Gianna’s cell phone rang and she excused herself, returning to Sandy Mitchell’s office to answer it and leaving Cassie, Alice and Linda to finish with Jared Taylor. She switched gears completely to listen to Eric update her on the status of the panel van Mimi had told her about. She looked at her watch. She had a meeting with the chief in forty minutes. She was pressing her luck by being with Cassie, Alice and Linda in Sandra Mitchell’s apartment, but the chief was so pleased that she’d found the Irish guns she felt safe taking a step on the wild side. But only a step. She needed to get back to the office. She told Eric to meet her there and punched off the phone.
She took a quick look through the papers on the desk and opened all the drawers. Nothing there she wouldn’t expect to find. Then she realized that one thing she would expect to find was missing: a telephone. The only phone was the one that was part of the fax machine. She picked up the handset with her thumb and index finger and held it to her ear. Dead. She carefully lifted the machine, looking for its connections to the computer tower. All the wires dangled freely. Then she took a close look at the computer. She was no technocrat but she knew hi tech when she saw it, and Sandy Mitchell’s computer set-up was the Cadillac. Just like her car, big, new, the top of the line. She recalled from the ME’s report on Ellie Litton the fact that every article of clothing she wore was brand new, even her underwear. A killer with a “new” fetish? But that wouldn’t explain why the computer wasn’t hooked up or why there was no telephone. The woman had been here for three weeks. She had to have talked on the phone, had to have used her computer, to have checked her e-mail.
Then Gianna backed away from the desk and scrutinized the area. Something about it had bothered her earlier, before Jared Taylor arrived. She studied the scene before her. The stacks of books on the floor beside the desk and on top of the desk. Yes, the piles were neat, but not, she thought, truly reflective of who Sandra Mitchell seemed to be. A neat freak, Linda had called her. Paranoid and obsessive about her possessions and surroundings. Sandra Mitchell would not have piles of books on the floor or on the desk, no matter how neatly they were stacked. Gianna knelt down and read the lettering on the book spines on the floor, then rose to read those on the desk. Text books and theses and sociological studies of varying kinds. The same kind of things that were on the shelves. She looked at her watch again, took a last look around the room, and sped out. She thanked Jared Taylor for his help and began to explain that the crime scene investigators would want to take his fingerprints.
“Oh, I know all about that,” he said sagely. “That’s so they can eliminate me as a suspect when they find my prints all over the place.”
“I wish all our witnesses could take lessons from you, Mr. Taylor,” Gianna said shaking his hand. She tossed a backhanded salute to her Team and all but ran down the steps and out the front door.
She shivered at the blast of cold air that met her. She hadn’t been aware of being too warm inside the apartment. “Maybe I’m getting old and my blood’s thinning,” she mused, and heard her mother’s voice saying that exact thing as clearly as if she were in the car with her. The memory warmed her faster than the car’s heater. She reached for the car’s mobile phone, punched in the number of her favorite deli and ordered half a dozen sandwiches. She was certain that Eric, Tim, Bobby and Tony hadn’t eaten; and even if they had, she was certain they’d eat again without hesitation. And she was ravenous. She’d barely replaced the receiver when the cell phone in her purse rang. She grabbed it, flipped it open, listened for several seconds, and couldn’t stop the curse that rose up and out.
“I’ll be right there.” She closed the phone, took a hurried look into the rear view mirror, and made a U-turn. Then she called the chief and explained why she wouldn’t be meeting with him in the next half an hour as scheduled and, mercifully, he gave her no grief. He agreed to let Eric brief him and extracted a promise from her that she’d see him before the end of the day. She hung up the phone, activated lights and siren, and was back in front of Jared Taylor’s house in a few minutes.
The white, unmarked big rig was at the curb. Gianna pulled to a stop at its front bumper and was hanging her badge on her jacket pocket when she leaped out of the car. With her right hand, she reached under her left arm as she ran up the walkway to the house. The door swung out just as she reached the bottom step, and she backpedaled out of the way of the man who tumbled down the steps and sprawled face down on the ground, Alice Long close behind. She straddled him, grabbed one arm and then the other, and handcuffed the snarling, cursing fellow before giving him a hard smack to the back of the head with the open palm of her hand, and the admonition to shut his nasty mouth before she shut it for him. Then she noticed Gianna.
“Lieutenant,” she said in her soft voice that registered no hint of the exertion she’d just endured. “I don’t know yet what all this ol’ boy is gonna be charged with but assault on a police officer is gonna be the first item on the list.” She got to her feet and cradled her mid-section, wincing in obvious pain. “He sucker-punched me. I should’ve seen it coming. Must be getting slow in my old age.”
Gianna stepped toward the prone man who was muttering under his breath. “Stand up, sir.”
“Fuck you bitch,” the man mumbled without conviction.
“You don’t want me to ask you again,” Gianna said, and the man looked into her eyes and struggled to a sitting position. “All the way up,” Gianna said.
“You wanna tell me what this shit is all about?” the man whined as he got to his feet. “I’m here just trying to do my job and all of a sudden I got cop bitches in my face, ‘bout to cost me a whole bunch of money.”
“If you use that word one more time, you’re going to spend the night in a place where it takes on a completely different meaning,” Gianna said, and watched with satisfaction as she saw that he understood her meaning. “What is your name and who sent you to clean out this apartment?”
Raul Lozano was the truck driver’s name. He was in his forties, about six feet tall, and had the wiry, muscular build of one who used his body in his work. His hair was black and curly and shot through with silver, as was his thick mustache, and his bad attitude dried up and blew away like tumbleweeds in the desert when he finally understood that big trouble was in his face, along with the cops, and that the situation could cost him much more than mere money. He started shaking his head, frustrated by his inability to use his hands. “I’m not here to ‘clean out’ no apartment! I got hired to move somebody. I got the paperwork in the cab.”
“Who hired you?”
Lozano shrugged. “Some company. Done lotsa jobs for ‘em the last couple years. I move people whose jobs move them.”
“I want a name, Mr. Lozano, and I want it now.”
“I don’t know nobody’s name. It’s just another job.”
“Get the paperwork out of the truck.” Gianna gave Alice a look and she stepped behind Lozano and removed his handcuffs. When the truck driver looked back at Gianna, her Glock was in her hand and pointed at him. “If you give me a reason, Mr. Lozano, I’ll shoot you, and that’s a promise, not a threat.”
Lozano rubbed his wrists and shook his head in disbelief. “I won’t, lady. I ain’t no criminal, for Christ’s sake, I’m a truck driver.”
“Then why’d you punch me?” Alice, obviously still in pain, was not inclined to accept Lozano’s declaration as gospel. “That’s the kind of thing criminals do, and you did it real easy, like it was something you’d done before.”
“‘Cause you made me mad, lady, jumpin’ in my face like that, when all I did was knock on the goddamn door! That was just reflexes acting, that’s all, and that’s the truth. I don’t go around punching people, ‘specially girls.”
“In that case, you’re lucky all I did was throw you down the stairs. I could’ve shot you. And I haven’t been a girl in twenty years.”
Lozano’s eyes widened but instead of speaking, he turned away from them and ambled over to his truck.
They followed him across the well-trimmed, winter brown lawn to the curb and the truck. He hoisted his right foot up to the big rig’s step, gripped the hand rail, and swung up with the ease of habit. When he opened the truck’s door, Gianna told him to leave it open, and to leave his feet visible in the door frame. When he backed down to the ground, a manila file folder in his hand, and turned around, he gasped at the sight of two gun barrels pointed at him, and backed into the truck’s tire. “What the hell do y’all think I did?”
Gianna reached for the folder without speaking.
“Do you want him handcuffed, Boss?” Alice asked.
“Not if he behaves himself,” Gianna answered, then turned to the truck driver. “You’re going to be here for a while, Mr. Lozano, so relax.” She holstered her gun and walked away, reading the papers in Lozano’s file. The trucker struggled for composure. He lit a cigarette and watched Alice Long watch him. It was getting colder; the wind blew icy and, given their proximity to the Potomac, damp. Alice, in wool slacks, jacket and sweater, was almost comfortable. Raul Lozano, in jeans and a long-sleeved denim shirt, was not. He blew on his hands and shivered. “Can I get my jacket outta the cab?”
Alice nodded and he climbed up and back out in a matter of seconds, a Baltimore Orioles cap fitting snugly on his head. He slipped into a fleece-lined parka, which he zipped all the way up. Then he lit another cigarette and smoked in silence while Alice watched him, her face a calm, unreadable mask. Both were glad when Gianna returned, the manila folder tucked under her arm. She stepped in close to Lozano.
“The woman who lived here, Sandra Mitchell, was murdered, so despite what it says in these papers, she’s not being transferred to a new job in Texas. Do you hear and understand what I’m telling you, Mr. Lozano?”
He did. He dropped his cigarette, crossed himself, and looked from Gianna to Alice and back to Gianna. “I don’t know nothing but what’s in those papers, I swear to God I don’t! Oh, Madre de Dios, yo no soy un asesino!”
“Mr. Lozano,” Gianna said in her calm tone. He looked again into her clear hazel eyes and again found a reason to listen, and to believe. “At the moment, I’m inclined to take your word for your presence here, but we will need your full cooperation. Do you understand me and are you prepared to cooperate?”
“Si, senora, yo entiendo.”
“It’s Lieutenant, Mr. Lozano, and unfortunately, your English is a lot better than my Spanish, OK?”
And when he almost smiled and nodded, she asked whether he’d planned to carry Sandra Mitchell’s belongings out to the truck by himself. This time he smiled broadly and answered that he came today, after unloading a job nearby, to assess how long this job would take and how many men he would need. He would arrange to have the requisite number of workers here tomorrow morning at dawn to begin packing and wrapping.
“Then we have until tomorrow morning at dawn, Mr. Lozano, to understand what’s happening here and to decide what we’re going to do about it.”
*****
Beverly was looking at her like she was a new species that hadn’t yet been classified. “What?” Mimi said in response to the look that was beginning to feel uncomfortable.
“What, indeed,” Beverly replied, still giving Mimi that look and enjoying Mimi’s discomfort.
Because it was a new one Mimi didn’t know exactly what it meant and therefore didn’t know exactly how to respond, though she had an idea. Their break-up more than three years earlier had been unpleasant in the extreme due primarily to Mimi’s behavior. Because of that, it had taken some time and lots of work to rebuild the friendship between them; and because they’d worked so hard, the friendship was solid, built on love and trust and forgiveness. If only they’d done all that work before they’d broken up.
Mimi gave Bev a look of her own—one both appraising and appreciative. Beverly was one of those women who became more beautiful as she aged. The long, thick dreadlocks that were gathered and held by a brightly colored cloth were streaked with silver and the laugh lines at the corners of her mouth were deep and sensuous. And though amply endowed of bust and butt, Mimi always was captivated by Bev’s eyes. They were deep-set and dark and liquid and they revealed exactly what was in Bev’s head and heart. Right now they were questioning Mimi’s presence and motives with equal parts warmth, love and skepticism.
“It’s a weird question, I know.”
“Mimi, it’s more than just weird, it’s so far removed from what I’ve come to expect from you that I’m having a hard time taking it seriously. Yet, I know you must be serious because you wouldn’t interrupt my work otherwise.”
Beverly Connors had spent fifteen years as a public school guidance counselor. Frustrated by and fed up with the school system, she’d completed her doctorate in clinical social work and a year and a half ago had set up shop with three other therapists in a beautifully renovated town house in a raggedy, run-down, dangerous neighborhood whose residents needed all the guidance, counseling, and intervention they could get. Most of them were low level government, hospital, and association employees who didn’t earn enough money to pay rent and buy groceries with the same paycheck, but whose union jobs provided the kind of insurance that bought them and their children an hour a week at Midtown Psychotherapy Associates.
“No, I wouldn’t, and I truly appreciate your making time for me.”
Bev snorted in a truly unladylike fashion. “I didn’t make time for you; I accepted a bribe, Miss Patterson.” And she gave Mimi the leering, lecherous grin that still could make her insides lurch. Mimi walked around the desk and presented Bev with a shopping bag that contained all of her favorite foods from an Ethiopian restaurant on 18th Street in Adams-Morgan.
Bev peeked into the bag and made yummy sounds. “Get out your pad and pencil, Girl, you’ve bought yourself a full hour’s worth of everything I know about what happens in the bodies and psyches of women over fifty. But first, Mimi, you really must tell me why you’re asking. This isn’t the kind of thing you do or care about.”
“It’s so not the kind of thing I do that I’m still not sure exactly what it is I’m doing, but I’m caring more about it every day,” Mimi said, and proceeded to tell Beverly everything that had ignited and then fueled her interest in what was shaping up to be more than just a newspaper story about a couple of murdered lesbians, though she told her the little that she knew about the deaths of Millicent Cartcher and Ellie Litton. And she told her about the ugly conversation she’d overheard in the locker room at the gym, and about the women willing to hurt themselves on gym equipment in order to lose a few pounds and about their defiant defense of their actions, and about the sexless union between Kate and Sue and the hopeless tone of Sue’s rationale for remaining in an unhappy union.
“I’ve read dozens of articles by and about baby boomers and the over-fifty set and I’m left with the impression that they’re essentially healthy, upbeat, and in total control of their lives. If that’s the case, does that mean that Cartcher and Litton and the women I met at the gym are aberrations? Or because they’re lesbians they’re out of tune with other women? Help me out here, Bev.”
Beverly finished chewing and wiped her mouth and hands and tossed the balled-up napkin in the trash. “I’m not sure what you want, Mimi. You know we live in a society that values youth and physical beauty, and you know that even young, beautiful women are still undervalued by this society. So, what’s in store for a fifty-something woman? Sue’s right, where’s she going to find a lover, male or female? Fifty-something men marry thirty-something women. Women hurt themselves trying to conform to the cultural standard of beauty, whether it’s by lifting too much weight in the gym or having the weight liposuctioned off or parts of the body lifted and tucked. You already know all this stuff, Mimi, so what is it you want from me?”
“I’m not sure,” Mimi said, “though I thought I knew when I walked in the door. Maybe I just wanted to bring you Ethiopian food.”
“Wanna know what I think?” Bev asked,
and when Mimi nodded, she told her: “I think you wanted to hear that it’s all right for you to write about human emotion instead of human weakness. Anybody—female or male—lucky enough to live long enough, will confront the consequences of aging, but not many people steal from their employers and go to jail, and those are the stories you know best.”
Mimi stood up but there wasn’t enough room to pace, so she sat back down. “Sue said that Kate was angry about being fifty and about the changes that came with growing older.”
“Do you know that more women know more about breast cancer than they do about menopause?” Bev asked. “And while that’s certainly important information to have, not every woman will get breast cancer. Every woman will, however, go through menopause if she lives long enough, yet most women still have no idea what, exactly, that means.”
“But is it really that big a deal if everybody does it? I guess that’s the question I need answered.”
“Look at Kate and Sue and you tell me. Ask yourself how you’d feel if you lost all interest in sex and didn’t know why or what to do about it.”
“Sue said that didn’t always happen.”
“She’s right,” Bev said, “but it happens often enough and it’s only one of perhaps a dozen symptoms—”
“A dozen?” Mimi yelped. “Sue mentioned three.”
“You’re familiar with the term peri-menopause?”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“But it doesn’t apply to you? Don’t end up like your friend, Kate, caught off guard and resentful and angry about the most natural occurrence of your life. In the next three to five years, Mimi, if not sooner, you’ll begin to notice some subtle shifts and changes if you’re paying attention to your body.”
Mimi jumped up and this time managed to find enough room to pace. “What do you mean in the next three to five years, Bev? I’m only forty!”
Love Notes Page 11