Nevertheless, I couldn’t let him get off that easy. “You don’t need to worry about riding with me in the future,” I assured him. “I bought a special set of electric paddles that plug into the cigarette lighter so I’ll be able to restart your heart.”
“Unnecessary. Your car’s so messy, I’d have to take a tranquilizer before I could even stand to get in.”
He’d believe the electric paddles story before he’d believe I’d planned to clean out my car, so I let it go.
His car in the driveway told me he’d had no plans to protest our mission. Other than coming out to be polished and taken to the grocery store, that vehicle pretty much lived in the garage so the paint wouldn’t fade and birds couldn’t poop on it or trees drop their leaves on it or squirrels scratch the finish with their claws or flies leave their footprints.
Anyway, Fred’s easy acquiescence made it obvious that he grasped the seriousness of the situation with Paula and Lester Mackey. That meant it was really serious.
Man, did I ever lie when I told him I knew what I was getting into.
He opened the passenger door. Courteous or just making sure I didn’t smudge the handle?
“I don’t suppose you found out exactly where this apartment building is,” I asked as I slid onto the cool leather seat.
“Yes, I did.” He went around to the driver’s side and got in.
Yeah, things were serious.
“How’d you find out?” I asked as we drove down the street at precisely the speed limit.
“Do I ask you for your secret recipes?”
“I’d give them to you if you did.”
“A secret’s not a secret if you tell.”
I interpreted that to mean, no matter how big a blabber-mouth I might be, he wasn’t going to reciprocate.
Sycamore Street was in an area no older than our neighborhood—possibly a few years newer, in fact—but it hadn’t aged as graciously. The homes and small apartment buildings hovered between picturesque and run-down.
Fred pulled over in front of a red brick building in the middle of the block, and we looked at each other.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Sure,” I lied again. “Uh, do you think we ought to discuss how we’re going to handle this? What we’re going to say to the manager?”
“Follow my lead.”
If anybody else had told me that, I’d have protested long and loud, but I figured Fred must have every syllable carefully planned out, and I wouldn’t have to say a word. Surely he didn’t trust me to improvise.
He took off his glasses and put on a dark hat.
“Hey, you didn’t tell me we should come disguised!” I protested.
“You’re disguised. You’re wearing real clothes. Anyway, you don’t have to be. I do.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
He didn’t answer. I hadn’t expected him to.
We got out and started up the walk, stepping over the upheavals of concrete and tree roots. The building was in even worse shape than it had appeared from the street. Chunks of mortar had fallen from between the bricks at odd intervals, and a long, jagged crack ran all the way down one side. The mesh on the screen door was rusty and had come loose at one corner.
“I think we can assume Lester Mackey was not a wealthy man,” I whispered.
Fred scowled at me. Apparently I wasn’t following his lead.
We went inside and were immediately engulfed by a musty smell. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like in the winter when the place was closed up with no fresh air coming in.
Fred knocked on the door to our right that said, in faded letters, “Apt. A, Manager.”
The overweight, under-washed man opened it so fast, he must have been watching out the window and seen us come up. He glared at us from beady little eyes set deep in his puffy face, and his rubbery lips stretched into a frown with the corners reaching almost to his chin. A television game show blared from inside his apartment. We’d obviously interrupted his routine.
“Whaddaya want?”
“Robert Anderson and Julia Crawley.” Fred responded so easily I had to stop myself from turning around to see if those people were standing behind us. “We’re with Guaranteed Heir Finders, and we’re trying to locate Lester Mackey.”
“I don’t where he is.” The man started to close the door, but Fred was faster. He grabbed the edge while I added my contribution by stepping halfway inside and smiling at the manager. Smiling or sneering. It was hard to know how the effort came out.
“Whoever helps us locate Mr. Mackey gets the ten percent finder’s fee,” Fred said. “Ten percent of five million dollars.”
I sidled closer even though the smells of well-aged fast food and dirty clothes were kind of overpowering. I might never eat another burger.
The manager studied us for a minute. “You got any proof who you are?” He wasn’t as dumb as he looked.
Fred took a card from his shirt pocket and handed it to the man.
He’d even printed up cards for the occasion! I was quite impressed with this display of sneakiness.
The manager relaxed and rolled his lips into a gross caricature of a greedy smile. “Ten percent of five million dollars? What is that, about a hundred thousand dollars?” Okay, he was as dumb as he looked.
“Five hundred thousand,” I corrected.
His smile got bigger and grosser. “I didn’t mean to be rude, but I get a lot of salesmen, you know. Name’s George Stinson. I’m the manager.” He extended a puffy, sweaty hand.
Fred’s lips pinched just a little, but that was the only indication of the distaste I knew he was feeling as he grasped that creep’s hand and shook it. I was impressed. Fred was good at this acting business.
“So what can you tell us about Lester Mackey’s whereabouts?” Fred asked, retrieving his hand and holding it at his side with the fingers spread as if airing it.
“He rents apartment C upstairs, but he’s not there. Come on in and make yourselves comfortable,” George Stinson invited, opening the door wide and indicating a room littered with dirty dishes, fast-food wrappers, clothes and beer cans. “You want a beer?”
“We appreciate your offer of hospitality, but we can’t drink while we’re on duty,” I improvised. “Or sit down.” No matter how good an actor Fred might be, I didn’t think he could survive that assault on his fastidiousness. I wasn’t sure I could, either, and I’m not all that fastidious.
“If Mr. Mackey isn’t in his apartment, where is he?” Fred prompted.
“He’s gone for a few days, but he’s coming back. All his stuff’s still here.”
“Gone where?”
Stinson looked a little uneasy. “I’m not real sure.”
“Could we see his apartment? Maybe there’ll be something there to tell us where we can find him. These bequests expire so fast, we really need to get right on it.”
These bequests expire so fast? I’d never realized Fred had such a line of BS…and Stinson was buying every word of it.
“Sure, just let me get my keys.” The manager reached behind the door and produced a rusty ring of keys. “All set.” He started up the stairs, and we followed.
“How long has Mr. Mackey lived here?” Fred asked.
“He come in three weeks ago needing a furnished place for a month.” Stinson paused every couple of steps to take a rattling breath. Obviously the combined acts of climbing stairs and talking at the same time created an unaccustomed and strenuous activity. Sitting while watching television game shows probably strained his repertoire of simultaneous physical and mental activities. “I don’t usually rent furnished, but this guy had the cash to pay extra and said when he closed his big business deal at the end of the month, he’d have a nice bonus for me.” He turned back to Fred. “That won’t interfere with the ten percent from this inheritance, will it?”
Fred shook his head. “Of course not. All you have to do is help us find this Mackey, and you’ll get ten percent of whatev
er he gets. Did he tell you what his big deal involved?”
“Nah. Pretty tight-mouthed guy. Lot of people are. Long as they pay their rent, I don’t care. I mind my own business. Whatever he was doing, looked like he was working pretty hard at it. Left out of here a little after noon every day and didn’t get back till late at night, sometimes dawn.” If you could get past his gasping, Stinson sounded kind of pompous with importance in this real-life game show he thought he could win.
“When was the last time you saw him?”
Stinson heaved himself onto the third floor landing and turned toward Fred. His red face and the way he was wheezing combined with his melodramatically intent expression made him look like he was intently considering having a stroke. “Last Saturday night. He come to my door a little before eight o’clock, right in the middle of the football game. It was kinda strange to see him there. He’d kept to hisself ever since he moved in. Anyway, he said his sink was stopped up. I told him I’d take a look at it and tried to close the door, but he held it open. He was real excited, talking fast and couldn’t seem to stand still, like he had ants in his pants. Said he was leaving to meet somebody and he’d sure appreciate it if I could have the problem took care of by the time he got back in two hours. I guess he could tell I wasn’t real happy about having to miss the rest of that ball game, so he smiled and said this was the big meeting he’d come to town for and that when he got back, he’d have that bonus he promised me.”
“But he didn‘t come back?”
Stinson turned his key in the door of apartment C, and I thought for a minute he wasn’t going to answer Fred’s question. Then he straightened and seemed to come to a decision. “About an hour after he left, I got a phone call. The game was still on, so I wasn’t listening real close at first and whoever it was on the other end was mumbling like he was drunk. I just caught a few words, like bitch and no money and dying. I asked, Who is this? and he kinda moaned and said, Mackey. Help. Call cops. Something like that. He was gasping all the time.”
“Did you call the police?” Fred asked.
Stinson shrugged. “Not right away. I thought maybe it was some of my friends being funny, trying to get me in trouble, making me call the cops when nothing was wrong. But then this Mackey guy didn’t come home and I started to get worried. Told me when he rented the place that he was what you call a creature of habit, and he was, till Saturday night. I knew something was bad wrong when he didn’t come back, especially after that phone call. So Sunday morning I called the cops.”
“So what do you think happened to Mackey?” Fred asked.
I could almost hear those rusty wheels turning in Stinson’s sweaty head. “I don’t know. If he’s dead, do I still get the money?”
“Maybe, if you help us find the body,” I said. Well, it wasn’t any more outrageous than Fred’s assertion that an inheritance expired fast.
Stinson opened the apartment door and stepped inside. We followed him.
It didn’t look like anybody lived there. The room had nothing personal anywhere. The cheap, mismatched furniture smelled like mildew and stale cigarette smoke. No T-shirts had been tossed onto the sofa, no shoes and socks dribbled around the green carpet…no sign of male habitation…discounting, of course, obsessive/compulsive males like Fred who wouldn’t live in this sort of place.
“Can you give us a description of Mackey?” Fred asked.
“Tall, but not as tall as you are. Big chest, like he worked out in one of them gyms all the time. Good shape for an old guy. Gray hair cut short. Wore them little gold wire glasses. Had a big, ugly mole right here.” He touched his left cheek with a pudgy finger. “Every time I saw him, he had on a suit and tie. Looked like a banker except for that mole.”
Bankers couldn’t have moles?
“And you haven’t heard from him or seen him since? No more mysterious phone calls?”
“Nope. All his stuff’s still here. His razor, his clothes. Even if you figure he’s trying to get out of paying me that bonus, it don’t seem right, leaving everything he owns. He’s got some expensive suits in there.”
“What about family?” Fred continued. “Did he list anybody on his rental application?”
“He paid cash. I didn’t get a rental app on him.”
“I see. What kind of car was he driving?”
“A blue Oldsmobile. Big and old. The paint was faded, and it made a lot of noise. That’s how I could always tell when he was coming or going.”
“Do you have a license number of this vehicle?”
“Yeah, sure, downstairs.”
“Would you mind getting it while we look around a little more for anything that would give us a clue as to his whereabouts?” Fred really sounded official. That suit seemed to have transformed him. Interesting.
“Sure.”
Stinson started to leave, but Fred stopped him with another question. “Did you get his sink fixed?”
“Yeah. Somebody dropped a rag down the drain. People don’t take care of things.”
He left, and I turned to Fred. “You’re good at this.”
He put on his glasses then pulled two pairs of rubber gloves from his pocket and handed one to me. “Put these on.”
“Oh, come on! It’s not that filthy in here!”
“Fingerprints. Put them on.”
Fred just continued to amaze me. Maybe he was a burglar in another life.
He headed toward the kitchen, and I followed. Like the living room and Mother Hubbard’s cupboard, it was pretty bare. No dishes, not even a water glass, no beer in the refrigerator, no peanut butter in the pantry, no dishtowels.
“I wonder what kind of a rag that was that got stuck in the drain,” I said.
“Just what I was thinking.” Fred peered under the sink.
“Either this Mackey guy is as obsessively tidy as you are, or he eats all his meals and drinks all his water at restaurants.”
“Let’s check the bedroom.”
At least that room showed signs of habitation. The bed was unmade, the rumpled sheets thrown back, and white T-shirts, boxer shorts and navy blue socks littered the bed and the floor.
Fred examined a scrap of paper on the nightstand. “Paula’s name and number, Saturday’s date and eight o’clock p.m. Must be what the police found. Interesting they left it here. Apparently they don’t consider this a crime yet.”
I moved over beside him to look, then picked up a matchbook, the only other thing on the nightstand except the lamp. “Last Chance Watering Hole, Dallas, Texas. Guess that explains why the cops asked Paula if she was from Dallas.”
“Interesting, especially since there aren’t any ashtrays around.”
“No matches used, either. Somebody’s been smoking in here, but I suppose it could have been a previous tenant. I doubt if the place got aired in between.”
“Maybe.” He laid down the paper and began picking up the clothing, studying each piece. I wasn’t sure what we were looking for, but I followed his lead, like he’d told me to.
All were a large size, all well worn, but the brands were different. “This is strange,” I said.
“What?”
“Well, a woman may own several brands of underwear. We buy for style or color or sale price or because we’re depressed. But you men, when your underwear has so many holes in it, you can’t tell which are the ones your arms and legs go through, you buy a dozen of the same brand, same size, all at once.”
“I never wear clothes with holes in them. But you are right about the rest.”
“Unless he’s so broke, he buys from garage sales and thrift stores.”
“That’s a possibility.” He strode purposefully—yeah, he did; that suit was like Jim Carey’s mask—over to the closet.
Two suits, half a dozen white shirts, and a couple of conservative, out of style ties pretty much filled the tiny space. A suitcase that looked like it had been dragged behind a car all the way from Dallas to Kansas City sat on the floor.
Fred took ou
t one suit and held it up to examine it. “If Stinson thinks these are expensive, I’d hate to see what he considers cheap suits.” He put the garment back and flipped through the closet. “Different labels. Same thing with the shirts and ties.”
“Well, we knew he wasn’t rich or he wouldn’t be living here, so maybe he did shop at thrift stores.”
“But he was planning to come into some money.”
“And not from an inheritance,” I sniped.
Fred shrugged. “It got us in here.”
I couldn’t argue with success. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking about the source of this expected money?”
“For once, I think you and I are on the same track. Doesn’t look too good for Paula since she’s obviously got something to hide, something she could be blackmailed for.”
“But on the plus side, she doesn’t have any money to pay a blackmailer.” The ramifications of that hit me like a brick upside the head. I could tell by Fred’s expression he’d already thought of the fact that Paula would have had to find another way to deal with a blackmailer. “Maybe that’s not a point on the plus side after all. But it doesn’t matter! We know she’d never hurt anybody.”
“Let’s check the bathroom.” He headed out the door.
“Is that a male euphemism for saying you need to go potty?” I called after him.
He turned back. “The bathroom is where you find out the most about a person.”
I came up beside him and took his arm. “Fred, if this was anybody but you, I’d think you were suggesting something kinky.”
He ignored me. He does that a lot.
We went down the hall and found the small bathroom even messier than the bedroom. Stinson was right about one thing. Mackey had planned to come back. His soap, toothpaste, toothbrush, razor, comb…all his personal items were still in the bathroom.
Using just the tips of his gloved fingers, Fred picked up and examined a black comb with short gray hairs in it. More hairs littered the sink, and there were several pieces of toilet paper with dried blood on them as if he’d cut himself shaving. Lester Mackey was not a tidy person. Even so, I didn’t think I liked him.
Sally Berneathy - Death by Chocolate 01 - Death by Chocolate Page 9