Dead Before Dark

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  Neal—and the others—wait for a response. She doesn’t dare look at Randy, but she can feel his eyes fixed on her, can feel his concern.

  “Um, my friend Bradley has the keys.” She exhales through puffed cheeks. “I gave him the spare set when he helped me move in, because he was coming and going without me there. But there’s no way he—”

  “Who,” interrupts Sergeant Van Aken, still not exactly Lucinda’s best bud, “is your friend Bradley?”

  “Bradley Carmichael.” Bradley Carmichael IV, but who’s counting? “He’s a friend from New York. I met him at his cousin’s wedding last year, and we got to be good friends.”

  Really good friends. Fast friends, the way it was with Cam; two strangers thrown together under unique circumstances.

  “Look,” she tells Neal—tells all of them, feeling their dubious stares, “I trust Bradley.”

  “You haven’t known him for very long,” Neal points out.

  “I’ve known him long enough to know he would never hurt me—or anyone else.”

  Neal nods, though his eyes ask her if she’s absolutely sure about that—and so does a little voice in the back of her head.

  “What should I wear?” Jaime Dobiak asks her friend Nancy above the Coldplay song blasting from the iPod plugged into the dock on her clock radio. She holds up two hangers from her closet. “The red or the black?”

  Sprawled on Jaime’s blue bedspread, Nancy doesn’t bother to look up from the latest issue of Cosmopolitan she’d found on the nightstand. “Red. You could use a little color in your life.”

  “I have plenty of color in my life.” Jaime gestures around her newly painted bedroom. Blue walls, blue curtains, blue bedspread. Even blue tissues in the box beside the bed. “And look what I bought yesterday.” She holds up a bright yellow silk Hermès scarf. With the sale price and her employee discount at Bloomingdale’s, it was a steal. “Do you like it?”

  “I love it,” Nancy tells her. “Are you going to wear it?”

  “Not with this.” She holds it against the black dress. “I’d look like a bumblebee.”

  “Don’t wear that. You wear too much black.”

  “But black is slimming.”

  “True.”

  Heaven knows Jaime could stand to lose ten pounds—although the weight charts always say she’s in a healthy range for her height.

  Too much beer, not enough exercise. But between a full time job as a secretary and a part-time one at Bloomies on Michigan Avenue—the only way to afford her wardrobe and the rent on this great apartment off West Division Street, in walking distance to all her favorite clubs—who has time for the gym?

  Granted, she might if she cut out the nightly partying. But not yet a year out of college and on her own for the first time in Chicago, Jaime Dobiak has no intention of taming her social life just yet.

  She tosses the yellow scarf over the bedpost. Standing in front of the full length mirror, she holds one dress up to her chin, and then the other, swaying in time to the music.

  “I love this song.” She turns up the volume.

  “What?”

  “I said, I love this song!”

  “The neighbors are going to call the cops!” Nancy glances up at last.

  “No, the walls are really thick. Like, soundproof.”

  “What?”

  “Soundproof walls!”

  That’s what the landlord told her when she moved in last summer. That—along with the prime location, near all Jaime’s favorite hangouts on West Division and Rush Streets—was a big selling point. Not because she’s a light sleeper, or concerned about the neighbors’ parties. Rather, because she’s worried that the neighbors are light sleepers and might complain about her frequent after-hours parties.

  No one ever has.

  Because they don’t hear a thing.

  The song ends. Jaime turns down the volume and compares the two hangers again. “I need a verdict, Nance.”

  “Wear the red. You look good in red with your coloring.”

  Blond hair and blue eyes go with everything in her closet, as far as Jaime’s concerned.

  Whatever. She’ll wear the red.

  She even has the lipstick to match, having stopped by the makeup counter at Bloomies before Valentine’s Day to pick up a daring new shade.

  It’s called Blood Red.

  Her Valentine’s Day date said it looked good on her.

  She’ll wear it again tonight.

  They don’t call this the Windy City for nothing.

  He shivers and pulls the collar of his black overcoat higher around his neck as he walks along State Street, rolling his dark blue Samsonite bag along behind him.

  No one gives him a second glance; he’s one in a cast of thousands: businesspeople in town for meetings and seminars and whatever the hell it is that businesspeople do.

  He had the cab driver from O’Hare drop him at a different hotel: the enormous, upscale Renaissance over on Wacker. Just in case.

  “Here for the conference?” the cabbie—a talkative, older guy with a flat Midwestern accent—asked.

  “That’s right,” he replied, and wondered what kind of conference it was.

  He hoped the cabbie wouldn’t ask any specific questions, because then he wouldn’t be able to answer them, and he’d have to get rid of the guy, and really, he’s too busy for that right now.

  Luckily for him—for both of them, really—the cabbie didn’t bother to ask, just collected his fare and tip with a “Hey, thanks for all the ones. I can use ’em, I’ve been breaking twenties all day, a lot of short trips, being it’s so cold out.”

  “No problem.”

  He tipped the doorman who came over to open the cab door with yet another dollar bill from the tremendous wad in his pocket.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Sir. He grinned. “No problem.”

  He made his way through the sea of professional types in the busy lobby, bought some mints and a newspaper at the lobby shop, visited the men’s room. When a good fifteen minutes had passed he left, crossing Wacker and heading across the river.

  Always cover your tracks.

  “Right this way, Randy.”

  He nods, and with his friend Dan at his side, follows the medical examiner’s assistant—Sherri is her name—through a set of doors. A pert little blonde, Sherri is wearing a snug white ribbed turtleneck tucked into a snug black tweed skirt, with heels that tap tap tap along the tile floors.

  They know each other fairly well: professionally, of course. He’s escorted a number of people into the small viewing room at the morgue: distraught families of car wreck victims, mostly. How many times has he half-walked, half-carried, a hysterical mother back through these doors with her screeching “My baby”?

  Now it’s his turn to be escorted to that awful room.

  “Do you want me to come in with you?” Lambert asks, laying a hand on Randy’s shoulder when they reach the door.

  “No. It’s okay.” He takes a deep breath. “Let’s just do this.”

  Sherri opens the door with a jangling of her charm bracelet. Her nails, Randy notices, are long and polished bright red, with little gold hearts painted on the tip of each one.

  The gaudy, cheerful manicure seems wrong here.

  Maybe it’s not.

  Who knows? Maybe it’s better, in this place where death hangs in the halls like a killing frost, to have a reminder that somewhere out there, life goes on. Somewhere out there, pretty girls polish their nails. Wear charm bracelets. Celebrate Valentine’s Day. Stuff like that.

  Then Randy is in the room with his dead wife.

  She’s lying there on a steel table with her eyes closed, looking just like all the other corpses he’s seen—skin an unearthly gray shade, almost a dark blue around her lips, features concave, hair pulled back from her face. The smell of death assaults his nostrils, but it isn’t overpowering. They’ve cleaned her up the best they can.

  When he leaves, he knows, the process will
begin. They’ll undress her, and cut her up for the autopsy. Officially determine what killed her when the evidence is right there, beneath an enormous gauze bandage shielding her neck.

  “Randy?” Sherri asks softly.

  “It’s her. It’s Carla.”

  Sherri nods. After a moment, she hands him a clipboard.

  He signs the papers.

  Just a formality.

  “Do you want a minute with her?”

  He nods.

  Sherri steps somberly into the hall. He can hear her voice, low, and then Dan’s.

  Hot tears pool in his eyes, then spill over.

  He looks at Carla. Forces himself to really look. One last time.

  “I’m sorry, baby,” he whispers raggedly, and touches her cold, blue hand.

  She isn’t wearing her wedding band—she wouldn’t be. She took it off in September. He did the same with his.

  Of course, she isn’t wearing her mother’s sterling signet ring, either. She wore it every day, on the ring finger of her right hand, because it’s too big for her pinkie. Every night that Randy lived with her, when she got ready for bed, she would take off her earrings and her watch and whatever other jewelry she had been wearing during the day, and she would put it in a little tray on her dresser.

  But she never removed the signet ring.

  The wedding band, either.

  Not until September.

  Her murderer stole the signet ring and left it for Lucinda to find.

  Did he steal her other jewelry as well?

  Randy looks to her earlobes, mottled and dark.

  The piercings are bare.

  Oh…She’s wearing pajamas. He’s seen them before: blue top with three-quarter length sleeves, and blue and green striped pants.

  That’s why her jewelry is off. She had already gotten ready for bed when she died.

  That doesn’t necessarily mean that it was late. Sometimes Carla got ready for bed before the sun even went down and ate dinner in her pajamas.

  He’ll have to look, back at the house, at the little tray on the dresser for her earrings and whatever else she’d had on the day she died. Make sure nothing else is missing.

  Randy hears a stirring in the hall and looks up. Both Sherri and Dan are looking in at him.

  “You okay?” Dan asks.

  Of course not. He’s here with his dead wife.

  “I’m okay.”

  He sighs and reaches out to touch her hand, one last time.

  Her extremities are purplish blue. Her hand feels weirdly thick and cold and hard.

  “I’m sorry, Carla,” he whispers, bending to press a kiss against her hand.

  That’s when he sees the watch around her wrist.

  Chapter Nine

  Lucinda left her car back at Randy’s house when they headed over to the police station earlier.

  “Just leave it there and ride with me,” Neal tells her now, as he stands, buttoning his coat, just inside the doors at police headquarters.

  “No, I want my car.” She tries to fight a yawn.

  “Look at you. How are you going to drive for two hours after days without sleep?”

  “I’ll manage.”

  “At least let me drive you over there to get it, then, and we can follow each other back. We’re going to the same place.”

  Yes. To Neal’s place.

  She’s already agreed to stay in the Bullards’ guest room for a few days—and not with much reluctance. Returning to her own apartment is, of course, out of the question for the time being.

  87.7

  41.9

  What do those numbers mean? She’s been running them through her head ever since Neal showed the photograph, to no avail. Santiago said they’ve run them through search engines and come up with countless references to—among other things—weight, weather, and air temperature. Nothing makes sense in terms of what is going on here.

  They’re going to analyze them, possibly even call in a numerologist.

  The meeting lasted almost two hours, with countless interruptions. That was the way it always went in an active investigation. Unfortunately, they had no new information or potential leads by the time they left. Santiago asked the homicide investigators to assemble again later.

  Of course. To go over all the details that couldn’t be revealed to Lucinda and Neal—or even to Randy, as a victim of this crime, rather than an investigator.

  Lucinda half-expected Neal to protest when they were dismissed, but he was anxious to get on the road. Erma had called him during the meeting, worried because the forecast along the shore calls for sleet, with snow inland.

  Meteorology—and her own exhaustion—be damned, Lucinda is in no hurry to leave. Not without making sure Randy’s okay after having gone to the morgue to identify Carla’s body.

  “I told Randy I was going to wait here for him to come back. Go ahead, Neal. I promise I’ll be fine.”

  “Call my cell when you get on the road.”

  “I will.”

  “And don’t wait too long.”

  “I won’t.”

  Ten minutes after Neal departs, Randy is back from the morgue, looking shaken.

  “How are you? Are you okay?”

  “Not really.” He accepts the cup full of Poland Spring water she pours him from the cooler.

  How can she leave him like this?

  They ride back over to the house in Officer Lambert’s sedan. Randy sits in the front seat, drawn and quiet; Lucinda in the back, wishing she could comfort him somehow.

  “We’re going to find out who did it, Randy,” Lambert tells him. “You know Santiago will be on this thing like a pit bull until he’s got someone in custody.”

  “I know.”

  “Is he sick?” Lucinda asks them, remembering what she sensed earlier, in the conference room. “Santiago, I mean.”

  “He’s had pneumonia,” Dan says.

  “No, something more serious than that. I felt it. I saw it.” Realizing Frank might not want anyone to know—or might not even know himself—she shakes her head. “Never mind. I could be wrong.”

  But I’m not.

  Randy’s phone rings.

  It’s his sister Julie calling to say that their parents’ flight had been delayed because of the weather in Newark. Their plane is still sitting at the gate in Florida.

  “Forget about driving them all the way out here tonight when they get in, Julie,” he says. “If they even get in.

  Sitting in the back seat, Lucinda can hear Julie protesting into his ear.

  “No, just tell them I’ll see them first thing tomorrow,” he says. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”

  Julie is audibly crying on the other end of the telephone line, and talking. A lot.

  Randy listens.

  Tries to interrupt.

  Listens some more.

  “Yeah,” he manages to say at last, “I’m sure I’ll be fine tonight. I’m exhausted. I just want to get some rest.”

  Lucinda can relate to that. Her body feels numb with the lack of sleep, and she’s starting to feel as though her brain is headed in the same direction.

  Randy hangs up just as the squad car arrives in front of the Barakats’ house, darkened for the night other than the doorstep light and a single lamp Randy left burning in the living room.

  Lucinda and Randy climb out. The wind is blowing incessantly and a fine mist is already in the air, not yet sleet but it can’t be far off.

  “Do you want to come back to my cottage with me and have a cup of coffee before you head back?” Randy asks as they stand beside her car, both with their own keys in hand.

  “Where is it?”

  “Just a couple of blocks away.”

  She hesitates. “Okay. Sure.”

  Going to his apartment is probably a bad idea for more reasons than she cares to think about, but she can tell he doesn’t want to be alone yet.

  Anyway, she could use a cup of coffee for the road. It’s a long drive.

  �
��Good. I just want to check the house one last time, and then you can follow me over.”

  Lucinda climbs into her car to wait, starts the engine, and turns the heat on full blast, wishing the frigid interior would warm up. She’s cold, and she’s tired, and she’s unnerved by the dark and by the unbelievable sequence of events that led her to this moment.

  Cam.

  With all that’s gone on, Lucinda forgot to call her.

  I can’t let it go.

  I’ve got to call her as soon as I get over to Randy’s.

  As she hugs herself and stares out the windshield, a figure appears on the sidewalk, eerily illuminated by the misty glow from the headlights.

  It’s a man—or it could be a larger woman—wearing a parka and walking a dog. The person’s hood is pulled up and zipped tight around the face. Obviously one of the neighbors. For all Lucinda knows, she poured coffee for this person at Randy’s this afternoon. Yet she can’t see enough of the face to rule out a stranger, and if the person recognizes her, he or she is not letting on.

  Lucinda can feel him—her?—staring in this direction with more than casual interest. Is it concerned, neighborhood watch-type interest in light of the fact that a woman was murdered a stone’s throw away? Or is it nosy, gossipy interest stemming from the fact that the dead woman’s estranged husband might be seeing another woman?

  The figure passes slowly, more slowly than is necessary as the dog strains at the leash. Randy comes out and gets into his car without glancing toward the street, and the dog-walker watches him, too.

  Randy pulls up alongside Lucinda and gestures for her to roll down her window.

  “Follow me,” he calls above the wind. “It’s only a few blocks away, off Bay Avenue.”

  Certain his voice carried along the sidewalk, she wonders if she should tell him she’s changed her mind and is heading back.

  Just because some busybody is snooping around?

  Please.

  Who cares what people think?

  Randy is her friend—a friend in need.

  “I’ll follow you,” she agrees, and promptly shifts into Drive.

  He’s reached the towering Westin on North Dearborn.

  Like the Renaissance, it’s a sleek, upscale hotel, its lobby also filled with businessmen in overcoats with rolling luggage. Candles flicker pleasantly.