by Tina Whittle
“Cricket?”
She sighed and stared sheepishly at the trash bag. “I guess this needs explaining.”
“I guess so.”
“Can I come in and do it?”
I stepped back and opened the door. “Absolutely.”
***
She entered hesitantly, standing under the fluorescents, clutching her trash bag with both hands. I went to Dexter’s office and dragged the desk chair into the main area. She sat, knees together, clutching the bag in her lap.
“Can I get you some water? Coffee?”
“No. I’m good.”
She started crying then, so I grabbed a box of tissues. She yanked up a handful as the tears streaked her mascara. While she dabbed her eyes and blew her nose, I retrieved the gun from the file cabinet and put it back under the counter. She watched.
“Is that yours?”
I nodded. “Smith and Wesson .38.”
“You carry it around a lot?”
“Mostly it stays under the counter. But I got spooked when I heard the crash.”
“Can I hold it?”
“Sure.”
I emptied the chamber and handed it to her. She held it in her hands like it was nitroglycerin, delicate and dangerous. That was a normal reaction. So was curiosity. Fascination, however, that shiny intense high like the first hit of a drug…that sent off warning bells. Some people poured all their crazy into whatever they touched, and a gun sopped up crazy like a sponge.
Cricket was looking at mine with a determined squeamishness. Eventually she handed it back to me, and I took it back to its hiding spot under the counter. When I got back, she was staring at her hands, at the tissue she’d shredded to fluff.
“So what’s in the trash bag?”
“Stuff that belonged to Lex. I found it under the sofa where he’d been sleeping. Mostly dirty clothes. I thought of throwing it out, but I decided to bring it to you instead.”
“Why?”
“Because of this.”
She pulled something out of the bag and handed it to me. It was a lacquered jewelry box, about the size of a shoe box, jet black and shiny. There was no keyhole, only a stainless steel latch that looked like a stylized Japanese Kanji character. I shook it gently and heard the dry rustle of papers, the rattle of small hard objects.
Cricket watched me. “Rico said your uncle was a locksmith.”
“You can’t find the key?”
“I don’t think there is one.”
I examined the latch. No keyhole. I fiddled with the silvery piece of metal, but it remained closed. I held the box up and studied the finish. Smooth and dark and impenetrable. Even if I’d known how to use Dexter’s tools, they would have been useless in this case.
“It’s a trick box. You have to know the secret to get into it.”
“What’s the secret?”
“Beats me. Every box has its own secret.” I let it rest in my lap. “Lex had something on you, didn’t he?”
She nodded.
“And you think maybe he kept his blackmail materials in this box?”
She nodded again.
I scooted my chair closer. “Tell me the truth, Cricket. Were you and Lex having an affair?”
Her mouth opened in a startled O, and her eyes widened. “What? God, no! He was…” She shuddered. “Omigod, no!”
“Then what the hell was going on between you? Because I know something was. And I know it’s got Rico in white knight mode and Jackson in an overprotective tizzy—”
“And you know what that means, right? He must be on steroids again.”
She said it with snap in her eyes, and I realized then that the waterworks were a piece of stagecraft, as calculated as Lex’s Gothwear and Vigil’s community service. Cricket’s sugar-sprinkled sweetness disguised one tough cookie.
I shrugged. “I’d heard rumors.”
“Everybody has. And they were true back then, but not anymore. He’s been clean since the day we met. He brings me the test results to prove it. He doesn’t have to do that, because I trust him, but he does it anyway.”
“I’m really glad you trust Jackson and he trusts you, but I can’t trust either of you until you tell me what you’re hiding.”
She hesitated. Then, as I watched, she untucked a silver pendant from under her blouse. It was very small, dainty, a five-pointed star surrounded by a circle. I wasn’t really up on alternative religions, but even so, I knew what it was.
A pentacle.
Cricket rubbed it between her fingers. “I don’t tell people I’m Wiccan. Only a few people know—Jackson, my close friends, the team. Lex threatened to tell the principal at my school if I didn’t vote to keep him instead of Vigil. He said he had proof.”
The same speech he’d tossed Rico about the missing money. “Did he?”
“I don’t know. Lex was good at manipulation. Like that ankh he had on at the debut party. I explained to him that it had real sacred meaning, but he didn’t care. He only wore it to piss me off.”
I remembered Jackson’s argument with Lex, right before he threw him into the hallway. And then you show up here wearing that!
“Jackson got pissed about the ankh too, didn’t he?”
“He did, especially when Lex kept saying I’d have a hard time explaining if it showed up in my desk at school.”
“But they can’t fire you for your religion!”
“Of course they couldn’t say that was why they fired me, but that’s what would happen. My job’s not much, but until Lupa gets off the ground, it’s all we have. And if word got out…you know how it is in the Bible Belt.”
She had a point, unfortunately. “So the night Lex was killed—”
“Lex sent me a text while I was at the bar, wanting to meet in the parking lot. That’s when he explained what he would do if I didn’t vote to keep him on the team instead of Vigil.”
“What did you do?”
“I told him he’d better be glad I took that ‘harm none’ part of my faith seriously and went back inside.”
Something was tapping in my brain. I itched to drag down my flow charts and diagrams. Rico had been in that parking lot too, and yet he hadn’t mentioned seeing Cricket. Another part of the story that didn’t mesh, not yet.
“And so you want to see what’s in the box, to see what kind of proof he might have had?”
“Yes.”
We stared at the box between us. Cricket chewed her thumbnail.
“Cricket? How bad do you want to get into this?”
“Pretty bad.”
I did too. My fingers practically itched.
I looked her in the eye. “I can get us in.”
“Okay.”
“But it won’t be pretty.”
“Okay.” She straightened her spine. “Whatever it takes.”
I handed it back to her. “Hold on. I’ll go get the pry bar.”
***
In five minutes, we had it open.
The latch would never work properly again, and I’d scratched the finish, but at the moment, I didn’t care. Item by item, we unloaded the box. And item by item, Lex himself gradually materialized.
There was the usual detritus—a watch, some spare change, a MARTA pass—but mostly I saw paper. Receipts, scribbled sticky notes, torn envelopes, the kind of trash that ends up on the floorboards of cars. No photographs, no incriminating documents. No tiny computer, no phone, no portable drive, no recording devices.
I picked up a Chinese takeout menu. The entire margin was a scribble of words. Snatches of verse. An embryonic poem. And it was then, with his words tangible between my fingers, that Lex finally became real, a person who had existed and who’d been violently erased. The sudden punch in the heart took me by surprise.
I picked up a sticky note. Words tangled with words, crossed out and looping back on themselves. A poet’s inheritance, scraps and words. Cricket examined the box’s contents. She looked puzzled and disappointed.
“That’s it?”
“Looks like.”
“So there’s nothing in there he could have used against me?”
“Not that I can see.”
“Well. That’s a relief, I guess.”
She stood. The woman could work sweetness, that was for sure. I’d watched her do it on stage, easing her way through the rawest lyrics, rimming them with sugar. All poets had their favorite tools of manipulation. Cricket used a honey tongue and blue-eyed innocence.
“So you’re…” I waited for her to fill in the blank.
She obliged me. “A witch.”
“And Rico knows?”
“The whole team knows, not just Rico. But Rico’s been keeping his mouth shut especially hard.” She moved toward the door, stepping over the trash bag as she did.
“Wait, you forgot his stuff.”
“Keep it in case any next-of-kin show up. There might be someone in the world who misses that son of a bitch.”
I went with her to the back and held the door. “One more thing. This may sound weird, but…did Lex have a snake?”
“A snake?”
“You know, like a pet.”
“No, no snakes. Not that I saw anyway.”
She left quickly, with no further questions or commentary. When I got back in the shop, I pulled the box out one more time. In the harsh afternoon light, it looked bedraggled, its broken latch like a wound. The black lacquer didn’t shine as brightly anymore, and its lack of ornamentation suddenly seemed cheap, not sophisticated. In short, it broke my heart. No matter what trouble Lex had caused, he didn’t deserve to die the way he had. He deserved justice.
I opened it and sifted through the artifacts of his life. The receipts were random and varied—small towns up and down I-75 , the typical debris of a traveler. No credit card numbers, no names, just dates and locations, all of them over a year old. Only one thing wasn’t a repurposed scrap, a folded piece of notebook paper. I opened it gingerly and read a poem so startling in its tenderness that I had to blink back tears.
Justice. Yes. Regardless.
I refolded the poem carefully and tucked it back in the box. I noticed the last receipt then, not crinkled with age, but crisp and relatively new. It was also the only scrap of paper not covered in words. I examined it closer.
This was no roadtrip detritus—it was from one of Atlanta’s car storage places, one of those climate-controlled facilities where automobile fanciers parked their classic Corvettes. And it was recent.
But Garrity had told me that Lex supposedly drove a beat-up Chevy Suburban that no one had been able to find. That wasn’t the kind of car one preserved in air-conditioned comfort. Nonetheless, the receipt showed a check-in Thursday morning.
I immediately called Cummings, but got his inbox. I left a quick message to call me ASAP. Then I closed Lex’s box and tucked it amongst my accumulated research, an entire paper box full of incomplete circle graphs, unstapled articles, and empty folders. I knew a coffee shop with big tables and free wi-fi and a wait staff who didn’t mind if I spent a couple of hours sifting through reams of paper.
But first…I had quick trip to Atlanta Custom Auto Care to make.
Chapter Twenty-six
I found the storage facility with no problem—it was located right off I-285, a bright set of interconnected buildings surrounded by thick woods. This was a common sight in Atlanta. Little forests dotted the city, sometimes with a single skyscraper jutting from the middle, verdant green mingled with steel.
But that was the end of my success. One look at the facility’s website told me I wouldn’t be doing any surreptitious snooping. Each unit had an individual door alarm, plus there were multiple video surveillance cameras. You needed either an entry code to get through the gate, or a ladder to get over the eight-foot-tall barbed-wire security fence. I had neither.
I’d given up and was returning to my car when I heard footsteps coming from the woods. The voice that came with them was rough. “You looking for something?”
A disheveled man rounded the corner. He wore a dirty checkered camp shirt and khaki shorts. Flips flops too, thick ones that looked like tire rubber.
“Maybe. Are you the manager?”
He laughed. Deep in the woods behind him, I saw a camouflage pup tent.
He followed my gaze. “It’s better than those places in the city. They’ll rob you blind there.”
“I can imagine.” I took out my photograph of Lex. “Any chance you’ve seen this guy?”
“That guy, sure. He’s hard to miss. But I haven’t seen him in a while. The woman, however, that’s a different story.”
“What woman?”
He smiled. “I’ll tell you for something to eat. It’s tough remembering things on an empty stomach.”
“What do you want?”
“Krispy Kremes. A dozen.”
“I’ve got an orange in my car.”
He shook his head. “Krispy Kremes. Fresh ones, mind you.”
***
So I drove back into town, got a dozen glazed to go, hot and still semi-solid from their dip in the oil. One whiff, and I made it a dozen and two and added a coffee. Then I made it two coffees to show my gratitude, throwing a handful of napkins in as well. I figured homeless guys could always use napkins.
When I got back to the facility, the guy was sitting beside his tent. He ate two doughnuts in about thirty seconds.
“So this woman?” I prompted.
“Chopped-up brown hair, thick glasses, weird scarf,” he said around a mouthful of doughnut. “Kinda wishy-washy, not like you. You’re a hoss.”
He grinned. This was obviously a compliment.
“Was her name Debbie?”
“Didn’t get a name. She was in a hurry, got out of a taxi and drove this van right out. Manager made her. He said she wasn’t allowed to have live animals in there.”
“Animals like in snakes?”
He shrugged. “Never saw no snake, just heard them arguing about it.”
“When was this?”
“Last night. That guy brought the car in Thursday of last week. The woman came and got it today.”
“When today?”
“Couple of hours ago. She told somebody on the phone that she had a place and told them to meet her there.”
“Did you catch a name?”
“Yeah, strange name. Starts with P.”
“Padre?”
The man made a noise. “Not that strange. More like Perry.”
That didn’t ring a bell. “Did she say where they were meeting?”
“Some gallery.”
Oh boy, was this starting to make sense—the storage space was air-conditioned, a perfect place to keep an animal away from prying eyes. But why would you need to hide an animal, even a snake? I didn’t know that yet, but I had an idea where to start finding the answer.
“Here,” I said, “have a coffee. You’ve earned it.”
He made a face. “Coffee? You’re kidding, right? It’s hotter than the devil’s armpit out here.”
***
When I got to Frankie’s gallery, the CLOSED sign was up and the lights out. I parked and walked around back. The pavement reeked heat, and the sun was so bright I had to shield my eyes, even with sunglasses on. And then I saw it—a navy blue Suburban, blatantly sitting there like the plum in the pudding, doors wide open.
I looked around. The parking area was deserted, the silence broken only by the hum of air conditioners. I pulled the least sticky napkin I could find out of my bag, grabbed the back door handle, and hoisted myself up.
Inside, a rattletrap collection of knickknacks greeted me—coffee mugs, cross stitch samplers, a tin of silverware. I saw a shopping bag full of jewelry boxes too—long skinny boxes for necklaces, square ones for brooches and bracelets, ring boxes. The sundries weren’t all peachy-pink innocent, however. A pair of handcuffs dangled from a hook, along with a red satin blindfold tufted with feathers.
Omigod, I thought, it’s an S&M yard sale.
I kept taking pictures, searching for anything that might store data, but coming up short. And then I saw what looked like a casket covered with a tarp. I took a deep breath and smelled cedar shavings. I lifted the tarp with two fingers and peeked underneath.
It concealed a rodent hutch, complete with water dispenser and pellet-filled food bowl. But no rodents—no rabbits, no guinea pigs, no chinchillas. I’d barely framed it in my viewfinder when a voice interrupted me.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
I spun around. Debbie stood at the door, grimy and disheveled, red-faced and sweaty. Splotches of dirt spotted her mini-dress and cowboy boots. She wore a different scarf this time, purple with fuzzy pom-poms, but it was as dirty as the rest of her.
She squinted at me. “I know you.”
I jumped down. “I know you too. But this is my first introduction to Lex’s SUV.”
“Get off my property!”
“It’s not your property, it’s Frankie’s, but since you still have Mom and Dad to answer to, I suppose it’s your only option for hiding this here vehicle.”
She snatched out her phone. “I’m calling the cops!”
“You don’t really want to do that, do you? I mean, there’s a dead man’s missing car sitting right here.”
“Lex left it to me. Nothing illegal about that.”
“There is if the cops don’t know about it.”
She slammed the door. “So? I’ll point out how this here vehicle has your fingerprints all over it!”
“It does not!”
She waved at the napkin in my hand. “You think that little shred of paper is foolproof? You think maybe your hair and skin and spit all stayed put while you were in there?”
“That’s not spit, it’s glaze!”
She glared. I glared. She didn’t want me to call the cops. I didn’t want her to call them either, since I didn’t want to explain why my fingerprints and DNA and doughnut glaze were maybe all over the inside of a dead man’s car.