by Неизвестный
“Pam, do you remember anything else about that guy?”
She snapped, “I can’t keep track of everyone all the time.”
I sighed. “Last night, you told me you saw someone skulking around the neighborhood, knocking on Mr. Michaels’ door. Do you remember if he was old or young?”
“Heck if I know,” she said before moving on to words more flavorful than heck.
I gently took her by the shoulder and gave her a shake. “Easy now. Shh,” I said. “The window’s open now, and we don’t want the whole block to find out what a filthy truck driver mouth you have.”
She turned her head and looked at me blankly, as though she’d just awoken in a strange location. I’d been smiling, somewhat amused by her colorful ranting, but now that I saw how dazed out she was, it wasn’t as funny anymore.
“Are you feeling okay?” I asked. “Did you take your blood pressure medication yet? Or is it thyroid pills?”
“Fools,” she said. “They’re just silly, old fools. We all are.”
I turned off the stove burner and took the spatula from her hand.
“Let me finish up here, Pam.”
“I’ve ruined everything,” she said.
“There’s plenty of french toast already. You’ve made enough to feed an army.”
She blinked rapidly and turned away from me. “I need a nap. I didn’t sleep well last night, and you woke me up when you got in late from the bar.” She gave me an accusatory look. “Why are you staying here? You don’t think I need looking after, do you?”
“Go have your nap,” I said gently. “I’ll clean up here. Don’t be so hard on yourself, okay? Dad will be back soon, and everything will be back to normal.”
She muttered, “I doubt that very much,” and left the kitchen.
I tidied up and sat down to eat my french toast. To Pam’s credit, the ones she didn’t burn were delicious.
Chapter 25
With a stomach full of breakfast, I left Pam to her nap and showed myself out. When I’d arrived the night before, I’d found her vehicle crookedly blocking both spots at the back of the house, so I’d parked in the front. I left through the front door, and as I locked up, my eye was caught by a yellow envelope resting between a snow-covered plant pot and the porch railing. I reached down and retrieved not one, but four envelopes, all yellow and the same size.
I would have put them in the mailbox for Pam to retrieve, but they weren’t addressed to my father’s house. They were for the deceased man, Murray Michaels. They must have fallen there the day before, when I’d startled the carrot-crunching mail carrier. He’d dropped his bag, scattering its contents on the porch.
Now what was I supposed to do with these? They weren’t just junk mail. By the look of the portion visible through the clear address window, these were checks. The return address was from a company called R&F Brokers. The moisture from the snow had made the envelopes soft. As I turned the envelopes over in my hands, the flap on one came loose. With a barely-perceptible nudge of my thumb, it flipped right open.
My breath caught in my throat. I looked up and down the street, self-conscious of my mail tampering. Opening someone else’s mail was a serious offense, but I really wanted to see what the checks were for. Was this what Mr. Jenkins had been searching for when he broke in?
I gave the envelope a gentle shake. The check fell out into my hand. The check was from R&F Brokers, the same as the return address, and the dollar amount was for only $43.77. My heart sank as I double-checked the puny figure. So much for cracking the case wide open. People killed over relatively small sums of money, but $43.77 was too small. The memo line held only an alpha-numeric code.
I shook the other envelopes until their checks “accidentally” fell out as well. The others would have bought a few rounds at the Fox and Hound but not much more. I slid the checks back into their envelopes and went to my car.
I’d planned to work on some orders and data entry at the store, but it could wait. I glanced over at the envelopes on the passenger seat, noting that the address of R&F Brokers wasn’t far from the hospital where my father was recovering. I entertained the notion of going to R&F myself and finding out what Murray Michaels had been pawning and how frequently, but then I quickly dismissed the idea. As intrigued as I was, getting myself further involved in the investigation would be rash.
I drove to the police station with the intention of hand-delivering the checks to Tony, but once I’d parked, my body felt as heavy as cement. The station had once been a friendly place for me, but most of the people I knew had all retired. For the first time in my life, I viewed the red brick building as intimidating.
The front door opened, and the instant I saw it was Tony Milano, I knew my dread about entering the building was actually dread about seeing him. I heard my father’s voice in my head, telling me to jump back in the saddle. Considering some of the moments I’d shared with Tony during our brief fling, my father’s advice took on a comically inappropriate tone.
I jumped out of the car and waved at him. “Tony Baloney!”
Shaking his head, he walked over toward me. “Stormy, I can only do what the law allows. If you want someone shot, get your own gun.” He stopped in front of me and stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets. “On second thought, stay away from weapons. Someone with your temper shouldn’t own anything more deadly than one of those gardening fork things, and even that’s questionable.”
“How about a crossbow? I just bought one. It’s in the trunk with my dynamite and my nunchakus.”
He ruffled the white hairs at his temples and fixed me with his dark brown eyes. “What are you doing here?”
“Helping with the Michaels case.”
“We don’t need any help,” he said, spitting the word help with distaste. “Pam Bochenek gave us a description of the guy she saw skulking around the place a few weeks ago. The guy was big, dark hair, bearded, and looked like a drifter. Sounds a lot like your friend from the vet clinic. The one who calls himself a lawyer.”
“Do you mean Logan Sanderson? He’s not your guy.”
Tony straightened up and scratched about two days’ worth of stubble on his chin as he looked down his nose at me. “And how do you know that? Are you his alibi?”
“Never mind about Logan. Why’d you let Creepy Jeepers go?”
“Creepy Jeepers?” Tony’s mouth threatened to betray him with a grin, but he fought it. “You mean Leo Jenkins? He was out of town during the week-long window that Michaels disappeared. We could charge him for the break-in, but in light of the fact he was looking for some items that the man had stolen from him in the first place, I don’t know. We might look the other way.”
“What items?” I asked. “What was Jenkins looking for?”
“He didn’t have anything on him, but he claimed he was looking for a pair of cufflinks and a bag of none-of-your-business.” He looked me up and down as he stepped back. “You’ll read about it in the paper with everyone else once we get this business cleaned up.” He started walking away, calling back over his shoulder, “Stay out of trouble.”
Chapter 26
Portland, Oregon, is not exactly New York City, but I’d forgotten how busy city traffic was. Cars zoomed by, changing lanes without signaling, the drivers distracted by their phones, speeding toward congested intersections like red blood cells toward a wound. By comparison, in Misty Falls the traffic jams lasted all of a minute, and nobody dared honk since they probably knew the person in front of them.
When I got to the hospital, I did something I hadn’t done in ages; I paid for parking. Sure, it was tricky to order a grande vanilla latte in Misty Falls, but you never paid a cent for parking.
I stretched my arms and back as I walked into the hospital. I found my father’s floor without incident, but when I got to his room, he was sleeping. I took a seat on the hard-backed chair near his side, expecting him to open his eyes at any moment. The room had another bed, but it was unoccupied. The window had a view o
f a small city park with green grass. Unlike our town, which was further inland and much higher in elevation, Portland hadn’t received any snow yet that winter, and would get no more than four or five days of frozen precipitation, at the most.
After ten minutes of the pleasure of watching Finnegan Day sleep, a dark-haired woman in pale green scrubs came in.
She saw me and said sweetly, “You’re as lovely as I imagined. Which one are you, the sunshine or the rain?”
I got up to shake her hand. “My reputation has preceded me. You could say I’m the rain. Stormy Day.”
The woman was forty-something, with flawless dark skin, a high forehead, and chin-length curly hair. She had an energetic presence and quick eyes, darting around to check everything in the room. She reminded me of my dental hygienist in Portland, who was from Jamaica, but it must have been because of their similar bone structure, for she had no accent. Her handshake was firm enough to make me wonder if mine was weak.
“Your father is quite the man,” she said breathlessly, as though talking about meeting her favorite actor. “He says I should move to Misty Falls now that my son’s off to college.”
“Oh, did he?”
Finnegan Day continued sleeping peacefully, unaware of my accusatory glare. My father loved his town, but he didn’t go around recruiting random people into moving there. His interest in this woman had to be personal. And here I’d thought those days were behind him.
The woman said, “I have to admit I’m curious. He’s been telling me about your town ever since we met.” She walked around the bed, tucking the blankets in along his sides.
I checked her name tag, and everything clicked into place. Dora Jones. We’d spoken on the phone when I called to check on him, and she’d been so friendly.
This was the woman who had helped with my father’s physical assessments. The way Pam had gone on about Dora being bossy, I’d thought she’d just been complaining for the sake of complaining. Suddenly, it all made sense. No wonder Pam felt threatened. No wonder she’d burned the heck out of the french toast. She knew he was here at the hospital, being cared for by a compassionate woman with big, amber-brown eyes and a lithe body that made hospital scrubs look flattering.
Dora finished tucking him in and said, “How about you? Are you glad to be living back in your hometown again? Hanging out with your old friends?”
“Somewhat,” I said. “It sounds like you’ve been spending a lot of time with my father. You two must talk a lot while you do whatever it is you do. Exactly what is that, Dora? Are you a physical therapist?”
She made the face people make when someone gets the title of their occupation wrong. “I’m an orthopedic nurse,” she said, enunciating each syllable carefully. “I’ve been with your father through everything, including the surgery.”
“Did you get to use the power tools?”
She squinted for a few tense seconds before laughing. “You’ve got your father’s sense of humor.” She wagged her finger at me. “Power tools. You really had me going.” She patted my sleeping father’s arm. “We’ll have to tell him when he wakes up.”
We both turned and watched him sleep.
Gazing at him tenderly, Dora said, “Poor ducky. He’s been living with a lot of pain.”
I chuckled. “He does live with Pam Bochenek.”
Dora’s expression contorted, her smooth brow wrinkling. “It’s a shame he took that tumble, or he might have delayed the surgery for years.”
“That tumble?”
Dora turned to give me a knowing look, sisterly warmth in her eyes.
“Sometimes I wonder if someone pushed him,” Dora said icily. “Your father claims he slipped in the bath, but the injuries weren’t consistent with the fall he described.”
“Right,” I said, pretending I knew what she was talking about. “And what do you think happened?”
She glanced around, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, looking as though she wanted to say something but needed more prodding to overstep her boundaries as an orthopedic nurse. What did she know? My father hadn’t mentioned a fall, let alone being pushed. My head got fuzzy as the edges of the room darkened.
“Was it his neighbor?” I asked. “A man named Murray? Is that who pushed him?”
“Who?” Dora didn’t show any recognition of the name Murray.
“Dora, if you know something, please tell me.”
She appeared to struggle with a desire to flee the room but finally said, “I don’t think she meant to push him down the stairs.” She waved one hand dismissively. “He was probably saying something sassy, like he always does, and she gave him a shove, and down the steps he went.”
“Are you saying Pam pushed my father down the stairs? Do you mean the ones inside his house?”
She took two steps backward, toward the hallway, shaking her corkscrew curls. “I’m not saying anything, dear.” She forced her mouth into a disconcerting smile. “But you might want to ask him about his fall.”
“Dad,” I said, shaking his shoulder. “Stop pretending to be asleep.” His nostrils flared, and the rhythm of his breathing broke, but he didn’t wake up. I shook his shoulder again.
“He won’t be out much longer,” Dora said, talking quickly and edging toward the door. “Would you like to borrow a book from the floor’s library? I could get you a real coffee from the staff lounge. Don’t use the vending machine in the hall if you know what’s good for you.”
I looked once more at my father, who was smiling, enjoying whatever dream he was in.
“What do you say to that coffee?” Dora asked. She stood in the doorway with her palms pressed together in a prayer-like gesture. She wore three rings on her fingers, but her wedding ring finger was bare. She was a single mother with a full-grown son, and I knew she was just my father’s type because his type was any female who found him charming.
“Thanks for the kind offer,” I said. “I’ve got an errand here in the city. If he wakes up, tell him I need to speak with him, and he’d better not go anywhere.”
“Don’t you worry,” Dora said. “I won’t let him get away.”
Chapter 27
No matter how dark things get, life has a way of getting better when you do a good deed for someone else.
Though I was worried about my father’s hip, his situation with Pam, the prospect of my new tenant being wanted for questioning, plus a killer on the loose back in Misty Falls, I could do some good during my visit to Portland. I got into my car and punched the address for R&F Brokers into the navigation system. If Mr. Jenkins had broken in looking for stolen cufflinks, they likely had some sentimental value, and it would be a good deed for me to retrieve them. I had to assume Tony had checked his alibi for the time during which Mr. Michaels had disappeared and that the man was innocent. The good deed would also assuage some of my guilt for continuing to call him Creepy Jeepers in my head.
R&F Brokers was, as I suspected, a pawn shop. An assortment of tough-looking guys were leaving when I arrived. Despite the chilly winter weather, the men wore no jackets, all the better to show off their arm tattoos and thick gold chains.
They gave me an appreciative look when I stepped out of my car. I was wearing my new lace-up boots, wool jacket, brown cords, and emerald green blouse. One of the bigger guys gave me a chin-lift gesture as he walked by, letting me know he liked what he saw. I smiled to myself, happy my new clothes had been a good investment.
I walked into the pawn shop and immediately started sneezing from the dust. A young woman of about twenty, with a shaved head and multiple piercings, sat behind the main counter on a stool, oblivious to me as she thumbed her phone screen. I sneezed again, and she didn’t even glance my way, let alone greet me.
I told her, “Your customers wouldn’t sneeze so much if someone ran a damp cloth over these display cases.”
She looked up at me as though I was a fussy older person who stuck her nose in everyone’s business. I realized, with horror, that I wasn’t so
different from Pam, who’d said the same thing to my employee three days earlier.
The girl with the buzz cut gave me a dull stare. “Sure,” she said. “I’ll get right on that. Anything else?”
“I’m looking for some cufflinks. They’re possibly vintage.”
“What are cufflinks?” She stared at me steadily, her expression unchanging.
Instead of explaining, I reached into my purse and pulled out the yellow envelopes. “These checks are from here, right?”
She shrugged. “Looks like it. What’s wrong, lady? Did your kid pawn your stuff for drug money?”
“My kid?” She’d basically handed me a premise far better than the one I’d had in mind. I stood on the precipice for several seconds before taking the plunge, casting my eyes down so she wouldn’t see my discomfort over lying. “He used to be such a good boy,” I said.
“Sorry about that,” she said, hints of genuine sympathy in her tone. “That’s a real bummer when they steal from you, but I can’t cash those checks, and if the goods are sold, they’re long gone.”
The dust was making my eyes water. I sniffed and rubbed my eye. “I’ll never be able to replace those cufflinks.”
“Don’t cry,” she said. “I can look up the lot number from one of those checks and cross-reference it to see if anything’s still here, if you want.”
I sniffed convincingly. “Thank you so much.”
“I’ll have to look it up on the computer, but yeah, whatever.” She took one of the checks and started tapping away at a computer terminal that looked older than she was. Her movements stirred up more dust, making me sneeze. With each sneeze, she gave me a suspicious look, as though I was doing it on purpose to make her feel bad about not dusting. I busied myself by looking around at some of the musical instruments on display. An accordion caught my eye, and I wondered what stories the old squeezebox had to tell.