by Julie Hyzy
DEADLY INTEREST
An Alex St. James Mystery
Julie Hyzy
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 Julie Hyzy
Smashwords Edition, License Notes:
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form or by any mechanical means without permission in writing from the author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to any businesses or locale, is purely coincidental.
Dedication
For Paul,
who survived Susie, Sni-a-bar, and much, much more.
Love you, Bruds.
Acknowledgments
A very special thanks to my patient family, who still insist they enjoy having me around, even though I sequester myself at my keyboard for hours and then fall asleep in front of the TV.
Chapter One
“Thank God,” I said under my breath when the garage door lurched upward, responding to a quick press of the remote. The opener had been misbehaving recently, often taking half-a-dozen tries before activating. It needed new batteries—but I didn’t have time to deal with that tonight.
Shutting off the engine, I gathered my purse and reached up to my visor, hitting the control button again.
Nothing.
I made a face, and pressed again, this time holding for an extra second—hoping for a strong enough signal to catch. Still nothing.
“Fine,” I said aloud, getting out and slamming the car door shut. I started around the front of the Escort, when I heard someone calling my name over the steady drizzle.
“Alex?” The high-pitched voice held a touch of urgency.
I peered out into the rainy night. One of my neighbors, Mrs. Vicks, held a folded newspaper over her wiry carrot-red hair, shuffling along the alley in what, for her, had to be warp speed.
A quick glance at my watch told me it was ten minutes before six. I needed to rush inside, make myself look gorgeous—as much as that was possible—and be out the door by six-thirty for the first newsmagazine awards dinner where I was a contender for the prestigious Davis Prize.
Mrs. Vicks’ expression was at once eager and apologetic, the wrinkles in her face so dense they formed crisscross patterns on her cheeks, pink with exertion. She had on a dark plaid raincoat, its silver snaps clipped shut from hemline to neck. Beneath it, she wore shiny sweat pants gathered over her extra-wide gym shoes that splashed up shots of water as she made her way toward me.
“Made it,” she said, with obvious relief, ducking into my garage to get out of the rain. “I’m locked out.” She shook out the newspaper, sending sprays of water across my car’s hood, and I got a mouthful of her cologne.
I was about to explain about my rush, but she interrupted. “Diana must’ve locked the front door. She was sitting at the kitchen table when I got home from work, and I thought she was staying in. I was sure of it. I told her I was going to be right back. I don’t know what goes on in that girl’s head, sometimes.”
Mrs. Vicks’ roommate, Diana, had been a troubled teen, and was now a troubled young woman. I knew Diana well enough to say hello and exchange quick pleasantries. She didn’t strike me as vindictive, or the type to purposely lock Evelyn Vicks out of her home for laughs, but I could believe she was sufficiently scatter-brained to forget about her landlady when leaving the house.
Digging out my cell phone, I offered to call my Aunt Lena who lived just a few houses down. “She has a key, right?” I asked, my voice a mite too hopeful.
Mrs. Vicks inspected her gym shoes. They were dappled with dark spots and she tried cleaning them by rubbing the tops against the fabric of her pant legs. She had difficulty maintaining balance and latched onto my forearm for support, holding me frozen in her iron grip. “Nah,” she said, not looking up. “Lena and Moose aren’t home. I tried them first. Nobody else is around.” She finished her futile effort and finally glanced up at me with a hopeful smile. “Well, nobody who’s agile enough to get through my back window.”
She let go as I put my phone back in my purse. I glanced at my watch. Five minutes had ticked by already.
“Mrs. Vicks, I’d love to help you out, but I’m really in a hurry tonight. How about you stay at my house till my aunt and uncle or Diana get back?”
She was shaking her head even before I finished talking. “I put a pork roast in the oven,” she said. “Told you I wasn’t going to be gone long. I just walked down to the strip mall to pick up my prescription. Half hour, tops.” Her eyes widened as she proffered a stapled-shut white bag that had been tucked under her arm. She held it out with a look of determination, as though I doubted her. “I’m afraid it’s going to dry out—you know pork does that real quick—or, heaven forbid, it could start a fire if it’s in there long enough.”
The last time I helped her get back into her house, it’d been a Saturday morning in the fall, and I’d been out trimming my yews and raking maple leaves. Suitably dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, I’d been perfectly willing to prop a ladder up to her back porch windows and shimmy inside.
Tonight was one of those almost-warm March evenings, the protracted rain pulling fresh growth smells from the new-green ground. Having shucked my lined coat because it was too heavy, I had on a brand-new navy blue skirt suit with matching pumps. There was no way I could see myself climbing up a wet ladder in this miserable weather. Not to mention that the clock was ticking. Even if I ran into my house this minute I’d never get my hair done in time.
“Really, Mrs. Vicks, I have to be somewhere by seven and I still have to get ready.”
She scrutinized me. “You look fine, honey. You always do.” Her eyes raked me up and down and she sighed, as though for her lost youth. “Your aunt told me about this dinner thing you’re going to. Isn’t this the one where you’re up against the jerk who cheated your station out of a big story?”
I winced. “Something like that.”
Mrs. Vicks pursed her lips and wrinkled her nose. “Well, I hope you beat him good,” she said. Her glance slid down the alley toward her house, four garages away. “I mean,” she said, “your aunt told us all about how that TV big-shot fellow got all the credit for the work you did. You’re not dating him anymore, are you?”
I scratched my eyebrow. Mrs. Vicks could talk all night.
“Wait here,” I said, dumping my purse onto my car’s passenger seat. I pulled on my coat in an effort to protect my suit, and hoisted my extension ladder from its hangers on the garage wall. This house and all its finery had belonged to my parents. Now safely ensconced in a retirement village in Arkansas, they’d seen fit to leave the whole kit and kaboodle to me. Mostly it came in handy. Tonight I wished I lived in a north shore condominium with a doorman named Joe.
The rain had let up, but Mrs. Vicks, determined to accompany me in my rescue quest, tottered alongside, holding the folded newspaper over me. Since she was at least four inches shorter than my own five-foot-six, the newspaper kept whapping against my head as we walked through the narrow passage that separated her garage from my aunt and uncle’s.
“How are your parents enjoying the leisurely life?” she asked. Not waiting for my answer, she continued.
“And your sister, Lucy. What about her? I can’t help but feel—don’t tell your folks this—that the poor girl is going to be lost in that retarded institution.”
Her mouth made a clucking sound, and she watched her feet, rather than the hand carrying the newspaper. I suffered another whack, and cringed at the word “retarded.” If Lucy had been here, she’d have been hurt.
“Sorry,” she said, meaning the hit in the head, and not the terminology. “It’s just that poor Lucy doesn’t seem like she should belong there. Not that she isn’t ‘special.’” Evelyn Vicks glanced up at me then. “Of course, she isn’t exactly normal, either.”
“She’s doing great. Loves it.” My tone was abrupt.
Mrs. Vicks shuffled as fast as she could to keep up with me, but all I wanted was to get in, get out and get moving. I heard her heave a long sigh. “Lucy is such a sweet girl. I miss her.”
A moment’s pang. I missed her too.
Once in the small yard, I headed toward the back porch. Not watching what I was doing, I inadvertently skimmed the top rungs of the ladder against her massive fir tree. The bouncy branches slingshot back at me, showering my head with rainwater and my last chance for decent hair washed away.
“It’s okay,” I said, pushing away her hand, trying hard not to let my impatience show. I raised the ladder till it bonked against the back of the house, next to the right-hand window. Things would have been easier if Mrs. Vicks hadn’t outfitted all her basement windows with glass-block panes.
I tried not to think about balancing on wet metal rungs as I stripped off my shoes. “You’re sure this back window’s unlocked?” I asked.
“I know it is,” she said, holding the paper over herself again. “I had it open this afternoon for a bit, when I got home from work.”
I sighed, handed my heels to Mrs. Vicks, and started up.
I was only three rungs up when a bright crack of lightning, just north of us, shot me with renewed urgency. Standing on a metal ladder, the ridged rungs digging into the soles of my pantyhose-covered feet in the middle of a storm was not how I’d planned tonight’s festivities.
As if to berate me for my foolhardiness, the sky rumbled, then boomed, shaking the already unsteady ladder. Above me, a trio of windows awaited, set into the vinyl-sided back porch add-on. All large and double-hung, I knew from experience that even from the inside, these heavy panes were often hard to lift.
“I’ve got you,” Mrs. Vicks said.
I glanced down long enough to see her eager, upturned face, squinting against the steadily growing drizzle. One hand was wrapped around her prescription bag and newspaper, her fingers tucked into the backs of my shoes, the other hand gripped the ladder.
Three more upward steps and I was in position. My left hand grabbed the white-painted wood frame of the window and I peered over the center to verify that the lock was unlatched.
She was right about that, thank goodness.
The wind whipped my skirt around, shooting blasts of damp air up my butt and making me feel for a moment like Marilyn Monroe must have over that subway vent, except cold. I tucked the excess fabric between my thighs in front, and tried to hoist the window upward.
No luck.
I heard the oncoming torrent before I felt it. Like the sound of a thousand spirits shushing at once, it moved from the north like a wave. Seconds later, we were drenched.
Grimacing, I dug my fingers between the upper and lower panes, and pushed the bottom half of the window upward with all my might.
It gave, about a half-inch.
Encouraged, I pushed again, till there was enough room underneath the frame to sneak my fingers in to get the leverage I needed to open the window full wide. The wrenching noise led me to believe that it’d gone off its track, and I felt like I’d broken something. A half-second later I realized I had—one of my brand-new acrylic fingernails. Getting them done on the way home from work was what made me run late in the first place. They’d been gorgeous—long and French-tipped. Now the middle fingernail on my right hand was short and ragged. I clenched my eyes shut, less in pain than in aggravation, but at that point, all I could think of was how fast I could straddle the windowsill and heave myself inside.
As I made it through, I heard Mrs. Vicks shout in glee that she’d meet me around the front door.
She was gone before I could argue that the back door was closer.
I ran a hand through my wet hair and took stock as I made my way to the front of Evelyn Vicks’ house. I glanced at the clock in the kitchen, where the table was covered with paperwork, and I could smell delicious heat coming off the pork roast. The room was bright and warm, plastic yellow tiles framed with a black border about three-quarters of the way up the wall,
My stomach growled.
Six-fifteen.
I made my way to the front door, and let a very grateful Mrs. Vicks inside.
“Oh, Alex, honey, thank you so much. You’re a dear.”
She handed me my shoes as she kicked off her own by the front door, stooping to place them neatly on a ribbed rubber mat right inside.
I smoothed back my hair again, pushing at its slick wetness till the water dripped down the back of my neck. “Not a problem,” I said, lying through my teeth. I headed toward the back door, but she stopped me mid-stride in the kitchen.
“Hang on, let me give you something.”
Her purse, a massive bone-colored vinyl bag with a long, wide strap that I’d often seen her wear strapped across her chest, was slung along the back of one of the chairs. She started to dig into it and I wondered why she hadn’t taken it with her to the drugstore. Or why she always seemed to be losing her keys.
Before I could say a word, she held out a five-dollar bill, shaking it to show she meant business.
“That’s okay,” I said, striving for polite, but wanting nothing more than to race home and get moving. I inched toward the porch pulling my pumps back on. I’d be sorry tomorrow that I put them on with these dirty wet feet. “Really, it was nothing.”
As I turned, I knocked over some of the papers on her table and cursed my bad luck. More time wasted, picking them up.
I mumbled to myself, as I snagged all the papers that had fallen, and I placed them on the table trying to arrange them neatly.
Bank statements, all of them. From Banner Bank with the distinctive double-B logo. I knew Mrs. Vicks worked there. She’d been taking the bus downtown everyday since I was a kid.
“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it,” she said, taking the bunch from my hand. She stopped for a moment, as though considering something, the five-dollar bill forgotten on the table, much to my relief. “Alex…” she said, “while you’re here…”
I turned. Almost out the door, I thought. Almost.
“Yes?”
“You’re still a news reporter, right?”
I still needed to get the ladder back to my garage before I could even hope to get dressed for tonight.
“I’m a researcher. It’s not really the same thing.”
“Would you be the person to talk to if I knew something?”
I winced at her question. Another clap of thunder shook the house and the sound of the pounding rain let me know the storm’s intensity had increased. People always ask me what to do if they know something. The “something” they’re talking about can run the gamut from a neighbor who leaves his dog out all night to howl at the moon, to a con man who’s plotting to talk an elderly parent out of retirement savings. My stories are assigned to me by my boss, Philip J. Bassett, not-so-affectionately known as Bass. I rarely find anything on my own that warrants the local Chicagoland coverage that our television newsmagazine provides.
“Ahh,” I said. “That would depend.”
I inched toward the stairs that led down to her back door. She stayed with me, hovering close, her brow furrowed and her lips tight, staring at the sheaf of bank statements in her hand.
She glanced up then, and her eyes were clouded. “It’s just
that there’ve been some,” she looked askance and tsked, “I don’t know. Just some things going on that I thought my boss ought to know about.”
My left hand was on the metal doorknob. I reached my right up to casually flick the flybolt open. “Well, you should say something then,” I said, my words bland. A quick glance at my watch. Six-twenty-five. Damn.
She cocked one hip and set her hand full of paper on it, as though settling in for a talk. “But I did. And, well, it’s like this—”
Desperate, I pulled open the door. “I’ll tell you what, Mrs. Vicks,” I said, knowing I’d be sorry later for making hasty promises now, “How about I stop by tomorrow and you can tell me all about what’s going on?”
Her face brightened, the deep crisscross grooves in her cheeks settling into cheerful smile lines. “You’re a sweetheart, Alex. You always have been, even when you were a little girl. Okay, it’s a date then.”
I grabbed the ladder and flinched at yet another flash of lightning overhead.
She called after me, “I’ll make dinner, would you like that?”
I opened my mouth to decline, thought better of it, and said, “That would be great.”
She beamed. “I’ll make it something very special.”
Chapter Two
Bass was pacing the foyer of the Convention Center when I got there. As I passed through the second set of glass doors, held open for me by the studly young valet, I watched my diminutive boss taking short-man strides across the dense maroon carpet. A wide set of double staircases leading to an empty loft above, curved like huge parentheses around his pacing area, keeping him contained. Centered high above, a crystal chandelier the size of my kitchen sent glimmers of brightness throughout the spacious entryway, but did nothing to brighten his obviously sour mood.
Bass was alone, head down, hands gesturing as though in conversation. People passing by might think he was talking on one of those cordless headset phones, but I knew better. Bass talked to himself often. Indeed, from the look on his face and the movement of his lips I could tell he was muttering. About me, no doubt. Behind him, along a gold-brocade wall, three sets of open double doors framed the busy ballroom beyond, like three giant animated pictures. The guests were seated, chatting in low tones as the wait staff mingled, trays balanced atop gloved fingers. Soup was being cleared away, salads were looming; I was later than I thought.