His woman!
I backed away from him. “Hey, caveman, I can make my own choices in friends. I don’t need you to tell me who I can and can’t talk to. I had the situation handled.”
“Oh, yeah? Then why was he still standing there when I drove up?” He moved closer and smelled good. “Did you at least tell him you had a date?”
“As a matter of fact, I did. He was just leaving before you bullied him away.”
“Didn’t look like he was leaving to me.” He leaned on the counter, arms folded, ankles crossed, all relaxed as if he owned the place. He wore faded Levi’s and a blue T-shirt. His biceps bulged, and I wondered if he was flexing them on purpose.
Trying not to laugh, I glared at him, unable to believe we were even talking about Craig. We were on a date for heaven’s sake.
“Make the salad, bigshot. I’m going to turn on the grill.” I handed him a salad bowl and headed outside, grinning at him as I closed the sliding-glass door. I started the grill and watered my patio container gardens. After picking a few more tomatoes and lettuce, I returned inside, by which time Brad had almost finished making the salad. I dropped the additional tomatoes and lettuce in the colander and rinsed them. I ripped the lettuce and gave Brad the tomatoes to slice. He hadn’t said a word. I made the dressing with freshly squeezed lemon juice.
“The grill should be ready. What are we having?” he asked.
“Salmon steaks and portobello mushrooms.”
“What? Raw or cooked?” He looked as if he were about to get sick.
“You got a problem with mushrooms?” I propped my hands on my hips once again, ready to do battle if necessary.
“Well, they kind of taste like dirt.” He scrunched up his face.
I groaned. “I marinated them, and I’m trying a new recipe.” I opened the fridge and handed him the bags of marinated goodness. “Don’t be a baby. You could at least try them.”
“All right.” He looked at them and shrugged. “Might be good.” He set the bags on the counter as if they were radioactive.
Sheesh, he was as bad as Josh.
“Don’t knock ’em until you try ’em,” I said, laying the salmon inside the foil. “I’m going to put them on now.” Back outside, I placed the food on the grill. “It won’t be long now.”
When I returned, it was time to find out more about real estate. “I’m thinking about buying a house.”
“Because of the fire in the building?” Brad poured the used marinade from the bags into the sink and dropped the bags in the trash.
Tidy. Nice.
“No, I’ve been thinking about it for a while. I’m ready to get out of here. All of a sudden, the place feels too small. You know what I mean?”
“I guess so.” He shrugged.
“What’s wrong? I thought you’d think it was a good idea.”
“No. Don’t get me wrong. I do think it’s a good idea. It’s just that I thought maybe you’d want to be with me. Eventually.”
“I don’t understand. I am with you. My buying a house wouldn’t change that.” I gulped ice water. My mouth suddenly felt dry.
“No, I meant that I thought we’d move in together someday. If you bought a house, what would you do with it when you moved in with me?”
“Whoa! Wait a minute. Back up. Stop.” I shook my head. “When did we get to the point of moving in? We’ve only been dating a couple of months.”
“Some people get married after knowing each other two weeks.” He reached for my hand and covered it with his.
“Yeah. Well, we’re obviously not those people.” I slid my hand out. What had gotten into him? Craig?
What the hell?
“And why am I the one who has to leave my house and move in? Why can’t you be the one to move in with me?”
Crap. What am I saying?
He gave me another shrug. “I don’t know. It just came out that way.”
Was I dating a chauvinist? Didn’t see that coming. “All right. We’ll cross that bridge if we ever reach it.” I pulled out a platter, tongs, and spatula then looked over my shoulder at him. “I’m going to check on the food.”
Everything looked ready to come off the grill, so I loaded it onto the platter. I pinched off a piece of mushroom and popped it in my mouth.
Oh my. So good.
I took everything inside and placed it all on the table.
Brad ate a large helping of salad and said he loved the dressing and grilled salmon. He tried a mushroom and said he liked it, but I thought he was being polite. His nibbling on a small piece and holding back a grimace was a dead giveaway. We stuffed ourselves, cleaned up, and settled in the living room to watch a movie. While he searched for something, I checked my cell phone to see if it had finished charging and saw that the phone was off. I turned it on. Once it had rebooted, I noticed my voicemail notification blinking. I hadn’t heard the phone ring. Had it been off all of this time?
“I have a message.” I glanced at Brad then looked at the time of the call. I’d been outside at that time. “Did my phone ring while I was outside?”
Of course it did.
“Oh, yeah. I turned it off.” He said it as if it were no big deal.
“What. The. Hell.” I snatched the TV remote from his hand. “Why did you do that? You should’ve told me I had a call, not try to hide it from me!”
“I wanted us to spend time together. Can you blame me for that?” He leaned back on the sofa.
“Blame you? Brad, I’m a cop! I need to know when I get a call.” I stood and paced in front of him. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that we always get interrupted by some homicide or something.”
“Oh, no, you did not just say that.” I threw my hands in the air. “Some homicide or something? Brad, I was a homicide detective when you met me. I’m still a homicide detective. Nothing has changed.”
“Don’t you think I know that? Your job is too important to you. It’s your life.”
“So? I have a career, and I like what I do. Don’t jeopardize that.”
“Or you’ll dump me? Is that what you’re saying?”
I marched to the door and opened it. “I can’t talk about this right now. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
Maybe.
He jumped up and grabbed my hand. “You’re overreacting.”
I jerked my hand away, moved aside, and opened the door wider. “Good night, Brad. Talk to you tomorrow.” Although I kept my voice calm, I wanted to punch him.
“Fine.” He stepped through the door and placed his hand on it. “I just thought we needed some us time. That’s all.”
“Let’s talk tomorrow.” I slowly pushed the door closed. “Good night.”
“Good night, Sydney.” He turned away and jogged toward his truck. If he was trying to make a quick getaway, he was too late for that.
I grabbed my tomato stress ball from the end table and squeezed it while listening to the voicemail. My heart pounded when I heard Bernie’s voice, afraid he’d called about Khrystal or the baby—he hadn’t. The body of the John Doe at the Portrero Meyer Homes lot had been identified as Vincent Frakes through prints he’d given when he applied for his real estate agent’s license. I wondered why Rudy had taken so long to find a match. Someone was slacking. The news did confirm Monica had been right to be worried about Vincent Frakes’s absence.
Bernie called again after I listened to his message. He told me the Portrero Meyer Homes offices had burned to the ground. Fortunately, there’d been no casualties.
16
The next morning, Bernie and I were sitting in Sylvia Frakes’s living room.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Bernie set the recorder on the coffee table in front of Sylvia and switched it on.
Sylvia eyed the recorder, raised an eyebrow, and frowned. “What’s that for?” She spat the question at us.
“It’s for your protection and ours.” I slid my notebook out of my pocket. “You previously told us
your husband was out of town. Correct?”
Nodding, she glared at me then at the recorder. She appeared wary of it, as if it were a dog that wanted to take a bite out of her leg.
“You’ll have to speak up. The recorder can’t register a nod.” Bernie nudged the machine across the table closer to her. He didn’t have to do that. The recorder could have picked up her voice from where she was sitting.
Sylvia leaned toward the machine. “Yes, I told you he went out of town,” she shouted.
“There’s no need to lean or yell. It will pick up your voice from where you are. Talk normally. Where did Mr. Frakes go when he left town?”
She scoffed. “Why does that matter?”
Everyone handled grief in their own way, but Sylvia’s demeanor hadn’t changed from when I’d seen her on other occasions. She was either a cold-hearted woman, or she’d done the dirty deed herself. Time would tell.
I stared her down, said, “We can do this here or at the station. I’m good either way,” and snapped my notebook shut, continuing to eyeball her.
Sylvia sighed and pursed her lips. Turning her back to us, she lifted the lid on a carved wooden box, and took out a pack of Salem cigarettes. Watching us, she shook one out and removed a slim gold lighter from the box. She wrapped her lips around the end, closed one eye, then lit up. She leaned her head back, inhaling deeply, and blew the smoke out of the corner of her mouth, squinting the eye nearest the smoke plume. After another drag, she flicked the tip on a shell-shaped glass ashtray and laid the cigarette on the edge.
Bernie and I waited while her cigarette smoldered and filled the air with its poisonous stench.
“What was the question?” Sylvia smirked and crossed her bony legs.
“When we visited Frakes Realty the first time you told us your husband was out of town. Where did he go?” I tapped my pen on my thigh, my patience wearing thin.
“Well, I can tell you where he told me he was going. There’s no guarantee that’s where he actually went, if he even went anywhere.” She plucked her cigarette from the ashtray and put it to her lips.
“Please answer the question,” Bernie said. “Where did he say he was going?”
“All right. Fine. He told me he was going to Hawaii to check on the progress of the timeshare resort he was developing. It’s going to be huge. Two hundred units on prime real estate.”
I hadn’t realized any prime real estate still existed for development in Hawaii. Showed how much I knew.
She looked from me to Bernie and raised her brows. “Either of you in the market?”
Always the salesperson, I supposed. Her sales pitch seemed rather callous, though, considering the circumstances.
“Do you recall when he left and when he returned?” Bernie asked.
Sylvia shook her head then glanced at the recorder. “Nope. He didn’t share the details of his travel plans.” She took another puff. “And I didn’t ask. Didn’t care, you see.”
I’d begun to. She didn’t appear to care about him at all. If so, then why the vindictiveness toward Monica Stewart? Was Monica blowing the affair out of proportion, or had she just flat-out lied?
“Has your business, Frakes Realty, closed?” I asked.
“No. It’s quite the opposite. We’re expanding, in fact.” Another long drag on the cig was followed by a round of hacking.
I was going to be joining her if I didn’t get out of there soon. The smoke drifted through the air like a morning fog—or a fire-bombed apartment. I looked around at the yellowed ceiling and drab curtains, imagining what her lungs must look like. The room was too small to handle her habit. There appeared to be very little ventilation, if any.
“In what ways are you expanding?” I leaned in, interested in the answer. Expansion meant money. Money could equal motive. That possibility worked for me. She seemed like the type, and she talked more about her business goals than her dead spouse. No wonder he’d paid so much attention to Monica.
“Oh, we’re … excuse me, I’m combining services with Portrero Meyer Homes. I need to find out if that’s even possible now. My father started that company, you know.” Her energy level perked up, and her eyes brightened. “I’ve been wanting to create a joint venture for a long time, and I’m finally getting the chance.” She rubbed her hands together. “I can’t believe it. My dream is finally coming true. I’ll have access to Portrero Meyer resources.” By resources, I assumed she meant money. Her newly formed smile reminded me of the shark in Jaws. I saw her as a shark that would go after what she wanted, no matter who or what stood in her way. The difference between her and sharks was that sharks simply tried to survive, doing what came naturally. I was sure Sylvia felt the same way about her strategy, but greed equaled motive. It could get her in trouble.
Bernie leaned forward. “Why didn’t you move on the joint venture before now? What’s changed?”
Sylvia turned away while she stabbed out her cigarette. She peered over her shoulder at Bernie. “Oh, nothing has changed. It’s just the right time to do it. That’s all.” She shrugged and smiled, but her eyes showed no humor.
“What made now the right time, instead of last year, last month, or whenever?” I asked.
“Well, it just is.” She glanced at her watch and twisted it. “I have to get going. I don’t think I can be of any additional help to you. Unfortunately, I have to organize rebuilding the Portrero Meyer offices because of the fire, and I just don’t have time for this.” She reached for another cigarette then stood and looked at the door. Our clue to get out of Dodge.
No problem.
My lungs would thank me later.
“What’s the address of your new office location?” I asked.
She narrowed her eyes. “Why? I’m beginning to feel harassed. My husband just died, and you seem to be focused on me, the grieving widow.”
Now she remembers the dead husband. Convenient.
“The address?” Bernie reached for the recorder.
Grumbling all the time, she scribbled the address on a piece of scrap paper lying on the table and practically threw it at me. What was the deal? Bernie turned off the recorder and put it away.
As we headed for the door, I thought of another question and spun around, nearly knocking Bernie over. “What’s the name of your new company?”
Sylvia sighed. “Who said the company was new and it had a different name?” She opened the door and stepped aside.
“Did the name change?” I asked.
She shrugged and opened the door wider. “Have a nice day, Detectives.”
I let it go and we headed out. We could find out if we needed to.
On the way to the station, Bernie told me he planned to leave work early to join Khrystal at her obstetrician appointment. While he drove, I gave Theresa a call for an update on the Jake and Kelly Milton case. The Miltons hadn’t contacted me for updates, and I wondered if they’d been in touch with her. She let me know they hadn’t.
We had found our John Doe, but we still had no identity for the Jane Doe—or her cause of death. Although the death was suspicious, it wasn’t necessarily murder. She could’ve passed out from drugs. Toxicology tests would take weeks. I called the ME and left her a voicemail. Something was going on with Dr. Lee. She was usually more on the ball. It was beginning to look as though we needed to visit the morgue for the information.
“Hey, Sydney. What’s going on?” Theresa plopped into my rickety visitors’ chair in the corner and rolled it toward my desk with her feet. “Why do you keep moving the chair to the corners?”
I stared at her, blinked, then shrugged.
“So, I’ve been in touch with the Miltons. They plan to start looking for another place to live real soon.”
“Wow. From what they said, I didn’t think they had the money to try again.” I swiveled my chair toward her and put my feet up on the desk corner.
Theresa shrugged. “That’s what I thought, too. I guess we were wrong. It sure did seem like they were broke, though.
”
“Mind if I tag along the next time you talk to them?”
“No problem. It might be today or tomorrow. Maybe they hit the lottery, or her parents gave them cash to get them out of their house.” She laughed. “You know how it is with some folks.”
“Yeah, that could be tough. I only stayed with Mac for a few days, but the lack of privacy started to get to me.”
“Oh, right! You’re back in your apartment?”
“My sister and her husband were great, but I felt a little weird being there with Brad.”
“Oh my goodness! Brad!” She slapped my desk and leaned forward. “What’s going on with you two?” she whispered, smiling broadly.
It was my turn to lean in and whisper, “Nothing is going on with us.” I sighed, leaned back in my chair again, and took my feet off the desk, ready to get to work and not talk about it.
Theresa’s brown eyes widened. “What?” She frowned. “What the heck happened? Did he cheat on you already? Girl, don’t tell me he cheated on you.”
“No.” I thought about it and shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t even know if we’re exclusive. We haven’t talked about it yet. It’s not cheating if we’re not exclusive.” I flicked my hand. “Doesn’t matter anyway. I can’t trust him.”
“Why not? What did he do?”
“He turned my cell phone off. Can you believe it?”
She frowned and tilted her head. “And?” She did the rolling-hand motion, urging me on. “And what else?”
“Nothing else. That’s enough.” I gazed at her. “Isn’t it?”
Theresa shook her head emphatically. “I don’t know, Sydney. It doesn’t sound so bad to me. Did you miss an important call or something?”
“Well, Bernie—”
My phone rang. It was Monica, and she’d heard about Vincent. She needed to tell me something and asked me to stop by her place as soon as possible. I slid my phone in my pocket and looked at Theresa. “Bernie’s taking time off. You got time to take a ride?”
17
Theresa scanned the paper and nodded before giving it to me. It contained the results of a DNA test for Monica and Vincent. Dated a couple of weeks earlier, the test confirmed he was most likely her father.
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