“I wanted to let you know about the progress at your house.”
“By progress, you mean they’ve taken all my belongings. All my stuff. And thrown it out, right?” Tears brimmed in her eyes.
“No, Sadie said, trying to stem the tide of tears. “They’ll take all your belongings into storage to go through it and make sure there’s, you know . . .”
“No more dead babies?”
“Right,” Sadie said. “Then it’ll be totally up to you and, well, I guess Paula too, what happens to all the boxes.”
“Same thing as throwing it out,” Mimi said sadly. “A woman spends her entire life accumulating objects she loves. Things that make a house a home. Then the minute you show a sign you’re getting old—bam!” She clapped her hands together loudly. “It’s gone. Your so-called loved ones come along and help themselves to the things you love and decide what stays and what goes.” She sighed. “It’s not fair.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Sadie admitted truthfully. “But you must understand that there’s no way all those boxes can really be full of things you need and love. I mean, half those boxes haven’t even been opened in years.” If ever.
“They’re still mine. I should still get to choose.”
“Well, maybe Paula will let you keep some of your things.”
“She won’t.” Mimi’s face clouded over. “She’s too worried there’ll be stuff in those boxes that shouldn’t be there.”
“Like what? Did she remove the stuff from the upper bedrooms and hide it away because of the baby?” Sadie slipped Mimi a Hershey’s bar, and the old woman clutched it in her hand but didn’t tear into it in her usual way. Mimi didn’t answer so Sadie continued. “I’m still trying to figure out who the guy is that we talked about. Remember? Big guy. Bald. Massive—well over six feet and, um, not very attractive.”
Mimi looked up at Sadie. Naked fear lit her eyes.
“Listen to me.” She reached out and clutched Sadie’s wrist tightly in her arthritic hands. “You need to stop asking questions like this or you’ll get yourself in a ton of trouble.”
She released her grip on Sadie’s hand and slowly unwrapped the chocolate. “Things are done. Finished. Why can’t you just leave it alone?”
“Because somebody tried to kill me, and maybe Paula is worried about Zack leaving her—”
“Paula didn’t do anything wrong,” Mimi said vehemently. She shoved a square of chocolate into her mouth. “But if you keep pushing, then, well, things are going to happen.” She looked over at Sadie with pure misery in her eyes. “Sometimes you just have to let the dead sleep. No sense in dragging things out that are buried.”
“Even if what you thought was buried is hurting people now?” Sadie asked.
Mimi looked down at her hands and appeared to be thinking about that as she unwrapped the last of the chocolate bar.
“While the cat’s away, the mouse will play,” Mimi murmured, her lips in a twisted, sad smile.
Sadie frowned. Was she losing Mimi’s attention to Alzheimer’s again?
“What does that mean?” Sadie asked.
“It means sometimes the cat catches the mouse, and there’s not a damn thing to do about it. Some cats are born mousers. It’s in their blood, and they won’t stop until they’re dead and—” She stopped herself and sighed. “Just leave me alone. I can’t talk to you. Just go.”
Sadie gave Mrs. Wicks one more chocolate from her purse and got up to leave.
On her way out the door she spotted Marvin. She said to him, “You want to make Mimi happy? You want to help her?”
“Yes, of course I do,” he said with a nod. “But I can’t do anything.”
“Find out who Mouse is,” Sadie said. “When you do, call me.”
She walked away from him and didn’t look back.
Sadie dialed Petrovich as soon as she was back in the van. She got his voice mail and left him a message to call her, but she figured if he was still pissed about Floyd, she wouldn’t hear from him.
She dialed Louise next. “We need to get the Thingvolds and work some more magic at Sunnyside Avenue.”
“How soon?” Louise asked.
“Today, if they’re available.”
“I’m available, but I don’t know about Rosemary and Rick. I’ll call you back.”
While waiting to hear back from Louise, Sadie took a call from a number she didn’t recognize. It turned out to be a landlord looking for help in cleaning up an unattended death. Sadie was told the body had been there for a number of weeks before neighbors noticed the smell. Foul play had been ruled out, as the deceased was an elderly person living alone. Now that the coroner had removed the body, the landlord needed the place cleaned, and the insurance company would foot the bill.
It was the blood and gore type of routine job that was the bread and butter of Scene-2-Clean. Sadie told the landlord she could start on the job first thing in the morning. When she disconnected from the call, Sadie began to think things through and realized she had a small problem. A decomp job involved air purifiers, and her backup systems were in her smoke-damaged warehouse. The remaining one was working at Ocean View School.
Louise called back and said that the Thingvolds could squeeze in the Sunnyside Avenue ghost that afternoon.
“They can make it between their two o’clock scrying and their five o’clock séance,” Louise said.
“What does that mean?” Sadie asked.
“They’ll meet us at Sunnyside Avenue at three thirty.”
Sadie agreed that was fine. She glanced at her clock and figured she had enough time to swing by Ocean View School, pick up the air purifier, and get it set up at the new scene. It wasn’t like the school really needed the purifier anymore. The scene had been relatively fresh, and any remaining scent of death had dissipated with her cleaning process on the days she was there. Sadie had mostly left the air purifier there as an extra measure of assurance for Principal Tu.
When Sadie pulled up to Ocean View School, she wasn’t surprised to see Ms. Tu’s vehicle in the parking lot. It was only days away from the first day of school, and principals all over the country were hard at work preparing their schools for students to arrive.
Sadie’s cell phone rang in her hand. She glanced at the incoming number and froze. Pretty Boy Floyd. She waited a minute until the call had gone to voice mail, and then she retrieved his message.
“Sadie, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. I never said a thing to Petrovich about the two of us. That would be, well, wrong. If anyone told Dean, I’m guessing it was Bowman. Zack left me a dozen angry messages since he saw us drive off from the hospital together. Just call me.”
Sadie winced. Now that she thought about it, she realized it was entirely possibly Zack had been the one to tell Petrovich that Sadie was up to no good with Floyd. Sadie hit send on her phone to immediately dial the last call that came in, but before Floyd could answer she pressed end. She’d call Petrovich after she was done here to get the truth from him, and then she’d call Floyd.
Tucking the phone into her pocket, Sadie headed for the school and let herself inside. She stopped and poked her head inside the office to let Ms. Tu know she was on the premises. The principal stood with her back to Sadie, looking out her window with her cell phone pressed to her ear. Sadie figured it was best to return in a few minutes, so she quietly proceeded down the hall.
When Sadie reached the art center she found her air purifier hard at work, whooshing air in and out in a constant loud hum. Sadie shut the unit down and wrapped the cord around it. The hefty boxlike purifier rode on whisper quiet casters, making it easy for Sadie to push it out of the room and down the hall like a shopping cart, only one twice as heavy.
Near the front door of the school, Sadie paused, leaving the purifier by the door while she dipped in to visit Principal Tu again. Might as well hand over the school keys while she was here.
She explained to Cheryl Tu that her end of the job was
completed and then handed her the keys.
“Thanks for all your hard work,” Ms. Tu said with an abrupt nod.
“No problem. If you ever need my services again . . .” Sadie handed her a business card.
Ms. Tu took the card and placed it in her desk drawer. No doubt it would never see the light of day again.
Sadie was now running behind schedule to meet the Thingvolds and Louise. However, as she was racing to Sunnyside Avenue to meet them, she received a call from Louise saying Rick and Rosemary were also running behind and could they please delay things until after their five o’clock séance.
Sadie agreed. She was in no rush to go back to Sunnyside Avenue, and a nice trip to her newest decomposition scene might be just what the doctor ordered to help her heart relax. She called the landlord to confirm her arrival and pulled an illegal U-turn to head in the direction of the new scene. At least she already had her air purifier.
She suited up in hazmat gear and did a walk-through of the home where the elderly person died. There was no ghost to help over, and Sadie was relieved for the distraction of simply taking photos of the job. The house was a nightmare of decomp fluids, sloughed skin, and hair. Sadie couldn’t wait to dig in. It would be an immense relief to work herself to the bone scrubbing this scene. She promised herself she’d come early tomorrow and work all day and night just to feel like she was back in the groove.
On her way back home, Sadie promised herself something else too. She vowed not to return to Sunnyside Avenue after this evening’s appointment there with the Things and Louise. Every pissed-off ghost in the world wasn’t her problem. She had to learn to just walk away from stuff like that when it got out of hand. It’s not like she didn’t have enough personal issues to keep her busy. Between Zack, her dad, and her mom, Sadie figured she could keep the drama high in her life without dealing with junk-flinging ghosts.
Sadie was looking forward to a hot shower and washing away the smell of decomp before going to work on setting up a file for the new job. However, before she could get home, she got a call from Noreen, the receptionist at Cedar House.
“I don’t normally do this, you understand,” Noreen said to Sadie. “But you did give me your business card and you’ve been to see her a lot so—”
“What’s up?” Sadie asked.
“Mimi is asking for you,” Noreen said. “Not just asking. She’s demanding you come and she’s making a big fuss about it.”
Sadie groaned.
“It’s just that she’s disturbing other residents and they’ll have to sedate her if this continues.”
“Fine. I’m on my way.”
She disconnected the call and took a sharp right at the next corner.
“The old bat’s probably needing a chocolate fix,” Sadie grumped as she wheeled through traffic.
She arrived at Cedar House, and Noreen greeted her by wordlessly pointing to the visitors’ lounge. Sadie walked in to find Mimi pacing in front of her favorite sofa.
When Mimi spotted Sadie, she all but ran to meet her.
“Finally!” Mimi shouted, as if Sadie was late for a scheduled appointment.
“What can I do for you?” Sadie asked.
Mimi grabbed Sadie by the hand and pulled her over to the sofa. “Paula and Carole came back to see me,” Mimi said.
“And?” Sadie asked.
Mimi templed her hands under her chin and chewed her lower lip. “Maybe I got to tell you from the beginning. It’s not like you’re a cop, right?”
“No-o-o-o.”
“Well, then it kind of started when Paula was about fourteen.”
“What? She started whoring around, stealing other girls’ boyfriends?” Sadie mumbled.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Like I was saying,” Mimi continued. “Paula’s dad died and, well, she was taking it real hard. I went out on a Saturday morning to look for a good tag sale, and there was one a few blocks over. Mostly kitchen stuff but there were at least a half dozen boxes still not even unpacked.” Her eyes sparked a little at the memory. “I offered Bertrude twenty-five dollars for the boxes, contents unseen.”
“Bertrude?” Sadie asked with a frown. “The lady that’s now your neighbor? Carole’s mom?”
“Yes, yes,” Mimi said impatiently. “She moved to Spokane after her husband, Stephen, um . . .”
“Killed himself?” Sadie finished. “That was the case Detective Petrovich took on, right? They found him in his car in Discovery Park?”
“Right. Anyway, then Bertrude moved back to the neighborhood and right next to me.” Mimi waved her hand as if we were getting away from the point. “And then—”
“But Paula and Carole were friends before she moved back to be your neighbor. Did you know the family when you went to the garage sale? Did the girls go to school together?”
Mimi sighed and obviously didn’t want to get into it. “Yes, they went to school together and became friends. What happened is that I gave one box from Bertrude’s tag sale to Paula. Told her she could pick any box she wanted, and the one she picked was loaded with costume jewelry. A ton of it. She started wearing it to school, and then Carole recognized some of it as her own stuff that her mom had sold. The two girls agreed to share it.” She got up and paced a little more. “As I was saying, I offered Bertrude twenty-five dollars for those boxes. A good deal for me but I expected her to argue. Especially considering she didn’t seem to even know what was inside the boxes. I found out later she was thinking of taking Carole and leaving Stephen, so she was selling off boxes of his stuff quickly, while he was out of town on business.”
“Okay, but why is it important that you tell me this now?” Then a small niggling feeling nudged Sadie’s subconscious. “Are you saying the baby was in one of those boxes that you got from Bertrude? Was the baby Carole’s baby?”
Mimi tapped her finger to her lips as if trying to keep whatever secrets were inside from spilling out.
“All you need to know is that I kept those boxes with a whole lot of others in an upstairs bedroom. You know, the room that got cleared out the other day and that you and the cop was asking about. Well, Carole may have moved those boxes herself. You should just stop asking around about who took what was upstairs because I’m pretty sure that she took that stuff, and it doesn’t matter ’cause it was her stuff anyway and I’m fine with it. So you all should just leave well enough alone,” she babbled.
“But the police are investigating it as a crime scene, Mimi. It doesn’t matter if you’re fine with the stuff going back to Carole. It still needs to be checked out by the police.” Sadie shook her head. “I don’t get it. Why would Carole risk crossing a crime scene to get at boxes of stuff that you’d had for over a decade?” Sadie frowned and then answered her own question. “Unless she just found out there was something even worse than a mummified baby in the other boxes. Stuff about her dad.”
Sadie’s eyes searched Mimi’s. “Stephen Brant was suspected of murdering a couple of girls, right? Did he keep souvenirs from those murders? Did Carole and Paula know that?”
“I’m just telling you to stop asking about those boxes, and everything will be fine. You don’t need to go through someone else’s stuff. It’s a dangerous habit, is all,” Mimi said heatedly.
“Did Paula and Carole tell you to threaten me?” Sadie asked Mimi. “Did they say something about making me stop the search for the boxes? Is that why you called me here?”
“It’s my house and I’m just saying you’ve got to stop being so nosy,” Mimi said, raising her chin defiantly.
“I think we’re done here,” Sadie said.
She got to her feet. Sadie walked around the small table housing the two old ghosts who were playing their usual invisible game of cards. Before she could leave the room, Sadie was stopped short by Marvin, who waved at her from a few feet away.
“She’s not a bad person,” Marvin called out as he approached. “You need to understand that.”
“I never said she was a bad person,” Sadie said with a sigh. “Now, just let me leave and—”
Sadie watched in shock as Marvin came closer, walking right through a coffee table between them.
“You’re dead.”
“As a doornail,” he said with a sigh.
“But . . .”
“I love her.” He nodded to Mimi sitting on the purple sofa, looking forlornly out the window. “So I hang around and keep her company.”
“But—but she can’t see you,” Sadie said. “Like I can.”
“I like to think that she can feel me,” he said with a sad smile. “This thing with Stephen Brant, it wasn’t her fault. You can’t fault a mama bear for protecting her young.”
Sadie shook her head. “I don’t even know what that means, Marvin.”
“It means Stephen Brant . . . hell, he just needed killing.”
Sadie blew out an exasperated breath. “But he wasn’t killed. He took his own life and—”
At the look on Marvin’s face, she stopped short.
“He didn’t kill himself, did he? He was murdered.” Sadie’s eyebrows pulled together in concentration.
She dug her cell phone out of her pocket when it rang. The call was from Zack. As much as she wanted to, she didn’t answer it. When she looked up, Marvin was gone and Mimi was being helped out of the room by an orderly.
Sadie walked back to her vehicle and headed for home. She didn’t know what to make of what Marvin had said but figured it wasn’t her place to try to figure it out. She dialed Petrovich.
Sadie’s call went to voice mail and she left him a message.
“First of all, Dean, it’s none of your business about what I do in my personal time but I know we’re friends so I appreciate your concern. Nothing’s going to happen between PBF and me. Zack is, well, just not himself right now.” She paused. “Second, I’m pretty sure that Carole Brant was the one who took the boxes from Sunnyside Avenue, and I’m guessing they’re probably right next door. Maybe in their garage. She’s hiding something but I’ve got a feeling it has more to do with family secrets and Stephen Brant than dead babies. Anyway, call me.”
Dead and Kicking Page 25