom. The one with the double bed. It had fallen down behind the nightstand. I think this is part of the story of who Charity Kinsman is, and why she’s here.”
He took it from me and looked at the picture. No doubt it was telling him lots of things it wouldn’t tell me. Then he nodded. “Thanks. This is helpful.” He didn’t exactly swat me on the bottom and tell me to go home, but that was in the air between us. He needed me gone so he wouldn’t be torn between loyalties.
I left the professionals doing their professional thing and went back up the driveway to the house. He got on the phone again while Norah and Tommy headed for the house.
Inside my own house, I told Alexa to play some dance music and started cleaning up. Soon the dishwasher was whooshing softly to itself, and I was back in my office, checking my mail and reviewing my materials for the morning. Among the many emails that needed a response was one from Bobby. Following the subject line “Dynamite,” he reported finding some interesting things posted online from the boys involved in, or who were witnesses to, the altercation with Denzel Ellis-Jackson.
Since youthful postings, particularly ones that reflect negatively on the posters, have a tendency to vanish, Bobby had taken screenshots. He’d posted some of the most relevant ones and they were, as he’d said, dynamite. Prior to the event, three boys had made an amateur rap video of themselves chanting a song in which the words “Gon’ get that Denzel, gon’ a bring him low, gonna trick him inta, fight will go to show, he ain’t the man who the boss of us. Gon’ tape that fight, gon’ make a fuss. Gon’ see that bas’, out right on his ass.”
There was a lot more. But as evidence of premeditation, it was solid. Seriously, if you’re going to set someone up, don’t post your intentions in a YouTube video before the event.
There was more. Plenty more. Bobby was a genius. And Emmet Hampton was going to be very pleased.
I sent an email thanking Bobby, and then forwarded his email with attachments to Emmett. One thing, at least, was going right today.
An email from Bobby popped right back saying he’d had some help from Lindsay, were we please going to hire her, and he said that she was also working on stuff for the Eastern Shore Academy meeting and if she found anything she’d be forwarding it directly to me. I felt a twinge of guilt that I was here in my cozy house while they, or at least Lindsay, were still at the office, then reminded myself I had put in plenty of late hours over the years. That was how jobs were when they were worth giving them your all.
It was nearly dark by now, and bright lights and a commotion of vehicles across the street told me that the crime scene investigation was well underway. I didn’t expect to see Andre—who’d kissed me with so much promise—for many hours. To keep myself busy, I went upstairs, took the tags off one of my new dresses and the tunics, and put them in my suitcase. I might wish that I could pop down to Maryland, put their world right, and be back by the end of the day, but experience has taught me that life rarely moves so efficiently.
I closed the suitcase and set it by the door. Then, though I was tired and my flight in the morning meant getting up at a ridiculously early hour, I went back down to my computer and started playing around with the two names I had—Jessica Whitlow and Charity Kinsman. I wondered if my searches would bring me anything. Also, I wondered who the mysterious, and very tough-looking D was. Charity’s husband? The father of her child? What was up with him that he couldn’t be here with her, and she had to hide?
The internet is a wonderful and scary place to search. I found Charity as a high school athlete. Charity graduating from high school. Charity getting an award as an outstanding political science major, and Charity in uniform as a member of the National Guard. I even found her engagement announcement, which gave me the name I was looking for: David Peckham. But when I did a search for David Peckham, I drew a total blank. It was kind of spooky, as though Peckham had gotten engaged to Charity and then vanished from the face of the earth. For that matter, while there were many events involving Charity up to the time of her engagement, after that there was no further mention of her, either.
If her information was scrubbed, why hadn’t that early information been deleted as well? The answers were beyond my pay grade. It was just another mystery.
It was while I was staring at my screen, puzzling over this, a possible answer hit me like a load of bricks. Charity’s husband had a job where he was engaged in something secret. She had become invisible to help protect that secret, and what? Gone into hiding so she couldn’t be used against him? It was wild conjecture, but if it was true, now a dumb broad sitting at a computer in Maine was conducting searches that could put them both at further risk. Or put herself, that is, myself, at risk. Because why would I be doing this search if I didn’t know something?
Oh crap. My curiosity might not kill me, but what if it produced someone from the government on my doorstep? Or a bad guy? I’d already had a person on my doorstep looking for Jessica. Was that person really looking for Charity? Had I just made an enormous blunder? Would my foolish curiosity now bring more of them?
What had she said in her note? Don’t look inside the box or it might put me in danger? And like Pandora, I had let my unbridled and unreflective curiosity lead me down a potentially dangerous path.
I wanted to talk to Andre about it, but he was unavailable.
I paced the hall, wondering where I could put the materials from that box that no one was likely to look. Once, years ago, when I was doing my first and last undercover stint in a town full of dangerous militia, I’d hidden my gun under a sink, behind a veil of spider webs, in a box of sanitary pads. I figured it was the place a tough guy was least likely to search. But I didn’t have spiders or pads under my sinks. So where?
Off my back deck, I had a small area with my gardening supplies, a potting bench, and bags of compost, manure, and planting soil. I left out Jessica Whitlow’s ID, which I knew they’d need. Then I wrapped the other stuff in foil, double-bagged it in sealable plastic bags, and buried it in the bag of manure. Amateur night, for sure, and of course I would tell Andre. But it was the best hiding place I could think of. Probably silly. Andre would likely want Charity’s items as part of his investigation, too, and be annoyed and digging it out of the manure before the sun rose. But she’d asked me to keep it safe.
Then, my evening as an incompetent spy and idiot having worn me out, I went through the nightly rituals, and MOC and I went to bed. People often say that as soon as their heads hit the pillow they are asleep. Not me. I only slept well when I was with Andre, and he wasn’t here. There was another sleep-killing thing in effect these days
as well. Lying down and putting my head on a pillow was the signal for MOC’s acrobatic act to begin. I lay in the quiet darkness, hand on the basketball, feeling the blanket hop and jump like there was a frog under the covers. The performance is usually about twenty minutes long. Tonight, when I really needed sleep, it went on far longer.
I had finally fallen asleep when I heard Andre come in. He undressed quietly in the dark and slid into bed. I dragged myself back from the arms of his rival, Morpheus, and said, “I made a big mistake tonight.”
His “Uh oh,” was weary. And wary. I told him about my internet search and what I’d found, and where I’d hidden the contents of the box and the photo.
“You’ll probably have some other government acronym breathing down your neck, looking for them.”
“By morning, I expect.”
“Am I a total idiot?”
“Not total.”
Well, he was being reassuring, wasn’t he? But I’d asked.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Things will be okay. Go to sleep.”
“MOC was thrashing for almost an hour,” I said. “ Boy, are we in for it.”
He pulled me against him and spread his hands over the basketball. “Hey, kiddo,” he whispered. “It’s your dad. You wanna take it easy on your poor mom?”
In response, MOC kicked him.
“Listen,” he whispered. “Be aware that you just assaulted a cop.”
I laughed, MOC settled down, and we all fell asleep. I, at least, was hoping that no one came pounding on our door before I could get safely out of town. As people often say, I was going to let the cops handle it.
Ten
The sun was already up and promising a perfect summer day as I drove to the airport. I would have had a worse case of “I don’t wanna” if it weren’t for crime scene tape and flashing blue lights across the street. Andre was up and out the door before I left. Being a gentleman, though, he did carry out my suitcase. For once, I was glad to see our house in the rearview mirror.