Drop Dead Beauty (17 page)

“Last I heard, Dawn’s new car got blown up. Have you found out who’s responsible? Don’t you even care?”

That stung. Of course she cared.

“Isn’t it the job of the police to find out who did it? Why does it fall on me?”

“Because, Sadie Novak, sometimes you’re more powerful than an overworked cop!” Dean shouted, waving his hands in the air. “You’ve got curiosity and tenacity and I’ve seen you blow a case wide open just by your own persistence!” Detective Petrovich added, “You know the only way to solve all the stuff that’s happening to you is to pull your head out of your ass and work on it!”

“Well, thanks, Dean. That almost makes me want to forgive you for calling me fat.” Sadie pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes for a minute. “Fine. I’m going to do a little more research on sleazy old Martin Brun the car salesman.”

His motivational speech sunk in and Sadie knew that her life had become a lot of loose ends that could only be tied up by her own blood, sweat, and tears.

Chapter 12

Petrovich left her alone to do some research, but first she texted Dawn:
Love you Sis. So sorry about what happened to your new car.

There was no response.

Next she Googled the car dealership site and clicked on Martin’s smiling business photo. A new page opened that talked about how long Martin Brun had been hocking cars and relieving the public of any extra cash. There was a link to Martin’s personal e-mail where web surfers were invited to send him their car inquiries. She’d already been told by Dean that the car salesman wasn’t tech savvy and had used Jane to handle e-mails. Sadie wondered who was taking care of those e-mails now.

She logged in to a generic e-mail account that belonged to her but had no connection to her own name or business. She’d opened the e-mail strictly for contests, spam, and for doing sneaky things like this. From this account she sent Martin a message. She told him that she was a friend of Jane’s who knew her from Jonelle’s Spa. After telling him she was sorry for his loss, she added she was in the market for a car. If he had anyone at all taking care of his e-mails, or had educated himself recently on how to use e-mail, Sadie was certain it wouldn’t take the salesman long to bite.

Next, she copied Martin’s e-mail address into her search engine to see if anything else cropped up. Lo and behold, she found herself scrolling through a list of old Craigslist ads. Based on every item that he’d sold over the last few months, she was betting he really was hard up for cash. Of the more recent items listed were his and hers bicycles, and in the ad Martin had given out an address for people to swing by and have a look during his garage sale two weeks ago.

Sadie jotted down the address and got up from her desk to find Dean.

“Didn’t Jane and Martin live together?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“He was selling stuff on Craigslist and the address he gave a couple weeks ago is in Bellevue.”

“Bellevue? The loser lived in Bellevue with his mother before he shacked up with Jane. I’m guessing that’s good ol’ mom’s address.”

“Did Jane own her condo?”

Dean nodded. “She bought it with the settlement from our divorce.”

“I thought so.” Sadie tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Do you think she left it to Martin in her will?”

“No.” The detective clenched his jaw and a small vein popped out on his forehead. “She left it to me.”

“Hold the phone.” Sadie tilted her head. “You mean to tell me she divorced you, moved in with her boyfriend, and never redid her will?”

“She redid it,” he explained. “She just kept me as beneficiary.”

“Why on earth would she do that? This doesn’t look good for you at all!”

“Do you think I don’t know that?” He tossed his hands in the air. “She’d been having second thoughts, okay? About me and her.”

“But she was the one who left you.” Sadie shook her head. “And she was living with Martin and you were marrying Jen. . . . Don’t tell me you two were thinking of getting back together.”

“I wasn’t. She was.” He offered her a wry grin. “What can I say? I’m a catch.”

“God, Dean. This makes things even worse! I mean, she kept cashing your support checks and she left you in her will? She should’ve just left a note in her apartment saying, ‘If I wind up dead then my ex did it for the money.’”

“I know it looks bad and that’s why nobody is bothering to look at anyone else on this!” Petrovich snarled. “That’s why I’m all over you to help me out here!”

Sadie blew out a long breath and told him she was going to shower and then take a drive to Bellevue to check out the address listed in the ad for the bikes—Martin’s mother’s place—after she dropped in at the lawyer’s office that called her earlier.

“Maybe I’ll even pop in and talk to Martin’s mom and see if he was up to anything suspicious.”

Dean was grateful that she was on his side, but Sadie got the impression he was starting to lose hope. If the situation were reversed, she knew the detective would do everything in his power to clear her name. Then again, he actually knew what he was doing when it came to detecting and she was just flying by the seat of her too-tight pants.

The lawyer was located in a congested strip mall between a QFC grocery store and a shoe outlet place. The receptionist for the lawyer had wildly teased hair and rocket-sized breasts that rested on her desk as she talked on the phone. After a few minutes, Sadie was ushered into a board room, where she explained her contract to a disheveled lawyer who looked a dozen hard years past retirement. He signed with a bored flourish before handing over the keys.

“Good luck,” he said to her. “I was out there once last year and the place smelled like a pile of dog crap and that was before she . . . you know. I hope you have nose plugs or something.”

“I use a filtered respirator for decomp scenes. It’s like a nose plug, only better.”

“Then you’re good to go.” He got to his feet and handed her a business card. “Once the place is spic-and-span, you give me a buzz and I’ll be happy to write you a check on behalf of my client’s estate.”

Sadie climbed back in her Scene-2-Clean van. She decided to go to the closest address first, and that was Martin’s mommy’s house in Bellevue. So as not to draw more attention to herself than necessary, she parked down the road. School must’ve been out for a professional development day because there were kids playing in yards and driveways up and down the street. She passed by a couple girls jumping rope and wondered if her child would be like those girls, energetic with pretty pigtails. Then she caught site of a girl sitting cross-legged on the grass picking her nose and realized it may be luck of the draw when it came to kids.

She walked up a weed-choked sidewalk to the front door of a brick two-story and rang the bell. The woman who answered wore a tent-sized purple muumuu and looked about ninety.

“What?” she croaked at Sadie.

“Um. I’m here about the ad for the bicycles.”

“They’re sold.”

The woman went to close the door. Sadie jutted her foot inside and stopped it.

“Mrs. Brun, I’m also an old friend of Jane’s.”

The woman pursed her lips and her face pruned into a hundred more lines. Then she opened the door wide.

“You can come in for a second.”

“Thank you,” Sadie said.

The living room smelled of mothballs and stale cigarette smoke. Mrs. Brun snatched up the TV remote and paused an episode of
The Young and Restless
.

“I never met any of Jane’s friends. Don’t know if that’s because she didn’t have any, or if it’s ’cause she was too embarrassed to bring them around.”

Mrs. Brun grunted as she lowered herself slowly onto the couch. Sadie took up a nearby chair.

“Jane was a, um, private person. I’d just recently reconnected with her online. We spoke mostly by Skype and e-mail.”

The old woman nodded to a laptop set up on a table not far away.

“Jane got me started on e-mail and Facebook. Martin still won’t use the thing. I even put the Craigslist ad online for him. It’s not so hard once you know how.”

“Well, I’m in town from California and missed the funeral so I guess I’m just looking for answers as to what happened.”

“What did you say your name was?”

“Liz,” Sadie said, deciding to go with the same alias she used with Martin. “I knew Jane from high school and last we talked she seemed really unhappy about something, so I planned this trip up to visit her and then she ends up dead.”

“I loved that girl like a daughter.” Mrs. Brun snatched up a tissue and dabbed at the tears sliding into the crevices on her face. “Loved her more than that lazy, no-good son of mine. What she ever saw in him I’ll never know.”

Sadie agreed wholeheartedly with that statement.

“I’m sure this has been hard on Martin too,” Sadie offered. “He loved her, right? Where was he when Jane was killed?”

“I’m guessing he was at work, sitting on his ass there doing nothing as usual.” Then she stopped herself. “Wait a second; maybe he wasn’t there. He called that stupid cell phone he bought me, but I never know how to answer the damn thing.” She dug the offending item out of a drawer in the end table and held it up to Sadie as proof. “By the time I find it in my bag, it always stops ringing and then I never know how to get the messages. Jane was going to show me how to text and stuff but that was before . . .” She sniffed and dabbed her eyes. “So that afternoon I was with my knitting group like I am every Thursday evening. Heard my phone go off in my bag and then one of my lady friends helped me by looking up who called. The number said he was at home. I called him back there and he told me about Jane.”

“So he was at home when he heard about her death?”

“Yes, but not here home. At Jane’s place, where he lived the majority of the time.”

“So he called you from Jane’s condo?”

“Yes, I think so.” She picked up the phone and started pushing buttons. “It would say on this phone if I even knew how to do that.”

“I can help you with that.” Sadie took the phone and scrolled through the history. There were very few calls listed and only one on the day Jane was killed. She read the number out to Mrs. Brun. “Was that Jane’s number?”

“Yes. So there you go. That’s where he called from. I guess he was waiting for her to come home. Of course, me and the knitters, we’d already heard about it on the radio. We didn’t know it was Jane, of course, but we heard about the shooting. That’s why I gave him hell for not calling me earlier. He said he was too overwhelmed by grief.” She rolled her eyes. “Too overwhelmed to share his grief with his own mother. Can you imagine? Such a dimwit that boy.”

Got that right.

“Everything I read said it was Jane’s ex who killed her. The cop.” Sadie shook her head. “That doesn’t sound right to me because she never seemed to have any hard feelings against him. I met Dean years ago and he seemed to treat her well.”

“True.” Mrs. Brun balled up the tissue in her fist. “She spoke fondly of him even to me. Guess we’ll never know what causes some people to snap. It was just a real shame things turned out the way they did.” She sighed. “I’m moving into a care home next month. I just can’t keep up with the place anymore. Jane was the kind of woman who would’ve come to visit me. Brought me chocolates. Had tea . . .” Fat tears leaked from her eyes. “Now I’m all alone.”

“But you have your son; surely he’ll come visit?”

“That boy can’t hardly wait for the dust to settle under my feet. All he wants is for me to be outta here so he can have the place to himself. Don’t know who’ll do his laundry for him then. I do it now. Jane did it before. The man is useless.” She shook her head ruefully. “He still stays at Jane’s some of the time, but that’ll be over soon enough.”

“Why doesn’t he just stay at Jane’s condo all the time? Is it too hard for him to be there now that she’s gone?” Sadie tried to sound sympathetic.

“Nah, that’s not it. Jane never got around to changing her will and she left the damn place to her detective ex.” She clucked her tongue. “Don’t know what’s going to happen to it now.” She opened the drawer to deposit the cell phone. “And look here.” She pulled out a key ring with a large brass letter
J
on it. “These here are Jane’s spare keys. She gave them to me to keep so I could water her plants when she and Martin went to Vegas last year. I guess I should turn them over to someone, but God knows who. . . .”

“Actually,” Sadie said quickly. “I could take care of that for you. The lawyer taking care of Jane’s estate is an old friend of mine and I was going to see him anyway, so I can give him the keys.”

“Oh. Okay.” The old woman handed them over to Sadie. “Guess a lawyer would know best what to do with them.”

Sadie quickly pocketed the keys.

“I’m just trying to wrap my head around the idea that she was killed by her ex.” Sadie shook her head. “Maybe all the reporters are wrong. Is there anyone else who’d kill her? Anyone else who she had a beef with?”

“Nobody I know of.”

“And she and Martin were doing okay together?”

“I know what you’re implying, and don’t think it hasn’t crossed my mind too,” Mrs. Brun said evenly. “But Martin has no balls and wouldn’t hurt a flea. And not because he doesn’t get angry, because he does. He’s all hot air and bluster and no gusto. Best thing he ever did was get hooked up with Jane. She was good to him. Made him a better man. A better son.”

Sadie thanked Mrs. Brun for her time and let herself out. The door had just closed behind her when the music from
Young and the Restless
cranked up. Although she felt sorry for Mrs. Brun, Sadie still hoped that she was wrong. She hoped Martin did have big enough balls to hurt Jane. Sadie was counting on it.

Spending time with Mrs. Brun made Sadie think about her own mom. She felt bad for blowing off dinner the other day. As she drove to her next stop, Sadie put her Bluetooth in her ear and dialed her mom at home.

“Hi, Mom. Just wanted to say sorry about not coming for dinner the other day. I’ve been working like crazy.”

“That’s what Dawn said. She also said you were feeling a little sick. Do you have the flu?”

“Um . . . maybe.”

“Well you heard your sister’s expecting again, right?” Mom demanded.

“Yes.”

“Don’t be going around her if you’re sick. It’s no fun being in your first trimester and coming down with a virus.”

“Yes, Mom.”

“And don’t visit me either because I’m helping Dawn out with little Dylan so she can get a few hours’ extra sleep each day.”

“Okay, Mom.”

“Did you hear that brand-new SUV John bought her actually burned to the ground? I tell you, they make things like crap these days! Thank God she wasn’t hurt!”

“Yeah.”

“Once you’re feeling better maybe you can chip in and help your sister too. It would be good for you to spend time with your nephew.”

“Yes, Mom.”

“I’ve gotta go. I’m on my way to Safeway,” Mom added.

“Okay, Mom. Have a nice day.”

“You too, dear.”

Sadie disconnected the call, feeling like she’d done her daughterly duty and now could safely avoid her mother for a couple more weeks. Next on her agenda was to call Rudie. Her call went to voice mail and she explained to him that the second conjure bag allowed her to see the ghost but not communicate at all. She added that she was off to a job site and would check in with him later.