“Some stuff.” I sipped my coffee thoughtfully. “You’re not suggesting we break in, are you? That’s a felony.”
“Yeah. But it’s a tiny thing. Compared to murder.”
“You’re right.” I swirled the liquid in my mug, wondering if I were crazy for agreeing with Ian.
“And Mike’s not going to be home,” Ian continued. “He said his shift starts at five.”
I looked at him thoughtfully. Were we just leading each other on with our stupidity? “It’ll still be dark at five. The neighbors won’t see anything.”
“Claire’s not home either. It’s the perfect opportunity.”
“We might not get another chance like this again.”
Ian and I were silent for a few minutes, and then he said, “It’s up to you. But if you go, I’ll go with you.”
“The living room window was open tonight,” I said. “If it’s still open, we can just pry off the screen and step inside.”
“It’s a plan.” Ian stood up. “Let’s practice taking off your window’s screen.”
“No,” I said. “I’ll know how to do it when we get there. You just kind of pop it off.”
“What if there’s an alarm?”
I hadn’t considered that.
“Maybe we should just cut our way in,” Ian suggested.
I nodded. “And that’ll be easier, too.”
***
We were back at Mike’s house at exactly five-thirty. Neither Ian nor I had slept a wink, and I felt my pulse beating wildly. This was it, I told myself. This was me proving Nanna’s innocence, once and for all.
The street was still dark, the houses on both sides lifeless and pitch black. Street lights illuminated both sides, but as long as nobody was watching us, we were safe. The scent of jasmine perfumed the air, and I wondered whose garden it was coming from. A bird chirped somewhere, starting its day early, and I cursed silently, hoping it wouldn’t wake anyone.
Ian and I slipped on our plastic gloves and headed towards the house. We paused for a moment, listening for any sounds, but there were none.
“Let’s do it,” Ian said, and I pulled a big chef’s knife from my bag.
“Here goes,” I whispered, and made a quick, sharp cut along the right edge, top to bottom.
We paused, ready to turn and run away. We waited for alarms to go off, sirens to sound, or some kind of strobe light to flash. There was nothing. We exhaled, and looked at each other.
“Couple more cuts,” I whispered, as much to reassure myself as to reassure Ian, and I made another cut along the top, this time from right to left.
“Maybe they’ve got one of those silent alarms,” Ian whispered.
“Thanks,” I hissed back. “You think I hadn’t thought of that?”
We waited a few seconds, before I went on to make the third cut, this time along the left side, from the top to the bottom.
“Maybe one of the neighbors is watching,” Ian whispered hoarsely. “Maybe they’re calling the cops right now.”
“Will you stop trying to make me feel better?” I hissed. “I’m brave enough as it is.”
“Your hand’s shaking.”
“Shut up.”
“I was just pointing ou–”
“Well stop it.” I made the final cut, along the bottom, from the left to the right.
I slipped my hand inside the mesh, pulled it out, and placed it carefully on the manicured lawn. Ian and I glanced around – the houses were still all dark, and there were no squad cars pulling up to the curb.
“I think we’re in,” I whispered, and stepped over the window-sill and into the room.
Ian followed my lead and promptly bumped into something. I heard it topple over and fall to the ground with a crash.
Chapter Fifty
We froze, waiting for someone to come running out with a baseball bat.
We must’ve stood there for hours, barely breathing, trying to not move a muscle. In reality, it was probably just a couple of minutes, before we realized that the house was empty.
Ian was the first to exhale. “Well,” he whispered hoarsely. “I think I did us a favor.”
I fished around in my bag and pulled out a flashlight.
Ian went on. “You know how some burglars knock? That was our knock.”
“Be quiet,” I hissed, pointing the flashlight’s circle of light around the room. It was still white and cream, and thankfully, we were the only two in here.
“Why’re you always so rude?” Ian whispered back. “I’ve been really helpful for you in this investigation. We might not even be here, if I hadn’t encouraged you. I think we make great partners.”
I waved my hands in frustration, and walked out the room and into the narrow hallway. “Be quiet, we don’t want to wake anyone.”
“No one’s home.” Even when he was whispering, Ian managed to sound pouty.
“Fine,” I said, peering into the kitchen and pointing the flashlight around. “But it doesn’t hurt to be quiet.”
I left the kitchen and dining area, and headed back down the hallway.
“Where’re we going?” Ian asked. “Where’d you think he’d hide the gun?”
There was a door on my left, closed and mysterious. I opened it a fraction, and aimed the flashlight inside.
“Bingo!” It was a study, complete with a desk, bookshelves and a metal filing cabinet. “I reckon it’s in the metal cabinet.”
I held the flashlight and Ian opened the drawers, one by one. None of them were locked; all of them were packed with papers and files. No gun anywhere.
I exhaled loudly, disappointed, and pointed my small Maglite around. This could be a long night: the gun could be anywhere. In a toilet cistern, in a kitchen cabinet, in a bedroom drawer. My legs were starting to feel shaky, so I headed over to the desk and sat down on the revolving chair.
The desk was large and wooden, and had a plastic paper-sorting system on the left corner, as well as a digital table clock, a silver photo frame displaying a photo of Mike and Claire grinning for the camera, and a pen-holder. On my right, there were four wooden drawers.
I opened them, one by one. The bottom one had odds and ends – sharpeners, hole punchers, staplers, the odd hair accessories, and a bottle of cheap whiskey. The second one had an odd assortment of paper towels, band aids, a packet of Mars bars, and a box of A4-sized batteries. The next one contained sheaves of papers, some of them loose, some stapled together.
The top drawer was locked.
I grabbed the handle and pulled, and then pulled some more. It didn’t budge.
“Let me try,” Ian whispered, so I let him.
We might’ve pulled the table forward a few inches, but the drawer refused to open.
“It’s in here,” Ian whispered, looking at me with gleaming eyes.
“I know,” I whispered back. “Maybe we should look for a key.”
“If there’s a gun in there, he’s probably thrown away the key.”
I nodded. He was probably right.
“Didn’t Jack teach you to pick locks?” Ian asked, and I nodded.
“I’ve got the lock-picking set he gave me.” I could barely remember what he’d told me about pressing down and jiggling the pick till the lock gave way.
“Now’s the time to use it.”
I nodded, and found the lock-picking set in my bag. My hands were trembling, but I managed to select the torque wrench, and inserted it into the keyhole. I turned it clockwise, but it stopped immediately, so I turned it anticlockwise.
When Jack had showed me how to do this, it had looked easy. “Insert the torque wrench,” he’d said, “Then use the pick to push the pins up into their unlocked positions. Do it one by one, and when you’ve got all the pins in position, turn the wrench to open the lock.”
It had seemed so easy then, but now, I could barely stop my fingers from trembling. I couldn’t seem to find all the pins, and I was nervous about pushing them too far and breaking them. Thankfully, Ian was sil
ent, other than his deep breathing, and didn’t try to offer me “encouragement.”
It seemed to take hours, but finally I got the lock pick to push up all the pins into position, and then I tried to turn the wrench. It turned all the way around.
I raised my arms into the air victoriously, and Ian gave a soft whoop of excitement.
I handed him the torch, and pulled on the drawer handle. It slid open easily.
Ian pointed the flashlight into the drawer. We peered inside and froze.
Ian was the first to speak. “There’s no gun in here.”
“Maybe it’s under these papers.”
I lifted them up and looked underneath, but there was nothing.
“Then why was it locked?”
All that was inside the drawer was a few sheets of paper, a checkbook, and a micro-SSD card.
“I guess the checkbook.”
“Hang on,” Ian said, “Wasn’t Adam’s phone missing?”
We both stared at the micro-SSD card. It looked like something that would fit into a smartphone.
“Here.”
Ian pulled his smartphone out of his pocket and turned it off. He flipped it over, removed the case and pulled out his micro-SSD card. It took him a few tries, but after a few seconds, he managed to insert the SSD card we’d found in the drawer, and started up his phone.
We waited while the screen gave us a “preparing internal mass storage” message, and then when it was finally gone, we went into the contacts screen. It was a bunch of people’s names, and we scrolled down, not recognizing any of them, until we got to Cynthia’s number.
“This must’ve been Adam’s memory card,” Ian whispered, and I nodded.
“But why’d Mike steal it?”
We scrolled down some more, but none of the names really jumped out at us. I recognized some employees from the Verdant Wealth Solutions office, and Mike and Claire’s numbers.
“Maybe he’s got some texts on there.”
But the messages inbox was showing up empty, so we shrugged, and went into the music folder. There were a bunch of popular songs, but no recordings.
We went into the photo gallery, and found a bunch of photos of food. There was a photo of the Verdant Wealth Solutions Christmas party, and I recognized some photos of Michelle Ackermann.
When we’d almost given up hope of finding anything interesting, we found the important photos.
There were five or six, all of Claire. She was meeting a short-haired brunette, giving her a bunch of gorgeous red roses. They were hugging, and then they were sharing a fairly passionate-looking kiss. There were at least three photos of them kissing, and another one zooming in on the flowers Claire had given her friend.
Suddenly, from the doorway, a voice said, “What’s going on?”
Chapter Fifty-One
Ian and I screamed in unison. I was so shocked that I almost didn’t register how high-pitched and girly Ian’s scream was.
Claire switched on the light, and Ian and I squinted and shaded our eyes.
“What’s going on?” she repeated, and this time, I noticed that she was pointing a small, deadly-looking Smith & Wesson at us.
“Hey!” Ian said, looking back at me excitedly. “Maybe that’s the gun!”
“Uh.” I had a hard time getting any words out.
“What gun?” Claire asked.
Her hair was as perfect as ever, and her voice was as cold as icecream.
“The gun used to kill Adam,” Ian said.
I managed to find my voice and said, “Maybe you could put it away?”
She shook her head. “I come home after a long, tiring, journey, and I find two crazy goons sitting around in my office. Why don’t you guys wait here, and I’ll call the cops.”
“Sure,” Ian said, “And we can tell them all about how you killed Adam.”
Claire narrowed her eyes at us. “On second thoughts, maybe I’d better not let you talk.”
“Oh, good,” Ian said. “You’re not calling the cops.”
I gritted my teeth. “Ian. She means she doesn’t want us to talk.” He looked at me cluelessly, and I said, “She wants to kill us.”
Claire smiled. “That’s it. Leave no evidence behind, right?”
Ian shook his head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. You’ll get blood-stains all through your nice house.”
The smile never left Claire’s face. “Maybe we’ll go out somewhere.”
For the first time, I noticed just how expressionless her eyes were, just how perfectly friendly her smile was.
“Why are you doing this?” I said. “You know you can’t just kill two more people. One might’ve been ok, but two…”
“Yeah,” Ian said. “Why’d you kill Adam anyway?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“I think I do,” I said slowly. “He took photos of you with a woman. That’s what he meant – stupid red roses. He threatened to expose you unless you paid up.”
She snorted. “You’re close, but not quite.”
“You killed Adam?”
The three of us turned around and stared.
Mike had walked into the room, his eyes wide and glassy, his face pale. He was still wearing the blue and white striped pajamas, and Claire pointed the gun at him.
“Hey!” Ian said. “What’re you doing here? Don’t you have work?”
He glanced at us disinterestedly. “I overslept,” he said, his voice seeming to come from far away. “And then I thought I heard a loud scream, like a teenage girl had seen a rat.” Ian and I exchanged guilty looks, and Mike turned to Claire again. “Tell me you didn’t kill my brother.”
I could see Claire’s arm trembling, and she shook her head. “It was for us. It was for the best.”
Mike’s eyes glowered, and his lips twisted into an angry grimace. “Just how was it best for us? Do you think I don’t know that you’re a lesbian? That you’d rather sleep with a woman than with me?”
Claire shook her head again. “He wanted to expose us, tell the world.” She turned to me and Ian. “That’s how it starts. Some guy asks for money, then he asks for some more, then he sells the photos to the papers.”
“Maybe you could’ve told me,” Mike said, taking a few steps forward. “I could’ve talked to him, instead of you just killing him.”
“Stay there.” Claire stepped back and pointed her gun at him. “I don’t want you any nearer.” She was only a few feet away from me and Ian, and she said, “I’ll kill you, too. This is bigger than us, bigger than any of us. I can do great things, if you’ll just let me.”
“Ok, babe.” Mike’s voice was gentle, and he raised his hands and took a step back. “We’ll let you do your thing.”
Claire took a deep breath and said, “Thank you. You know, I only do this for us.”
She was about to say something else, but before I knew it, Ian had leaped forward and pushed her face-down onto the ground. A shot rang out as she went down, and Mike immediately crouched down and grabbed her hand. Claire screamed, warning us all to get away from her, but we chose to ignore her.
Ian lay immobile, pinning Claire down beneath him. I went over to Mike, making sure the gun wasn’t pointing at me, and helped him pry the gun out of Claire’s hand.
“She killed my brother,” Mike said softly, as I went and put the gun away in Claire’s desk drawer.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”
We glanced back at Ian, who was still busy keeping Claire pinned down onto the ground. I said, “I guess it’s time to call Detective Elwood.”
Chapter Fifty-Two
Five days later, I was having lunch at my parents’ place with Ian and Stone. Nanna had moved back in with my parents the day before, and my mother seemed to have gotten over her fear of Nanna spending her remaining years in a prison cell.
“Where’s Nathan?” I asked Nanna, as we dug into our lunches. My mother had chosen to try out a some new recipes – Moroccan lamb tagine, with brown
rice and a spicy vegetable dish. The vegetable thing wasn’t much to look at, and even worse to eat, but the rest of the food was pretty yum.
“I think maybe we’ll take a break,” Nanna said.
“That’s wonderful!” I beamed, and then I caught a glimpse of her face. “I mean, I’m sorry to hear that. What happened?”
Nanna shrugged. “I think we’ll stay friends. But I saw Glenn and Karma together, and I thought, maybe I should date someone more my age.”
My mother exhaled loudly. “Wonderful, wonderful. Or maybe you can just stay home and rest for a bit.”
Nanna glared at my mom. “I’m not dead, you know. Why should I waste my prime years ‘resting?’”
Stone looked up from his food and winked at me, and my parents exchanged a glance. We had no answer for that, so I said, “Well, it’s good you decided now. Instead of, you know, ten years later.”
Nanna nodded and turned to Stone, who was sitting next to her. “It’s good to see you again. I’m glad you’ve got time for these lunches.”
Stone nodded politely. “The food’s delicious.”
Nanna turned to face me, made wide, cookie-shaped eyes, and then looked down and smirked at her plate. Beside me, Ian giggled like a teenage girl who’d just glimpsed her high-school crush.
I frowned at Nanna and said, “I’m dating Jack.”
Stone looked up from his food immediately. I was pretty sure he hadn’t seen Nanna’s wide-eyed grimace and coy smirk, and he looked at me as though I’d just made that announcement out of the blue.
“I thought things weren’t going well between you two,” he said.
My mother looked at me, worried about a man she hadn’t even met yet, and I said, “What made you think that?”
Stone shrugged. “Oh, just… you never talk about him. And I thought you’d date someone sensible.”
“He is sensible.”
“Someone right for you.”
“He’s right for me.”
“Are you sure?”
I smiled and nodded. I might not be part of Jack’s usual crowd, and I might not have wealthy parents and pristine, well-maintained good looks. But now that I thought about it, his rich, glamorous crowd didn’t seem all that great after all. The women were cold, cruel and ambitious, and I wasn’t surprised that Jack had gotten bored of that life and indulged in his burglary hobbies. And it was probably quite reasonable for him to date someone like me, instead of a sharp-taloned gold-digger.
A.R. Winters - Tiffany Black 03 - Red Roses in Las Vegas Page 19