The deck of the Bay Bridge was slippery. Cars hugged their lanes and crawled along at about forty miles an hour. With headlights on and wipers in lazy mode, people were driving as if their trunks held cartons of eggs. Seasoned Bay Area drivers never use their high beams in that sort of fog. If you do you’re pegged as a tourist or an asshole.
The fog suited my purpose. I wanted to be invisible. The ex-wife of a cop couldn’t claim ignorance about basic law. What I was planning was illegal, and I knew it. Technically, I could be charged with aiding and abetting if an actual crime had been committed. I had every right to be at École; but rummaging through a dead woman’s locker and handbag was another matter.
I prepared my alibi. If I ran into anyone, I’d say I was collecting Allison’s things for Antonello so that he could give them to her parents. Which was absolutely true; the part about searching her purse and locker before I handed it over to Antonello the rather illegal part. I wasn’t particularly worried. I doubted I’d see a soul. The school was closed on weekends except for private events, and traditionally January was a slow month. Holiday burn out. Things didn’t pick-up until February. Besides, who’d want to return to the school so soon after Allison’s death?
Unless you were like me.
Obsessed, driven, and pissed off.
As I anticipated, my car was the only one in the underground garage. I did have a fleeting moment of common sense. Suppose there was something fishy about Allison’s death. The killer might have the same idea about looking for incriminating evidence. How wise would it be to return to the crime scene? No one would hear my screams for help.
Nonsense. O’Connor was right; I was manufacturing dead bodies out of thin air. First of all, it was highly unlikely that Allison’s death was anything other than anaphylactic shock. I’d seen those symptoms too often in my mother to think it was anything else. Second, there wasn’t a hint, a soupçon of evidence that O’Connor was there for any other reason than attending classes. Two hours ago I was dead certain he was surreptitiously interrogating me about Allison’s death. Now I wasn’t so sure. Maybe he was legitimately attending the program. And if he hadn’t called to see how I was doing after Allison’s death, I’d have labeled him a complete cretin. Plus, if I was going to be completely honest, I seemed to be the only one trying to shake off covert sexual longings. All I got from him was either attitude or a blank stare big enough to lose myself in.
By the time I had reached École, I’d almost convinced myself this was a wild goose chase. I’d collect all of Allison’s belongings and drop them off at Antonello’s place in North Beach.
But not until I had searched through everything.
I used my elevator key to reach the basement. The elevator doors opened to absolute pitch black. Damn, this hallway had always been lit when I’d been here before. The storeroom where the dry goods were kept was on the left and down a few feet, on the right, was the door to the locker room. That Twilight Zone twitch at the back of my neck came back. Nothing, nothing was going to make me negotiate that total dark.
Memo to self: if you are going to pretend to be Nancy Drew, have the goddamn sense to carry a flashlight with you.
My hand fumbled along the wall for a light switch. A flash of bright light blinded me for a second. I squealed in fright, then relief. A motion sensor had flipped on the fluorescent light overhead. Of course, the light would be on a sensor. When did a bunch of twenty-year olds remember to turn off lights? Not until they started paying electricity bills.
It felt about thirty degrees down here. I shivered and zipped my down vest up to the limit.
When I opened the door to the locker room another flash of light greeted me. A second motion sensor. This settled my internal debate whether to be as blatant as possible about my presence or to skulk around. With lights announcing my every movement, I’d better look like I had a good reason for being here.
The locker room was tiny, roughly twenty by ten feet. One bank of lockers was propped up against the north and south wall, and one bank of lockers and a long wooden bench bisected the room. The entrance to the bathroom was at the far side of the room.
When I stepped into the room the stench of sewage was overwhelming. I walked across the room and peeked into the bathroom. Christ, the toilets had overflowed again. That was twice in one week. By Monday afternoon the janitor would have pasted crudely lettered signs up on the wall berating us for flushing feminine hygiene products down the toilets. I guess it was easier to write signs than replace the ancient plumbing.
My locker was located in the middle bank of lockers, Allison’s in the far south corner against the wall. Cuffing my nose against my sleeve, I opened my locker, found Allison’s purse, and grabbed her Chanel No. 5. I spun around, spraying a two-foot arc of protection against the smell so that I could check out Allison’s wallet without gagging.
I’d gone through the contents of Allison’s purse the day before in the pastry kitchen: the only thing I hadn’t searched was her wallet. I sat down on the bench and laid out its contents. Her wallet was as neutral as her purse. Bills were carefully arranged according to denomination, the heads of the presidents all in the same direction. There were no credit card or ATM receipts bulging out from the billfold like in my wallet. Her only items of identification were one credit card, a gas card, and a driver’s license.
This neatness spoke of a need for order so compelling that life’s everyday clutter had been ruthlessly erased as it happened. No checkbook even. Strange. And not a single clue, unless one was searching for an insight into Allison’s rigid nature.
No wonder she’d blown up at Marc’s petition. Her orderly, little world was about to be rocked. For someone obsessed with being in control of the smallest minutiae of her life, the events of the past few months must have been unbearable. It certainly explains why, in spite of her phenomenal creativity, she’d never left the comfortable fold of École for the crazy, rollicking world that food had become in the last ten years.
For a few seconds I felt smug about the clutter that seemed to accumulate around me. I’ll shove one bank slip in my wallet and overnight ten more will have sprung up. With money—completely hopeless. If I ever get desperate before paychecks, I can always find a few fives and ones hidden in every coat and sweater pocket I own. And you’d better believe that they aren’t in any sort of order in my wallet, denomination or direction-wise. I’d always considered this sloppiness a deep character flaw. But despite the best intentions, I never seemed to get a handle on it. Looking at Allison’s wallet made me feel almost saintly by comparison.
Then I tried to envision what my life would look like if someone decided to search my purse. They’d think I was a disorganized mess of a woman who wrote far too many checks under $5.00 and seemed to buy an inordinate number of shoes. All these things were true, of course, but it was such a small, mean picture.
Come on, Allison. You are so much more than the sum of this wallet. Help me out, I implored her mentally. I studied her driver’s license picture, as if that would give me divine inspiration. She had listed her weight at one hundred and ten poundsat least fifty pounds off the mark.
If I hadn’t have been staring at her license so intently I’d have missed it. The tiny point of a business card peeked out from behind her license. I pried the license out from under its plastic cover. Beneath it was a business card from a jeweler in North Beach. I turned the card over. Written in Allison’s ornate script was a time and date: January 12th, 10:30 a.m.
This Tuesday. The phone call reminding her that her ring would be ready.
Okay, this was something to work with.
I scrounged around in the bottom of my own purse, found my wallet, and hid the business card under my own license for safekeeping. Then I put everything back into her purse and stuffed it into the enormous black sack that I use as a handbag. With such a pristine wallet, I’d no hope that her locker would yield any clues. I rounded the end of locker bank to the c
orner where Allison’s locker was located and stopped short. I didn’t move a muscle.
Her locker door hung open wearily on one hinge. The locker was empty.
The door and the frame had been pried open until the lock had snapped. Despite the cold, I began to sweat. Up to that point I realized I’d been playing a game, trying to prove to O’Connor how smart and sassy I was. I hadn’t really believed that Allison had been killed. It was a necessary by-product of my fantasy. Like reading a mystery novel, none of it was real.
Until I saw the locker.
Whoever had trashed that locker it wasn’t the police. Someone needed something in that locker. Someone so desperate he beat it open with a crowbar, not caring who saw his handiwork. At the very least something had been terribly wrong in Allison’s life. At the worst, she’d been murdered because of it. I don’t know how long I stood there trying to accept the real possibility of Allison’s murder as it beat like a tom-tom into my brain.
The light went out.
Terror stuck my feet to the cold cement floor. I was too afraid to even blink. Then my brain started to thaw and began screaming at me, “Move, idiot, and the light will go back on.”
Before I could move, I heard the lock turn.
The door opened.
The light came back on.
Chapter Eleven
I slipped into the bathroom and lodged myself behind the door, cell phone in hand poised to dial 911. With my free hand I pulled the band of my turtleneck over my mouth and over the bridge of my nose as a makeshift mask so that I wouldn’t suffocate from the noxious fumes emanating from the floor. It didn’t help.
“Yuck, it stinks in here. The toilets are clogged again.”
“I’ll be two minutes. Tops.”
It was Marc and Shelley. What was Marc doing in the ladies’ locker room? And two minutes for what? From the snotty tone of their voices, they were gearing up for a fight.
“You still haven’t explained to me what we’re doing here,” Shelley complained. “After what happened yesterday I’d just as soon never come back here again.”
Silence.
“Marc, why are we here? You promised you’d take me to brunch and all of a sudden you pull into École’s parking lot.”
There was a pause and then Marc said, “I need to check out Allison’s locker.”
I heard the sharp intake of breath.
“Marc, the woman is dead and you want to rifle through her stuff? What in the hell is going on?” Shelley was clearly outraged. Our brief encounters hadn’t exactly endeared her to me, but her sense of propriety in this instance was right on the money. How dare Marc violate Allison’s privacy.
That was my job.
Marc’s voice was sullen, the southern drawl more pronounced. “It’s got nothin’ to do with us. Just somethin’ I need to take care of before I quit.”
God, it was cold. I clenched my jaw tight to stop my teeth from chattering. I was so aware of their presence, every high and low of their voices. If they discovered me, how was I going to explain myself? Think, Mary. Why would you be hiding behind the door of the bathroom, cell phone clutched to your chest, your hightops mired in two-inch deep sewage.
“You promised me you’d quit last semester. Fuck it, Marc. I’m giving my notice on Monday. I’ll stay until the end of the semester and that’s it. Wolfgang’s opening a new restaurant in Paris this spring. I told him last Monday I’d take the job.”
Three beats and then Marc asked, “And when were you goin’ to tell me?”
“I didn’t think you’d care,” she countered.
“Of course I care,” he sputtered.
“Then come with me.” Shelley had thrown down the gauntlet.
Silence.
“Marc, are you coming with me or are you staying here at this total dead-end? This place can’t even keep its sewer lines clear.”
Still no answer.
“Marc, I want an answer. Now,” she demanded.
It amazed me that someone who was only sixty inches tall could have such a big voice.
“I don’t know.” I could hear the desperation in his voice. “I’d like to, but I got something going on here. It’s got nothing to do with us. You know I love you.”
Shelley’s voice boomed throughout the locker room. “You promised me this was a two-semester gig. We’ve been here four semesters. And that petition to get Étienne fired—what do you care if that French fart works here or not when you’re leaving? Next, you want to search through a dead woman’s locker. What is going on here?”
I cringed listening to this. Shelley’s cranky, take-no-prisoners tone was a little too familiar. Jim and I’d had variations of this fight numerous times. It wasn’t selfishness so much as my unwillingness to be second best—at anything. I’d never wanted my career to be more important than my husband’s. I only wanted it to be as important. A job opportunity would pop up that was stimulating, with more prestige, more money, and lots more hours. I always took it, thinking that somehow we’d make it work.
We didn’t.
After Jim walked out on me I spent the next six months blaming myself for being so driven. A year of therapy—perhaps I should slip Dr. Robinson’s business card in Shelley’s locker—made me realize that Jim needed a wife whose main focus of attention was him. Unfortunately, that wasn’t me. We both felt cheated. Me, because I was constantly justifying my need to excel at what I did best, and him because he always felt like he came in a distant second.
“Come with me,” Shelley cooed. “Just think, Marc. Paris in April. We’d have such fun.”
She said “fun” in a husky, deep tone that promised satin sheets, red lingerie, and whipped cream in strategic places.
Next, I heard the unzipping of a zipper and the rustle of clothing. This couldn’t get any worse. Please, oh please control yourselves, I begged silently.
Shelley continued her siren song. “With a last name like Lapin you must have French blood in you somewhere. We could drink Beaujolais Nouveau the minute it’s released.” More rustling and another zipper was freed from its teeth.
There was a pause in the action, then Marc barked, “Stop it, Shell.”
“Oh, come on,” she teased. “Let’s pway. Just the way you wike it.”
The Elmer Fudd voice put me over the edge. I slipped the cell phone into my pocket. I couldn’t listen to their verbal foreplay for one more second. Just as I was about to stick my fingers in my ears, the sharp tone in Marc’s voice stopped me.
“I said stop it,” he bellowed.
Then I heard a loud bang, as if someone had pounded an angry fist into the side of the lockers. There was more frantic rustling and zippers being rezipped. Someone wasn’t in the mood.
“I get the message, Marc.” Shelley’s voice was sulky.
“I can’t. Not here.” Then he tried to woo her with food. Always works for me. “Let’s have brunch like I promised and then go back home. Then you can tell me about Puck’s new place and we can pway. Okay?”
I heard leather squeaking, like he was rubbing the back of her coat.
“Yeah,” she agreed, mollified by the back rub and the promise of chow. “How about Anjou? We can eat and pretend we’re already in Paris.”
“Great, but first I need to check out that locker.”
“This is illegal, Marc, and I want no part of it. I’ll wait for you outside.”
Shelley might not have a problem with sexual high jinks in public places complete with cartoon voices, but apparently she drew the line at breaking and entering.
Marc didn’t wait for an answer. I heard his shoes squeaking against the cement floor and then stop.
“Shell?” His voice displayed all the disbelief that I’d felt seeing Allison’s locker.
“Marc, I’m not being a party to any of this.”
“Come here.”
“What is the hell is the matter with you….”
They stood in s
ilence for a few seconds.
“Marc?”
“I swear I had nothing to do with this. You’ve got to believe me.”
“You’re going to explain everything to me. No stalling this time. I want…Wait a minute. Don’t you smell it?”
Shelley’s voice was an octave above her normal contralto.
“It’s Allison’s perfume!” she shrieked. “It’s that Chanel crap she was always squirting on herself.”
“Calm down, Shelley,” Marc said. “You’re imagining it. I don’t smell….”
Then I heard little sniffling sounds.
“We’re out of here,” he yelled.
The sharp tap-tap-tap of her boots was followed by the muffled thuds of Marc’s sneakers.
I’d waited another ten minutes to make sure they’d left and then walk out after them. Using the tweezers from my Swiss Army knife, I untied my shoes. Getting my socks off with the tweezers was trickier but I finally managed. I dropped everything in the first garbage can I could find. First I’d go home to get some new socks and shoes, then I’d go to Allison’s apartment. My bare feet made no noise as I negotiated my way back to the garage. Lights greeted me as I rounded every corner.
I was alone.
Chapter Twelve
As I drove back across the Bay Bridge, the specter of Allison’s locker kept reappearing again and again in my mind. Such undisguised fury or desperation is the stuff murder is made of.
After last fall’s murders I didn’t take anything for granted anymore. O’Connor’s sneer about me seeing bodies behind every tree wasn’t so far off the mark. When you’re a casualty of evil, it opens a door that can never be shut. It’s the adult version of realizing there’s no Santa Claus.
A co-worker I had trusted, a person I actually liked, killed two people—over money. The first victim’s face was bashed-in so violently with the flat side of a frying pan that I wouldn’t have recognized him if it weren’t for his unusual buzz cut. For the coup de grace, they wrapped a kitchen apron around his neck and pulled the strings tight until he died. The second victim was shot execution style in my bedroom, his brains splattered all over a quilt that Jim and I had bought ten years ago as a wedding present to each other.
Roux Morgue Page 8