As soon as the staple lady was gone, I danced around the counter to get a better look at her desk. A box of tissues, the stapler and a stack of work orders occupied the left corner. A giant calendar blotter covered with doodles took up the middle. The computer keyboard and monitor were to the right, along with a cup that said “Fuck off, it’s Monday” and evidently was used to hold pencils rather than coffee. In the middle of the wall behind her desk was a closed door with a sign that said Private.
“What are you doing?” Pauline hissed.
“Shut up and watch for her.” I opened the top desk drawer. Pencils, nail file, paper clips. I shut it quickly and heard a jangly sound. I reopened the drawer and fished my hand to the back, closing on a set of keys. I slipped them into my purse and turned around just as the woman came back into the office. I snatched a tissue.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
I glared at Pauline and gave what I hoped was a believable fake sneeze. “Sorry. Allergies.” I blew my nose loudly and waved my hand around. “All the dust, I guess.”
She came around the counter towards her desk, and I made my way back to the other side. “Ugh, tell me about it,” she groaned. “Sometimes my eyes water all day long. So, what can I do for you?”
“I was looking for Danny Salazar.”
“Oh, sorry, wrong brother. It’s Junior Salazar who works here. Danny is a fireman. I think he’s stationed at Company Three, over next to the mall.”
I smacked my hand to my forehead. “Of course. Well, thanks a lot.”
She had returned the car keys to her purse and was back at the stapling. “No problemo. Have a good weekend.”
“What the hell was that about?” Pauline asked when we were safely back on the road. “And why’d you take those keys?”
I honestly didn’t know. “Forget about the murder.” I was back to thinking in Jimmy C’s terms. “Who had the best motive for burning the body shop?” I asked.
“Well, I suppose the owner could have done it for the insurance money.”
“Yeah, but the insurance would only cover the actual losses, which the paper said didn’t amount to all that much. Jenkins was in negotiations to sell the whole thing to Junior, and that would have netted him a helluva lot more money than the insurance settlement.”
“Hmmm. Okay, what about Junior? I don’t think I buy the jealous lover angle, but - ”
“Why not? People kill their romantic rivals all the time.”
“Well, sure. But I saw the photo of the nightwatchman in the paper. Only a seriously deranged woman would stay with him if she could have Junior Salazar instead.”
I’d been in junior high the last time I saw Junior around town. I was having a hard time picturing him. “He’s hot?”
Pauline shrugged. “Not like Danny, but I wouldn’t turn him down.”
“Remind me - exactly who have you turned down?”
She gave me a snotty look. “I believe we were discussing Junior’s possible motives for arsoning the body shop.”
“Arsoning? Never mind. Jimmy C seems to think that maybe Jenkins was threatening to raise the price and Junior didn’t like it and set the fire to scare Jenkins into backing off. That could make sense, but he said Junior wouldn’t have known how to set the fire. Too sophisticated.” I thought a second. “Come to think of it, I guess that would have to go for Jenkins, too.” At least, Jimmy C hadn’t mentioned Jenkins having any arsoning skills. That didn’t necessarily mean much, though.
“That’s why they think it was Danny?”
I nodded.
“But Junior’s been in prison for years, he probably could come up with an arsonist if he needed one.”
I had thought of that, too. But something like that would cost money. And I didn’t think Junior would just make out a check to Joe Felon for a few grand and write “arson” on the little memo line. It’d be cash. An idea was forming. Maybe it would be cash from the yard, and there’d be some sort of ledger in the office.
“You didn’t say why you took those keys.”
“I was looking for clues.”
Pauline snorted. “What are you, Scooby-Doo?”
“Well, I could use a snack.”
Pauline dropped me off at home, saying she couldn’t come in because she had to get ready for her date with my brother. I got ready to make “lalala” sounds again, but fortunately she didn’t elaborate.
“Hey, come over to the folks’ tomorrow afternoon.” Before she could protest, I went on, “Kevin will be there.”
She banged her head on the steering wheel.
“Good. Two o’clock.”
Jack’s truck wasn’t in the driveway, and I admit I felt a little lonely, so instead of going to my house, I went next door to say hi to Debbie. She answered the door with oven mitts on both hands and cats at both feet. Lucifer the stalker cat was nowhere in sight.
“Alex, come on in.”
“Hey, Debbie. Just wanted to say ‘hi.’ You busy?”
“Hunh-uh. Just making the weekly batch of cookies. I can wrap a plate up for you to take home, if you want.”
“Sure, that’d be great.”
She led me to her kitchen, and I resisted the urge to scrawl messages in the dust on her furniture as we went. Her house was the mirror image of mine, except without a pool. The house originally had one, but one of her cats, either Hats or Coats, I couldn’t remember which one, had fallen in and almost drowned when she first moved in, so she’d had the pool filled in and planted over, and now there was no indication that there’d ever been one. I was thinking of Darwin, and it occurred to me any cat that stupid didn’t deserve to live, but then I’d always been more of a dog person, myself.
The other difference between our houses was that Debbie appeared never to have thrown anything away, ever. Boxes and piles and shelves overflowing with books and papers and knickknacks filled every corner, and the pathways for walking were as choked as my cholesterol-filled arteries would be in another twenty years.
She was waving her mitts and complaining about a woman who’d tried to buy Christmas stamps today, even though they didn’t have Christmas stamps in stock yet, since it was only July, for crissake, and I wondered what would happen if Debbie ever went postal. I imagined baked goods flying and innocent victims covered with flour, Debbie being hauled away by the cops, her mitts cuffed behind her back, cats hissing and clawing at the officers.
“Don’t you think?”
Crap, I hadn’t been listening for I didn’t even know how long. She could have been talking about health care reform, the latest in vibrator technology or the eighteen dead bodies she’d buried in the swimming pool, for all I knew. Although the last one seemed pretty unlikely. And I might be needing the information on the second one, if my fortunes didn’t turn around pretty soon.
“Hunh?”
“Cats. I was saying that they’re more reliable than men, don’t you think?”
“Sure, but not as much fun.” Debbie was a couple years younger than me, but she had spinster written all over her. I made a mental note never to get a cat. And never to visit Debbie again. I glanced at the clock on the stove. “Gee, I didn’t know it was getting to be so late. I need to go finish up some work.”
I felt a little guilty about lying when she sent me home with two dozen of the best peanut butter cookies I’d ever tasted. I brought in the mail, sorting it as I walked towards my kitchen. I passed the middle bedroom and stopped short. It was empty.
“Fuck, who the hell steals bedroom furniture?”
I detoured back to the living room and took inventory. Nope, everything was there. The office was intact. The hallway floor hadn’t squeaked once.
Finally I made it to the master bedroom. Narrow oak planks covered the floor. My bedroom furniture was arranged just as I would have done it, with the bed up against the wall looking out on the yard through the French doors. The dresser was along the left wall, and the reading chair was in the c
orner, next to a little walnut table I didn’t recognize. There was a note on the table.
“Alex, Jack finished the floors and I moved your furniture for you. The table is a housewarming present. Love, Kev.”
I was touched and a little sad. There was nothing left on Jack’s to-do list, and I had gotten used to having him come and go at inconvenient times. I sighed. I was in bad shape if my social life depended on unscheduled visits from the handyman. I saw cats in my future.
I made myself a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich for dinner and ate it and five cookies in front of the TV, watching Bull Durham on TBS. I turned it off halfway through because baseball, romance and sex all together was making me nostalgic and depressed and horny. I went to my room and cut the tags out of my new clothes and put them away, then hauled all of my clothes and shoes from the middle bedroom closet and arranged them in the closet in my new room. I showered to wash off the dust and grime from the gravel yard. I took a Communication Arts magazine outside and sat on the lounge next to the pool, flipping pages in the dusk. I heard my cell phone ringing in the distance and went in the kitchen to answer it. It was a blocked caller, and when I answered there was no one there. I picked up the mail that I’d dumped next to the cookies on the counter and brought it, along with the cell phone and five more cookies, back outside with me. A couple of bills and a circular for a sale at Wal-Mart, plus a plain white envelope. Lucifer appeared from who knows where and jumped up on the foot of the lounge. He didn’t try to get closer, just patted my bare foot with his paw a couple of times, curled up and went to sleep. The white envelope wasn’t sealed, and I slid the paper out, flipping it open and flinging colorful confetti everywhere. Sparkly rainbow letters spelling out Welcome Home Alex were pasted to a sheet of regular typing paper. I had no idea who’d sent it, but I guessed Pauline might have slipped it into the mailbox when she arrived this morning.
I had six more blocked caller hang-ups, but other than that, no contact with the outside world for the rest of the evening. Finally, alone with a cat on a Friday night, and feeling like a huge loser, I went back inside, locked all the doors and collapsed into bed.
I knew I owed Danny an apology for the other day, and I got out of bed with a plan. I padded to the bathroom, enjoying the squeaklessness of the trip, making a quick phone call along the way. I showered and did my makeup, not too much because I didn’t want to look like I was trying, but enough that I didn’t look like I was on chemo. I dressed in a leopard print thong, my new orange surfer shorts and a white stretchy tank, and slipped my feet into white slip-on canvas Skechers. I put my hair in a ponytail and stuck it through the opening in the back of my Oakland A’s baseball cap. When I was satisfied, I went to the kitchen for a cup of coffee and some toast.
“Morning, sweet thing,” Murphy said. He was sitting at the counter, reading the paper and drinking coffee.
“I thought you were finished.” I reached for the coffee pot. “This decaf?” I asked before pouring.
He nodded. “Your electrical service is outdated. I thought I’d install a new two hundred-amp panel and replace some of the old wiring. It’s not absolutely necessary, but I’d do it in my own house.”
“You still haven’t billed me for the other work. I don’t know if I can afford it.” I knew for a fact I couldn’t afford it. I had a couple thousand dollars left after buying the house, but I was pretty sure he’d exhausted that stash already, and I had no other savings. And I hadn’t exactly been raking in the dough since I’d been here.
“I’ll just put it on your tab.” He flipped to the sports section, and I wondered what sort of payment my tab would require, and when.
“Want some toast?” I pulled the bread out of the freezer and chiseled off two slices with a butter knife.
“Nah, thanks, I gotta get started.” He pushed himself away from the counter and gave the brim of my cap a tug as he passed me on the way to the back door. “He’ll like the cap,” he said, and then he was gone.
It was still before eight o’clock when I finished my toast and coffee and headed out. The weatherman was predicting a break in the weather, but not for another day or two, and it was already in the high eighties. I beeped the car open and got in, arranging my shorts so my legs wouldn’t stick to the seat. It occurred to me I hadn’t seen Lucifer this morning, and I was annoyed that I found that worrisome. Next time I saw Debbie, I was going to point out that cats were exactly like men. You spent the evening with one, and then they disappeared on you. Stupid thing would probably be leaving a mouse on some other woman’s porch by this afternoon.
I drove away, air conditioner blasting. When I got to Vista del Mar, I pulled over to the side of the road to consider my options. I could buzz Danny and lose the element of surprise. Not to mention he probably wouldn’t let me in. Mrs. Dunbar wasn’t trustworthy. I could try another neighbor, but that wasn’t a sure bet, either. I was about to leave the car where it was and jump the fence, when somebody pulled past me and turned into the complex, opening the gate with a thingamajig that looked like my garage door opener. I pulled out and followed the car through the gate.
I parked in the guest spot in front of Danny’s house and tried hard not to be elated that there wasn’t a car already in the spot. I guessed there was a chance he’d had sex once or twice in the twelve years we’d been apart, but thinking that it could have been last night, when I was three miles away, bored and lonely and horny, with a cat for company, was problematic for me. I tiptoed around the Element and along the side of the house to the back gate and pulled the string. The gate opened and I ninja’d into Danny’s backyard. My plan was to knock on the back door, duck to the side so he couldn’t see me, and rush past him into the house when he opened the door to check. Since he was sitting there on the patio, though, I decided to switch to Plan B. He was reading the paper at the patio table, no shirt, his back to me. There was a cup on the table, evidently coffee, judging by the steam.
“Hey.” Plan B.
He jumped up and spun around. “What the hell? Oh, for crissake, Lex, what are you doing here?” He was wearing blue and green boxers and nothing else, and that Abs of Steel video was obviously working a helluva lot better for him than it ever had for me. I watched the muscles ripple along the curve of his biceps as he snapped the paper shut and tossed it on the table. Damn. I looked around for something to lean on.
“I surrender.” I waved an imaginary white flag. “Truce?”
He eyed me warily. “Surrendering armies don’t usually mount a sneak attack.”
“I didn’t think you’d let me in.” I attempted to surreptitiously check my pulse.
“You thought right.”
I sighed. I hate groveling. “I made an ass of myself the other day. I’m sorry. I want to make it up to you.”
“Don’t sweat it.” His face was drawn and his shoulders slumped a little, and it was clear the nightmare that had begun a week ago was taking its toll.
“Come on, get dressed, let’s go.” We had someplace to be, but mainly I wanted him dressed so my blood pressure would go back to normal. I felt a stroke coming on.
“If I say no, you’re not going to leave, are you?”
“It’s doubtful.”
Big, dramatic sigh. “Come in.”
I fixed myself a cup of coffee in the kitchen while he went up to the loft to change. “Hey, is this decaf?”
He leaned over the half-wall and hollered, “Not a chance in hell. Where are we going, anyway?”
“Wear shorts and a t-shirt. And sneakers.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
He came downstairs in long khaki cargo shorts, a black t-shirt and Nike Air running shoes. I mentally swore at him for being so friggin’ perfect, then I choked on my coffee.
He had his keys in his hand. “I’m driving. I’m seriously considering leaving your ass somewhere.”
“Whatever.”
There was a door to the attached garage at the end of the hall, next to the bathroom
. We went in and Danny hit the button to open the roll-up door. Two Mustangs were parked side by side, a white 2012 GT and a red 1965 convertible, a classic. Danny loved Mustangs. I’d always been a Corvette girl myself, not that I’d ever be able to afford one.
We took the GT. It wasn’t a convertible, but it had air conditioning and a badass stereo. “Where to?”
I gave him directions that led towards the lake. Finally, I had him turn on Old Lake Road and into The Fun Zone parking lot. The Fun Zone has miniature golf, a little go-cart racetrack and a huge video arcade. Plus, batting cages.
He idled in the driveway and said, “Lex, this place isn’t even open. It’s only nine in the morning.”
“Not open for other people, maybe. But it’s open for us. Park the damn car.”
He parked, and I hopped out to meet the skinny dark haired man ambling towards the gate.
“Alexis!”
“Hi, Uncle Teddy. Thank you so much for opening up early for me.”
“Anything for my favorite niece.” I was his only niece. Actually, I was the only female of my generation on my mother’s entire side of the family, which made for lots of cheek-pinching as a child. But also lots of attention and more gifts than all the boys in the family combined.
Ted unlocked the gate and motioned us in, then relocked it. He gave Danny a pat on the back. “Danny, how are you? Sorry about all the troubles I’ve been hearing about.”
“Thanks, Ted. So this is retirement, huh?”
My uncle Ted had retired from the fire department a couple years ago. Aunt Marie was going to kill him if he didn’t get out of her way, so he bought The Fun Zone last year, and they both seemed much happier now. Now if only my cousin Nicky’s wife would start popping out babies, Ted and Marie’s lives would be perfect.
We followed Ted to the concession stand, and he selected two aluminum baseball bats from a bin that held the bats upright in little individual cubbyholes. He slid the bats towards us on the carpeted counter, then added two helmets.
“When you said you were bringing a friend, I assumed you meant Jack Murphy,” Teddy said. He turned to Danny. “You know, those Murphy boys are damn fine contractors. The arcade was practically falling down when I bought this place, and I hired them to rebuild it. They came in on time and under budget.” He was shaking his head, obviously still in awe.
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