Home Free (14 page)

“My stories don’t tend to involve naked
mental images of your brother.”

“I don’t have a brother.”

“I think you see my point.”

It was barely ten o’clock, and the mall had
just opened, so parking was a snap. We took a spot a few steps from
the entrance to minimize sweat time and dashed inside. Since the
purpose of our visit today wasn’t to find a specific outfit, but
rather to lift our spirits, we started with the good stores,
Victoria’s Secret, Old Navy and Ann Taylor. If additional
counseling was needed, we’d include Macy’s and Nine West.

Five hours, three hundred bucks and a large
everything pizza later, I was in a great mood. I had bikini and
thong underwear in animal prints, floral prints and bright solids.
I had stretchy tank tops, stretchy t-shirts and colorful board
shorts. And I had a slinky, pale pink sundress that was definitely
dangerous, and a pair of little high heeled sandals to go with
it.

“Who’s that for?” Pauline asked when I took
the dress to the fitting room.

“What do you mean?”

“That’s a
fuck me
dress if ever there
was one. I’m just wondering who the intended victim is. Jack’s not
sleeping with you because he thinks you want Danny. Danny’s not
even speaking to you because he thinks you’re sleeping with Jack.”
She thought for a moment. “And because you think he shoots people.
Your husband lives three hundred miles away with the pool boy. So?
Who’s it for?”

I sighed. She was bound to find out anyway.
“Johnny Depp. We’re going to Cannes for the film festival, and I
need a new dress. Jack and Danny are just a smoke screen to keep
the paparazzi away.”

She gave me the disgusted eye-roll. “Did Rory
give you her phone number? I’m going to call her. I need a new best
friend.” She stomped out of the fitting room, and I tried not to
laugh too loud.

We were almost home, singing along to a Bruno
Mars CD when Pauline turned serious.

“Alex, I really like your brother. What do
you think’s going to happen?”

I knew she meant about the investigation, but
I didn’t want to think about that. “Judging by the lingerie you
just bought, I’d say everything is going to happen.”

“You know what I mean.”

I blew out a breath. “I don’t know, Paul. I
wish I did.” I thought again about Chambers. Who would have killed
him? He was a dealer, but small-time, so it wasn’t likely to have
been a drug deal gone bad. I felt certain, finally, that Danny
hadn’t killed him. The only other person I could think of with a
decent motive was Sherry. I seriously doubted she was the shooter,
and even if she had been, she definitely was not the arsonist. A
pro had set the fire.

We were approaching the gravel yard, and I
was having a thought.

“Pull over,” I told Pauline.

She jerked the Bug into the parking lot and
skidded to a stop on the gravel. “What for?”

I was looking at the black Lexus parked at
the edge of the lot, the one I’d noticed this morning. It was
covered with dust, but it looked pretty new. “Angela said she’s
seen a man in a pricey dark sedan at Sherry’s house, more than
once, she thinks. He was there yesterday morning. You think that’s
Junior’s car?”

Pauline followed my gaze to the Lexus and
gave me the
who the hell knows
face, and I hesitated,
chewing on my lip. “I was thinking maybe Sherry had another friend
who might’ve wanted Lonnie out of the picture.”

She stared at the car for a minute, and I
could see the lightbulb go on. “You think
Junior Salazar
was
screwing Sherry, got jealous of Chambers, and killed him?”
Skeptical didn’t begin to describe her tone.

It sounded stupid to me, too, when she said
it out loud. “I don’t know what I think. You coming?” I was already
out of the car. A wood and aluminum office structure separated the
parking lot from the gravel yard. There were enormous piles of sand
and gravel sorted by size, and dump trucks, forklifts and concrete
mixers criss-crossed the yard like ants on steroids. I eyeballed
the Lexus. Surely a car like that would be alarmed, I thought.

I gave a yank on the door handle, and sure
enough, the whoop, whoop, whoop of the alarm kicked in. There was
no way anyone other than Pauline and I could hear it, though, over
the deafening sound of several tons of rock being dropped from the
sorter into a dump truck.

“What are you doing?” she shouted.

I shrugged and motioned her into the office.
A hefty middle-aged woman in jeans and a red polo shirt that said
Salazar’s Sand & Gravel over the left breast sat at a desk on
the other side of the reception counter, stapling a receipt to a
work order. She glanced hopefully at the clock before looking over
at us.

“Help you?” She blew a stray piece of dark
brown hair out of her eyes.

“Hey, is that your Lexus out front? ’Cause
the alarm’s going off.”

“Shit,” she said, rolling her eyes. “My
husband’s baby.” She scooted her chair back, yanked a set of keys
out of the pocketbook next to her desk and lumbered gracelessy
around the counter. “I’ll be with you in a minute.” Crap. Not
Junior’s car. Still, I cheered myself with the thought that just
because the Lexus wasn’t his didn’t mean he
didn’t
have a
dark, expensive sedan and a penchant for unattractive junkies. I’m
a glass-half-full kind of person.

As soon as the staple lady was gone, I danced
around the counter to get a better look at her desk. A box of
tissues, the stapler and a stack of work orders occupied the left
corner. A giant calendar blotter covered with doodles took up the
middle. The computer keyboard and monitor were to the right, along
with a cup that said “Fuck off, it’s Monday” and evidently was used
to hold pencils rather than coffee. In the middle of the wall
behind her desk was a closed door with a sign that said
Private
.

“What are you doing?” Pauline hissed.

“Shut up and watch for her.” I opened the top
desk drawer. Pencils, nail file, paper clips. I shut it quickly and
heard a jangly sound. I reopened the drawer and fished my hand to
the back, closing on a set of keys. I slipped them into my purse
and turned around just as the woman came back into the office. I
snatched a tissue.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

I glared at Pauline and gave what I hoped was
a believable fake sneeze. “Sorry. Allergies.” I blew my nose loudly
and waved my hand around. “All the dust, I guess.”

She came around the counter towards her desk,
and I made my way back to the other side. “Ugh, tell me about it,”
she groaned. “Sometimes my eyes water all day long. So, what can I
do for you?”

“I was looking for Danny Salazar.”

“Oh, sorry, wrong brother. It’s Junior
Salazar who works here. Danny is a fireman. I think he’s stationed
at Company Three, over next to the mall.”

I smacked my hand to my forehead. “Of course.
Well, thanks a lot.”

She had returned the car keys to her purse
and was back at the stapling. “No problemo. Have a good
weekend.”

“What the hell was that about?” Pauline asked
when we were safely back on the road. “And why’d you take those
keys?”

I honestly didn’t know. “Forget about the
murder.” I was back to thinking in Jimmy C’s terms. “Who had the
best motive for burning the body shop?” I asked.

“Well, I suppose the owner could have done it
for the insurance money.”

“Yeah, but the insurance would only cover the
actual losses, which the paper said didn’t amount to all that much.
Jenkins was in negotiations to sell the whole thing to Junior, and
that would have netted him a helluva lot more money than the
insurance settlement.”

“Hmmm. Okay, what about Junior? I don’t think
I buy the jealous lover angle, but - ”

“Why not? People kill their romantic rivals
all the time.”

“Well, sure. But I saw the photo of the
nightwatchman in the paper. Only a seriously deranged woman would
stay with him if she could have Junior Salazar instead.”

I’d been in junior high the last time I saw
Junior around town. I was having a hard time picturing him. “He’s
hot?”

Pauline shrugged. “Not like Danny, but I
wouldn’t turn him down.”

“Remind me - exactly who have you turned
down?”

She gave me a snotty look. “I believe we were
discussing Junior’s possible motives for arsoning the body
shop.”

“
Arsoning
? Never mind. Jimmy C seems
to think that maybe Jenkins was threatening to raise the price and
Junior didn’t like it and set the fire to scare Jenkins into
backing off. That could make sense, but he said Junior wouldn’t
have known how to set the fire. Too sophisticated.” I thought a
second. “Come to think of it, I guess that would have to go for
Jenkins, too.” At least, Jimmy C hadn’t mentioned Jenkins having
any arsoning skills. That didn’t necessarily mean much, though.

“That’s why they think it was Danny?”

I nodded.

“But Junior’s been in prison for years, he
probably could come up with an arsonist if he needed one.”

I had thought of that, too. But something
like that would cost money. And I didn’t think Junior would just
make out a check to Joe Felon for a few grand and write “arson” on
the little memo line. It’d be cash. An idea was forming. Maybe it
would be cash from the yard, and there’d be some sort of ledger in
the office.

“You didn’t say why you took those keys.”

“I was looking for clues.”

Pauline snorted. “What are you,
Scooby-Doo?”

“Well, I could use a snack.”

Pauline dropped me off at home, saying she
couldn’t come in because she had to get ready for her date with my
brother. I got ready to make “lalala” sounds again, but fortunately
she didn’t elaborate.

“Hey, come over to the folks’ tomorrow
afternoon.” Before she could protest, I went on, “Kevin will be
there.”

She banged her head on the steering
wheel.

“Good. Two o’clock.”

Jack’s truck wasn’t in the driveway, and I
admit I felt a little lonely, so instead of going to my house, I
went next door to say hi to Debbie. She answered the door with oven
mitts on both hands and cats at both feet. Lucifer the stalker cat
was nowhere in sight.

“Alex, come on in.”

“Hey, Debbie. Just wanted to say ‘hi.’ You
busy?”

“Hunh-uh. Just making the weekly batch of
cookies. I can wrap a plate up for you to take home, if you
want.”

“Sure, that’d be great.”

She led me to her kitchen, and I resisted the
urge to scrawl messages in the dust on her furniture as we went.
Her house was the mirror image of mine, except without a pool. The
house originally had one, but one of her cats, either Hats or
Coats, I couldn’t remember which one, had fallen in and almost
drowned when she first moved in, so she’d had the pool filled in
and planted over, and now there was no indication that there’d ever
been one. I was thinking of Darwin, and it occurred to me any cat
that stupid didn’t deserve to live, but then I’d always been more
of a dog person, myself.

The other difference between our houses was
that Debbie appeared never to have thrown anything away, ever.
Boxes and piles and shelves overflowing with books and papers and
knickknacks filled every corner, and the pathways for walking were
as choked as my cholesterol-filled arteries would be in another
twenty years.

She was waving her mitts and complaining
about a woman who’d tried to buy Christmas stamps today, even
though they didn’t have Christmas stamps in stock yet, since it was
only July, for crissake, and I wondered what would happen if Debbie
ever went postal. I imagined baked goods flying and innocent
victims covered with flour, Debbie being hauled away by the cops,
her mitts cuffed behind her back, cats hissing and clawing at the
officers.

“Don’t you think?”

Crap, I hadn’t been listening for I didn’t
even know how long. She could have been talking about health care
reform, the latest in vibrator technology or the eighteen dead
bodies she’d buried in the swimming pool, for all I knew. Although
the last one seemed pretty unlikely. And I might be needing the
information on the second one, if my fortunes didn’t turn around
pretty soon.

“Hunh?”

“Cats. I was saying that they’re more
reliable than men, don’t you think?”

“Sure, but not as much fun.” Debbie was a
couple years younger than me, but she had
spinster
written
all over her. I made a mental note never to get a cat. And never to
visit Debbie again. I glanced at the clock on the stove. “Gee, I
didn’t know it was getting to be so late. I need to go finish up
some work.”

I felt a little guilty about lying when she
sent me home with two dozen of the best peanut butter cookies I’d
ever tasted. I brought in the mail, sorting it as I walked towards
my kitchen. I passed the middle bedroom and stopped short. It was
empty.

“Fuck, who the hell steals bedroom
furniture?”

I detoured back to the living room and took
inventory. Nope, everything was there. The office was intact. The
hallway floor hadn’t squeaked once.

Finally I made it to the master bedroom.
Narrow oak planks covered the floor. My bedroom furniture was
arranged just as I would have done it, with the bed up against the
wall looking out on the yard through the French doors. The dresser
was along the left wall, and the reading chair was in the corner,
next to a little walnut table I didn’t recognize. There was a note
on the table.

“Alex, Jack finished the floors and I moved
your furniture for you. The table is a housewarming present. Love,
Kev.”

I was touched and a little sad. There was
nothing left on Jack’s to-do list, and I had gotten used to having
him come and go at inconvenient times. I sighed. I was in bad shape
if my social life depended on unscheduled visits from the handyman.
I saw cats in my future.