Before I Wake (11 page)

Items beyond recovery she put into the HazMat barrel to seal and haul away to be burned.

Frank wanted her to join him in this business when his dad retired. Not just anyone could take on this business and it would be difficult to run without a full-time partner. Rae was glad it was a decision for another year.

She gagged when she picked up the briefcase and roaches scurried away. She hated roaches. They loved scenes like this one.

Kevin Hammond, vice president of B.G. Bakery—she picked up the photo and studied the man who had days ago been going about his life on the expectation he would live another ten years. His blood had splattered on his wife’s picture. Life came with no guarantees about its length. She put the picture in the tub and turned back to the desk.

Before the day was done she would be aching in muscles she hadn’t used in a while and emotionally tired from looking at the effects of death, but she didn’t regret telling her uncle yes, she’d come back to work with him part-time. A janitor or hired cleaning crew didn’t need to be the ones dealing with this cleanup. As awful as this was, she had come ready for the job. She added another photo to the stack to clean and moved on to gathering business papers.

* * *

Nathan braced his elbow against the truck radiator and strained to get enough leverage on the wrench and the old bolt rusted into the engine frame to get it to turn. He’d oiled the bolt, tried heating and cooling the metal, and still he couldn’t get movement.

He wished his grandfather would not get so attached to vehicles. The way the truck was running, it was unsafe, and he’d told his grandfather so on Sunday when he’d heard it start. Somehow in that exchange he’d volunteered to try and make the repairs. It wasn’t how he’d envisioned spending his snatched Monday lunch break.

“Sheriff.” The doorbell rang inside his house and he heard knocking start on the front door. “Sheriff!”

Nathan lowered his hand to keep his dogs quiet. He reached over and turned down the volume on his small radio.

“Sheriff.” Mrs. Neel strode around his house. She was wearing her favorite floral dress but with clunky winter boots, coming fast on the stepping stones.

His dogs disappeared into the open garage behind them. “Traitors,” Nathan whispered after them. He reluctantly straightened and picked up a rag to wipe his hand.

“That private investigator is sitting in his car down the street from Heather Teal’s, watching her house. The entire neighborhood is in a buzz about it.”

“Are you sure he’s not just asleep?”

“Am I sure he’s not . . .” Her voice moved up in shrillness. “This is serious, young man. He’s been there for the last two hours and ten minutes and he’s disrupting the entire neighborhood.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. I’m on my lunch break, Mrs. Neel.”

She opened her mouth and closed it again. She took a breath. “Well, I never. Your father would have never made such a lame excuse to avoid his duty.”

My father was better able to hide.
“Yes, Ma’am, he was a great sheriff.” Nathan looked back at the vehicle engine. “What would you like me to do?”

“Tell him to move along.”

“It’s a public street.”

“Well he can’t just sit there; it’s vagrancy or something.”

Or something.
Sometimes Nathan thought Bruce enjoyed the fact he could get people so riled up without even trying. “I’ll talk to him, Mrs. Neel.”

“Now?”

“Soon.”

He needed a new timing belt, and since his grandfather was now an hour late being here to supervise, it was probably best to go quietly prowl to find the man. The man missed his wife. Nathan wasn’t sure what as a grandson he was supposed to do.

“This truck should be junked; it’s falling apart.”

“Yes, Ma’am. I’ll tell Henry.”

“I’ll be talking to Mrs. Teal and telling her you’re going to deal with this problem.”

“I’ll talk with Bruce.” He closed the truck hood and watched his neighbor walk away. Living in town did have a few drawbacks. He sighed and then snapped his fingers for his dogs. “You can come out now, you two.”

They scampered out.

* * *

Nathan stopped his squad car alongside Bruce’s Caprice and motioned to his friend to lower his window. “This is the strangest stakeout I have ever seen. Practically everyone in town knows your car.”

“I figure at least half a dozen friends of Heather have called her to mention I’m parked down the street from her driveway.”

“They have, and they’ve found me as well. What are you doing, Bruce?”

“Getting myself fired.”

Nathan grinned. “I told you not to take the case. Heather’s husband is not cheating on her; she’s just paranoid.”

“I know. I suspended my good judgment for the rent money.”

“I brought you a coffee.” Nathan leaned over and offered through the window the coffee he’d picked up at the hardware store, the owner determined to be known for the best and cheapest coffee in town. Nathan’s own cup of coffee came from the deli. He couldn’t afford to pick sides in the town’s coffee war.

“Thanks.”

“You could call her and quit.”

“I’ve tried that. She keeps ignoring my final report and suggests I don’t know how to do my job or I’d find the evidence. It’s time to make her decide she wants to end my services. I doubt Heather lasts another hour before she’s storming out the front door and down the street to fire me in person.”

Nathan put his car in drive. “Private investigators have such interesting jobs.”

“I notice you’re on patrol duty.”

“We were short a man for the evening shift,” Nathan replied. “You want a real job?”

“And miss out on the Heathers of the world?”

Nathan smiled. “See you later, Bruce. If you happen to see my grandfather, let him know I figured out what was wrong with his truck.”

“Will do.”

Nathan slowed as he passed Heather’s home, saw her at the window with the curtain half pulled back, and offered her a wave. The curtain dropped. He’d get a call from her before long and there were only so many times he could put her off before she called his father to complain. There were days belonging to the town’s founding family was not a blessing.

Nathan picked up the radio and called in to the dispatcher, then turned east. He would check in with the picket lines and listen to the conversations for a while. Someone getting antsy enough to cause trouble—maybe a friend would think it best to say a quiet word before the trouble actually started.

Sending guys coming off the line over to the diner for steak and fries on him might defuse some idle talk from turning into actions. If he had to buy the peace with cash from his own pocket today he’d do so.

Every day of quiet bought that much more time for the negotiators to find a way to settle the strike. It had to end before strikebreakers arrived and violence erupted around him between folks who had known each other for decades. He feared the town would never recover if that happened.

* * *

Bruce watched through half-closed eyes as Heather’s husband appeared through the fenced backyard gate and crossed the yard, reached the sidewalk, and turned toward Willow Street. His daughter lived the other direction so he wasn’t walking over to see his grandson, and if he was getting out of the house to get away from his wife it was odd he wasn’t heading downtown as was his custom.

Two weeks of following the man had convinced Bruce that the man was a creature of habit who just wanted some time away from his wife. He’d eat a piece of pie, walk down to the library, and read a book in peace.

Bruce watched the man walk away and debated with himself. Another few minutes and Heather was going to be out here firing him; the upstairs window curtain was twitching often now as she watched his car and worked up the words to say to him.

Where was Bob going?

Bruce sighed and tugged his keys from the ignition and shoved open the door. Curiosity was a bad character trait for a private investigator to have. It created work. He headed after Heather’s husband.

At the stop sign a blue truck pulled to the curb; Heather’s husband walked over to the passenger door and opened it. He got inside. The truck, driven by Nathan’s grandfather, turned east. In weeks of following Bob, Bruce hadn’t even realized the two men knew each other beyond a casual name recognition. And that blue truck looked new. Henry had bought himself yet another vehicle?

Bruce returned to his car. He followed the truck. Snowplows were current with their work and traffic was light for a Monday, making it an easy enough tail but ensuring he would also be spotted. Bruce caught a clear enough look at the back window to see a temporary license-plate tag taped in the corner. The truck did indeed look like a new purchase.

Nathan’s grandfather ran a stop sign. Bruce drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. Henry wasn’t pleased with being followed. So much for doing this chase the easy way. Bruce followed for another mile and watched the truck turn into the cemetery where Henry’s wife was buried. Bruce had a feeling it wasn’t the two guys’ original intended destination. He drove past and continued on.
Another time, Henry . . .

Bruce turned back toward his office. He wanted another look at what he had on the car dealer. If that truck was getting titled in Henry’s name, that made two substantial purchases in only a few months. Where was the money coming from? One way or another he was going to figure out what was going on.

10

Rae bit the tip of her tongue as she concentrated on painting around her office-door woodwork. This was going to be the place she talked with clients, managed case files, did her research, took a nap when the days were slow, read a novel when she didn’t want to leave for home yet . . . it was beginning to feel like her space and she liked that feeling. She’d chosen a great color for the walls.

“How was the day with your family?” Bruce asked, pouring more paint into his roller pan.

“Pleasant for catching up on news, not so pleasant for the job. I’d forgotten how physically hard the work is. How did your day go here?”

“I trailed Heather’s husband around some more.” Bruce started rolling a second coat of paint on the wall.

“I’ve heard that name several times. Who is she?”

“One of the town’s lifetime residents. Heather Teal is sixty-two, the owner of a card shop here in town. She thinks her husband is cheating on her.”

“Is he?”

“I very much doubt it. She’s got a suspicious perspective on everything in life.”

Rae leaned back to study her paint job. “You need to give me an update on the cases you are working on. I saw the list on your whiteboard.”

He pulled a rag from his pocket to wipe a paint splatter off the light fixture. “Tretton Insurance is a possible insurance-fraud case. Several items reported on a robbery report may not have actually been taken. The couple moves a lot—different cities, different states—and there is a string of insurance claims with different companies in their wake. I’m going after their former friends to see if one of them will give me a lead on what is really happening with the items being reported stolen.

“Next item on the whiteboard—Larry Broderick. That is a real robbery case. Someone broke into his hardware store and stole several thousand dollars’ worth of inventory, including six handguns. Nathan has that case well in hand, so I’m trying hard not to step on his investigation. We both want the guns found, so it’s been a cooperative arrangement so far.

“The last cases on the whiteboard are smaller—Karen Elan is looking for a half sister she recently learned exists, Laura’s ex-husband is the one who gave me this shiner, and I’m working on a private item for Nathan.”

“They all sound much smaller than what I worked on recently.”

Bruce glanced over at her and laughed. “Did you work on anything less than a task force and a case that took a year of your efforts?”

She conceded that point with a good-natured shrug. “I had one case that we wrapped up in six months,” she offered.

“A record for the FBI. The cases on the whiteboard are big to the people involved. Remembering that helps.”

“How do you get cases? Do people come by the agency? Do you make inquiry calls on businesses that might have work?”

“You’ll find in a small town it’s not so formal. People will stop you at the hardware store, the diner, at the post office to mention a problem and ask for advice. Some will call and ask that you stop by. I’m content to sit back and let work come in at its own pace. I don’t want this to be a large and growing agency, Rae. I had my run at being decorated and famous when I was a cop, and I want something different.

“I keep the files for the active cases in the top drawer of my credenza. Feel free to read through them and make copies for yourself,” Bruce offered. “You’re welcome to help me with any of the cases that catch your interest.”

“I’d like that.”

* * *

Bruce closed up his paint can and pulled over a chair to take a break. “I’ve been thinking some more about Peggy Worth. What would you do if you were getting ready for a date?”

Rae didn’t have to think about it long. “Buy a new dress, shoes, visit my hairdresser, take time on my makeup, maybe get a manicure. Basically spend money and look great so if the date was a dud I would still feel like the time had been worth it.”

Bruce smiled. “I remember the time you took getting ready for a date, but I always appreciated the results. So which of those did Peggy do? If her date was cancelled, she would not have gone through the preparations. There should be something to indicate she actually went on a date—what the coroner says she had for dinner if nothing else.”

“Thanks for that image. And you have to figure Nathan has already asked those questions.”

Bruce shook his head. “His first question is more simple—does he need to pursue those questions? Unless the coroner says it’s a suspicious death, the case will be closed despite the open questions. It’s a fact of life when it’s the public paying for how the police spend their time.”

“Nathan thought he’d hear from the coroner on the toxicology results today. Do you think he would mind if I called him to ask the results?”