Home Free (19 page)

“Just so you know, ten-thirty is not the
crack of dawn. And his roommate was home.”

“And your apartment is, what, being
fumigated? Infested with rats? Condemned?”

She shrugged. “You have a pool.”
“Doesn’t everybody?”

She shrugged again. “Yours is private.”

Right.

“Why do you have pictures of Brian’s car?”
Kevin sauntered out from the office, photos in hand.

I sat up so fast I knocked Pauline’s coffee
off the table, the mug sailing halfway across the room. “What?”

“These pictures. Why would you want to take
pictures of Brian’s car?”

“How do you know it’s Brian’s car?” My brain
was still sludgey with hops, I couldn’t figure this out.

“Duh, because these are his plates.”

“
Muscle Man
? Are you
kidding me?” Talk about false advertising. Brian’s five-eight,
weighs about a hundred and fifty pounds and has never picked up a
dumbbell in his life. Muscles were Neanderthalish and beneath him,
I was sure.

Kevin smacked me on the head with the
pictures. “Music Man, stupid.”

“Say what?” No one in my family can carry a
tune in a bucket, including the otherwise faultless Brian.

“His wife? Melody? Jesus, Alex, how much did
you drink last night?”

“Her name is
Melody
. Right. Musical
Man. Okay, I’m with you.” More clever thinking on Brian’s part.
Music Lemon would’ve been cleverer, though.

“So what’s with the photos?”

“I just needed a license plate for a design
I’m working on. I didn’t need his license plate, but his was the
cleanest one on the street when I went to take a photo. I scanned
it and I’m going to play around with it,” I lied. My brain was
sending signals to my mouth, but I was still reeling.

I took the photos from Kevin, went to the
office and put them in my desk drawer. I stared out the window for
a minute, dejected. I realized it had been unreasonable to hope
that any car parked at Sherry’s had something to do with the
murder. My car had been parked there, for pete’s sake, and I was
pretty certain I hadn’t killed Chambers. My memory wasn’t that bad.
I’d just latched onto expensive car guy because I was desperate to
help Kevin and Danny.

I guessed Brian had been at Sherry’s for the
same reason I had, to get information that would clear Kevin. Or
maybe he’d been out pressing the flesh for the upcoming election.
That seemed more likely, somehow.

Jack’s truck was in the driveway next to my
car, and Kevin’s Deuce was parked in front of my house behind the
gray Escort, and the Shirtless Wonder was in his driveway,
half-clad and poking around at one of the Camaro bodies, making
sure it was really dead, I guessed. I closed the office door and
dialed Mikey’s home number.

“Salazar,” he growled.

“Jeez, you were friendlier last night when
you were threatening me with the forty-five.”

“I just had my daily visit from Minter’s
finest.”

“Anything new?”

“They’re still fishing. But they’re getting
tired of waiting. I think they’ll arrest Danny and Kevin in the
next few days, with the hope that that will get me to confess.”

“But you didn’t do it.” I had decided I
believed him about that.

“I’m aware of that.”

I had a thought. “You think they’re tapping
your phones?”

“I think you watch too much TV. This is a
small town with no money. There’s no budget for things like
wiretaps, and besides, they may have circumstantial evidence
against Danny, but they’ve got nothing on me except speculation and
small-mindedness. Usually takes more than that to get a warrant for
any kind of surveillance.”

“Hunh.” He seemed to know a lot about legal
stuff. I guessed he’d had a lot of time to read over the past
fifteen years, and he hadn’t spent it on comic books.

“Alex?” I could hear the hint of a smile.

“Yeah?”

“Was there a reason for this call, or did you
just miss the sound of my voice?”

Now that I thought about it, he did have a
pleasant voice. Not an orgasm-on-the-front-porch kind of voice, but
fortunately, those are pretty rare. I imagined housewives running
to the door to greet the UPS man, casseroles burning, children left
unattended, playing with matches, running with scissors...

“Alex? You there?”

“Oh, right. Hey, I think I know who that car
belongs to.”

“Jesus, who?”

“My brother.”

“
Kevin
?”

“The other one, Brian. I’ll find out for sure
tomorrow and let you know.”

“He have any particular business that would
take him to Sherry’s place?” A polite way of asking if he was a
junkie or murderer, I guess. Obviously, he’d never met Brian.

“Nah,” I said, still bummed that expensive
car guy turned out to be a dead end. “He’s running for office. I
guess he was either campaigning or looking for information to help
Kevin.”

“Damn. Well, give me a call when you know for
sure.” Mikey was obviously bummed about the dead end, too.

I hung up and stared out the window some
more, hoping for inspiration.

I wasn’t inspired yet when I was interrupted
by a knock at the door. Pauline poked her head inside.

“There’s steam coming out of your ears.”

“I was trying to figure something out.”

“Well, it’s clearly not working. Take a
break. It’s the weekend. Come relax by the pool like the old
days.”

I was thinking that in the old days, we
didn’t relax by the pool with my brother. I thought maybe I was
jealous, but I couldn’t figure out if I was jealous about sharing
Pauline with my brother, or about sharing my brother with Pauline,
or about sharing my house with the whole lot of them, or if I was
just mad because they had each other and I didn’t have anybody.
Probably a little of each, I decided. My phone rang, but the caller
was blocked so I didn’t bother to answer it. I sighed and shuffled
to my room to change into a swimsuit, then headed out to the pool.
Pauline had persuaded Jack to take a break from the wiring, and he
was swimming laps. Lucifer was sitting next to the pool, licking
his paw and watching Jack like some sort of feline lifeguard.

I considered calling Danny but decided
against it. Things seemed to have improved somewhat between us, but
probably he didn’t want to come over and hang out with Murphy. I
took a lounge chair and arranged it so the sun would ruin my skin
evenly and then arranged myself to look as thin as possible in my
swimsuit. I sucked in my breath so I wouldn’t have a roll around my
stomach. I sighed and blew out the air. That would never work.
Sooner or later, I was going to have to breathe. Lucifer gave up on
Jack and leapt on the foot of my chaise. I gave him a pat with my
foot, and he purred and closed his eyes.

Jack surfaced and climbed out of the pool,
ignoring the steps and the stack of towels Pauline had brought out.
He flopped on a lounge, then shook his head like a wet golden
retriever, droplets flying. Lucifer opened one eye and glared in
Jack’s direction.

“You have a pool guy?” he asked.

Not in the way that Max has a pool guy, I
thought. “Yeah, the old owner gave me the name of the service she
had used.”

“My brother-in-law has a pool service. He’ll
give you a really good deal.”

“Will he also want to live here?”

He flicked water at me and smiled. “You’d be
lonely without us.”

I heard the back door open and waited to see
who would appear. Maybe Debbie with more cookies. Jack and Kevin
had finished off the batch from Friday, and I could use a cookie.
Nothing like feeling depressed about how I looked in a swimsuit to
stimulate my appetite.

“Hey, Alex.” It was Angela. “I rang the bell
and no one answered, but since I saw all the rides out front, I
figured you’d be back here. Hope it’s okay.”

I introduced her to my entourage, and she
made some assumptions of her own.

“Let me guess. You’re the big-ass truck,” she
said to Jack, who grinned as proudly as if he’d given birth to the
stupid thing. “And you’re the Hog,” she continued, nodding to my
brother.

“You’re batting a thousand,” he told her.

“And I know Alex drives the funky orange
thing,” she turned to Pauline, “but you don’t look like a boring
gray Escort to me. More like a Bug, or one of those funny little
Mini Cooper things.”

“Wow, not bad. She’s attached to the Harley
these days, but she does drive a Beetle. It looks like a ladybug. I
don’t know who that ugly Escort belongs to. It’s out there for a
while every day, but I haven’t seen the driver yet. Probably a
friend of the meth lab’s.”

I got up and wrapped a towel around my waist
and escorted Angela into the office.

“Thanks a lot for taking these,” I said,
taking the license plate photos out of the desk drawer and
inspecting them again. “What time was it there?”

She shrugged. “In the morning agains.”

She flipped on the computer, and I pulled a
file off the credenza and laid it in front of her on the desk. “So,
about that humongous truck - ?”

“Christ, you’re not old enough to ask that
question!” Honestly, kids these days. “Anyway, we’re just friends.
He’s the contractor I told you about.” I flicked the folder open to
show her what I’d done with the raisins, and she read over the
notes I had taken on the requirements for the brochure. I opened
the Illustrator file that I’d called
Leisure Land Brochure
,
in my clever naming system, and saved a copy of it as
Angelas
Raisins
.

“Here, these old people are killing me. Play
around and see what you come up with. Use the tutorials if you
don’t know what else to try. If I use your ideas, I’ll pay
you.”

“Cool.”

“I’ll be outside. Take a break and join us
whenever you feel like it.”

Angela glanced at her watch. “I probably
won’t have time. I’m going to a movie with Kyle after football
practice.”

“Football practice? On a Sunday? In this
heat?”

“They practice twice a day in the summer.
Last year, this kid in Fresno keeled over from the heat. Died right
on the field. People were up in arms, so now the coaches have to
let the players have a five-minute water break every half
hour.”

“Oh yeah, I’m sure that’ll take care of it,”
I mumbled, walking away. After all, I can be endearing, too.

I stopped by the kitchen to make a pitcher of
iced tea on my way outside. A magnetic business card for Main
Street Pizza pinned a note to the refrigerator. The magnet was
mine. The note said DID YOU MISS ME? in the same sparkly rainbow
letters as the welcome home note from the other night, and I’d
never seen it before. I made the tea, then sorted through the
trashcan for the first message and took the pitcher and both notes
outside with me.

“So, who’s leaving me love notes?” I asked,
pouring tea for all of us.

“Where’d you get those?” Kevin asked.

“Duh, isn’t that what I just asked?”

Lucifer had taken my seat, so I gave him a
shove. He jumped off the lounge and stalked away, tail straight up
in the air, twitching at the tip, clearly indignant.

I looked at Pauline. She shook her head no.
“Yeah, I have time for that. Besides, it’s kind of weird and
creepy.”

I hadn’t thought that till she said it, but
now I was creeped out too. I looked at Jack hopefully. He held up
his thick-fingered hands.

“Right. I could use a chainsaw to carve a
sign that said that, but if I tried to work with those little
stick-on letters, they’d be all over me.” That was a funny visual,
Jack naked except for sparkly letters, and the creepy feeling went
away. I decided someone was playing a joke on me, and I put the
notes away in the junk drawer on my next trip to the kitchen, when
I went to make a pitcher of margaritas.

The four of us spent the day sprawled by the
pool, talking about everything and nothing. The weatherman had been
right about it cooling off, and it was a beautiful day, sunny and
toasty, but not scorching. The sky was blue and there were soft
fluffy clouds and it was hard to think of bad things happening
anywhere, let alone in my own family. Sometime around noon, Pauline
suggested margaritas to celebrate Kevin’s ownership of the bike
shop, and they drank them by the blenderful. I passed, thinking
that one hangover per weekend ought to be my limit.

I checked out the computer screen after
Angela left for her date. She’d cut the heads off the geezers,
attaching some of them to other geezers and floating some of them
in the pool. Funny, but I didn’t think I’d have to part with any of
my own money on this particular project.

“Where’s your child labor?” Kevin asked as I
flopped onto my stomach on the lounge, my face buried in the crook
of my arm. I was bothered by the vague notion that hanging around
in the sun may have had something to do with turning the senior
citizens into raisins. I figured it wouldn’t be as noticeable if
only my back was wrinkled.

“I think
minion
is the politically
correct term,” Pauline threw in.

“Angela, my
assistant
, had a date.
Kyle somebody. You know they have football practice on Sundays?
When it’s four thousand degrees outside? What’s up with that?”

“Boy, you
have
been gone a long time,”
Jack offered. “It’s football, muffin. Serious business. Minter High
lost in the semifinals of the state tournament last year. I’m
surprised the coach doesn’t have the team locked down in bunkers
where he can force-feed them psych-out strategies and playbook
variations.”

“Don’t forget the ‘protein shakes,’ Kevin
snickered, using air-quotes around protein shakes. Jack and Pauline
guffawed, and I scowled, confused. I hate when I’m not in on the
joke.

“Protein shakes?” I wondered.