So we took the elevator up to the top floor and walked over to the door. It was open about a foot.
“Did it look like this when you saw it?” I asked.
Zachary shook his head. “It was open just a few inches. The door mat was caught in the gap. I pushed on it and called out to see if anyone was inside.”
“I guess the neighbor across the hall was the one who notified you?”
The other two penthouse apartments were in the other direction, on the far side of the elevator banks.
Zachary nodded.
“And I guess he didn’t see or hear anything?”
“He was coming home,” Zachary said. “And he noticed the door being open.”
So whoever had been here, was already gone by then.
I squared my shoulders. “Let’s do this.”
Zachary squared his, as well. I gave the door a push. It opened far enough to let us through if we sucked in our stomachs and slithered sideways.
I had been prepared for destruction. When there wasn’t much destruction to be found, it was both a relief and, in a funny way, a letdown.
The place was messy, sure. It looked a lot like David’s office had, before I started cleaning. Stuff everywhere. But there had been less stuff here to begin with, so the mess was less. In the kitchen, the drawer with the bank statements and bills had been upended on the floor, so there were papers everywhere, and a couple of the utensil drawers had been emptied, too—God knows why. So there was a jumble of credit card statements and silverware, electric bills and spatulas, scattered across the floor. The pillows had been taken off the sofa and tossed on the floor, but that was it for the destruction in the living room. And in the bedroom, the old files David had kept there, boxed up in the closet, were spread across the floor along with the entirety of David’s wardrobe. Shirts, pants, and jackets had been yanked off their hangers and tossed to the ground. Sometimes, the hangers were still in place. Sprinkled across the top of everything was David’s socks and underwear.
I sighed. “I’d better call the police.”
Zachary nodded, his eyes big. “I’ll go downstairs and wait.”
I turned away from the mess. “I’ll come with you. There’s no point in hanging around here.” And Mendoza would probably tell me I had compromised his crime scene, even if I didn’t touch anything.
I made the call directly to the police hotline, and asked them to notify Mendoza. That way I could put off having to talk to him a bit longer. If I got lucky, maybe he’d decide it wasn’t worth his time stopping by to check out a common, garden-variety burglary. Maybe a fresh homicide had landed in his lap, that took precedence over David’s.
It was a horrible thing to wish for, and I felt a bit guilty for hoping, but luck would be a fine thing.
Of course, I wasn’t that lucky. He walked into the lobby twenty minutes later.
By then, Zachary and I were chatting like old friends, and Mendoza’s brows rose as he looked from one to the other of us. “Convention?”
“Huh?... Oh.” It took another moment for me to put two and two together and understand what he was talking about.
Then it dawned. Redheads aren’t very common, and here were two of us, heads together, chatting up a storm. Zachary was more of a strawberry blond, really, but close enough.
“This is Zachary Brennan,” I said. “Zachary, this is Detective Jaime Mendoza.”
“Nice to meet you, Detective,” Zachary said. His cheeks were flushed with excitement at finding himself face to face with a real, honest-to-goodness homicide detective.
Mendoza nodded, but turned to me. “I thought I told you to stay out of trouble.”
I shook my head. “You can’t pin this on me. I was at home, minding my own business, when Zachary called. And I waited to bother you until I made sure there was something to bother you with.”
Mendoza looked unconvinced.
“Believe it or not, Detective, seeing you is not the high point of my day. And I’m not making up excuses to make it happen.”
He grinned at that, dimples and all. My toes curled.
“So what’ve we got?” he asked.
I reeled in my rampant hormones. “Someone went through David’s penthouse. There are papers and kitchen utensils and clothes all over the floor.”
“You discovered it?” Mendoza glanced at Zachary, who shook his head.
“The neighbor across the hall did. He called me, and I called Mrs. Kelly.”
“And I called you,” I said.
Mendoza nodded. He glanced around the lobby. “This place have security cameras?”
“On the secondary doors,” Zachary said. “Not on this one.”
“Someone’s supposed to be here 24/7?”
“Six AM to midnight. The sliding doors are locked through the night. Only the secondary doors are open. Garage and side entrance.”
“And those have cameras?”
Zachary nodded. “Motion activated. They come on when the door opens.”
“And the rest of the time someone’s here?”
Zachary shrugged. “We come and go, you know? I was upstairs for ten minutes with Mrs. Kelly just now. And for five minutes earlier, when I first heard about the open door. And I’m always outside hailing cabs or helping to carry packages or something.”
“So someone could get inside and upstairs without being seen? As long as he—or she—timed it to when your desk was empty?”
Zachary nodded. “You want I should pull the feed from the secondary cameras?”
Mendoza hesitated. “Does someone have to have a key to get through those doors?”
Zachary nodded.
“Then no. Whoever we see, will belong here. Any cameras on the front?”
Zachary shook his head.
“Give it some thought,” Mendoza said. “See if you can remember the people who went in and out this afternoon. And whether there was anyone who didn’t belong.”
Zachary nodded, already groping for pen and paper.
“When I come back downstairs, we’ll see what you’ve got.”
“Yessir.” Zachary flushed excitedly.
“Nice kid,” Mendoza told me when we were in the elevator on our way back upstairs.
“I guess.” He wasn’t mine, so I couldn’t take credit. “He told me he’s waiting to turn twenty-one so he can apply to the police academy.”
His brows arched. “How old is he?”
“Twenty,” I said.
“Why isn’t he in college?”
“He said he was sick of school.”
“Hmmph,” Mendoza said.
I hid a smile. “I’m really sorry I had to bother you again today. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to.”
“You’re not bothering me,” Mendoza said. And then ruined it by adding, “This is my job.”
“But I was rude to you earlier, and I imagine you would have preferred not to have to deal with me again for a while.”
That gained me another grin. My stomach swooped. “Believe me, Mrs. Kelly, if your brand of rudeness was the worst thing I had to deal with on a daily basis, I’d consider myself very lucky.”
Well, yes. Compared to dead bodies and blood, guts, and gore, my putting my foot in my mouth probably didn’t rank very high. Still, I felt bad.
“I really am sorry, though.”
“Don’t be. I was the one who started it.” When the elevator came to a stop and the doors opened, he gestured me out. “After you.”
I wanted to keep arguing, to make sure he wasn’t still angry, but that would make him angry, so I didn’t. When we got to the door to David’s penthouse, he glanced at me. “It’s empty?”
“As far as I know,” I said. “I didn’t see anyone.”
“Stay here.”
Why, if I had already been inside?
But mine was not to argue. I nodded meekly and waited beside the door until he came back, holstering his gun in a harness under his arm. “C’mon in.”
I thought about say
ing something snarky, but bit my tongue. “Thank you.”
“You know, Mrs. Kelly,” he told me as we walked back into the penthouse, “you shouldn’t have gone inside. You should have called me and waited.”
“I told you. I didn’t want to call until I knew there was something to call about. If the place looked pristine, you would have been angry.”
“I would have been angrier if someone had shot you and you’d bled to death on the floor while I made my way here,” Mendoza said.
A chill crept down my spine, like a trickle of ice water. That possibility hadn’t even crossed my mind.
“Whoa.” He reached out and grabbed my elbow. I guess I’d turned pale.
I looked up at him, sort of blindly. Not seeing him so much as the horrible possibilities. “Do you think whoever did this was still here when Zachary came upstairs earlier?”
“Might have been,” Mendoza said.
Good thing Zachary hadn’t gone inside, then. Or he might not be sitting downstairs making his list of tenants right now.
“But once he knew Zachary had noticed the open door, he would have left. So we weren’t in any danger.”
“Unless he wanted to shoot you.”
Mendoza waited a second to let that one sink in. “So tell me about this.” He gestured to the mess with his free hand. He must have realized he was still holding on to my arm with the other, because he let go.
I looked around at the kitchen floor. “I’m not sure what to say. I don’t understand why anyone would do something like this.”
“There are a couple of reasons someone might,” Mendoza said and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Someone wanted to give you a mess to clean up. Or someone was looking for something.”
“The same something someone was looking for in David’s office in Hillwood yesterday?”
“Seems logical,” Mendoza said.
“Wouldn’t it be easier to make everything look pristine, like no one had even been here?”
“Sure. But that’s not always possible.”
“Yesterday, maybe not. I imagine time was of the essence when this person, whoever he was, went through the office. Someone could have walked in at any time and caught him or her in the act.”
Mendoza nodded.
“But the penthouse was empty all day. I left this morning, and I haven’t been back. There was no need to hurry. And I don’t think there was really a need to empty out the silverware drawers, either. I don’t think whatever he was looking for, was there.”
Mendoza shook his head. “When people make a mess like this, it’s usually because they’re angry, and throwing things around relieves their feelings.”
Like a child with a temper tantrum. I remembered Kenny throwing his crayons at the walls as a child, if he didn’t get what he wanted.
Not that I was trying to pin this on Kenny. Although he was as likely a suspect as anyone else at this point.
“I don’t think that’s the case this time,” Mendoza added.
I stopped thinking about my stepson. “Why?”
“The mess is too orderly.” He gestured around the kitchen. “There’s plenty of glass here. Someone who was angry would start with that. It’s very satisfying, watching glass break. Makes more of a mess that someone has to clean up, too.”
True.
“Not to mention the chance that someone could cut themselves.”
Yes, indeed. That was probably incentive to someone who was angry, as well.
“The sofa pillows are on the floor,” Mendoza continued, moving from kitchen to living room, “but they’re intact. Someone who was really pissed, would probably go at them with a knife.” He nodded at a block that was still sitting pristinely on the kitchen counter, full of cutting instruments of varying sizes.
I nodded, and looked around at the mess with new eyes. Now that he’d pointed it out, it all made sense. “So what made someone do this, then? If it wasn’t necessity, and it wasn’t anger?”
“The hope that you wouldn’t notice anything missing if the mess was big enough,” Mendoza said.
Ah. Yes, that made sense, too. “I guess, if he hadn’t found it, the mess would have been bigger.”
“Like your office at home,” Mendoza nodded.
I glanced around. “Well, then it wasn’t David’s will he was looking for. Because I already looked for that, and it wasn’t here.”
Mendoza nodded. “I’ve read the will.”
Really?
“Mr. Hess was kind enough to give me a copy.”
I smiled. “I don’t imagine you gave him much choice.”
“Not much,” Mendoza agreed. “It’s standard procedure in a homicide investigation to determine who benefits.”
Of course. “And do Kenny and Daniel?”
“It’s hard to determine what might be worth murder to someone else,” Mendoza said, “but between them, they inherit enough to get their business off the ground.”
“So they might have killed David.”
“Might have,” Mendoza nodded.
“Are you going to check their alibis for this afternoon? And ask them whether they tossed the office yesterday?”
“As soon as I leave here,” Mendoza said. “Are you going back home?”
I nodded. “I’ve cleaned up one mess today. I’m not cleaning up this one.”
“I’ll send a team over,” Mendoza told me. “See if they find anything different here than they found in your house.”
“Do I have to wait for them?”
He shook his head. “Zachary can let them in.”
Good. I was feeling wiped out. All I wanted to do, was get home to my house in the woods and curl up on the sofa with a glass of wine and a movie and forget everything that had happened.
Chapter 16
I WAS WALKING through a desert. The air was so hot it hurt to pull it into my lungs, and I could hear my hair crackling as the moisture was drawn out of it. Or maybe that was my skin crackling as it dried and pulled closer to my bones. If I didn’t get out of here soon, I’d burn to a crisp. And no one would miss me, because I had no one in my life to mourn my passing. No husband, no children, no mother or father...
I would have traded my soul for a sip of water, but there was none to be had. Just sand dunes as far as I could see, and the burning heat of the sun, searing my eyeballs. I didn’t even have tears to cry for my sad situation. And my chest hurt, like a heavy weight was pressing down on it. I tried to cough, but that hurt, too—
And then a spasm of hacking brought me upright and awake, into a reality that was hardly better than the dream.
A reality that was worse than the dream, because it was reality.
The house was on fire. I could feel the heat all around me, and hear the crackling of the flames and the groaning of timbers. Smoke seeped under the bedroom door and rose, wafting toward me. My chest hurt from trying to breathe the air, and another spasm of coughing bent me nearly double on the edge of the bed.
Move!
I had to, or I was going to die right where I was, in the bed I had shared with David.
Clothes.
I peered through the smoke and gloom for something to wear. Something more than this slinky satin and lace nightgown. Why hadn’t I put on something more practical when I went to bed last night? It wasn’t like I had anyone to dress sexy for.
If I survived this, I’d start sleeping in yoga pants and T-shirts.
No time.
No. I’d have to get out the way I was, or there was a chance, a very good chance, I wouldn’t get out at all.
Sometime, I had heard that the air was cleaner closer to the ground. So I rolled off the bed and crept, on hands and knees, across the floor to the door, stopping every so often to hack up a lung. The floor was warm, almost as if there were heating cables under it, and the door was hot enough to burn my palm when I touched it. I knew better than to open it. Something about funnels and flames. Keep things closed.
There was only one thing for i
t, then. I’d have to go out a window.
A second-story window.
I crept back toward the bed, across the desert-like expanse of carpet, cursing David for insisting on this twenty-by-twenty-five master bedroom with a vaulted ceiling. Why couldn’t he have been satisfied with a nice, tight, ten-by-twelve box, instead?
Beyond the door, I could hear the flames crackle. The floor felt hotter than it had been just a minute ago, too. That might have been my imagination. On the other hand, it might be that the flames from downstairs were ready to burst through and would devour the second story any moment now.
I reached up and grabbed a corner of the goose-down comforter on my way past, and dragged it with me as I crawled. When I got to the nearest window, I wrapped it around myself before I staggered to my feet.
The air was so much worse at five-and-a-half feet than a foot off the floor. I knew I wouldn’t have much time to make my break for it—literally—before the smoke knocked me out. I was lucky I was still breathing. So I made sure I was clutching the comforter tightly, but I didn’t bother to take a deep breath—it would only make me cough—before I threw myself at the window.
It shattered into a thousand pieces, some of which sliced into the comforter and into the top of my head as I tumbled past the jagged shards, headed for the ground and the holly bushes below.
It wasn’t a very long trip, and my life did not flash before my eyes, so I knew I wasn’t dying. I did know the landing would be unpleasant, if not as unpleasant as it could have been if the vegetation hadn’t been there.
The thing about holly bushes is that they’re nice and dense, and they have leaves all year around. They broke my fall very nicely. Or as nicely as could be expected, when I’d jumped out of a second-story window.
The other thing about holly bushes, of course, is that their leaves are hard and pointy. They cut me almost as badly as the glass. And although landing in the bushes sure beat landing on the hard ground, the impact still knocked the wind out of me. I couldn’t do anything for several seconds but lie there and try to catch my breath.
Ditching David Page 16