I stepped into the kitchen and all thought of ferret bribes left me. Boyce Edgerton lay faceup on the floor, eyes open, congealed pool of blood gluing his body to the linoleum. I didn’t need to check his pulse to know he was dead. The waxy look of his skin and the film over his staring eyes told me he was gone. I glanced around, needing to focus on something other than those dead eyes. The mountain of Budweiser and Mountain Dew empties in the recycling bin had toppled, sending an avalanche of aluminum cans across the small kitchen floor. Orange goo puddled near the sink, and it took me a moment to recognize it as dishwashing liquid from the bottle knocked off the edge. The smell of hot dogs permeated the small room, and I craned my neck to see three fleshy pink franks floating in the saucepan on the stove. Apparently, Edgerton had been making dinner—surely not breakfast?—when his murderer surprised him. Had the murderer turned off the burner when he left, not wanting the whole house to go up in flames? Thoughtful of him.
Knowing better than to disturb a crime scene, I backed carefully away from the kitchenette, careful not to touch anything as I returned to the landing. Descending to the second floor, I lowered myself to a stair and called the police on my cell phone to report finding the body. As I waited there for the cops to show up, shivering slightly, Sadie crept up to me and laid her tiny pointed snout on my thigh. I stroked her gingerly, then with more confidence. “Sorry, girl,” I murmured. “Looks like you’re an orphan.”
* * *
The patrol officer who arrived first took one brief look and called for a homicide detective. Montgomery showed up within minutes, looking grim. “Stay,” he told me in much the same voice I’d used with the ferret, before donning booties and gloves to check out the crime scene. By this time, the downstairs neighbor had emerged, quivering with excitement, and invited me into her apartment for a cinnamon bun. Telling a uniformed officer where Montgomery could find me, I joined the woman, who introduced herself as Claudine Massey, in her cozy apartment. Sadie trailed behind us and responded favorably to Claudine’s offer of a bit of iced cinnamon bun. She was a cake-ivore, I realized, not a carnivore or an herbivore. Satisfied with her morsel, she scrambled onto one of the cushioned chairs in Claudine’s kitchen and curled up in it, very much at home. I accepted a warm bun and a glass of milk from Claudine, who joined me at the table with her own plate.
“Oh, my yes,” Claudine said when I mentioned how comfy Sadie looked. “She comes and visits me most days when Boyce goes to work. She and I are old friends, aren’t we, dear?” She stroked the ferret’s head. “Boyce is dead, I take it?” A faint tremor sounded in her voice.
“Yes,” I said gently. “Were you friends?”
She nodded, fat tears rolling down her crumpled cheeks. “He used to take out my trash for me—I have trouble on the stairs—and I babysat Sadie for him. If he wasn’t working, we watched Survivor together. He used to talk about trying out for the show. I know he’d have won.”
I couldn’t picture the pale, soft Edgerton making it one week on a deserted island with a bunch of attention-starved fitness freaks, eating grasshoppers and coconuts, but I didn’t say so.
“Was it a heart attack?” Claudine asked. “I told him and told him that he couldn’t live on hot dogs and Mountain Dew, that he needed to get some exercise. Why, I walk three miles a day, rain or shine, unless it’s really icy.”
“Really?” I was impressed.
“You look like you stay fit, too,” she said approvingly.
“Thanks.” I found myself ridiculously pleased by the compliment. “When was the last time you saw Boyce?” I asked.
She pondered, mushing a crumb of cinnamon bun with her fork. “Last night? About seven?” She nodded to herself. “Yes, that was it. I had finished watching Jeopardy!—the categories were impossible last night—when I heard him come up the stairs. I popped out to say hello, and we chatted for a couple of minutes.”
“About…?”
“Nothing much. He mentioned he was working a party the next night—tonight. He was in catering, you know, and did the most marvelous desserts. Sometimes he brought a little something home for me, one of those mini cheesecakes, or a slice of lemon meringue pie. Leftovers, he said. He knew about my sweet tooth.” She put three fingers to her mouth.
“Did he have any visitors last night or today that you noticed?”
She didn’t bridle at the implication that she was nosy; indeed, she seemed to take pride in it. “I try to keep on top of what happens around here. There are a couple of college kids on the ground floor, and they’re so careless about leaving the front door unlocked—and there are babies in the house to worry about! Poor McKenzie is coping with those twins all on her own while her husband is deployed. I try to help out where I can, but—”
“Boyce’s visitors?”
“Oh, yes. I heard someone up there this morning, but I don’t know who it was. I was kneading the dough for my buns, and I didn’t want to open the door with my hands all floury. Maybe it was that whiny Vanessa. Although she usually wears heels that make a pock-pock sound, and I didn’t hear them. It’s hard not to hear footsteps upstairs.” She paused, and we both listened to the thud of cop shoes reverberating through the ceiling.
“I see what you mean. What time was that?” Maybe Boyce did eat hot dogs for breakfast.
“Oh, very early. A bit past six thirty, maybe?” She paused, an arrested look on her wizened face. “You know, I don’t remember hearing the front door close or hearing Boyce’s visitor climb the stairs. I must have been in the shower.” She nodded to herself. “Yes, that must be it.”
“Besides Vanessa, who visited Boyce?”
Claudine pursed her nearly colorless lips. “Well, that friend who worked with him at the catering company, that skater. I’ve seen him on TV. Very handsome. And another young man I think Boyce knew from high school.”
“Did you—” A knock on the door cut me off.
Claudine shuffled to the door—it must take her half a day to walk her three miles—and opened it to reveal Montgomery, sternly handsome in his black leather jacket and slacks. He flashed his badge, introduced himself, and dislodged me with a meaningful jerk of his head. “I’ll be by to chat with you in a little while, Mrs. Massey,” he said with the smile that never failed to set women fluttering. Except me. I’m not the fluttering type.
“Any time, Detective,” she said.
“Is Sadie okay here?” I asked, joining Montgomery at the door.
“Sadie?” His brows snapped together.
“Boyce’s ferret,” Claudine and I chorused. As if responding to her name, the slinky creature put her tiny front paws on the table and peered at Montgomery over its edge.
“She can stay with me,” Claudine said. “It’s not like she has anywhere else to go now, and she’s comfortable here.”
* * *
“Okay, Charlie,” Montgomery said when he had walked me down to the first floor and a room off the entryway that the cops had apparently commandeered. It was chilly—probably because the front door had been propped open by the coroner’s team—and severely formal, with two uncomfortable-looking gray sofas, an occasional table or two, and a fireplace that looked like it hadn’t held a cheery blaze since trolley cars trundled down the streets of Colorado Springs. A buck glared at me from over the mantel, his fur a bit mangy and one antler cracked at the tip. A fedora hung whimsically from the other antler, giving the old guy a rakish look. “Tell me what you were doing here, why you broke into Edgerton’s apartment, and anything else you know—or think you know—about Edgerton’s death.”
I gave it to him straight, not about to hedge my answers in a murder case. “I came to see Edgerton, hoping he could tell me something more about the cabin that blew up or about Dmitri’s associates, and I didn’t break into Edgerton’s place—the door was unlocked, and I went in to find some ferret kibble.”
“Ferret kibble?” Montgomery’s eyebrow soared the way it does when he doubts my veracity. Which is fairly often.
“You’re a freakin’ model citizen,” he said. The corners of his mouth softened. “So, now that we’ve established that you only entered the apartment out of the purest motives for animal welfare, tell me what you think happened.”
“Someone shot Edgerton,” I said promptly.
Montgomery heaved a sigh.
I relented. “Probably sometime early this morning. Claudine says she heard someone up there while she was baking, probably around six thirty, but she didn’t hear anyone come up the stairs.”
“Whoever it was came up the fire escape and left the same way,” Montgomery said. “The window was forced.”
“Pretty risky at that hour,” I observed.
“Still dark at this time of year. The house backs to an alley—not much traffic.” Montgomery shrugged. “Still, I’ll admit it was ballsy.”
“Why didn’t Claudine hear the shot?” I wondered
“Suppressor, maybe, or she left her hearing aids out.”
“Not an item your average Joe has on hand.”
“Not that hard to obtain, either. The Internet…”
I dipped my chin to acknowledge that the World Wide Web had made it much easier for criminals—and PIs—to obtain useful equipment and gadgets.
“What else did you discover?”
Montgomery hesitated.
“C’mon,” I urged him.
“A stash in the toilet tank. Enough to get him prison time as a dealer.”
“The hard stuff?”
“Marijuana, some coke.”
I figured that put Boyce in the frame as the girl’s supplier at the party Friday night. “What are you thinking—a falling-out between stoner and supplier?”
“Maybe.” Montgomery’s expression didn’t give much away, but I got the feeling he knew more than he was saying.
“I don’t like it,” I said, having given it some thought. It was too pat. Following on the heels of Dmitri’s disappearance and the cabin blowing up, Edgerton’s murder gave me the heebie-jeebies. If he and a junkie had a falling-out, why didn’t the junkie take the drugs after he murdered Edgerton? Something could have spooked him, I supposed, made him run off without finding the stash.
“You’re not required to like it,” Montgomery said with a laugh. He shot his cuff to look at his watch. “As much as I enjoy interrogating you, I’ve got other witnesses to interview. I know you’ll keep me posted on anything you turn up that might have the smallest relevance to my case.” He said it warningly.
“Of course.” I widened my eyes in a “can you doubt it?” way.
He snorted, chucked me under the chin, and trotted back upstairs, presumably to visit Claudine. I slipped out the door, avoided a reporter looking for witnesses to misquote, and jogged to my car. If I sped like a demon, got lucky with the lights, and didn’t get pulled over, I might just make it to the airport on time to collect Irena Fane.
19
Slowing to a crawl in the lane outside the arrivals doors at the Colorado Springs Municipal Airport, I considered the people standing by their luggage, scoping out approaching cars. Not the army major in uniform, not the college girl texting like mad, not the zoned-out businesswoman tapping her pump-shod foot. I gave myself a mental slap for not having arranged a way of recognizing Dmitri’s mother. A woman standing at the far end of the pickup area looked possible: She was petite like a former pair skater, and studying the passing cars like she was waiting for someone, but she looked too young. Nonetheless, I cruised up to her and lowered the window. She gave me a nervous look and clutched her purse to her chest. “Mrs. Fane?”
Drawing in a deep breath, she nodded. Wearing a red knit hat with a rolled brim pulled to her brows, she had mink brown hair lightly flecked with silver that fell to her shoulders in a casual tumble. It was the hair and her slim build that had fooled me into thinking she was too young to be a twenty-seven-year-old’s mom; up close, deep grooves bracketed her mouth, and her neck showed the first faint signs of crepeyness. Wary dark eyes assessed me as she took a tentative step toward me.
“I’m Charlotte Swift. Call me Charlie. Hop in.”
She reached for the door with a leather-gloved hand and slid onto the seat. “Thank you for coming.”
“Don’t you have any luggage?” I asked, scanning the sidewalk for a suitcase or duffel bag.
“No. I didn’t take the time.” A faint Russian accent lent a charming lilt to her voice. “I have necessities in here.” She patted her purse, a messenger-style bag that might hold a toothbrush, a bikini—not much use in Colorado in January—and a change of undies but not much else.
I put the car in gear, swerved around a taxi, and headed for the airport exit.
Irena stayed quiet the couple of minutes it took me to get clear of the terminal traffic. “Where is my Dmitri?” she asked as we passed the rust-colored metal statues of a mounted brave near a bison. A real pronghorn grazed nearby.
“I was hoping you might have some ideas about that,” I said. “What prompted you to come to Colorado Springs?”
She looked at me as if I were an idiot. “My sister has been brutally attacked and my son is missing and you can ask me that?”
“So, Yuliya Bobrova is your sister?” Boyce Edgerton had been right; Bobrova was Dmitri’s aunt.
“Yes. She is the oldest and I am the youngest of eight. We were not close, but when I came to America with Stuart, she was very supportive. She was still in Michigan then, and she helped me adjust.”
“Do you want to go by the hospital?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No. Dmitri’s.”
“I don’t know if we’ll be able to get in,” I said.
In answer, she pulled a key from her pocket. The brassy color glinted in the sunlight pouring through the car windows. She turned her head to look out the side window at the stores and businesses lining Powers Boulevard and I debated whether or not to tell her about Boyce. I decided to keep his murder to myself for the time being. She was already worried about her son—hearing that his friend had been shot might goose her into hysterics.
Pulling into the still-empty parking lot at Westhaven, I had barely stopped the car when Irena jumped out and ran to the front door of Dmitri’s unit. She slid the key home with a trembling hand and pushed into the foyer, calling, “Dmitri!”
I was half a step behind her and almost gasped as I entered. The disarray that had greeted me the other day was gone; in fact, everything was gone. The sofa, the TV, the DVDs, the red pillow—gone. I turned in a circle while Irena dashed up the stairs. Who had cleaned the place out? And why? I wandered into the kitchen and opened a couple of drawers at random. Empty. Not even an old takeout menu or a paper clip wedged into a drawer seam.
“He’s not here,” Irena called from the top of the stairs.
“The condo didn’t look like this when I was here Thursday,” I told her, returning to the empty living room.
Irena plodded down the stairs, one weary step at a time. “I am so worried.” She sat on the next-to-last step and dropped her face into her hands, elbows propped on her knees.
I joined her. “Do you want to go somewhere else to talk? A Starbucks or a restaurant?” She shook her head, not looking up, and I gave in, sliding my back down the entryway wall until my butt hit the cold wood floor. “What do you think is going on with Dmitri?” I asked.
She looked up after a moment, dug the heels of her hands into her eyes, and then met my gaze. “He called me this morning.”
“He did? Then he’s alive!”
She nodded. “He told me I might be in danger, told me to leave my house and spend a couple of nights in a hotel or with a friend.”
Instead of which, she’d come straight to Colorado Springs, leaping from the sinking boat into the crocodile-infested river
, I suspected.
She read my expression. “He is my only son. Of course I am going to try to help him.”
“Did he say why you were in danger?”
“No. He said he had some business to sort out and then everything would get back to normal.”
Somehow, I didn’t think we were talking about skating business. Even the most cutthroat, Tonya Harding–esque competitor would draw the line at threatening a skater’s mother, I felt sure. “You’re his mom,” I said, “and you probably know him better than anyone.”
“I do,” she said fiercely.
“So what’s he mixed up in?”
She bristled. “What makes you think he’s ‘mixed up’ in anything?”
I just looked at her. After a moment, she squirmed, then pulled off the knit cap and ran her fingers through her hair. I stayed silent. Finally, she burst out, “You have to understand that ice-skating is a very expensive sport.”
“I know.”
“Training and competing at the level Dmitri does can cost a hundred thousand dollars a year.”
I was going to ask about sponsors, but I didn’t want to derail her, so I said, “That must be hard.”
She jerked her head down hard once. “Yes. So you cannot blame Dmitri for taking advantage when opportunity presented itself.”
“What kind of opportunity?” From the way her eyes slid away from mine, I knew we weren’t talking about a mutual fund.
“As a caterer with the run of people’s kitchens, he found that sometimes he had access to … to certain documents. So many people, especially well-off couples, seem to have those built-in desks in their kitchens, and they leave papers there—bills, investment statements, and the like.”
“So Dmitri helped himself to customers’ financial data and then—what? Stole their identities?”
“No!” Her slender brows drew together, cutting a deep groove over her nose. “If he came across credit card data, he would … borrow it.”
Swift Edge Page 13