Rob Cornell - Ridley Brone 01 - Last Call (9 page)

“Then why in the world would they leave everything to you?”

“Maybe they felt guilty.”

“Which is more than anyone can say of you, I suppose.”

I moved around her and into the house. She followed, I could sense her on my heels, but I didn’t look back, and I didn’t say a word. When I pushed out the front door, Sheila called my name.

I paused on the porch.

“There’s a clause,” she said. “A clause in the will.”

“What are you talking about?”

“They were very specific. If you neglected their wishes to continue running the
High Note
, I could use my own discretion in the matter.”

I turned slowly. “What matter?”

She still held her wineglass. Gray wisps of her hair had come loose from her bun. I noticed the red lines in her eyes and wondered if she was drunk.

“They instructed in the will that should I observe a lack of effort on your part toward running the
High Note
, I was to revoke the conditions of the will.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m to take it all away. The entire inheritance.”

My mouth must have hung open for some time. My tongue felt so dry and fat I could hardly swallow.

“Go ahead,” I said. “I never wanted any of it to begin with.” I strode off the porch, got into the car, and slammed the door.

“What happened?” Autumn asked.

Backing out, I spun the tires on the dirt drive and kicked up dust.

“I just got my life back.”

Chapter 7

I thought I could buy Autumn time with an excuse, but now it looked like I would need to make her disappear for a while.

About two hours after leaving Sheila’s, we pulled off a remote paved highway and onto another dirt path, this one snaking through dense trees for a mile before reaching a clearing.

The cabin sat at the far edge of the clearing. Beyond that, Burl Lake glistened in the moonlight. It wasn’t a large lake, but the whole thing and much of the land around it had belonged to my parents. Now it belonged to me. At least for a little while longer.

I parked on the gravel in front of the cabin and peered through the night. I hadn’t been to the place since I was seven or eight years-old. My parents had some theatre friends that had rented the place, though a few times Mom and Dad had left me with Sheila for a long weekend and had come here for intense song-writing sessions.

Autumn turned wedding ring around and around with the shaking fingers of her opposite hand. Neither of us had spoken on the trip over. When I climbed out of the car, she followed, and both of us ascended the steps to the sagging porch. Much of the wood had rotted. Black clumps of decomposed leaves from God knew how many Octobers huddled along the cabin’s façade. Even the wood siding had cracked, the natural finish spotted and warped by seasons of neglect.

I wondered when my parents had come here last. Why had they let it deteriorate?

“This will work for now,” I said and pulled the cabin’s keys from my pocket. It took a few guesses for me to find the right one to the front door.

When I swung the door open, a musty smell poured out on us so thick I could practically feel it ooze up my nostrils and into my mouth.

Autumn scrunched up her face and coughed.

Holding my breath, I said, “I’ll run in and open the windows.”

Autumn stayed on the porch while I charged into the cabin to open every available window and door to the outside. I tried the lights, and a few of them actually worked, including a floor lamp in the front room, and one of the two porch lights.

Back on the porch, I found Autumn sitting on the steps. Lightheaded from holding my breath, I staggered over and plopped next to her.

The chirping crickets seemed to surround us, the sound everywhere. Probably a nest of them inside the cabin.

“Is this really happening?” Autumn asked.

I would have liked to tell her it wasn’t. Against my better judgment, I put my arm around her. She snuggled in next to me, rested her head on my shoulder.

“It doesn’t seem real,” she said.

I remembered the call from Sheila telling me Mom and Dad were dead. It had been so long since I’d seen them, they were so far away, they didn’t seem like actual people anymore, just actors playing roles in my memories.

“It will,” I said.

“I don’t think I can take it.”

I hugged her tighter. I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t help it. I wanted to take care of her. “You’ll be all right.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

I reached up, cupped her chin and forced her to look at me.

“I will make sure you get through this.”

She tried a smile, but it didn’t stick. Her hand slid along my thigh, gripped my knee. “What are you going to do?”

“I’ll go back to the house, call Tom, tell him I was looking for you, and found …”

“Tom’s going to want to know where I am.”

“Yes. He will.”

“He won’t believe you don’t know.”

“He won’t have a choice.”

A breeze hissed through the trees. For an instant I was eight, playing with my G.I. Joe action figures on the steps. My mother sat on the cabin’s porch, strumming her acoustic guitar and humming, then pausing while she scribbled lyrics into a spiral notebook.

I shook the memory and stood. “I should get back.”

I walked to the car, popped the trunk. We’d stopped at a grocery on the way for some supplies—bread, peanut butter and jelly, a six-pack of grape pop. I pulled out the grocery bag and carried it to the porch. “Plug in the fridge when you can stand to go in. It should still work. You might want to eat something now, just in case. Either way, I’ll bring more stuff when I can get away.”

Autumn took the bag from me.

“And don’t call anyone,” I said. “In fact, turn your cell off. It’s conceivable Tom could get a warrant and use it to track you.”

“I should at least call Daddy. He’ll be worried.”

“The less he knows, the less he can be implicated in any of this.”

“What about you?” she asked. “You could get in trouble.”

“I already am in trouble.” I couldn’t stop myself, and brushed her hair back behind an ear. The feel of that ear’s top edge alone brought back dozens of images, sensations, and smells. “You are a lot of trouble.”

My hand lingered by her ear. She took it.

“Forgive me?”

I pulled away without answering.

As I drove off, I glanced in the rearview and saw her standing on the porch steps, grocery bag tucked in one arm. I couldn’t believe she was a killer. I refused to believe it, even while I knew how dangerous that refusal could be.

Quiet filled Autumn’s house like an engulfing energy. Every step I took sounded three times as loud. Every creak of a floorboard or crinkle of a kitchen tile underfoot plucked my nerves like guitar strings.

Creeping through the kitchen, I could smell the death even thicker now. Doug remained hung over the coffee table. The blood had stopped flowing, but the way it had painted itself across the surface of the table and down along the edges gave it a sense of perpetual motion. Doug himself looked more like a gory wax sculpture from a fun house than a once living human being.

I moved into the living room, stopped two feet away from Doug’s body, and bent over to get a closer look.

The bullet had chewed a good-sized hole into his back, just to one side of the spine. The blood and tissue had congealed, giving the wound a plastic look.

Neither a doctor nor a forensic scientist, I gave up examining the body and started trolling the house. I didn’t want to waste too much more time. Tucking Autumn away at my parents’ cabin was a rough fix at best, and wouldn’t hold up for the long run.

I scanned the house quickly, upstairs and down. I didn’t know what I was looking for. Something weird. Out of place. Maybe a gun lying around with some fingerprints on it. If I had to handle anything, I used my jacket sleeve as a makeshift guard against leaving prints. Undoubtedly, my prints were already on some surfaces from earlier visits, like on the coffee table. I didn’t want to raise any questions by leaving some on harder to explain surfaces, like the dresser in the bedroom.

I got a glimpse of Doug’s underwear drawer—he wore tightie-whities—found where Autumn kept the good china, and learned that neither one of them cleaned behind the toilet. Other than that, the search turned up a big Zippo. I found myself back in the living room, turning in circles, trying to decide if there was something I’d missed.

One thing I didn’t find was any sign of forced entry or a struggle. From the looks of it, I wasn’t even sure Doug knew the shot was coming. One might deduce the killer was already in the house, that Doug knew the person, and that he felt comfortable turning his back on them. This, of course, only bolstered the theory that Autumn had done the deed. But where was the gun?

I crossed to the sliding glass door that led to the back porch. The vertical blinds were already drawn aside. Hand in my sleeve, I tested the door. It slid open easily.

Maybe the killer had snuck in through the sliding door.

Maybe a lot of things. I didn’t have time to work up a theory of my own on the spot. I trudged back toward the kitchen, hand reaching into my pocket for my cell, when I spotted the glint of metal by the couch. I crept over for a closer look, stepping around Doug, and crouched. Just under the skirting around the bottom of the couch I found a set of keys, as if Doug had dropped them when he fell, and they had tumbled under the couch.

Was he on his way out when he got shot?

I lifted the skirting. The keys had a weird-looking fob on the ring—a plastic rectangle with what looked like a plug at one end.

I picked up the keys, not bothering to use my sleeve because I thought I knew what I was looking at and didn’t intend to leave it behind. I examined the plug-end of the key fob and confirmed my suspicion. The plug would fit into a USB jack on a computer. Flash drives, or jump drives, they called them. A mini hard drive you could carry with you and stick into any computer to access the files. I’d never had one or seen one used, but I’d heard of them, and it reminded me of how strangely clean Doug’s computer had been.

I pocketed the keys without another thought.

Satisfied that my snooping had actually turned something up, I drew my cell phone and checked my watch. Just after five in the morning. I thought my fatigue-blurred eyes were screwing with me until I glanced out the window and saw the sky had lightened.

I dialed Tom, my thumb a little shaky on the keys.

His voice sounded hoarse when he answered, as if I’d woken him. “Ridley?”

I set my jaw and made the leap. “Looks like I should have listened to your warning.”

Then I lied to my friend.

I stood on the driveway watching crime scene techs file into Autumn’s house, lugging their equipment. I was a private detective. Murder scenes were never my thing. The closest I’d come was
Law and Order
marathons, one syndicated episode after another. Addictive, that show. But no matter how realistic they might try to make it, nothing came close to seeing a real murder victim yourself.

My eyes had a sleepy crust in them. My back and neck ached. My stomach felt hollowed out.

Standing next to me, Tom had the capped end of a pen clamped in his teeth like a cigar while flipping open and closed the steno pad in his hands. “Explain again how you happened into the house when no one answered your knocking?”

“We were supposed to meet,” I said, trying to sound as bored and annoyed as possible. “When she didn’t come to the door, I got worried. I tried the knob. Unlocked. In I went.”

Tom stared at his pad, brow wrinkled. “Don’t give me the attitude. This is bad news. I should arrest you.”

“On what grounds?”

“On being a stupid asshole for not listening to me when I told you to stay away from her.”

I tried to rub some of the sleep out of my eyes, using the time to come up with another piece of the lie. “Fair enough.”

“So you, the concerned citizen, let yourself in and find Mr. Chodakowski… damn, that’s a mouthful. You find him on the coffee table. What next?”

“Next? I called you.”

“Just like that?”