“But you don’t have a tape recorder, do you?” He patted the shopping bag. “I brought one, and it could come in handy. We could talk as we walk through the place, then listen to our recording later. You know, just so we don’t forget anything.”
“We could, but—”
“But if you start walking around Brad’s property with a camera, you’re likely to be noticed. Am I right?” Good thing Kegan didn’t give me a chance to answer. I wasn’t in the mood to admit he was right and I was wrong. Before I could, he dug into the shopping bag and brought out what looked to be a pair of ordinary glasses. He perched them on his nose. “Camera,” he said, pointing to the glasses. “Nobody would ever guess.”
“No, they wouldn’t. But—”
“And a security camera.” He brought this out, too, still in its box, and showed it to me. “We can leave this outside the door. You know, just in case anyone happens to show up. I don’t know what we’d do if that happened.” His laugh was nervous. “But at least we’d know they were coming.”
“We would, but—”
“And this is the best!” Again he reached into the bag. He brought out a—
“Remote control car?”
“Not just a remote control car. A spy car. We let it take a look around the place before we even walk in.”
“But—”
“But nothing. This is really cool. See.” He pointed. “It’s got a little built-in camera, and I’ll hold on to the monitor. We can look around Brad’s place without stepping a foot inside. If something doesn’t look kosher, we won’t take any chances.”
“But—”
I paused, waiting for him to interrupt me yet again. When he didn’t, I pulled in a breath and launched into my objections. “I don’t want to get you in trouble,” I said. “I don’t want you to do anything that isn’t ethical. I don’t want to feel guilty if something happens and you end up with a record because of me. I don’t want you to feel as if you have to do this.”
“But I do. Don’t you get it?” Kegan looked at me carefully. “Eve is your friend, sure, but she’s my friend, too,” he said. “I’ve got to help her. And I’ve got to help you, too, Annie. You guys at Bellywasher’s…well, you’re all special to me. I know it sounds corny and old-fashioned, but heck, ever since Grandpa Holtz died, I’ve been pretty much on my own. Then I started coming to class here…well, you’re all like family. I can’t let one of the family down. Not if there’s any way I can help.”
Like I was supposed to find a way to argue with that? Or the puppy dog look that went along with Kegan’s statement?
I told him to stow his spy toys and bring them along.
Twelve
BRAD THE IMPALER LIVED (I GUESS I SHOULD SAYused to live) in a well-groomed town house in a well-groomed part of town. His home was redbrick and Georgian in style, with neat flower beds on either side of the short front walk, a tiny but perfectly manicured lawn, and outside the first-floor windows, planting boxes filled with yellow and purple pansies.
Call me cynical, but I decided right then and there that there must have been a homeowners’ association for this row of town houses and the identical ones that faced it from across a visitors’ parking lot. And that the association must have taken care of the outside of the buildings. No way could I picture Brad in the garden on his hands and knees.
Which was exactly where Kegan was. Kneeling on the tiny porch just to the left of the front door, he finished positioning the camera that came with his spy security system and rose. Since he was wearing his camera glasses and the heavy, dark frames made it hard for him to see, standing up wasn’t as easy as it sounded. He put a hand on one of the window boxes to boost himself to his feet.
It was the first I noticed that sometime since we’d gotten out of my car, he’d put on a pair of latex surgical gloves.
“What?” When he saw me staring at his hands, Kegan raised his eyebrows, then looked down. “Oh, these. I almost forgot. I was watching an old episode of Matlock on cable last night. That’s what made me think of the gloves. The bad guy used them when he burglarized a house.” I guess this was supposed to make me feel better, because Kegan grinned. “No use taking any chances. I brought a pair for you, too.” He dragged the gloves out of his pocket and handed them over.
Of course he was right to think of the precaution, and had I been operating like a real detective instead of like a bank teller who was terrified of being caught at the home of a recent crime victim, I might have thought of it myself. I drew on the gloves at the same time Kegan stepped back. All the while, he kept an eye on the security monitor he held in one hand.
When he pointed, I peered over his shoulder and saw the two of us pictured side by side on the screen. Even though the evening was cool and none of the neighbors were likely to have their windows open, he kept his voice to a whisper. “See? This is perfect. If anybody gets this close to the door, we’ll see them for sure. No matter where we are in the house. We’ll leave the camera right here when we go inside. Just in case, you know?”
I did know, and it was the just in case part I didn’t want to think about.
With that in mind and eager to get this over with, I looked over my shoulder one last time. The sidewalk was empty, and though the blue light of a TV flickered from a window next door, there was no sign of activity. And no sign of neighbors, either.
Praying it stayed that way and with hands trembling inside my very own pair of burglar-approved latex gloves, I unlocked Brad’s front door.
Anxious to play with his new toys, Kegan had the Spy Museum shopping bag opened on the floor practically before I had the door closed behind us. He flicked on a flashlight. With its hands-free stand and halogen bulb, it was way more high-tech than the flashlight I always carried in my purse. With the help of the beam of pure, white light, he positioned his security monitor on a table in front of the window and got busy with the spy car.
I left him to it, turning on my own little pathetically uncomplicated flashlight and clutching it in my left hand as I slowly made my way through the living room and into the dining room beyond.
“The place is neater than I expected.” I whispered, too, just like Kegan had done outside, though come to think of it, I probably didn’t need to. I arced my flashlight across the dining room and a china cabinet where crystal wineglasses were displayed along with a silver serving platter and a decanter that contained what looked to be whiskey. “That should teach me not to judge so quickly. Since Brad was so rude, I guess I just expected—”
“What?”
Since I hadn’t heard Kegan come up behind me, I had every right to squeal. Instinctively, I clamped my left hand over my mouth and the beam of my flashlight swung wildly across the ceiling.
In the crazy play of light and shadows, Kegan’s eyes were black puddles behind the clear lenses of the camera glasses. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I wanted you to know that I’m going to start up the car so you wouldn’t be surprised by the noise.”
Fortunately, the noise was nothing more than a gentle whirr. With Kegan working the joystick controls at the same time he peered at the tiny monitor screen, the car zipped over the hardwood floor, climbed the lip of an Oriental rug under the dining room table, and took off down a hallway on our left. The spy car monitor in both hands, the security camera monitor tucked in his pocket and with the camera glasses down on the end of his nose so he could see where he was going, Kegan headed off after it.
I have to admit, I was relieved. With Kegan busy playing spy, I could get down to some honest-to-gosh detecting.
I peeked into the kitchen but decided right away that chances were slim I’d find anything useful in there. Instead, I looked around for a stairway and climbed. If Brad had secrets, my guess was that he kept them in his bedroom.
Unlike the neat-as-a-pin downstairs, in Brad’s bedroom, my light slid over clothing piled at the end of the bed, newspapers scattered on the floor, and an open, half-empty bottle of beer on the dresser.
The nearly surgical cleanliness of the first floor had lulled me into thinking my search was going to be impersonal, and as devoid of emotion and full of logic as every investigation should be. Now, these signs of life—a life that had ended horribly and brutally—made my stomach clutch. I wasn’t fooling myself, and I sure wasn’t trying to fool anyone else; I’d never liked Brad. I had never pretended I did. Brad was pompous and ill-mannered and if half of what the women of WOW said about him was true, he was underhanded and so testosterone-driven that he let his sex drive rule his common sense. None of that explained the sudden knot that blocked my breathing. Especially when I saw that the bed wasn’t made. The sheets were pulled back and rumpled from where Brad had lain on them. From where he’d spent his last night on earth.
I guess I’m just a sucker for justice. And getting pushed in front of a Metro train…well, not even a Weasel deserved that kind of justice.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and turned my back on the bed. It was time to get down to business.
There was nothing of interest in or on Brad’s dresser. Nothing that held a clue to who might have killed him in the piles of papers next to his bed or in his closet or anywhere in the tiny bathroom off the bedroom. Of course, Brad didn’t know he was going to leave the house that Monday morning and be murdered. Is that what I expected, some sort of trail of bread crumb clues that would prove that someone other than Eve had done the deed?
Absolutely!
Disappointed I hadn’t found it, I went out into the hallway and looked over the railing. “Kegan!” My voice was a stage whisper that was barely louder than the whirr of the spy car from somewhere in the dark downstairs. “Kegan, I’m not having any luck. Have you found anything?”
No answer.
Reluctant to raise my voice, I trooped down the stairs. I aimed my flashlight into the living room. I pointed it into every corner of the dining room. I checked out the kitchen again.
There was no sign of Kegan anywhere.
Still, I heard the whirring sound of the spy car, and I followed it to another bathroom. I found the car caught up under the lower lip of the vanity cabinet, its motor running, its wheels spinning, going nowhere.
I picked it up, turned it off, and tucked it under my arm. What was that I said earlier about wanting to be analytical about this investigation? That’ll teach me, because for all its benefits, being analytical has a downside, too. Like right then and there, as I analyzed the situation with all the logic of a real detective:
If Kegan was paying attention to the car monitor screen, he should have seen that the toy was stuck and that now, it was turned off.
Which meant he wasn’t paying attention.
Which was weird, considering it was his idea to bring along the spy car in the first place.
My logic kachunked along, and before I knew it, my heartbeat was speeding as fast as the thoughts that raced through my head.
If Kegan wasn’t paying attention to the spy car, it meant he was busy doing something else. Or that he wasn’t able to pay attention.
Which might mean he was in trouble.
Which suddenly had me very worried.
“Kegan!” My voice was hushed in the dark, but even I couldn’t fail to hear the note of fear in it. I raced as fast as I could through the dark, retracing my steps through the house as I pictured every disaster imaginable. Most of them included police cars outside, their lights spinning, and uniformed officers closing in on the house to take us into custody.
With no sign of Kegan on the first floor, I hurried back upstairs. “Kegan, where are you?”
“Over here!” He popped out of a doorway on my left, and for the second time in an investigation that should have been all about silence, I let out with a yelp. Kegan didn’t hold it against me. He poked a thumb over his shoulder into the blackened room he’d just stepped out of. “Come on. You’ve got to see what I just found.”
What he’d found was Brad’s home office. The beam of my flashlight washed over a desk where piles of paper were mounded precariously, a computer, a file cabinet with bulging drawers, and a credenza where more papers—stacks and stacks of papers—were heaped in little mountains that looked as if they’d topple at the slightest touch. It was just the sort of treasure trove I’d been hoping for, so I couldn’t hold it against Kegan for being so distracted by it that he hadn’t kept track of his spy car. But realizing what it meant, my shoulders drooped.
“It will take us forever to go through all of this stuff,” I grumbled.
“But I don’t think we have to.” Kegan stepped back and trained his light on the wall behind us. One look, and my breath caught.
I was eye to eye with a photograph, and even with no light to go on but the soft glow of my flashlight and the brighter, clearer beam of Kegan’s, I would have recognized the blue eyes that looked back at me anywhere. Oh yeah, there was no mistaking the sleek, blonde hair, either. Or the upbeat smile.
“What on earth?” The words whooshed out of me, and my stomach filled with ice. I’d come to Brad’s home specifically to prove that his death was in no way, shape, or form connected with Eve, and instead of finding something that would exonerate her and point the finger of guilt at someone else, I’d found her framed photograph hanging on his office wall. No wonder Tyler had reason to be suspicious! Though he was a royal pain in the butt, Tyler was also a good cop, and no doubt, he’d been here before us and had a look around. No way he could have missed the picture of Eve. No way he wouldn’t have jumped to the conclusion of what it might mean.
“Darn.” There I was, grumbling again, and I didn’t even care. I reached out a hand and clutched Kegan’s arm, eager for comfort and because I knew that, left to their own devices, my knees just might give out. “This is exactly the kind of thing we didn’t want Tyler to find. You know what this will mean to him, don’t you? He’s going to make a huge assumption. He’s going to think it proves there was more to Eve and Brad’s relationship than she says there was. Oh, Kegan…” I realized that even as I looked at it, Eve’s face got blurry. That’s because my eyes filled with tears. “This is terrible.”
“Maybe not so terrible.” Kegan wrapped an arm around my shoulder so he could turn me just enough to see the rest of the wall. The light of his flashlight glided over more photographs. Each was of a woman. No one could have been more surprised than I was when I realized that I recognized them.
“That’s Valerie,” I told him. “And this is Grace, one of the other WOW women I talked to about Brad. As a matter of fact…” I stepped back so that my light, too, could rake the wall. One by one, I identified the faces of each of the women I’d talked to with regards to Brad’s death.
“It’s a wall of suspects,” I said. “Or at least it would be if they all didn’t have alibis.”
I took another look. There were one, two, three, four, five, six framed pictures in all, and the way I remembered it, I’d interviewed—
“Five women.” Since Kegan had no idea what I was talking about, I caught him up on my thought process. “I talked to five women who said they’d been wronged by Brad, but there are six pictures up there. This is the one who doesn’t belong,” I said, pointing to a picture that hung in the bottom row and all the way to the right. The photo was of a pretty, light-haired woman with big eyes, long lashes, and cheekbones that would have made a supermodel envious. More proof that Brad had an eye for nothing but pretty women. “Who do you suppose she is?”
Kegan leaned closer. “The picture’s signed, but she used some kind of silver ink. It’s kind of hard to read.” I trained my light where his was shining. If I squinted, I could just make out the flowing cursive.
“To the man of my dreams. Love, Gillian.”
“Gillian Gleeson?” Kegan leaned in for a better look, but he hardly had a chance. That’s because I grabbed his sleeve and tugged him back.
“How do you know her name?”
He pushed his camera glasses up the bridge of his nose and snapped a couple sho
ts of Gillian’s photograph and the ones that surrounded it. “I was looking through Brad’s mail,” Kegan said. “Before you came up here. I saw her name in that pile.” He waved in the general direction of one of the mountains on Brad’s desk. “Gillian isn’t a common name. It’s got to be the same person. Who do you suppose she is?”
I wasn’t sure, but I knew one thing: Gillian Gleeson was on Brad’s trophy wall along with women who I knew for a fact he’d sexually harassed, women whose lives and reputations he’d ruined.
I was thinking like a detective, remember, and like a detective, I knew exactly what this meant. If the other women were Brad’s victims, then chances were, Gillian was, too.
That also meant Gillian Gleeson was a suspect in Brad’s murder.
UNLIKE THOSE OF US WHO WORK FOR A LIVING, THEN go to their other jobs when their first job is done for the day, Gillian Gleeson apparently had a life. Her chirpy voice mail message said that she was out and that I could leave my name and number. By the time I did that and waited for her to return my call, it was already the weekend. She was not so chirpy when we talked. In fact, she sounded downright gloomy. Nor was she inclined to get together with a stranger who had called out of the blue and would say only that she found her on the Internet and was looking for information. Good news, though, Gillian changed her tune when I finally realized she was being sensible and I was being mysterious for no good reason. As soon as I mentioned that I wanted to talk to her in connection with the investigation into Brad’s murder, she agreed to meet with me.
I was thinking like a detective, right?
Thinking like a detective, her quick consent told me she probably wasn’t a viable suspect. What suspect in her right mind would agree to meet with someone who was bound to ask all the wrong questions?
But thinking like a detective, I knew I had to give the meeting a shot, anyway. In my efforts to exonerate Eve, I could leave no stone unturned.
Gillian and I set a date and a time, Sunday afternoon, and because he asked so nicely, I agreed to let Kegan come with me. I agreed to meet him at Bellywasher’s for the trip out to Middleburg, where Gillian lived.
Dead Men Don't Get the Munchies Page 14