Hoarded to Death (A Jamie Brodie Mystery) (12 page)

Quentin straightened up from the laptop. “I don't see anything in our inventory previous to the tenth century.” But he wouldn't look at me directly.

“Oh, that's too bad. One of our donors heard a rumor that there was a page from a ninth century manuscript available, but so far we haven't found anyone who knows about it.”

Eckhoff chimed in. “My employer – the donor – would be very interested in buying the piece for the university, if it could be found and authenticated. But so far we're not having any luck.”

Quentin looked even more nervous. “Maybe it was just a rumor.”

“Maybe. But my employer said her source was reliable.”

I shrugged. “Oh well. We have a few more dealers to visit.” I closed my notebook and slipped it back into my jacket.

Quentin had developed a few beads of sweat across his upper lip. “If this item did exist, theoretically speaking, how much would your employer be willing to spend?”

Eckhoff said, “We didn’t discuss a price range. It would depend on the item.”

I wanted to make sure Brashier stayed interested. “I do know that she's paid top dollar for several things the university has in its collection.” I pulled out the new business card with the special cell phone number on it. “If you do hear anything, even if it is just a rumor, would you let me know? Our donor is very eager to find this item, if it does exist.”

Quentin took my card. His hand was shaking a little. “I certainly will, Dr. Brodie. I certainly will.”

“I'd appreciate that. Thank you for your time.”

We left the shop and walked down the block to Eckhoff’s car, and got in. I asked, “Success, you think?”

“I think so. He definitely knows something. I bet you’ll be hearing from him soon.” Eckhoff grinned. “Good work. We may have to deputize you.”

The following Saturday was moving day for Kevin and Abby. Pete and I headed over to the apartment early. We wanted to get the big stuff and boxes moved quickly, so they could spend the rest of the day unloading boxes and getting the place arranged.

We started with the bigger furniture as Abby was tossing last-minute items into boxes. As we worked, I told Kevin about my sleuthing with Eckhoff the previous weekend. “So the last guy we visited is the one the cops suspect of knowing something, but he was the one the art theft unit recommended in the first place. So that’s weird.”

Kevin grunted. “Sounds like art theft needs a new expert. What’s the guy’s name?”

“Quentin Brashier.”

Kevin had been carrying one end of their mattress. When I said Brashier’s name, he suddenly dropped it. “
What
did you say?”

“Quentin Brashier. Why?”

Kevin stared at me. “That body we had, back in October, the night I had to leave right after dinner? It was found on the property of a guy named Quentin Brashier.”

I was temporarily speechless. Pete said, “No
shit
. There can’t be two guys with that name in LA, can there?”

“I doubt it. So now we have to figure out whether our body has a connection to your case?”

My brain kicked back into gear. “Maybe not. Maybe it’s just coincidence. Or maybe someone else dumped the body on Brashier’s property.”

Kevin shook his head. “If it’s coincidence, it’s a big one. I might buy a body dump, though. But if Brashier is actually your shooter, and not just looking to make big bucks…damn, this is a whole new can of worms.”

“Did you question him?”

“
Duh
, of course. Extensively. He claimed to know nothing about it, said he’d never heard of the dead guy. Clearly we’re gonna have to talk to him again. I’ll call Tim as soon as we’re done.” He picked the mattress back up, but didn’t move yet. “Does the name Michael Lindsey mean anything to you?”

“No, why?”

“That’s the name of the dead guy on Brashier’s property.” He tugged on the mattress and we started down the hall again. “Just covering all the bases.”

It didn’t take us as long as we thought it might to move everything. We then concentrated on getting all the boxes in the new apartment moved into the rooms where each belonged. We started to help Abby unpack boxes, but she shooed us out. "I want to do this so I'll know where everything is. You guys take a break."

We didn't argue. Pete decided that he’d go to the grocery store, since that was on our list of things to do today as well, then come back to pick me up. He left. Kevin grabbed a couple of beers out of the fridge. He and I found the patio furniture and moved it out to the balcony. It was just the two of us - a perfect time for me to talk to Kevin about Jennifer.

I nudged him with my foot. "I never told you how surprised I was when I saw Jennifer's apartment. I couldn't imagine you ever living there. Still can't."

He shook his head. "It wasn't full of crap when I lived there."

"Well, no, of course not. But even the complex itself. It just...it didn't look like your kind of place."

"It wasn't. But at the time, it was all we could afford. We couldn't find a place that was actually in West LA in our price range, and it was so convenient to Jennifer's school, it was going to save us a lot of gas money." He shrugged. "It was okay for a temporary thing. If we'd stayed together, we would have moved eventually."

I hesitated to ask this, but I wanted to know. "When did you know you'd made a mistake?"

Kevin shot me a look, but didn't comment on it. "After about six months. That's when the spending started."

"She'd never done that in college?"

"No. She was living on her parents' money then, and had to account for all of it. Once she was making her own money and had her own credit card, she went nuts with it."

"I know she grew up poor. Was she making up for lost time?"

"Yeah, I think that was part of it. Plus she saw her friends having nice stuff, and wanted to keep up."

"How much debt did she get into?"

Kevin sighed. "When we got divorced, we owed $68,000 plus on the credit cards that were in our names jointly. She had a couple of other cards in just her name - I assume they were at their limits too."

"
Fuck
." I had no idea it was that much. "How long did it take you to pay all that off?"

He gave me another look and took a drink before he answered. "I'm still paying it off."

That upset me. "Oh,
Kev
."

He was grim. "Yeah, I know." He shook his head. "Just proof of the old saying, you never really know someone until you live with them." His face relaxed a little. "Fortunately, Abby's the exact opposite. She doesn't spend a dime without talking to me about it first. I've told her she doesn't have to be that careful, but it's just the way she is. She doesn't do it because of my experiences."

"Yeah. Abby's awesome. You all think you'll ever get married?"

"I doubt it. Maybe when we're older. Although, if anything happened to me, I'd like her to get my pension, and we'd have to be married for that."

"Well, it's a lot less likely that anything's going to happen to you, now that you're detective."

"Yep. That's one of the reasons I did it." He gave me a sly grin. "I kind of like not getting shot at."

I laughed. "Yeah, I'd think that would be preferable."

We drank in companionable silence for a few minutes. I said, "I hate to keep bringing this up, but...I’ve been wondering if maybe Jennifer knew more than she's told about what was in those boxes."

"Huh." He thought about that for a minute. "Well, we know she's less than completely truthful sometimes. She never told the truth about how much money she was spending when we were together. If she thinks it's going to get her in hot water, she keeps her mouth shut." He laughed a little. "You’re suspicious of her, huh?"

"Um...yeah. She just doesn’t come across as 100 percent sincere."

"I know she doesn’t." Kevin glanced at me. "I know none of you thought much of her. Especially compared to Val. Jennifer could never hold a candle to Val, and she knew it. That's one of the reasons she didn't like being around the family."

"Yeah. I didn't realize, until I saw the apartment, that I'd never even been there."

"Well, no, you were in England most of that time."

"Yeah, but I came home a couple of times."

"You came home to Oceanside when you did, or to San Francisco if you were going home with Ethan. There wasn't any reason for you to come to LA then."

"No. Guess not."

"Anyway." Kevin finished his beer and stretched out on the Adirondack chair. "If I was Belardo and Eckhoff, I'd have another talk with Jennifer, just to make sure she wasn't leaving anything out. They're at an impasse otherwise, right? It couldn't hurt."

"Yeah. Maybe it’ll turn out that Jennifer knew Brashier somehow."

“Yeah. Speaking of which...” Kevin got to his feet. “I’d better call Tim. We’ve got to talk to Belardo and Eckhoff ourselves.”

So Kevin and Abby moved, and I was officially living with Pete. Of course we’d been living together for nearly six months, and everything had been great. But now there was no going back. And, of course, it was shortly thereafter that we had our first real argument.

Pete and I rarely argued. We agreed on all the big things: politics, religion, Star Trek vs. Star Wars (Star Trek, duh). We both liked the outdoors and all the activities that went with it - hiking, running, fishing. Since we both worked in academia, we understood each other's work issues and schedules. We both read a lot. We were both neat, but not obsessively so. We were both adventurous eaters. Pete cooked, I cleaned. We were a good fit for each other in most ways.

But we both had our little idiosyncrasies that drove each other crazy. I liked to read in bed, but Pete couldn’t sleep with a light on. I was apparently a blanket hog. Pete was pretty traditional when it came to sex, and would only top; I preferred more variety than that. And we were both younger brothers, so we'd learned the fine art of picking a fight.

The real problem, that Sunday before Christmas, was that it was raining. It had been raining for several days. In the Southwest, rain is good, and during the week I don't mind it. But the weekends are for being outdoors, and that's tough to do when the rain won't stop.

And two big guys, being stuck indoors in a 968 square foot space, is a recipe for problems.

We'd gotten through the morning okay. Pete had made a big breakfast, then cleaned up from that and started cooking again. He'd gotten a bunch of tomatoes at the farmers' market the day before and wanted to make homemade spaghetti sauce and probably other stuff to freeze. So he was happily ensconced in the kitchen. I, on the other hand, was restless. So, I cleaned the townhouse from top to bottom, moving furniture to vacuum behind it, dusting everything that didn't move, taking everything off the closet shelves and out of the closet floors to vacuum and dust. I unloaded the linen closet, which had gotten a little disorderly, and refolded and rearranged everything. I stripped the bed down to the mattress and washed everything. I washed all the towels and all the dirty clothes. I was on a roll.

The first thing that happened was that Pete came upstairs into our bedroom while I had everything pulled out of the closet and lying in the floor. He walked into the room and said, "Good God. You're putting all of this back, right?"

I stuck my head out of the closet (ha) and said sweetly, "Gee, no, I thought I'd leave it all here."

Pete glared at me. He pulled off the sweatshirt he was wearing and said, "Well, then, let me help," and tossed it onto the pile of shoes and suitcases that was blocking his path to the bathroom.

I muttered, "Smartass." Pete climbed over and around the pile, then stuck his hand back through the door and gave me the finger.

The second thing that happened was after I'd put everything away in the closet and had just finished scrubbing down the master bathroom. It had
never
been that clean. As soon as I'd finished, Pete came upstairs again, and went into the bathroom. He must have been drinking a lot of Coke. He went to the toilet and unzipped his jeans, and I yelled, "No! I just cleaned that!"

He looked at me like I'd grown a third eyeball. "It's not gonna stay clean forever, Alice. I've gotta take a leak."

"Well, at least let it be clean for more than thirty seconds. Go leak in the guest bathroom. And who the hell is Alice?"

"The maid on the Brady Bunch." He continued to prepare to pee.

I grabbed his arm and started pulling on it, which is probably not the best thing to do to a guy who's in the process of pulling his dick out of his pants. "Not in here."

"
Ow!
Hey!" He jerked his arm away from me. "What the fuck is the matter with you?"

"I
told
you. I just cleaned that. And you've got bad aim. And I'm not your damn maid."

"What!? I do not have bad aim! It's no worse than yours." He tucked himself back in and came back out of the bathroom. "I'm not letting you watch Clean My Hoard any more. You're turning obsessive."

"I am not."

"Are too." He left the room and went to the guest room.

I yelled out the door after him. "Am not!"

A faint shout from the guest bathroom. "Are too!"

Yeah, I know, real mature.

After I'd finished the master bedroom and bath, I headed for the guest room/office. I had to move the stuff off our desks to dust, so of course Pete came in again while I had everything that had been on his desk on the floor. That set him off. "What the hell are you doing?"

"I'm dusting your desk."

"You've messed everything up!" He bent over and started sorting through books and papers.

"I have not. I took everything off the desk in order, and I was gonna put it back in the same order, but now you've messed it up yourself."

"You should have asked before you started moving my stuff."

"Oh, so now it's
your
stuff. I thought everything was
our
stuff. And really? I should have to ask permission to dust your desk?"

"My
work
stuff isn't ours, you moron, any more than your work stuff is mine. I wouldn't go messing around on your desk without permission."