Zack shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I can’t speak on behalf of ghosts. It flies in the face of all the training I’ve ever had. If I had to give you an answer based on what you’ve told me, I’d say Trudy was either in denial or feeling guilty because of the affair. Most likely, Grant found out she was screwing his best friend. As for that whole spooky scene with the cold room and the books being thrown, well, maybe Grant’s message is that you should butt out and get lost. Not every person likes someone poking around in their private business. Could be that ghosts feel the same way about that kind of stuff.”
A weary smile broke her lips.
“Are you actually talking about ghosts with me and sounding rational?”
“Yeah. Guess it’s official.” He chuckled. “You’ve caught me in your vortex of weirdness.”
It was nearly eleven, so when her cell phone rang, Sadie frowned and was going to let the call go to voice mail, but Zack picked the phone up from the table and handed it to her.
The call was short but not sweet. She made notes as she talked.
“We’ve got a job to take on at a convenience store in Chinatown,” she said to Zack when she was finished. “A sawed-off-shotgun job. It’s bound to be real messy.”
He nodded. “I heard about that one.” And his mouth quirked at the corners like he was containing laughter.
“What?”
“Nothing. It was sad, really. And brutal.” But he kept on smiling. “The owner was chased around his store and finally shot by some crackhead.”
“You look like you’re all broken up about it,” Sadie said dryly.
“Who called it in?” Zack asked, clearing his throat and wiping away his grin.
“The son. It’s a family business and they need the place cleaned as soon as possible. The store’s their only income. We’ll need to get in there tomorrow and see if we can finish up in a day.”
“That’s quick.” He quirked an eyebrow. “Are the vultures circling?”
It sure wasn’t unusual for family members to be more concerned about what the deceased left behind than about the person who had passed. That was an even uglier side to her business than the gore they cleaned.
“Mom-and-pop business, and it just sounds like they’re hard up for the cash the store brings in. They’ve already called the claim in to their insurance company, and the son is going to fax the paperwork over tonight.”
“Mighty efficient of him.” Zack finished off the rest of his beer. “I haven’t worked a store location with you before. Should be interesting.”
“Watch, they’ll want us to try and salvage all the shelved goods.”
“That’ll be fun.”
Sadie noticed the smirk playing on his lips again.
“There’s something you’re not telling me.”
“Oh, you’ll find out soon enough.” Zack got to his feet, yawned, and stretched. “Fetch me a blanket and a pillow. I’m crashing on your couch tonight.”
When she frowned, he pointed a finger in the direction of the busted door frame.
“Someone shot up your house today in broad daylight. Do you really want to be home alone tonight with only your rabbit for protection?”
When Sadie woke up to the smell of freshly brewed coffee, she briefly thought that it would be nice to have a man around again, or a roommate. It was amazing how easily she could be lulled into a false sense of comfort just by the promise of instant caffeine.
“We need to get moving,” Zack barked at her when she walked into the kitchen. All her romantic notions were pretty much washed away immediately.
“It’s just after seven.” Sadie yawned as she poured coffee into her I Seattle mug. “We’re not meeting Bart Woo until nine. Why the rush?”
“Just don’t want to waste the entire day, that’s all,” he grumbled into his mug.
She silently made two pieces of toast, put them on a plate, and slid it in front of him. Maybe he was grouchy because he needed food. It couldn’t be a hangover—they’d stopped at two beers. Sadie grabbed her coffee, sat down at the table, and watched as Zack rubbed the back of his neck.
“Now I get it.” She cringed. “Guess I should’ve warned you that my sofa is a real bitch to sleep on.”
“It feels like I slept with a noose around my neck,” he snarled.
“It’s not easy being a macho he-man protecting the women of the world, huh?”
“If we do this again, I’m sharing your bed.”
She glanced up and saw the look on his face that he wasn’t kidding. She reddened and busied herself with fetching him two aspirin before heading for the shower. After she dressed, she grabbed another cup of coffee and they loaded the van with supplies and hit the road.
When she stopped the company truck in front of their destination, she looked over at Zack.
“Oh God,” she said, then turned and raised her eyebrows at him. “You could’ve warned me.”
“What, and miss the look on your face when we got here? Not a chance.”
Zack smiled, and Sadie only closed her eyes and shook her head as they climbed out of the vehicle and walked toward the store. The neon bright red awning overhead read HOT TAMALES EROTICA.
“The family lives in an apartment above the store,” Sadie said. “We’ll get the key from them and I’ll get the contract signed before we go inside.”
They took a few steps and were immediately greeted by a young Chinese man, who rushed over. He was frantically waving his arms, making shooing gestures, and shouting, “No, you can’t park there! You must move your vehicle to the back. Park in the alley, not in front of the store!”
“Mr. Woo?” Sadie asked.
“Yes. Yes,” he confirmed. “Move your truck and I meet you at the back entrance before you scare away all our customers!”
Sadie eyed the four-foot inflated pink dildo in the display window and mumbled to Zack, “I don’t think there’s a whole lot that would scare off his clientele.”
She maneuvered the van slowly down the narrow lane, which was riddled with potholes. In order to allow other vehicles access down the lane, she had to park extremely close to a Dumpster. It was so tight that she couldn’t open the driver’s door, so she exited via the passenger side.
Bart Woo looked a lot more relaxed, even a little too relaxed. He waved them inside with a huge smile that certainly didn’t scream grieving son.
“You’ll get the place done today, right?” he asked. “So we can reopen tomorrow?”
“I can’t make any guarantees, Mr. Woo. We haven’t even seen the place yet.”
She handed him her contract to look over, and he signed it after giving it only a passing glance.
“You realize that if something is uncleanable, whether it’s real or personal property, we have to toss it. I’ll provide the insurance company with an itemized list, so you should be reimbursed, but much of your product may need to be destroyed.”
“Yes, I understand,” he said hurriedly. “But you’ll try and keep what you can clean, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Fine. Start now, okay? The sooner you start, the sooner you finish and I reopen my store and restock my shelves with stuff from the storeroom.”
Bart Woo handed Sadie a key to the premises, then scooted back upstairs to his apartment. Zack was almost finished suiting up.
“This is a shotgun job,” she reminded him. “It’ll be slow going because there’ll be lots of debris. Remember to watch for sharps.”
Bone fragments could be razor sharp and would easily slice through their gloves if they weren’t careful. The cut itself was the least of their worries. It was all the potential diseases swimming in the blood that upped the level of risk.
Once they were fully suited, they stepped out of the stockroom and into the outer store. It wasn’t the destruction that caused Sadie to stop short and had her eyes bulging.
There was something about standing in a store with floor-to-ceiling sex aids that made her feel distinctly uncomforta
ble.
Hot Tamales Erotica looked like a war zone—a combat area littered with packaging shrapnel and coated with slimy joy gel that was mixed with blood spatter.
14
Bone fragments were embedded in walls, shelves, and product. Bart Woo was either paranoid that they would steal from him or terrified that they were being overly slow in their cleaning efforts, because he repeatedly popped in unannounced.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t know how you put up with him,” Sadie grumbled to Mr. Woo Sr., who walked up and down the aisles in dazed confusion. The entire right side of the man’s rib cage was blown away.
It didn’t matter that the older Mr. Woo probably couldn’t hear her from behind her disposable respirator. He also didn’t appear to speak English.
“No spatter here, but the packaging has been destroyed,” Zack called out. “Should I toss it?”
Sadie glanced over her shoulder in his direction.
“Yeah, toss it,” she replied, clearing her throat uncomfortably.
“You sure?”
Zack closed the gap between them, took the object in question, and nudged Sadie under the chin with it.
“A woman living alone could find something like this useful.”
Sadie looked down at the huge black dildo and blushed bloodred.
“Get lost,” she muttered with a nervous giggle and turned away.
“Of course, if that’s not your thing, there’s always these.”
She turned again and he snapped a pair of fur-lined pink handcuffs onto her gloved hand.
“Zack, stop it!”
He tugged her close.
“If Bart Woo would leave us alone in here for a while, I could probably help get rid of that stressed look on your face.”
Her eyes were huge and she swallowed thickly.
“We should probably just get back to work.”
He released her and they busied themselves at opposite ends of the store. By three o’clock, they’d been hard at it for nearly six hours straight. They were both low on energy and decided that they were long overdue for lunch and an infusion of caffeine.
Bart met them in the storage room while they were doffing their Tyvek suits and stuffing them into the bins.
“Where are you going?” he asked. “You’re not even done. You still have work to do!”
“Mr. Woo, we’ve worked for hours without stopping. We’re just taking a break. We’ll have lunch and come right back.”
“You have lunch here. I’ll order you a nice stir-fry from next store. You’ll love it.”
Sadie planted her hands on her hips and just barely managed to keep her anger in check.
“We’re on target to get the cleaning done today, Mr. Woo, even if we take a one-hour break. Still, there are portions of the drywall that had to be removed. All that will have to be replaced, and I still need to contact the restoration companies.”
“I’ll hang posters over the holes in the wall for now,” he said with a shrug. “I just need to be able to sell my products and make money.”
Zack stepped up to stand shoulder to shoulder with Sadie.
“I’m sure your father wouldn’t mind if you took a day or two off to mourn his passing and deal with your grief,” he drawled evenly.
“My father worked his fingers to the bone selling cheap imported paper fans at this location for over twenty years,” Bart Woo snapped. “I took over the store last year when he was about to lose everything to the bank. Of course, being old-fashioned, he didn’t like the changes I made or the products we’d be selling,” he admitted. “However, when he saw that we made more money in a single year than he’d made in the last ten, he didn’t mind.” Bart Woo smiled. “As a matter of fact, he took great pride in learning about our products so he could make knowledgeable recommendations to our customers. My father never missed a day of work his entire life. He would want me to keep that tradition going.”
“Point taken.” Sadie nodded. “But we’re still going out for lunch. See you in an hour.”
They stepped outside into a light drizzle that misted over them as they strolled down the lane and entered South King Street across from Hing Hay Park. Looking left and right at the multitude of choices, Sadie debated her options.
“How about dim sum? There’s a place up the block—”
“I know a great deli around the corner,” Zack said. He stepped up onto the curb to his right and began to walk.
“We’re in Chinatown,” Sadie reminded him, quickening her pace to keep up. “I figured while in Rome…”
“Even the Romans would’ve gone for a sub from this place.”
Sadie found it hard to argue with that kind of logic. As it turned out, Zack was right. Although the Formica-table decor of the tiny diner left something to be desired, there was no refuting the fact that the thick sandwiches looked mouthwatering.
With most of her sandwich still left, Sadie pushed her plate away, dug out her phone, and dialed Detective Petrovich to ask about Sylvia Toth. He told her he’d heard that the woman was recovering well from her surgery but was still heavily sedated.
“She’s out of surgery,” Sadie told Zack after she hung up. “I’d like to go visit her.”
“Not a good idea.” He pointed to the remaining piece of Sadie’s sandwich, and she nodded her okay for him to eat it.
“Why not? I’ll bring flowers and stop by for a second to see how she is.”
“You already know how she is. Petrovich just told you. Don’t visit. Get a florist to deliver the flowers instead.”
Sadie rested her head in her hands.
“I feel so guilty.”
“Why? You didn’t shoot her.”
Sadie started to pursue her point but then realized that there would be no reasoning with a man who had a blob of mustard in the corner of his mouth and a cop demeanor.
“My first patrol was in this neighborhood,” Zack said in an unusual show of nostalgia for his ex-life, or else an attempt to change the subject. “Man, did we have trouble with the Asian gangs. Biggest problem was that much of the older Chinese community is so tight-lipped they never wanted to press charges.”
Sadie was barely listening. Instead, she scrolled through the listings on her cell phone and punched SEND.
“Who are you calling now?” Zack asked.
“Kent Lasko.”
Zack opened his mouth to speak, but disbelief apparently had fused his voice box, because no sound came out. He snapped his jaw shut and quietly dabbed at the mustard on his mouth. His eyebrows drew together as he shot daggers at her.
“He’s not home,” Sadie replied. Not to be deterred, she dialed the real estate office next. She was told the same thing as before, that Mr. Lasko was out of town but another agent would be pleased to help her with her real estate needs. Nobody at the office seemed to know when he was expected to return and no one had another number to reach him.
With a sour look on her face, she stuffed the phone back into her purse.
“Didn’t Petrovich tell you he’s got a rock-solid Tahoe alibi?”
“Not for when that diamond brooch showed up in my pocket,” Sadie snapped. “And we both know he didn’t need to be here to have someone take a shot at my house.”
“Let the cops handle things,” Zack said, downing the rest of his Coke. “Focus on something else.” He leaned in and whispered, “How about you think about that raspberry gel that grows hot when you breathe on it?”
“Be serious.”
“I’m dead serious,” Zack replied. “Fine. If you won’t do that, you could call restoration companies to find out who might be willing to put off a job in progress for the chance to work on renovating a sex shop.”
Sadie grinned. “You’ve got something there. That kind of spin might actually get someone on the job quicker.”
She called the regular companies they used, but unfortunately, not as many restoration professionals were voyeurs as one might first expect. One company offered to fit Hot Tama
les in next week, but nobody was willing to drop a current job just for an opportunity to work around dildos and furry pink handcuffs.
“Bart is going to be pissed,” Sadie remarked.
“Yeah, but he looks like the kind of man who was born angry.”
As if to prove Zack right, when they returned to the sex shop Bart was glaring down at them from the window of the upper suite, which looked out on the alley. When they went inside to work, Mr. Woo Sr. was walking the aisles, mumbling to himself in Chinese. Sadie wished she had her iPod so that she could drown out his voice.
They’d removed most of the visible blood and tissue, as well as all products and hardware that were beyond cleaning. Now they painstakingly worked to find and eliminate all the bone fragments. The shrapnel caused by the shotgun blast covered a shockingly wide area, and some bits were embedded so far into the drywall that the wall itself had to be cut away. A shame, since the paint used in the shop was a high-gloss type, which would usually tolerate a disinfectant spray and a scrub clean for blood quite well.
Mr. Woo must’ve been standing behind a large glass display case when he was shot, because it had been decimated during the incident. The spray of glass mixed with blood and tissue was bad, but equally disturbing was coming upon the odd fluorescent rubberized material. Apparently, vibrators didn’t tolerate gunfire much better than humans did.
They filled close to a dozen large rubber bins with destroyed product and shelving. Zack’s eyes were laughing behind his face mask whenever he noticed Sadie collecting a few more vibrators in animal shapes to clean or remove. He was enjoying this a little too much.
It was a relief to enter the second stage of cleaning once the blood, tissue, and sharps were removed. Now they could simply wear gloves to protect their hands from the cleaning products and not worry about cuts and diseases.
True to their word, they managed to finish the job at Hot Tamales Erotica that night, even though it was the middle of the night.
The Remains of the Dead Page 17