“Don’t you ‘member what I tole you about that light?”
“I’m not going to aim it in your face, Luther. Why didn’t you answer when I first called out? I thought maybe you’d left.”
He cackled. “An’ go where? Las’ bus for Florida left yestiddy.”
Jonelle ignored the comment. At least Luther’s attitude was the same, which indicated things seemed as normal as they were going to get. “Is Chester around? I’d like to talk to the both of you.” Although the light was pointed away from Luther’s face, she saw him nod.
“Hey, Chester. Where you at? We got company.” A loud cough in the distance was the reply. Luther let out an exasperated sigh. “Damn fool. Follow me.” He led Jonelle deeper into the bowels of the building. That familiar tightness squeezed the middle of her chest. She breathed deeply.
How the man could walk with confidence in near darkness without running into anything, or anybody, amazed Jonelle. It was as if he’d been born blind and what little light there was, was superfluous. She sniffed the air and caught a whiff of smoke. At pinprick of light shone in the distance. The light grew as they walked closer.
Four men and a woman stood around a barrel with fire leaping from the top. “Chester. Ain’t you hear me call you?”
One of the men stepped away from the others. “Yeah. But it’s gettin’ cold and I got to warm up before I hunker down.” He peered at Jonelle. “She the one got somethin’ to do with Susanna?”
It was hard to tell the ages of any of the homeless she’d met so far, but Jonelle pegged Chester’s age at around fifty. Phil’s description was spot on. Chester had dirty, shoulder-length gray hair and scraggly whiskers. She couldn’t tell the color of his eyes in the dim light. He was as thin as Luther, but taller even with the slight stoop in the shoulders. A dirty bandage ringed his head.
The fire emitted enough light for her to see, so she flicked off the penlight. “How’s your head?”
He touched the filthy dressing as if to reassure himself it was still there. “That why you here?”
One of the things she most admired about those who lived on the street was their no-nonsense attitude. “Partly. I’d like to find out what happened that night you were attacked. Luther told me some of it, but often people remember facts they didn’t know they knew or thought unimportant at the time.”
Although the idea didn’t appeal to her, Jonelle looked around for someplace to sit.
As if reading her mind, Luther said, “We got some crates back here.”
The three of them skirted prone bodies and ignored stares from the others. Another barrel of fire provided weak illumination as the two men cleared off wooden boxes against the concrete wall. They waited while Jonelle tested the container to make sure it would hold her weight. She’d have trouble getting them to take her seriously if the thing smashed to the floor when she sat down.
Satisfied she wouldn’t take a tumble, Jonelle began her questioning. “First, Chester, could you please tell me what happened before, during and immediately after the attack.”
Luther snorted but didn’t say anything.
Chester stared at her, mouth open.
“You gotta give it to him in small bits,” Luther said. “Chester, when didya first notice them guys?”
Great. I’m being schooled on how to do my job by a homeless person, Jonelle thought.
Chester looked from Luther to Jonelle. He cleared phlegm from his throat. Jonelle willed herself not to grimace at the noise.
“Well. Guess it was a few days before Suze”—his eyes darted in Luther’s direction and just as quickly back again—“I mean Susanna was killed. Some shithead was talkin’ ’bout how I knew where a lotta money was at that she had. But I don’t know nuthin’ ’bout no money, an I tole them so. The las’ time was when we was all standin’ around talkin’ about how they arrested Luther and we knew he didn’t have nuthin’ to do with her gettin’ killed.” He emphasized those last words with a firm nod. “Then I went out to the places I usually go. They got me when I was comin’ back. But not too close to here.” He looked quickly at Luther who stared back through narrowed eyes.
“What did they look like?” Jonelle asked.
Chester stood and lowered his hand about two inches from the top of his head. “About this here tall, an’ fatter than me.” Jonelle thought grimly that she was fatter than Chester and needed more specifics.
“Do you mean solid fat? Like if you drew a line around their bodies, would they be pretty, um, square like? You know, as wide as they were tall?”
A gape-toothed grin covered Chester’s face. “That’s it. You nailed it right there on the head.” He sat back on his crate and rested his body against the wall.
“Okay. Luther said you told him they looked Mexican but didn’t sound Mexican. I’m not sure what that means.”
“Me neither,” Luther grumbled. Jonelle’s look told him to keep quiet.
“Just describe everything about them.”
Chester let out a frustrated sigh. “I don’t know how to describe it better’n that. Long black, straight hair, brown skin … but not as dark as you an’ Luther.”
Luther snorted again.
Chester continued. “Kinda squinty eyes but not like Chinese. An’ they didn’t really have no accent. Most Mexicans I ever heard had an accent. These guys didn’t.”
Because somebody looked Mexican to Chester didn’t mean they were. Chester’s description caused a faint stirring in Jonelle. She wondered if what she thought was what Chester saw but decided he wouldn’t know the difference.
“What did they say?”
“Both of ’em?”
Luther groaned. “Of course, you ole fool.”
“Luther, please.” Jonelle raised her hand in a gesture to ask him to stop interfering.
Chester touched his head. In the dim light Jonelle saw him grimace.
“This conversation will go no further than this place,” Jonelle said, looking around. She thought about Burt and quickly decided that if Chester revealed anything of value, she’d have to tell the detective. What she wouldn’t tell him was the name of the person who gave her the information.
Chester hesitated. Luther opened his mouth to speak and Jonelle silenced him with a shake of her head.
“They kept sayin’ they knew she hung out somewhere ’round here,” Chester said. His eyes darted in Luther’s direction. “Said the bum she hung out with lived there.”
“How’d they know that?” Jonelle asked.
“Ever’body knows Luther and knows his camp.”
Anyone with access to the news knew the person who discovered the body was homeless, Jonelle thought to herself. She couldn’t remember if the news reports gave Luther’s name.
“What else did they say?”
“Kept goin’ on an’ on about where was the money at. Tole them I didn’t know nuthin’ about no damn money.” Another glance at Luther. “An’ I still don’t neither.”
“None of us do,” Luther said with an edge in his voice.
Jonelle studied the two men. She wondered if Luther knew more than he was letting on about Susanna’s money.
“Let’s think about this. What I know is, Susanna stole money from her job in Michigan.”
Luther and Chester’s mouths dropped open. She directed her next question at Luther. “She never told you where she came from or what she did up there?”
He shook his head.
“She ever tell you how much money she had with her?”
Luther looked as if he’d been sucker punched. Another shake of the head. “Only that it was a lot. An’ she didn’t tell me she was no thief neither.”
“So. If I came to you for help in hiding a lot of money, where would I do it, knowing it would be safe until I could be sure the coast was clear?”
Chester looked confused. Silence stretched on for several seconds.
Luther looked at Jonelle. “It’s gotta be close by.”
CHAPTER 29
After a fitful
night’s sleep, Jonelle woke early and drove back to the warehouse. She and Luther had agreed to meet during the day to search for Susanna’s money. Jonelle knew that Luther had a special area for his stuff but found it hard to believe that hundreds of thousands of dollars could remain concealed so well that no one would find the hiding place.
She pulled up to the curb next to a pacing Luther. “Don’t know why you wanna do this. The cops already been through here. Let’s git this over with. I got places I gotta be at,” he said to her through the open driver’s side window.
Oh, no, Jonelle thought. That’s not the way this is going to proceed.
“Listen Luther. I can understand it if we were only looking for where Susanna hid her personal items, but I’m talking a lot of money here.” She left her Jeep and locked the doors. “Hiding that amount of money …” she glanced at him. His face remained impassive. “To hide that amount of money could mean she hid it in stages. You said yourself that there were times she stayed by herself.”
They walked to the building and stood outside the massive opening.
He nodded. “When she first come, she stayed pretty close. After a while, sometimes she’d come with me downtown and we’d split up. But there was other times …” He stopped and looked up at the building. “Other times I left and she’d still be here.”
“She give you any reason for staying behind?”
He shook his head. “Naw. I jus’ figured she needed more time to get her stuff together.”
“That’s different from what everybody else did, right?”
“She wasn’t like ever’body.”
The yawning space didn’t look as threatening during the day, but the sunlight filtering through the many broken windows highlighted the bleakness of Luther’s living conditions. “Have you thought about maybe, I dunno, picking up some of this trash and throwing it away. Might make you feel better about coming here every night.”
The scowl on Luther’s face indicated what he thought about her suggestion.
“Take me to where she had her things,” Jonelle said before Luther fired off a sarcastic remark. Jonelle knew the cops had confiscated the few items Susanna had stuffed in a black, plastic bag. She also knew that the few women “residents” had probably filched the rest.
“What else did the cops find when they searched this place?”
He shrugged. “Wasn’t no money or else they’d still be swarmin’ ’round here like ants over spilt sugar. She didn’t have much in the way of clothes.”
That didn’t sound right. “I know when she left Michigan she had some belongings with her. I also know that when the police searched her room at the Lancelot Inn, all they found were a few items of clothing. So where’s the rest of her stuff?” Jonelle pointed to a spot further inside the warehouse. “Let’s have another look.”
Luther led the way with his head down and hands shoved deep into his pockets. Neither one spoke as the homeless man preceded her deeper into the bowels of the place he called home. At the back wall, concrete stairs led to the second level. Jonelle paused.
“She stayed up there with you?”
“You implyin’ somethin’?”
Jonelle ignored the question. “Who else stayed up here?”
“Nobody.”
No one spoke until they emerged on the second level. Instead of one huge open space, this level looked as if several rooms occupied the area in the past. Luther limped past several doorways and stopped at what Jonelle counted as the fourth space. He entered and pointed to the spot where Susanna kept her belongings. All that remained were a few empty shopping bags and empty cracker and cookie boxes. Jonelle couldn’t hide her disappointment.
“Ain’t no way stuff’s gonna hang around here without somebody takin’ it,” Luther said. “Especially clothes. I asked Connie an’ Flo already if they took some ‘a Suze’s stuff and they said no. But they lie like all the rest. So who knows?” He shrugged.
With her hands on her hips, Jonelle circled the area. She stopped in front of Luther and put a hand over her mouth, face scrunched up in concentration. “Do you have anything of hers?”
He folded his arms across his chest and stared at the ground. “She didn’t give me no money an’ I already tole you I don’t know where the money’s at.”
“That’s not what I’m asking you and you know it. What do you have that once belonged to Susanna?”
Luther’s nostrils flared. She held his gaze, noting the throbbing vein in his forehead. He turned on his heels and stomped over to the far corner. She skirted a few plastic crates and cardboard boxes to catch up to him.
He stopped at the wall. His hand reached in his back pocket and he pulled out a knife. A push of a button released a four inch blade. Jonelle gasped and stepped back. Her hand groped inside her bag before she realized her pistol was still locked in the Jeep’s glove compartment.
“Relax. I need this to open somethin’.” With his back to her, he stooped down and with the knife, chiseled around some of the concrete. A few moments later, he removed a brick and set it to one side. Jonelle watched as he glanced at her over his shoulder and put his hand in the opening. He pulled out a filthy cloth.
Dirty fingers opened the folds of the material. In the middle was one of those scrunchy hair things, a gold cross necklace and a pair of diamond stud earrings.
“Susanna’s?”
He nodded.
Jonelle reached inside her bag and pulled out a penlight. “I’d like to see what else is in there.”
Luther moved to one side without comment.
Jonelle shined the light in the narrow hole all the way back to what looked like another wall. Nothing. She couldn’t hide her disappointment.
“I checked my other hidin’ place and I swear to Jesus she didn’t hide no cash.” He squinted at Jonelle. “You think I’d still be livin’ in this hell hole if I had a shit load ‘a money?”
She studied Luther carefully. “I believe you. But if I don’t see for myself, I’ll always wonder. So let’s just take another look. Please.”
Deep lines formed between his eyebrows. He turned on his heel and hobbled over to the far corner. On the way he gathered up several old, plastic milk crates. “Grab some more ‘a those,” he said.
Jonelle did as he asked. He stacked several of them in a pyramid type fashion, under a rusted chain hanging from the ceiling. Next, he hobbled over to a stack of bags, reached in one and pulled out a metal rod with a hook on one end. “Hold this.”
She did as instructed and watched in amazement as he climbed on the boxes and pulled on the chain which squeaked in protest as a ceiling panel slowly descended about six inches. “Gimme that thing.”
She handed him the pole.
Luther inserted the pole in the opening, and wiggled it around. A satisfied look appeared on his face as he removed a small, dusty, red velvet bag. He handed her the pole and climbed down.
“What’s that?”
He opened the bag and exposed a small metal box. He shoved a few items aside and picked up a tissue-wrapped parcel.
“Those las’ few days she give this to me for safe keepin’. Said she was gonna sell them for the money … in case she needed more.” Dirty fingers opened the paper. In the middle sat a gold band and a diamond and sapphire ring.
CHAPTER 30
On Monday morning, a frustrated Jonelle drove to the office in a fog. Not only had Luther refused to give her the ring he also told her he was going to hide it in a different place should she come back intent on searching on her own. Two different emotions swirled within. First, she knew that keeping a personal item of the victim’s from the police might be construed as withholding evidence. Second, she also knew that she wouldn’t turn him in. If Luther kept the jewelry because he wanted to pawn the ring for the money, he would have done so by now. The only reason for Luther to refuse to give her the ring was that he wanted it for sentimental reasons.
Jonelle trudged up the back stairs to the agency.
&n
bsp; She opened the door to an empty reception area. A quick, “Hello? Rainey you here?” was met with Rainey’s head peaking around the open door situated to the side of her desk.
“Just needed to refill the copier. You want something?” Rainey asked.
“Not really. Anybody else in?
“Hold on a sec.” A few moments later she came and sat down at her desk. “Marvin had an early appointment and the guys are on assignment, so it’s just us girls here right now.” Rainey peered into Jonelle’s face. “You okay? You don’t look like your usual happy self.”
Jonelle resisted the temptation to sit next to Rainey’s desk and tell the receptionist everything that had happened. “I made a stop Saturday concerning my case and it didn’t go well.” She shifted her bag from one shoulder to the next. “It’s something I’ll have to work out on my own.” She gave a weak smile and headed for her office. Halfway down, she turned around and came back.
“Did I get any calls on the office line?” Jonelle hoped that if Sophia somehow forgot or misplaced Jonelle’s cell, she’d at least try the main number.
Rainey shook her head, setting in motion two yellow pencils dancing in her hair. “Afraid not, hon. You expecting something important?”
“I haven’t been able to reach Sophia Reyes. If she calls, please let me know, no matter where I am or what I’m doing.”
Rainey nodded, pencils bouncing. “Will do.” She turned and began working on her computer.
After putting her bag away, Jonelle sat and pulled up her emails, hoping that one of the many she’d received would produce one from Sophia. None were from the victim’s sister, but she perked up when she noticed an item from Winston Hackett, Rosemary Wilkins’ attorney.
She tried calling him first, but the call went directly to voice mail. Jonelle read through the message twice. Hackett stated Rosemary had additional information about her relationship with Susanna. Rosemary wanted Jonelle to know more about what led up to Susanna’s decision to take the money and run. Jonelle noted with a wry smile that Rosemary again stated it was all Susanna’s idea to drag her into the whole mess. Hackett’s message stated he was coming to the area to attend a two-day conference in Arlington, Virginia starting tomorrow and if she wanted to meet him, he’d tell her what additional information Rosemary revealed.
The Trickster (A Jonelle Sweet Mystery Book 3) Page 18