by Penny Drake
“Yep.” Zack put the bus into gear and guided it carefully into traffic. “Where to, ma’am?”
I told him, and Zack set out. It looked weird, seeing him behind the wheel of a vehicle instead of on a bicycle. The muscles on his forearms bunched and moved as he wrenched the wheel around. No power steering. All the windows were open, and hot August air blew gently over us. No AC. I glanced behind me. The rear of the van was piled with closed metal boxes, the kind with padding inside. Photography equipment, probably. Benches lined the sides, and I could make out places where other stuff had once been fastened to the walls. A stove and table, maybe, for people who followed deadheads around the country?
“Thanks for this,” I said. “Especially after I was so bitchy at you earlier.”
“I’ll be gallant and blame it on low blood sugar,” he said airily. “God willing and the creek don’t rise, we’ll have you home in time for dinner. Most of it, anyway.”
True to his word, we pulled into the Biemers’ driveway less than fifteen minutes later. I invited Zack inside, and he accepted. Everyone was already at the table, of course—supper was halfway over. I introduced Zack to a chorus of hellos, and Mrs. Biemer jumped up to get an extra place setting. The Biemers don’t mind the occasional dinner guest, as long as it’s occasional.
Lasagna was on the menu for tonight, and smells of cheesy tomato sauce filled the dining room. Garlic bread lay half-covered under a towel on a cutting board, and crisp green salad mounded a bowl. Zack and I were washing our hands in the kitchen when Mrs. Biemer bustled up behind me with a manila envelope.
“This was in the mail for you,” she said. “It looks important, so I thought I’d better give it to you now.”
I dried my hands on a dishtowel and accepted the envelope. It was a little stiff, and my name and address were printed in neat block letters on the front. So were the words URGENT! OPEN IMMEDIATELY! It didn’t have a stamp or a postmark. When I pointed this out to Mrs. Biemer, she blinked.
“I didn’t notice that,” she said. “It was in with the rest of today’s mail.”
I set the envelope on the counter and examined it, Zack staring over my shoulder. Out in the dining room, flatware clanked against plates as dinner continued.
“Do you think it’s dangerous?” Zack asked quietly.
“I doubt it,” I said. “It’s not thick enough to be a…to be anything nasty.” I had been going to say “bomb,” but didn’t want to use that word with Mrs. Biemer in the room. Finally I picked up a paring knife and slit the envelope on two sides so I could get at the contents without sticking my fingers inside. I have to admit I was more than a little nervous. The FBI never did catch that anthrax guy. On the other hand, I didn’t think it’d be a good idea to call the police for something like this. It might just be private information, something I wouldn’t want the cops to see.
I peeled back one corner. Glossy black and white images looked back at me. Photographs. I set the knife aside and pulled them out with Zack and Mrs. Biemer continuing to hover nearby. Puzzled, I flipped through them.
All of them were of me. Six of them showed me examining the outside of Uncle Lawrence’s house. Another three showed me walking up to and entering the Biemers’ house. What the hell? I turned to Zack.
“Did you take these?” I demanded.
“Nuh uh,” he said. “For one thing, I’d do a much better job. And I certainly wouldn’t send them to you anonymously.”
“So who took them?” Mrs. Biemer asked. “And why?”
Feeling uneasy, I checked the back of each photo. On the rear of the last one was written, WE KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE. MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS.
Chapter Nine
The next hour was a flurry of activity. Henrietta Flinch and Carl dela Cort came, took the photos, and left. Ms. Hawk came, made sure I was all right, and left.
Zack vanished moments before the detectives arrived. Was I surprised?
Slava paced the front porch, waving her arms. I had called her right after getting hold of Ms. Hawk and the police. I wasn’t entirely sure why I did until she rushed over and her expansive voice filled the porch. Her outrage on my behalf calmed me down, as if she were siphoning away the trickle of unease the package had given me.
“Who would so such a thing?’ she boomed. “I will cut his genitals off with a dull knife—thwack! Just like KGB.”
“Thanks, Slava,” I said, unable to hold back a smile. “I might let you.”
She rounded on me. “Did you have supper?”
Her words reminded me that I hadn’t, and my stomach growled. Slava caught the noise and nodded.
“I thought not. You wait here. I get food from Mrs. Biemer.”
I sat in a wicker chair while Slava went into the house and returned bearing a microwaved plate of hot lasagna and a can of cold pop. I slugged down some soda first—caffeine fix—then started in on Mrs. Biemer’s delicious lasagna.
Some of the other boarders popped out to see what was going on, but Slava bullied them into going back inside, for which I was grateful. I didn’t feel like explaining everything yet again, and I wasn’t up to reassuring anyone that there was no danger, partly because my overactive imagination put snipers on nearby rooftops and bombs in my closet.
“So,” Slava said as I finished the last bit of lasagna. “Is this a cheesecake emergency? I bring some with me.”
“I’m not that upset,” I repeated in exasperation. Then I glanced toward the shopping bag at Slava’s feet. “What kind of cheesecake?”
Slava, it turned out, had two kinds with her—a slice each of cherry and blueberry from Zingerman’s deli. She produced plastic forks, and we dug in. My spirits steadied with every melty bite.
As I was spearing the last bit of graham cracker crust, my cell rang. I jumped and all but tore it open, expecting to hear Ms. Hawk’s voice, or even Zack’s. It was Dave down at the garage calling to tell me he was swamped and wouldn’t be able to look at my Jeep until late afternoon tomorrow. Was that all right? I told him it was and hung up.
Slava stayed with me, and we holed up in my room watching The Two Towers on DVD. Slava isn’t a big Orlando Bloom fan, but she always says, “Viggo Mortensen has nice ass, so I watch him run with little dwarf.”
She left when the movie ended, and I surprised myself by falling almost instantly asleep. Ms. Hawk called in the morning as I was finishing up a short stack of pancakes in the dining room.
“I talked to Ms. Harris,” she said. “She says she has no idea who might have sent those photographs, and I believe her. I also checked with the police. They have finished with the house and it is no longer a crime scene. We can enter it again.”
“We?” I said.
“Both of us. Shall we meet there in half an hour?”
Pride tingled in my chest—Ms. Hawk hadn’t even asked if I wanted off the case. I wasn’t working out today, so I told Ms. Hawk half an hour would be fine. At that moment, the taxi I had called for pulled up—my Jeep still with Dave—and honked.
I spent the ride to the house in a pensive mood about the photos. I didn’t think there was any real danger. Yet. If whoever had taken those pictures had wanted me dead, I would be dead. Just as easy to aim a rifle scope as a telephoto lens. Except I didn’t know if the sender had sent the pictures in the hope I’d back away from his bluff, or if he was firing a warning shot across my bow, with real bullets to follow.
Their mistake was, I don’t appreciate anything going across my bow, let alone warning shots. Sure, I’d been uneasy yesterday, but now I wanted even more to know what was going on and what the hell was in that house.
I had the driver make two important detours on the way. First we stopped at the office so I could grab my Glock from the safe. I checked to make sure it was loaded and holstered it in my supply belt. The cabbie didn’t show any signs of noticing the addition when I got back to the car.
Second, we stopped at the Sweetwater Café. I ran inside and emerged a moment later with a large foam cup
filled to the brim, which I then poured into my insulated canteen. What more can you need in the world?
Ms. Hawk’s car was already parked in the mansion’s gravel driveway. The vehicle looked oddly new and clean amid the aging squalor around it. I paid the cab driver, included a generous tip for all the stopping, and trotted around back, my supply belt dragging at my waist.
The back door was open at the bottom of the stone steps, and I gingerly crossed the threshold into musty darkness. “Hello?” I called, and realized there was no way Ms. Hawk would hear me with all the boxes of junk to absorb sound. Flashlight out, I wound my way along the now-familiar cardboard pathways to the kitchen stairs.
The kitchen was still in a state of disarray, though I couldn’t remember enough about the place’s condition to tell if anyone had gone through it again since yesterday. I wandered into the dusty dining room, letters still scattered across the floor, and then to the stuffy study beyond, calling for Ms. Hawk all the while. Still no answer. I was getting nervous. The house was still full of traps and perhaps even an intruder. Ms. Hawk could have fallen victim to either one. What if she were lying on the floor somewhere, broken or bleeding? I tried to call her cell phone, but all I got was a NO SIGNAL message.
Rather than try to renegotiate the labyrinth of boxes at the front of the house, I returned to the dining room and went up the shoe staircase, barely remembering to skip every other step. My heart started to pound. Ms. Hawk might be in trouble, and I needed to—
I almost crashed into her at the top of the stairs. Ms. Hawk was wearing khakis and a ball cap again. The hawk pendant glittered at her throat. She held up a battery-operated camping lantern like a hermit seeking the truth.
“There you are,” she said. The fluorescent light of the lantern gave her face an eerie cast. “Mr. Archer is already here. We’re continuing the survey from yesterday.”
“Zack is here?” I blurted.
“Ears burning,” Zack said, appearing from the gloom of the hallway.
For some reason, the idea that Zack and Ms. Hawk had been working together when I wasn’t around really bugged me. I took a swig of coffee from my canteen to cover my annoyance. “So what are we doing?”
“I was about to check the third floor,” Ms. Hawk said. “Mr. Archer here was going to examine two more rooms on this one. Why don’t you come up with me, Terry? There are more rooms up there, and they will require more people to search.”
“You smell like coffee,” Zack said as I passed by him. “Got a sip for me?”
I handed him my canteen. “You realize what a sacrifice this is. Every drop is gold.”
“You are a fine and generous soul,” he said, clasping his free hand over his heart. “I am not worthy.”
“Damn right,” I said. Then I noticed I was smiling.
“Did anything else happen last night?” Ms. Hawk asked.
“Just a whole lot of cheesecake and Orlando Bloom with Slava.”
Zack swallowed a mouthful of coffee. “Okay, I figured out the cheeseburger thing, and cheesecake goes without saying, but I would never have guessed Orlando Bloom.”
“You did say you love a mystery woman,” I replied blandly. “Why’d you cut out before the cops showed up? Again.”
He shrugged indifferently. “I told you. Cops don’t like reporters. And my ex-hippie parents did manage to instill some values.”
“Never trust The Man?” I said.
“Right up there with ‘Cops are pigs.’ The police make me nervous, so why hang around?”
“Yes, well,” Ms. Hawk said. “I believe we were going upstairs, Terry?”
Ms. Hawk and I made our way through the stacks of junk to the pan staircase at the far end of the hallway while Zack remained behind to check the last couple of rooms. My boss and I climbed carefully up the pot and pan staircase with Ms. Hawk holding the camping lantern above her head. I admired her forethought. The lantern cast light in all directions instead of in a single beam and made it easier to see. Metal clanked and clattered as we climbed, and a whiff of rotten meat wafted down to me. Great. No bodies, but the smell of decay was still hanging around.
Halfway up the stairs, I felt for the canteen at my belt. It wasn’t there. I had left it with Zack. Dammit! No way was I going to investigate dusty, smelly rooms without my drug of choice at hand.
“I’ll catch up,” I told Ms. Hawk. “I forgot something.”
She waved a hand, and I went back downstairs, avoiding as many pans as I could—the noise grated on me. I entered the narrow, cardboard-lined hall, my footfalls hushed by looming piles of nothing. My eyes had adjusted to the dim light, but I was reaching for my flashlight anyway when I saw something strange. Ahead of me, Zack’s flashlight beam was shining on a door at waist height. It took me a moment to make out that Zack was kneeling in front of the door holding the flashlight in his mouth and doing something to the lock. Metal glinted. I stared. A moment later, I heard a scraping click. Zack straightened with a satisfied grunt, opened the door, and vanished into the room beyond.
I continued to stare. What the hell was he doing with picklocks? And where had he learned to use them? I doubted they taught locksmithery at the hippie commune. My first instinct was to rush in and confront him, but I checked myself. Being able to pick locks isn’t illegal, and neither is owning a set of picks. Hell, Ms. Hawk is a dab hand at it, and even I can open a simple spring lock without a key. But it’s still a little suspicious when someone else turns up with the skill. I also remembered the scratches on the lock to the basement door, the ones Ms. Hawk and I spotted when we first arrived at the maison d’ trash.
I waited for a count of fifty, then strolled casually down the hallway and into the room. The door, I noticed, was the one with the Beebo’s warning to stay out tacked to it. The interior was lit by an unblocked window, just like the bicycle room, and I blinked at the unaccustomed illumination.
A bookshelf took up one wall, and the other three were lined with pigeonhole shelving. The pigeonholes themselves overflowed with paper. Shoeboxes were stacked knee-high all over the floor. Zack stood with his back to me, examining some papers he had pulled from a pigeonhole. What drew my eye, however, was the bed.
It was an old-fashioned iron-framed thing with a thin mattress over sagging metal springs. It was neatly made with a green blanket and flattened pillow in a grayish pillowcase. Next to the bed sat a small nightstand with a reading light and a windup alarm clock. The clock was ticking.
“Wasn’t this door locked?” I asked, hoping Zack would jump or scream or shit a brick.
No such luck. He calmly turned around, still holding the papers. “Guess not,” he said in a perfectly natural voice. “Must’ve just been stuck.”
I was all set to string him along, keep my knowledge a secret, but then my mouth said, “Liar.”
Zack raised an eyebrow. “Sorry?”
“I saw you pick that lock, and now you’re lying about it. What’s up with that?”
“If you saw me do it, why didn’t you say so?”
“You’re evading.”
“And you’re nosy. Belinda—your client—wants me here, remember?”
“Answer the question, Sunshine,” I said. “Why pick the lock and lie about it?”
“Because people always think someone who can pick locks is crooked,” he said. “You’re thinking it right now.”
“Am not,” I lied.
“Are so.”
“Am n—oh, never mind. Just give me my canteen back.” He did so, and I jerked a thumb at the night stand. “Sounds like someone’s been winding that alarm clock. Uncle Lawrence?”
“Could be.” Zack went back to examining papers.
I turned away from the bed and pulled a handful of papers of my own from a nearby pigeonhole. It was a series of bank statements from 1969. A fair amount of money had been in Uncle Howard’s account back then. I put the statements back and checked the papers from the next hole over. Bank statements from 1970. The hole below it conta
ined a stack of canceled checks, all from the same year. Below that was 1970’s utility bills.
“This place seems to be a little more organized than the rest of the house,” I mused aloud. Dry dust coated my fingers. “If this whole room is full of records, it might be a good place to look for the uncles’ wills.”
“Uh huh.” Zack was methodically pulling down papers, glancing at them, and putting them back. His face wore a look of heavy concentration. Dust motes danced in the air in the golden sunlight around him, making it look like he was standing in a cloud of fairy dust. He had rolled his sleeves halfway up his forearms, displaying fine, corded muscle.
“Terry?” Ms. Hawk peered into the room. “Aren’t you coming upstairs?”
I jerked my eyes away from Zack. “Sorry. I came down to get my canteen and saw Zack in here. It seems a likely place to search.”
“We really should complete the survey first,” Ms. Hawk said, though I saw her eyes roam over the old records with obvious interest.
“You go ahead,” Zack said. “I’ll let you know if I come across anything.”
His tone was a little too casual for my taste. Because he wanted us to leave? In that case, no way was I going to leave him in here alone.
“We might save ourselves a lot of time and effort if we search here first,” I countered.
“That’s all right,” Zack said. “You go on.”
I shot Ms. Hawk a quick glance, then flicked my eyes at Zack. Ms. Hawk didn’t visibly react, but said, “No, I think Terry has a point. Let’s see what the three of us can find.”
“Sure. Fine,” Zack said. Was his face a little tight, or was I being overly suspicious? I couldn’t tell.
The three of us each took a wall of pigeonholes and set to work. Everything was definitely well-organized. Each column held records for a certain year, and each row was a different type of record. Statements and bills on the upper rows, letters in the middle rows, and miscellaneous stuff toward the bottom. It was like a giant spreadsheet, really. I sifted through several sets of records, often having to shake dust off the papers. One thing I noticed was that the records before 1967 were all in Victor Peale’s name. By 1968, everything was in the name of either Lawrence or Howard Peale. I pointed this out to Zack and Ms. Hawk.