I sighed. “That sucks.”
“Yeah. You said this was the fourth time you’d picked him up today?”
“Yes. The first time he got tied up in the parking lot, and I was able to get lost in traffic before he caught up. The next three times I drove to the police station. I shook him the first two, but like I said, he got wise to my plan this last time.”
“Strange he was able to pick you back up three times.”
“Yeah, tell me about it.”
“Okay, there’s obviously some explanation. An easy one is that he put a tracking device on your truck. I’m going to call Amerson and ask him to look it over.”
“Why Amerson? I’m perfectly capable of looking at the truck.”
“Zoe, Amerson’s military career involved a lot of electronics. He used to be the guy planting the trackers. If there’s one there, he’ll find it.”
“How do you know about Amerson’s military career?” I asked. “What do you know?”
“Nothing I can say. Wait for him to take a look before you leave, okay?”
“When did you and Amerson become so close?”
“Amerson can be a dangerous man. He and I became close the day you started working with him.”
Ah. It was one of those things.
“Are you close with everyone here?” I asked.
“Close enough,” was all he said.
I found it kind of annoying Ellmann had been getting to know the people I was working with, because it was sort of like checking up on me. I knew he did it because he was worried about me, which I thought was sort of sweet. But mostly it was annoying.
We disconnected, and I handed the phone back to Natalie, who dropped it in her bag.
“Dean gave me a tour of the office,” she said. I thought she was blushing a little bit.
“Really? There isn’t much to see.”
“I think it’s great.” She was definitely blushing now.
“Great,” I said, packing the last of my things back into my bag and logging off the computer. “It looks like you’ll get your wish. I’ve got someone else to talk to.”
“Oh, really? You don’t have any more work to do here?”
What was going on? She’d been bellyaching because she didn’t want to come here; now she was whining because we were leaving.
Amerson appeared in the doorway. He was holding a small, rectangular-shaped electronic device.
“Hear you might have a bug problem,” he said. “Let’s check it out. I’ll show you how to use this thing.” He held up the device. “Plus, I thought maybe Natalie might like to come along and, you know, watch.”
For crying out loud! Amerson was blushing, too!
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered, swinging my bag onto my shoulder.
Now I knew why she didn’t want to leave.
We followed Amerson out of the building and gathered around the truck. Amerson was explaining the device, a scanning tool used to detect electronic signals put off by tracking devices, the most common types of tracking devices, and the most likely places to find them. I was listening because I thought this was information that might come in handy later. Natalie was listening because it was Amerson who was talking. I really hope I’m not like this with Ellmann.
Twenty minutes later, Amerson had scanned the entire truck and pronounced it bug-free. I got in the truck and started it. Natalie stood around talking to Amerson for another five minutes. Finally, she tore herself away and climbed in. I stepped on the gas before she had any second thoughts and tried to get out again.
As I drove, I kept my eyes to the rearview mirror. So far, I’d seen no sign of the Cadillac, but I didn’t expect that to last. Ellmann had said a tracking device on the truck was an easy explanation for how the Cadillac kept reappearing. Since there wasn’t a tracking device, I wondered what some of the more complicated explanations might be.
Natalie peppered me with questions about Amerson the entire drive. She was like a middle-schooler with a crush. It was exhausting. When I parked the truck, she climbed out and trailed me up the walk and onto Bonnie Matheson’s porch. She didn’t stop talking until Matheson opened the door.
“I have a couple more questions,” I said, handing her the new photo of Dillon. “Have you seen this woman?”
She looked up from the photo. “This is who you’re looking for?” Suddenly all of the color was gone from her face, and she looked like she’d seen a ghost.
“Yes. Do you know her?”
She handed the photo back to me as if she couldn’t touch it any longer.
“That’s her,” she said, her eyes darting to the abandoned house across the street.
“That’s who?” I asked.
I thought I knew.
“That’s Melissa Conrad.”
16
“Is this some kind of joke?” Matheson demanded. Her eyes were full of tears, and she looked on the verge of panic.
“No, Mrs. Matheson, I assure you, it isn’t.”
She folded her arms across her chest and glanced again at the Conrad house.
“I don’t know what you’re playing at,” she snapped, “but you better get off my porch right now.”
I nudged Natalie and began to move down the steps.
“Melissa Conrad and her husband were good people,” Matheson went on angrily. “Good people! And what happened to them was a tragedy! How dare you drag it all up again! Let them rest in peace!”
I herded Natalie to the truck then got in behind the wheel. I stared down the street at the Conrad house, sitting lonely and sad in a warm, cheerful neighborhood. Matheson was right; what had happened inside the Conrad house was a tragedy. The part I wasn’t certain she had right was who it had happened to.
I started the truck then drove down the street and stopped in front of the overgrown yard around the Conrad house. I jumped out and checked the little box hanging on the for sale sign for a flyer. There were none. I leaned back in the truck.
“Can I borrow your phone?” I asked Natalie.
“Why?” she asked as she dug in her bag. “Who are you calling? What are we doing now?”
She handed me the phone. I took it without answering.
I dialed the number for the real estate agent on the sign. After working my way through a series of prompt menus, I was finally connected to a real person.
“Can I speak to either Leroy or Barbara Jukes, please?” I asked, reading the names off the sign.
“I’m so sorry, ma’am, but there are no agents in the office until Monday morning.”
I really don’t like to be called “ma’am.”
“That’s too bad. I’m visiting from California and fly out early tomorrow morning.”
“And you’re interested in one of our properties?”
“Yes, the place on Douglas Road.”
“Douglas Road? Oh,” she said, as if thinking out loud. “You said you’re from California.”
“Is there any way someone could show me the house today? I’d really like to have something lined up before I go home.”
“I believe I can work something out,” she said.
That real estate market is pretty much in the crapper might have played a part here. But, more likely this girl recognized I might be their only shot of getting rid of the Conrad house. The house had been sitting empty for the better part of a year with absolutely no one even remotely interested. But an out-of-state buyer wouldn’t have any clue as to the gruesome history of the house. I felt bad for misleading her.
“Let me just take down your name and number,” she said.
I gave her Natalie’s name and number and hung up.
I waited five minutes, then the phone rang again.
“Ms. Ellmann?” It was the same girl.
“Yes,” I said.
“I was able to reach Leroy Jukes. He says he can meet you there in fifteen minutes.”
“Great.”
It was almost exactly fifteen minutes before a white Hy
undai SUV pulled over and parked in front of the truck. A short man with a round stomach and a round face got out and hurried over to us, hand outstretched, grinning widely. After introductions, Leroy handed us each a flyer on the house and chatted to us about it as he led us up the overgrown walk to the front door.
The house had a seven-figure price tag. There were six bedrooms, seven bathrooms, a finished walk-out apartment in the basement, a game room, a home theater room, an office, a mother-in-law suite, and two dozen other amenities. On paper, the house was amazing.
Leroy got the door open, and I noticed he hesitated before finally stepping inside. He chuckled, trying to laugh it off, but I could see the sweat covering his slightly ashen face. Natalie, unaware of what had happened here, went in and began looking around.
“Natalie, stay close,” I said.
I wasn’t sure what we’d find in the house, but uncertainties, like unanswered questions, bother me. In circumstances like these, I prefer to play it safe. At least when it’s my boyfriend’s sister we’re talking about. Ellmann would kill me if anything happened to her while she was with me.
For once, she didn’t argue. But as we walked through the entryway to the living room, she seemed to sense something about the house. It was the same thing Leroy and I were aware of; the only difference was we knew what had caused it.
Like any place that had been shut up for any length of time, the air inside was stale and dusty. All the furniture still appeared to be present, and everything was covered in white sheets. This just made it look creepy—and would have even if the house had had a benign history. There was a layer of dust on the floor and over the sheets. There were also cobwebs stretching between the walls, the ceilings, and the sheet-draped furniture. Watching the floor, I looked behind us; we were all leaving footprints in the dust. I saw no others. It appeared no one had been in the house since August.
Leroy’s voice had increased an octave, and his mouth was dry, but as we went through the house, he tried to talk about it, illustrating its high points. When we walked down the hallway toward what I guessed was the kitchen, Leroy stepped to the side of the hall. He raised a hand in the direction of the arched doorway.
“The kitchen is there,” he said. “Please, go in and have a look.”
Natalie and I took several steps, but Leroy didn’t budge. I assumed the kitchen would have been cleaned up after the house was released from the police and no trace of the incident would be visible. As I walked to the archway, I saw that was not true.
Natalie walked ahead of me, looking around with mild interest. I stopped and stared. This was not as gruesome as Grandma Porter’s house has been, with dark red blood splashed all over the white floor and cupboards. But neither had the place been professionally cleaned. Someone had been through the space with some type of cleaner and done what they could. There were no splashes or pools of coagulated blood anywhere, but I could see the markings pretty plainly on the floors and cabinets where there had been.
“What happened in here?” Natalie said, staring at the floor and cabinets.
I could only assume it was because I knew what had happened that I found it gruesome. Because she didn’t know, and she didn’t seem bothered. In fact, she didn’t seem to recognize it as a bloody crime scene at all.
Just as I had done in Grandma’s house, I froze for a moment, my mind stalled.
“Geez, what’s the matter with you?” Natalie asked, brushing past me and out of the kitchen.
I turned and followed her, my brain slowly spinning back into action.
Leroy, more than anxious to leave the immediate vicinity, took us upstairs. After having a look through all the rooms and bathrooms, seeing the furniture covered in sheets and the dust on the floor unmarked, I concluded we were the first people to set foot in the house since it had been shut up months before.
“There is also an apartment downstairs,” Leroy said. “There is an access point through the kitchen, but the apartment is a garden-level walk-out, so we can reach it from outside.”
Clearly his preference.
We went out through the front door, since the back door was also through the kitchen, and walked around the house. The first time I’d been here, I’d walked along the opposite side of the house to reach the back. I hadn’t made the complete circuit, and now I saw the door leading to the basement.
Leroy used his key to open the door, and the instant it was open, I noticed the difference. The upstairs had been shut up, abandoned, forgotten. The basement had been lived in. And based just on what I could see from the doorway, I thought it was still being lived in.
We were in the kitchen, which opened to the living room. This space, like that above, was fully furnished. But this furniture wasn’t covered, and there wasn’t much dust. There was a newspaper less than a week old on the kitchen table, dishes and a pot in the dish drain, and bread and bananas on the counter.
“What the …” Leroy said, staring around dumbly.
I walked past him and into the kitchen, pulling open cupboard doors and drawers as I spoke.
“Is the electricity to this place still on?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t think so,” he said.
I went to the fridge and opened the door. The electricity was on. I went to the sink and turned on the tap; water came rushing out.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Leroy said.
I left him standing in the doorway and started through the rest of the apartment, Natalie close behind me. The place was huge, with three bedrooms and four baths. The master bedroom was obviously being used, while the others had been untouched, the furniture still under sheets. There were things in the closet and bathroom, the bed was unmade, and there was a desk in one corner. The desk was covered with dozens of newspaper articles, clipped from papers as far back as five years. There was also a laptop computer.
I pulled out the chair and sat down, opening the laptop. I’m not extraordinarily savvy when it comes to computers, so I basically just looked over the icons on the desktop then hit the start button and saw which programs had been used recently. Internet Explorer was the main one. I opened it then looked back through the browser history. Most of the sites were newspapers: the Coloradoan, the Denver Post, the Greeley Tribune, papers for Aspen, Colorado Springs, and Vail, as well as half a dozen international ones. The sites that weren’t media-related looked informational. I opened one at random. The page loaded, and a giant photo of a Russian egg like the one we’d seen at Dunn’s house appeared. A quick glance through the page told me whoever had been using this computer had been doing research. I chose a couple other sites and found more research on rare and valuable art pieces.
“Who’s staying here?” Natalie asked.
“I’m not sure.”
But I thought I had an idea.
I went to the bedside table and pulled open the drawer. Besides the normal stuff you’d expect, there was also a photo. I picked it up and looked at it. It was a photo of a dark-haired baby boy of about one and a half. Feeling as if a couple pieces had just fallen into place, I replaced the photo then turned and left the room. Leroy was still in the doorway, talking on his phone.
“Well, we obviously need to call the police,” he was saying. “There’s a squatter here.”
“Hey, Leroy,” I said, walking up to him. “Why don’t you call them back?”
He looked at me then put up an index finger, telling me to wait.
I pulled my rinky-dink badge out of my pocket then snapped my fingers a couple times, calling his attention back to me. When he turned to me, I waved the badge.
“You need to call them back,” I said again.
He repeated this then hung up.
“You’re already here,” he said. “What are you going to do about this?” He waved an arm toward the kitchen. “About this squatter?”
Leroy, like Vandreen yesterday, was confused about what exactly my job is.
“You’re going to want to hold off on doing anything ab
out the squatter for right now,” I said.
“Is that right? Why don’t you just do your job, huh? And I’ll do mine.”
“Oh, she’s not—” Natalie began.
“Not in the business of taking orders,” I said loudly, cutting her off.
Natalie had been so helpful up to this point.
“I need you to answer a couple questions, Leroy. Who put this house up for sale?”
“I can’t disclose that sort of information,” he began, indignant, as if I’d asked him something offensive and personal, like what he preferred to wear to bed.
“Stop it. Property ownership and sales are public record, so you’re just being a pain in the ass. Who?”
“Ian Dawson,” he said. “He inherited the house after … .” His eyes inadvertently darted up, as if he might be able to see the kitchen. “Well, after the incident. Naturally, he wanted to sell.”
“What incident?” Natalie asked.
“Who is Ian Dawson?” I asked Leroy. “Was he related?”
“He was Mitchell’s brother.”
“Mitchell’s brother?” I asked. “If Mitchell had a brother, why did his son go into foster care?”
Leroy shrugged and shook his head. “I have no idea. I don’t know anything about any children.”
“Ian Dawson only has a post office box listed. I need an address and a phone number.”
“I don’t—”
“Look,” I cut in. “You asked me to take care of your squatter problem. That’s exactly what I’ll do, but I’m going to need that address and phone number.”
He debated for an entire minute before he finally sighed and reached into the leather zipper binder he was carrying. He flipped to the page he wanted then made a note on the back of one of his business cards and handed it to me. I glanced at it then thanked him and put it in my pocket.
We locked up, and Leroy put the key back in the lockbox on the front door. I asked him not to show the property again until he heard from me, and he informed me, rather crisply, that wouldn’t be a problem. The house had been on the market for ten months, and I’d been the only one to call about it.
Catherine Nelson - Zoe Grey 02 - The Trouble with Theft Page 20