Tracy Hayes, P.I. and Proud (P.I. Tracy Hayes 2)

by Susanna Shore

  “No woman is doing fine when she’s going through a divorce,” I told Tessa as kindly as I could. She occasionally had trouble understanding human emotions. “You have to pay extra attention to her.”

  “I do?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very good. I’ll do that, then.”

  The nurse and I exchanged amused glances behind Tessa’s back, but I knew Tessa would do exactly as I said.

  Trevor and Jarod were in the waiting room when the nurse wheeled me in. My brother was in a better mood, genuinely concerned for my wellbeing, when he helped me to his car. When we finally got home, after a detour by the bar so Jarod could drive my car back, I was exhausted. My knee had begun to hurt, and after I took the pills Tessa had given me, I pretty much passed out, barely making it to my bed.

  I woke up when the lights came on in my bedroom.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Jackson was standing in the doorway in his jogging gear, arms crossed over his fine chest, glowering at me.

  “You failed to show up on our morning run.”

  I was so sure I was having my recurring nightmare that I pulled the quilt over my head and went back to sleep. Or tried to. The cover was yanked off me, only to instantly return. I wasn’t wearing any clothes to bed. I’d barely managed to remove the torn dress and my makeup the previous night. Putting PJs on had seemed like too much trouble.

  “Sorry,” Jackson said, embarrassed, staring at the ceiling.

  “Nothing you haven’t seen before, I hope.” But I held the quilt to my throat. Then I frowned. “Are you really here or am I having a nightmare?”

  “Gee, thanks. Get up. We still have time to go running before work.”

  “I can’t. I’m wounded.”

  “Wounded?” he asked in disbelief.

  I poked my leg out from under the quilt, showing the patched knee. “Wounded.”

  “What the hell happened?”

  “Um, can I put some clothes on first?”

  “Yes, of course. I’ll go make coffee.” He made a hasty retreat, clearly relieved to be elsewhere.

  I got up and put on the comfiest clothes I could find; the mere thought of pulling tight jeans over the wound made my bones ache with anticipated pain. Then I limped to the kitchen, where Jackson had the coffee ready, and slumped on the chair by the table.

  “How did you get in?”

  Jarod couldn’t have let him in. The door to his room was open and the room empty. He must have left really early, which could only mean yet another cyber emergency at work.

  He looked smug. “You’re not the only one who can pick locks.”

  “Yet you wouldn’t teach me?”

  “You didn’t ask. So what happened?”

  “I tried to be chivalrous and break up a fight.”

  “Right…”

  “Why won’t anyone believe me?” Sighing, vexed, I told him what had happened the previous night. The true story. When I finished he looked pained.

  “If I’d been Trevor, I would’ve let them arrest you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “That was really stupid of you. You could’ve hurt yourself much worse.”

  “I almost did.” I shuddered, remembering the pressure on my throat when Daryl had squeezed the front of my dress. Luckily the material was so flimsy he couldn’t do much damage.

  “It’s good, then, that your personal goon was at hand.” Oh, yeah, that had helped too. “What was he doing there?”

  “He was on a date. Honestly. Nothing to do with me.”

  “Quite a coincidence that he’d be in the same bar,” Jackson said, shooting his cop gaze at me—the one that made me want to confess to every crime I’d ever even contemplated committing.

  “He was there before we came in. Only way he could’ve known about it was if he had this place bugged.” I paused and looked around, instantly paranoid. “Do you think he does?”

  “No. No one wants to spy on you.”

  “Hey!”

  He just smiled, the cop gaze gone. “Do you want a day off?”

  “Nah. But I can’t go chasing after criminals until the stitches come off.”

  “Paperwork it is, then.”

  Really, not as fun as it sounds.

  I was saved by a timely call from Trevor before we left my apartment an hour later. Getting ready to work had been quite an operation and taken longer than normally. Have you ever tried to shower without getting a part of your body wet? Jackson managed to drive home, change into work clothes—and probably even go for a jog in between—and return to give me a lift to work before I was ready to go. I couldn’t drive with my bum knee, and I wasn’t sure I could survive the subway either.

  Maybe I should’ve accepted Tessa’s offer of crutches, but I’d thought they would be overkill. I could only hope the painkillers would start working soon and I’d be able to walk properly.

  Jackson put Trevor’s call on a speaker. “The coroner’s report is here,” Trevor said. “And you won’t believe it. Turns out Sheila Rinaldi was shot.”

  “What?” we exclaimed pretty much simultaneously. But really: what?

  “Coroner found a small caliber bullet in her brain. Her head was so badly smashed we didn’t come to think of any other cause of death.”

  “So what now?”

  “Now we have to find the weapon, won’t we, one we didn’t originally think to look for, so it could be anywhere by now.” He didn’t sound happy about it.

  “Or it’s in the dumpster by the house,” I suggested helpfully.

  “Yeah. Lucky me.”

  I smiled, happy—gleeful—that I wouldn’t have to be the one doing the dumpster diving.

  Jackson asked the one thing I didn’t want to know: “So how did the head get smashed?”

  “The coroner thinks she was dropped from a high place on her head post mortem.”

  I closed my eyes, warding off the image. “High place, like say, the third floor apartment fire escape?”

  “Seems the most logical option, yes. It could even be that the murderer moved the dumpster first so they could drop the body straight into it, but then missed it and left the body where it fell.”

  Whoo boy. I might need to go throw up.

  Jackson wasn’t similarly affected. “What about the time of death?”

  “It’s between 6AM and 9AM, so Larry Williams isn’t out clear yet.”

  “Have you talked to the second girlfriend? Will she vouch for him?”

  “We still haven’t been able to reach her. She’s officially wanted for questioning.”

  “Do you mind if we go look around at her place?”

  “Only if you can come up with a plausible reason to enter her apartment,” Trevor said with a meaningful tone.

  “We’ll do our best.”

  Carol Marr, the second girlfriend, lived in Williamsburg, in a three-story building on a hole-in-the wall retail street. Everything looked fairly ramshackle and close to being demolished. The building adjacent to hers had its windows boarded over, and the empty lot next to that one indicated something had already been razed. Wire-net fencing enclosed the lot, so maybe something new would rise on it eventually.

  Jackson pulled over and we spent a moment staring at the building. The windows of Carol Marr’s apartment were dark and the curtains were open. They had been closed the last time I was here, on Sunday morning.

  “I bet we could take a peek through the window if we could get on that fire escape,” I suggested. I clearly hadn’t learned my lesson.

  “What do you mean we?” Jackson asked dryly. “You can’t climb with that leg. But I can’t get on that fire escape either. That awning over the restaurant window right underneath it blocks the access.”

  “So the door it is?”

  “Yep.”

  For such a ramshackle building, the front door was surprisingly new and sturdy, as if it had been recently replaced because of a break-in—a theory that was instantly refuted by the fact that it wasn’t locked. Or
maybe they’d thought it was cheaper to keep it open than to replace the door after every break-in.

  A small hallway opened from the door and Jackson headed to the back of it instead of up the narrow stairs. My knee was giving me trouble, so I thought to wait for his return, but then he cursed heavily and I had to go take a look at what he’d found.

  He was standing by a heavy metal door he’d opened. “Behold, the alley behind the building.” It was a narrow, dark place, the buildings on three sides closing it in.

  I peeked out. “But it only leads to that fenced-in lot,” I remarked. “Larry wouldn’t have got far if he came out here. And we’d have noticed if he’d tried to climb over the fence.”

  “There has to be a way out so these dumpsters can be emptied.”

  Jackson headed to the empty lot, disappearing around the corner to the right instead of left to the street. He was gone for quite some time, and when he returned he didn’t look happy.

  “You can get to the next street over from here.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning Larry Williams just lost his alibi. We can only vouch that he didn’t come through the front door, but what if he went out through the back?”

  He took out his phone and called Travis. “Your client’s alibi just went up in smoke.”

  “Are you sure?” Travis didn’t sound happy. “Because I’m about to go tell the police he has to be released because the time of death means he couldn’t have made it to Gravesend and back to Williamsburg in time, especially with public transportation.”

  “There’s a back door to the building. He could’ve had a car waiting on the next street over.”

  “Fuck.” Travis didn’t swear often, so he had to be really upset. “What about the woman he was with? Will she confirm the alibi?”

  “We’re on our way to interview her, but it may be she’s not home. The police haven’t been able to find her.”

  “Let me know the instant you do so I can move on with this.” He hung up.

  Jackson gave me a grim look. “I think we’d best find Carol Marr, then.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The building had no elevator, and my knee didn’t thank me that I made it climb to the third floor. The way the stitches tugged with every step, I feared they would tear. At the very least, the wound probably wouldn’t heal nicely and I would have a scar.

  “Maybe you should’ve waited in the car.”

  “I’ve climbed this far. No point in turning back now.”

  The landing had three doors and Carol Marr’s was the one at the end of the small hallway. Jackson knocked on it, loudly. We listened intently, but couldn’t hear anything from the apartment. Instead, the door next to it opened and an old man in long johns and a thermal undershirt peeked out.

  “What do you want?”

  “We’re looking for Miss Marr,” Jackson said politely.

  “She ain’t home. She went to see her mom for a week.”

  “Today?”

  “Nah, Sunday.”

  That was a coincidence.

  “Do you know where her mother lives?” I asked.

  “Do I look like I care?”

  “Then have you perhaps seen this man?” Jackson showed Larry’s photo to him.

  “Who wants to know?”

  “I’m a private detective.”

  “Carol’s a good girl,” the old man said, looking angry. But he took the photo. “Yeah, I know him. Has been hanging around here lately. Bit of a weasel of a guy, if you ask me. Not good enough for her.”

  “Have you seen him here recently?”

  “Was here on Saturday. And Sunday.”

  “Did he spend the night?”

  “How should I know? I go to bed early.” He pulled the door closed and locked it. A moment later the security chain was glided across too.

  “That was useless,” I noted.

  “At least we know he actually came to her apartment on Saturday and didn’t go out through the back right away.”

  “Now what?”

  “Do you smell gas?”

  I gave him a puzzled look. “No.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked with a meaningful look. “Do you smell gas coming from Miss Marr’s apartment?”

  “Ah, yes. I definitely smell gas.”

  “Good.” He pulled on disposable gloves and opened the door with a few nifty moves of a credit card he slipped between the door and the jamb.

  “That was great. Will you teach me that?” I said admiringly as I followed him in, putting on my gloves too.

  “No.”

  “But you were upset that I didn’t ask you to teach me how to pick locks.”

  “That wasn’t the reason.” But he wouldn’t elaborate.

  Carol Marr’s apartment was just a largish room, with a kitchen and a bathroom. It wasn’t in much better repair than the outside, but it was clean and nicely, if sparsely, furnished. It didn’t take us long to go through it, and even a cursory study yielded interesting details.

  “You’d think a woman who’s left for a week would empty the perishables from the fridge,” Jackson noted from the kitchen.

  “You’d also think she’d take a toothbrush with her, let alone other toiletries,” I countered from the bathroom.

  We checked the freestanding wardrobe, and although we wouldn’t know if anything was missing, there weren’t any empty clothes hangers there.

  “Well … fuck,” Jackson said with emphasis. The next moment he was calling Trevor. “You’re not gonna like this.”

  “I’m standing next to a pile of trash emptied from a dumpster. Anything is an improvement.”

  “Carol Marr’s gone missing.”

  My brother was quiet for a heartbeat. “Missing as in left home with no intention of coming back and no forwarding address?”

  “Missing as in left home without taking any personal items with her and not emptying the fridge.”

  “Fuck.” He sighed. “Any signs of violence?”

  “None.”

  “Okay, I’ll send the crime scene investigators there. Don’t go anywhere before the cops come.”

  We went back to the hallway to talk to the old man. He wouldn’t open the door after the first knock, and when he did he kept the chain on.

  “Yes?”

  “You mentioned Miss Marr left for her mother’s for a week. Did she tell this to you herself?”

  “No, her man told me on Sunday morning.”

  “And what about on Saturday? Did you actually see the two of them together?” I asked.

  “I don’t spy on my neighbor.” Jackson produced a ten dollar bill that the man quickly took. “No, he let himself in with his keys.” And he threw the door closed.

  Jackson and I exchanged glances. “What if Carol Marr had disappeared already on Saturday?”

  Jackson looked grim. “That’s excellent thinking. I just followed Larry here, I didn’t actually see them together. So the question is, did he kill Carol too? He could’ve taken her body out through the back and we wouldn’t be any wiser.”

  “But why would he kill her? More importantly, why would he return the next day?”

  “I have absolutely no idea.”

  “I say we go through her drawers again before the cops arrive,” I suggested. “Maybe there’s a clue.”

  “That’s not exactly allowed.”

  “And getting into the apartment on a false pretext is?”

  He grinned. “Who says it was false?” But he waved his arm towards the apartment, showing me to go in first.

  We put our gloves back on and went through the drawers—the few there were. There weren’t many official papers and nothing that would tell us more about her relationship with Larry.

  “What kind of woman doesn’t collect mementoes of her relationship?” I wondered. “A box of memories or a photo album?”

  “To burn them up with the wedding photos afterwards?” Jackson quizzed, and I smiled with the fond memory. It had been a wonderful bonfi
re. But people didn’t print out their photos anymore, so maybe Carol kept hers in her phone or computer. I glanced around, but didn’t see either.

  “At least we know where she works,” he said a moment later, holding a pay stub. “You’ll never guess.”

  But his excited tone suggested only one possibility. “The racetrack?”

  “The racetrack. As a croupier.”

  “But everyone we talked with told us how happy Larry and Sheila were together. Surely they would’ve noticed something.”

  “Maybe this relationship was new. Maybe it was just sex.”

  “That would explain why there are no mementoes. But why did she have to disappear, then? Surely she was needed to testify that Larry was here the whole night.”

  “Maybe she wouldn’t play ball.”

  That sounded plausible. We returned to the landing just before the cops arrived and were politely but firmly told to leave. We detoured by the dumpsters at the back, but there wasn’t a body hidden there. That was a relief.

  “Now what?”

  “Now we return to the racetrack.”

  Ms. Hunter was not happy to see us back. “I thought you questioned everyone yesterday?” She was dressed in a wine-red sheath dress and looked stunning.

  “This is another line of inquiry, I’m afraid. We’re here to talk about Carol Marr, one of your croupiers.”

  She cocked a brow. “Former croupier you mean.”

  “Really? We weren’t aware she doesn’t work here anymore.”

  “She was fired about a week ago. Last Wednesday, if I recall. There were some discrepancies with her blackjack table. There was a client who seemed to win more often than she should have.”

  “And what happened to the client?”

  “She was barred, of course.”

  Jackson nodded. “Could we get her details, please?”

  “I really shouldn’t reveal that information.”

  “If you could make an exception? This is a murder investigation, after all. I would hate to involve judges and warrants into this.” Jackson said everything with a pleasant smile, but Ms. Hunter understood the threat just fine. She frowned and picked up her phone.