I rolled over at some point and detected the beat of rock music nearby. Really, girls? The party isn’t over and the neighbors don’t matter at all? A glance at my bedside clock showed 3:14. I pulled the pillow over my head and snuffed out the sound.
When my alarm went off at six I slapped the snooze button and winced at the pain that zinged through my shoulder. All this manual labor was getting to me. If I didn’t hold the scraping and sanding to a minimum, I’d be too crippled for my accounting work. Beside my bed, the dog’s tail beat against the floor. We were starting our day whether I was ready or not.
I zombied my way through the morning ritual and rubbed some muscle-relaxant cream on my poor shoulder, informed the dog he would be staying home again and grabbed my purse. A brisk wind greeted me as I headed toward the old Buick. Once I knew the bottom line on what the renovations were costing, I might just spring for a new vehicle for myself.
The reminder of new cars made me look up the street. The two new ones were in the driveway at Delaney’s now, but what really caught my eye was the scattering of trash on their front lawn. Apparently, no one at the party had thrown a single cup or plate into any trash receptacle and now the litter was blowing through the neighborhood.
Enough already, I decided. I tossed my purse in the car and picked up two red plastic cups from my front lawn. The gutter held three more, and a scattering of paper plates were flying across Elsa’s yard. Okay, this is ridiculous. I picked up the items I passed as I marched myself up the street.
I don’t care what time you went to bed, little chicks, I’m ringing this doorbell until you’re up.
The twin who answered was less bleary-eyed than I would have expected, although she was still in her sleepwear—loose shorts and a tank top—and her long hair hung in tangles over a makeup-free face.
“Are you Clover or Zayne?” I asked.
“Clover.”
“Look, Clover,” I said, losing some of my ferocity. I held up my two fistfuls of trash. “This is all over the place. Not good.”
“Sorry about that.”
I stood aside so she could see her own front yard, which was by far in the worst shape.
“Sorry is one thing, but it’s windy out this morning and your stuff is ending up all over the neighborhood.”
Zayne stepped into view behind her sister, giving me the blurred-mascara stink eye.
“Didn’t your parents come home last night?” I asked, really trying not to sound like a grumpy old witch. Seriously, I’m only twenty-eight but sometimes I feel seventy.
“We’re fine,” Zayne said, ignoring the trash I showed her.
Clover gave a quick glance over her shoulder. “We’ll get it cleaned up this morning, Charlie.”
“Thanks. I’m sure the whole neighborhood will appreciate it.”
Zayne gave a dismissive pah and disappeared from view. I stood there with two handfuls of trash. Clover told me to wait while she got a bag. When she came back she’d put on a sweatshirt and she stepped out to the front porch, pulling the door closed behind her.
“Don’t mind Zayne. She just wants to have a good time. She got pretty wacked last night. I went to bed after the police left. We told them my mom was visiting relatives and my dad had just gone to the store and would be back soon.”
The police had been here and I’d slept through it?
“I guess I’m surprised your parents don’t get more upset about this kind of thing. I mean, this is not the first party, by far.” I dropped the trash into the bag she held open.
“They don’t care. Really, they’re so easy on us.”
No kidding.
“They’ve got these fantastic careers now, and they take great care of us.” A fond glance toward her new car in the driveway. “Really, Charlie, it’s all good.”
Chapter 17
Ron came back from the police station around three-fifteen, looking like a bedraggled stray. I was in the kitchen, snitching a couple of Oreos from the package I’d left on the counter earlier.
“Fun time?” I teased.
“Ugh. I’m beginning to see your point about these cheating-spouse cases.” He dropped his cap on the table and picked up the coffee carafe, scowling at the two inches of black liquid in it.
I almost offered to make a fresh pot but he’d already reached for his mug, filled it and set it in the microwave. In my mind, the day-old versions of some things are okay, but coffee is not one of them. I stared as he shoveled several spoonsful of sugar and I changed the subject.
“So, you got Mr. Lorrento out?”
He nodded. “Asked him where he was staying and he said, at home of course. So I drive him all the way out there. The second I see Marcie’s car in the driveway I figure there’s going to be real trouble so I wait around to be sure I won’t need to call the police.”
“Yikes. What happened?”
“She meets him at the door, and from what I can see she’s wearing nothing but a pair of high heels.”
I know my eyes widened. “You noticed her shoes?”
He may have actually blushed a little.
“So, what happened then?”
“Bobby has a big grin on his face and he goes in the house. I drive away.”
“You think you’ll be getting another call? Once he gets past being all happy again, the same old issues will come back. She’ll remember the cheating; he’ll remember his fancy rings.”
“Yeah, I know. All the way from downtown out to the north valley, he couldn’t stop talking about getting the rings back. Now, I’m hired to do what it takes to make that happen. He pretty much gave me carte blanche to spend whatever it takes using his American Express Black.”
“Is the pawn shop guy going to let Lorrento buy back the two he hasn’t already sold?”
“That’s why I went over there immediately after I dropped Bobby off at home. The owner doesn’t know his clerk sold them to me on Bobby’s behalf.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out two velveteen boxes and handed them to me.
When I opened them I nearly had to reach for my sunglasses.
“Holy cow—that has to be the most diamonds I’ve ever seen in one place.”
The rings had other information—the Super Bowl logo, team name, the year—but the dazzle from the stones kind of blurred the detail. I snapped the boxes shut and handed them back to Ron.
“So, now you have to go back to Lorrento’s house to return them,” I said.
“Later. I’m not walking in on whatever’s going on at that big house of theirs. He’ll contact me, I’m sure, once he’s out of bed.” He pocketed the boxes. “For now, I’m locking these two away in the safe at home while I go looking for the third.”
“How do you plan to do that?”
“I managed to get the buyer’s name. When I went in to buy these I got the youngest-looking clerk in the shop, said I was representing an anonymous collector who wanted all three. The girl looked up the record and said the ring they sold went to someone named Segal.”
“I’m surprised she told you that.”
“Frankly, I am too. The owner most certainly wouldn’t have revealed the name. Maybe it was the fact I so readily paid for the other two rings.”
“Well, I’d be looking over my shoulder every minute I had those things in my pocket,” I told him.
The phone at the reception desk rang, and with Sally gone for the day I ran to catch it.
“Charlie, is that you?” The female voice was only vaguely familiar, and I suppose I hesitated. “Donna Delaney. We spoke yesterday.”
With Elsa. The Lorrento drama and Ron’s investigation had set the neighborhood doings on the back burner for me. I asked if I could put her on hold long enough to go upstairs. At my desk, I shifted thoughts and picked up the phone again.
“I’m sorry if I interrupted a busy day for you,” Donna said.
I assured her it was fine.
“I’ve been thinking about the twins ever since I spoke with Elsa. I reached my brother i
n Egypt and it turns out Zayne isn’t with them.”
“Elsa told me.”
“Oh, okay. Well, after that I called the girls and spoke with Clover but I just don’t feel I’m getting the whole story and I keep thinking about dear little Zayne. You know, in elementary school the kids called her Zany Delaney and the tag stuck. Instead of being offended, she played up to it. Came up with increasingly wild pranks. By fifteen, both girls were living on the wild side. Rick and Jane kind of vanished as parents. I mean, they’re gone all the time and now they make so much money they’ve made up for a lack of parenting with lavish gifts. Those cars. What fifteen-year-old needs her own brand-new car? And that was the first pair they bought—now they’re older, they’ve gotten something even more expensive. They have unlimited clothing budgets and neither kid has ever held a job. I wish I had more influence with the girls these days.”
I could tell she didn’t approve, but maybe there was a hint of envy too.
“I get the impression Clover is the quieter one,” I said, although my memory of the parties across the street definitely included both girls.
“In general, yes. But even as small children I can’t tell you how many times they tricked me into thinking one was the other. They are identical in appearance so the only differences I could spot were in their tone of voice and mannerisms. Jane used to tell me the girls could even fool their dad.”
I wasn’t sure where she was going with all these stories. “So, what can I do for you?”
“Elsa gave me your office number because you’re a private investigator now.”
Not exactly true but I didn’t want to interrupt her.
“So, I’d like to hire you to look into this, to find out that both girls are safe and sound. I discussed it with Rick and although he’s sure everything’s fine, he did authorize me to check into it. I can’t personally do it—we’re in spring planting season here and if we don’t get these potatoes out right now we’ll not have a fall crop. Our growing season is pretty limited up here. There’s no chance I can break away and come to Albuquerque right now.”
I asked a few more questions, but Donna had no current information on the twins’ habits or friends. I quoted our normal daily rate for investigative work and told her Ron would most likely be the person actually conducting the investigation. She seemed agreeable enough and gave me a credit card number to cover the retainer. I also took down contact information for Donna and for both parents.
I ran the credit card for five hundred dollars, thinking the whole case might end up being as simple as Ron showing up at the door and both twins actually being home at the same time. Donna had agreed that a photo of the two girls together would suffice to alleviate her fears. I quickly typed notes about everything I’d learned from the aunt and carried the printed page, the credit card receipt and contact information to Ron’s office.
“It’ll be at least a couple days, most likely, before I can get to it,” he said. “I want to get this whole convoluted Lorrento mess off my desk as soon as I can. Having both spouses on my back about different subjects is driving me nuts. I pretty much have the evidence Marcie requested, but now it’s the search for the ring for Bobby.”
“A missing person might be more important than a missing diamond ring,” I said.
“Probably is. Have the police been brought into this?”
“Elsa called them a few days ago and they treated her like a nutty old lady. They said the girls are over eighteen and, as adults, are free to come and go as they please.”
“Exactly.”
“But now the family is concerned—well, some of them are—and we’ve been paid to look into it.”
“And in two more days’ time maybe she’ll come waltzing back home and the case will be solved.”
“Elsa tells me she hasn’t seen both girls home together in months.”
“So, she’s—what—sitting at the front window every minute of every day? C’mon, Charlie. I’ll get to it when I get to it. Unless you want to start asking around. You’re done with the taxes and not doing a whole lot else that I can see. Go ahead and get started.”
The ‘not doing much else’ part stung. I was hardly lounging around with a paperback romance and a box of bon-bons. But it was true my urgent deadlines had passed and Drake hadn’t needed me on a helicopter job recently. I resisted the urge to make some childish gesture at Ron, turned on my heel and went back to my office.
Chapter 18
I stewed over Ron’s comment as I drove back to my neighborhood. Not so much his obsession with solving the football player’s case as the part about my sitting around doing nothing. Well, I would show him. We would just see who solved which case first.
Taking Elsa’s word for the fact both girls had not been home together for awhile, I decided to see who I would catch there today. Both Corvettes were in the driveway. I parked in my own driveway and walked up the street, gave a hard push at the Delaney’s doorbell. A twin dressed in low-riding jeans and a cropped tank top answered the door, barely glancing at me before her eyes went back to the smartphone in her hand.
“Clover?”
She looked at me. A flicker of emotion—something I couldn’t read—crossed her face, but then she gave a bright little smile. “Huh-uh. I’m Zayne.”
“Great—I’ve been wanting to catch both of you at home. Mind if I come in?”
The smile faltered. “Clover’s not here right now. She and Ryan went to the movies.”
I reached for the handle on the screen door and pulled it open. “I’d like to chat a minute, Zayne.”
She didn’t want me to come in but I used my age advantage to get my way. She stepped aside as I pushed into the living room. It was impossible to tell at a glance whether the home’s disarray was caused by one girl or two. A bright pink fluffy hoodie lay draped over the back of a dining chair. At least three pairs of shoes caught my attention, two of them by the couch in front of an enormous-screen TV set. Pillows and a couple of fuzzy blankets were tossed there, a cozy nest for viewing the big screen. A scattering of receipts littered the dining table, along with two shopping bags.
“Clover said you were in Las Cruces,” I said.
“Oh, yeah. I am. It’s spring break.” I tried to gauge the truthfulness of her response, but lost eye contact when Zayne glanced at her phone’s screen, distracted.
“Your aunt Donna called me this morning. She’s worried about you girls.”
“Really? Why?”
The question was a little sticky to answer. I couldn’t very well admit the elderly lady across the street spent her days spying and she was the one who alerted the aunt.
“Donna said she’d tried to call and no one answers.”
“Seriously, she must be using the landline. Half the time I don’t even know where that phone is. Anybody who needs us uses our cell phones.”
“That makes sense. If you’ll give me those numbers, I’ll pass them along to her.”
Zayne looked me straight in the eye. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll call her myself.”
“She wants to hear from Clover, too. She needs to know you’re both okay, and when she talked to your dad recently he said he hadn’t heard from you two in awhile.”
“Geez, what is this, the phone police? We’re living on our own and we’re fine.” She took a breath and forced the perky smile again. “Really, Charlie, it’s all good.”
I knew a dismissal when I heard one. Pushing for more information would not accomplish anything, so I turned toward the door.
“Just give your aunt a call and reassure her, okay?”
She kept the smile in place, but the door closed pretty firmly behind me. I crossed their front lawn, remembering the time I’d confronted Clover about the loud party and trash all over the neighborhood. The incident had happened nearly five years ago. Her words and tone had been nearly identical to what I’d heard just now.
It’s all good. Great catch-phrase to gloss over an iffy episode or deliver a blat
ant lie with wide-eyed innocence. I’d used it plenty of times myself, back in the day. It might not be what Elsa thought, but those girls were lying about something.
Zayne might, indeed, turn right around and call her aunt thinking that would get us off her back, but Donna knew the girls played tricks at times. She’d specifically asked for a photo of the two together, and that’s what I planned to deliver.
I went inside my house and straight to Drake’s office. He had a pricey Pentax camera with a lens that brought objects right up to your face. While he used it for grabbing great shots during his jobs, I had purposes other than scenery in mind. I checked the batteries and ran through the menus quickly to remind myself how everything worked.
Freckles whined from her crate and I let her out. With the camera, my purse and the dog’s leash stationed near the front door, I called Elsa and asked her to give me a heads up when she saw either twin leave their house.
“Am I helping on the case?” she asked. I heard the eagerness in her voice.
“Absolutely. I need to track the girls’ movements and your eagle eyes will be invaluable.”
I’d barely finished making myself a peanut butter sandwich for the road when the kitchen phone rang.
“I’m not sure which one it is, but the girl just went out to the red car.”
“Keep an eye out while I’m following this one. I need to know if the other girl comes home. Supposedly, she went to the movies with that guy.”
So maybe this one really was Zayne. If I remembered correctly, hers was the red car. I grabbed a bottle of water to go with my sandwich, called to Freckles and we headed for my Jeep. Before I could get my key in the ignition, the Corvette raced past my driveway, made a rolling stop at the corner and turned left. I jammed my gearshift in reverse and squealed out of the driveway. I would need to finesse this a bit better if I hoped not to attract attention.
I managed to get close enough to witness each of her turns as she left the neighborhood and headed east on Lomas Boulevard. If she made two turns in quick succession I would definitely lose track. The good news was she probably had no idea I was following her. At Girard, Zayne made a right, and I did a barely legal right-on-red turn to keep her in sight. She slowed as she approached the UNM campus and turned into a parking lot for a couple of the big dorm buildings. I slowed, wondering what I should do if she went inside.
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