Dead Before Dark

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “Lucinda is the psychic detective who helped out on the case last summer, before you got here,” Lambert tells Van Aken.

  The case. No need to specify which one on an island where the police spend far more time handing out parking tickets than investigating abductions and homicides.

  “Psychic detective?” Van Aken slants a bushy blond eyebrow at Lucinda. “You didn’t say you were a detective.”

  There are a lot of things Lucinda didn’t say.

  “You’re based out of Philadelphia, right?” Lambert asks.

  “Yes.”

  “And what was it again, that brought you here?” he asks, as though he and Lucinda have already discussed the situation.

  They haven’t, but she has a feeling he and Van Aken have.

  “I had a vision,” she says simply. “It made me worry about Carla.”

  “She said that’s how she knew to find the victim in the bathroom,” Van Aken puts in.

  Lucinda notices that even with Lambert here to back up Lucinda’s psychic background, the female cop doesn’t seem entirely convinced of her abilities.

  Most people are skeptical upon meeting her and hearing what she does. That’s typically the least of Lucinda’s worries.

  Not today.

  Not as the only witness at the murder scene of her ex-lover’s wife.

  “Look, someone left a ring in my kitchen, and I found it this morning,” she tells Lambert and Van Aken as a couple of paramedics exit the house and brush past, carrying unused equipment back to their van.

  “A ring? As in jewelry?”

  “Yes. And it was coated in something that looked to me like dried blood.”

  The two cops look at each other.

  “Did you call the police when you found it?”

  “No. When I picked it up, I connected it to Carla right away.”

  “It was her ring?”

  “I don’t know…. I didn’t think so. It was a signet, but the initial was wrong. It was a Z.”

  Lambert’s eyes widen behind his oval glasses. “That was Carla’s ring; I’ve seen it. She wore it all the time. It used to belong to her mother.”

  Her mother…of course. Zelda.

  Lucinda feels as though someone just vacuumed the air out of her lungs.

  If it was Carla’s ring…covered in Carla’s blood…then it had to have been left in Lucinda’s apartment by Carla’s killer.

  “Why didn’t you call the police when you found this bloody ring and had this disturbing vision about Mrs. Barakat?”

  She can’t tell Lambert that she didn’t trust herself—that she thought her subconsciousness might have conjured the image of Carla, dead, out of some deep-seated resentment. How can she admit that to anyone, especially a friend of Randy’s, especially now?

  You were a fool, Lucinda. You’re always a fool where Randy is concerned. You let your feelings get in the way of sound judgement. How could you?

  It’s so obvious in retrospect that she did everything wrong, from not calling the police to her careless handling of the evidence.

  “Lucinda?” Lambert prods—now watching her nearly as warily as Van Aken has been all along.

  “I called Randy,” she tells them. “But when I found out he was away, I didn’t want to alarm him.”

  “Did you say anything at all to him about his wife?”

  I asked him when he last talked to her, and he said last night.

  Oh, Randy, why did you lie about that? What are you hiding?

  “Not really,” she tells his colleagues. “I just…I decided to come on over here and see if everything was okay.”

  Come on over, as if it’s right around the corner.

  “Where is the ring right now?” Lambert asks.

  “In a plastic bag in my glove compartment.”

  “A plastic bag. All right, good.” He gives her a little nod of approval.

  Van Aken, less approving, asks, “Did you wear gloves when you handled it?”

  “No,” she admits. “Not the first time. Not until I realized what it might be. My prints will be on it.”

  Lambert is already walking toward her car. “With any luck, so will someone else’s.”

  Twilight is falling by the time Neal Bullard arrives at the Long Beach Township police headquarters on Long Beach Boulevard.

  Never in her life has Lucinda been so glad to see anyone.

  Being a man of few words—particularly over the telephone—Neal didn’t say much when she reached him earlier with the news. He told her he was just leaving Scranton, and promised to get to her as quickly as possible.

  He also asked if she knew whether an investigator named Frank Santiago was on the case.

  “I think so. Why? Do you know him?”

  “I did. A long time ago.”

  Neal didn’t elaborate. She didn’t expect him to.

  He did ask her how she’d come to be on Long Beach Island.

  “Long story,” she told him. “I’ll tell you when you get here.”

  Grateful to see him at last, she rises from her chair as Neal strides past the desk sergeant, who looks up only briefly before going back to a phone call.

  “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  “I was just going to say that to you.” He gives her a swift, hard hug. “I’ve been trying to call your cell. I thought maybe you’d left.”

  “Where would I go? The battery died after I called you.” She sinks into her chair again, facing the Beach Buggy permit sign she’s read and reread for hours now, brooding about Randy.

  “Are there still reporters out front?” she asks Neal.

  “What do you think?” He sits beside her, stretching his long legs in front of him. He’s wearing jeans and sneakers. He really didn’t waste a moment’s time getting here. “Does the press know you’re involved?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “They’re going to have a field day when they find out.”

  “Maybe they won’t.”

  “Have a field day? Are you kidding?”

  “I meant maybe they won’t find out.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  She sighs and shakes her head.

  “Oh, I bought this for you when I stopped for gas.” Neal pulls something out of his pocket.

  “Thank you.” She gladly accepts the jumbo-sized Twix bar, surprised by the lump of emotion in her throat.

  Neal takes care of her—even when she doesn’t think that she wants—or needs—to be taken care of. Which is, pretty much, always.

  “I figured you might be hungry.”

  She is hungry, she realizes, though she hadn’t even noticed until this very moment. Aside from the Pepsi and coffee she gulped down before hitting the road, she hasn’t had a thing to drink, much less eat, all day.

  He watches her take a huge bite of chocolate-coated caramel.

  And then another.

  “So is Randy…?”

  “He’s on his way.”

  Again, she thinks about Randy’s lie, and the candy bar turns sodden in her mouth.

  But she can’t tell Neal. She can’t tell anyone.

  Not without at least talking to Randy first.

  “How is he?” Neal asks.

  “I don’t know. I tried calling his cell phone again before mine died, and there was no answer. Maybe he’s on a plane.”

  “What time is he getting in?”

  She shrugs. “All I know is that someone called him. I heard them say that he was going to catch the first plane back. But he’s out in Tahoe—I don’t even know if there’s an airport there.”

  “Reno. He’ll have to drive there, or maybe Sacramento, and make a connection.”

  “How do you know that?” she asks, having often heard Neal’s claim that he’s never been west of Pennsylvania.

  “Patty and Jeff went skiing at Squaw Valley a few years ago, and they left the twins with us. Maeve ended up in the ER with pneumonia, and they had a hell of a time getting back. Randy will be l
ucky if he gets here before tomorrow.”

  “I figured it would be a while.”

  “You’re not planning to wait all night, are you, Cin?”

  “If that’s what it takes. I want to be here for him.”

  He gives her a long look.

  “No matter what happened between us in the past”—and no matter what reason he had for lying to me this morning—“Randy’s my friend. How can I walk out on him now?”

  Neal says nothing to that, asking instead, “Did you get any more information on what happened to Carla?”

  “I have no idea. Nobody’s telling me any of the details.”

  “Did they at least mention whether there are any suspects?”

  “Just me.”

  Neal’s green eyes widen.

  “Well, not really,” she says quickly. “Not anymore, anyway.”

  She explains about the ring, and how she came to be here, and what happened back at Randy’s house.

  She keeps her voice low, even though they’re the only two people sitting here. The desk sergeant has his hands full with incessantly ringing phones. The press has clearly gotten wind of another murder on the quiet little island.

  “You should have called me the second you found that ring,” Neal tells her, just as she’d known he would.

  “I should have done a lot of things. I’m sorry. I hadn’t slept much, and I wasn’t thinking straight. I don’t think I am even now.” She sighs, rubs her eyes, exhausted. “I don’t suppose you bought me some coffee at that gas station, did you?”

  “Sorry. I should have. Let’s go out and find a diner or something.”

  “What about the press out there?”

  “You’ll have to leave sooner or later. Maybe there’s a back door.”

  “What if Randy shows up?”

  “He won’t. Not yet. Come on. I’ll buy you dinner, and then we’ll come right back.”

  She hesitates. “Okay.”

  Standing, she tosses the candy bar wrapper into the trash can, then picks up her coat. Several blue plastic bags drop from the folds onto the floor.

  “What are those?”

  “The Barakats’ newspapers,” she tells Neal, gathering them. “I picked them up from the driveway when I got there, and I forgot I had them.”

  She starts to throw them into the trash, but Neal stops her.

  “If we’re going to sit here all night, I’ll read them.”

  “Old news?”

  “Not the news, but I’ll take all the sports sections. You can throw the rest of it away. I missed the last few Sixers games because I had the kids with me, so I’ve got to catch up.” Neal, a rabid basketball fan, holds out his hand.

  Lucinda takes the papers out of their protective plastic bags and begins sorting through the sections. Something flutters to the floor.

  Neal bends to pick it up as she separates yesterday’s sports page from the rest of the paper.

  “Cin.”

  “Mmm hmm?”

  He doesn’t reply.

  She looks up to see him holding up a white sheet of paper.

  Typed precisely in the middle of the page, in bold black type, are two numbers:

  87.7

  41.9

  Chapter Six

  “Morning, Joe.”

  “Night, Larry.”

  Both men smile as they pass each other with their usual greeting, Larry Blazer carrying a janitor’s bucket and mop, ready to erase the sticky remains of another night at the bar; Joe Armano with a down jacket thrown over his dress shirt and loosened tie, car keys in hand, heading home after the closing shift.

  If he’s lucky, he’ll get home in time to kiss his wife Mary Lou hello and good-bye as she leaves to start her early morning nursing shift at Methodist Hospital. Sometimes he catches her; sometimes he doesn’t. It all depends on how many times she hits the Snooze button on the alarm.

  She works hard, Mary Lou. So does he. With two sons in college and a daughter planning a wedding for June, they have no choice. After being forced into early retirement from his job as a telecommunications manager and cheated out of ten percent of his pension, Joe has no choice but to do what he can to make ends meet.

  He likes bartending better than his other current job, driving for an airport car service. Drunken revelers tip a lot better than harried businessmen on ever leaner corporate expense accounts.

  Any other time of day, the streets are buzzing in the Rittenhouse Square area, filled with people coming and going from upscale restaurants, expensive shops, fancy hotels and apartment buildings. At this hour, though, even the club kids have gone home, and with freezing temperatures and sunup still a few hours off, all is quiet.

  Joe’s footsteps sound hollow as he walks the familiar route up South 18th Street toward the garage off Market Street where he pays a small fortune to park his car every night. He parked on the street when he first started working down here, but after a few tickets and a few break-ins, he wised up.

  Not that the streets around here aren’t safe.

  But you leave a decent looking BMW—even the older model, used one that Mary Lou fondly continues to call his ‘midlife crisis’ splurge years later—on the street anywhere in the wee hours, and you’re going to see some damage.

  Damn, it’s cold tonight.

  Joe crosses against the light—not a car in sight—and starts up the next block, where a couple of older storefronts hug the sidewalk.

  Someone steps from the sheltered doorway of one of them, directly into his path, facing him.

  Startled, Joe stops walking and prays that the man is bundled in a parka zipped to his nose and a ski cap pulled low over his eyes because of the temperature. If not, Joe wonders if he can fight him off and run. The guy is the same height as he is, and looks about the same weight, though it’s hard to tell with the bulk of the parka.

  But Joe used to be a wrestler. He’s still strong, and he knows some moves….

  He sees the gun, and his guts go liquid.

  “Give me your wallet.”

  Joe’s gloved hand, trembling, goes to the back pocket of the nice gray dress pants Mary Lou gave him for Christmas, saying he needed to dress more fashionably if he was going to work at an upscale bar near Rittenhouse.

  He hands over his wallet.

  The mugger, wearing black leather gloves, opens it and looks inside.

  “Take it. You can have whatever’s in it. Just don’t hurt me. Please.”

  The mugger gives a nod as if he’s satisfied, snaps the wallet closed, and tucks it into his pocket.

  “Sorry, Joe,” are the last words Joe Armano hears before his brains are blown out.

  “Ms. Sloan?”

  She looks up to see the young cop who’s been working the desk phones since beginning last night’s late shift. “Yes?”

  “Would you like one?” He offers a box of Krispy Kremes, adding, “I know what you’re thinking. Cops and donuts. Cliché, right?”

  “Clichés are clichés because they’re true.” She manages a faint smile and gratefully accepts a glazed jelly donut.

  He returns to his post, and she devours it in two bites, wishing she’d taken two. She hasn’t eaten a thing since the Twix bar Neal brought her last night, right before they found the paper bearing the strange numerical sequence.

  They immediately turned it over to the police, along with the newspapers and plastic bags.

  “Which newspaper was this with?” was, of course, one of the first questions from the detectives who came on duty when Lambert and Van Aken went off.

  Her answer—“I’m not sure”—was hardly satisfactory, another strike against Lucinda with a fresh crop of Long Beach Township investigators.

  She should have given Lambert and Van Aken the newspapers in the first place yesterday, but it never occurred to her that—beyond the ring—she was harboring evidence from a crime scene.

  It should have. You’re not exactly new to this; yet somehow, you’ve bungled one thing after another.
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  In her defense—as Neal pointed out to the police—she was upset, and tired, and anyway, hindsight is twenty-twenty. How could she have guessed that Carla’s killer might have left a clue with the newspaper?

  How, indeed?

  She gathered the papers, carried them away. In the grand scheme of things, that wouldn’t exactly be second nature. She’s pretty sure that was no accident.

  No, because her brain is wired to pick up on things most people don’t.

  She was subconsciously drawn to those newspapers because she herself has some oblique connection to Carla’s killer, the most frightening prospect of all.

  “Is there any way this note wasn’t in with the papers when you picked them up off the driveway?” Neal asked her last night on the heels of their discovery.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, maybe someone is following you and left it in the newspaper after you picked it up. Did you let the papers out of your sight for even a moment today?”

  “I forgot I even had them with me!” Her nerves were fraying fast at that point, thanks to exhaustion, low blood sugar—and, though she would never admit it to anyone but herself, sheer fright. “I probably left them here with my coat a couple of times when I went to the ladies’ room.”

  “So anyone could have come in and left this note.”

  “I guess so…but would someone really do that in a police station?”

  Probably not.

  In the end, both she and Neal concluded that the killer had probably left the note at the scene of the crime, that he was the same person who left the album and the ring in her apartment, and that he might have something to do with Ava Neary’s death as well.

  The Long Beach Township police didn’t seem as convinced. They asked to see the other sheet of paper, which was back at Neal’s house. He left after midnight to drive back to Philadelphia to get it and to meet a couple of other detectives from the Philadelphia police department at her apartment to dust for prints.

  “I should go with you,” she said, but he shook his head immediately.

  “You’re safer here.”

  “On an island with a murderer on the loose?”

  “In the police station on an island far away from your apartment—which, let’s not forget, he visited after the murder to leave the bloody souvenir. I’d be surprised if he’s hanging around Beach Haven now—but we might be able to pick up the trail in Philly.”