Angel Sleuth (9 page)

The smell of garbage and cigarette smoke hung in the narrow passage. Maybe this was stupid, she told herself, but she stepped from behind the trash in front of her to encounter whoever hovered beneath the dumpster’s overhang.

There were two of them, but not whom she expected. Teenage girls wearing the purple and red satin booster jackets of Aldenville’s high school football team and smoking cigarettes.

“You’re going to regret lighting that,” she said. “It ages you, you know. Creates wrinkles on your forehead.”

The girls hadn’t heard her approach, and they jumped up from the crates they were using for seats, throwing their lit cigarettes to the ground.

They recognized her. “Mrs. Singer. You won’t tell, will you? We just wanted to try it,” said the shorter one, a blonde with a chubby face and the requisite baby blue eyes to match. Although still a child in Kaitlin’s eyes, the girl had used a heavy hand to apply enough makeup to look more like a streetwalker than a teenager.

Kaitlin held out her hand. “I’ll take those,” she said. She gestured toward the pack of cigarettes. The taller one, skinny, with a scattering of freckles across her nose was as flat-chested as a child of ten. She swallowed, her face so devoid of color that Kaitlin worried she was going to throw up. The girl handed over the pack.

“I wouldn’t think of ratting on you, because you’ll never do this again anyway, will you?”

They nodded. Two pairs of eyes looked down the alleyway and beyond her, seeking the freedom of escape.

“Can we go now?” asked the blonde. Her voice was whiny with teenage disdain at getting caught.

“Tell me something first. Was there anybody else hanging around here just a few minutes ago? Maybe a woman and a boy about nine or so?”

Blondie hesitated a moment, then spoke. “We didn’t see anybody.”

“No one?”

“No one.”

“Okay then. Get out of here.”

They rushed around her and fled toward the street.

“And stay out of alleys.”

And stop lying, she wanted to say. They’d been there a while, long enough to spot Delbert enter the building and her and Brittany leave. And they had to have seen whoever it was running by from the newspaper office. She toed the pile of butts that lay on the ground, the same brand as the half empty pack she held in her hand.

“Police,” said Mary Jane. She held the phone out to Kaitlin who lay napping on the couch.

“What? What time is it?”

“It’s almost nine. I tried to wake you a half hour ago, but you told me to go away. I thought you had an appointment tonight.”

“I did. Police? For me?” Kaitlin grabbed the receiver.

“Officer Hendricks here. We need you down at the newspaper office. Now.” He hung up before Kaitlin could ask him any questions.

Now what? And what about the appointment with my mysterious note writer?

“I’ve got to go to the newspaper office,” said Kaitlin.

“I’ll come along,” said Mary Jane.

“You stay here with Jeremy. I don’t know how long this will take, and there’s no sense keeping him up late two nights in a row.” She knew she sounded snarly and accusatory, but for a moment she didn’t care. Then the guilt hit her. She had no right to be so dismissive of Mary Jane’s offer of help.

“Let us know if we can do anything,” said Mary Jane. The expression on her face was one of concern. Kaitlin wondered if she could believe that look.

A police cruiser sat outside the newspaper office, its red light flashing. Hendricks, an officer she remembered from her high school years, stood in front of the counter.
How old was this guy?
He had always impressed her as a man who wouldn’t feel quite complete without a uniform and a lot of gadgets hanging from his belt.

Brittany stood alongside Hendricks, leaning toward him as he wrote down something in his notebook. Her hand rested lightly on his shoulder, a move the officer seemed to be appreciating.

“Someone broke into your office,” said Brittany. “Delbert is out of town tonight so the police got me on my cell. Officer Hendricks wants you to take a close look and tell him what’s missing.”

“Yup,” said Hendricks. He did an I’m-in-authority-here swagger into the office and beckoned Kaitlin to follow.

“It looks as if a hurricane hit,” said Kaitlin.

She was right. Papers littered the floor, desk drawers stood open, and file cabinets lay on their sides on the floor, their folders splayed out onto the rug. The laptop computer no longer sat on the desk, yet the stereo and CD player remained undisturbed on a shelf across the room, and the small television sat on the table near the door, its remote on the desk where it had been earlier today.

“The TV and stereo are still here, but the computer is gone,” she said. Hendricks chawed on his toothpick while his eyes surveyed the room.

“TV looks kinda beat up. What about the stereo?” he asked.

“It’s at least ten years old,” said Brittany.

“Thieves know their business, taking only what is worth hocking. Anything else gone?” he asked.

Kaitlin bent to examine the papers and folders from the drawers and file cabinets where they fell or where someone had tossed them onto the floor. It seemed to her the intruders threw the contents of the drawers on the floor for effect without taking anything.

“As nearly as I can tell, everything else is here. No, wait.” The bottom right-hand desk drawer was empty. She scrounged around among the papers on the floor for a few moments longer then sat back on her haunches.

“All of the letters written to the advice column are gone, Leda’s and mine.”

“Guess our thief wanted something to read to amuse himself while he waited to fence the computer. That’s about all that advice stuff is good for—a laugh or two. Don’t know why anyone writes into that column anyway. Begging your pardon, Kaitlin, but it’s a sorry human who can’t handle his problems on his own,” Hendricks said.

Kaitlin was developing her own theory about why the thief or thieves wanted those letters. As was Brittany, it appeared.

“So why didn’t he take anything else like the computer on my desk or the one on Delbert’s in there?” Brittany pointed to Delbert’s office.

The door stood open, yet it appeared the intruder or intruders had ignored his office. His laptop sat closed on the desk, the desk surface and floor were free of papers, and the filing cabinet stood against the far wall, its drawers closed.

Hendricks switched his toothpick from the left side of his mouth to the right and shrugged.

“Who knows what goes through these guys’ heads? Likely needed only enough money to score a hit on some drugs, took the computer, and skedaddled. The computer’s probably on its way downstate right now, and the thief or thieves are getting high in the woods someplace.”

He heisted up his pants which slid back down to settle under his belly and dropped his toothpick into the garbage can. He sauntered out the door, exuding self-congratulatory confidence as if he had just solved an important crime.

“Let us know if anything else turns up missing,” he said. His tone said he couldn’t have been less interested if they did find other items gone.

Kaitlin plopped herself in Brittany’s chair and held her head.

“I was thinking today after we left here,” said Brittany. “You don’t think Will hid the other will or that he…that he had anything to do with her accident?”

“I don’t know, but this theft can’t be coincidental with our finding those internet sites today. And I think someone sneaked in here and overheard us while we were working. Remember the door slamming shut?”

Kaitlin wasn’t ready to share her suspicion about the identity of who spied on them until she had a come-to-meeting talk with Mary Jane. She glanced at her watch. Nearly ten. Her confrontation with Mary Jane would have to wait. She was late for her meeting at ARC.

* * *

Rather than drive, she walked up the hill to ARC, not wanting her car’s headlights to give away her presence there. At this hour most residents were in bed; the windows were dark or lit only by the flickering light of the television. The parking area in back of the building had two outdoor lights and one of the bulbs was out. The area farthest away from the building was in total darkness, illuminated only when the moon broke through the heavy cloud cover.

Kaitlin didn’t want to be seen by anyone except for her pen pal, but the blackness of the night gave her little sense of comfort. She chose, instead, to hide herself under the shadowing arms of a large maple near the driveway. She leaned against the trunk, hoping whoever wanted to meet her had waited.

She couldn’t tell how much time had passed, but the wind began to pick up, rustling the leaves overhead and drowning out other night sounds. She questioned her choice of hiding place. She’d never hear anyone approach, nor see them unless they came from the direction of the building.

She stuck her hand out of the tree’s shadow into the dim moonlight to take a quick look at her watch and thought she saw something move out of the corner of her eye. Too late she caught sight of the arm that delivered the blow to her temple.

She fell to her knees, but didn’t lose consciousness.

“Quit snooping around,” said a voice from behind her.

* * *

“Kaitlin, wake up,” said Mary Jane.

“Wha?”

“You’ve got a nasty knot on your head. Who hit you?”

Kaitlin looked around and found herself propped against the maple’s trunk.

“What’re you doing here?” Kaitlin asked.

“Looking for you. I was worried.”

“And you thought this was the place to look for me?”

“I went to the newspaper office. Brittany said you had some kind of meeting here, and you were late.”

“Did you see anyone?”

Mary Jane shook her head no.

“We should call the police.”

“No way. I saw enough of Officer Hendricks tonight. And what’re the police going to do anyway?”

“Who were you meeting?”

“I don’t know. Someone left a note in my car saying they knew something about what was going on here and to meet them tonight.”

“We should at least get you medical treatment,” said Mary Jane.

“And say what to the doctor? That I was hanging around the parking lot of ARC and fell into the maple tree? I don’t think so. I’m fine. My head just hurts a little, that’s all.”

“Let’s get you up and home. Then I can see better how bad that bump is.”

“Not bad,” said Kaitlin. She leaned heavily on Mary Jane as they headed down the hill.

* * *

“Not too bad.” Mary Jane cleaned the area and took a good look at Kaitlin’s head in the bathroom light. “How do you feel?”

“Better now I’m home. Safer.” She explained to Mary Jane about the warning from her attacker.

“We definitely should call the police.”

“No, no, no. I just want to lay down for a while.”

“Maybe you’ve had a concussion and shouldn’t sleep.”

“I don’t feel like sleeping. I just feel like thinking a little.”

She lay back on her pillow and considered how out of control her life seemed now than before the summer started. Before Mary Jane and Jeremy moved in and Leda died. Before she started writing the column. Before the theft of the computer or the new will. She touched the bump on her head and winced. And long before someone found her snoopy enough to hit her over the head and threaten her.

What was puzzling to her was how her life spinning out of control was so much more satisfying than when she was writing and when she had Zack. That didn’t make any sense at all, did it?

She fell asleep and didn’t die, but awoke in the morning with a sense of purpose, something she’d not experienced for…well, forever almost.

* * *

“Arlene.” Who else would pull up in front of Kaitlin’s house in a limo wearing Chanel, Jimmy Choos, and mink in the middle of summer, thought Mary Jane?

“Kaitlin’s not home yet. I think she went to the newspaper office.”

Mary Jane kept the events of the night before to herself. No sense in worrying Arlene. Kaitlin seemed fine this morning, actually better than Mary Jane had seen her so far. Odd, that.

Arlene paused in the doorway and inspected the woman before her. In contrast to Arlene’s haute couture look, Mary Jane was her usual consignment shop mixture of colors, fabrics, and styles, most of them from decades past. Arlene swept through the door with a soft swish of her silk skirt and perused the room.

“I thought maybe she would have redecorated. I told her the last time I visited that the house was hers to do with as she liked. I never use the place anymore, so I haven’t had time to do anything with it. Isn’t it a horror? Bad retro eighties.”

“Oh, Jeremy and I think it’s cozy. Takes me back to summers when I was a kid.”

“I don’t remember your ever visiting here.”

“Oh, I meant it’s just the way Mama used to describe it. Homey.”

Arlene took a seat on the old leather couch.

“Working at the office? She must be taking this newspaper job seriously.”

“And she’s good at it too. I knew she would be. You must have read some of her columns.”

Arlene shook her head. “Harold—he’s my husband, I don’t think you’ve met him yet—and I got back from France a few weeks ago, and the apartment in Manhattan has taken all my time. We’re redoing it. Maybe, if you have some of the papers laying around here, I could borrow them.”

“Sure,” Mary Jane said. “I’ll get them for you before you leave.”

“Look, dear, I’m just as happy Kaitlin isn’t back yet. I wanted to talk to you about her. Do you think she’s all right? She rarely calls me, but then we never were real close as mother and daughter, but…” Arlene’s carefully made-up eyes filled with tears.

Arlene’s obvious unhappiness caught Mary Jane by surprise. What she knew of the woman said she was always composed. Mary Jane rushed over to the couch and put her arm around Arlene.

“I’ll brew us a pot of tea, and we can talk.”

Over the Oolong, Arlene told Mary Jane she was worried she was responsible for Kaitlin’s writer’s block. Mary Jane sighed inwardly. She often had this effect on others and had heard confessions from strangers, people she’d encountered in the supermarket, on the bus, or, once, shopping for shoes. Mary Jane hardly thought twice about it anymore. She accepted it because it was part of who she was and what she did.