by Julia London
“You’re an instructor, not a friend or neighbor,” he informed her.
“Right. Okay. Well . . . I guess I’ll just go,” she said, gesturing lamely toward her car.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said sternly. “Of course you should come in now that you’ve come all this way,” he said, pushing the screen door open.
She was having some serious second thoughts, and very reluctantly stepped inside the dark interior. She was immediately hit with the strong smell of antiseptic spray and had the very morbid thought that maybe his wife died days ago, and he’d kept her here until he could come to terms with it. But one glance at Mr. Gregory and she changed her mind. He looked a lot like Mr. Rogers in his button-up sweater and his house slippers as he led her through a very narrow and dark hallway and into a small kitchen that was spotless. Rachel expected lots of different dishes to be lying around, mail and phone messages—something to indicate his life had been turned upside down. But it looked like no one had eaten or cooked in that kitchen in years.
Mr. Gregory shuffled toward the refrigerator.
“I’m very sorry to hear about your wife, Mr. Gregory,” Rachel said as he opened the fridge and looked inside.
“Don’t be.” He bent over, peered into the empty racks. The man had no groceries at all—unless you called a tub of butter and a half pint of buttermilk groceries. “She was sick for a long, long time,” he said, straightening up again. “Bedridden and lacking most of her faculties. She’s in a much better place now,” he added, and carefully shut the door. “I’d offer you something, but I haven’t been able to get to the market. I’ll bury Clara Wednesday.”
The look on his face belied his casual tone, and Rachel’s heart wrenched. “Do you have any family? Children?”
Mr. Gregory shook his head.
“Siblings? Cousins?”
He gestured for her to follow him. “No sibling or cousins, either,” he said as they entered the living room, which contained one Barcalounger, a positively ancient TV on which CNN was broadcasting with no sound, and a couch covered in plastic. On one wall was a cross-stitched picture of a wolf. That was the only ornament besides an end table, a lamp, and a remote control. On the end table was a newspaper, neatly folded. “What few friends we had drifted away over the years with Clara’s illness,” Mr. Gregory added as he slid into the Barcalounger and hiked the foot rest. “Please sit down,” he said, motioning to the couch.
Rachel sat on the very edge of the plastic. “I beg your pardon for asking this . . . but surely you aren’t going to bury your wife alone, are you?”
“A pastor will be there to officiate.”
“I mean,” she said gently, “anyone besides the pastor.”
He thought for a moment and shook his head. “Might be a neighbor or two will show up, but I really don’t expect so. Clara’s been bedridden for so many years,” he said, and it looked, from where Rachel was sitting, as if he was tearing up.
Her heart went out to him—she could not imagine how awful it must be to be so totally alone at the last stage of one’s life. A cold shiver ran down her spine, and she put a hand to her gut, wondered if this could be her someday, sitting in an empty house, living an empty life, being an empty shell of a person.
“Mr. Gregory, is there anything I can do?” she asked. “Is there someone I can call? Make you some tea?”
He shook his head. “I’m all right. Just haven’t had a chance to get to the market,” he said again, and stared blankly at the silent TV.
“Let me do that for you,” Rachel said eagerly, glad to have a way to help, and began digging in her purse for a piece of paper.
“I couldn’t—”
“Of course you could! Really, it’s no imposition. I was going to stop by the market on my way home anyway,” she lied. “Just tell me what you need.”
Mr. Gregory eyed her suspiciously. “You’d do that for me?”
“I’d be more than happy to do it for you,” she said, smiling as warmly as she could.
After a moment, he shrugged. “All right,” he said. “I really don’t need much. Maybe some bread and milk. And prunes. A big jar. You know, the one they have on the bottom shelf . . .”
Rachel found a Shaw’s Supermarket nearby, and with basket in hand, gathered up some staples, and then went in search of prunes. Not prune juice, but the actual black and squishy prunes in a jar. And no cans. Only a jar. Mr. Gregory was very adamant about that.
On the prune aisle, there were more varieties and brands than one could possibly imagine would be available for the lowly prune, so she picked up two competing brands, one jar in each hand, to figure out why that was.
So naturally, Flynn would choose that moment to appear out of nowhere and startle her out of her wits again. “Mind, you’re blocking the prunes,” he said from behind her.
Rachel jerked around, clutching the two jars of prunes to her chest. “What are you doing here?” she exclaimed breathlessly.
He grinned, held up a package of razors.
With a laugh, Rachel relaxed. “You know, I could really begin to believe you are following me around Providence.”
“Actually, I was going to accuse you of the same,” he said, and glanced at the jars she was holding, lifted one thick brow above the other.
Rachel looked down at the jars and felt her face flame. “Okay,” she said quickly, “they aren’t for me—”
“That’s quite a lot of prunes, isn’t it?
“These are for Mr. Gregory.”
“Who?” he asked as his smiling gaze roamed her face.
“Mr. Gregory. You know, the elderly gentleman from weaving class?”
“Ah.” Flynn nodded. “How could I have possibly forgotten?” He glanced at the prunes again, and lifted that brow once more. “It’s really none of my affair, but do you and Mr. Gregory have some sort of relationship I should know about?”
Rachel laughed, put one of the prune jars in her basket and the other on the shelf. “I hardly know the man. But his wife died—”
“His wife?” Flynn interrupted, looking just as confused as she had been earlier.
“I know . . . a wife,” she whispered. “I assumed he swung the other way,” she added softly. “Apparently, she’d been ill for a long time and finally died. And he hasn’t had a chance to get to the market, what with all the stuff he had to do, so I told him I’d come for him.”
Flynn’s cheerful smile faded to a soft one, and he casually reached up to push a curl behind her ear that had fallen over her eye.
Rachel’s blood immediately began to rush warm. “A-and,” she continued unsteadily, “he’s apparently a huge fan of prunes. Jarred prunes. No cans. And definitely no fresh prunes, because they are too tangy.”
“You’re quite amazing, Rachel Lear.”
“Amazingly easy,” she said laughingly, looking down at her prunes.
“Just amazing. I don’t believe I’ve ever known anyone quite like you.”
His gaze was actually very intense, as if he was seeing her in a different light all of a sudden, and unused to that sort of acute attention, Rachel shyly glanced down, made a show of rearranging the things in her basket and turned toward the head of the aisle. “You mean anyone quite as weird,” she said with another self-conscious chuckle.
“I mean anyone as captivating.”
Damn, he was good. Rachel glanced up at him; he was just looking at her, his gray eyes holding her gaze, the warmth in them filtering down to the tips of her toes so that she felt all sparkly inside. “Do you say that to all the girls?” she asked with a smile.
“I’ve never said it before this very moment,” he said, and stroked her arm. It seemed to Rachel that in that moment, there was a weird lavender glow around them.
But then a woman turned onto the aisle with an overflowing cart, one child hanging on to the handle, and another in the baby seat, and the lavender glow disappeared.
Rachel laughed sheepishly, adjusted the heavy basket in her hand
s. “So what are you doing in this part of town? More local homicide investigations?” she asked with a wink.
Flynn’s cheerful countenance returned and he took the basket from her hand as they began to walk to the front of the aisle. “Actually, no. Someone threw a spanner in the works, unfortunately, so tonight I’ve been investigating another sort of crime.”
“Do tell,” Rachel said.
“Oh, I couldn’t possibly bore you with the details of it—just a bloke who nicked a few things, that’s all.”
“What things?”
“The Eiffel Tower. The Mona Lisa. And we’re not entirely certain, but we think perhaps that Staten Island ferry, of all things.”
Rachel laughed as they reached the cashier stand. “And how is it that a computer guy gets involved in all these crimes?” she asked as she began to unload the basket and put the items in front of the cashier.
“The usual way,” Flynn said with a shrug. “Hard work and perseverance.”
“You’re funny. Evasive, but funny.”
Flynn put down the pack of razors on the cashier’s conveyor and pulled out his wallet.
“And you came all the way to Mount Pleasant to buy razors? The last time I checked, it’s clear across town from your apartment.”
“What’s a few miles? I’ve heard they have spectacular razors here,” he said. “And for a bloke who’s a bit lost driving about on the wrong side of the road, it seemed the perfect place to pull in and have a look at a map.”
She was about to ask him what he was lost from, but the guy behind the stand said, “Thirty-two seventeen, lady.” She paid for the groceries, Flynn paid for his razors, and he accompanied her to the door, where he paused to pull the collar of his trench coat up around his ears. “Rather cold out tonight,” he said idly.
“Yeah,” she sighed, and glanced out the glass doors, thinking of Mr. Gregory. “It’s sort of poignant, isn’t it? That feeling of being alone is so cold anyway, but to feel it on such a frigid night . . .”
Flynn glanced down at her with a strange expression. “Are you cold, Rachel?”
The question startled her; he was looking at her very seriously, and she realized he was asking if she was lonely. “Who, me? Nah,” she said, waving a hand at him.
He nodded, looked toward the parking lot. “I can’t think of ever a time that it’s particularly good to be alone.”
She figured a man like him would hardly ever be alone, would have all sorts of hangers-on and women surrounding him. But then again, the man was constantly surprising her. And at the moment, he was looking impossibly gorgeous, and was holding the door open for her.
On the sidewalk, he pressed his lips to her cheek for a long moment, then pushed the errant curl from her eye again before letting his hand drift down her arm. “Wednesday?”
“Wednesday,” she said, giving him a mittened thumbs-up.
He winked, shoved his hands in his pocket, and strode down the sidewalk. But he paused a few feet from her, turning partway. “My condolences to Mr. Gregory.” He walked on, turned the corner, to where, she presumed, he had parked his car.
Rachel turned in the other direction, toward her car.
She stayed on with Mr. Gregory for a little while after that. They watched an episode of Trading Spaces together, while he ate an entire bowl of prunes and Rachel tried not to gag. Surprisingly, Mr. Gregory was just as hooked on the show as were she and Dagne.
When she finally left, Mr. Gregory walked her to the door. Before Rachel could step through, he stuck out his hand. “Thank you,” he said, shaking her hand vigorously. “Thank you very much.”
That night, Rachel when Rachel slipped into sleep, she dreamed of Flynn and his gray eyes. He was trying to tell her something, but she couldn’t hear him, and when she tried to move closer to him, a giant spoon fell on her car and smashed it, and then Mr. Valicielo was chasing her with the spoon.
Back at his flat, Flynn pulled out his mobile and hit the speed dial. “Yeah,” a sleepy Joe said.
In the background, Flynn could hear the sound of some sort of sport blaring out of a telly. “Once again, you owe me,” he said pleasantly as he loosened his tie.
“Oh, yeah?”
“One of the weavers had a death in his family and she’d gone to pay her respects.”
“No kidding,” Joe said thoughtfully.
“I wouldn’t kid about something as dreadfully serious as ten quid, mate,” Flynn said with a grin, reminding him of a little wager they’d made earlier.
“Yeah, yeah, you’ll get your ten quid.”
“Just so we’re clear, that’s about fourteen dollars American.”
Joe snorted at that. “Did you get anything else?” he asked.
“Nothing, really. Except that earlier, before she arrived home, her friend—the tall one with the blondish-red hair?”
“Yeah,” Joe said appreciatively.
“She stopped by and left with two paper bags that appeared to be quite heavy.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“I thought it a bit odd . . . seemed rather like she was filching it.”
“That whole damn crew is odd if you ask me,” Joe said, and yawned. “Okay, see you bright and early in the A.M.”
“With my ten quid, if you please. Cheers,” Flynn said, and hung up over Joe’s grousing.
He walked into the tiny bedroom, removed his coat and tie, then sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, staring out over the parking lot of the Corporate Suites. He did not see the concrete below him, but rather Rachel’s smiling face, the flush of cold in her cheeks, the tiny little curls that framed her face, and the fullness of her lips. He was quite looking forward to their evening on Wednesday. Quite. So much so, that he was beginning to worry a bit about himself. These feelings were starting to approach Richter levels, and he wasn’t entirely certain what to do about that.
This was quite bothersome, really, as there was a bit of reality gnawing a hole through him, and as of late, it felt as if that hole was becoming unmanageably large.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Flynn and Joe caught up with Mr. Castaneda, the Wassermans’ yardman, on Tuesday, who assured them he had not seen anyone come or go from the Wasserman house the day Mrs. Wasserman was murdered.
“I left around two,” he told them at the burger joint where they had convinced him to meet. “Didn’t see no one.”
“Did you have anyone helping you that day, Mr. Castaneda?”
“No, no one.”
“You gonna eat those fries?” Joe asked Flynn.
Flynn turned his head and gave Joe a look. “Help yourself.”
“Thanks,” Joe said, and picked up a handful.
Flynn turned his attention back to Mr. Castaneda. “Did you happen to note if Mr. and Mrs. Wasserman were home that afternoon?”
“I know she was. I saw her walking the dog,” he said.
“And did you happen to see Mr. Wasserman that morning?”
“No. I think he was already gone when I got there,” Mr. Castaneda said as he watched Joe take another handful of Flynn’s fries. Joe noticed him looking at him and offered him one. Mr. Castaneda shook his head.
“And you saw no one else come or go from the house but Mrs. Wasserman. Is that likewise correct?”
“Yeah,” he said, nodding.
“What about that pickle? You gonna eat that pickle?” Joe asked Flynn.
Flynn abruptly shoved his plate in front of Joe, who smiled and picked up the pickle.
“And again, how long would you say you were there, sir?” Flynn asked.
“Got there around eleven and left at two.”
“Brilliant, thanks. Just one more thing, if you’ll indulge me—had anyone assisted you at the Wassermans’ house prior to that morning?”
“Sure!” Mr. Castaneda said. “In the summer, there’s too much work to be done. I use my nephew.”
“His name?”
“Joaquin Castaneda,” he said readily. “But he didn’t do it
, Mr. Oliver. He’s in the army now.”
“Anyone in addition to Joaquin?” he asked as Joe polished off the pickles and the last of the fries.
Mr. Castaneda squinted his eyes as he thought about that. “Maybe once or twice.”
“This summer?” Flynn pressed.
Mr. Castaneda shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t remember. If I did, it was in the spring, I think. One of Joaquin’s friends.” He glanced at his watch. “Are we about done here? I have to get back to work. I got two yards this afternoon.”
“All done,” Flynn said, withdrawing his wallet and tossing a few bills on the table. “We appreciate your help, sir,” he said, coming to his feet. Joe did, too, but not before reaching for a toothpick. “Thank you kindly for your time.”
Mr. Castaneda nodded and got up to go. But before he got too far, Flynn said, “I do beg your pardon, Mr. Castaneda, but there is one more little thing.” He casually put his wallet in his trousers. “Did you like the Wassermans’ dogs?”
“Their dogs?” he asked, confused. “I’m not a dog guy—my wife’s got cats.”
“Did they bark?”
He thought about that for a moment and shook his head. “Not at me. I don’t know, I didn’t see them much. They were spoiled. Always inside.”
“Thank you again,” Flynn said.
Mr. Castaneda beat a hasty exit out the door. Joe chuckled as the door closed behind him and clapped Flynn on the back. “Hate to say I told you so, but I told you so. It was Wasserman.”
“And exactly how do you come round to that stunning conclusion?” Flynn asked as he picked up the check and started for the counter.
“Easy. Listen to a pro, pal. The yard man doesn’t see anyone coming or going all day. The lady is dead since late morning—”
“Or early afternoon, after Mr. Castaneda’s departure. The coroner did give quite a long range to time of death. You might recall reading that fact in the coroner’s report,” he said as he handed the pretty girl behind the register a twenty-dollar bill.
“Just like you to read all the crap. Me? I just called up the doc and asked him straight up to save myself some time. So anyway, Mom and Mom’s dog are already dead when Castaneda arrives. Pop has already left for work. No one hears or sees a thing that morning. It’s pretty clear cut, I’d say. Pop killed Mom and Mom’s dog, made it look like some sort of break-in, and skipped off to work. Just need to wrap up a motive and there you have it.”