Catherine Nelson - Zoe Grey 02 - The Trouble with Theft (22 page)

“Oh, really? You don’t
have any more work to do here?”

What was going on?
She’d been bellyaching because she didn’t want to come here; now she was
whining because we were leaving.

Amerson appeared in
the doorway. He was holding a small, rectangular-shaped electronic device.

“Hear you might have a
bug problem,” he said. “Let’s check it out. I’ll show you how to use this
thing.” He held up the device. “Plus, I thought maybe Natalie might like to
come along and, you know, watch.”

For crying out loud!
Amerson was blushing, too!

“You’ve got to be
kidding me,” I muttered, swinging my bag onto my shoulder.

Now I knew why she
didn’t want to leave.

We followed Amerson
out of the building and gathered around the truck. Amerson was explaining the
device, a scanning tool used to detect electronic signals put off by tracking
devices, the most common types of tracking devices, and the most likely places
to find them. I was listening because I thought this was information that might
come in handy later. Natalie was listening because it was Amerson who was
talking. I really hope I’m not like this with Ellmann.

Twenty minutes later,
Amerson had scanned the entire truck and pronounced it bug-free. I got in the
truck and started it. Natalie stood around talking to Amerson for another five
minutes. Finally, she tore herself away and climbed in. I stepped on the gas
before she had any second thoughts and tried to get out again.

As I drove, I kept my
eyes to the rearview mirror. So far, I’d seen no sign of the Cadillac, but I
didn’t expect that to last. Ellmann had said a tracking device on the truck was
an easy explanation for how the Cadillac kept reappearing. Since there wasn’t a
tracking device, I wondered what some of the more complicated explanations
might be.

Natalie peppered me
with questions about Amerson the entire drive. She was like a middle-schooler
with a crush. It was exhausting. When I parked the truck, she climbed out and
trailed me up the walk and onto Bonnie Matheson’s porch. She didn’t stop
talking until Matheson opened the door.

“I have a couple more
questions,” I said, handing her the new photo of Dillon. “Have you seen this
woman?”

She looked up from the
photo. “This is who you’re looking for?” Suddenly all of the color was gone
from her face, and she looked like she’d seen a ghost.

“Yes. Do you know
her?”

She handed the photo
back to me as if she couldn’t touch it any longer.

“That’s her,” she
said, her eyes darting to the abandoned house across the street.

“That’s who?” I asked.

I thought I knew.

“That’s Melissa
Conrad.”

“Is this some kind of joke?”
Matheson demanded. Her eyes were full of tears, and she looked on the verge of
panic.

“No, Mrs. Matheson, I
assure you, it isn’t.”

She folded her arms
across her chest and glanced again at the Conrad house.

“I don’t know what
you’re playing at,” she snapped, “but you better get off my porch right now.”

I nudged Natalie and
began to move down the steps.

“Melissa Conrad and
her husband were good people,” Matheson went on angrily. “
Good
people!
And what happened to them was a tragedy! How dare you drag it all up again! Let
them rest in peace!”

I herded Natalie to
the truck then got in behind the wheel. I stared down the street at the Conrad
house, sitting lonely and sad in a warm, cheerful neighborhood. Matheson was
right; what had happened inside the Conrad house
was
a tragedy. The part
I wasn’t certain she had right was
who
it had happened to.

I started the truck
then drove down the street and stopped in front of the overgrown yard around
the Conrad house. I jumped out and checked the little box hanging on the
for sale
sign for a flyer. There were
none. I leaned back in the truck.

“Can I borrow your
phone?” I asked Natalie.

“Why?” she asked as
she dug in her bag. “Who are you calling? What are we doing now?”

She handed me the
phone. I took it without answering.

I dialed the number
for the real estate agent on the sign. After working my way through a series of
prompt menus, I was finally connected to a real person.

“Can I speak to either
Leroy or Barbara Jukes, please?” I asked, reading the names off the sign.

“I’m so sorry, ma’am, but
there are no agents in the office until Monday morning.”

I really don’t like to
be called “ma’am.”

“That’s too bad. I’m
visiting from California and fly out early tomorrow morning.”

“And you’re interested
in one of our properties?”

“Yes, the place on
Douglas Road.”

“Douglas Road? Oh,”
she said, as if thinking out loud. “You said you’re from California.”

“Is there any way
someone could show me the house today? I’d really like to have something lined
up before I go home.”

“I believe I can work
something out,” she said.

That real estate
market is pretty much in the crapper might have played a part here. But, more
likely this girl recognized I might be their only shot of getting rid of the
Conrad house. The house had been sitting empty for the better part of a year
with absolutely no one even remotely interested. But an out-of-state buyer
wouldn’t have any clue as to the gruesome history of the house. I felt bad for
misleading her.

“Let me just take down
your name and number,” she said.

I gave her Natalie’s
name and number and hung up.

I waited five minutes,
then the phone rang again.

“Ms. Ellmann?” It was
the same girl.

“Yes,” I said.

“I was able to reach
Leroy Jukes. He says he can meet you there in fifteen minutes.”

“Great.”

It was almost exactly
fifteen minutes before a white Hyundai SUV pulled over and parked in front of
the truck. A short man with a round stomach and a round face got out and
hurried over to us, hand outstretched, grinning widely. After introductions,
Leroy handed us each a flyer on the house and chatted to us about it as he led
us up the overgrown walk to the front door.

The house had a seven-figure
price tag. There were six bedrooms, seven bathrooms, a finished walk-out
apartment in the basement, a game room, a home theater room, an office, a
mother-in-law suite, and two dozen other amenities. On paper, the house was
amazing.

Leroy got the door
open, and I noticed he hesitated before finally stepping inside. He chuckled,
trying to laugh it off, but I could see the sweat covering his slightly ashen
face. Natalie, unaware of what had happened here, went in and began looking
around.

“Natalie, stay close,”
I said.

I wasn’t sure what
we’d find in the house, but uncertainties, like unanswered questions, bother me.
In circumstances like these, I prefer to play it safe. At least when it’s my
boyfriend’s sister we’re talking about. Ellmann would kill me if anything
happened to her while she was with me.

For once, she didn’t
argue. But as we walked through the entryway to the living room, she seemed to
sense something about the house. It was the same thing Leroy and I were aware of;
the only difference was we knew what had caused it.

Like any place that
had been shut up for any length of time, the air inside was stale and dusty. All
the furniture still appeared to be present, and everything was covered in white
sheets. This just made it look creepy—and would have even if the house had had a
benign history. There was a layer of dust on the floor and over the sheets. There
were also cobwebs stretching between the walls, the ceilings, and the
sheet-draped furniture. Watching the floor, I looked behind us; we were all
leaving footprints in the dust. I saw no others. It appeared no one had been in
the house since August.

Leroy’s voice had
increased an octave, and his mouth was dry, but as we went through the house,
he tried to talk about it, illustrating its high points. When we walked down
the hallway toward what I guessed was the kitchen, Leroy stepped to the side of
the hall. He raised a hand in the direction of the arched doorway.

“The kitchen is
there,” he said. “Please, go in and have a look.”

Natalie and I took
several steps, but Leroy didn’t budge. I assumed the kitchen would have been
cleaned up after the house was released from the police and no trace of the
incident would be visible. As I walked to the archway, I saw that was not true.

Natalie walked ahead
of me, looking around with mild interest. I stopped and stared. This was not as
gruesome as Grandma Porter’s house has been, with dark red blood splashed all
over the white floor and cupboards. But neither had the place been
professionally cleaned. Someone had been through the space with some type of
cleaner and done what they could. There were no splashes or pools of coagulated
blood anywhere, but I could see the markings pretty plainly on the floors and
cabinets where there had been.

“What happened in
here?” Natalie said, staring at the floor and cabinets.

I could only assume it
was because I knew what had happened that I found it gruesome. Because she
didn’t
know, and she didn’t seem bothered. In fact, she didn’t seem to recognize it as
a bloody crime scene at all.

Just as I had done in
Grandma’s house, I froze for a moment, my mind stalled.

“Geez, what’s the
matter with you?” Natalie asked, brushing past me and out of the kitchen.

I turned and followed
her, my brain slowly spinning back into action.

Leroy, more than
anxious to leave the immediate vicinity, took us upstairs. After having a look
through all the rooms and bathrooms, seeing the furniture covered in sheets and
the dust on the floor unmarked, I concluded we were the first people to set
foot in the house since it had been shut up months before.

“There is also an
apartment downstairs,” Leroy said. “There is an access point through the
kitchen, but the apartment is a garden-level walk-out, so we can reach it from
outside.”

Clearly his
preference.

We went out through
the front door, since the back door was also through the kitchen, and walked
around the house. The first time I’d been here, I’d walked along the opposite
side of the house to reach the back. I hadn’t made the complete circuit, and
now I saw the door leading to the basement.

Leroy used his key to
open the door, and the instant it was open, I noticed the difference. The
upstairs had been shut up, abandoned, forgotten. The basement had been lived
in. And based just on what I could see from the doorway, I thought it was still
being lived in.

We were in the kitchen,
which opened to the living room. This space, like that above, was fully
furnished. But this furniture wasn’t covered, and there wasn’t much dust. There
was a newspaper less than a week old on the kitchen table, dishes and a pot in
the dish drain, and bread and bananas on the counter.

“What the …” Leroy
said, staring around dumbly.

I walked past him and
into the kitchen, pulling open cupboard doors and drawers as I spoke.

“Is the electricity to
this place still on?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t think so,”
he said.

I went to the fridge
and opened the door. The electricity was on. I went to the sink and turned on
the tap; water came rushing out.

“This doesn’t make any
sense,” Leroy said.

I left him standing in
the doorway and started through the rest of the apartment, Natalie close behind
me. The place was huge, with three bedrooms and four baths. The master bedroom
was obviously being used, while the others had been untouched, the furniture
still under sheets. There were things in the closet and bathroom, the bed was
unmade, and there was a desk in one corner. The desk was covered with dozens of
newspaper articles, clipped from papers as far back as five years. There was
also a laptop computer.

I pulled out the chair
and sat down, opening the laptop. I’m not extraordinarily savvy when it comes
to computers, so I basically just looked over the icons on the desktop then hit
the
start
button and saw which
programs had been used recently. Internet Explorer was the main one. I opened
it then looked back through the browser history. Most of the sites were
newspapers: the
Coloradoan
, the
Denver Post
, the
Greeley
Tribune
, papers for Aspen, Colorado Springs, and Vail, as well as half a
dozen international ones. The sites that weren’t media-related looked
informational. I opened one at random. The page loaded, and a giant photo of a
Russian egg like the one we’d seen at Dunn’s house appeared. A quick glance
through the page told me whoever had been using this computer had been doing
research. I chose a couple other sites and found more research on rare and
valuable art pieces.

“Who’s staying here?”
Natalie asked.

“I’m not sure.”

But I thought I had an
idea.

I went to the bedside
table and pulled open the drawer. Besides the normal stuff you’d expect, there
was also a photo. I picked it up and looked at it. It was a photo of a
dark-haired baby boy of about one and a half. Feeling as if a couple pieces had
just fallen into place, I replaced the photo then turned and left the room.
Leroy was still in the doorway, talking on his phone.

“Well, we obviously
need to call the police,” he was saying. “There’s a squatter here.”

“Hey, Leroy,” I said,
walking up to him. “Why don’t you call them back?”

He looked at me then
put up an index finger, telling me to wait.

I pulled my rinky-dink
badge out of my pocket then snapped my fingers a couple times, calling his
attention back to me. When he turned to me, I waved the badge.

“You need to call them
back,” I said again.

He repeated this then
hung up.

“You’re already here,”
he said. “What are you going to do about this?” He waved an arm toward the
kitchen. “About this
squatter
?”

Leroy, like Vandreen
yesterday, was confused about what exactly my job is.

“You’re going to want
to hold off on doing anything about the squatter for right now,” I said.

“Is that right? Why
don’t you just do your job, huh? And I’ll do mine.”

“Oh, she’s not—”
Natalie began.

“Not in the business
of taking orders,” I said loudly, cutting her off.

Natalie had been so
helpful up to this point.

“I need you to answer
a couple questions, Leroy. Who put this house up for sale?”

“I can’t disclose that
sort of information,” he began, indignant, as if I’d asked him something
offensive and personal, like what he preferred to wear to bed.

“Stop it. Property
ownership and sales are public record, so you’re just being a pain in the ass.
Who?”

“Ian Dawson,” he said.
“He inherited the house after … .” His eyes inadvertently darted up, as if
he might be able to see the kitchen. “Well, after the incident. Naturally, he
wanted to sell.”

“What incident?”
Natalie asked.

“Who is Ian Dawson?” I
asked Leroy. “Was he related?”

“He was Mitchell’s brother.”

“Mitchell’s brother?”
I asked. “If Mitchell had a brother, why did his son go into foster care?”

Leroy shrugged and
shook his head. “I have no idea. I don’t know anything about any children.”

“Ian Dawson only has a
post office box listed. I need an address and a phone number.”