Dead Lift

by Rachel Brady

  “I’d know if that were the case.”

  My face twisted in doubt I couldn’t hide. “We’d like to think so. But you’re not a cop anymore. They can’t tell you everything.”

  I watched him mentally weigh that.

  “All the computers at Claire’s house were gone,” I said. “If there was evidence she’d been e-mailing Platt, the police would have taken those with a search warrant.”

  He knew I was right. “I’ll see what I can find out.”

  “Listen, Richard.” I looked at my watch. “In about fifteen minutes I’d like you to leave. Make a big production out of it. Tell Linda to do the same thing. Hopefully everybody else will follow you out. I want to clear this place out and look at Thursday’s footage from the club.”

  He looked at his own watch and then stole a glance at the make-shift bar in my kitchen. “No problem.”

  Annette, fully jazzed on sugar, bee lined between us and Richard stepped back. She ran in the direction of her room and he crunched another ice cube.

  “She staying here tonight?” he asked.

  I hoped she would. I’d loaned her room to Jeannie for the week, but the nice thing about kids was that they all loved sleeping in forts. Any piece of furniture could be converted.

  “We’ll see.” I glanced at Betsy, still in the same place on my sofa.

  Richard picked up on it. “She’s your kid. Betsy’s permission isn’t required.” When I didn’t answer, he made an obscene point of making eye contact with me. “Your kid,” he said again.

  I hated when Richard got fatherly with me.

  “I already told them they could have the week with her. But it was easier to share when I thought they’d be out of town.”

  Annette barreled from the hallway with one of my cast-off handbags, the crocheted one I knew had checkers and marbles inside. She moved so fast it seemed she’d been launched.

  “On second thought,” he said, “She’s wired. Let her spend the night with them.”

  I smiled—not at the thought of Nick and Betsy wrangling a hyperactive five-year-old, though that did sound funny—but because I knew she’d crash hard any minute now. Getting her to sleep would be no problem, and I felt a little surge of progress because I’d learned this about her.

  “I’ll figure something out,” I said. “You just worry about your grand exit.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Despite his best efforts, Richard didn’t come through for me, but his wife Linda cleared my small apartment in a matter of twenty minutes. The Bunko crowd was delighted when she offered up the leftover soft drinks and booze. They filled their arms with bottles and cans and shuttled drinks across the landing to Florence’s place. I especially liked that Linda managed to rid my kitchen of leftover cake and chips—she knew I didn’t like that stuff around. Florence and her tipsy friends moved the party next door and that left us with just the Fletchers.

  Feigning interest in Annette’s newly-decorated princess bedroom, Linda disappeared with her into the hallway, and when they returned Annette was in her pj’s, dragging Georgina the Giraffe at her side.

  “Give everybody a hug and kiss goodnight,” Linda was saying. “Then go crawl into your beautiful royal bed.”

  I could have kissed her.

  “Just for tonight,” I assured Betsy. “She can spend some time with Jeannie while she’s in town, and then I’ll drop her off tomorrow so you can finish your week together.”

  This seemed to satisfy her, or else she pretended it did, and Annette said her goodbyes. Nick and Betsy left, and Richard and Linda dutifully followed.

  I shut the door behind them and leaned backward on its frame, my hand still on the knob. “That woman is my hero.”

  We dimmed the lights and settled Annette onto the couch, figuring it was easier to set her up there than to resituate Jeannie, who’d already made herself at home in the princess room. Since Annette was all but asleep, I didn’t trouble myself to make a fort.

  Behind me, Jeannie cleared a spot for my laptop at the kitchen table. While she booted the machine and opened the software package I’d bought, I lingered on the couch and stroked my baby’s hair, happy in the moment’s simplicity.

  Then Jeannie came around the far end of the sofa, pulled her glittery pink phone from her purse, and plugged it into the charger she’d situated near my TV.

  “I think my phone is toast,” I said. “It sounds awful and the Caller ID is hosed.”

  “Still under warranty?”

  I nodded.

  “Where is it?”

  I pointed in the general direction of my purse and she took it upon herself to fish it out, turn it off, and remove the battery. She looked inside.

  “Not anymore,” she said. “This little sticker is red. It changed from white when the phone got wet. Water damage voids most warranties. Got insurance?” She answered her own question before I drew a breath. “Of course you don’t. You’re cheap.”

  “How do you know all this? Been sleeping with a Verizon guy?”

  She smiled. “Sprint. I dropped mine in a hot tub and he hooked me up. You can bleach those stickers white again, you know.”

  “I’m not going to bleach a sticker.”

  “You can do what Tina did.” She took my phone to the kitchen and started opening cabinets. “Put it in uncooked rice. That soaks out all the moisture.”

  “Pantry,” I said. “And that sounds ridiculous.” Secretly, I hoped it would work. I didn’t want to pay for a new phone.

  She found a mixing bowl, dropped in my phone and battery, and poured rice over them. “Worked for Tina.”

  She brought the bowl to me in the living room and set it on the coffee table in front of me as if were a cracker tray and I were her guest. Then she returned to the kitchen table and hoisted a CD on one finger, her acrylic tip prominently displayed through the hole in its center. “Want me to put this in?” She waggled the disc back and forth.

  I turned and nodded, growing drowsy with the powerful urge to scoop up Annette and fall asleep with her. Behind me, Jeannie’s nails clacked on the keyboard and the rhythm was strangely hypnotizing.

  “Whoa,” she said, a moment later. “Rebecca Sleitzer is preggers!”

  I turned again, annoyed. She was reading my e-mail.

  “What the hell are you doing? Who reads somebody else’s mail?”

  She looked up, startled, but not finding much anger in my face, she relaxed. “Not my fault. I opened a browser and the default page is your webmail. Apparently,” she tisk-tisked, “you leave yourself logged in.”

  I glared at her. “That doesn’t mean ‘Read this.’”

  She shrugged. “Aren’t you glad your friend’s pregnant?”

  “Is the install finished?”

  She minimized the browser and I stood up and joined her at the table. I watched the last steps of the installation and, too weary for the user’s manual, clicked on new icons and fumbled through pull-down menus until the files from my thumb drive were successfully loaded. So far I’d located feeds from thirty-one cameras—everything from the parking lot to the indoor pool.

  “The place opens at five and Claire found the note around lunchtime…Or, the note could also have been left the day before. I grabbed those files too.”

  Jeannie yawned. “That’s a lot of hours to watch. Do we have to do it all tonight?”

  “Don’t have to,” I said, feeling a little badly. This was her vacation, after all. “But I’m itching to see who’s on here. You should go to bed. I’ll fill you in tomorrow.”

  She wasn’t one to argue for the sake of being polite. Instead, she slipped out of her slingbacks, rolled her ankles, and flexed her toes. “Don’t stay up too late.”

  She walked toward the hall, shoes dangling by straps that were hooked over a finger. Before she shut herself into the bathroom, I stopped her. “Hey.”

  She leaned back out.

  “Thanks for my party.”

  She gave a thumbs-up and closed the door
. Water started running, and I turned my attention to the computer. It didn’t take long to get the hang of how the new program worked. The camera feeds were motion-based, so if a period of time passed in which nothing moved, the camera for that zone didn’t tape. That made it easier to zoom through all the views, although by about eight o’clock the gym was so busy that somebody was doing something in every nook and cranny.

  I started with the camera that overlooked the entrance to the locker room. Women I didn’t know came and went at regular intervals. Most had preened for the gym the same way I would for a fancy night out. Even more astonishing, they somehow managed to beautify themselves even more after their work-outs. They’d return to the locker room, tired and disheveled, and then emerge again even more crisp and lovely than when they’d arrived. I only recognized Kendra, who’d been working Thursday morning. On multiple occasions, Diana strode through the corridor in her pressed linen dresses—a sunflower print on Wednesday and a violet number on Thursday—but she never went inside, which both comforted and vexed me. By all appearances, Kendra was right and Diana had nothing to do with any note that might have been left in Claire’s locker. But, she’d been the easiest explanation for how it could have been left. Now I was left to wonder who among all those other ladies might have done it. If Daniel were involved, he would have to have given the note to one of them.

  Then another thought. Perhaps he gave it to somebody at the reception desk, with a message to pass it to Claire. I dismissed it. A desk attendant would have given it to her when she checked in, not dropped it in her locker.

  I clicked my fake nails on the table and thought. For lack of a better idea, I ran Wednesday and Thursday’s camera coverage of the desk. More trophy wives and debutantes in fitted clothes and high heels. I remembered many of the faces, and outfits, from the locker room camera’s view. A startling number of members visited twice a day—early in the morning and again in the evening. When I had more time on my hands, I vowed to come back and figure out what they did there. The petty side of me believed most came for facials and pedicures, not for hard, sweaty work like we Plain Janes did at our affordable local YMCAs.

  At any rate, forty-five minutes later I’d gone to a whole lot of trouble for nothing. The footage was a bust and I was worn out. I closed the program.

  My webmail application, still open in the background, displayed a new e-mail from an address I didn’t recognize.

  Stupidly, I opened it. A microsecond later I knew I’d probably invited a virus onto my machine. What I found instead was potentially worse.

  Somebody named FastCruzn had left me a one-liner: Go back to chemistry.

  I might have ignored it, chucked it up a spam message, if not for the very personal reference to the career I’d recently given up.

  I stared at it, sufficiently freaked out. How could some crazy person possibly single me out in cyberspace? Immediately, I Googled “find someone’s e-mail address” and learned that for $14.95 I could get a list of e-mail addresses, social network results, and current address and phone number listings not only for fourteen Emily Lockes, but for anybody else I damn well pleased.

  I closed the laptop and checked that the door to my apartment was locked. Annette, even at five, still felt small in my arms as I lifted her off the couch and moved her to my room. I placed her gently on the bed, no longer willing to sleep apart from her, and changed into my pajamas and brushed my teeth. Then I snuggled in close with her under my comforter, listened to her slow, soft breathing, and fell asleep stroking her smooth, tiny arm with the pad of my thumb. She smelled like frosting.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “I have so much to say to you, I don’t know where to begin.”

  My tone, two parts irritation and one part flat-out mad, didn’t seem to faze Claire. She stared through our dividing pane, phone to her ear, appearing wild-eyed for a moment. The impression passed, and I realized I’d witnessed a transient after-effect of Dr. King’s handiwork. When she moved her eyes a certain way, they widened unnaturally. At least his surgeries had left her natural-looking most of the time—not fantastically stretched and rearranged like the celebrities in the news rags. I pulled my eyes away and scavenged in my purse until I found my little notebook.

  “More lists?” A slight lilt carried in her voice. I thought she was making fun of me.

  I flipped to the page I wanted but didn’t look up. “If you won’t cooperate for yourself, at least do it for your boys. The games you play will ruin your sons.”

  Squeezing a nasty jail phone between my shoulder and ear further eroded my mood.

  “Games?” Her voice was muffled and far-off, the result of the phone slipping out of place in the crook of my neck. I made a mental note to bring Clorox Wipes to any future jail interviews.

  I found the paper I wanted, looked up again. “Tell me about the e-mails you sent to Platt.”

  She drew her head back, in the way of a person who’s heard something strange. “I didn’t know him. There were no e-mails.”

  “Diana King said you e-mailed him a lot. That has to be the reason for the search warrant to take your computers.”

  She only shook her head. I thought of the bizarre e-mail I’d received the night before and a new question materialized. Computers and search warrants were one thing. Getting a subpoena for e-mail accounts and text messages could take a while.

  “It’s only a matter of time before they look through your entire e-mail history…sent mail, deleted items. You name it. Anything in there that raises an eyebrow could become a real problem.”

  Claire ran her thumbnail between her teeth, studying me. I waited to see if she’d talk.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve ever been in jail.” She swallowed visibly. “There’s no modesty here. I have no expectation of privacy anymore. All I care about is getting back out, to my kids. I use Yahoo for my e-mail. My oldest, Josh, set it up. You want to know who I’ve been e-mailing?” She shrugged. “Log in and see for yourself. The address is ClaireGaston1@yahoo.com. Password’s ‘new woman,’ no caps, no space.”

  Her candor floored me. I couldn’t imagine freely sharing personal information like that—not only the log-in details, but all the messages I was sure to find in her account. I managed a weak thank-you and pressed forward.

  “Last night I was at your house when the storm came through,” I said. “The roads were impassable and I ended up sleeping there. In the middle of the night, Daniel came home.”

  “Did you tell him about me?”

  I remembered Daniel’s pleasure upon learning Claire was in jail. The last thing I wanted was to trigger another outburst.

  “He knows the situation,” I said. “The police will likely question him today if they haven’t already.”

  “Did he say where he’s been?”

  “Las Vegas.”

  She nodded. “He’s done that before. Gotten mad and left for a while.”

  “At least he’s alive,” I said. “We don’t have to deal with the suspicious disappearance of your husband on top of everything else.” I glanced at my list, more for something to do than because I needed it. “There were some files in your study. Life insurance policies, retirement portfolios.”

  I hesitated, hoping she’d take it from there, but she only waited.

  “Are there any financial accounts not documented in your filing cabinet? Maybe something you’re tracking strictly on-line?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Almost all the assets I found are listed in Daniel’s name. I was hoping you’d tell me that you bank separately and that your portfolios are somewhere else.”

  “No,” she said. “He handles all that.”

  “Is it possible then that he set you up? Maybe he wanted to move money around or hide it somehow before the divorce…to keep you from getting your half.”

  Her mouth twisted into a tentative frown, a silent Maybe.

  “He’s greedy and mad,” she finally said, “But not that smart. He wou
ldn’t have the first idea about hiding assets.”

  “Maybe not personally,” I said. “But he could get help if he were so inclined. Think he’s capable of it?”

  “Probably.”

  “Your being here could give him time to organize a scheme like that.”

  I watched her mull over my suggestion. That anyone other than Diana might be responsible for her circumstances was clearly difficult for her consider. Still, I could tell she was trying to keep an open mind.

  “But Daniel didn’t know Dr. Platt. Daniel’s no Boy Scout, and I could see him scheming for money, but I really don’t think he’d murder for it. Killing an innocent man to get me out of the picture seems a stretch, even for him. ”

  “As far as we can tell, Diana had no reason to kill Platt either.” I remembered my talk with her the night before, and how she’d seemed wounded by his death. “It’s something we’ll keep working on,” I concluded vaguely.

  Claire moved the handset to her other ear and smoothed some wayward hair out of the way. Even in a government issued jumpsuit, she was graceful. I consulted my list again, this time because I’d lost my train of thought.

  “I found the box in your closet,” I said carefully. “I read all the letters. Who is Kevin?”

  Her eyes flashed. “That’s over.”

  “Fine, but he wrote you last month so it’s still important that I understand who he is.”

  “You know the type.” She flicked her wrist casually, as if swatting a gnat. “Handsome as the devil and just as devious.”

  Mercifully, I had no experience with the type, but I gave a knowing and sympathetic nod anyway. I remembered Kevin, soaked in Claire’s kitchen, and could at least attest to the handsome part. “He seemed very taken with you judging by the letter I read.”

  Her lips curved into a tired, exasperated smile. “I’m pretty sure he had a wife.”

  So what? You had a husband.

  “You miss him?”

  She raised her eyes to look at me. “I miss my kids.”