Enter Evil

by Linda Ladd

  TEN

  The following day, Bud and I spent most of our time at the department, talking about the case, studying crime scene photos, deciding which warrants to issue, mainly because Charlie was on our case big-time about getting the paperwork done and on his desk. He wanted the Mikey Murphy case solved, and yesterday, at that. Bud started looking up info on the girl we thought attended Missouri State in Springfield, while I finished typing up my reports, put them in Charlie’s in basket, and then tried to get hold of Boyce Collins to set up an interview, but he was in flight and not answering his cell phone.

  After several more unsuccessful attempts to reach Collins, I gave up for the moment, tidied up my desk, and headed for Harve Lester’s house. Black was still in New York, so I was alone and ready to spend some quality time with my old friend Harve. A few years ago when he was my mentor and partner at LAPD homicide, he and I got in a jam that cost him the use of his legs. He has been in a wheelchair ever since, and I blame myself for what happened to him, but he’s no victim. Not now, not ever. Yes, he is quite a guy. Right now he’s my next-door neighbor, and my best friend in the world. I love the guy.

  In his fifties, with a gray buzz cut and as strong as an ox in his upper body, Harve is also a computer genius with a lucrative business going on with research corporations, not to mention headhunting and other things he’s added along the way. Of late, I’d begun to drop off my little pooch, the feisty French poodle, Jules Verne, at his house while I went out hunting for bloody, maniacal killers. Harve likes the company, and it is definitely mutual. Every morning, Jules’s little curly tail starts the crazy wag thing the minute Harve’s house comes into sight, and Harve’s usually waiting on the front porch to meet us. I tell you, this dog of mine could charm a terrorist.

  When I pulled up later, around six thirty, Harve wasn’t hunched over his keyboard in his sun-drenched converted sunroom office but in his motorized chair down by his dock on the water, frying fish in a big propane-fired kettle. Hands down, he fixed the best fish dinners this side of Key West, and Jules Verne was sitting on the ground beside him, almost at point, as if the designated cook’s assistant. All he needed was a French chef’s hat and apron that said Ooh la la. Probably just hoping Harve would drop one of those crispy, batter-fried fish fillets, or better yet, a hush puppy. Who knows, maybe Jules was a helluva better fishing buddy to Harve than I’d been of late.

  Climbing out of my Explorer, I walked down the sidewalk to Harve’s dock. The smell of frying crappie sent my stomach into spasms of delight, oh yeah, I do love home-cooked fish, nice and brown and crispy. Harve likes to use peanut oil in which to fry his fish, and then he’d cut up thick potato fries and raw onions and drop those in the sizzling grease, too. Last thing that went in was my favorite, and Jules’s, too, the hush puppies that turned out light and golden brown and tasted like oniony, puffy cornbread. No ban of cooking with fats at Harve’s house. He was old-fashioned that way. Uh uh, he liked to fry everything and then dip it in mayonnaise and fry it again, especially since he’d been watching Paula Deen’s cooking show on the Food Network. Not that he needed any of her recipes. Down deep, I think he’s in love with her.

  The big Cobalt 360 that Nicholas Black gave him some time back was bobbing slightly and every third beat bumping up against the rubber tires attached to the pilings. Always on the alert for brash and obnoxious reporters, probably because they’d been dogging me for the majority of my life, especially the last couple of years since Black and I had hooked up, I leveled my intense distrust on a well-rigged black and red bass boat that was motoring its way slowly up the middle of our little cove. The driver was sitting at the helm, the fishing chair bolted high in the bow, empty, and I didn’t see the flash of any binoculars lenses or TV cameras trained on me and Harve, so I let down my guard and stepped up onto the raised planks of Harve’s dock. It was newer than mine and better maintained. Hey, I’m busy.

  Harve glanced up as I approached him, my Nikes creaking on the boards. “Hey, Claire, ’bout time you happened by.”

  Jules Verne, on the other hand, made much ado about my arrival, jumping up like he’d stuck his nose in a light socket and heading at me like a hairy whirling dervish gone straight. He leapt into my arms from about three feet out but still hit me mid-chest and staggered me a step or two backward. He was an impressive track star for a miniature poodle. Maybe I should enter him in one of those canine shows where the dog runs a hundred miles an hour and jumps out in a pool after a ball. Nah, he’d probably only do that in the Seine.

  Black had brought him to me from Paris last Christmas, and now the little poufs on his tail and paws had grown out into softly ringleted white fur that I had to brush out nearly every night. Not that I coddled the dog but sometimes he got cockleburs tangled up in his hair. Truth is, though, Jules has turned out to be a pretty good friend and loyal bed partner to keep me warm when Black is off on his important business jaunts, such as right now.

  “I know, Harve, sorry, but Charlie’s got us working pretty hard.”

  I sat down beside him and hugged the dog against my chest. He kept licking my neck and chin until I let him go. Then he ran up and down the dock for a while as if marking his ground, then got all tired out and plopped down beside me, breathing hard. I dipped up some water in my palm and he licked it long and hard and sounded pretty much like a hog at a trough. Not that I get that many hogs at a trough in my daily routine.

  I said, “Smells good, Harve.”

  “You gotta stay and help me eat all this fish. I got me a good stringer this morning.”

  “You gotta deal there. Fried macaroni and cheese, too?”

  “Of course. My menu’s always the same, you know that. You’ve been gone a long time. New case?”

  “Yeah. Another freakin’ doozy, in fact.”

  Harve stopped rolling crappie fillets in cornmeal and wiped both hands on his apron. It was a long white one with a bib that tied around his neck and had Paula Deen and Sons embroidered across the front in red. He’d ordered it off her show. Maybe I ought to get him a Paula Deen cookbook for his birthday, maybe even an autographed copy. He said, “Got a bad one, huh?”

  “Oooh, yeah, worse than bad. A double homicide, to be exact. At least I think it is. One might be a suicide, but I’m betting that it’s not.”

  “Whoa, murders seems to be coming in waves nowadays.”

  I nodded. “Sorta like the old days in LA”

  “It’s hard to beat LA in total number of murders committed.”

  “We’re getting way too many for this little hidey-hole burg on the lake.”

  “Maybe. I dunno, though, seems lots of weird crimes and ugly killings are cropping up all over the place. My God, it’s on the news every damn night. People getting mad and killing their wives and children, goin’ to work and massacring their boss and coworkers. Schools, too, my God, talk about psycho. It’s sick shit, everywhere, everywhere you look.” He picked up another thick fillet and drudged it carefully in cornmeal, then let it slide gently into the boiling oil. “Wanna tell me the particulars?”

  I told him about it. If anybody had a good head for investigatory work, it was Harve. He was the best detective I’d ever known, and I’d known a lot of them. Even he looked a bit startled by our friend, Mikey, and the fun and games going on in his pizzeria.

  “You still don’t have the identity of the girl?”

  “Nope. We got a lead from the parents about one of Mikey’s exes. Sounds like the same kid, because we think the vic is Asian. Bud’s looking into that now. She’s supposedly a student at Missouri State. But we’ve also been told he’s had numerous Asian girlfriends. This girl could be any one of them.”

  “The perp’s another freak, sounds like.”

  I nodded, thinking that was a charitable description and that this guy deserved much worse. Leaning back on my palms, I watched Jules Verne sit up on his haunches and beg. I didn’t know he could do that, but Harve was a helluva better cook than I. Jules sure never
begged for my Special K breakfast bars. Harve tossed my pup a cooled piece of fish, and Jules sniffed at it as if unsure it was up to his culinary tastes. He probably wanted Hollandaise sauce smeared on it.

  But hey, he’s a Parisian dog, he was probably more used to eating fancied-up snails at posh restaurants. Black had ordered those things once at one of the fancier restaurants he dragged me to when we’d been on Bermuda and the dish had looked really cosmopolitan, and all, but the sight of it had turned my stomach, made me want to gag, actually, especially when he actually put a bite of it in his mouth. But then again, I’m a plain old detective type, not rich, not sophisticated. I had ordered plain broiled chicken and plain white rice and plain salad so I could actually tell what I was eating and get a little nourishment, which the fancy-smancy chef couldn’t mess up. But he just couldn’t stand it, I guess; he just had to line up little anchovies all over my lettuce, which are nasty little fishy things almost on the par with escargot and which I probably should’ve fished out and saved for Harve’s bait box. I am not exactly experimental when it comes to foodstuffs that I actually have to swallow. But the salad was served up in a chilled crystal dish, though, and that was pretty cool.

  “You go out on the lake alone today?” I was glad he could now. Black’s boat was completely handicapped accessible, not that I consider Harve in that category.

  “No. Joe McKay and Lizzie showed up on their way to your place and I invited them to tag along. We had a real good time, too. That little girl’s a sweetie and she’s startin’ to talk some now.” Harve looked at me. “I guess Black’s gone off somewhere again and that’s why you’re here.”

  “Aw, c’mon, Harve. He’s roughing it at the Ritz in NYC or somewhere equally uppity for a couple of days. Man, I’m telling you I can’t wait to get a bite of that fish. I haven’t had your fish in ages.”

  “You and Black are doin’ okay, I suppose?”

  Let me explain. Everybody at the lake is hideously obsessed with this romance thing that Black and I have going on. Don’t ask me why. Probably making bets on when Black moves on to Naomi Watts or Gisele Bundchen. “Yep, still plugging along. That’s a little hard to believe, right? Me, actually staying with somebody this long.”

  Harve shrugged. “He’s more than a somebody. He’s good for you, Claire. You’re good for him. Sounds like a winning combo. I’m happy when you’re happy.”

  I wondered if I was good for Black. Then I wondered if I was happy. Seemed that way to me, a real shockeroo because I wasn’t exactly used to being happy. No Happy Pete of Oak Haven was I. Always seemed to me that I got the best end of the Black/Me hookup. I did dig the guy, I must say. Even wished he was not away at the moment. The great big, black silk-sheeted bed that he also gave me last Christmas was gonna look pretty cold and empty again tonight. But I did have Jules Verne and two lethal weapons to keep me warm, and that wasn’t so bad. At least, temporarily, it wasn’t.

  When the thunderous vroom vrooms of a giant motorcycle echoed out over the cove, Harve and I turned together and looked down the gravel road. I knew who it was, even before Joe McKay roared into sight from the direction of my own cabin just down the road. He had his little daughter with him, a child who’d figured into a past case of mine, one that had turned up creepier than most. She still wasn’t right, not emotionally, not socially, not any other way, but I had to give McKay an A for effort, because he was as gentle with her as he could be, plus he’d had the sense to get Black professionally into the act. Black was being his regular good-guy self and seeing the kid pro bono, but the child still wasn’t saying much. Hell, who could blame her, after spending some nightmare time with us down in a dank cave holed up with a couple of psychopaths. I’m surprised I hadn’t been struck dumb by what had happened down there, too.

  “You didn’t mention Joe was coming for dinner,” I said, as Joe brought his big Harley-Davidson to a stop at the end of Harve’s sidewalk.

  “Yeah, he and his kid helped me catch the fish. Least I can do is ask them to help me eat it. He went home to bake an apple pie.”

  I laughed, couldn’t help it. “Oh, right, he baked a pie?”

  Harve looked surprised by my surprise. “That’s right. He said he’s real good at making pies.”

  “Bull. I bet he bought it at Kroger’s and put in his own pie pan.”

  “We’ll see, once we slice it up. I know a Kroger’s when I taste it. That’s the kind you make, if I recall.”

  I laughed, but I always thought Kroger’s pies tasted just fine. Truthfully, I couldn’t see the sexy bad boy McKay baking anything, much less the All-American apple pie. He was so thoroughly the dangerous type, so drenched in sex appeal, that he almost rivaled Black in the “fighting off of willing women” category, I’m sure, but I’d found out the hard way that he was okay, a real stand-up guy. He dearly loved his daughter, that was the one thing I knew about him for absolutely certain. I respected him for that.

  “Well, well, the sexy detective’s joinin’ us for dinner. My prayers are finally answered. Thank you, God.”

  McKay’s deep voice was right behind me. When I turned around, he was grinning at me, deepening some impressive dimples. Not as deep and impressive as Black’s are, of course. You see, I’ve got this thing for dimpled men, just can’t help myself. The more they had, the more I liked them. McKay had his long sun-bleached blond hair pulled back into a low ponytail, and I noticed it was shorter than usual. He’d actually been to a barber. He was holding Elizabeth’s hand.

  I looked down at her, and she stared at me without the hint of a smile, or any other kind of emotion, and then set her large cornflower-blue eyes on Jules Verne. I was holding him by his bejeweled collar, also from Paris, France, and I let the dog go. When he ran to Elizabeth and jumped up on her legs, she actually curved that sober mouth into a big beautiful smile and knelt down to pet him. That was the first time I’d ever seen her smile, or give us any insight into her troubled mind. McKay’s gaze met mine. He nodded and smiled. “Lizzie’s gettin’ a little bitty bit better every day, detective. Showin’ some signs of comin’ out of her funk. Guess I owe some of that to your better half, Mr. Super Shrink.”

  “I can see that. I’m glad.”

  I watched the child hug my dog, and Jules Verne ate up the little girl’s attention, wagging his tail like crazy and rolling around on his back so she could tickle his belly, something he demanded regularly from me. Even Jules Verne had a run-in with a certain bogeyman once upon a time, but he was tough as a rottweiler and came out of it a lot faster than Elizabeth. Sometimes, though, he woke up, whining and yipping, and I had a good idea what he’d been dreaming about.

  I said, “Maybe you oughta get her a dog, McKay. Something tells me she likes them.”

  “We’re gonna get one. You bet. Until then, I thought we’d just mosey over and let her get a dose of little Curly here. I wouldn’t mind playin’ with yours now and again, either.”

  Again, our eyes locked, and his sexual innuendo came across loud and clear. He had been coming on to me big-time since the day we’d met on that prior case but not in a creepy, intrusive way. He was getting really good, though, at thinking up ways to hang around my place and spend time with my friends, so we’d have to run into each other. I guess I was flattered. McKay was one helluva good-looking guy, but I’d made it crystal clear that I was with Black, a plethora of times, at that. McKay was proving himself to be a good friend, and as much as I didn’t like to admit it, I enjoyed being around him and listening to his slow drawl, not Georgia-soft like Bud, but North Carolina, maybe, with all those rounded O’s. He liked to joke, and believe it or not, I usually thought he was funny. Me, who never joked around or thought anybody was particularly funny.

  I said, “Like I told you, McKay, you’re welcome to come over and fish and swim off my dock, play with my dog, whatever it takes to help Elizabeth get back on track. Just don’t overstep your bounds.”

  “That’s real nice, Detective. I’ve been takin’ you up on i
t, but it seems you’re never home anymore. You move in with your shrink? That it?”

  “And say again, what’s that to you?”

  “You know how much you mean to me, Detective.”

  “Right. To answer your nosey question, we’re spending a lot of time at his place lately. But I live at my house.”

  McKay smiled, as if delighted to hear the last part, and Harve said, “I hope you brought a big appetite, Joe. We caught enough fish for a brigade.”

  “And I brought us dessert, just like I promised. I ain’t much at cookin’, but I can bake a mean pie.” He held up a large brown paper sack and balanced it on his open palm.

  “I can’t help but notice that’s a Kroger’s sack.” I said.

  “Now you’ve gone and hurt my feelings, Claire. That’s one thing my momma taught me how to do. She made the best piecrust this side of Tokyo.”

  “Well, now, I’m looking forward to tasting it. I think.”

  “Well, I made two, one for you to take home and share with the shrink. You know, just my way of paying you back for letting us fish at your place and him seein’ Elizabeth free of charge.”

  Harve said, “I’ll get the rest of this crappie dipped up and drainin’ on paper towels, then drop in some hush puppies, and we’ll be set.”

  “Let me ask you something, Harve.” I pulled the plastic evidence bags containing Mikey Murphy’s beaded bracelet and the key out of my pocket. “You ever seen one of these before?”

  Harve took the bags and examined them. “No, can’t say I have, but I bet I can pick up something on the Net ’bout that kind of bracelet.”

  Joe McKay took the bags from him. “Lemme see those. This got something to do with a case?”

  I nodded, not about to give him the details. Not that I didn’t trust him, but I didn’t, not enough to run a case with him like I did with Harve.

  “Wanna let me see what I can conjure up for you?”

  Oh, yeah, I forgot, Mr. Bad Boy McKay was also a purported psychic, especially in his own mind, but he had proved himself to be just that more than once, and I found that fascinating, if nothing else. Sometimes I dragged my feet a bit before asking him to hold my evidence and summon his inner magic voices, dreading what he was gonna see. Usually, when he had his little visions and I was the star, the immediate future didn’t bode well for my health.