by Zoe Burke
We were in time to make the flight I had booked in Chicago. “You thought we would only be in Las Vegas for one night, hmm?” Mickey gave my cap a playful tug and bought himself a ticket. We sat toward the back, me in the middle, him on the aisle, and a girl of about nineteen at the window, who listened to her iPod the whole trip. Somehow I slept, my head resting against Mickey’s shoulder.
We landed at SFO, where Mickey rented a red Mustang convertible. I chuckled. “Are you still trying to impress me?”
He winked at me. “Always.”
Our flashy, look-at-us car headed north to San Francisco, the city I had always loved, the city where I thought I would always belong. But this homecoming felt dark and the streets, strange. The fog was cutting, not soothing. For the first time in my life, I didn’t want to be there.
Chapter Ten
My apartment building is on the corner of Geary Boulevard and 23rd Avenue. I live on the second floor, right above a mom-and-pop bakery owned by an Italian couple. The luscious scents of freshly baked profiteroles, cannoli, and other sugary confections wake me each morning. The periodic roar of the Geary buses pulling in and out of the bus stop beneath my living-room window drove me crazy when I first moved in. It would completely drown out my TV or music. But I eventually got used to it. City noise has been a small price to pay for living by the ocean in a light-filled city that has embraced beatniks, hippies, and out-of-the-closet homosexuals. The rent, of course, is another matter. I can’t really afford my apartment, and I’ve got way too much debt on my MasterCard. Retirement savings are a long way off.
Money doesn’t interest me much. Expensive things aren’t a necessity. Good taste and an eye for the great bargain keep my wardrobe up-to-date. Too many shoes, probably, but no Jimmy Choos or Manolos. Sales at Scandinavian Designs have furnished my apartment, so clean wood and simple lines offer uncluttered sanctuary in my four-room abode: bedroom, big living room, kitchen, and bathroom. I painted most of my walls what I call “clay-gray-green,” the cool color that I plastered all over my face once when I thought I should be worrying about wrinkles and bought an expensive French clay mask. My kitchen is sunny with yellow tile counters, a red linoleum floor, and sunflower wallpaper I put up myself. It’s a little over the top, but the room lands me smack dab in the middle of Under the Tuscan Sun. The movie bored me to tears, frankly, but the sunflowers that led Diane Lane to love and happiness have stuck with me.
If you’ve ever been to San Francisco, you know what a problem parking is. I don’t own a car. I rent one when I need to get out of the city. Mickey drove around and around the avenues, from 20th up to 26th, and from Balboa to Lake, until we finally found a spot on 23rd and Anza, a block from my apartment. We got out of the car and shut the doors. Mickey grabbed his suitcase from the back seat.
“What are you doing? Don’t you want to put the top up and lock it? We can leave our suitcases here.”
“Nah. It’s a convertible. If someone wants to steal it and the top is up, it’s easy enough to slice through it with a good knife and get in. This way, we’re saving the car some damage.” He grabbed my suitcase, too, unlocked the trunk, and tossed them both in.
“Your logic escapes me.” We were walking along the sidewalk now. “You’ve driven lots of convertibles, and this is how you came up with this theory?” We got to the front door to my building. I pulled my keys out of my purse.
Mickey smiled. “Not exactly. I used to steal cars. Convertibles were easy.”
I jerked to look at him, dropping my keys. “Are you kidding me?”
That easy smile again. “High school. Long time ago.” He picked up the keys and handed them to me. “Don’t worry.”
What, me worry? Even though I just found out I slept with a car thief who is now escorting me to a murder scene? I stuck the key in the lock, turned it, and pushed. We walked in and headed upstairs to my apartment. The creak of the old wooden stairs was louder than I remembered. The cream-colored walls, dingier.
My door was slightly ajar, and yellow crime-scene tape criss-crossed in front of it. It matched the tile in my kitchen. That’s when I started to gulp for air, seeing how the edge of the door was bashed in, the locks were all busted up, and the figure of a uniformed policeman stood inside my hallway.
Mickey put his left arm around my shoulders and held tight. “Slow down, even breaths, slowly, you’re okay.” He lifted up the yellow tape.
The cop was about to speak when I said, “Hi, I live here.” I immediately looked at his shoes to see if I could figure out what Luis meant, about cops wearing a certain kind of shoes. These looked sturdy and black, with laces.
“Ms. Starkey? Can I see some I.D.?”
“Okay. Can I see your badge?”
“It’s right here on my chest, Miss. I’m Officer Wilson.”
I was slightly embarrassed about that, but my only experience in situations like this came from TV, mostly Law and Order in all of its incarnations. I checked out his badge and then lifted my driver’s license from my purse. After he examined it, Wilson nodded at Mickey, who took the hint and pulled out his license as well. Wilson examined it and handed it back to him before addressing me.
“Sergeant Franklin isn’t here right now, but he asked me to tell you that he’ll be back about six and wants you to wait here.” I nodded. “He said to apologize for not meeting you at the airport, this being a murder case, but thought it would be best to see you here, since you are the primary…”
“Suspect?” Mickey interrupted. “Is that what you were going to say, officer? Because Annabelle wasn’t even here Sunday night! She doesn’t need this stress on top of everything else she’s going through.”
“Actually, no, Mr. Paxton, that’s not what I was going to say.” Wilson took a step toward Mickey. Mickey held his ground. Wilson’s words were clipped. “I was going to say ‘primary resident.’” He crossed his arms.
Mickey held up his hands, like he was imitating a goalpost. “Officer Wilson, we’re a bit on edge, as you can probably imagine. We’ll just take a seat and try to calm down.”
“Sure thing, Mr. Paxton.” He stepped aside as Mickey and I walked into the living room.
Sitting down was not easy. My home was a replay of the Las Vegas suite, with furniture turned upside down, books in heaps, shelves askew, a knife slice through the padding of the couch. I peered into my bedroom, looking for Bonkers, and saw the same mess. On my knees next to my bed, I lifted up the spread to see Bonkers’ little black-and-white face peering at me as he crouched on all fours.
“Honey bun! C’mere!” I held out my hand, but he wasn’t budging. I got up to get him some water, heading back to the kitchen through the living room and into the entrance alcove. That’s when I saw the blood on the floor by the telephone table, gasped, moaned, and fled to the bathroom, where I heaved into the toilet.
Mickey came to the bathroom door but didn’t watch me, just stood next to it. “It’ll be okay, Annabelle.” But he didn’t sound okay, and I was throwing up, and Cassie’s blood was on my floor.
He moved back into the living room. I eventually stood up, took off my glasses, washed my face, and rinsed out my mouth. I took my extra contact lenses out of the medicine cabinet and put them in. Then I sank down on the closed toilet seat, afraid to leave, unable to bear seeing the blood again. Mickey was on the phone.
“Luis?…Yeah, we’re here.…Yes. The place is a mess.…No, he’s not here right now, we’re waiting for him. Any news there?…Mmm. Okay. There’s still blood on the floor.…Yes, there’s an officer here, but…Okay. Yeah. I’ll ask him.…Yeah, after we see Franklin. Later…Yeah…Thanks.” He hung up. “Officer?”
“Right here.”
“May I have your permission to clean up this blood? Has forensics finished their work here?”
“I’m not sure, but I don’t think so. We should wait for Sergeant Franklin before we touch that.�
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“No, sorry, no can do. Annabelle cannot see this blood again, do you understand? She can’t. We have to clean it up.”
“Well, look, I can’t just…”
“You can call someone, right? You can call and find out if that would be okay?”
Wilson sighed. He was probably crossing his arms again.
Then Mickey walked closer to him. “Wilson.” He used a very measured voice. “You can call someone.”
Wilson talked on his walkie-talkie, and Mickey came back to the bathroom. “You stay right there, Annabelle. I’ll take care of this.”
I couldn’t open my eyes to thank him, but I waved my hand. Never had a man looked after me so well, ever, in my life. Let alone a car thief. Why was he so caring? Given my track record, how could I bet on any guy liking me enough to listen to me hurl without hurling himself—right out the door.
Wilson’s voice faded away, so he must have stepped out into the hallway to have his conversation. Mickey waited by the bathroom door, as if guarding it, not letting anyone in and making sure I stayed put. Then Wilson called out. “It’s okay. You can clean it up.”
“Good. Thank you.”
I should help clean up that blood. Why should Mickey have to do it? Still, my body wouldn’t move. He rummaged around in the kitchen and found my Ajax and that big sponge I use for wiping down the kitchen walls after I have steamed them up but good from boiling more pasta than I need to eat. I plugged my ears, elbows on knees, kept my eyes shut, and tried to pretend I was sitting on the toilet on a cruise ship in the middle of the Caribbean. That was hopeless. Instead my mind retraced my walk up the apartment stairs to my front door, and came up with a lot of questions.
“Annabelle?” I opened my eyes and removed my fingers. Mickey squatted down in front of me and took one hand in his. Nice of him not to notice the bit of earwax on its tip. “I’m sorry. Most of the blood is gone, but there’s a stain. I can’t get that up.”
I squeezed his hand. “Okay. Thanks.”
“But I found a small braided rug in the corner of your bedroom, and I put that over it.”
I drew him to me then, my arms around his neck, pressing the side of my face against his. “What’s your middle name?”
“Thomas.”
“Thank you, Michael Thomas Paxton.”
“Sure.”
We both stood up and walked into the living room, taking our time looking around at the mayhem. And that’s when Sergeant Franklin walked in.
“Wilson?”
“Sir.”
“They’re here?”
“Yes, sir.”
We turned around to meet Franklin. It’s true I was not in a trusting mood, and it’s true that I was imagining conspiracies behind every handshake, but it got far too weird when Mickey saw Franklin and said, “Brad? Brad Franklin? Is that really you? Jesus!” before holding out his hand.
Brad Franklin used his hand to pull Mickey into a bear hug. “Surprise, surprise, Paxton! I knew it was you when I talked to the Las Vegas detective, Luis Maldonado. How’s everything going in New York? Man, how long has it been?”
“Christ, probably twelve years. Damn.” Mickey acted nonplussed. “A cop? You’re a cop? When did that happen? The last time I saw you, you were trying to sell futures for a brokerage house.”
“Well, that got old quick, and I thought, what the hell, I’ll see if I can get a real job. Signed up, in fact, soon after I last saw you. I guess you inspired…”
Mickey jumped in. “Patty? How’s Patty?” Franklin kept gripping Mickey’s hand in a shake and pumping their arms up and down during this exchange. Mickey was trying to pull away. I just gawked.
“Ah, well, didn’t work. We got divorced about five years ago. The police world didn’t suit her, you might say.”
“Hmmm. Yeah.” They finally let go of each other.
“What about you? What was her name, um…Laurie?”
Okay, now I was annoyed. I guess I coughed or shuffled my feet, and the two long-lost pals swiftly shifted their loving gazes from each other to me. Franklin spoke first.
“I’m so sorry, Ms. Starkey. You must be Beatrice Starkey. I’m Brad Franklin. Sorry about all of this.” He held out his hand and I shook it.
“Thanks. So you guys…?”
Mickey put his arm around my shoulders. “Annabelle, Brad and I were in college together at Amherst. I majored in English and Brad…what did you major in, Brad? Frisbee?” Franklin snorted.
“We’ll catch up later, Mick.” He winked at his old pal, then shifted his expression and turned to me again. “Right now we have to talk about your friend Cassie and what happened here Sunday night.”
“Okay. I’ll start. I have a lot of questions.” I held his gaze.
Franklin paused and I saw his mouth twitch slightly. “Okay, shoot.” Then he stuck his hands in his pockets, moved his legs a bit wider apart than his hips, locked his knees, and waited.
“How come we weren’t met at the airport, seeing as how this is a murder case, and all?”
Brad laughed. “Well, usually we don’t worry about one of…”
Mickey interrupted him again. “Brad just said, he remembers me from the old days.”
Brad paused to study Mickey for a few seconds. Whatever passed between them was creepy.
“Sounds pretty casual to me. You haven’t seen Mickey in ten years. How do you know he’s not some criminal? I mean, he used to steal cars.” Mickey let his arm drop and gave me a look that I read as, “What has gotten into you, little lady?” which got me even more riled up.
Franklin held his position a moment, moving his eyes back and forth before relaxing into a pleasant smile. “Mick isn’t a criminal, I know that. But you got me on the other thing.”
“What?”
“You’re right. It would have been sloppy police work not to meet you at the airport. But someone did. Followed you here. If you were going to take off somewhere, we wanted to know where you’d go.”
Mickey shrugged at my glare. “We weren’t really paying attention to people or cars around us.”
“Hey, we’re good at what we do. You wouldn’t have seen my guy anyway.” He fiddled with coins in his pocket. “Do you have another question?”
“Yeah. My next one is, if the locks on the door were broken when Cassie got back here, why would she have come into the apartment?”
Franklin was sizing me up. “She didn’t. It looks like the intruder grabbed her right when she reached the top of the stairs and pulled her into your apartment. He was in the hallway waiting for her. He may have been ready to leave and seen or heard her come in the front door of the building. We found her purse out in the hallway, like she dropped it there.”
Mickey said, “But he hit her in the alcove of the apartment.”
“Yes, he got her inside and then hit her over the head.”
“With what?” I asked.
“We don’t have a murder weapon yet. But it could have been any number of things, heavy and hard. His gun, if he had one.”
“Any prints yet?”
He rolled his eyes, like that was the dumbest question he’d ever heard. “Well, sure, we found a lot of prints. But if this guy was careful, they’ll all be yours and Cassie’s, and any other friends’ you may have had in your apartment.” Franklin motioned to my sliced-up sofa. “Shall we sit down now and talk about you?”
“Okay, but first I’ve got to get water for my cat.” I tiptoed through the kitchen, stepping around, over, and right on top of forks, knives, spoons, and broken coffee mugs. Bonkers’ food and water dishes were on the floor next to the refrigerator. I picked them both up and rinsed them out, put some kibble in one and some water in the other, and gingerly made my way back to the bedroom. Kneeling down, I pushed the two dishes underneath the bed and peeked at Bonkers. He hadn’t moved.
“Sugar pie, here’s some yummy food and some water. I want you to eat.” I held out my hand again. Bonkers stayed put, eyes wild. I waited for a minute, my hand outstretched, and then gave up.
I could hear the two men speaking quietly. They stopped abruptly when I came in and sat down on the sofa next to Mickey. Franklin had righted my butterfly chair and was sitting in it, looking silly. Were policemen supposed to look so comfortable? And why was Mickey looking so uncomfortable?
“I’m starving,” I suddenly announced. We hadn’t eaten anything except airplane crackers since breakfast.
Mickey took my hand. “Brad, can we go somewhere and talk about all of this over dinner?”
“There’s a good little Italian place on Clement, a short walk.” I stood up. “Really, I need to eat.”
Franklin tilted his head to the side as if he were studying something on the wall and then turned back. “Okay. Not the usual procedure, but I don’t see any harm in it.” He and Mickey stood up and I picked up my purse.
When they headed for the door, I checked Bonkers one more time. He was lapping up some water. “Good kitty.” I reached under to pet him, and he let me. Then I saw it. The little notepad I keep on my bedside table. Bonkers had been crouching on it. I reached for it and was about to toss it onto the table when I noticed that part of the last page torn off was still attached. Now, I’m not a neat freak or anything, but I would never leave a torn bit like that attached to a notepad. Someone had used this. I could feel indentations on the top full page. I fumbled around in the table drawer—which is definitely not the drawer of a neat freak—until I found a pencil. I felt like Nancy Drew, rubbing the pencil over the top sheet. Sure enough, a message emerged—“Georgia Browning” and a phone number.
I had never heard of Georgia Browning. How had the police missed the notepad? Maybe Bonkers had been sitting on it under the bed, and Bonkers can be ferocious when he senses danger. They probably let him be. But how did this end up under my bed in the first place? And who was Georgia Browning?