“Perfect,” he said. “You like red wine?”
“Yeah. Red is fine. Great.” Then she remembered her manners. “But I’ll bring the wine. It’s the least I can do.”
“Don’t bother; I’ve got plenty,” he said.
“Dean?”
“Yeah?”
Sadie was about to ask Petrovich if anything more had happened at the Sunnyside Avenue house but figured she’d wait until she was sitting across from him at dinner. It would give them something else to talk about besides his divorce and her problems with Zack. She’d much rather discuss mummified babies.
“Nothing. I’ll see you soon.”
She ended the call and pulled her van into traffic just as she remembered that Zack had also called. Sadie nervously punched in Zack’s number while simultaneously wheeling the lumbering van out of Capitol Hill and toward home.
The phone rang a few times and then went to voice mail.
“Um. You called me,” Sadie said weakly. “So I’m calling you back. I, um, hope you’re okay and maybe we could, you know . . . talk.” She hit the off button to disconnect the call and swore softly under her breath.
She hadn’t checked to see if he’d left her a message, so she dialed her voice mail and listened to Zack’s voice smooth over the line into her ear.
“Look, Sadie, I don’t want things to end like this. . . .” But “this” came out as “thish,” and the slow drawl of his tone indicated he was hammered. “I jus-s-st want . . . Hell, I don’t know what I want. Guess we jus-s-st need a break for a while.”
Sadie blinked back tears as she punched the accelerator, and the Scene-2-Clean van lurched forward down the street. She pushed in a CD and with tears in her eyes sang along to a soft rock song about lost love.
By the time she parked the van in her garage, Sadie’s nose was red and her eyes were puffy but she’d stopped blubbering. She walked straight from the garage into the mudroom that doubled as her own safe zone. Here she showered and put any clothes she wore on a job straight into the washer and dryer next to the shower stall so that nothing from a job entered her house. After cleaning up, Sadie felt almost human. She put on just her fuzzy housecoat for now and then checked her answering machine, playing back messages from Maeva, Dawn, and one hang-up that the call display told her was from her mother. Maeva’s was the only call she returned.
“I’ve decided to help you with your dad,” Maeva announced.
“Uh-huh.” Sadie played on the floor with Hairy, rolling a small sisal rope ball and watching him hop at it, ringing the bell inside. “And how exactly do you plan to help me with my dad? Are you going to bring him back from the dead?”
“No, I’m going to help you send him over.”
“Hmmm,” Sadie said, distractedly snagging the ball and rolling it away again. She got to her feet and decided it was time to dress if she wasn’t going to be late for dinner.
“Are you even listening to me? What are you doing?”
“Trying to figure out what to wear when you’re going to someone’s place for dinner but you don’t want them to think it’s a date or something.” Sadie opened her closet and peered inside.
“And whose place are you going to for dinner?”
“Dean Petrovich.”
“That burly cop who always has food stains down the front of his clothes?”
“He’s cleaned up a bit over the past year,” Sadie remarked.
“Is this a business dinner?”
“Maybe,” Sadie said, thinking of the Sunnyside Avenue house. “Mostly, I think it’s a pity dinner. He feels sorry for me because of Zack and my dad.”
“There ain’t no pity involved, Sadie. That man has had serious hots for you since the beginning of time.”
“No. If there’s any ulterior motive, it’s that he probably wants to try to figure out how I can help him get his workers back into the Sunnyside Avenue house.” Sadie paused. “Don’t suppose you’ve changed your mind about helping out with that one?”
“Nope, but I did confer with an old friend. How about Louise?”
“The ghost buster with the mega purse?”
“That’s the one.”
“Last time she tried to help me with a job, didn’t we burn down a few acres of a crime scene?”
“She’s gotten better at smudging since then. Seriously.
She could help you out.”
“Maybe . . .” Sadie said, but was thinking, Definitely not. She was also thinking about Zack and about how she couldn’t talk this out with him, and it made her sad. She was aware the Maeva was saying something, but she hadn’t heard the words. “Sorry . . . what did you say?”
“Are you okay?” Maeva asked.
“Zack’s moved out.”
“What?”
“He moved out of here and in with Paula.”
“No!”
“Yes.” Sadie closed her eyes against the pain because saying it out loud made it somehow even more a reality.
“I’m coming over,” Maeva said firmly.
“It’s okay,” Sadie said. “Besides, I’ve got dinner with Petrovich, remember?”
“You know, a dinner out with someone else might just be what you need. Even if it is Detective Petrovich. You need distraction. You need an admiring man sitting across from you at dinner, looking at you as if you’re the best thing since sliced bread. It’ll do wonders for your ego.” She paused and then added, “Just don’t sleep with him.”
“Petrovich? Ewww!” Sadie said, and laughed. “We’re more like siblings or something.” She knew Maeva was joking with her and trying to make her feel better, and she was grateful for her friend’s attempt. “Thanks for the laugh.”
“Call me anytime, Sadie. Seriously. And I’ll have Louise call you regarding that haunted house.”
After they disconnected Sadie stood staring at her closet a moment and finally decided on her everyday Levi’s and a loose-fitting, navy long-sleeved tee with her Mariners ball cap pulled on for good measure. Her outfit screamed casual friends and definitely, positively not a date.
She rummaged through the bottom of the closet for her good Nikes but Zack had made such a mess when he’d hurriedly packed his things that her shoes were piled in a huge heap. Sadie uncovered one shoe, and while digging for the second her fingers closed around a small drugstore bag. She opened it and discovered two empty bottles of prescription meds. Vicodin. One dated a couple months ago and the other from only a few weeks earlier. Sadie was dumbfounded and crushed. She sat down on the floor and stared at the bottles in her hands, not wanting to accept their implication. Finally, she got to her feet, and with a feverish look she began searching the house. When it was all said and done, she’d found only one more bottle, this one with still a few pills remaining, crammed deep into the sofa cushions. No doubt he’d tossed out any others.
Why hadn’t she seen the obvious: that Zack had been back on the drugs for months?
Sadie got in her car to head for Petrovich’s apartment even though she would’ve preferred to curl up in the fetal position at home. She remembered what Maeva said about needing a distraction and prayed the evening would provide just that. When she arrived at Dean’s apartment, he opened the door, looking almost identical to her in his own jeans, blue tee, and, wouldn’t you know it, his Mariners ball cap.
“Hey, look at us!” Petrovich exclaimed with a loud guffaw. “Guess great minds think alike.” He stepped aside and ushered her into his apartment. “Come in. Come in.”
Sadie immediately removed her ball cap so she could separate herself from the weird twinlike look and kicked off her Nikes. She glanced around the apartment and nodded with approval.
“The place looks great, Dean. You’ve really spiffed it up.” The last time she’d been in Petrovich’s apartment was when she’d stopped in briefly a couple months ago with Zack to get some information on a job. The place had been a dump littered with fast-food wrappers, old newspapers, and smelly socks. Now there wasn’t a wrapper, paper
, or sock in sight.
“Well, I’ve got the lady across the hall cleaning for me once a week. That helps,” Petrovich admitted. He’d walked across the cramped apartment to the kitchen nook, where he proceeded to dump some fresh pasta into a pot of boiling water.
“It’s not just clean,” Sadie said, glancing around. “You’ve actually decorated.” She pointed to a nearby wall that boasted framed black-and-white photos of various Seattle sites. “I like the pictures.”
“Thanks. Another hobby I took up.”
“You took these?” Sadie’s jaw dropped in surprise, and she began looking at the shots more closely.
“Yeah. I took one of those classes at the community center. When I looked at the price of pictures for my apartment I figured, hell, I could take better myself.” He laughed and brought her a glass of red wine. “Take a load off, Novak.” He nodded toward the sofa.
Sadie waited for Dean to sit first in an overstuffed recliner that was worn with wear and had obviously survived the makeover. Sadie took a seat on the newer green leather love seat.
She sipped her wine and pronounced it delicious. They fell into an uncomfortable pause until Sadie blurted, “So what do you know about the knifing at Ocean View School in Capitol Hill?”
Petrovich settled back into his chair with a look of relief to have something to talk about. “PBF caught that case,” he said.
“PBF?” Sadie asked.
“Pretty Boy Floyd,” Petrovich stated. “Otherwise known as Floyd Grayson. He’s been around a while. Half-decent detective, just too handsome for his own good, so—”
“So that’s why they call him Pretty Boy,” Sadie finished.
“Right. So PBF caught the slice ’n’ dice at the school and, as far as I know, he’s still working a sweat over it.” He took a large gulp from his wineglass.
“No immediate suspects? The school’s closed for the summer, and somebody just waltzed in and cut up the janitor for no apparent reason?”
“Oh, there was reason. . . .” He grinned into his glass of wine and slurped noisily.
“What do you mean?” Sadie asked.
He didn’t answer; instead Petrovich got up and hustled back over to the kitchen and began lifting the lids off pots and stirring.
“You saying he needed killing?” Sadie asked, slipping a southern lilt into her tone.
“That’s what others are saying,” Petrovich admitted, holding up a hand. “Not that I’m saying that’s right, but if a man has a taste for little kids, then—”
“You’re saying Virgil Lalty was a pedophile?” Sadie asked, leaning forward with interest.
“I’m not saying anything of the sort,” Petrovich said. He continued stirring the pasta.
“But others are saying it, so there must be some kind of evidence.”
“Just because a man has pictures of kids—”
“What kind of pictures?” Sadie demanded.
“Not those kinds of pictures,” Petrovich said. “But, hey, if I had a kid at that school and I saw my kid’s face plastered on an old man’s locker wall, then, hey, I might take offense. I might even poke him to see if he squeals.” He lifted the lid of a second pot and stirred. “We’ll be eating in five minutes.”
Sadie thought about the bits of tape all over Virgil Lalty’s locker area in the janitor supply closet. If that’s where the photos had been, they’d all been brought in as evidence.
Sadie snagged a bowl of salad greens from the kitchen and brought it to the table.
“Anything else I can do?” she asked.
“Nope.”
“So Virgil Lalty had no record of messing with kids?” Sadie asked.
“That’s the funny thing. He was kind of long in the tooth to be just getting into this kind of stuff.”
“What do you mean?”
“Usually guys who do this thing, they find out pretty early in life that they lean that way, and they have a hard time keeping it under wraps. Mind you, the picture taking might have had more of a financial motive. The sites we found on his computer, the ones he’d been selling pictures to, they paid big bucks.”
“Someone had a lot of rage in them to chase a man around a school and stab him that many times,” Sadie reasoned. “That kind of blood spatter means a vicious attack. It’s gotta be personal, right?”
“You working up to a question?” Petrovich asked, raising his eyebrows at her from overtop the steaming pot.
Sadie shrugged.
Petrovich opened the fridge and handed her a bottle of dressing for the salad. She put it on the table next to the salad and then took a seat. She was relieved to see there were no candles that suggested this was a romantic dinner for two. Just good food prepared by a man who was proud to show off his newfound culinary skill.
They ate the salad in silence, and when they were done, Petrovich quickly handed Sadie a heaping plate of spaghetti with marinara. She took one bite and pronounced it delicious.
“A little salty, though,” Petrovich said humbly.
“Not at all,” Sadie said, but she gulped down a mouthful of wine.
“I’ve got to control my urge to overspice.” Petrovich smiled sheepishly. “That’s what the instructor said. Less is more.”
“It’s good.” Sadie smiled.
She ate enthusiastically to prove her point. Though admittedly it was a tad oversalted, it was still a good effort and certainly not inedible.
“There was blood in the principal’s office,” Sadie mentioned casually. “Could be transfer but maybe I should talk to PBF about it.”
“I’ll talk to him for you,” Petrovich offered. “And get him to call you.”
Sadie nodded. “So how are things going at the Wickses’ house?” she asked.
“Slow. Crap is still flying in the air but nobody’s really been hurt. The guys go in with hard hats and Kevlar vests.”
Sadie smiled a little at the image. “Maybe I should try again.”
“To do what? Bust that ghost with newfangled ghost buster technology?” He reached for the bottle to refill his own glass, but Sadie’s was still half full and she declined a top-up because she was driving. “Most of the guys, they just want to see that the house gets gutted of all its crap and then never talk about it again to anyone.”
“Maeva knows other people who are better at this kind of stuff. How about if I ask them if they’d be willing to take a look-see?” And hopefully Louise and her wayward smudging don’t burn the house to the ground. “Discreetlike. Nothing that’s going to scream, ‘Ghosts live here and here come see the ghost busters!’ ”
“I guess we could give that a try, if you think it’ll work.”
He picked up their empty plates from the table. Together they cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher. Petrovich stopped Sadie when she was about to start scrubbing the sauce pot.
“Just let that soak,” Petrovich said. “Grab a coffee and take a load off.”
Sadie copied Petrovich, filling up a mug of coffee and then taking it into his living room. Sadie chose the sofa again while Petrovich lowered himself carefully onto his chair, careful not to spill his full mug.
“So how you making out with things? You know, like your dad and Bowman and all? That’s a lot of stress in a short period of time,” Petrovich said.
“It’s a helluva ride,” Sadie said grimly. “I’m hanging on by the skin of my teeth,” she admitted.
“So it’s over between you and Zack?”
Sadie thought of the pills hidden around the house and felt like it had been over for months. Reluctantly she nodded.
“Just hang in there. It gets better,” he said wisely. The look in his eyes told Sadie he was thinking about his own divorce.
Sadie didn’t want to talk about Zack or her dad but she did think of something else to talk about.
“I went back and spoke to Mimi after you left. She was still pretty out of it but she did say a couple things. She told me Carole’s troubles were their troubles and that ‘he go
t what he deserved.’ ”
Petrovich nodded. “Well, Paula Wicks was a classmate of Carole’s. Right around the time we were looking hard at Stephen Brant for the deaths of Tanya and Ashley, I interviewed Paula at the school. She was pretty upset at the time, and I’m sure at some level, Mimi remembers those days. No doubt she remembers Stephen Brant taking his own life in Discovery Park too. There were loads of meetings with parents at the high school to help them find a way to help their kids come to terms with the whole situation.”
There was a knock at the apartment door and Petrovich nearly flew to answer it. “Hi,” he said to the visitor.
“I just wanted to let you know I tried that recipe you recommended, and it’s absolutely wonderful,” gushed a female voice.
Sadie could see the woman clearly from her location on the sofa. She was a short brunette, maybe mid-thirties, with a little extra weight around the middle and a kind face.
“I would’ve used less oregano,” the woman went on. “But still, it was—” She stopped short and a hand flew to her mouth in embarrassment. “I am so sorry! I didn’t realize you had company.”
She was backing away and Petrovich stopped her by snagging her hand in his.
“No problem at all,” he said. “Come in and meet a friend of mine.”
Sadie walked over to the door. “I’m Sadie Novak.” She held out her hand. “My business does work with the Seattle PD and Detective Petrovich was feeding me out of pity.”
The woman chuckled nervously and shook Sadie’s hand.
“This is Jenny,” Petrovich said. “She’s my friend and neighbor from across the hall and also the one who encouraged me to take the cooking classes. After I tried to poison her by making her a meat loaf one time.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” Jenny said, punching his arm good-naturedly. They shared a soft look between them.
Well, lookee, lookee. Dean’s got himself a girlfriend, Sadie thought with a smile.
“I should go,” Sadie said.
Even though both immediately offered up halfhearted protests, Sadie knew a good time to escape when she saw one.
“I appreciate the meal,” Sadie told Dean. “But I’ve got a ton of paperwork and stuff. You know how it is.” To Jenny she nodded. “Nice to meet you.”
Dead and Kicking Page 17