Black notice (16 page)

Rose had gotten weary of running a house and had moved into an apartment in the near West End, off Grove Avenue, several blocks from a cafe called Du Jour, where I now and then ate Sunday brunch. Rose lived ir~ an old three-story dark red brick building shaded by big oaks. It was a relatively safe area of town, but I always scanned my surroundings before I got out of my car. As I parked next to Rose's Honda, I noticed what looked like a dark-colored Taurus several cars away.

Someone was sitting inside it, engine and lights off. I knew that most unmarked Richmond police cars were Tauiuses these days, and I wondered if there was a reason a cop might be waiting out here in the dark, cold air. It was also possible the person was waiting for someone to come down to go somewhere, but again, one generally didn't do that with headlights and engine off.

I felt I was being watched and got my seven-shot Smith & Wesson revolver out of my satchel and slipped it into my coat pocket. I followed the sidewalk and caught the car's tag number on the front bumper. I committed it to memory. I felt eyes on my back.

The only way to get to Rose's third-floor apartment was to take stairs illuminated wanly by a single light overhead at each landing. I was anxious. I paused every few steps to see if anyone might be coming up behind me. No one was. Rose had hung a fresh Christmas wreath on her door, and its fragrance stirred powerful feelings inside me. I could hear Handel's music playing inside. I dug into my satchel, pulled out a pen and writing pad and jotted the tag number on it. Then I rang the bell.

"Goodness!" Rose exclaimed. "What brings you here? Do come in. What a nice surprise."

"Did you look through the peephole before you opened the door?" I quizzed her. "At least you could ask who it is."

She laughed. She was always teasing me about my security worries, which were extreme in the minds of most people because they did not live my life.

"Did you come here to test me?" she teased me once more.

"Maybe I should start doing that."

Rose's furniture was warm and perfectly polished, and although I would not call her taste formal, it was very proper and exactly arranged. Floors were the beautiful hardwood one didn't find anymore, and small Oriental rugs were spots of color on them. A gas fire was burning, and electric candles glowed in windows overlooking a grassy area where people used their Hibachis and charcoal grills in warmer weather.

Rose sat in a wing chair and I settled on the couch. I had been to her apartment only twice before, and it seemed so sad and strange to see no sign of her beloved animals. The last two of her adopted greyhounds had gone to her daughter, and her cat had died. All she had left was an aquarium with a modest number of guppies, goldflsh and mollies constantly moving around, because pets were not allowed in the building.

"I know you miss your dogs," I said, not mentioning the cat, because cats and I didn't get along. "One of these days I'm going to get a greyhound. My problem is I would want to save all of them."

I remembered hers. The poor dogs would not let you stroke their ears because they had been yanked by trainers, one of the many cruelties they suffered at dog tracks. Rose's eyes got bright with tears, and she turned her face from me and rubbed her knees.

"This cold is hard on my joints," she commented, clearing her throat. "They were getting so old. It's just as well Laurel has them now. I couldn't bear another thing dying on me. I wish you would get one. If every nice person would just get one."

The dogs were put to death by the hundreds every year when they could no longer perform up to speed. I shifted on the couch. There was so much in life that angered me.

"Can I get you hot ginseng tea that dear Simon gets for me?" She mentioned the hairstylist she adored. "Maybe something a little stronger? I've been meaning to stop and pick up shortbread cookies."

"I can't stay long," I said. "But I just wanted to drop by and make certain you're all right."

"Why, of course," she replied as if there were no reason in the world she wouldn't be.

I paused, and Rose looked at me, waiting for me to explain why I really had dropped by.

"I talked to Ruth," I began. "We're following a couple of leads and have our suspicions . . ."

"Which I'm sure lead right to Chuck," she announced, nodding her head. "I've always thought he's. a bad apple. And he avoids me like the plague because he knows I see right through him. It will be a cold day in hell before the likes of him will charm me."

"No one could charm you," I said. Handel's Messiah began, and intense sadness tucked itself into my heart.

Her eyes searched my face. She knew how hard last Christmas had been for me. I had spent it in Miami, where I could avoid it as much as I could. But it wasn't possible for me to get away from music and lights, not even if I fled to Cuba.

"What are you going to do this year?" she asked.

"Maybe go out west," I replied. "If it would snow here, that would be easier, but I can't stand gray skies. Rain and ice storms, Richmond weather. You know, when I first moved here, we always got at least one or two good snows every winter."

I envisioned snow piled on tree branches and blowing against my windshield, the world whited out as I drove to work even though all state offices were closed. Snow and tropical sunshine were antidepressants for me.

"It was very nice of you to check on me," my secretary said, getting up from the deep blue wing chair. "You've always worried too much about me, though."

She went into the kitchen and I heard her digging around in the freezer. When she returned to the living room, she handed me a Tupperware container with something frozen inside it.

"My vegetable soup," she said. "Just what you need tonight:'

"You can't know how much," I told her with heartfelt appreciation. "I'll go home and warm it up now."

"Now, what will you do about Chuck?" she asked with a very serious expression on her face.

I hesitated. I didn't want to ask her this.

"Rose, he says you're my office snitch:'

"Well, I am."

"I need you to be;" I went on. "I'd like you to do whatever it takes to find out what he's up to."

"What the little son of a bitch is up to is sabotage," said Rose, who almost never swore.

"We've got to get the evidence," I said. "You know how the state is. It's harder to fire somebody than walk on water. But he's not going to win."

She didn't respond right away. Then she said, "To start with, we mustn't underestimate him. He's not as smart as he thinks he is, but he's clever. And he has too much time to think and move about unnoticed. What's unfortunate is he knows your patterns better than anyone, better even than me, because I don't help you in the morgue-for which I'm grateful. And that's your center stage. That's where he could really ruin you."

She was right, although I couldn't bear to admit the power he had. He could swap labels or toe tags or contaminate something. He could leak lies to reporters who would forever protect his identity. I could scarcely imagine the breadth of what he could do.

"By the way," I said, getting up from the couch, "I'm fairly sure he has a computer at home, so he lied about that."

She walked me to the door, and I remembered the car parked near mine.

"Do you know anybody in the building who drives a dark Taurus?" I asked.

She frowned, perplexed. "Well, they're rather much all over the place. But no, I can't think of anyone around me who drives one."

"Possibly there's a police officer who lives in your building and might drive such a car home now and then?"

"I know nothing about it if there is. Don't get too carried away by all those little goblins that will rise up in your head if you let them. I have a firm belief about not giving a life to things, you know. The old bit about a self-fulfilled prophecy:"

"Well, it's probably nothing, but I just had an odd feel-ing when I saw this person sitting inside a dark car, engine off, lights off," I said. "I got the tag number."

"Good for you." Rose patted my back. "Why am I not surprised?"

My shoes seemed loud on the stairs as I left Rose's apartment, and I was conscious of my handgun when I went out the door into the cold night. The car was gone. I looked around for it as I approached mine.

The parking lot was not well lit. Bare trees made slight sounds that turned ominous in my mind, and shadows seemed to hide fearful things. I quickly locked my doors, looking around some more, and called Marino's pager as I drove off. He called back right away because, of course, he was in uniform on the street without a damn thing to do.

"Can you run a tag?" I said right off when he answered.

"Lay it on me."

I recited it to him.

"I'm just leaving Rose's apartment," I said, "and I have a weird feeling about this car parked out there."

Marino almost always took my weird feelings seriously. I was not one to have them often without justification. I was a lawyer and a physician. If anything, I was more inclined to stay inside my clinical, fact-only lawyer's mind and was not given to overreactions and emotional projections.

"There are other things," I went on.

"You want me to drop by?"

"I sure would."

He was waiting in my driveway when I got there, and he awkwardly climbed out of his car because his duty belt got in his way and the shoulder harness he never wore tended to snag him somewhere.

"Goddamn it!" he said, yanking his belt free. "I don't know how much more I can stand this." He kicked the door shut. "Piece-of-shit car."

"How'd you get here first if it's such a piece-of-shit car?" I asked.

"I was closer than you. My back's killing me."

He continued to complain as we went up the steps and I unlocked the front door. I was startled by silence. The alarm light was green.

"Now that ain't good," Marino said.

"I know I set it this morning," I said.

"The housekeeper come?" he asked, looking, listening.

"She always sets it," I said. "I've never known her to forget, not once in the two years she's worked for me."

"You stay here," he said.

"I most certainly will not," I replied, because the last thing I wanted was to wait here alone, and it was never a good idea for two armed people to be nervous and on guard in different areas of the same space.

I reset the alarm and followed him from room to room, watching him open every closet and look behind every shower curtain, drapery and door. We searched both floors and nothing was the least bit amiss until we went back downstairs, where I noticed the runner in the hallway. Half of it was vacuumed, while the other wasn't, and in the guest bath right off it, Marie, my housekeeper, had neglected to replace soiled hand towels with fresh ones.

"She's not absentminded like that," I said. "She and her husband are supporting young children on very little and she works harder than anyone I know."

"I hope nobody calls me out," Marino complained. "You got any coffee in this joint?"

I made a strong pot with the Pilon espresso that Lucy sent me from Miami, and the bright red and yellow bag made me feel hurt again. Marino and I carried our cups into my office. I logged onto AOL using Ruffin's address and password and was extremely relieved when I didn't get bumped off.

"Coast is clear," I announced.

Marino pulled up a chair and looked over my shoulder. Ruffin had mail.

There were eight messages, and I didn't recognize who any of them were from.

"What happens if you open them?" Marino wanted to know.

"They'll still be in the box as long as you save them as new," I replied.

"I mean, can he tell you opened them?"

"No. But the sender can. The sender can check the status of the mail he sent and see what time it was opened."

"Huh," Marino said with a shrug in his voice. "So what? How many people are gonna check what friggin' time their mail was opened?"

I didn't answer him as I began to go into Chuck's mail. Maybe I should have felt frightened by what I was doing, but I was too angry. Four of the e-mails were from his wife, who had many instructions for him about domestic matters that made Marino laugh.

"She's got his balls in a box on top of the fireplace," he gleefully said.

The address of the fifth message was MAYFLR, who simply said, "Need to talk."

"That's interesting," I commented to Marino. "Let's check out mail he might have sent to whoever this Mayflower is."

I went into the mail-sent menu and discovered Chuck had been sending e-mail to this person almost daily for the past two weeks. I quickly scanned through the notes, Marino looking on, and it became obvious in no time that my morgue supervisor was having rendezvous with this person, possibly an affair.

"I wonder who the hell she is?" Marino said. "That'd be a nice little bit of leverage to hold over the son of a bitch." "Not going to be easy to find out;" I said.

I quickly signed off, feeling as if I were escaping from a house I'd just burglarized.