Shin Lee’s house at 233 Dusty Pines Place was a ten minute drive across town. We had decided to arrive a few minutes earlier than the 9:30 time noted on the card. If Colt wasn’t in trouble, and his plan had been to meet her at that time, we’d intercept and, although relieved, give him a piece of our mind for scaring us half to death. If Colt didn’t show, we’d knock on her door and see if Shin Lee had answers that would lead us to him. I wasn’t anticipating the chattiest of conversations, given her stated lack of English skills, but if she lived in Rustic Woods, the woman had to be able to speak at least some of the language. She was last seen knocking on Colt’s door after all, and the only languages he spoke were English and Surfer Dude.
“Shin Lee,” I wondered out loud as we turned off our White Willow Lane toward Rustic Woods Parkway. “Is that Chinese?”
“Korean,” Howard answered confidently.
“I don’t supposed you speak Korean, do you?”
“Enough.”
“Really?”
“Worked a Korean organized crime case for over a year. Picked up a fair amount. I’ll think we’ll be able to communicate, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
I was wondering that, and many other things about my husband’s once secret job, but my phone jingled again, announcing the arrival of another text. We’d put my phone in the cup holder between us for quicker access. Howard picked it up and eyed the display.
“Colt,” he said, tapping to read.
“Please tell me it says, ‘Hi guys, I’m home, sorry for the confusion.’”
Howard shook his head. “Sad to say, no, but he’s letting us know he’s the one sending the texts.”
“What do you mean?”
“This one says Curly. He’s smart and at least he’s still alive.”
“How’s that smart? He always calls me Curly.”
“Exactly. Only he calls you Curly. He’s telling us this is him and not someone else with his phone.”
The phone jingled again. Another text.
“Is that Colt again?”
Howard nodded. “RMPTCHTG.”
“What?”
“That’s what this says. RM space PT space CHTG.”
“What the heck?”
“Three strings of letters.”
“More code?”
“Maybe.”
Howard’s phone rang this time and my hopes soared that it was Colt. “Who is it?”
“Don’t know,” said Howard.
He’d have known if it was Colt because his name would have showed on his caller ID the same way it does on mine. Howard answered the unknown phone number. “It’s Lamon,” he said to me. “Here, let me put you on speaker, Erik.” A second later, Howard, Officer Erik Brad Pitt Lamon, and I were conversing while I drove. “Hi, Barb,” said Erik’s voice. “How are you doing?”
“I’m worried, Erik. Worried.”
“Understand that. Listen, I don’t have an official report yet, but a woman named Cherry Sparrow has contacted Loudoun County Police claiming that her husband, Orson Sparrow has been missing for more than twenty-four hours. They’ve asked her to come in for possible identification of the remains you discovered yesterday.”
I hadn’t really been dying for that information, since finding Colt was far more important.
“How will she identify them?” asked Howard. “Markings on the hand?”
“Not the hand. Evidently there was a large brown patch on his-”
“No, no!” I interrupted. “No! Don’t need to hear it!” I shouted.
“She doesn’t like the word,” explained Howard. “But thanks, we got the idea.”
“I’m more interested in the Mercedes, Erik,” I said, moving to topic back to Colt. “Did you find anything on that license plate?”
“That’s the strange thing about the Sparrows, Barb,” said Lamon’s voice. “Cherry Sparrow claims her husband never came home after leaving in a huff, uh...” his voice trailed off briefly. “Thursday. Thursday afternoon. When she reported him missing on Friday, she told Loudoun County police that he’d come to Rustic Woods to talk to a couple who had been renting some farm land from them. In Loudoun, I mean. Apparently he was having some disagreement with them over the land—it’s unclear. That couple’s name is Rick and Rita Ash.”
“Okay…” I said, confused. “What’s strange about that?”
“The car whose plates you asked me to run belongs to a Rita Ash who lives in Rustic Woods.”
Chapter Nine
Erik asked where Colt’s car was parked. When we told him Sassafras Lane, he went silent for a minute.
“You still there?” Howard asked.
“Yeah. Hang on.” Then he gave a low whistle. “That’s just one street over from where Rick and Rita Ash live.”
Howard leaned back in his seat. “I had a feeling. Anything you can do?”
“I can send a car out to the house. I’ll get back to you when I have more information.” He clicked off.
Just minutes away from our destination, Howard and I did a verbal run-through of Colt’s photo diary from that morning. He’d been following an Asian man who rendezvoused with a white woman. She’d given him an envelope. The white woman sped away in a red Mercedes and Colt followed. Was the Asian man related to Shin Lee? He could be her husband possibly. Or maybe he was Dr. Kyung Kong? Or both? Had Colt been hired by Shin Lee to follow him? He often complained that many of his clients were jealous spouses.
Continuing on, Red Mercedes Lady, who we now presumed was Rita Ash, traveled to three different grocery stores. She left each carrying a heavy bag. The last photo had been taken at 11:59 in the morning, just before noon. So what did Colt do between 11:59 and somewhere around 2:30, when Kyle saw him park in front of the Fetty’s house? We’d reached 233 Dusty Pines Place, but no hard conclusions about Colt or how much danger he might be in.
To say that 233 Dusty Pines Place was a house would be grossly unfair to the dwelling. It was somewhere between a McMansion and a real mansion and way bigger than our own modest humble abode. Shin Lee lived in some sweet digs. A long, long, long paved drive wound from the road toward what could only be described as small parking lot in front of the massive three car garage. The house itself was lit up, both inside and out, illuminating its Mediterranean-like structure. It looked like it belonged in Cannes, overlooking the sea, rather than surrounded by tall oaks in Rustic Woods, Virginia. I especially loved the tile roof and wondered how they got that one past the Home Owners Association. A large donation of Ben Franklins to the pockets of HOA board members, guessed a cynical me.
Howard instructed me to drive past, then turn around and park on the opposite side of the road just far enough away not to be obvious, but close enough to easily view the house and the driveway. I turned the ignition off and glanced at the dashboard clock—9:15 p.m. We waited.
“So,” I said. “you and me, alone, in a dark car. Maybe I wasn’t lying to my mom. We could turn this into a date night.” I put on a come-hither grin. “Of sorts.” Wink.
He eyed me suspiciously. “You mean, steam up the windows? Then we couldn’t see.”
“Vision is overrated.” I winked again.
“I think you have something in your eye,” he teased.
“Just a twinkle for you, you hunk o’ man, just a twinkle for you.” I was leaning over jokingly for a romantic smooch, when he blurted, “Here we go,” and reached under his seat retrieving a pair of binoculars.
“How did those get there?” I asked. It was my van, and binoculars were not part of my roadside emergency repair kit.
“I snuck them out of the house when your mother wasn’t looking.”
“We have binoculars?”
“I have binoculars.”
Yes, he did, and his face was
glued to them as we both watched a four-door sedan pull into the driveway. It motored slowly toward the garage and parked. Two people, a man and a woman, exited the car, met to join hands, and strode together down the long walkway leading to the front stoop. It didn’t appear that they rang a doorbell or knocked and then waited to be greeted, but rather just walked right in. I glanced again at the clock on the dash: 9:20.
“Did they just walk in without knocking?” I asked of the man with a telephoto view.
“Yeah. Wasn’t Shin Lee.”
Five minutes later, another car, a Lexus crossover, pulled in and next to the first car. Another couple approached the house and walked in without knocking. A third car that arrived at 9:35 produced yet another hand-holding couple, but this time they knocked. I couldn’t see, but Howard said it was a man who answered the door.
By 9:55, four more cars had arrived, all couples, some knocked or rang, others let themselves in.
Finally, I had to venture a guess. “Do you suppose that this is a,” I made finger quotes in the air, “club meeting?”
“There’s only one way to find out,” he said.
“Are you serious? You want to walk into that den of iniquity?”
“You were just talking about gettin’ jiggy wit it around a steering wheel.”
“I wasn’t inviting someone else to join us!”
“I can go alone.”
“You’d look out of place.”
“Then come with me. Everything Colt did leads us here. You’ll be fine. You have your mace, remember. And I’m a human killing machine.”
“Really?”
“No, but I’ll watch out for you. You’re my wife and the mother of my children after all.”
“I’m not dressed for it. It looked like most of those women were wearing dresses.”
“You look fine.”
“Howard, this blouse is fifteen years old. It still has a stain from when I was breastfeeding Bethany.”
“Breast milk stains?”
“No. I was trying to eat French fries and nurse at the same time. Ketchup dripped.” I pointed. “See, right there.”
“Are you stalling?”
I sighed. “What if no one finds me attractive?”
“I find you attractive, isn’t that enough?”
“But if this is a swingers’ party, other men should be looking at me, right? Isn’t that how it works? Couples trading partners?” I shook a finger at him. “And you, by the way, are not allowed to look at other women.” I slipped out of my jacket. If I was going to pretend to be a swinger, the ten-year-old fading and pilling fleece just wasn’t going to cut it.
“I haven’t looked at another woman since I first laid eyes on you in the campus library.”
“Well now you’re just being silly.”
“No, I’m not. It’s the truth.” He kissed me softly, sweetly. “Now, come on, let’s go.” He opened the door, walked around the front of the van, opened mine, and took my hand.
I instantly noticed something was missing. “Wait, where’s your cane?”
“It’s getting in the way. I’m fine.”
“It was part of the deal—you bring your cane, remember?”
“And you were supposed to bring your mace, but I happen to know it’s in that jacket you just took off.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, but gave up the fight. If we were, in fact, walking into a burrow of wife swappers, a cane and mace might be a bit extreme for fending off advances.
The long walk across the street and up to the front stoop was chilly and more nerve wracking than the hours leading up to a root canal.
Howard pushed the doorbell while I practiced exercises to prevent hyperventilation.
A tall, big-boned man with strawberry-blond hair and freckled cheeks opened the door. “Hello!” he said in a boisterous voice. His smile was genuine. “Are you new?”
“That’s us,” I quipped, “New, new, new.” My voice cracked from nerves and I hoped the man hadn’t noticed.
He lowered his voice to a near-whisper and leaned in as if sharing a secret. “You got the invite?”
Uh oh.
We did not anticipate the need for an invitation. One needed invitations for these things? I gulped. Okie dokie, how could I quip us out of this one?
Luckily, I had a husband with smarts and training from the best of the best, which usually referred to Top Gun School, but in this case referred to the FBI Academy. Smart Hubby Howard pulled the business card out of his back pocket and handed it to the friendly fellow who took the card with a wink and let us pass.
To our right was a massive living room. I mean, massive. You could fit five of my living rooms into that space. The furnishings were right off the cover of House Beautiful, including a shiny black baby grand piano in the back corner.
To the left, another living room. Two living rooms? To be fair, though, this one was smaller and had a television as well as a stereo system Howard would have killed for, I am sure.
Straight ahead through a wide hallway we could see a kitchen island the size of Maui and the hint of a dining room beyond. A few people milled around the kitchen island, preparing plates of food. I did not see Shin Lee anywhere.
For no other reason probably, than that we’re both right handed, Howard and I slipped into the living room on the right and immediately caught the attention of a young couple standing with drinks in their hands. I tried to look down and avoid eye contact, but it was too late. The shortish brunette man smiled broadly and held his hand out for an introductory shake while the woman seemed more bashful.
“Name is Bob,” he said. “This is Betty.”
Betty and Bob? They didn’t look a year over thirty, yet their names were at least sixty years old. “I’m Barb,” I said taking his firm hand with my sweaty one. I cleared my throat. Boy, did I need a glass of water bad. “This is my husband, Howard.”
I’m not sure if it was my imagination run amok, but I sensed Bob sizing me up. Alright, he was thinking, Betty, Bob, and Barb, a threesome of Bs.
“Barb!” bellowed Bob. “We’ve been expecting you.”
Oh no! He was sizing me up. I grabbed Howard for support. This was heading in the wrong direction far too quickly. We needed Shin Lee, not a romp in Pee Wee Bob’s Playhouse.
Bob peeked around as if checking out my rear end. “Where’s the tequila?” he said, grinning.
I thought I might faint when the doorbell rang and a second later the kitchen erupted in joyful shouts of, “Barb! Finally! Barb!”
Spinning toward the door, my eyes landed on a face I never expected to see in a million years. Dandi Booker—all four feet of her. Her dyed blond hair was semi-teased into some style that I assumed was supposed to pass for sexy. It just looked like squirrels had nested there instead. She wore a low-cut dress so brightly orange that it could burn retinas, and she had her boobs all pushed up tight into a vice-like bra to give the illusion of cleavage. Yeah, I thought, when that thing comes off tonight, some man is going to be very disappointed.
“Hey, ya’ll!” she cheered, all cheerleaderish. “Ready for some fun and margaritas?” She bounced a few times while lifting a party-sized bottle of tequila high into the air for everyone to see. I nearly expected her to break out into a chant: Give me a T, give me an E, give me a Q...
Bob turned his smile upside down. “You said you were Barb.” His tone was accusatory.
“I am,” I said, very confused.
Betty and Bob exchanged disappointed glances and walked off in what I detected was a huff. Our first rejection. I didn’t know if I should be relieved or embarrassed. I thought about sniffing my pits to make sure my deodorant was still working, but reconsidered.
I whispered to Howard. “I know that woman, and her name isn’t Barb.”
“Who is it?”
“That’s the friend-stealer, Dandi Booker. I can’t wait to tell Peggy about this.”
“I thought you didn’t like gossips.”
“That’s not gossiping. That’s telling the truth. I’m here, and so is Dandi, pretending to be someone else—me. If that’s not a good truth to spread, I don’t know what is.”
My phone rang while Howard was rolling his eyes at me. I slipped it from my purse, trying to look casual. “It’s Clarence,” I told Howard.
He pointed. “I’m going to wander into the kitchen. See what shows up there.”
I gave him a thumbs up and answered, moving into the far corner of the room, away from the voices that made it hard to hear. “Clarence, are you there?”
“Yeah. Hey, so we spent all afternoon researching this Saturday Night Fever and eventually Guy wound up on a discussion board and found out all kinds of cool stuff. This club has its own jargon and they refer to their parties as dances and guess what? They’re having one tonight!”
“I know. I’m there right now.”
“Really? So are we.”
The doorbell rang.
“Clarence, what did you say?”
The boisterous, freckled guard who had answered the doorbell yelled out for the house to hear, “Hey! We got two gay guys!”
A resounding round of positive hoots and hollers echoed from every corner of the place.
“They don’t have an invite, should we let ‘em in anyway?”
More hoots and hollers and “Alright!” and “Show ‘em the way!” and “It’s cool to be gay!”
I was hearing this from both the house and the phone in my ear, so I knew the guys at the door were queer, but not gay. Pounding across the never-ending living room to the front door, I spied the long and stringy haired, younger version of Colt smiling proudly next to the pointy-nosed, fedora topped Guy Mertz who looked like a deer wishing he’d been caught in some headlights instead of caught in a possible panty parade.
Saturday Night Cleaver (A Barbara Marr Murder Mystery #4) Page 8