*****
Cartons crowded the dining room table. Apparently Morgan had sent out for Chinese. Maid’s night off? Then he remembered. This last one had quit after only three days.
He heard Morgan’s voice and followed the sound to her bedroom. She was on the phone, dressed for a change, looking gorgeous in a honey-colored suit with a contrasting pale blue scarf at her neck.
She waved to him with a weak smile and then turned her attention back to the phone call. “I’d like to see it before you do anything further. Yes, I can come there. It shouldn’t be a problem.”
She must be picking out Kevin’s casket.
“About eight,” continued Morgan after a short pause. Then she returned the cordless to its cradle.
His glance traveled quickly to his watch. Seven-thirty. Then he kissed his wife.
“You going somewhere?”
“The mortuary.”
They walked back to the dining room
“Aren’t you afraid of the MSG?” he asked, with a nod toward the cartons from Yung Foo’s. Everyone knew the MSG they put in Chinese was hell on migraines.
“My headaches aren’t food-related.”
Morgan’s eyes pinned him. She was so hard to read when the black of her pupils melded with the dark irises.
He noticed something he’d missed on his first pass through the room: one place setting at the table. His dinner, not hers.
“You can’t eat first?”
“I’ve got to go.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“I need you to be here when Beth gets home. She and Josh are supposed to be watching a movie here tonight.”
“They need a chaperone?”
“As a matter of fact they do.” She sighed as if it was obvious, and he’d missed it. “You’re to make sure they watch the movie in the den—not in her bedroom.”
“Oh.”
Nate’s attention wavered, drawn like a magnet back to what he’d just heard Morgan say on the phone. I’d like to see it before you do anything further. Not a casket. You don’t do something to a casket. Wouldn’t she be asking about Kevin? I’d like to see him would have been more appropriate. In the context of the mortuary, something was off. Dead folk don’t lose their gender, now do they?
“I’ll go to the mortuary. You stay here with the kids. Let me do that for you.”
Morgan shook her head. “No. I’ve got to do this.”
“If that’s what you want,” he shrugged, “but first, I’ve got something for you.” He still had the lease application in his hand. No doubt she already knew about his checking on Camacho. Betty Jean’s unexpected phone call to his office. Now he’d reveal the good reason he had for what he’d done.
He handed her the paper, and then watched her closely as she read. Her face was inscrutable. He waited for a reaction. Something. Anything?
“Don’t you see? That’s why they’re sitting on the report at Wheat Ridge. He’s got a--”
“I knew all this. I thought I told you. Stan Eisley is handling it. He set up a meeting with the policewoman who interviewed Deidre.”
“But--”
“I know you are just trying to help.” Condescension dripped from her lips, melting him into the naïve Oklahoma boy he was when he’d met her. “You need to back off, Nate. Let our lawyer do his job. Heaven knows we pay him enough.”
Morgan glanced at her watch, gave him a peck on the cheek and picked up her handbag. “I won’t be late,” she said as she headed for the door.
Why was it she could still do that to him? Fifteen hundred dollar suits, the best barbers, dentists, personal trainers, and whatever crap it took to make him fit her world—didn’t mean jack shit. He was still the Okie kid with his brand new B.S. from UNC in hand, applying for the property manager job at Bayfield Enterprises.
He had been a bit older than your typical new graduate, but then he’d explained how he had to go to work first to earn the money for college. That had made big points with old man Bayfield. He’d gotten the job, ditched his hokey Okie accent and then had summoned the gumption to court his boss’s granddaughter.
Morgan was three years older, but hey—he knew from experience that older was sometimes better—up to a point. That gorgeous creature had told him she didn’t date. Was it just the brush off? Not so. He’d learned that Morgan was the major caregiver for her mother and baby sister. Stepfather, dead ten years, mother a virtual invalid, and sister Deidre, a nightmare in black nail polish and purple eye shadow at twelve.
Nate told Morgan he didn’t mind playing second fiddle. Or even third or fourth. He told her that he admired her dedication. Almost as much as he admired her money, but he’d kept that part to himself.
The Chinese was cold by the time he picked at it. After only a few bites, he decided to pitch the rest. There was no future in warmed-over Chinese. He gathered up his plate, utensils, and the remaining cartons and carried them into the kitchen.
When he opened the dishwasher to deposit his dirty plate, the three cups with their matching saucers that already rested on the top rack raised a question in his mind. He didn’t usually have morning coffee at home. Beth didn’t drink coffee. Like most teens, she drank pop or that flavored bottled water.
His brain homed in on a sliver of conversation: Stan Eisley set up a meeting with that detective… He scanned the kitchen for some sign that Morgan had received guests that day. They would probably have sat at the kitchen table by the window, not at the dining table.
Why didn’t she say she’d already had the meeting? The pink pastry box from Meacham’s Bakery, still on the table, told the tale. He opened the lid. Crumbs. Just crumbs.
Why was Morgan keeping things from him? Their relationship had never been that great, but now he'd settle for things to be like they were. Was he paranoid? Was he just being infantile about having his amateur detective work rejected?
He thought back to their early days, like turning pages in an album. Courting her had not been easy. Like breaking down a wall. As Morgan relented and they got closer, he was even able to watch her give her mother Elisabeth those shots she needed when the migraines got so bad that nothing else helped. Morgan had looked up to him then, leaned on him even for emotional support. Or had that been his wishful thinking? He’d never let on how watching the needle enter Elisabeth’s flesh made him want to puke. Morgan's strength had impressed him back then--not just her ability to give shots without batting an eye, but the way she lifted Elisabeth when the need arose and even carried her, never asking his help. Frankly, sick people freaked him out. Even Morgan in her weakened state was somewhat repugnant to him.
Another thought, triggered by the idea of puking: Kevin’s autopsy report was still in his briefcase. He remembered something he was going to check out. Something from the report.
He grabbed Beth’s laptop out of her room. Where were those kids anyway? He looked at his watch: 8:30. Then he retreated to the guest room where he opened the laptop and went online. He Googled a word on the autopsy report: meperidine.
As he scrolled down the results, Nate felt moo shoo pork working its way back up his throat.
Bitch has to come home sometime. Outside Wehr’s apartment Reggie stewed in the rancid juices of the day’s events.
The drug bust he’d spent the better part of a year on was down the toilet. The meeting with his team had been depressing. Nobody came out and said it was his fault. They didn’t have to. Who had vouched for JJ? He’d been screwed again. Cabron was probably sitting in some cabana on a Mexican beach, spending Bayfield bucks and drinking tequila.
Reggie popped a handful of Tums to ease the gut ache that had been tearing at him all day. The night without sleep, spent weighing plans to cut his losses, had left him teetering on a crazy place in his head.
How’d he know for sure Wehr had kept the tape that could do in his already shaky career? There was the cell phone conversation he had tapped into last night. Though the tape hadn’t been mentioned directly, it con
firmed his speculation. From the gist of what Wehr told Veronica Sanchez, she didn’t have the tape with her. This meant it still could be in the apartment. Or in a safe deposit box somewhere.
Ironical, he thought, Veronica could bring me down.
But there was still a chance he could beat this thing.
Where was Emily Wehr? Nothing in or out on her landline, which probably meant she led a pretty solitary life. Plain as she was, he didn’t wonder. Or, she’d told a bunch of people in advance she was leaving. But…no suitcase?
He’d seen her grab the interstate east last night, but was pretty sure she hadn’t made him.
Earlier, after he left his team, he’d ambled into the station at Wheat Ridge to get the lay of the land. No telling what the bitch might’ve told Commander Marsh after last night’s little fiasco.
Reggie had a plan in place. If he went down, Wehr would go, too. He’d say they conspired to use the tape to blackmail the Bayfields.
He’d seen Commander Marsh in with the chief, through the closed glass door. Maybe nothing. Then he’d mosied into the locker room and seen Susie crossing Wehr’s name off the weekly schedule. Susie had told him Wehr was on emergency leave. Family illness. He didn’t buy it.
Now he sat weighing his options in his dark green Dodge pickup, a vehicle Wehr wouldn’t recognize. Go back in, really tear things apart and maybe find what he missed the first time? Catch Wehr returning and maybe convince her that there was no way she could have a legit reason for keeping the tape. Shit! Maybe she’d already acted on that thought and destroyed it. Then, what in hell was he doing here? Setting himself up?
Krispy Kreme donuts and black coffee fought a duel in his stomach. Reggie popped another bunch of Tums from the plastic bottle on the truck’s console.
He’d already checked back and front for Wehr’s car before parking. She couldn’t drive in the back without going through the front driveway.
Reggie watched a woman in sweats and a baseball cap key into the common front entrance. A large grocery bag hid most of her face. Something kinda familiar about her. Maybe from his surveillance, but then he didn’t have everybody from the building pegged yet. He dipped into a battered briefcase and eyeballed his notes. Nada.
The single mom with two kids from apartment C, upstairs across from Wehr’s, buzzed in a pizza delivery guy. Reggie knew this from the kids’ faces at the front upstairs window. Pizza!
Seven-thirty. Dusk, but too early for the street lights to go on.
Then he thought he detected movement in Wehr’s apartment. Light flickered behind the draped front window. Irregular, pulsing light. Like somebody had turned on the TV. Or the VCR.
“Uncle Nate?” Beth’s voice just outside his door. “Do you have my laptop?”
He quickly logged out and opened the door. Beth stood there in jeans and a tank top. He looked down the hall behind her for Josh.
“Where’s Josh?” He closed the laptop and handed it to Beth.
She shrugged. “Home, I guess.”
“You two haven’t had a quarrel?”
Beth took the computer, and then wrinkling her nose, looked at him. “Why would you ask that?”
“I—No reason.” He tried to smile disarmingly.
“Next time you want to borrow my computer, ask me first,” said Beth. “Where’s Aunt Morgan?” She glanced around, though Morgan seldom entered the guestroom.
“Gone to the mortuary to see about Kevin.”
“Why didn’t you go with her?”
Nate mumbled something about being home for her and Josh.
“What?” Puzzlement played across Beth’s face.
Might as well bite the bullet. “Your aunt thought you guys might need a chaperone.”
As he reached out to pat her arm, she drew back like she’d been scalded.
“A chaperone!” Beth yelled, “How could you? How could Aunt Morgan think I’d have sex with my brother? Eeew. That’s disgusting!”
Nate was knocked off guard. Josh was her stepbrother, and he hadn’t been for long. Words jumbled around as he tried to make them come out in some order to appease Beth, but she would have none of it.
“And it’s not just Josh I wouldn’t have sex with,” she screamed. “Don’t you guys know there’s no way I’m ever going to end up like Mom? I mean, like how could I live with her and not know exactly what I was never going to be?”
Then her face froze, as she apparently got hit with the full brunt of her words. “Oh.” The scream shrank to a whisper as tears coursed down her face.
Again Nate reached out to her, but Beth turned and ran from the room.
As sorry as he was to see her pain, Nate was relieved. He’d tell Morgan that she had no cause for worry. But something in him was uncomfortably aware that Morgan probably already knew this.
He sat down on the bed with thoughts of meperidine swirling around in his head. Coincidence? He hoped that was it. What he was imagining could mean a drastic life-style change if it were true. Morgan’s being questioned by the police in the presence of her attorney, and not wanting him there—that was the clincher. Or was it?
No way. He was reading something into nothing. Playing what if. And some of the alternatives really weren’t all that bad. If something happened to his wife—like maybe she had to go away for a long time—somebody would have to take care of all that money.
Oh, yeah. There was Sam, but frankly, the old geezer couldn’t live forever, could he?
Then he remembered he hadn’t deleted the site he’d visited on Beth’s computer. What were the chances Morgan ever used Beth’s laptop? Next to none. She had her own.
But just in case, he began to envision a lock on the guest room door, to which he had the only key. But that was really crazy.
At 8:35 p.m., Wehr’s building was caught in a web of shadows from the surrounding trees.
The evening had cooled nicely, but Reggie had broken a sweat that wouldn’t let up from the moment he’d seen signs of life in Wehr’s apartment.
Not the cops. No vehicles that he couldn’t account for on the street or in the building parking area. Somebody Wehr had sent to retrieve the tape? No way. They wouldn’t stop to play it first.
The gal with the grocery bag. He’d waylay her when she came out and bust her for B and E. Or put the threat of being busted on her so’s she’d give up whoever sent her. And maybe he’d retrieve the tape in the process.
How’d he explain his presence at Wehr’s? More Tums.
The pain in his gut was moving. Gas, he told himself, from all that coffee. He shifted in his seat and tried to relieve the pressure but nothing happened. Hell of a note when a guy couldn’t even fart. Better not try too hard. He was in enough shit already.
Then he saw a white Jag circle the block for the second time, but he couldn’t catch the license. He waited. This time it didn’t come back by him. Reggie waited another ten minutes.
The gal in A came out with her boyfriend. Reggie watched them get into a Honda and drive away. The kids in C brought down a couple of pizza cartons and shoved them into the building’s waste dumpster. Recycle, ya little bastards.
The VCR strobed again in apartment D. Oh, shit, an encore. Reggie started the truck, threw it in gear and drove around the corner to where a city park backed up to Wehr’s building.
A handful of folks roasted weenies over a community pit. A couple sets of parents pushed small kids on a swing set.
Reggie pulled to an unlit corner of the parking lot and spotted the white Jag. He drew up next to it and looked inside. Empty. Run the tags? Nah—that could put him where maybe he didn’t want to be. He had no business hanging around Wehr’s.
A quick assessment of the small park turned up nobody who looked like they belonged to the Jag—all strictly Chevy and bicycle folk.
If White Jag was in Wehr’s, he would have needed to scale a six-foot cedar fence. No sweat. Reggie’d done that when he’d broken in. Right then, he prayed for no sweat. The walk from his truck to
the fence had drenched him. The thought of making it over that fence with a gut ache was—ah, there were two fence panels on the ground, like somebody else had looked for an easy way.
He glanced back at the recreation area and gauged he was about a hundred yards from the nearest person. No lights here next to the fence, except from the building, and those were filtered through drapes and blinds.
Through the opening in the fence, he made his move. Halfway, he realized he had misjudged his own bulk. He needed more like four panels removed.
Oh, shit. Two women came out the back door of Wehr’s place and paused at the top of the stairs. The gal in the sweats, only this time she wasn’t carrying a grocery bag. The other gal moved like she was older. He couldn’t see their faces, but if he didn’t get himself loose, he soon would and not in a way he wanted.
Gotta get back to the truck.
Reggie pulled back in the direction of the park, but he had gone too far. Stuck like a pig on a spit. The pain hit him again and moved upward, skewering his chest.
When he heard the sound of the garage door opening, Nate looked at the luminous hands on his watch. Eleven-thirty. He didn’t turn the light on, as the guest room he occupied was near the garage. Its tiny window would be visible to Morgan as she went through the breezeway to enter the house.
He shivered at the sound of Morgan’s footsteps on tile, glad she passed his room without stopping.
In the wake of her footsteps, a soft wail drifted back. Was he hearing things? He waited a moment and then crawled silently out of bed.
As he listened at the door, there it was again. Muted sobs. Couldn’t be Morgan. She never cried. Not even when her mother had passed. And there had been no tears for Deidre or Kevin. At least none that he’d witnessed.
Down the hall he crept, and across the house to the master suite. Morgan’s door was closed, but he could see a light under it.
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