Trash Course

by Penny Drake

  The door across from Uncle Howard’s bedroom exploded open and a figure fled down the stairs. Ms. Hawk and I instantly charged after him, but Zack was between us and the stairway, so he got a head start. Leaving a startled Slava behind, the three of us bolted down the hall. This turned into a dance when we hit the stairs and had to dodge pots and pans. The figure reached the bottom of the stairs and turned to flee down the cluttered hallway.

  “Freeze!” I shouted, but the figure kept going.

  Ms. Hawk hit a pot lid and stumbled. She caught the rail just before she fell. My heart lurched, and I slowed to help her.

  “Keep going!” she snapped. “I’m fine.”

  Zack, meanwhile, had reached the landing and was already sprinting away. I took a calculated risk and jumped, landing with a thud a few steps behind him. The figure had avoided the main staircase and was fleeing down the hall toward the shoe stairs instead with Zack in hot pursuit. I followed, all my senses set on high. My flashlight beam bobbled and jumped. I caught a glimpse of a baseball cap and some iron-gray hair.

  “Hold it!” Zack shouted. “I just want to talk. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  The figure pulled a stack of boxes down to block the hall behind him. They burst open, revealing mounds of old clothes. Zack dove over them and tried to roll to his feet, but the open space in the hallway was too narrow and he ended up wrestling with a pair of farmer jeans. Dust rose in a choking cloud, and I heard the thump and thud of uncertain footsteps clambering over a pile of books—the booby trap Slava had set off. I shoved some boxes aside and clambered over others as Zack leaped back up and charged ahead. Footsteps clattered down the back steps in an uneven rhythm. Zack reached the top of the stairwell and started down.

  “Zack!” I screamed. “Wait!”

  Too late. Wood cracked and Zack screamed. I vaulted over the pile of books and found Zack clinging to the hand rail at the top of the stairs. He was knee deep in shoes, and his face was drawn with pain. The figure had vanished.

  “What the hell happened?” he gasped.

  I shoved shoes aside and sent them spilling down the steps. They were surprisingly heavy and difficult to move. Once the top step was clear, I could see Zack’s right foot had broken through one of the weakened risers. If he hadn’t grabbed the rail, he would have broken his leg, or maybe fallen forward and broken his neck.

  “Every other step is trapped,” I said. “Didn’t you see the broken one at the bottom when you came up?”

  “I didn’t know they were all like that,” Zack hissed through clenched teeth.

  I examined his leg with my flashlight. The broken wood had trapped his ankle and blood seeped through the khakis on his lower calf. I ducked under his free arm and put my own arm around his waist. His body was warm and solid and it felt…nice. He smelled of clean, masculine sweat. I remembered his earlier condescension and was forced to admit feeling a little conflicted right then.

  “We’ll go straight up on three,” I said briskly. “Ready? One…two…three!” I lifted. Zack hissed again and I felt his muscles tighten. His foot came free of the stair, and a few more shoes tumbled down into darkness. With my help, he took a couple hops backward and we both plunked down onto the pile of dusty books.

  “Let me look at that,” I said, sliding up Zack’s trouser cuff and shining my flashlight on his calf without waiting for an answer. His leg was covered with fine, red-gold hairs. A nasty set of abrasions oozed scarlet, but they looked more painful than serious.

  “Will I be able to play the bagpipes, doc?” he asked, though his tone was forced.

  “God, I hope not,” I said. “You’ll need to wash this. We have a first aid kit in the car. Can you flex your ankle and wiggle your toes?”

  “Yeah,” he grunted, flexing. “It’s twisted, but I think I can walk on it. Hurts like a mother, though.”

  “How come you didn’t break through on the way up?” I asked.

  “I always skip steps when I go up,” he said. “The first one was broken anyway, so it was a natural thing to do.”

  Slava and Ms. Hawk caught up with us then. We all agreed it was high time to exit the house and call the police. I noticed with some satisfaction that although Zack limped, Ms. Hawk walked just fine.

  Another trip through crunchy cockroach county in the basement, and we were outside, breathing summer air that smelled delightfully of brown grass and sunshine instead of dust and dead bodies. Ms. Hawk trotted over to the car to update Belinda while I called the cops to tell them what my boss and I had found. The dispatcher told me to wait, no surprise. I relayed this information to Zack and Slava, and we all took up seats on the ground beneath one of the oak trees not far from Ms. Hawk’s car. Belinda got out of the car, and Ms. Hawk talked earnestly to her for several minutes. A squirrel cheebled at us and I threw an acorn at him. He fled in a huff.

  Ms. Hawk returned bearing several unopened bottles of water and a first aid kit. Belinda followed, her clunky shoes forcing her to walk carefully on the unkempt lawn. Her face wore the neutral expression of someone trying to keep her emotions under control. Ms. Hawk handed the water bottles around, and even Zack got one. I drank thirstily, dashed some into my face, and poured more over my head. Zack copied me. The water soaked his shirt and made it cling to his body, showing off lines I had only imagined before. Then he pushed up his pant leg and set about cleaning the scrapes on his calf with the first aid kit. I resisted the urge to poke at the wounds and make him yelp.

  “I suppose I was expecting this,” Belinda was saying. “But it’s still a shock to get the news, you understand. Poor Uncle Howard. After the magazines crushed Uncle Lawrence, he must have died of dehydration, stuck in bed like that. God. I feel like I should go in there, but…” She trailed off.

  “There’s no need,” Ms. Hawk said firmly. “Your uncles’ remains aren’t in any condition for viewing, even if the house were safe for you. You’re doing absolutely the right thing by staying out here until the police arrive.”

  “And who is this?” Belinda asked with a nod to Zack, who set aside the first aid kit and got to his feet.

  “Zack Archer, ma’am,” he said, flashing a wide, sunshine grin. “You must be Mr. Peale’s niece Belinda.”

  A startled silence dropped over us. I turned to face Zack. “I hope you’re smart enough to figure out what I’m going to ask next.”

  “‘How do you know Lawrence Peale, Zack?’” he said in an irritatingly high-pitched voice. I wanted to smack him.

  “Let’s hear the answer,” Ms. Hawk said.

  “I met him when I was doing a photo shoot on the homeless,” Zack said. “I found him going through a dumpster. I thought he was homeless. He almost ran away from me, but I called after him to stay, and he actually did. It was cold out, so I bought him a cup of coffee and we talked for a while. This was six or seven months ago.”

  “My uncle talked to you?” Belinda said. “That’s…unusual, from what I know of him. He was painfully shy, you understand.”

  “Yeah, I got that sense,” Zack told her. “But I think the old guy was also lonely. He told me that he had some pretty amazing collections and that I might want to shoot some of them, though he was pretty adamant that I never shoot him. I thought, what the hell. Mr. Peale took me home—here—in this old, rattle-trap truck. Like I said earlier, I knew the house and I was dying to know what was inside. Mr. Peale wouldn’t let me see much of it, though. He brought me in through the basement and showed me a whole bunch of leaves ironed in wax paper, like you do in second grade. Big whoop.”

  “He brought you in through the basement?” Ms. Hawk said. “What about the cement blocks?”

  “He told me where to step, but he didn’t say why.” Zack shuddered. “Now I understand. Anyway, after he showed me his leaves, he told me I had to leave—ha ha—but I could write to him if I wanted.”

  “And you did,” Belinda said. She looked a bit put out. I guess the idea that Uncle Lawrence corresponded with someone besides her made
Belinda a little jealous.

  “Yeah,” Zack said. “Peale was kind of strange, but kind of interesting, too. A few weeks ago, he wrote to say he had something important to show me, something big. But I was flying to Alaska the next day and couldn’t come over. I wrote him to say I’d drop by when I got back, but he didn’t respond. I got worried and decided to check on him. I saw your car, but it looked empty.”

  “I lay down for a nap,” Belinda said. “You probably couldn’t see me.”

  Zack nodded. “So I went in through the basement. A little later, I heard the Great Pan Avalanche, and you know the rest.”

  I fixed him with a hard glare. “Why didn’t you tell us this before?”

  He glared back at me. “I didn’t know who the hell you were. Mr. Peale is—was—my friend, and you were trespassing in his house.”

  I started to snarl at this, then paused. He had a point, much as I hated to admit it. “I’ll give you that,” I said.

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “Where is your car?” Slava asked. “I don’t see it in driveway.”

  “Rode my bike,” Zack said, “and put it in the back yard so no one would wander off with it.”

  “You rode a bike?” Slava looked surprised. “You could boil eggs on sidewalk today.”

  “The ride keeps me in shape,” Zack said with a shrug, and I thought I saw vague embarrassment in the gesture. Slava gave him a hard look, and he rolled his eyes. “Okay, so I like keeping green, too. Nothing weird in that.”

  “Not in this town,” Slava agreed.

  “What about the guy who started the avalanche?” I said. “Ms. Harris, did you see anyone leave?”

  Belinda shook her head. “I read for a while, then dozed off. I didn’t see anyone leave the house, but that doesn’t mean no one did.” She paused. “Though I wonder…”

  “Wonder what?” I asked.

  “Maybe the person was looking for something,” Belinda said. “Something specific.”

  “In that place?” Zack said. “Good luck.”

  “Something like what?” Ms. Hawk said.

  “Well, there’s the important thing Uncle Lawrence wanted to show Zack,” I said.

  “That, and possibly my uncles’ wills,” Belinda said. “I know they each had one, and they didn’t file them with a lawyer, you understand. They didn’t trust anyone that far.”

  “You think your uncles mentioned you in their wills?” I asked.

  “It’s possible,” Belinda said. “As far as I know, I’m the only relative they had any contact with. They might have left me the house and property. Uncle Lawrence hinted he might, you understand, but he never came out and said so.”

  “That place is a total loss,” Zack said. “I’m no engineer, but most houses aren’t built to hold that much junk. You can tell by walking on them that the floors are warped.”

  “House may be loss,” Slava said, “but this much property on west side of Ann Arbor is worth nice piece of change.”

  “You mentioned other family members in Chicago,” I said. “Do you think one of them may be involved? That they may have killed your uncles to get their hands on the house?”

  “I have no idea.” Belinda’s face remained stony. She took another hit on her inhaler, then said, “Listen, you’ve done what I hired you to do, but would you be willing to continue on this contract for a while yet? Someone needs to go in there and try to find Uncle Lawrence and Uncle Howard’s wills and any other important papers. I certainly can’t do it.”

  Ms. Hawk nodded. “We’ll be happy to help.”

  I had the feeling this meant I would be happy to help, but kept my mouth shut. If Ms. Hawk wanted me to do it, I would do it.

  “Just what is it you guys do, anyway?” Zack asked curiously. “Private investigator work?”

  “No,” Ms. Hawk said in a tone that firmly closed the subject.

  The police arrived then—two officers in a cruiser, followed by an ambulance. I faded into the background as best I could while Belinda and Ms. Hawk explained about the bodies, the booby traps, and the avalanche. The police didn’t seem ready to call the place a crime scene quite yet—one uncle had apparently died in his bed, and the other by accident. The paramedics, meanwhile, looked nonplused.

  “You want us to haul two corpses down from the second floor of a booby-trapped house?” one said. “You have to be nuts.”

  In the end, we called the fire department. I guided a firefighter named Frank through the house to Uncle Howard’s room. Frank wore his breathing mask and oxygen tank, so the smell didn’t bother him. I had to make do with one of Ms. Hawk’s handkerchiefs tied around my face. It was still lose-your-lunch nasty, especially with my own lost lunch still on the floor. A few strokes of Fred’s axe smashed out the plywood covering the window and revealed our location to his buddies outside. They raised a ladder to the room so Dr. Karen Wilewski, the medical examiner, could climb up and pronounce Uncle Howard dead at the scene. That done, I led her down the hall to Magazine Mountain and Uncle Lawrence’s protruding hand. Dr. Wilewski, a middle-aged, rangy woman with graying hair pulled back in a bun, changed into a new set of rubber gloves and shined her flashlight on the hand. The attendant smells didn’t seem to bother her at all. Carefully, she cleared away a few magazines to reveal part of an arm. I stood well away. Two close encounters with these corpses was plenty for me, thanks.

  “Assuming there’s a whole person under there,” Dr. Wilewski said, “he’s dead. We’ll need an entire crew to clear away these magazines so we can get at him. And here I thought it was going to be a dull day.”

  “Do you need me for anything else?” I asked. “I can think of a thousand other things I’d rather be doing. Maybe two thousand.”

  “Sure, sure,” she said with a dismissive wave. “Tell the paramedics to bring up a body bag for the first victim, would you?”

  I exited the house through the basement again—the fire department doesn’t let civilians climb their ladders—delivered the message, and went in search of Ms. Hawk. I found her holding court with Zack and Slava under the oak tree. Belinda was back in the car with the AC cranked up to high.

  “There’s no way we’re going to find anything in there,” Zack was saying in sour tones.

  “You give up too easy,” Slava said. “You must be part of American slacker generation.”

  “We?” I said, sitting down.

  “Mr. Archer has kindly agreed to help us search the house,” Ms. Hawk said.

  “What?” I squawked. “After he let that guy get away?”

  “Hey!” Zack said. “I almost broke my leg. A little sympathy would go a long way.”

  “In return,” Ms. Hawk continued, “he can photograph the house and its contents, but not any of the people involved.”

  “But why?” I asked.

  “My mother always say, ‘Extra people make work go faster,’” Slava put in.

  “Exactly,” Ms. Hawk said. “The more people we have searching, the more likely it is we’ll find what we need. It’s also our client’s hope that Mr. Archer can find whatever it was Mr. Peale intended to show him. She wants to know what it is.”

  “This is slavery,” Zack growled. “Pure and simple. I’ll spend more hours searching than shooting.”

  “Then leave,” I said.

  Zack set his mouth, and I started to wonder. Letters or no letters, Zack’s presence was damned coincidental. Was he telling the truth, the whole truth, so help him God? I had a feeling the answer was no.

  On the other hand, if he found something, it would be better if he found it with me or Ms. Hawk looking over his shoulder. And the work would go faster with another pair of strong hands on the team.

  “I still don’t know how we’re going to find anything in there,” Zack said. “You’ve seen the place—it’s a junkyard with an attitude.”

  “On the contrary, Mr. Archer,” Ms. Hawk countered, “as Terry noted before you arrived, the contents of the house are surprisingly well organized. In
theory, all we need to do is find the place where the uncles kept important papers and search through them.”

  “In theory, I could build an airplane,” Zack said. “It doesn’t mean it’ll happen.”

  “It could be exciting,” Slava said, brushing dust off her dress, now more gray than red. “There might be more booby traps. Or dead bodies.”

  “Fun,” I muttered, sneaking a sideways look at Zack. Now that the condescending not-sneer had been wiped off his face, he was looking fine again. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad working with him. The view would be nice, if nothing else. I poured more water over my head and shook it free, then caught Zack staring at me.

  “What?” I said.

  “You look awful,” he said.

  I sighed and got to my feet. So much for a nice view. “Let’s get this over with,” I said. “Slava, are you coming?”

  “Ha!” She crossed her arms. “I go home, take nice cool shower, and eat big piece of cheesecake, just for you.”

  Zack snorted. I glared at him, then strode wordlessly back toward the house. After a moment, Zack and Ms. Hawk caught up to me. We pushed aside bushes and trooped down stone stairs into gloomy darkness. The basement door gaped like the entrance to a dragon’s lair.

  “Dead bodies and booby traps,” I said, and aimed a sweet smile at Zack. “You go first.”

  Chapter Five

  Zack climbed the basement stairs ahead of me, passing the microwave and side-stepping the stacks of cookbooks. We had decided that Uncle Lawrence wasn’t likely to store important papers in a damp basement, so we’d start with the first floor and work upward. The thought of sifting through mounds and mounds of junk for something specific made me dizzy. What if Uncle Lawrence had decided to hide important papers by slipping them between the pages of a certain magazine? Or at the bottom of a box of Barbie dolls? We might never find them.

  “This is awful,” Zack said as he reached the top of the stairs. His flashlight bobbed around him, glinting gold off his hair. “I mean, I’m no Mr. Clean, but who could live like this?”