Swept Up (16 page)

 
I found the bra that matched the panties under the sink.

 
Personally, I didn’t want to know why there was a bra under the sink.  Maybe Mr. Banning had a dishwashing fetish and the mystery naked woman helped him out?  The mental image was disturbing.

 
I knew walking into the place that Mr. Banning liked women.

 
It said so on his file.  Right after BWP/wL it said
DOG.

 
That’s our code for he liked women a lot and liked a lot of them.

 
Yes, Mr. Banning is a dog...a letch.

 
But he never bothers the staff, so it didn’t bother us.

 
Mac’Cleaners is an equal opportunity employee.  We stake our reputation on good service and discretion.

 
This job was going to require a lot of discretion on my part.  I wondered if Theresa’s illness had anything to do with knowing that Mr. Banning’s place was this bad and that she’d have to clean it up?

 
Kitchen done, I moved onto and finished the bathroom as well.  Then I folded a load of laundry and put another one in the dryer.  With the job almost done, I was getting excited about shoe shopping, which in LA is a unique treat.  So many shoes, so few feet.  I headed to Mr. Banning’s bedroom.

 
If his living room was a pit, I really didn’t want to know what condition his bedroom was in.  Knowing that all that stood between me and some Santee Alley bargain shopping was this bedroom, I opened the door, took all of one step in and...screamed.

 
It wasn’t a frustrated scream.

 
It wasn’t even a this-guy-is-such-a-pig sort of scream.

 
No, it was more like a there’s-a-bloody-dead-body-on-the-bed sort of scream.

 
Loud, long and more than a little crazed.

 
I wanted to keep screaming and run right out of the house, but I managed to get myself under control.  The killer had to be long gone, or else he—or she—would have attacked me as I cleaned.  I was safe.  I couldn’t say the same for poor Mr. Banning.

 
I reached in my back pocket, pulled out my cell phone and called 911.

 
“You’ve reached Los Angles emergency dispatch.”

 
“I need help,” I blurted out.

 
“What is the nature of your emergency?” the man on the other end of the phone asked.

 
“Mr. Banning’s dead.  There’s blood on his head and his eyes are open.” 

 
Those eyes were going to give me nightmares for the rest of my life.

 
“Your address ma’am?”

 
“I’m at, he’s at—” I had to think a moment, but then I somehow pulled his address from the fog that was my mind and blurted it out.

 
“Who are you?” the operator asked.

 
“I’m the maid.  Quincy Mac.” 

 
Now, some people prefer the term domestic engineer, or some fancy title.  I call it like I see it.  I’m a maid.

 
I had no idea why I thought of what to call myself at that moment.  Maybe it was nerves.  After all it’s not every day I find a dead client. 

 
Thinking about my job description was easier than thinking about those eyes and all that blood.

 
“Ma’am are you sure he’s dead?”

 
“I don’t think there’s any way someone could look that bloody and blue and still be breathing.”

 
This was the ultimate topper to my day from hell.

 
A dead man in the bedroom.

 
As I talked to the operator, I walked outside.  Not really walked, trotted.  I moved fast.  I mean, no way was I staying in a house with a dead guy.

 
I was thankful for my cell phone as I stepped out onto the bright sidewalk. 

 
Perfect.

 
All that LA sunshine made it hard to believe that someone was dead a short distance away.

 
The emergency operator continued asking me questions.  The company’s name, my name and address, etc...

 
Personally, I sort of zoned out.  I think I answered him all right but couldn’t be sure.

 
Actually, I didn’t want to be sure.

 
I just wanted to go home. 

 
The police arrived, followed by an ambulance.  They stopped and talked to me a minute, then hurried off to check on Mr. Banning. 

 
I wondered how long I had to wait around.

 
I wanted to go home now.

 
I mean, I didn’t even want to hunt for the perfect pair of bargain shoes or stop for Ben and Jerry’s.  That just shows how hard I’d been hit by this.

 
Anytime a woman passes up Ben and Jerry’s or new shoes...well, it’s moved beyond a bad day and turned into a found-a-dead-body-on-the-bed sort of day.

 
I was wondering if I could just sneak out.  The authorities had my information already, so they didn’t need me.  But then
He
walked up to me.

 
He
was tall, lean and oh-so-yummy.  Dark hair with just a touch of grey at the temples.

 
Not one of LA’s boy-toys who are a dime a dozen.

 
No, this was a real man walking toward me like some hero out of a movie.

 
Maybe he was here to take me away from all this.

 
Maybe he’d seen me from across the street looking fragile, yet still beautiful.

 
Okay, so beautiful was a bit unattainable.  I’d settle for fragile and cute.  Yeah, I could pull off cute on a good day and I felt very, very fragile at the moment.

 
Ah, my hero.

 
I sucked in my baby-pooch, pulled out my old acting class skills and concentrated on looking even more fragile and cute.  It worked.  He walked right up to me, shot me a concerned look, then...he flashed a badge. 

 
I realized that his concerned look was more of an assessing look.

 
My hero was a cop.

 
Okay, so maybe
He
was a cop who was concerned because I looked so fragile?

 
“Ma’am?  You’re,” he flipped open his little notepad in a very Adam-12 sort of way, and that particular mental-analogy really dated me I realized morosely as he finished, “Quincy Mac?”

 
“Yes.”  I thought about fluttering my eyelashes but decided to give up before I embarrassed myself. 

 
“You’re the one who found Mr. Banning and called 911?”

 
“Yes.”  I wanted to say more, so much more.  But even a gorgeous knockout cop couldn’t make me forget I’d just found a dead body, at least not for long.  And thoughts of Mr. Banning, sitting on his bed, covered in blood with his eyes open, well, that sort of froze the words in my throat.

 
“The officer over there said that the house has been pretty much wiped clean.”

 
I had professional pride in my job well done.  “Not
pretty much
, all the way.  Other than the bedroom, which I didn’t clean for obvious reasons.”

 
The cop quirked his eyebrow.  “He said the bedroom was wiped clean as well.”

 
I think the hunky cop just called me a liar. 

 
Actually, I didn’t just think it, I could see it in his eyes.  The man actually thought I’d gone into a room with a dead body in it and cleaned it up?

 
My attraction to him slipped more than just a notch.  It evaporated.

 
“Not by me,” I assured him.  “I took one look at the body on the bed, called 911 as I got the heck out of there.  I guarantee that I didn’t stop to clean the room first.”

 
“But you admit you cleaned the rest of the house?” the cop asked.

 
“Of course I admit it.  I’m the maid.  That’s what they pay me to do.  Don’t you think that if I’d have known someone had died, I’d have simply called the cops first?  If you’d seen what a state the house was in when I arrived, you’d know I’d have welcomed an excuse not to clean it. But I did clean it and I did a fine job of it.” 

 
Cleaning houses is an honest profession.  I might have been a bit befuddled, but even in my present state I wasn’t going to let some cop make me feel less than the professional that I am.

 
He didn’t answer my question.  He simply asked, “And the other officers said there were footprints you steamed off the carpet?”

 
“Yes.  I’m good at what I do.  When Mac’Cleaners cleans a house, it’s totally clean.”

 
“Ma’am, the coroner says that Mr. Banning probably died sometime last night.”  He paused a moment and sort of gave me a hard stare with his charcoal grey eyes.

 
That stare did things to me...my knees felt rather weak and my heart rate sped up.  I don’t think it was shock. 

 
Lust.

 
That’s what it felt like.

 
I hadn’t had a good case of lust in a while.  But I was pretty sure that I remembered how if felt and this was it.

 
“Quincy,” he said, soft and low.

 
Yes
, I wanted to say. 

 
Oh, yes
.

 
I’ve read that when someone experiences death they want to make love just to prove they’re still alive, to prove that they can still feel something.

 
I think my lust for this cop went deeper than just a need to prove I was alive.  It might have been a need to prove I still had a libido, but mainly I think it had something to do with a long, hard orgasm.

 
I was almost forty and I’d read enough magazine articles to know that meant I was reaching my sexual prime.

 
Only it had been a long time since I’d been primed.

 
This guy was making remember how much I enjoyed a good priming.

 
“Yes,” I said out loud.  Hoping he’d say,
let’s forget about the dead body and get you home to bed
.

 
Oh, yeah.  I wanted him to tuck me in, then tuck himself right next to me.

 
Naked.

 
“Quincy,” he said again, “by any chance you have an alibi for last night?”

 
“An alibi?” I squeaked, all lust-filled thoughts fleeing from my head.

 
Alibi?

 
Rats. 

 
I knew what that meant.

 
I watch
Law and Order
,
Law and Order SVU
, and
Law and Order Criminal Intent
.  Is that all?  I might be forgetting one, but that’s understandable, given my circumstances.

 
Oh, and I watch
CSI
. 

 
All that television meant I knew that cops didn’t ask witnesses for alibis.

 
They asked suspects for them.

 
I was a murder suspect.

Check out Book #1
Steamed: A Maid in LA Mystery

Quincy Mac is a maid in LA--a maid who's accidently cleaned a murder scene.  Now she's a murder suspect with only one option--find the real murderer before she ends up in jail for a crime she didn't commit.  Quincy came to LA looking for fame and fortune. What she's found is infamy and misfortune. There's a killer out there, and Quincy's going to them...or die trying.

Did you miss Quincy’s second book,
Dusted
: A Maid in LA Mystery
?
Here’s an excerpt:
 

I looked in the mirror and felt nothing but…horror.

 Orange? 

 
I have never owned any orange clothes, so I must have suspected all along that orange might not be my color, but looking in the mirror, I was positive—orange was soooo not my color.

 
Frankly, I don’t know that orange is anyone’s color.  I mean, Tiny could keep calling it
rustic pumpkin
until the cows came home, but the fact of the matter was, my maid-of-honor dress was orange.

 
The other fact of the matter was, I looked like giant pumpkin.

 
“Quincy Mac, you are absolutely stunning.”  Tiny’s voice was all breathless  wonder.

 
The last two weeks she’d gone from wedding-itis to full blown wedding-fever.  Everything she said was breathless. 

 
Breathless wonder. 

 
Breathless excitement. 

 
Breathless anticipation.

 
“Breathe, Tiny,” I reminded helpfully as I had countless times the last few weeks. 

 
“You look so…” She stared to cry.

 
Breathless and crying.  Those were Tiny’s two modes of communication as her wedding day drew nearer.

 
I filled in the blank while I waited for her to compose herself.

 
You look so…
much like a pumpkin
.

 
You look so…
scary
.

 
You look so…
much like a tangerine
.  Oh, who was I kidding, I was no tiny tangerine.  I was a full-on navel orange.

 
I sucked in my baby-pooch and wished I’d thought to bring my body-sucker.  Oh, I know that’s not what it’s actually called.  These days people call them by their name brand.  My Grandma Mac called hers a girdle and I don’t think I ever saw her without it on.  I’m pretty sure she was buried in it.

 
Note to my boys who would some day be in charge of burying me.  Do not bury me in a body sucker.

 
“…so beautiful,” Tiny finally managed.

 
I smiled and put all of Mr. Magee’s acting classes to use by assuring her, “I love it, Tiny.”

 
I didn’t love it, but she did and that’s all that mattered.  Too many people forget that a wedding is the bride and groom’s special day.  It’s the one day when thinking about yourself isn’t the least bit selfish.  If she wanted me to look like a pumpkin, then by gosh, I’d be a smiling pumpkin as I walked up that aisle.

 
Tiny’s wedding was three weeks away. I had promised myself I’d do everything in my power to be sure it was perfect. 

 
Heck, I’d even found out who murdered Mr. Banning in order to see to it I wasn’t in jail for Tiny’s wedding.

 
Okay, truth was, I didn’t want to be in jail period.  And since I’d accidently cleaned Mr. Banning’s murder scene, I was the only viable suspect. 

 
Yeah, that’s right.  I cleaned it.  I washed and polished the murder weapon.  I even steamed the footprints off the carpet.

 
My Uncle Bill went to jail for a crime he didn’t commit.  Eventually the authorities realized he was innocent.  They let him out of prison, but he came out with a tattoo.  Mac’s do not get tattoos.  Or go to prison for that matter.

 
I was determined not to go to jail and leave my boys, or miss Tiny’s wedding…or get a tattoo.  I just didn’t think a tattoo would age well.  I was thirty-eight, and though I avoided the sun as if I were a vampire rather than simply a fair-skinned woman, I knew that wrinkles would be forthcoming.  And who wants to see a wrinkled tattoo unicorn, even if it was a declaration of my innocence? 

 
No one, that’s who.

 
Thankfully, I found the murderer.  Of course, he tried to kill me to keep me quiet, but I grew up with brothers and three sons.  I kicked him and made it count.  I rescued myself before Cal came in to rescue me.

 
Detective Cal Parker, my new boyfriend.  It felt so odd to use the word
boyfriend
when I was the mother of three teens and almost forty (sigh) but I hadn’t come up with any better designation for him. 

 
I must have sighed as I thought about my cute, hunky new boyfriend because Tiny laughed.  “You’re thinking about him, aren’t you?”

 
“Him, who?” I asked, trying to sound as if I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.

 
“Him—Detective Sexy.”

 
“I was thinking about your wedding.”

 
Tiny laughed some more and humphed me in a way that I knew meant she wasn’t buying it.

 
The phone rang.  I sucked in my stomach as I walked across the room in my pumpkin colored dress.  I picked up the phone. “Mac’Cleaners.  We do it all and we’re glad you called.  How may I help you today?”

 
“Quincy, it’s me,” a woman’s voice said.

 
I didn’t need any more than that to know it was Theresa Maxwell.  She was officially the worst employee Mac’Cleaners had ever had.  To be honest, that whole cleaning-Mr.-Banning’s-murder scene was her fault because she was supposed to be the one cleaning the dead-body house that day, but she’d called in sick.  When an employee calls in sick, Tiny and I—as the business owners—step in and fill in for them.  So Theresa is why I’d almost ended up in jail for a murder I didn’t commit.

 
Theresa really was the worst employee ever, not just in an almost-sent-me-to-jail sort of way.

 
I’d like to fire her.  I’d threatened to do just that, but I kept hoping she’d get better.  Seriously, she couldn’t get any worse.  Although this call didn’t bode well for the getting better and seemed to be pointing to worse.  There was panic in her voice.

 
“What’s up, Theresa?” I asked suspiciously.

 
“It’s not what’s up, it’s what’s down.  I was dusting a painting at the Gifford’s house and it fell.  There’s a tear in it now.”

 
I’d seen the Gifford’s house when I cleaned for Theresa a month ago.  The last call of the day had been the dead body house, but the Gifford’s house was part of her morning calls, which became my morning call when Theresa called in sick.  I did not know much about art, but I knew enough to know their art was expensive.  The Giffords lived in Hollywood Hills, an expensive part of town.  I lived in Van George, where the cost of the houses sent my Pennsylvanian family into heart palpitations, but here in southern California was actually a mid-middle class sort of price.

 
“Oh…” I searched for a curse word I could use without being too crass or offending anyone. With three teenaged boys in the house, I really tried to watch myself.

 
“Boogers,” I opted for.  It was a pretty perfect curse word.  Gross enough to get some umph out of, but not really offensive.

 
“I’m so sorry, Quincy,” Theresa said.  “I don’t know what to do now.”

 
“You’ll have to call the Giffords and let them know what happened.  Please take a picture of the damage with your cellphone, just to cross all our t’s.  I’ll dot our i’s by calling our insurance company to make a report.  We’ve never had an accident like this happen, but please assure the Giffords we’ll make it right.”

 
“Okay,” Theresa said and hung up.

 
I hit end on my phone and thumbed over to my contact list to look for our insurance company’s number.

 
“Problems?” Tiny asked.

 
“Theresa,” I managed.

 
“We’re going to have to fire that girl,” we said in sync.

 
I called the insurance company…

Check out Book #2
,
Dusted
: A Maid in LA Mystery

 
Quincy’s taking classes on writing and working on a script. She’s taking care of her boys, wearing a pumpkin orange maid of honor dress for Tiny’s wedding, and oh…she’s got another case. Someone stole Mac’Cleaner clients’ artwork, and Quincy’s employee is under suspicion.  This is one LA maid who’s got a lot on her plate in Holly Jacobs’ second Maid in LA Mystery, Dusted.