A Killer Closet (11 page)

“My point exactly.”

Irene managed a little laugh, the first time she'd expressed anything other than gloom since she returned to town from Mariposa. “You're being overly dramatic, Angel. Save that for your acting class at the art school. Come on, get your keys and take me home.”

“What are you going to do once you get there?” Angel asked. “And just to set matters straight, I'm studying painting and design at the university, not acting. A lot of people think that just because the Greer Garson Theatre is on campus, everybody at the Institute is studying acting.”

“Okay,” Irene said, “I'll try to remember.”

“So what
are
you going to do?” Angel asked again.

Irene let her breath out in a heavy sigh. “Wait for the police to call with news about Adelle, I guess.”

“Just like you've done all day. You must have taken your cellphone out a hundred times. It's like you thought that by staring at it you could make it ring.”

“Yeah,” Irene conceded. “I feel like I'm losing my mind.”

Angel locked the back door and pointed toward his car, a twelve-year-old red Mustang. “There's my ride,” he said, then added, “You sure you want to be alone tonight?”

“If you were a little older, I'd take that as a come-on,” she said.

Angel shook his head. “Just an offer.”

“I'll be fine,” she said, not at all sure she would be. She dreaded being alone in the big old Victorian with its creaking sounds and tree shadows on the windows, and with nothing to keep her company except her own fear and worry.

“You can always call me if you need me,” he said, as he picked up a soda can from the front seat of his car and tossed it in the back before he helped her in. Besides the soda can, the backseat was full of textbooks, bulging notebooks, and a portable easel leaning against one of the windows. A McDonald's sack crumpled under her feet as she got in.

“Your car doesn't reflect my original assessment of you,” she said.

Angel shrugged. “It's a ride. Not much time to be orderly when you go to school and have a job.”

“Do you know where I live?” Irene asked, as Angel started the motor.

“The old Seligman house. Everyone knows where that is.”

“Of course,” she said. “I keep forgetting, I'm back in a place where everybody knows your name.” They were both quiet as they drove beyond the plaza toward Hyde Park Road. Irene felt very tired and was resisting the urge to lean her head back against the headrest when Angel suddenly rammed his foot down on the brake pedal, thrusting her forward violently against her seatbelt, then swerved into a turn, throwing her against the door.

“What the fuck?” Angel glanced anxiously into his rearview mirror. “That guy tried to ram my car!”

Irene twisted around in her seat to look behind them. The vehicle that had tried to ram them was speeding away. It was P.J.'s old pickup.

“What just happened?” Angel asked, obviously shaken.

“The pickup,” Irene said. “I know that pickup.” She was as stunned and edgy as Angel. “It belongs to P. J. Bailey.”

“No shit!” Angel said.

“Oh, yes!” Irene exhaled a puff of breath, trying to push out fear and anger as well.

“But why would he do that?”

“I don't know.” In spite of her effort to calm herself, Irene's voice was trembling. “But it seemed obvious he wanted to kill us, or at least harm us.”

“That's crazy,” Angel said. “There's no reason he'd want to kill you.”

“Maybe it's the same reason someone killed Loraine Sellers and Susana Delgado,” Irene said. “We don't know what that is, either.”

Angel glanced at Irene as he drove toward her house. “Do you think P.J. knew you were in my car? I mean, maybe it's me he was after, not you.”

“Is there a reason someone would want to harm you?” Irene asked.

“Well…no.” Angel shook his head. “This just doesn't make sense.”

“No,” Irene said. “None of it makes sense. “Not my mother's disappearance, not those two deaths, none of it.”

Angel stopped his Mustang in front of the Seligman residence. The house was built near the curb, with a small front-yard space typical of houses constructed in the nineteenth century. There was no room for the circular drive for horse-drawn coaches Irene had always imagined would be appropriate when she was a child growing up in the house.

Now, however, circular driveways and horse-drawn carriages were the furthest thing from her mind. All she could think about was P.J. trying to kill, or at least injure them. She felt a tinge of nausea in her stomach along with the ice of fear in her veins. There was something else as well, something splintering and breaking. She'd begun to like P.J., even to trust him.

Angel turned off the motor and turned to look at her. “You okay?”

“As okay as I can be under the circumstances,” she said.

“Want me to come in with you? You know, just to make sure?”

“Make sure of what?” It hadn't occurred to her until that moment that, given all that had happened, there might be someone waiting for her in her house. It should have, maybe, but it hadn't. Obviously, her mind wasn't functioning correctly.

“To make sure of you,” Angel said. “To make sure you're all right.”

“Of course I'm…Oh, what the hell,” she said, and opened her door. “Come on, I'll give you a popsicle while I have a glass of wine. I guess I could use the company,” she added, as she walked toward the front door of her house.

Angel followed her inside and looked around as he entered, taking in the high ceilings with the tasteful ivory-colored crown molding, the gleaming floors and expensive antique carpets, the elaborate staircase. “Nice place,” he said. “I'd kill for a place like this.”

“Don't talk that way!” Irene sounded harsher than she'd meant to sound.

“Sorry. I didn't mean it that way.”

She motioned toward one of the carved settees. “Sit down. It's more comfortable than it looks. I'm going to have a glass of wine. What can I get you?”

“Vodka with a twist, if you have it.”

Irene stopped on her way to the kitchen and turned around suddenly. “Hey, I wasn't kidding about that popsicle. You're too young to—”

“I'm twenty-one.”

“Uh-huh, and I'm Lady Gaga.”

“No, really, I am.”

“Let me see your driver's license.”

Angel made a move as if he was about to take his wallet from his back pocket, then hesitated. “Well, I'm almost twenty-one.”

She held her palm out. “Prove it. Let me see your license.”

“Okay, I'm nineteen, but—”

Irene turned her back to him and walked toward the kitchen. “Actually,” she said, turning around to look at him, “I'm momentarily out of popsicles, but I'll bring you a soda.”

“Okay. I guess,” he said. As she started to walk away again, he added, “Everyone says I don't look nineteen.”

“No, you don't,” she called to him as she entered the kitchen. “More like thirteen.”

“What I mean is people think I look older,” he shouted to her from the living room.

When she returned with the drinks, he was sitting on the settee, looking slightly awkward and even more like the kid she'd thought he was. She handed him his soft drink. “Thanks for coming in with me. I guess I need the company more than I was willing to admit.”

“I could tell that incident with the pickup shook you up.”

“No kidding.”

Angel raised his brows in surprise at her sarcasm. “You really think it was him? P. J. Bailey, I mean.”

“It was his pickup. Unless someone else was driving it, it was most certainly P. J. Bailey.”

“Who else would be driving it?

“Exactly.”

“But why—”

“I told you I don't know.” Irene set her wine aside and stood, pacing toward the door to try to peer outside through the leaded glass. “I just don't understand why any of this is happening.” She walked back to her chair and picked up her glass from the side table. “I'm not even sure the police are taking any of this seriously.” She took a sip of the wine. It was her favorite cabernet, but it tasted vinegary now, so she set it aside. “I'm going to make myself a drink,” she said, going toward the kitchen and thinking that Angel's suggestion of vodka with a twist sounded perfect.

“What makes you think the police aren't taking you seriously?” Angel asked when she came back with her drink.

“I don't know. It's hard to put my finger on it. I guess I just want them to be out there with bloodhounds and SWAT teams and…It's my mother who's missing. I want them to…” Her voice trembled and she stopped speaking.

“Why don't you tell me about your mother?” Angel said. “Maybe it will help to get it off your chest.”

“There's nothing to tell.”

“Okay, there's nothing to tell.” Angel settled back in his seat.

After a long pause and several gulps of her drink, Irene said, “She wasn't a very good mother.”

Angel took a sip of soda and said nothing.

“All of Santa Fe knows her,” Irene said. “She's kind of like a legend. Of course, she's on all of the right boards of all of the right charities. Or at least she used to be. I think she's pulled back a little now as she's getting older. My guess is her picture will be on the front page of
The Santa Fe New Mexican
tomorrow with a story about her disappearance.” Irene paused again and looked at her drink as if she might find some answers to her questions in the glass. “Truth is it's not the first time she's disappeared. Not like this, of course, but she was always disappearing out of my life. She was off to Paris, off to London or Venice. One husband and then another. One charity event after another. Oh, God, I'm whining! Sounding like the poor little rich girl. Except we weren't rich.” She drank the last drop out of her glass. She stood. “I need another. Do you?”

“I'm good,” Angel said, holding up his soft drink.

Irene came back with her drink and sat down heavily in her chair. “She could be a bitch at times, but I loved her, and that's all I'm going to say.” She took another long drink. “No, I don't mean that in past tense. I
love
her. Present tense. I have to believe she's still alive.”

“Yes, of course.”

“I mean, she could be a bitch, but not the kind people want to kill.” She looked at Angel. He seemed to be nodding, but something was happening to her eyesight. “I just wish I knew what those two dead women and that creepy house and that locked room have to do with all of this.”

Angel nodded again, and Irene continued talking, pausing long enough to make herself yet another drink. Or did she make herself two as they talked? Truth was she'd lost count. She wasn't even sure what she'd been saying to Angel.

“You know,” Angel said, “your mother's disappearance may not be related to those two deaths. I think we should—”

“Are you shitting me?” Irene asked. It confused her that shitting came out sounding like
ssssiting.
“It has everything to do with this. Adelle must have been mixed up in something bad.” To her horror, she began to cry.

“I think you should go to bed,” Angel said. “We'll talk more in the morning.”

“I can't,” she said.

“Why not?”

She pointed to her empty glass. “Had too many of these. Can't make it upstairs.” Her lips were numb. She could only hope that what she'd said made sense.

“If I help you up the stairs, can you find your room?”

“Sure.” She tried to stand, but landed back in the chair with a heavy thump. Angel came to her rescue and helped her stand again. After that, she remembered nothing.

When she awoke the next morning, she was wearing pajamas. She didn't remember putting them on. Surely she hadn't allowed Angel to…She tried to push the thought out of her mind. Her head hurt, and her mouth was cottony. She lay still for several seconds, trying to collect her thoughts. Hadn't she been talking with Angel the night before? They were talking about Adelle's disappearance. She sat up suddenly and clutched her head, as if that would stop the pain. What else had happened? It must have been that she'd seen Angel to the door and then come up to bed. Obviously, she'd had too much to drink. That hadn't happened in a long time. She must have been twenty-three, maybe twenty-four. She was with Freddy, her fiancé, who became her husband and then her ex. Thinking about it made her shudder.

Somehow she made it to the shower and stepped inside, fighting back nausea while needles of water bombarded her body. Later, feeling a little better, she wrapped her body in a blue terry-cloth robe and her hair in a white towel and made her way downstairs. She wanted to call the police again, and she wanted to call Angel to make sure he opened the store.

Just as she reached the bottom of the stairs, she saw Angel's head pop up over the back of a Victorian sofa. The sight of him startled her, and she took a backward step, sucking in her breath and clamping her hand over her mouth.

“You okay?” He stood, looking at her curiously.

He'd asked her the same thing the night before, hadn't he? She managed to nod and to note that his thick black hair was mussed, sticking out at the sides. His shirt was wrinkled and untucked from his jeans. “You've been here all night,” she said.

He didn't respond, but turned his back to her and unzipped his pants to tuck in his shirt.

“Why?” she asked, speaking to his back.

“You were in no shape to stay by yourself.”

She sighed. “Yeah. I apologize. I never have more than one drink.” She paused, feeling awkward. “Obviously, I should make that almost never.”

“No need to apologize.” He turned to face her. “You were upset about your mother. And about P.J.”

She felt confused. “P.J.? Oh! Yes. I must call the police. We should have done that last night.” She started toward the telephone in the kitchen.

“I already called. Last night after you went to bed. I told them about the pickup trying to run us off the road. They asked for a license plate number, but I didn't get one. Did you?”

“No, but you told them the pickup belonged to P.J., didn't you?” she asked.

“I told them you thought it was his. They wanted to talk to you, but I told them you weren't feeling well. So now both of us have to go down to the station and make a statement.”

Irene closed her eyes and put her hands on her face as a meaningless defense against the increased pounding in her head. “I don't want to go to the station again.”

Angel nodded. “I know. But we have to.”

She looked at him from between her spread fingers. “Did the police say anything about Adelle when they called?”

“Nothing,” Angel said. “I asked if they had any leads, but they said no.”

“Are they even trying?” She turned away. “Forgive me. Maybe I'm being irrational. My head hurts.”

“You're not being irrational. Come on, get dressed. I'll drive you to the station. Let's get this over with.”

“I have to have coffee.”

Angel rolled his eyes. She ignored him and went to the kitchen to make coffee, then sat at the table to wait for it to finish dripping. In a little while Angel appeared and sat across the table from her.

“About that plan we agreed to talk about…” Angel said.

“We have no plan,” Irene said. “I want you to stay out of this. I should have said that last night.”

“What do you think is in that locked room up there in the mountains?” Angel asked, ignoring her comment.

Irene shrugged. “Money? Drugs? Both?”

“I think I know a way we can find out.”

She looked at him, her expression a silent question. Finally, she spoke. “I told you, stay out of this. The police will be up there soon enough, won't they? They'll look into it.”

“I think we should find out first and not involve the police.”

“God, Angel, that doesn't even make sense. Why shouldn't we involve the police?”

“Just 'cause.”

“Now
that,
of course, makes perfect sense.” She stood and reached for the coffeepot. “To an eight-year-old,” she added, as she poured a cup for herself and one for Angel.

“I don't drink coffee,” he said, when she set it in front of him.

“Of course you don't,” she said, pulling the mug toward her. “It's just for grown-ups. Okay, I shouldn't have said that,” she added, when she saw the look on his face. “I'm not very nice when I'm hung over.”

Angel ignored both her insult and her apology. He was stroking his chin. “I don't suppose you have a razor, do you? Since you're in no hurry to get dressed, I really need to shave before we show up at the police department.”