by Rachel Brady
“When we were here on Monday,” she said, “There were rings and bracelets. All of it’s gone.”
I was too frustrated to move.
“My favorite was her blue topaz cocktail ring. You should have seen the size of that baby…” She frowned. “Gone.”
“I sent you up there to look for pictures in a different room. This isn’t dress-up time, Jeannie. A woman is sitting in jail and a crazy computer freak is after me. You’re worried about her jewelry?”
I ran my open palm upward over the right side of my face and then down the left, as if the face-washing pantomime might wake me up, conjure some ideas. With my head still low I grabbed my temples and squeezed. For the life of me, I couldn’t think.
I raked my fingers through my hair and sat up. “Her mom might have taken those things for safe keeping, but somehow I doubt it.”
Jeannie lowered her chin and stared at me, her skepticism evident. “There’s a painting missing too.”
I stood and followed her upstairs. The coincidence of Claire’s apparent jewelry theft in the same week as mine didn’t sit well.
“I don’t get to be around nice things like hers every day,” Jeannie said without apology. “Had to take a second look.”
She peeled to the left, where the door to the master bedroom had been left open. The room was as I’d remembered, and if Jeannie hadn’t pointed out the empty nail along the wall where a painting had once been, I wouldn’t have noticed it missing. She led me to Claire’s bureau. The jewelry box still had a few nice costume pieces, including an oval pendant embossed with delicate paw prints, but it was nowhere near full anymore. I was about to go look for photos in the guest room when my phone buzzed.
Expecting Richard, I flipped it open with a curt, “Yeah?”
“Yeah to you too, lady.” It was Vince. I mouthed his name to Jeannie and she gave me an encouraging nod before leaving the room and pulling the door closed behind her. “What kind of trouble are you girls up to tonight?”
“Funny you should ask,” I said. “Because you might get dragged into it.”
He chuckled. “How so?”
I sat lightly on the edge of Claire’s king bed and focused on my reflection in the mirror mounted over her dresser. “We need a favor.”
“You always need favors.”
“This one’s big.”
“Okay, let’s hear it.”
“It’s fine if you want to say no.” When he didn’t say anything, I continued. “I’ve been getting some…creepy e-mails and somebody broke into the apartment—”
“What? When?”
“Yesterday.”
“Were you there? What happened?”
“No. I didn’t figure it out until today. It happened when we went out for dinner.” On his end, a horn blared. “You’re driving?”
“On my way home. Did you call the police?”
“I don’t want to go into everything while you’re in traffic,” I said. “Can you come over for dinner?” Before he could answer, I clarified. “Richard’ll be there. We’re going to brainstorm the case.”
“Sure,” he said. “I’ll head over in a little bit.”
I told him to drive safely and we hung up. My phone buzzed again.
“You never told me what the favor is.”
“Richard doesn’t think my apartment’s safe anymore. He wants Jeannie and me to find a place to stay for a few days, starting tonight.”
Vince was quiet. I thought he was probably doing mental iterations of sleeping arrangements, stressing about the implications of each potential set-up the same way I had.
“I’ll have to get food,” he said.
Or maybe he was thinking like a guy.
“I’ll stock the fridge,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“And you won’t like what’s behind the shower curtain.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“No. Make Jeannie do it.”
I laughed. “Never happen.”
“There’s the dog hair,” he said.
“I get it,” I said, trying to find balance between being playful and reassuring. “It’s not like I’ve never been there.” It’s only that I’ve never slept over. “We’ll be low maintenance, I swear.” I paused. “At least I will.”
“And there’s a condition,” he added, as if he hadn’t heard me. “This is short notice so you can’t hold anything against me.”
“I love that you’re worried about making a bad impression.”
“Is it a deal?”
“Thank you so much.”
“I’m always bailing you out of trouble.” His voice made it sound more like a compliment than a complaint.
I grinned. “See you in a little bit.”
After the call, I found Jeannie sitting cross-legged on the bed in the guest room, going through photographs in a series of boxes and albums.
She looked up expectantly. “All good?”
“Yep.”
“Told you so.” She replaced the lid on a photo box and moved it to an empty spot on the quilt behind her. “These pictures are old. Unless she knew the guy ten years ago, he’s not in here.”
I shook my head. “He’s new. A short-timer.” I checked my watch and wondered how much Claire might be telling Mick Young. “Where else can we look?”
“If he was a short-timer, there might not be pictures.” A devilish smile crossed her lips. “At least…not of his face.”
It made me wonder how many summer flings Jeannie had had. Her point about not having pictures hadn’t even occurred to me. I shook my head in distaste and dialed Richard.
“Any word?”
“Pictures aren’t the least of it,” he said, “but we can talk about that in person later. She thinks there’s a snapshot in one of her handbags. Something juicy.”
I glared at my over-sexed friend. “I’m not going to find an x-rated photo, am I?”
“Huh? Oh. No, I meant the purse, not the picture. She told Young the purse is something juicy. I don’t know what that means.”
“Hold on.”
My face twisted into an impatient expression, the result of getting half-information from a totally clueless man. I looked at Jeannie. “A juicy purse?”
She nodded serenely, as I imagined the Dalai Lama might. “Juicy Couture. Claire has three.” Jeannie stretched her legs over the side of the bed and pushed herself up. “Be right back.”
I watched her disappear into the hallway. “Jeannie’s on it,” I said into the phone. “So did Claire talk? Did she say anything about Burke?”
“Young said the meeting was a test of his patience.”
“I don’t care what Young said. What did Claire say?”
“She gave him a bunch of flack but eventually acknowledged that they’d been together a couple of months before she broke it off. It wasn’t a cold turkey break, either. One of those long, arduous break-ups. She didn’t want to cut Burke out of her life entirely because she thought he was a positive influence on her sons.”
“Yeah,” I said. “She told me something similar.”
Jeannie returned, waving a snapshot. “A hottie!”
I snatched the photo from her and stared at it.
“We have his picture,” I said to Richard. “Head over to the apartment and remember your laptop.”
***
We swung by Brewster’s on our way to meet Richard. The manager confirmed my hunch with a single definite flick on Burke’s impossibly handsome face. “That’s him.”
He passed the photograph back with something like a remorseful shrug, perhaps sensing my mixed feelings about finally knowing who we were dealing with.
Forty-five minutes later, Richard sat at my kitchen table studying his computer screen while Vince and I lounged on the couch sharing mine. We were tapping keys, clicking links, buried deep in Google and Wikipedia.
I’d printed the last e-mail from my cyber spook and Richard busied himself with biographies of all the famous people Burke ha
d cited in that message. He aimed to figure out what they had in common. Vince and I tried to learn what we could about William Henry Saunders the third so we could determine how he’d gotten unwittingly tied up in this mess.
We only found his name once, in a caption. He’d been photographed with his mother, the late Judith Saunders, a decade ago at a Houston Rodeo fundraising event. Apparently she’d been an avid volunteer for thirty years.
Vince pointed mid-way down the list of search results. “Click that one.”
An obituary from the Chronicle came up and I read it aloud so Richard could hear too.
JUDITH SAUNDERS, age 80, passed away on Thursday, April 2 at her home. A long time resident of Houston Heights, she was born in New Braunfels, Texas, on December 22, 1920 and was preceded in death by her husband, William H. Saunders II. Judith will be remembered for her tender heart and iron will, traits that served her for decades of commendable volunteerism in her community. For thirty years she and her husband sponsored scholarships for local children with intellectual disabilities. They were instrumental in raising community awareness of these underserved children. She leaves her loving son, William Henry III, and sisters Claudia and Violet. Judith touched the lives of everyone who knew her and will be greatly missed. The memorial service will be Sunday, April 5, at 11 AM at Grace Family Fellowship. In lieu of flowers please send donations to help fulfill Judith’s dream: Saunders Scholarship Fund, c/o First National Bank, Houston Heights.
“That’s scary,” Vince said when I’d finished. “A rich old lady died and her estate went to her mentally challenged son?” He rested an arm on the back of the couch. “Hardly makes sense. A reasonable person would have put it into a trust.”
I considered the timeline and shook my head. “He wasn’t always this way. It’s from a head trauma. When his mom died, he was perfectly fine, so it makes sense she’d leave everything to him.”
I started to tell Vince what I’d read in William’s medical records. The front door knob rattled and Jeannie battled her way inside with a precarious arrangement of soft drinks and too many sacks of Chinese take-out. I’d sent her out for dinner while waiting for the guys. They stood to help her and she closed the door with a bump of her hip.
“Hi, Richard,” she said, passing him the drinks. “Hey, Cowboy.” She handed off a wayward sack.
I headed to the kitchen for plates and heard them pop lids and arrange entrees behind me at the kitchen table.
“Smells good,” I said. “You bring me anything that wasn’t fried?”
I already knew the answer.
“Where would be the fun in that?” Jeannie said. “Did I miss anything?”
“Not yet,” Vince said. “Richard’s trying to figure out what that list of famous people was supposed to mean. So far, all we’ve found is an obituary for the neighbor’s mom. Seems she left her son quite a haul.”
I pulled some forks from the silverware drawer and joined the others. Richard helped me pass out plates and then stacked his high with fried rice and mandarin chicken. He returned immediately to what he was doing on the laptop. The rest of us filled our own plates and fit where we could in the remaining space around him.
“So the guy next door to Platt is loaded,” Jeannie said. “And his caretaker’s skimming.”
Richard glanced at her. “Understatement.”
“Platt must have noticed and tried to report it,” I said. “But since Saunders didn’t know better than to give Burke everything he asked for—”
“There’s no crime.” Richard said. “Everything Saunders gave Burke is probably legally considered a ‘gift.’”
Vince shook his head. “That makes me sick.”
“Platt must have confronted him.” Jeannie dipped an egg roll in sweet and sour sauce. “That’s the only way Burke could have known he had suspicions.”
“Makes sense,” Vince said. “Then Burke got paranoid because Platt had his number. So he killed him.”
“Sure,” I said. “But not at that confrontation. It would have taken planning to pin it on Claire.”
We stopped talking momentarily, all too busy thinking or eating.
Jeannie, not one for silence, tapped her fork on her plate. “That’s a good reason to want Platt dead. For a long time Burke had been living carefree in a fancy house, driving nice cars and using a bottomless supply of cash.”
I remembered Burke’s recent e-mail to Claire, the one I’d found in her closeted curio box. “He told Claire he was an artist, working on an important sculpture or something, and that’s why he never had her over at his place—because he needed the solitude for his art.” I took a sip of the Coke Jeannie had brought me.
Vince reached across my plate for more soy sauce packets. “Framing Claire to get even for breaking up sounds extreme.”
Jeannie was chewing but waved a finger to reserve space to comment. She swallowed. “Getting dumped might be even tougher on a sociopath’s ego than it is for the rest of us. And let’s not forget there’s more to the Claire thing. He was swindling money from the Gastons too.”
Vince looked up. “Really?”
“Oh yeah, big time,” she said. “Daniel had a girl on the side and she told Emily all about it.”
Richard looked up from the monitor. “A girlfriend?”
I took another pull on my Coke. “We went to Rice Village to check out the murder scene. I tracked down the woman who rents the place where he was shot. Daniel had noticed extraneous charges on his credit card statements for a while, but since he and Claire still shared those accounts, he assumed the charges were hers. When she went to jail, the charges didn’t stop, so a few days ago he started asking questions.”
I took a bite of cashew chicken and Jeannie relayed what we’d learned from the manager at Brewster’s. She explained how the Mustang coincidence had made me suspicious enough to re-visit the Tone Zone parking lot footage from last week. Sure enough, a car by the same description had been in the lot Thursday morning.
Vince glanced at me with a subtle smile. I wasn’t sure if he was impressed or amused.
“Then Platt wasn’t the only one onto Burke’s ruse,” Richard said, scrolling down his screen without looking at us. “Daniel confronted him too. And they both ended up dead.” He punctuated the statement with a double mouse click.
Jeannie dipped her egg roll again. “I wonder how he met Claire in the first place.”
“Through Platt, I’m sure.” Vince emptied the last of the ginger beef from its paper container.
I shook my head. “Claire and Platt didn’t know each other. At least not according to her.”
“She met Burke at Tone Zone months ago,” Richard said, glancing up for an instant. “He was helping a friend move a piece of furniture to the club one day. Claire was there working out. The rest is history.”
Inexplicably, I suddenly felt sorry for Claire. “More likely he was helping a neighbor. Platt was an older guy, not many friends or relations. I wouldn’t blame him for asking the young, athletic caretaker next door for a hand. And Burke and Claire are both charismatic flirts,” I said. “So Richard’s right. All they’d have to do is meet.”
“How she met Burke isn’t important,” Richard said. “What we need to know is how he set her up. The murder weapon came from her garage.”
His comment conjured the image of a dark stain on the floor in Platt’s study and, without meaning to, I imagined a bloody screwdriver lodged in the dead surgeon’s neck. Appetite lost, I set down my fork and reached for a napkin.
“With Burke at her house all the time, it’s easy to see how he got the screwdriver,” I said. “And we know he got her to the crime scene with that bogus note about a neglected dog. Having lived with her, Burke would know she was a sucker for critters and that she’d respond to a situation like that. That’s how he got her prints at the scene. But how’d he get them on the screwdriver? She hardly seems the fix-it type.”
Richard must have finished his drink because he started sta
bbing his straw up and down through its plastic lid, moving around the ice that was left behind. Still focused on his monitor, his attention was obviously divided between our conversation and whatever he was reading. He went through another series of mouse clicks and then, with apparent effort, finally pulled his eyes off the monitor and glanced around the table. He stopped at me.
I suffered through an awkward moment while it looked like he was remembering something he’d wanted to say. He scratched his cheek the way men with stubble sometimes do and said, “I’m starting to wonder if Burke isn’t way smarter than we’re giving him credit.”
Personally, I’d been giving Burke lots of credit but I didn’t interrupt Richard to say so.
He continued. “You wanted to know when they broke up.”
I nodded. “Because I thought that’s when the weird credit card charges would have started.”
“Young says it was a slow, languishing separation. Not a clean break.”
Jeannie made a disgusted face to convey that, like Claire, she’d been there. I assumed it was for Richard and Vince’s benefit because I already knew and didn’t care.
Richard continued. “Claire thought she’d finally found a decent role model for the boys and was reluctant to cut him loose, despite her instinct that things weren’t right.” Without picking up his cup, he fiddled with his straw again. “What if she’d tried to break it off a few times, but Burke was tuned in to her reluctance? Maybe he was sweet talking her, or promising to change.”
“If he was siphoning money from her, I’m sure he’d exploit any weakness he could if it meant he could stick around longer.”
“Exactly,” Richard said. “And I think he was successful to a point. But when Platt figured out the scheme with Saunders, and Claire kept talking Splitsville, suddenly Burke’s castle in the sky began to crumble. The on-again, off-again break-up might be what saved him and ruined her. Surely he saw the writing on the wall. What if he got her prints on the weapon before she kicked him out for good?”
Jeannie snapped her fingers. “Maybe when she was sleeping.”
Richard shrugged. “If he’s as shrewd as I think he is, I wouldn’t put anything past him.”