“And then?”
“Then I drove home.” Labeck started pacing around the room.
“But tonight—why were you the one who found her?”
“I wanted to drop off the information she asked me for, the cost projections and stuff for the documentary. I was filming a school board meeting in Brookwood, so I thought I’d just swing by Rhonda’s and drop off the packet. Save having to express it over.”
Labeck sloshed more wine into his glass. “She didn’t answer when I rang her bell. I saw a light on in the back, and went around to the rear of the house. No answer there, either. I was about to leave when I caught something out of the corner of my eye, white, like a nightgown. I thought maybe Rhonda had gone back there and fallen down or something. I walked into her backyard and saw that the white thing was the cover on her neighbors’ lawn furniture, flapping in the wind.”
I gnawed on a knuckle, knowing what was coming.
“I figured I’d be a good Samaritan and dog down the tarp—my dad’s a carpenter and he’s always yammering about how weather wrecks furniture. But then I saw a hand in the folds of tarp. I whipped off the tarp and saw her—Rhonda. It was dark out, but I could still make out her features. She was frozen stiff, her eyes were wide open, bulging, and something was knotted around her neck.”
“What was it?” I remembered all the women at her office who’d joked about wanting to strangle her.
“I don’t know—something skinny and dark, maybe a belt, a piece of fabric. It was too dark to tell. I thought about calling for an ambulance. But it would have been pointless—she was beyond help. She looked like she’d been dead for hours. I just got out of there fast. I felt guilty leaving her there, almost like I’d killed her myself. But I didn’t know what else to do.”
I nodded. “There’s no way you could explain to the police that you just happened to stumble across a woman’s dead body. They’d have arrested you on the spot.”
He groaned. “They’re going to arrest me anyway. My fingerprints are on that tarp.”
“Maybe the snow will wash them off.”
“Why the hell did I have to go check that tarp? Why didn’t I just mind my own business?”
“Because you’re a decent person. You thought someone might be in trouble and you went to help. That’s how you are.”
“I wasn’t being decent. I was being stupid.”
“So you came straight here, to me?”
“Am I spilling my guts at the corner bar or am I in Mazie Maguire’s kitchen?”
Labeck was in trouble and he’d turned to me. Not Aspen Lindgren, not a lawyer. For once he needed me. “You knew I was living here?”
“Of course I knew. Did you think I’d just let you drop off the edge of the earth? Magenta fills me in on everything. He told me you kept a spare key duct-taped to the drainpipe, so I took it and let myself in.”
“You mean you and Magenta have been in contact since—”
Oh, never mind, there were more urgent matters right now. I’d settle Magenta’s hash later. “I think the lawn furniture belongs to a woman named Fran Schnabble,” I said. “She’s the one who set the leaves on fire the other night.”
“You think this Schnabble woman killed Rhonda?” Labeck frowned. “Pretty stupid to strangle someone and then set her out in your—what do you call those lawn chairs that stretch out?”
“A chaise lounge.”
“It’s shez-lonj.”
“Well, excuse my ignoramus American pronunciation.”
“Anyway, you don’t murder someone, then plop them in your backyard.”
“Fran Schnabble might,” I said. “Fran’s skylight leaks a little, if you get my drift. And she’s been going steady with cheap vodka.”
I tossed the rest of the turpentine wine down the drain and opened the refrigerator. Like everything else about this apartment, the fridge was old but comfortable. It had rounded shoulders, it hummed in the key of G, and its freezer produced frost thick enough to chip with an ice ax. Still, it was a friendly appliance, sort of like a large, shiny, white dog. “Are you hungry?”
Labeck thought for a moment. “I don’t know.”
I interpreted that as a yes, because he still seemed too stunned to separate stomach contractions from a general state of misery. I took out a carton of eggs and started breaking them into a bowl. Scrambled eggs, the wonder cure for being dumped, failing the bar exam, or finding a dead body in a chaise lounge.
“So you think Ms. Charcoal Starter did it?” Labeck asked.
“I think Fran would have happily water-boarded Rhonda to death if she got the chance. Maybe she strangled her, then decided to chill the body in her backyard all winter, and then—”
“Thaw her out in spring? Turn her into garden mulch?”
I belatedly recalled something. The egg slipped in my fingers and shells spattered into the egg batter. “My fingerprints are on that tarp, too. I helped Fran clean her lawn furniture.”
“But you had no reason to kill the woman.”
“She fired me Monday afternoon. We yelled at each other and sort of got in a fight.”
Labeck’s eyebrows rose. “Did this involve any nudity?”
I whacked him with my whisk. If Labeck was recovered enough to think about sex, he didn’t require any more emotional coddling.
“So what was your motive?” he asked.
“She had it coming,” I said. “She refused to give me my back pay.”
“Okay, you’re a good suspect. What’s that mark on your face?”
My hand flew to the scratch on my cheek. “When she hit me, her rings scratched me.”
“Not looking good, Maze. Where were you last night?”
“Upstairs, in Magenta’s apartment. We watched a movie together.”
“What movie?”
“Miss Congeniality.”
Labeck made a face. “Magenta is a traitor to his gender. Okay, so that still gives you enough time to rush over to Rhonda’s and kill her.”
“Well, I didn’t. Anyway, I would have had to stand on a chair to strangle her—she’s half a foot taller than me.”
He tossed the empty egg carton in the garbage. “All right. We both accept that you might have done the deed. What was my motive for killing Rhonda?”
I rinsed off the whisk and used it to whip the eggs into a froth. “You went into a homicidal rage when Rhonda wouldn’t put out?”
“It was more the other way around.”
Right. Rhonda would have put out for a lawn rake. And she would have been furious if a guy didn’t return her amorous fervor. I cut a chunk of butter and dropped it in the hot frying pan. When the butter was sizzling I poured in the egg batter and swizzled it around. “Have you got an alibi?”
“I was really beat last night. I went to bed.” Labeck was monitoring the toast. “Alone, Miss Nosy.”
The eggs and the toast got done at the same time. Labeck buttered the toast and I ladled eggs onto plates. We made a good team, I thought, tucking that concept away in a corner of my brain for later consideration. I set the food out on my table, a curbside throwaway someone had discarded because it had a broken leg. Mending it had been a simple matter of Gorilla Glue and sandpaper.
We were both quiet as we dug in to the eggs. Then Labeck looked up at me, almost apologetically. “I can’t just leave her body sitting out there, Mazie. It feels all wrong. I’ve got to tell the police.”
“Too dangerous. Someone will eventually find her body.”
He shook his head. “I should never have left her there.” Labeck was inclined toward rule breaking, but he had a moral code he adhered to even when it worked to his own disadvantage.
“All right—here’s what we need to do,” I said. “We call the police about her body, but do it anonymously. Otherwise they’re going to haul you off and grill you under a dangling lightbulb.”
“No way to do it anonymously. Even cellphones can be traced these days.”
I handed him a glass of orang
e juice. “This is why you came to Mazie Maguire, former felon and fugitive. We call from a pay phone.”
“Not many around. I think there’s one just down the street, near the Oriental Theater. The local drug dealers use it a lot.”
“The Oriental Theater. Hmm. Who lives in the apartment next to the Oriental Theater? Let me think. Why, that would be Ben Labeck.”
“So the farther away the better.”
“Right.”
“I’m sorry I got you into this.”
I pointed to Labeck’s plate. “Mangez votre pain blanc.”
“Eat your white bread,” he translated, managing a faint smile. “One of my grandmère’s sayings.”
“You taught it to me,” I said.
Its implied meaning was “Enjoy what’s in front of you, because things are about to get worse.”
Chapter Eleven
Doing the right thing is really overrated.
—Maguire’s Maxims
“Don’t use your bare fingers. It’ll leave prints.” Labeck spit on a napkin he’d swiped from the mini-mart’s coffee bar and wiped off the receiver.
“Great job, Sherlock—now they can extract DNA off your spit. Besides, that’s disgusting.” I used my wool muffler to wipe off the spit.
“Who’s the Sherlock now? That muffler is crawling with hair. Hair’s got DNA.”
We were operating under the assumption that the police would trace the anonymous call to whichever pay phone we used and take prints. We were at the rear of an all-night mini-mart on the far north side of town. It was nearly midnight, my eyelids felt as though they’d been boiled in lye, and I was beginning to think that phoning in the tip about Rhonda’s body was a huge mistake.
“Forget this,” Labeck muttered, gesturing toward the checkout counter. “That clerk is eyeballing you.”
“Well, he’s eyeballing you, too.”
“No,” Labeck said confidently. “It’s you. Guys notice you. Let’s go.”
Hand in hand, we walked out of the mini-mart. Just two sleepy people too much in love to say goodnight. The clerk, a large man who was a dead ringer for Saddam Hussein, scowled at us, stroking his mustache and conspicuously fingering the handgun he wore in his waist holster.
The sneet had turned back to snow, and there was about a half inch on the ground. Labeck brushed snow off the passenger window of his Volkswagen and held the door open for me. If I hadn’t felt like the walking dead, I might have experienced a twinge of nostalgia for the Volks, which despite its small size had been the setting for a few of our more memorable erotic encounters.
Labeck started the car. “Your face sticks out in people’s minds,” he informed me. “Next time, keep your hood pulled down.”
“Right, so I’ll blend in with all the other stickup artists.”
“I think it would be better if you stayed in the car and I went in.”
“I just thought of something. Convenience stores have security cameras. If the police trace the call, they can check the videotape for who was in the store at the time the call was made.”
“Why didn’t you think of that before? You’re supposed to be the criminal mastermind.”
“I’m thinking of it now,” I snapped.
Labeck drove south down Seventy-Sixth Street, both of us rubbernecking for phones. When I’d been a kid, pay phones had been everywhere. Even Quail Hollow, which was so small that a night on the town only lasted five minutes, boasted half a dozen pay phones. But now that even preschoolers had their own cells, pay phones were becoming as rare as two-dollar gas.
Labeck pointed at a strip mall at the intersection with Brown Deer Road. “There!”
The strip mall looked as though it had been the scene of a gang war. Most of its storefronts were boarded up, and the only ones remaining were a tattoo parlor, a video game store, and a shop that sold pastel-colored wigs of the sort favored by streetwalkers. There was a drive-by phone at the edge of the parking lot. Labeck pulled up in front of it and picked up the receiver with gloved hands. Amazingly, the phone was in service; even on my side of the car, the dial tone was clearly audible.
“Don’t forget to disguise your voice,” I said. “Every 911 call is recorded. You don’t want to sound like yourself.”
“Okay.” He cleared his throat, started to dial.
“Wait. You should practice. Put my scarf over your mouth.”
“Pick the hair off first.”
“Get over the hair thing!”
I handed him the scarf and he spoke through the fabric. “I’d like to report a body at—”
“Don’t hold the phone so close to your mouth. Make your voice higher.”
“I’d like to report a body at—”
“Not that high! You sound like you’ve been sucking helium.”
Sirens suddenly blared and a police car came tearing down the street, lights flashing. Reacting simultaneously, we ducked down in our seats like prairie dogs spotting a coyote. The patrol car passed and we popped back up. I was shaking.
“You think he noticed us?” I asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“Just the same …”
“Right.”
Labeck started the car and we drove off. Half an hour later, having driven around half of the city without spotting a phone to our liking, we walked into the Marquette University Student Union. Despite the late hour, students were still milling about, providing a screen of background noise. This was good. We didn’t spot any cameras, and we were both still young enough to pass for grad students. Nobody paid us the slightest attention. We headed for the row of pay phones against the room’s back wall. Seasoned veterans at crime by now, we both wore gloves and had our faces partially obscured by caps and hoods.
“You can do the honors,” Labeck said.
My hands shook. I picked up the phone. I fumbled through my pockets, looked at Labeck. “Do you have change?”
He tapped a finger at a sign on the phone: 911 calls do not require payment. I dialed.
A female voice came on the line, helpful and alert. “Emergency services. Is this an emergency?”
How did you answer that? Was it an emergency if the person was already dead?
“Umm …”
“Sir? If this is not an emergency situation you need to hang up and phone the police instead.”
Labeck pressed his head close to mine so he could hear. He gave me a thumbs-up. I’d been taken for a guy.
“There’s a dead person,” I whispered into the receiver. The whisper was Labeck’s idea; he thought it made it harder to identify gender. My own voice echoed back along the wires, sinister sounding.
“Sir?” said the dispatcher. “Did you say dead?”
“Yes.” I was playing this by ear. I’d never reported a body before. “It’s at—”
My mind went blank. I couldn’t remember Rhonda’s address. “Cumberland Drive.” I said finally. “In Brookwood.”
“What address, please?”
I looked at Labeck for help. He air-scribbled the numbers. “Forty-five oh six. It’s—she’s dead.”
I hung up. We stared at each other. I wondered if I looked as pale as Labeck did. As we sauntered out of the union, I discovered that our hands had somehow drifted together.
“Do you think I should have mentioned that she’s in the backyard?” I asked.
“Trust me,” Labeck said grimly. “They’ll find her.”
We returned to the car, which Labeck had parked in a handicapped zone because the odds of winning the Publishers Clearing House jackpot are better than finding a legal parking spot in the Marquette area.
“Now what?” I said, as he started the car.
“We go to bed, we try to sleep, we go to our jobs as usual.”
Labeck pulled out of the handicapped zone. “And when the police show up tomorrow, we act ‘shocked, shocked,’ to hear that Rhonda was murdered.”
Chapter Twelve
The bigger the combover, the smaller the brain.
—Maguire’s Maxims
Rhonda’s murder was all over the news next morning. Hottie Latte’s patrons sat transfixed in front of the café’s TV, watching as the story unfolded. Local reporters did their stand-ups with the Cromwell house, cordoned off in crime scene tape, as their background.
The strangling was immediately dubbed “The Cougar Killing,” and made the national as well as the local news. The crime possessed all the juicy components people love: attractive divorcée with a scandalous sexual history, bizarre death scene, car-vandalizing ex-husband, arsonist neighbor, penchant for young lovers—the titillation factor was off the charts, a water cooler topic guaranteed to slow down production in offices across the nation for weeks.
The café had a lull in late morning, just before the lunch crowd started trickling in, and Juju cornered me as I was refilling the napkin dispensers. “That Rhonda woman—the victim—she was your boss, wasn’t she? What was she like?”
I decided to go with the truth. “Not very nice.”
Carleen, the oldest Hottie at fifty-four, a grandmother who had no qualms about displaying her knockers in low-cut negligees, sidled over to listen in. So did Heidi, who’d taught third grade before being laid off, and now earned more at Hottie Latte than she had as a public-school teacher. The other two waitresses—tall, slender Giselle, who could have been a runway model except for the fact that she was so astigmatic she needed to wear thick glasses, and Samantha, a recent college grad with a degree in philosophy that qualified her to work as a telemarketer—also crowded around, eager to get the scoop.
I told them as much as I could, leaving out the part about who’d discovered the body. They peppered me with questions, and then all of us settled down to playing armchair detective, throwing out our theories without boring regard for the exact facts.
“Who do you think killed her, Mazie?” Heidi asked, sprinkling pumpkin-pie spice over a mountain of whipped cream on a Golden Harvest Mocha.
Naturally, I’d thought about this a lot. Exhausted as I’d been last night after our report-the-corpse mission, I’d been too wound up to sleep and had passed a restless night running suspects through my mind.
Crazy for You: Life and Love on the Lam (A Loveswept Contemporary Romance) Page 7