“Going to call Rodney?”
I nodded, my gaze sweeping over the apartment in search of a phone, which Melissa evidently didn’t have.
“I think a cell phone is wasted on you.” She fished her own cell from her purse and handed it to me.
“I don’t know his number,” I said, taking it.
Brooke took the phone back and returned it to her purse.
Chapter 14
I called Rodney Burns when I got back to my office. When I had identified myself, he said, “I haven’t got anything yet.”
“I got a look at one of Melissa’s old medicine bottles, which may tell us where she came from.”
He waited.
“Arlington, Virginia,” I said.
There was a pause. Maybe he was writing it down. “That may help,” he said finally. “I know someone up there I can call.” Another pause. “I’ll let you know if I find anything.”
I had a letter-brief to write for a case in circuit court. The phone rang as I was proofreading it for the third time. I sent the document to the printer as I picked up the phone.
“Robin Starling.”
“Robin, it’s Brooke.”
I turned in my chair to look at the clock on my desk. It was nearly five. “Hey, Brooke.”
“I’ve got Derek’s files set up on my computer. If you can bring home a ream of letterhead, we can print out letters to let all the debtors know to keep sending their money.”
“Whose letterhead? Mine or Derek’s?”
“Well, Derek is dead. I was thinking you could introduce yourself as attorney for the estate...”
“Got it,” I said.
“Have you ever thought that the murderer could be somebody who owes Derek money? It gives us 58 more potential suspects.”
“Just what we need.”
“The debtor comes in to make a payment or to plead for more time, then shoots Derek and takes his note from the drawer. Bingo, the debt’s erased.”
“But not from the Peachtree file,” I said.
“Probably not from the Peachtree file.”
“So what you’re looking for is a computer record of an outstanding note that doesn’t have a corresponding paper copy in those files we took. It’s an idea. Could you check it out for me?”
“I’m working on it,” she said.
After I hung up, I got a phone book out of the drawer. If I could locate Mark Walker, it would be a good afternoon’s work.
But I didn’t, and it wasn’t. I left the office about 5:00 so I could stop by the Y on my way home. Women crowded the locker room getting ready for an aerobics class, but the basketball gym was empty. I dribbled the ball and shot baskets for a while, waiting for enough people to show up for a pickup game, but no one came.
Eventually, I stood at the free throw line, counting baskets to see how many consecutive shots I could make. It was how I always ended practice when nobody showed up. Sometimes I missed a shot after only half-a-dozen or so, but I often broke twenty, and today I found myself settling into a zone where everything functioned automatically. Shot after shot fell through the hoop without doing more than graze the rim. Rather than have to run down the ball, I stepped forward to recover it, then stepped back to shoot again.
My fiftieth basket got my attention, and I started thinking about what I was doing, a little on my fifty-first shot, a little more on my fifty-second. I missed on basket fifty-six and had to chase down the ball.
There was a guy standing just inside the door watching me. He was good-looking, maybe three or four years younger than I was, but the white T-shirt and white gym shorts that looked like underwear didn’t do much for him.
“How many was that?” he asked me.
“Fifty-five.”
“In a row? You always do that?”
“Never. I think I once hit forty-nine out of fifty when I was in college.”
He nodded. “Cool.”
I tossed him the ball and headed down to the locker room to get my clothes. My performance at the free throw line had redeemed what had been a tough day. For nearly thirty minutes, I had not thought about Larsen or my father or the Nolan case. I had not even been aware that such people existed. It was for such moments that I had always devoted so much time to athletics.
Brooke hadn’t turned up a missing note by the time I got home. She was sitting at one of the computers in the bedroom we used as an office.
“I didn’t accomplish anything either,” I told her. “There’s no Mark Walker in the phonebook, and he doesn’t seem to be related to any of the Walkers that are.”
“Maybe he doesn’t have a phone.”
“At least no land line. And if he has a cell, I couldn’t find it on the Internet.” I headed back to my bedroom to hang up my dress and put my shoes in the closet. I did a little stretching, then stepped into the bathroom for a long, hot shower.
I glanced at the clock when I got out. It was still early, but I figured I was in for the night. I pulled on the big T-shirt I slept in over a fresh pair of panties, then went to the kitchen to rustle up some dinner.
Brooke came in and took one of the stools at the counter. “I found three possibilities,” she said.
“That was quick.” I got out the open bottle of wine in the refrigerator. Brooke nodded when I held it up, so I slipped two glasses off the rack beneath one of the cabinets and set them on the counter.
“One still owes fifteen thousand dollars, one still owes nine, and one owes fifty,” she said.
I nodded as I poured. If I had gone in and shot Derek Nolan because I owed him too much money, I wouldn’t take just my own note. That would focus attention on me. I’d want to take several.
“Are the three files together in the alphabet?” I asked.
“B, D, and R,” Brooke said.
I put the cork back in the bottle and took a sip of my wine. “Were the B and D together in the drawer?” Mr. R, I thought, might have done the shooting, then grabbed a couple more files from the front of the drawer to cover himself.
“Six in between,” Brooke said.
Mr. R still could have taken them, I thought. I got the salad bag and a leftover piece of steak and some raspberry vinaigrette from the refrigerator. “You want some?” I asked her.
She nodded. “Please.”
“There was only one bullet in Derek Nolan,” I said, voicing my theory. “But one person could have taken the other two files to spread suspicion.”
“Or two people came in right behind the murderer, one after the other. When they saw Nolan dead, each got his file and left.”
“Or somebody else entirely did the killing and took all three files to divert suspicion,” I said.
“Somebody else with a motive unrelated to Derek’s loan-shark business.”
We kept coming back to my clients. I made a face as I chopped up the steak and put it on the salad. Brooke sat watching me as I sprinkled on the vinaigrette.
“There’s another possible explanation for the missing files,” she said at last. “One that has nothing to do with the murder.”
I divided up the salad and pushed Brooke’s plate over to her.
“Maybe Liz Lockard’s Peachtree file wasn’t up to date,” she said as she speared a piece of meat with her fork. “Derek Nolan was a high-interest-rate lender. Maybe three people came up with lower-cost sources of funds and came in to pay him off. He marked the notes paid, returned them to the debtors, and moved the files from his active drawer to the inactive file cabinet.”
“And the reason Liz didn’t make the changes in her computer…”
“Is because she was out and he didn’t tell her.”
I nodded and ate some salad. “Or he told her, but she’s lazy and never got around to it,” I said.
“Or she’s lazy,” Brooke conceded.
“In either case, the files would be in the lateral file cabinet.”
Brooke nodded. “I’ve got a call in to Matt.”
“No answer?”
&n
bsp; “No,” she said.
“I wonder where he is.”
“Maybe he has a night class, or he’s at the library studying.”
“Maybe he’s out looking for his fiancée,” I said.
“I doubt he’ll find her.”
“Always the optimist.”
When the doorbell rang, I was curled up in the living room with the latest edition of Runners’ World.
Brooke went to the door and looked through the peephole. “It’s Matt Nolan,” she said. I started to get up. Brooke was dressed, but I was wearing a T-shirt that barely covered my panties.
She opened the door. “Hi, Matt.”
“Hi, Brooke. I found two of the notes.” He held the files up. Catching sight of me, he said, “Hey, Robin.”
I sat hastily, holding the magazine on my lap for cover.
“Which ones are they?” I called.
“Bein and Radford.”
B and R. That left D as our suspect.
“Come on in,” Brooke said. She led him into the living room, evidently oblivious to my state of undress. When she sat beside me on the couch, Matt took the club chair, which put the coffee table between us and provided me at least a little camouflage.
“Yes,” Brooke said. “They’re two of the missing files.” She looked at my long, bare legs and raised an eyebrow. Matt was looking, too, but with both eyebrows up. It occurred to me that I might not be as camouflaged as I thought.
I said, “So that leaves…”
“Dillon,” Brooke said. “Michael Dillon. According to Peachtree, he owes fifteen thousand and change. I don’t remember exactly.”
“It gives us someone to talk to. We can look him up tomorrow.”
Matt said, “Won’t that be dangerous?”
“He may not be our guy,” I said. “This is kind of a long shot.”
“But if he is your guy…”
“We’ll be careful. Where does he live?”
Brooke opened the file. Matt’s head was down, but his gaze cut toward me and away. I looked down. My panties, with their broad stripes in primary colors, were clearly visible through and below the T-shirt.
“Excuse me,” I said. I stood up and went around the end of the couch to go back to the bedrooms. I felt as if they were watching me, but I didn’t look back. As I reached the hallway, I heard a snort of laughter, I couldn’t tell from whom. I looked down and sighed, then twitched the T-shirt down over my fanny.
“House in Carytown,” Brooke called. “Grove Avenue.”
“Got it,” I shouted. In my bedroom, I got a pair of jeans off a hanger in the closet and pulled them on as I hobbled back down the hall to the living room. Matt and Brooke turned around and looked at me as I came in. Neither one of them busted out laughing, so I thought maybe I was decent.
“We can call on him tomorrow,” I said. I sat back down on the couch and put my bare feet on the edge of the coffee table. Matt’s eyes went to them, and so I put them back on the floor. A guy his age, maybe a woman’s bare feet were arousing.
“You know,” I said, “we’re running down these long-shots because we can’t find your fiancée. She’s the critical witness in this case. If she were to show up and say the man she saw had hair on his head, or a beard, or was unusually short or something, we’d be in the clear. She didn’t tell you anything?”
Matt shook his head. “She just said a man. We all assumed…”
“Yeah, I know. I guess you noticed that she didn’t run off until after the police showed up.”
He looked startled.
“The police came, she took off in my car, and nobody ever saw her again. She hasn’t returned to her apartment and hasn’t returned to work. You don’t have a theory for why she disappeared?”
“No. None.”
“She really intended to marry you, you think.”
His smile was more like an expression of pain. “I think,” he said.
“She’s from northern Virginia?”
“I thought she was from Pennsylvania.”
“Really? She told you that?”
“I…I’m pretty sure she’s from somewhere around Philadelphia. She grew up in one of the suburbs.”
“She say which one?”
“I don’t remember. Maybe.”
“Is it the kind of thing you would remember?”
“Maybe not.”
I nodded. Men, I thought. I looked at Brooke, wondering how we were going to get rid of our guest, now that we’d gotten what we could out of him.
“Have you been going to class?” she asked him. “You’re still in school, aren’t you?”
“Yes, technically. I’ve been to some of my classes.”
“Uh oh,” Brooke said.
He shrugged.
“Do you have any classes tomorrow?”
“Yes. I have a nine o’clock.”
Brooke looked at her watch. “It’s a long way back to your house, and it’s getting late. Would you like to crash here on the couch?”
“Yeah. Sure,” he said.
I tried not to roll my eyes.
Chapter 15
Matt was still asleep the next morning when I cut through the living room to get my orange juice. The coffeemaker started sputtering while I was pouring, and I knew Brooke wasn’t far behind me. I took my juice into the living room, sat, and propped my feet up on the ottoman. I’d pulled on a pair of gym shorts, though Matt’s eyes were closed and it didn’t really matter. To paraphrase a commercial for a big motel chain, everyone looks fully clothed when you’re asleep.
The coffeemaker reached the end of its brewing cycle, and, as its sputtering increased in volume, Brooke came through wearing a long-sleeved, silk pajama-top that came down to mid-thigh. It looked like she’d run a brush through that thick, red hair of hers, which put her one-up on me, though she was scratching her rump sleepily as she went by me, giving only a glance at the sleeping figure on the couch.
Once she’d got her coffee, she came back and sat beside me on the loveseat.
Matt was lying on his back, bare-chested, one arm over the side of the couch and touching the floor. A leg stuck out from under the twisted sheet.
Brooke sipped her coffee. “Do you think he shaves his chest?” she murmured softly.
“Does a bear poop in the woods?”
She looked at me. “What does that mean?”
“He must,” I said. “Men’s chests aren’t completely hairless like that. Maybe Asians’ are,” I amended. “Native Americans’.” I took a swallow of juice.
“He even shaves his pits,” Brooke said.
“Evidently. Probably if you got close enough, you’d see he had some stubble.”
She didn’t move to the couch to check it out. She just sipped her coffee and watched Matt sleep. I sipped my juice and did the same. I didn’t feel any particular inclination to move when I’d finished my juice. Watching Matt sleep was proving to be a surprisingly pleasant way to pass the time.
After ten minutes or so, though, Matt snorted explosively and sat up. He looked at us, a little wild-eyed. “What is it?” he said.
“What’s what?” I asked.
“What’s wrong?”
I exchanged looks with Brooke. She said, “Nothing’s wrong, that we know of.”
“Then why…” He looked down, flipped the sheet over his bare leg, then swung both feet to the floor. “Why are you just sitting there looking at me?”
I shrugged. “I’m drinking my morning orange juice. You want some? Or there’s coffee.”
Brooke nodded. Matt looked around the room as if still trying to get his bearings, jerking his head as his gaze shifted.
“I’ll get you that coffee,” I said, and stood up.
“So, how’d you like sharing a bathroom with him this morning?” I asked Brooke as she drove us toward Carytown.
“It was okay. He probably wasn’t in the shower five minutes.”
“I noticed you found him a safety razor. He managed to cut himself.”
She nodded. “He had to put back on his old clothes, though. I didn’t have anything for him.”
I got a mental image of Matt Nolan in a pair of Brooke’s panties, and I snorted.
“What?” Brooke asked.
I shook my head. “Grove Avenue,” I said, pointing at the sign. “Get off here.”
The house had a low-ceilinged porch with square brick pillars. The door was dark wood and beveled glass. I pressed the doorbell, and it jangled deep inside the house. We waited. My watch said eight-fifteen, so it was possible that we had missed him. Having an extra person in the house when you wake up tends to slow you down.
Brooke nudged me, and I looked up, seeing the short, dark-haired man coming toward us just as I heard the sound of his feet on the hardwood floor. There wasn’t a rug in the front room of the house. Some nice mahogany furniture, but no rug.
The knocker clacked as he pulled open the door. “Hello,” he said. “What can I do for you?” He wore a polo shirt, and his belly spilled over jeans worn low on his hips.
“Michael Dillon?” I said.
“That would be me.” From further in the house, I could hear children’s voices and the clatter of tableware.
“Sorry to disturb your breakfast,” I said. “We wanted to ask you about your loan with Derek Nolan.”
He stepped back into the house, which I took as an invitation to come in. I nodded Brooke ahead of me and crowded behind her. Michael Dillon went and stood by a wingchair, but didn’t sit. “What about the loan?” he said.
“It was for fifteen thousand dollars?”
“Twenty, originally. I think I got it down to fifteen or so before I went in and paid it off.”
“When was that?”
He shrugged. “Couple of weeks ago maybe. Jen?” he called.
A heavily freckled woman with straight brown hair appeared in the door of the kitchen.
“When did I go in to pay off Derek Nolan?” Michael asked.
“Four weeks ago tomorrow,” she said. “Catherine, put that down.” Something thudded, a child screamed, and Jen disappeared back into the kitchen.
Michael shrugged at us. “Time flies,” he said.
Juggling Evidence (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery) Page 9