by Kylie Logan
CHAPTER 17
The next day after school, Jazz zipped over to the Allen house.
“You cleaned out Florie’s studio at school and her apartment on Murray Hill,” she said to Larry when he came to the door and after she reintroduced herself. “There was an ad? For a divorce attorney?”
Larry wasn’t so sure and Jazz supposed she couldn’t blame him. His daughter’s life had been cut short—brutally, senselessly—and he and his wife had been left to gather up the flotsam and jetsam of everything that had once been Florie. One ad cut from a newspaper was small potatoes.
“Maybe I could look through her things?” Jazz suggested.
Larry wasn’t sure about that, either. It wasn’t until he glanced over his shoulder that Jazz realized Renee was behind him in the shadows. Her blue fuzzy slippers flapping, she stepped forward and squeezed into the space in the doorway beside her husband.
“Why would Florie need a divorce attorney?” Renee wanted to know.
“I don’t think she did. But I think…” Okay, so she didn’t know for sure, but it was the only theory Jazz had been able to cobble together after studying the photographs she got from Lalo’s mother. “I think it might have something to do with her murder.”
Renee and Larry exchanged looks, hers clearly saying he was in charge.
“Sounds crazy to me,” he grumbled. “How—”
“I don’t know yet. I’m not sure.” Jazz let go a shaky breath. “I saw the ad in Florie’s studio, but I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention. If I could just look at it and get the phone number, I could talk to the attorney. Unless…” She didn’t want it to get to this, but she didn’t want Larry to shut the door in her face, either. “Unless you’d like to find the ad and call me with the information?”
When he stepped to the side, the floorboards inside the front door moaned in protest. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt,” he said.
Jazz wasn’t sure if it wouldn’t hurt for him to find the ad on his own, or it wouldn’t hurt for her to come in and take a look for herself. Since the second scenario fit better with her plans, she grabbed the door handle and yanked open the aluminum screen door.
She was met with a gust of air so musty and stale, it caught in her throat.
Jazz swallowed down the sour taste in her stomach, and when she stepped into the house, Larry and Renee had no choice but to each step to one side.
“Thank you,” Jazz managed to stammer. It was just as well she got the words out before she looked around. After that, it was anyone’s bet if she could have said anything if she tried.
Instead, she stared at the piles that towered around her. Newspapers on top of boxes on top of chairs. Clothes bundled into loose, lumpy wads, tossed atop one, two, three, four old TVs. Two green hair dryers from some long-ago beauty salon, their seats stacked with knickknacks and books and a trombone and cans of tomato soup; the goosenecks that traveled from the chairs to the domes that rested against customers’ heads were draped with towels and blankets and more clothes.
“Oh.” Jazz gave herself a kick in the pants. It was the wrong way to react. “Where…” She glanced at one particularly precarious-looking pile and wondered how the rumble of a passing truck didn’t topple it. “Where are Florie’s things?”
She managed to step further into the living room down a pathway that was maybe eighteen inches wide between the piles. Larry followed her into the maze. Renee kept her place at the door and scraped her palms along the legs of her jeans. “You really don’t want to … we really can’t let you…”
“I get it,” Jazz said. Even though she didn’t. Even though she didn’t want to. “Maybe you could point me in the right direction?”
Of course they couldn’t. With Jazz standing where she was, there was no way for either Larry or Renee to get past her.
Because of the piles, the windows were blocked, and Larry motioned somewhere into the gloom. “That way,” he said.
With no clear way back to the door, Jazz turned and followed the path. Halfway through the living room, it branched off in two directions. One led into the kitchen, where she could see dozens of blue plastic grocery bags stuffed with other blue plastic grocery bags. More boxes. More cans of soup. A metal container with a lid.
Florie’s ashes?
Her stomach flipped, and when Larry poked her shoulder, Jazz flinched.
“Over there,” he said, pointing to the right.
Here the path was narrower. Magazines. Board games. Empty milk cartons.
Jazz sidled through it all and headed up a stairway where each step was heaped with newspapers and every movement she made caused the stale, heavy air to rise up and assault her nose.
There was more of the same on the second floor, and when Larry directed her to a room at the end of the hallway, she could barely squeeze through the half-opened door. Behind it was—
Jazz didn’t know what was hidden behind the plastic milk crates that loomed over her. She only knew that whatever it was, it smelled like old socks and older food. And fish.
Another couple steps, and she found a two-foot-square patch of floor where there was nothing but stained and faded maroon carpet. She would have taken a deep breath if the air—thick and dusty—didn’t stick in her throat, and while she struggled not to cough or gag, a thought overtook her repulsion.
No wonder Florie liked to clean the stainless-steel counters in the St. Catherine’s cafeteria.
No wonder she liked to help with washing the pots and pans and lining them up in neat, shiny order.
“Might be in here.”
Larry’s comment snapped her back to reality.
“Might be…” Jazz looked at the stacks of junk piled around her. “You just brought it home,” she said, and then because it sounded too judgmental, she added, “but I can see how you’d get confused. I’m sure you have a lot on your mind.”
Larry squeezed by her, closer to the nearest pile, flannel blankets that jiggled when he put a hand on them. Jazz jumped when an orange cat popped out from between the layers, came at her, then disappeared into the hallway.
“There’s that picture.” From her place in the doorway, Renee pointed a finger. Across the room, beyond a pile of books and what looked to be a lifetime’s worth of old birthday cards, was the dizzying photograph Jazz had seen first at Florie’s office, then in her apartment, the trippy colors standing out against the cardboard and dust of the room.
“Tate Brody has one just like it,” Jazz mentioned, and she wasn’t sure what she expected them to say in return. That they hadn’t told Brody he could have the picture? That he’d scooped it up before they got to the studio and they had no idea another one existed?
Instead, they said nothing at all.
Larry poked through the pile nearest the photograph, and when Jazz came up alongside him and made to move a stack of magazines, he shot her a look. “You better not,” he said.
She stepped back to the small bare spot, her hands tucked behind her, her breath hanging suspended, her gaze darting back and forth between the piles and the stacks, the heaps and the gobs.
“Wait!” When Larry moved a cardboard box filled with cans of cat food, Renee stepped up and squeezed herself into the space in back of Jazz. “You shouldn’t touch that, Larry.” Her voice trembled and her hands shook. “We should just go downstairs. We should all just go downstairs. We should just leave … leave everything alone.”
“We will,” Jazz promised. “As soon as we find the ad. I know we’re close.” She perked up when she saw a stack of pink envelopes. “There!” She pointed to direct Larry’s attention to a spot between a coil of Christmas lights and a dresser with its drawers open and crammed with paper shopping bags. “I saw those envelopes in Florie’s studio. I bet the ad is right there.” The ad was small and looked like junk, and Jazz’s shoulders slumped and her mood plummeted when she told herself there was no way Larry was going to find it. At the same time, she looked around, and for the first time since she walke
d into the house, she was encouraged by what she saw. They didn’t throw anything away. The ad would be there. It had to be.
“This?” When Larry spun to face her, he had a scrap of paper in his hands.
“Yes!” Jazz plucked it away before he could stop her, and when she heard Renee suck in a breath, she struggled for a compromise. “I’ll just take a picture of it,” she said, and as if to prove her intentions were honorable, she took her phone out of her pocket. “Just a picture. You can keep the ad. Is that all right?” she asked Renee.
Her eyes were wide and uncertain, but the barest of nods from Renee gave Jazz the go-ahead, and once she had it, and the picture, she thanked the Allens and told them she’d let them know what she found out from the attorney—Howard Moritz—whose name was on the ad in bold letters.
They trudged back through the maze and were already at the front door when Larry asked, “And if you do find something out from that lawyer guy, you’ll tell that cop. Right?”
Jazz assured them she’d take care of it and congratulated herself; she waited to groan until she was back in her car.
She hadn’t planned on spending so much time at the Allens’.
That cop was waiting for her at the coffee shop.
And she was late for their date.
* * *
He was sitting at the table next to the window and farthest from the door.
Their table.
It wasn’t like Glen and Abby, the nice folks who ran the coffee shop, ever said as much. But it seemed like every time they showed up—back in the days when they’d stop there before a concert or a movie or after they went to her mom’s for Sunday dinner when Jazz was done training with Manny and Nick wasn’t chasing down bad guys—it was the table where they always ended up.
Since the place was relatively empty and Nick had his choice of tables, she wondered if he remembered. What did it mean if he did?
And what did it mean if he didn’t?
“I’m late.” The words rushed out of her even before she sat down. “I got busy and time got away from me, and—” Her feeble smile was all she could offer by way of an apology.
He was wearing a navy-blue suit and the Jerry Garcia tie she’d given him for Christmas once upon a time, green and blue swirls of color with splashes of yellow and purple. The colors reminded her of the psychedelic photograph back at the Allens’. Of the photograph Tate Brody had taken from Florie’s studio.
“I had some stuff to do,” she said, and she sat down. “I’m sorry.”
He wrinkled his nose. “You smell like a sewer.”
She sniffed the air and realized he was right. “Sorry,” she said again. “I had to stop and see the parents of one of the girls from school and…”
It wasn’t much of an explanation, but it was just penitent enough. Most other guys would have been satisfied.
Nick wasn’t most other guys.
He studied her, his expression not exactly accepting but not accusatory, either. “Not Florie’s family, I hope.”
She wondered if lying on a first date was a sin and consoled herself with the fact that technically, this wasn’t a first date. Still not willing to take a chance, she skirted the subject. “They … the family of the girl I visited … they’re pack rats.”
“Yeah, hoarders. Been there, seen that.” He sat back, one arm draped over the empty chair next to him
She told herself to shut up, not to push it, to change the subject, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. He’d waited. At their table.
“It took longer than I thought,” she told him. “I shouldn’t have made you wait.”
He didn’t have a chance to respond. The waitress came over carrying a tray, and before Jazz could order the coffee of the day like she always did, the woman set a mug in front of her.
“Coffee of the day for you,” the waitress said. “And double espresso with the coffee of the day.” She set that cup in front of Nick, who explained his menu choice with a grimace and “I’ve got to work late tonight.”
The waitress left and was back in a flash. “Two forks.” She set them on the table. “And one chocolate truffle tartlet in a salted shortbread crust.”
Jazz’s favorite dessert, the one they’d always shared on special occasions.
“I…” The words stuck in Jazz’s throat and she coughed them away. Maybe she was going to thank him. Maybe she was going to remind him that this really wasn’t a special occasion. That it couldn’t be. That it was just a date.
Rather than think about it, she concentrated on the dessert in all its glorious decadence. “It looks fabulous.”
“And I didn’t have lunch. I’m starving.” Nick grabbed his fork.
“This is your dinner?” She watched him take a bite and give her a wink that said the tartlet was as good as ever. “It’s not exactly healthy.”
“I’ll grab something later.” He pushed the plate a little closer to her and, with one finger, indicated that she should pick up her fork and dig in. “It’s still early.”
She dutifully took a bite. He was right. The best was still the best.
“So what did Florie’s parents have to say?” he asked.
It was a good thing she was chewing, Jazz had time to stall. She washed down the tartlet with a gulp of coffee. “Who says I was with—”
He leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “You always were a lousy liar.”
“Except I never lied. Not to you. Not ever once.”
“Until now.”
He looked entirely too self-satisfied, and it made Jazz’s blood boil. Or maybe that was just the heat she felt from taking a chance, getting too close.
“What, you can read minds now?”
“I could always read your mind.”
She might have gone right on being annoyed if the last of the late-afternoon sun didn’t slant through the front window and turn his hair golden. In all the time they were together, they’d gone on exactly one getaway, two days (it was all either of them could manage to cobble together) at a bed-and-breakfast on the lake. It was May and the weather was glorious, and when they sat and watched the sun slip into the water in the evening, the light reflected off the lake and brought out the honey highlights in his hair. She remembered thinking he was the handsomest man on the planet.
Back then, there were fewer lines at the corners of his eyes.
“How’s Kim?” she asked.
He made sure he took another bite of the dessert before he answered, and though Jazz was pretty sure there wasn’t anything interesting happening out on the street, he watched something there intently. “Same old same old.”
“I’m sorry.”
His gaze flickered to hers. “You’re sorry about a lot today.”
“I’m sorry I smell like a sewer.”
“You see, that’s exactly how I knew you were lying.” He took one more bite, then pushed the plate to her side of the table. “You think I made detective for nothing? I’ve been to the Allens’, remember. I’d recognize that smell anywhere.”
There was no use explaining. With a sigh, she dug out her phone and showed him the picture she’d taken upstairs in the fishy-smelling room.
Nick didn’t say a word, just raised his eyebrows.
“It was on the bulletin board in Florie’s studio.”
“I saw it. I’m surprised you did.”
She tapped a finger against the photo instead. “And this didn’t strike you as odd?”
“It struck me as plenty odd.” He sat back and eyed her, not the way he used to when they were together, when they were alone. Then there was a spark of heat in his eyes. Now, they were lit with nothing more than curiosity. “What do you make of it?”
“I’m not sure,” Jazz admitted. “But I’ve got an idea. Florie was renting the kid next door.”
She was moving too fast, and he held up a hand. “Renting—”
“The kid who lives next door to her parents. Sure.” She nodded. “And she had a collection of odd clo
thes. Clothes that made her look old and homeless. Or clothes that a mom would wear to the park. You know, for when she went there with the kid.”
“Because . .?”
“Because she was following people. She was taking their pictures. And I think she was doing it because she was working for this Howard guy, the divorce attorney.” As if he might have forgotten, she waggled her phone at him. “If one of those people caught on, if Florie saw something she shouldn’t have seen … or if Florie was freelancing…”
This was a new thought, and it fell out of her mouth before she had time to even think it through. There was no better way to see where it was headed than to think out loud. “Florie had these big pink envelopes.”
Nick nodded. He’d seen them in the studio, too.
“And the photos I got from the neighbor, the ones Florie supposedly took of the woman’s kid, were in a pink envelope. And that What’s-Her-Name…” Jazz came up short on the memory. “Anyway, one of the teachers at Florie’s school had one of those envelopes on her desk, and she didn’t want me to see it. When I walked into her office she slipped it under some books. The way I see it, scenario number one is that Florie saw something she shouldn’t have seen when she was working for the divorce attorney. That she took a picture she shouldn’t have taken. If the subject of that picture found out, that would be a motive for murder, right?” Before he could tell her that she—or her theory—was half-baked, she went right on.
“And Florie was desperate for money, you know. She was working as hard as she could just to pay her rent, working so hard that her grades suffered and she lost her scholarship. What if she went off the reservation? What if she was working for that attorney, following people and taking pictures, and what if she kept some of those pictures for herself? What if she was blackmailing somebody? It wouldn’t be the first time, Nick. Florie blackmailed a girl back at St. Catherine’s. Blackmail would be a motive for murder, too, right?”
“You’ve been watching too much TV.”