“She must have been going through her wardrobe,” Bernie said as she stepped over a pile of shoes on the pale blue rug. “Deciding what to toss and what to keep.”
Libby lifted a Victoria’s Secret catalog from the nightstand and put it down. “Too bad she didn’t get a chance to wear what she ordered,” she said, gesturing to a black lace bra and a pair of black lace panties that were spread out on top of the pillow. The price tags were still on them.
“Yes, it is,” Bernie said as she looked out the window. It was getting dark outside. It was time to finish up and get out of the house.
As they walked down the stairs, the sisters decided that Bernie would take the basement and the garage while Libby would go through the rest of the first floor. Once they got downstairs, Libby turned her attention to the dining and living rooms. She expected it would take her ten minutes at the most.
The two rooms were furnished in mid-twentieth-century knockoffs. The sofa and the chairs were low and square with a slim profile, while all the wood in the living room and the dining room was teak. The pictures on the wall were framed posters from the works of Degas and Renoir, while the inexpensive rugs on the floor were blue and aqua tweed.
A large television hung on the wall opposite the sofa, while two art books sat on the coffee table. The whole effect was cheerful, but oddly impersonal, like a hotel room or an upscale doctor’s office, Libby thought. She was just about to tell Bernie she was done, when Bernie called Libby on her cell.
“Get down here,” Bernie told her. “You won’t believe what I’ve found.”
“A giraffe?”
“Nope. You have to see it to believe it.”
Chapter 37
“What am I looking at?” Libby asked Bernie after she’d walked through the basement door that led to the garage.
Bernie didn’t say anything. She just pointed.
For a moment, Libby couldn’t speak. She was too stunned. “Oh my God,” she cried after she got her voice back. “Is this what I think it is?”
“I’m pretty sure it is,” Bernie answered as Libby walked down the two steps and squeezed by a row of metal shelves filled with cartons.
“Good parking job,” Libby commented about the SUV as she walked to the front of the vehicle. The space between the vehicle and the wall was so tight she had had to flatten herself out to get through.
When she got to the front she studied the black SUV’s license plate. The first two letters on it matched the ones she had captured on Bernie’s phone. This was the SUV she and Bernie had chased, the one whose driver had put the note and the tracking device on Mathilda, the one they’d almost died trying to catch. Okay. Slight exaggeration.
“No wonder we couldn’t find the SUV in the factory parking lot,” Libby noted. “It’s probably been here all the time. But what the hell is it doing in here?”
“Hiding, I’d say.”
“Well, whoever put it here, picked an excellent spot,” Libby observed as she watched Bernie try the door handle on the driver’s side. The door opened.
“Let’s take a look, shall we,” Bernie said as she plopped herself down in the seat, leaned over, opened the glove compartment, and began taking stuff out of it. She took out a jumble of candy wrappers, a pack of tissues, a bottle of Advil, and a small prescription pill bottle full of oxycodone. Bernie read the label on the bottle. It read: VICKY SINCLAIR. FOR BACK PAIN. TAKE NO MORE THAN TWO AT A TIME TWICE A DAY. “Interesting,” Bernie said, showing the bottle to Libby.
“You think this is her vehicle?” Libby asked.
“Well, I don’t think it’s Harry Potter’s,” Bernie said, going back to digging through the SUV’s glove compartment. Out came more candy wrappers, a couple of pens, the owner’s manual, and finally the thing she’d been looking for: the insurance card.
Bernie glanced at it and handed the card to Libby. Libby read it and handed the card back to Bernie.
“I’d say this proves it,” Bernie commented.
“So, what’s Vicky Sinclair’s SUV doing in Peggy Graceson’s garage? Why isn’t it in her garage?” Libby wondered out loud.
“Because that would be the first place someone would look,” Bernie guessed as she put everything back in the glove compartment and closed the door. “Which means Vicky Sinclair had a key to this house. Or,” Bernie added, “she knew where to find it. Obviously, the location of Peggy Graceson’s house key was not a closely guarded secret. Probably everyone knew.”
“And the code to the garage door opener?” Libby asked. “Does everyone know that as well?”
“Why not? And if Vicky Sinclair didn’t she could have come in through the house and opened the garage door from the inside,” Bernie replied as she went through the rest of the SUV, but there was nothing in it aside from a couple of empty cans of Pepsi and a half-eaten bag of potato chips, the fancy kind made out of beets and sweet potatoes. Bernie reached in, took a handful of chips, and ate them.
“Bernie,” Libby cried, horrified.
“What?”
“How can you eat those?” Libby protested.
“Easy,” Bernie answered. “I’m hungry.”
“The bag is open. You don’t know where they’ve been or how long they’ve been sitting in the SUV.”
“And I don’t care,” Bernie told her as she ate another handful. “I’m hungry.” She held the bag up. “Now if we were the police, and could get DNA and/or fingerprints off of this, that would be a different story.”
“But we’re not,” Libby said as she walked over to the blue Honda Civic that was parked next to the SUV. “And I don’t think that Clyde would be able to get that information for us.”
“No, he won’t,” Bernie agreed as she got out of the SUV and joined her sister by the Civic. “And I wouldn’t ask him to.” It was one thing to get her dad’s friend to run a license plate through the DMV database and quite another thing to have him submit something to the police crime lab under false pretenses.
Libby tried the Civic door. It too opened and she got in. “I’m guessing this is Peggy’s vehicle,” she said, looking around.
Unlike Peggy Graceson’s house, the vehicle had that lived-in look. The front seat was festooned with a couple of empty fast-food bags from McDonald’s, two empty coffee cups, a bunch of wadded-up Kleenex, a bag of cough drops, as well as a stack of local newspapers, a couple of romance novels, a pair of sheepskin gloves, a wool scarf, and a bottle of eye drops.
“It looks as if Peggy lived in her car instead of her house,” Libby observed as she pushed the newspapers aside and came up with a pair of binoculars; a small spiral notebook, the kind you buy in a drugstore; and a birding book. “Go figure,” Libby announced, showing the birding book to Bernie. “I never would have taken her for a bird-watcher.”
“And I never would have thought she’d be running off to Australia. Or getting murdered,” Bernie said as she took the binoculars out of her sister’s hands and examined them. “These are really high quality, Libby. I think they cost a little over two thousand dollars,” Bernie noted as she handed the binoculars back to her sister.
“How do you know that?”
“Brandon won a pair like it in a poker game last year. Can I see the notebook?” Bernie said, reaching her hand out for it. Libby handed it to her and Bernie leaned against the garage wall and began to page through it.
“There’s nothing in here except bird-spotting notations,” she noted while Libby opened the Civic’s glove compartment.
Unlike the inside of the vehicle, the inside of the glove compartment was pristine. There were a couple of pens, a pair of nonprescription sunglasses, a cloth for cleaning them, the driver’s manual, an insurance card, and a small manila envelope. Libby took the envelope out and showed it to Bernie.
“I wonder what’s in this?” she said.
Bernie was just about to tell Libby to open it and find out when she heard a noise. “Do you hear that?” she asked.
Libby shook her head. She didn�
�t, but a moment later she heard what her sister had. People talking. The voices were coming from the street. “That’s Linda Sinclair,” Libby said, identifying the person speaking.
“I guess we overstayed our welcome,” Bernie observed.
“Ya think?” Libby shot back.
“They’re here somewhere, Rick,” Linda was saying to her son. “They have to be. Their car is here.”
“I told you parking the van in Linda’s driveway wasn’t a good idea,” Libby hissed.
“Let’s leave the recriminations until we get out of here,” Bernie said to her sister.
“If we get out of here,” Libby said as she got out of the Civic and carefully closed its door so as not to attract any attention.
“No problem. We’ll go out through the window in the basement.”
“Does it open?” Libby asked.
“Of course it opens,” Bernie told her. “All windows open.”
Libby was about to say not necessarily when the back of Linda Sinclair’s head and those of her son and daughter popped up in front of the garage door window. Bernie ducked down. So did Libby. They both held their breath.
“Where are they?” Bernie and Libby heard Rachel ask her mom.
“Heaven only knows,” Linda Sinclair replied.
“Why the hell couldn’t Ada leave things alone?” Rick complained.
“Your sister has problems,” Linda Sinclair answered, her voice sharp.
“But, Mom, she was doing okay or as okay as she ever does,” Rachel said. “What set her off?”
Linda Sinclair shook her head. “Your guess is as good as mine.” Then she turned and walked out of Bernie and Libby’s line of sight. A moment later, Rick and Rachel followed her lead.
“Now what?” Libby whispered to Bernie after another minute had gone by and she was sure Linda Sinclair and her children weren’t coming back.
“We try that window,” Bernie said as she headed toward the door that led into the basement. She had her hand on the doorknob when she heard a sound coming from inside the house, one that a door opening and closing would make. “Or maybe not,” she muttered.
“They’re in the house,” Libby said. She could hear muffled voices.
“It’s time for Plan B,” Bernie said.
“What’s Plan B?” Libby asked.
Her sister gestured toward the garage door.
“But they’ll see us coming out,” Libby objected.
“Not if we’re fast,” Bernie told her. Then she turned and headed for it. When she got there, she looked up searching for the red handle that would allow her to manually open the door. It was attached to a rope that was hanging above her head. It was high and she had to stand on her tiptoes to reach it.
“Here goes nothing,” Bernie declared, grasping the red handle with both hands and pulling. Nothing happened. She tried again. Still nothing.
“Why isn’t it working?” Libby demanded.
“It will,” Bernie asserted, and she wiped her hands on her parka jacket, took a deep breath, grabbed the handle, straightened her arms, and using her abs pulled down with all her might.
“Yes,” Bernie said as the door went up three inches. And groaned. Loudly.
“What is that noise?” Libby asked.
“The mechanism needs oil,” Bernie explained as she got ready to try again.
“They’ll hear us,” Libby said, referring to Linda Sinclair and her children. “Everyone on the block will hear it.”
“Hopefully not, but as they say, in for a penny, in for a pound.”
“Where do you get these sayings from?”
“Mom. She used to say that all the time.”
“I don’t remember that,” Libby replied.
“Trust me, she did,” Bernie replied as she took a deep breath and pulled down on the rope again. The door made another groaning noise and rose six inches. Bernie assessed the space. It was going to be a tight fit, but it would have to do. She didn’t want to risk making any more noise. “Come on,” she gestured to Libby, who was standing right next to her. “You first.”
“Why do I have to go first?”
“Because I got the door opened.”
Libby was about to say something but decided this wasn’t the time for arguing. Instead, she looked at the space between the door and the floor and wished she was twenty pounds lighter. “I don’t think I’ll fit.”
“You’ll fit,” Bernie assured her. “Just think thin thoughts.”
“All I can say is I’m glad I don’t have big boobs,” Libby noted as she got down on the floor, lay on her back, and sucked in her stomach. Then she put the manila envelope she’d grabbed out of Peggy’s car over her chest as an additional layer of protection. “Here goes nothing,” she grumbled as she began to wiggle through. She had to turn her face to the side so the bottom of the garage door wouldn’t hit her nose.
Bernie went after her. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Bernie said as she sprang up and pushed the garage door closed.
“That depends how you define bad,” Libby said, examining the mark on the manila envelope. At least her parka wasn’t ripped.
Bernie didn’t reply. She was busy brushing the snow off the back of her jacket and jeans when Libby coughed and pointed. Bernie turned. Damn, she thought as she saw Linda Sinclair and her two children standing there. All of them had their arms folded across their chests and unpleasant expressions on their faces.
“So, what exactly is it that you two are doing?” Linda Sinclair asked.
Bernie smiled her most ingratiating smile. “Would you believe, looking for one of our pans?”
“No, I would not,” Linda Sinclair snapped. “And neither will the police.”
Chapter 38
Bernie forced a laugh. “I was kidding. Actually, my sister and I were looking at the vehicles in Peggy Graceson’s garage. My dad needs a new car and we figured maybe we could get a good deal on Peggy’s Civic, but then we saw the SUV and we decided that that might be a better bet. Did Peggy own that, too?”
“No. That’s Vicky’s,” Linda replied.
“Great,” Bernie said. “You probably don’t know if she wants to sell it or not. I guess we should call.” She started to walk away. “Thank you for your help. We’ll be in touch.”
“Not so fast,” Linda said, putting out an arm to block Bernie from getting to Mathilda. She pointed to the manila envelope Libby was holding. “Where did you get that from?”
“Oh, this old thing,” Libby said, looking down. “It’s nothing.”
“Then why does it have Sinclair Enterprises stamped on the left-hand corner?” Ada’s sister, Rachel, asked. Both she and Rick were dressed in office casual. It looked as if they’d both come home from work.
Libby couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed the stamp before.
“They’re recipes Peggy Graceson sent us,” Libby blurted. She knew it was a bad answer, but her brain had gone numb and this was the best she could come up with.
Linda Sinclair tsk-tsked. “You do know that Peggy didn’t cook, right?”
“That’s what makes them so unique,” Bernie piped up.
Linda Sinclair narrowed her eyes and turned toward her son. “Rick, call the police and tell them we caught someone breaking into our neighbor’s house.”
“Let’s not be hasty,” Bernie said.
“And why shouldn’t we be?” Rachel demanded. “You’ve been nothing but trouble since the day—”
“Evening,” Bernie corrected.
Rachel glared at her. “Whatever—you came into my house.”
“For one thing,” Bernie said, “we didn’t break into Peggy Graceson’s house; we used the house key.”
“Peggy told us where it was,” Libby added.
“Tell that to the police,” Linda Sinclair said. “Though, frankly, I don’t think they’re going to care.”
“Fine,” Bernie said, “I admit we may have overstepped a bit.”
“You think?” Rick said.
/> “Okay. We did,” Bernie allowed. “But don’t you want to hear why?”
Rachel sniffed, read a text on her cell phone, and looked back up. “Not really,” she said and yawned, already bored with the conversation.
“I think you should listen. We’re very close to finding Peggy Graceson’s killer,” Bernie lied, “and we were hoping to find some evidence in the house to corroborate our theory.” She looked Linda Sinclair in the eye while she went for broke. “Do you really want to see your daughter go to jail for a murder she didn’t commit?” Bernie asked softly. “Because I don’t think you do.”
Linda Sinclair’s face collapsed. “You’re right. I don’t,” she admitted.
“And at this point, we’re the only chance she’s got,” Libby said.
“That’s a frightening thought, but you may be right,” Linda allowed.
“Mom,” Rick whined.
Linda shushed him with a look and invited Bernie and Libby inside.
* * *
Ten minutes later Rick and Rachel had gone off to meet their friends and Bernie and Libby were sitting in Linda Sinclair’s kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil.
“I swear this family is cursed,” Linda Sinclair confided as she got out the tea canister, a canister that Libby was gratified to learn contained oolong tea.
Bernie didn’t reply. She was too busy studying the contents of the manila envelope, now spread out on the kitchen table. Among other things, the envelope had contained Peggy Graceson’s passport and eight thousand dollars in one hundred–dollar bills.
Bernie reached over, picked up the passport, and opened it. “Peggy just got this,” Bernie said, noting the issuing date as she looked at Peggy Graceson’s picture. She looked happy, Bernie decided. As if she was heading off on an adventure. Because she was. Then Bernie took out the piece of paper lodged between the last page and the back cover and unfolded it and smoothed it out with the edge of her hand. It was an itinerary.
A Catered New Year's Eve Page 24