“I’d never hurt Linda.”
I hoped that was true or I was going to really regret stalling back there.
“She’s my sister.”
“Sister, huh?” Malcolm had mentioned something about Linda’s brother looking for her. “So why the different last name? She’s not married.” At least her status in her employee file had been listed as single with no dependents.
“Yeah, they told me at the museum.”
“They told you.”
“I’ve been out of the country. When I heard she had a new last name, I assumed she got married without bothering to let me know.” He dragged his feet on the stairs, clearly not wanting me to see inside that apartment, and yup, he definitely had a cut on that foot. He left behind smears of blood. “How was I supposed to know if the badge you flashed was real or not? You hear stories all the time of people impersonating cops to worm their way into a house.”
Guess my daily gym workout was paying off if I had him that spooked.
“Is Linda in some kind of trouble?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out.” I pushed him in front of me and up to Linda’s door. What was taking my backup so long? My gut told me there was no one in the apartment, at least not alive, or they would’ve fled too. But what if I was wrong?
I tightened my grip on Stan’s arm. If I was wrong and his cohorts decided to shoot, he’d be my bullet trap. He’d be more likely to warn me that way. I gave him a moment to contemplate that, then reached around him and pounded loudly on the door. “FBI, open up.”
Not a sound came from inside the apartment.
I tried the handle. Locked.
The same neighbor lady stuck her head out her door again, took one look at Stan in cuffs, and then slammed her door shut. The click of three deadbolts followed. I hoped Stan hadn’t thrown the deadbolts on Linda’s door, because he wasn’t carrying a key. “On your knees.” I pushed him to his knees in front of the door, then used his driver’s license to shimmy the lock.
His chin dropped to his chest. “It’s not what it looks like,” he moaned.
My hand stilled on the doorknob. Okay, I didn’t like the sound of that. I pushed the door in just enough to unlatch it, then I pulled him to his feet and drew my weapon. “You first.”
“I was worried about her,” he claimed as I shoved the door with my foot and pushed him inside.
I didn’t know what I’d expected—well, yeah, I did—but it wasn’t this. A large, rolled-up rug was lying on the sofa, looking very much like a body could be hidden inside. Where it had once laid, if I went by the unfaded wood in the middle of the living room, there was a crowbar and a half-pried-up board.
Now the loud TV made sense. He’d been trying to muffle the sound of his “renovation.”
I edged him forward slowly. The kitchen opened off the entrance to the left. I visually scanned it, nudged open the broom cupboard to ensure nobody was hiding, or being hidden, inside. I reached for the fridge door to do the same.
“You don’t want to—”
I gagged as the smell of rotting meat caught me by the throat.
“—open that,” Stan finished, too late.
I checked the packaging date on the rancid pound of ground beef—a week ago—then kicked the fridge shut. “When’s the last time you talked to your sister?”
“Christmas.”
I had a bad feeling about Linda’s state of health and a lot of questions for Stan, but I needed to record his answers and I didn’t want to let go of him until I’d finished checking the place. I quickly cleared the living room, aside from checking inside the rolled rug. Linda’s tastes were spartan. Besides the sofa, she had an armchair and an end table. No stereo system. No phone, although these days that wasn’t unusual. No books on the built-in bookshelf or papers in the drawers that were dangling precariously from their slots. No photographs on the walls. No art anywhere.
Of course, an art thief couldn’t afford to covet what she stole.
Neither of the two bedrooms had closets. Only one had a bed. I glanced underneath it. No one hiding there. The dresser drawers were too small to conceal a person, so I didn’t check them, but I had to wonder how any woman could fit her entire wardrobe into such a tiny bureau. Three outfits hung in the hall closet. A pair of sneakers sat on the floor beneath them. No other shoes or boots. No coats.
A single bath towel hung on the rack in the bathroom. A couple more were stacked on a shelf above the toilet. A small bottle of strawberry-scented shampoo occupied the tub shelf, along with a razor and dry bar of soap. A single toothbrush hung in the rusty chrome holder over the sink.
The place looked more like a hotel room than a residence.
I pushed Stan back to the living room and pulled over a hard-backed kitchen chair. “Sit.” When he complied, I holstered my gun, then checked inside the rug. No body.
Good for Linda. Not so good for me. I no longer had a viable reason to detain Stan for questioning. Sometimes regulations really got in the way. I reluctantly unlocked his cuffs. Then again . . .
Anything found during an exigent search could be used in court, and the fact he’d been prying up floorboards in the apartment of an art museum employee had just rocketed him and his sister to the top of my suspect list.
Tanner chose that moment to race through the open doorway. “What’s going on?”
“Ah, perfect timing.” I pulled out a notebook and pen. “I was just about to ask Mr. Johnson a few questions.” Drawing Tanner aside, I quickly caught him up on my missing suspect and Stan’s claim that he was her brother, then turned back to Stan. “Is it unusual to not hear from your sister in over a month?”
He massaged his wrists, looking irritated. “Why are you looking for my sister?”
“Please answer the question.”
“No, it isn’t. Until six weeks ago, I’d been working overseas, so we didn’t talk much.”
Volunteering more information than I asked for. Interesting. His curiosity about my interest in his sister must’ve overpowered his desire to toss me out. That or Tanner was giving him the evil eye from behind me.
“But the last time we talked,” Stan went on, “I told her I wanted to see her when I got back.”
“Why?”
His gaze flicked to the pried-up floorboard. “It’s none of your business.”
“To kill her?”
He jolted at the accusation and almost toppled off his chair. “No! Of course not.”
I tilted my head to check out the space beneath the boards—a space that could easily accommodate a rolled-up painting. “Are you in the habit of renovating her apartment when she’s out of town?”
“She complained the floor was spongy.”
My single slow nod said I didn’t believe him. “Do you stay here?”
“Yeah, sometimes.”
I shifted my gaze pointedly to the crowbar and back to him. “Sometimes, as in currently?” I avoided reminding him of the rotting meat in the fridge and could almost see the gears grinding in his head—he couldn’t be accused of breaking into an apartment he was already living in.
“Yeah, currently.”
Good, that solved my consent to search problem, since consent could be given by a person who controls something. Now to win his consent, one more time. “Do you have any dope or guns here?”
“No!” He sounded as indignant as I’d hoped.
“Mind if I check?”
His facial tic screamed “Yeah,” but with a no-skin-off-my-nose kind of shrug, he said, “Knock yourself out.”
Perfect. Technically that meant I could search the common areas and his personal property. I got down on my knees and took a thorough look under the floorboards. Besides the remnants of a mouse nest, the space was clear. I turned over furniture cushions, burrowed my hand into the corners, found three quarters and a dime, and set them on the end table. I walked over every square inch of the floorboards, checking for “sponginess,” and scoured kitchen cupboards and drawer
s. “Which bedroom’s yours?”
Stan’s eyes bulged in apparent panic, but he quickly recovered. “The first one.”
“Stay here and watch him,” I said to Tanner so I wouldn’t have to worry about a knife in my back. In “Stan’s” room, I checked the drawers—which were empty, surprise, surprise—then did a little cha-cha dance on the floorboards to test for other potential hiding spots. The floor was sound. The room was clean. No guns, no drugs, no art. No slip of paper with a middleman’s number on it. No stash of cash.
Typically, a middleman might pay 3 or 4 percent of the painting’s value to a thief, but Linda had probably counted on it being months before the theft was noticed and might’ve figured she had time to dispense with the middleman and go straight to a dealer, or better yet a collector.
She would’ve realized her time was up when Zoe started taking inventory.
I returned to the living room. “Did you just get into town today?”
“Yeah.”
“Aren’t you concerned that something might’ve happened to your sister? Most people wouldn’t leave a pound of beef to rot in their fridge if they planned on being away.”
“I figured she forgot. The message on her cell phone says she’s on vacation.”
“Really? So you didn’t expect to find her here?”
He shrugged.
“Funny, because I’ve called her number a few times today and there was no mention of a vacation.”
“I’m not lying,” he blurted, and his indignant expression looked pretty believable.
“What’s the number you dialed?”
He recited a number different than the one the museum had given me. There was no landline in the apartment, so why’d Linda have two numbers? I tapped Stan’s into my phone, and sure enough, a female voice came on and said she was sorry she missed my call, but she was away on vacation and wouldn’t be checking messages.
“Did you find her phone here?” It hadn’t rung, but the battery might already be dead.
Stan shook his head.
“What did you find?”
“Nothing.”
“Not what you were looking for?” Tanner piped up.
I reined in a wry grin. He’d been exercising tremendous self-control.
Stan let out an exasperated breath. “If you want to know the truth, our dad died of Alzheimer’s while I was overseas. I couldn’t make it back for the funeral, but I told Linda I’d be back as soon as I could to settle the estate. Only she said there was nothing left.”
Hmm, that sounded like motive for murder.
“She said that the money was all used up paying for his care, but I don’t believe it. She must’ve siphoned money out. Dad had a nice house and a good pension. Then when I got back to Tulsa, no one knew where she was. They said she’d moved away over a year ago. So what do you think I’m going to think when her phone says she’s on vacation and then my friend spots her working here and discovers she’s not even going by the same name?” He paused only a second. “I’ll tell you what I think. She doesn’t want me to find her because she’s taken the entire inheritance for herself.”
Okay, if that was true, she sounded like the type of person who might also steal paintings from the museum for an easy buck and then skip town.
The Murder, She Wrote ringtone jingled from my cell phone telling me Jessica Fletcher, aka Aunt Martha, was calling. I let it go to voice mail, not wanting to invite any more questions about my investigation.
“You thought Linda hid the money under the floorboards?” Tanner asked.
Stan shrugged. “I felt a soft spot when I walked across the rug and thought I might get lucky. I figured she couldn’t put it in a bank without me finding out. And when we were kids she used to have a loose board in the floor of her room that she hid things under.”
“You really thought she’d leave a stash of money behind?” I hadn’t seen a single sheet of paper in the whole place, with the possible exception of her bedroom. Not so much as a memo pad or pen or junk mail addressed to Occupant. If she’d cleared out that thoroughly, chances were she expected someone to search the place. But who? Her brother?
Or someone else?
If she’d been hired to pull the art museum heist and then decided to cut out the middleman, her handler wouldn’t have taken kindly to being stiffed.
Was that why she didn’t leave anything that might give away where she was headed? Or had whoever planned her latest trip not wanted anyone to find her?
I still wasn’t sure what to believe about Stan, but my gut said he wasn’t responsible for Linda’s disappearance. I needed to talk to the neighbors, find out what they saw or heard. As I took down Stan’s contact information, my cell phone rang again, this time signaling an incoming text from Aunt Martha’s number. Only . . . it wasn’t from Aunt Martha.
This is Nate. Call me as soon as you can. Urgent.
6
“Your aunt was attacked outside your apartment,” Nate said without preamble.
“Is she okay?” I asked breathlessly. Aunt Martha often stopped by to visit old friends and the cat. Who would do something like this?
“Well enough to put up a stink about my calling the paramedics.”
She needs a paramedic? Covering my phone’s mic, I backed toward the door of Linda’s apartment and looked from Stan to Tanner. “I need to go.” His sympathetic nod said he’d overheard. “Can you talk to Linda’s neighbors here? Find out when they last saw her and if she said where she was going and if anyone else has been here.”
“Of course.”
To Nate I said, “I’ll be right there,” and sped out the door.
“I’ll wait with her in your apartment unless the paramedics decide she needs to go to the hospital.”
“I don’t need to go to the hospital,” Aunt Martha groused in the background. She hated seeing a doctor worse than Harold hated going to the vet.
I raced out of the building to my car and headed west on Delmar, but traffic came to a standstill as I turned onto Skinker. I turned on my siren and bubble light. Cars magically moved out of my way. Had to appreciate the perks of the job when you could. Too bad I couldn’t justify the trick on my way home from work at rush hour. I made it to my apartment in record time, but the ambulance driver was already climbing into the front of the ambulance.
I double-parked and sprang from my car. “Wait! My aunt? Is she in there?”
“No, still upstairs. But if she gets any worse, you should convince her to visit her doctor.”
“Okay, thanks.” Right. Short of handcuffing her and prodding her at gunpoint, getting her to a doctor wasn’t going to happen. I headed toward the front door, only to be flagged down by a police officer.
“Hey, is that your car?”
“Oh, sorry.” I hurried back to my car, drove it past the ambulance, and parked in the first available spot along the curb.
The ambulance driver must’ve filled the officer in on my relationship to their victim, because he was waiting for me outside the building. “You live in 2B?”
“Yes, I’m Special Agent Serena Jones. Have you caught the assailant?”
“No, he ran off before we arrived, but we’ve got a boot print and we’re interviewing neighbors.”
“You have a description yet?”
“Short, wearing faded blue jeans, mechanic’s gloves, and a large, gray, hooded parka that hid his face,” the officer read from his notepad. “He was jimmying the lock on your kitchen door when your aunt shouted up the stairs at him. He raced down, knocking her over, and ran off.”
“She interrupted a burglary?” I said, having a hard time keeping the relief from my voice.
“Seems so. You recognize the description?”
“No.” When he started to ask another question, I said, “I’ll be happy to answer all of your questions and ask a few of my own as soon as I’ve checked on my aunt, okay?”
“Of course.”
Since an officer was still examining footprints
around the outside stairs, I used the building’s main entrance. To think I’d viewed the private entrance as a plus when I’d taken over Aunt Martha’s lease. I let myself in to my apartment.
Aunt Martha sat at the kitchen table, her foot resting on a pillow propped on a second chair, her pant leg rolled up to her thigh, a gel ice pack draped over her knee, and Harold curled on her lap.
I lurched toward her. “Aunt Martha, I’m so sorry.”
“Pfft. It’s not your fault the hoodlum bowled me over. I was a silly old woman to shout at him. I should’ve stayed quiet and called the police.”
“Or called me.” Nate stood at the counter, filling my kettle with water and, in well-worn jeans and a black T-shirt, looking remarkably at home. He pulled the fine bone china teacup and saucer from my dish rack. “Do you want me to make you a cup, Serena?”
“I’m fine . . . and thank you for taking care of my aunt.”
“My pleasure.” He winked at Aunt Martha. “Besides, Martha’s done her share of bringing me hot chicken soup when I’ve been under the weather.”
Aunt Martha patted his arm and looked at him as if he’d hung the moon. “He’s a keeper.”
I tried not to read too much into what she meant by that, especially on the heels of last night’s negative Tanner comments, and lifted the ice pack to examine her knee. “Are you in pain?”
“Nothing a little ibuprofen won’t take care of.”
“What did the paramedics say?”
“It’s just bruised.”
Nate swished boiling water around inside my teapot, poured it out, and dropped in a tea bag as if he knew how to brew a perfect pot. “They also said if the swelling persists she should see her doctor for an X-ray. Her blood pressure was slightly elevated and she twisted her wrist.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my vocal cords last I checked,” Aunt Martha chided.
Nate squeezed her shoulder and leaned down, his mouth close to her ear. “I know you. You wouldn’t have told her.”
I laughed.
Aunt Martha shook her head at me. “You won’t be laughing if your mother hears about this. She’ll be after you to quit all over again.”
A Fool and His Monet Page 7