Leave it to my hubs to think of his stomach, even while in the presence of a killer.
Mom went into the kitchen, which was separated from the living room by a short counter. She would be able to see and hear everything from there, otherwise she might have not have offered us drinks. Meanwhile, Elaine and I stared at each other, neither making a move to sit. I wasn’t sure if I should give her a hug like I would one of my usual friends, or even Willie. Willie didn’t scare me. Elaine Powers terrified me. She made the decision for me.
“Come here, Dottie,” Elaine said, holding out her arms to me. I tossed my bag onto the counter and went to her. We shared a short warm hug. Elaine called me Dottie because I reminded her of her deceased sister. If Elaine hadn’t been the mastermind of a successful crew of hitwomen, I think we might have been normal friends. She’s smart and funny and genuine. But it was kind of difficult to overlook the killer part.
After releasing me, Elaine held out her right hand to Greg. “Nice to see you looking so fit, sport.”
Greg eyed the hand, not sure what to do with it. Even more than me, he had personal conflicts when it came to being chummy with murderers. The first and only time he’d seen her was after he’d been shot, when she’d visited him briefly in the hospital. In the end he caved and shook Elaine’s hand.
“I didn’t see Lisa outside,” I said to Elaine after we each took our seats and Mom had delivered our drinks. Then Mom scampered back to the kitchen to retrieve a plate of sliced banana bread and napkins. She handed a slice on a napkin to Greg before sitting down in her recliner. Grace Littlejohn wasn’t about to miss a thing.
“Some things are better done solo,” Elaine said with a brief smile. “It attracts less attention, especially in a place like this where people have nothing else to do with their time but be nosy.”
“You’ve got that right,” agreed my nosy mother.
Lisa was a pint-size killer who usually rode a sleek, high-powered motorcycle and often accompanied Elaine as her bodyguard. I wasn’t sorry Lisa wasn’t present, and I certainly would not have given her a hug. She didn’t like me one bit, and the feeling was mutual. The first time we met she wanted to put a bullet in my brain. The last time we saw each other she called me dumber than a box of rocks, but at least no guns were involved. Maybe that’s measurable progress, but I still didn’t like her.
“But rest assured, Lisa isn’t too far away. She never is.” Wiping the smile off her face, Elaine got down to business. “Do they know anything about Zach Finch yet?” she asked. “Like who killed him?”
“Not yet that we know of,” I told her after glancing at Greg. His mouth full of banana bread, he gave me an encouraging nod to go ahead and tell Elaine what we knew.
“Maybe that’s what Andrea wants to talk to you about,” chimed in my mother. “She said it was urgent.” Mom leaned toward Elaine. “Even though she’s a cop, Andrea Fehring is quite nice socially. I think my son Clark is a little sweet on her.”
Elaine laughed at the thought. “Considering Clark’s connections and yours,” she said to me, “that could be a very interesting pairing.”
“My son used to be a police officer, you know,” added Mom. “In fact, he was chief of police in our town. They’d have a lot in common.” Elaine looked at me and winked when Mom finished.
Right then and there, I understood that Elaine knew a lot about me and my family and friends that I hadn’t disclosed. I was also pretty sure now that Mom didn’t have a clue about Clark’s true employer but that Elaine had more than a clue. Next to me, Greg started tapping the fingers of his free hand nervously on his leg as if sending me a message in code.
“Andrea’s good people,” I confirmed. I looked Elaine in the eyes and slightly shifted mine toward Mom, hoping to send her a warning to tread lightly with information. Elaine gave me a tight-lipped smile and blinked once—message received.
“The police think you might have had something to do with Zach Finch showing up dead in Odelia’s trunk,” Greg said. He’d stopped drumming his fingers, so maybe he’d caught my silent little tête-à-tête with Elaine.
“Not me, sport,” Elaine answered.
“My name is Greg,” Greg informed her with a face so tight it could crack. Even his beard, a tidy van dyke, looked ready to splinter and fall off. Years ago Greg and I had come across a criminal named Gordon Harper who had called Greg sport. He has hated it ever since, no matter who used it. Elaine paused a moment, and I held my breath. Mom looked uncomfortable too.
“That it is, Greg,” Elaine finally said to him. “My bad, and I apologize.” She smiled at him, and he nodded acceptance of her apology.
“Getting back to Zach Finch,” Elaine continued, “my crew had nothing to do with killing him or with stashing him in Odelia’s trunk. Even if we did do the job, I would never put you all at risk like that. We’re not that sloppy, for one thing, and I don’t treat people I like with such disrespect. Odelia here gets in enough trouble on her own without me throwing gasoline on the fire.”
“You’ve got that right,” my mother said half under her breath.
After shooting my mother the evil eye, I turned my attention back to Elaine. “There’s been another development just this morning, which is what I’m sure Andrea wants to discuss with us.” I took a deep breath and a drink of water, then jumped in with both feet. “We just came from Jean Finch Utley’s place—that’s Zach’s sister. Right after we spoke to her, she did a swan dive off the balcony of her third-floor condo onto concrete.”
Mom gasped. “What did you do to that woman, Odelia?”
“We did nothing, Mom,” I assured her. “We asked her a few questions about Zach and her family and her move to California in the past few years. When we left her, she was dressed in running clothes. When she fell, she was naked except for a short terry robe. The police found her shower running when they went to check her apartment. She must have been getting ready to take a shower when she was murdered.”
“Murdered?” Mom asked. “So it wasn’t suicide?”
“Nothing’s been determined yet,” I said, “but why get ready to take a shower, then change your mind and jump from the balcony? The police and FBI aren’t sharing information with us, so we don’t know if they found evidence of anyone in the condo unit after us. After we left her, we were hijacked by Special Agent Shipman at our van and questioned. There was about twenty to twenty-five minutes between the time we last saw her and her death.”
“Plenty of time for someone to slip in and push her off the balcony,” noted Elaine, “especially if they were already in her place or nearby.”
I filled Mom and Elaine in on the information we’d gotten from Jean. After, we were all silent for a bit. Greg snagged another piece of banana bread and took a big bite. I loved my mother’s baking, but right now the sight of the bread turned my stomach.
Elaine broke the silence. “We were contacted about the job,” she admitted.
“Zach or Jean?” Greg asked after swallowing his last bite of bread.
“Both,” Elaine answered.
In shock, we all snapped our heads in her direction in expectation of more information.
“I received a request, but when I got the names of the targets,” Elaine explained, “I turned it down as too much exposure for the crew.”
“Exposure?” asked Greg.
“I do my homework on targets before I give the green light to a job,” Elaine explained. “Zach Finch was a live grenade, even dead. The kid of a powerful man goes missing for years, then shows up freshly dead? The police and the feds would be all over that like a bloodhound after a coon, which they apparently are. We could dispose of the body somewhere, make it disappear, but even that’s tricky. We kill pests; we don’t dispose of the remains. As for Jean, just being Zach’s sister would put a spotlight on that.”
“So who tried to hire you?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Elaine answered. “All inquiries about our services are anonymous until I agre
e to take the job. The less I know about the employer, the safer I can keep my crew and me if I turn down the job and it blows up later.” She paused, then added, “Like this one did.”
“So when do you find out about who hires you?” asked Greg.
Elaine hesitated before answering, then with a shrug gave up the information. “First I get a cryptic message, like how Odelia contacted me this week. Then I contact that person using a burn phone. One burn phone per job. When the job is done, the phone is destroyed. We discuss the job by phone. If I’m interested, I ask for information about the buyer to confirm who he or she is. Once I’m convinced that it isn’t a set-up and the target is legit, we move forward with payment arrangements and the job. All I remember about this job request is that the person on the phone was male, with no strong accent—either international or Southern or even from the Northeast—that I could decipher.”
“What do you mean by a legit target?” Mom asked, leaning forward as if taking notes.
“I don’t kill for the sport of it, Grace,” Elaine told her. “There has to be a good reason for the target to be taken out for me to take the contract, like maybe he’s a pedophile or wife beater. Or maybe it’s a woman who abuses her kids or murdered them and got away with it. I fancy myself an exterminator of vermin. And I have other business endeavors that don’t involve killing, which I have to protect.” She winked at me, reminding me of how I last came across her. She’d been running a financial scam on the aged mother of one of my bosses.
“It’s still murder,” noted Greg with his eyes fastened tightly on Elaine. “Even though you’ve helped Odelia out a few times and even saved her life—and for that I’m very grateful, believe me—it’s still murder.”
Elaine got up and started for the kitchen. As she passed Greg, she gently patted him on the shoulder. “That it is, Greg. I don’t deny it, and I don’t deny that I deserve to be damned to hell for it.”
Elaine continued to the kitchen. She was wearing loose black knit pants and a bulky knit pullover, also in black, with a cat print around the hem. On her feet were bright blue Crocs and rainbow socks. When I last saw her, Elaine’s hair was a soft brown. Since then, she’d let it go to a natural shiny dark gray shot with silver, which she wore clipped into a perky tousled pixie. She looked like she’d lost weight since our last encounter, and her skin was pale and her eyes dark. Maybe she just needed a good night’s sleep. Being the leader of contract killers had to cause many sleepless nights. As she walked away from us, I could see the outline of a gun tucked under her jersey in the waist of her pants. Greg saw it too and widened his eyes at me. Did he really think she’d come unarmed? At least she’d left Lisa, her churlish bodyguard, somewhere out of sight. Elaine may trust us, but she wasn’t in the habit of letting her guard down.
In the kitchen, Elaine started to help herself to a cup of coffee. Mom started to get up to assist her but Elaine waved her back down in her seat. She returned with the pot and refilled Greg’s mug. After putting the pot back in the kitchen, she stood on the kitchen side of the counter and sipped her coffee. She was so at home, you would have thought she visited my mother frequently. “Do you know any other professionals in my field?” she asked us.
“If I do,” I said, “I’m not aware of it. I mean, I can hardly imagine Zee or Steele or Sally Kipman moonlighting as contract killers.” I hesitated. “Well, if any of my friends had it in them, it would be Sally, but I seriously doubt she’s taken that path.”
“How about William Proctor?” Elaine asked. “Has he branched out from embezzlement and fraud?”
“The police asked me the same thing,” my mother said, “but I don’t recall ever meeting a William Proctor.” Through her thick glasses, my mother looked truly puzzled.
When my mother met Willie, he had been going by the name of Willie Carter and was passing himself off as Greg’s cousin. We always thought she’d figured out the truth somewhere along the line but was keeping her own counsel. Once Mom had asked Greg’s mother about Willie Carter, and Renee had looked at her with confusion. Greg had quickly stepped in and got the two women’s minds onto something else before anyone could compare notes. Later he told Mom that Willie was a very distant cousin, the black sheep in his father’s family, and that no one talked much about him.
At some point, she was going to make the connection. My mother is far from stupid, but she can be artfully distracted. So after the Renee incident, Greg, Clark, and I had sat down and fabricated a story about Willie Carter using bits and pieces that Mom already knew and the lies we’d told her. Then we each memorized the story and made a pact to stick to it, come hell or high water. Herding Mom’s inquisitive mind in the direction we needed it to go for both Willie’s and her protection could be exhausting. She seemed to have pretty much forgotten about Willie until the police questioned her about him this week.
I caught Elaine’s eye and telegraphed another warning. Over the rim of her coffee mug, she gave me a slight nod of understanding, barely hiding her amusement, and moved back into the living room to take her seat.
“Wait a minute,” Mom said, raising an index finger in the air like she was testing wind direction. She turned to Greg. “Are William Proctor and your cousin Willie Carter the same person, Greg?”
Bingo. Give the woman a prize.
“Yes, Grace,” Greg responded, “they are the same person. I told you that Willie is the black sheep in the family, and this is why. I’m the only one who keeps in touch with him, and I’d rather the rest of the family not know that.”
“Gotcha,” Mom said with a jerk of her head. “Don’t worry. I can keep a secret.”
“You sure?” Greg asked, looking for confirmation. “This isn’t fodder for your blog, you know.”
“Nor is this visit from Elaine,” I tacked on for good measure.
“I like your blog, Grace,” Elaine told Mom artfully and with a smile. “I read it regularly.”
Mom looked at Elaine and beamed like she’d just received praise from a rock star. “You do?” I was about to voice the same surprised question.
“Yes, I do,” Elaine told her. “I really enjoy An Old Broad’s Perspective, but I’d be sorely disappointed in you if my name ever ended up there. Willie’s shouldn’t either. You understand what I’m saying?”
“Don’t you worry, Elaine,” Mom assured her. “Neither will.”
Elaine glanced at me, and it was my turn to give her a small nod of assurance. My mother could be a bit daffy at times, like asking Emma Whitecastle to pay me a visit, but she wasn’t a snitch. Maybe it was because she was the black sheep in our family.
“We’ve been assured that Willie had nothing to do with any of this,” I said to Elaine, getting the conversation back on track. “And he’s just as anxious to get this resolved as we are so the police will stop thinking about him.”
“Okay,” Elaine said. She took a long drink of her coffee and put the mug down on the coffee table. “Do you know how Zach died?”
“We were told by suffocation,” I told her. “The police don’t think he was dead very long before he was put in the trunk.”
“Interesting,” she said, considering the information. “Most hitmen would use a gun. Not always, but usually, unless they were concerned about blood or noise.”
“Maybe whoever did this,” I said, “wanted to make sure Zach didn’t bleed all over the trunk of my car. That’s pretty considerate, don’t you think?” All three of them shot their eyes at me like I’d gone off the rails. “I’m just joking,” I quickly added. “Geez.”
“Not considerate,” Elaine said, “but careful. Shooting means blood, and blood can leave a trail back to the killer or to where the murder took place. Even a drop can give the police a great deal of information these days. Obviously, whoever did this wanted the boy to be found, and the killer knew you’d be the perfect candidate.”
“So it is someone Odelia knows?” asked Greg.
“Not necessarily,” answered Elaine. “It could b
e someone who’s read or heard about her adventures in the news. Not all of them have been kept quiet, even if the police have been pretty careful about it. But for sure the killer, whether it was hands-on or hired out, wanted that body found. It could have been a message to Zach’s father. And whoever did this knew that boy was alive and being kept somewhere all these years.”
Elaine pulled a phone from her pocket and hit a button. “Hi, it’s me,” she said into it in a low voice. “You know that contract we turned down, the one for Zach Finch and his sister? Well, he turned up dead in Odelia Grey’s car, and his sister took a dive off a balcony today.” She paused and looked at me, a grin on her face. “Yeah, her again.” She turned her attention back to her call. “Quietly dig around and see if any of the other local crews took the job or know anything about it. I’m sure whoever wanted those kids dead went somewhere else after we turned them down.” She listened, then said, “Right. Zach Finch and Jean Finch.”
“Jean Finch Utley,” I added.
“The sister also went by Jean Utley,” she said into the phone. “I want to know who did these jobs and why they stashed Zach’s body with Odelia. And I want to know now.” She sharply ended the call and looked at us. “Lisa’s on it. She’s good at ferreting out information like this.”
When Elaine got ready to leave, I walked her to the door. “My brother is looking into Zach’s friends,” I told her. “You never know, one of them might be keeping a secret.”
“Good start,” she said. “And look into the father as deep as you can. Willie can probably help with that more than I can. Another thing: kidnappers don’t usually keep a kid alive after being paid ransom money. I’d say the kidnapping was close to home. If the kidnappers knew the family, they might have kept Zach alive.”
“You mean he’s been living with them all this time? And not necessarily as a captive?”
She shrugged. “Stockholm Syndrome. Maybe Zach preferred being with them over going home. Maybe Zach took the opportunity to break from home. Look into that family’s background and see if there was a reason for Zach not to come home. Didn’t you say Jean took off right after college and changed her name?”
A Body to Spare Page 17