Weapons of Mass Distraction (Lexi Graves Mysteries)

by Chafer, Camilla

  “Damn,” I said, though I wasn’t sure what I was damning: my lack of leisure time or his muscles.

  “Want to grab dinner later?”

  “If by ‘grab’ you mean, sit down at a nice restaurant and eat at a leisurely pace, then yes.”

  “What if I meant grab a hotdog while watching a suspect?”

  I shrugged. “That works for me too.”

  “I’ll pick you up at seven. Wear something pretty.”

  “Fancy hot dog stand, huh?” I quipped, suddenly remembering I had another date that day. “Can we make it eight? I have a dress fitting with Lily.”

  Solomon frowned. “I thought you already did that.”

  “We did, but Lily found her perfect shoes this morning and she wants to try them on with the dress to make sure they really are perfect, so I said I would go with her after she finished her shift at the bar.”

  “Are you ever going to show me your bridesmaid gown?”

  “No. You’ll have to wait for the wedding.”

  “Is it a meringue? Is it floral?” Solomon teased.

  “No and no.”

  “Is there a headdress? Does it have sequins?”

  “Yuck. I hope that stuff doesn’t turn you on.”

  “Getting you out of it would.”

  “One track mind.”

  “Mmm. The right track.” Solomon’s eyes dipped down my body then back up again and I could pretty much figure out what he was thinking because Mr. Ahearne had the same look right before he asked me to his social club luncheon. Solomon checked his watch, probably noting the several hours between now and dinner. “Where are you headed next?”

  “The office to take another look through Jim Schwarz’s background, and Lucas said he left a bunch of reports for me. Then I’m going to do some checking up on Jim,” I added, wondering if my colleagues spilled as much information on their planned whereabouts.

  “I won’t be there. File a report and don’t do anything dangerous.”

  “Who? Me?” I feigned mock shock. “Never. A little light snooping, then trying on shoes and dresses, and after that, home to wait for you.”

  “I like that,” said Solomon.

  “What? Shoes and dresses?”

  “Someone to come home to,” he said, walking away, and leaving me wondering if I would like that too.

  ~

  After my gym clothes were hung in the locker in the employee’s room, I switched into cute, mint-hued pants, a black sweater, and the most gorgeous pair of pointy-toed black Louboutin pumps - a gift to myself for being fabulous. I hightailed it to the agency, but Solomon was nowhere to be seen. Only Fletcher was in the office with his head buried in a file. It was just as well Solomon was absent because I had a stack of paperwork on my desk to read through. I needed to concentrate, and not think about our romantic dinner - unless he really did want to grab a hotdog? - and whether he would stay the night. I mentally thanked the lingerie gods for having the fortitude to ensure I wore a matching set. Just in case.

  Settling into my chair, I retrieved the victims’ slim files from my locked drawer, and pulled the stack of papers Lucas left on my desk onto my lap. I set about adding the reports to the files of each victim. I returned Karen and Lorena’s now thicker files to the drawer.

  After a moment or two of paper shuffling, I turned to Lucas’s almost empty desk and empty chair. Now that the upstairs section of the agency was up and running, he didn’t spend much time down here anymore. I cast a casual glance at the ceiling and wondered exactly what they were doing up there. Wrinkling my nose and blowing out an exasperated lungful of air, I turned my eyes to the papers. Jim’s credit report, his bank statement, his cell phone usage, a résumé; it was all there, and once again, I was amazed at the kind of information we could access on a person. Not all of it was strictly legally obtained, I suspected, given that we couldn’t get the kinds of warrants the police could. But I wasn’t looking for evidence admissible in court. No, I was just trying to connect the dots in a puzzle that currently was missing most of its pieces.

  After perusing Jim’s financial information - mortgage on a property, car payments, the usual grocery bills and a couple of restaurants featured on his bank statement over the past year, I concluded he didn’t have any curious payments or deposits. He seemed sensible, a saver, probably a rainy day kind of man. That matched the sensible, straight-laced opinion I remembered having of him.

  I tossed the stapled set of papers onto the desk and looked up again. Maybe… maybe if I just strolled on up the stairs, I could take a peek? Where was the harm in that?

  With that idea in my head, nothing could stop me. Fletcher didn’t look up from his reading as I left the office, and Flaherty said nothing on his way in with a paper bag and a takeout coffee in one hand. He held the door open, nodded and waited for me to pass.

  “Thanks,” I said and he grunted a response. Clearly, not a chatty day for him.

  Out in the small lobby, I paused. A few months ago, there was a swipe card access point to ensure only agency employees got into the lobby, and from there, to our large, shared office. We also had access to a small suite of meeting rooms on the floor below where we met with clients away from our precious files, databases and whiteboards. Since Solomon had acquired the floor above, the lobby was opened up, revealing another set of stairs, presumably so employees could freely travel between this floor and the one above. So far, since I had no need to ascend, I ignored that particular staircase; but now I strolled casually towards it as if I were absolutely meant to be there, and tried not to race up. My heart sped slightly as I stepped from the stairwell into the next lobby. This lobby was plain and empty too, with a set of double doors across from me. I moved over, glanced through the windows, and saw a couple of workers, both men, judging by their thick necks and buzz cuts, with their backs to me. Several laptops lay unused on a few desks. One wall seemed to be covered with surveillance equipment, but I didn’t have a good angle or superhuman vision, so I couldn’t see what was on it. I reached for the handle and gave the door a tug, but it didn’t budge. Locked, of course, I realized when I clocked the swipe card point next to the door. Just for kicks, I ran my pass through it and the light blinked red. Boo.

  “Whatcha doing?” said a voice behind me and I spun around, my heart pounding.

  “Nothing,” I blurted out.

  Lucas grinned. “How come you’re plastered to the wall like that?”

  “I thought I felt damp,” I lied, spreading my fingers. “Nope, not on this floor though. All good! Hurrah! So… what are you doing?” I asked, figuring my best defense was to act suspicious of Lucas.

  “Going in there.” Lucas pointed to the double doors I just failed to access. “You?”

  “Heading down. Uh… thanks for the reports on Jim Schwarz. Very… comprehensive.”

  “No problem. Later, Lexi.” Lucas stepped around me, and leaned in to swipe his pass, disappearing through the door. He pulled it shut behind him before I could grab the handle and follow him inside. I heard the faint sound of locks clicking into place, and not just one. Solomon certainly had that floor securely protected.

  “Damn,” I sniffed, sulking all the way downstairs, my interest piqued and dashed, as I returned to my waiting files.

  Jim Schwarz’s reports didn’t get any more interesting, so I placed them in a folder and typed up a brief report that I emailed to Solomon. With a little time to kill before the next dress fitting, and a lot of time to work up an appetite, I could have read all three files, which were now fuller, but what I really wanted to do was get out there. I needed to learn something about the victim that wasn’t just paperwork. My first call would be Jim’s house. Maybe there, I could “bump” into a neighbor or a relative who might shed some light on why this seemingly very average man would have been murdered in such a cold fashion?

  My number one victim lived in a first floor apartment of a two-family home. It was neat and soulless, with a perfectly manicured lawn, and a small b
ox hedge, approximately one foot tall all the way around. I looked at the neighbor’s place to the left. They cut their taller hedge into something resembling castle ramparts, which was pretty hilarious because Montgomery never, ever had a castle and probably never would. I bet it looked brilliant on Halloween. I also bet it drove the fastidious Jim crazy. Even though I knew Jim was unmarried, and I got the impression he lived alone, I knocked on his door anyway. No one answered. I waited a few minutes, surveying the neighborhood. Harbridge was a nice area, very “up and coming” along with the prices, which had risen considerably in recent years. Jim’s Toyota was missing so I guessed he’d driven it to the gym, which was too far to cycle or walk. I didn’t see it at the gym so that meant it had either been towed or someone came to retrieve it. I crossed the Toyota off my mental list of things to check out, deciding it was a dead end.

  The other cars in the area were all nice models, I noted as I looked around from my vantage point at his front door. Boxy, two-seater convertibles, small hatchbacks, and a couple of minivans showed a diverse cross-section of people who lived on this street. Turning back to the apartment, I peeked into the windows. A couple of squashy couches, a glass coffee table, a huge, flatscreen television, a couple of bookcases, heaving with books, and a large Yucca in a basket made up the single guy’s living room. Everything was minimal, and neat, very much like Jim appeared in person. Returning to the door, I knocked again, just in case someone was there and didn’t hear me. If I were lucky, the resident upstairs might appear.

  “If you’re looking for Jim, honey, you won’t find him,” said a voice behind me. I turned to see a short African-American woman with cornrows smiling up at me. She wore a fashionable, pink scarf over a long navy dress and thick, gold, hooped earrings. “He’s passed on, honey,” she added. “Some kind of accident.”

  “Are you his neighbor?” I inquired.

  “Sure am. I live right there,” she said, pointing to the house on the right. It mirrored the size and shape of Jim’s, but instead of plain grass, her garden had a glorious flowerbed, smack dab in the middle of the lawn. “I’m helping his family out, keeping an eye on the place until they decide what to do with it, especially with the upstairs apartment empty.”

  I stepped down from the porch and walked over to her so we didn’t have to yell, as I pulled my license from my pocket. “Lexi Graves, Private Investigator,” I told her. “I’m looking into Jim’s death.”

  “I heard it might not have been an accident,” she said, pursing her lips as she looked over toward the house and sighed. Then she stuck her hand out and pumped mine. “Jackie Bishop. Do you think Jim was murdered?”

  “Maybe,” I said, remaining purposefully vague to her very direct question.

  “Good heavens. I wonder why anyone would want to hurt Jim.” She leaned in, like he was waiting in the house and might hear us, and whispered, “He was a touch dull, you know. Nice, but dull all the same.”

  “What can you tell me about him? Did he have a lot of visitors? Did you ever hear him arguing with anyone? What was his attitude like?” I asked, sensing Jackie Bishop liked to talk.

  “Well now, let me think. He seemed like a nice guy to me. Always polite. He often looked after my two cats when I’d go visit my son and his wife in Boston; and I take his mail and look after his houseplants whenever he goes away, not that he does, or did that often. He’s kind of a homebody. Nobody had a bad word to say about him, though he and our other neighbor there—” Jackie pointed to the castle hedge “—don’t exactly see eye to eye on that hedge; but we just had a barbecue two weeks ago, and they got on fine then. Jim makes a great potato salad.”

  “Did he seem out of sorts this week?” I asked, thinking about Lorena’s call for help. I wondered if Jim might’ve made one of his own.

  “Now you mention it, yes. He seemed a little preoccupied when I came by to give him some mail that got into my mailbox by mistake. I asked him what was wrong and he said it was nothing, but he looked down. The last time he looked that low, he’d lost his job. Oh, that was a bad time for him.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, he lost his job,” said Jackie, slowly, like I couldn’t work out why that wouldn’t put the downer on someone. Come to think of it, I’d lost countless jobs, so by the end of my temping years, I wasn’t exactly overly concerned about losing another one. I would, however, be upset about losing a job I enjoyed… like this one.

  “Of course,” I agreed, nodding. “He got fired?” I said, lilting my voice so it became more a question than a statement. I didn’t know the circumstances yet, but I intended to find out.

  “Oh no. No no.” Jackie gave a determined shake of her head, seemingly surprised by the idea. “He left of his own accord, he told me, but he was very unhappy about it. One night, when we had a few drinks, he said he’d done something bad, something he couldn’t forgive himself for, though he would never say what. I asked him about it the next day, but he made some kind of excuse or other. Got depressed about whatever it was too.” A male voice called Jackie’s name and she half turned, shouting back. “That’s my husband. We’re going out. I have to go,” she said, returning her attention to me. She hesitated, like she didn’t want to stop talking, nor did I want her to. I wanted to know more about what was bugging Jim enough to make him leave his previous job. What could have upset him so badly that he preferred to leave, rather than stick it out?

  I slid a business card from my wallet and passed it to Jackie. “Just in case you think of anything else,” I told her. She took a look at it before tucking it into her jacket pocket.

  “The only thing I can think to tell you right now is Jim Schwarz was a good neighbor and a good man. No trouble to anyone. If his passing was no accident, then he didn’t deserve it. I hope you get to the bottom of this.”

  Me too, I thought, as Jackie strode away, her hem swishing around her ankles. Me too. I took another look at Jim’s manicured lawn, a glance at my own unmanicured fingernails and climbed into my car, the wheels spinning in my mind. My next step for looking into Jim’s death, I decided, was to inspect his car before delving any further into his past job. There had to be a clue waiting for me there. The connection was too intriguing to pass up. Jim, Karen, and Lorena had all worked together, and all quit at around the same time. Jim was deeply unhappy, after doing something he considered unforgivable. Could that be a coincidence? What could’ve happened to make them all leave? And did it have anything to do with why all three now lay in the morgue?

  ~

  “Nice manicure,” said Lily when she let me into the wedding store after I’d rung the doorbell several times. I was barely a few minutes late. “New?”

  “Just had them done,” I told her, holding up my perfect, hot pink nails to admire.

  “So pretty,” Lily cooed before her eyes widened and she gasped, “Don’t touch anything! Do not get that gorgeous polish on any dresses. What shade is it? Where did you get it done?”

  “That new place across the street. Nails by Monica. I was early so I thought I’d get a manicure. And a hand massage. It was divine. Smell my hands.” Lily dutifully did, giving me an approving nod at the lingering rose scent. “That was an excellent use of your spare time,” she told me, sounding distinctly like my mother. “You should have called me and I would have joined you.”

  “Except then you wouldn’t have been able to try on your dress with the shoes without worrying about getting polish on… ooooh! Shoooooes!” I cooed, forgetting about the potentially hazardous nail polish issue. I was pretty sure they were dry, but you never could tell until that gut-wrenching moment when it smeared. “They’re so pretty. My shoes want to have their shoe babies.”

  Lily grinned and rubbed the snow-white satin pumps across her heart. She reached into her shopping bag and produced another bag. “I got you some too, but to match your dress.”

  “Thank you. I love you so much.”

  “You can thank my mom’s credit card. She paid.”

&nb
sp; “Thank you, Lily’s mom, wherever you are… Guatemala?” I guessed.

  “Ecuador,” said Lily, “as of this morning, apparently.”

  “That was nice of them to let you know.”

  Lily sniffed. “My father’s secretary sent a text.”

  We both rolled our eyes at the sterile message and I unpackaged Lily’s shoe gift. Not only did they match the dress, but they fit perfectly too. As an added bonus, they were black, stunning, and I knew I would wear them many times. Best of all, they were free! Lily slipped hers on and we paraded around the store. “Where’s Sharon?” I asked. “Does she know we’re here?”

  “Yep, she let me in. She was acting all weird again, but she said she hadn’t eaten yet, so I figured maybe she was low on sugar. She’s in the back, getting our dresses.” When Sharon did return, low on sugar wasn’t what I would call her behavior. She was skittish and distracted, jumping when the phone rang, and again, when a dog barked outside the store. Leading us through to the changing area, she hung back, nervously checking the door every few minutes, and frequently disappearing from view, while letting us struggle with the serious business of lacing Lily into her dress for the final fitting now she had her shoes and tiara.

  “You should get that polish again for the wedding,” Lily told me as we both stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirrored panel. I wore my bridesmaid dress and I had to admit I looked pretty good. The whole outfit was much nicer than my previous incarnations as a bridesmaid, but admittedly, those occasions were during the decades style forgot. “It goes with your dress. Do you want your hair up or down? I have to let the hair stylist know.”

  “I don’t mind,” I said, just as Sharon walked through. The wall phone extension rang, the bell bursting the silence, and she jumped, dropping the boxes she was carrying. After a long moment during which all of us just stared at the spilled contents, Sharon burst into tears and sank onto one of the velvet pouffes, hiding her face in her hands.

  Lily and I exchanged puzzled glances. “What’s gotten into her?” Lily mouthed and I shrugged as the sobs got louder. Gathering up our skirts, we stepped off the podium and sank down next to her. I lamely patted the woman’s shoulder while Lily produced a tissue from somewhere.