Dead In Red (23 page)

I offered Hanson my hand and we shook.

The floodgates opened and I was bombarded
with images and sensations. One in particular he enjoyed, though
might never happen again: Cyn, on the back of his motorcycle, her
arms wrapped around him.

Ted took back his hand.

“Thanks,” I managed.

He nodded, went back inside and closed the
door.

We started back for the car. “Well?” Richard
asked.

“Cyn and Ted have been more than just
landlord and tenant.”

Richard raised an eyebrow, said nothing.

“He’s worried about her—and probably with
cause.”

Richard’s cell phone rang. He answered it,
handed it to me.

“Get a pencil,” Brenda said, her voice
sounding tinny on the little phone. “I’ve got Dana’s address.
Wouldn’t you know it was the next to last name on the list?”

I had a pen and jotted it down.

It was a toss-up if we went north to Cyn’s
house or south to locate Dana. I was pretty sure we wouldn’t find
Cyn home, but I had to check it out. So north we went, battling the
last of the commuter traffic.

As anticipated, the drive was empty and no
one answered when I knocked on the condo’s door.

“She’s not home,” came a quavering voice.
Sitting on a white plastic chair on the front porch of the next
condo was an elderly woman in a green-plaid cotton housedress, with
worn, what had once been pink, fluffy slippers on her feet.

I descended the steps and joined the old
woman. “Do you know when she’ll be back?”

She shook her head, her tight white curls
never moving. “Not soon. She had suitcases.”

“Last night?”

“About ten o’clock. She didn’t even turn on
the porch light when she loaded the car. And when she drove away,
her headlights were off. I thought to myself, ‘that is
strange.’”

“Yes, it is,” I agreed. “Has anyone else
been around asking for her?”

“Just a nice young man in a silver car.”

“Kind of thin, short and balding?”

“Yes. Reminded me of my husband Charles when
we were first married, oh, sixty years ago now.”

“When did the young man stop by?”

“Oh, several times today. You just missed
him about ten minutes ago.”

Damn. But at least Gene didn’t know where
Cyn was, either. That meant she was probably safe.

“Thanks for your help,” I told the old woman
and went back to Richard’s car.

“So?” he asked as I slammed the door shut. I
gave him a recap. “You want to hang around in case Gene comes
back?”

“There’s no guarantee he will. We’d better
go see Dana. That is, if she’ll give me an audience.”

Richard started the car.

Dana Watkins lived in a typical, older
middle-class housing tract in Cheektowaga. Rows of purple petunias
bordered the sidewalk up to the front door of the neat little brick
bungalow. Richard and I got out of the car and headed up the path.
Dana’s car was parked in the driveway, and there were lights on
inside the house, but no one answered our knock.

Richard followed me around the side of the
house to the back, where a central air conditioner hummed. I
stretched to peer through a kitchen window. Dana was hard at work,
kneading dough on a 1950s chrome-and-Formica table. I tapped on the
window. She looked up, annoyed.

“Can we talk?” I yelled, probably loud
enough for her neighbors to hear.

“Go away,” she mouthed. “I’m busy,” and went
back to her kneading.

I tapped on the window again. No reaction. I
kept tapping. Thirty seconds. One minute. Finally she stomped to
the back door, yanked it open. “Will you stop bothering me!”

“I need to talk to you. We’re pals,
remember?”

“You are not my pal.”

“I was last Wednesday.”

Impatience shadowed her eyes. “I have a lot
of work to do. And you’re keeping me from it.”

“Then tell me where to find Cyn or, better
yet, Gene.”

Anxiety tightened her lips into a thin line.
She breathed through her nose, her breaths coming in short snorts.
“I suppose if I asked you to leave you’d ignore me and just keep
bugging me.”

“A man has died and the police have arrested
the wrong person for the crime. I’m working on behalf of the
murdered man’s family to find out the truth.”

She scowled. “Well, you might’ve put it that
way earlier. Oh . . . come in.”

I climbed the three concrete steps with
Richard right behind me. The aroma of breads, cakes and cookies
filled Dana’s kitchen, which was overrun with flour sacks, spices,
and cans and jars of other ingredients. The oven timer counted down
thirteen minutes and six seconds. The table and sideboard in the
dining room beyond were stacked with boxes and racks of baked
goods. Dana was already back to work at her kitchen table.

And there was something else in the room. An
aura I recognized and it didn’t belong to Dana.

“You’re filling Cyn’s orders?” I asked.

“It’s a great opportunity for me.”

“Why did Cyn close the café?” Richard
asked.

Dana looked up, for the first time noticing
Richard. “This is my brother. He’s also a friend of Cyn’s,” I
said.

She didn’t believe me. “Look, all I know is
she said she was shutting down. I don’t know any more.”

“This doesn’t look like a licensed kitchen,”
Richard said conversationally.

Dana’s head snapped up, her eyes
blazing.

“I’m a physician. I’ve got friends who work
for the health department. I wonder what they’d say if they knew
about your little operation.”

Dana’s grip on her pile of dough tightened.
“I’ve got a line on a commercial kitchen. I just need to find the
financing.” The words were fine, it was the quaver in her voice
that belied her conviction.

“That won’t help if you’re shut down,”
Richard added.

Dana bit her lip, turned back to the dough
on the table. “I don’t know why Cyn closed the café. The two of us
could’ve handled the business for a couple of days or weeks. She
was in such a snit—”

“Why’d she fire Gene?”

Dana paused in her work, but didn’t look up.
“I don’t know.”

She was a terrible liar.

“Cyn called me about seven o’clock last
night, told me she was shutting down the business. By the time I
got there, she’d already cleaned out most of her office. I asked
her about the orders, but she said she didn’t care. She told me if
I wanted to take them on, I could. She even gave me the supplies to
do it, too.”

“That seems overly generous of her.”

Dana merely shrugged.

“Cyn’s neighbor said she saw Cyn leave with
suitcases last night. Did she tell you where she was going?”

Dana shook her head. “Just away.”

“You said she cleaned out her office. Does
that mean her financial records?” I asked.

“I guess.”

“Could Gene have been embezzling from
her?”

“Gene and I weren’t really friends, but we
did work well together. I won’t believe he could do that to
Cyn.”

“I don’t suppose you know where Gene lives?”
Richard asked.

She shook her head. “Just that he had an
apartment on Hertel Avenue or just off it.”

“That’s a lot of territory,” I said. “What’s
he drive?”

“A silver Alero.”

“New York plates?”

She nodded.

I reached back and took out my wallet,
withdrew one of my old calling cards with Richard’s phone number
written on the back and handed it to her. “I don’t know where your
loyalties lie, but I honestly want to help Cyn. If you hear from
her, please consider calling me.”

She scrutinized the card, said nothing.

“I’d like to talk to Gene, too. If he’s
threatening Cyn, she really should go to the police. This isn’t
something she should try to handle on her own.”

Dana stood in the doorway and watched us
until we turned the corner for the front yard.

“Well?” Richard asked.

“That was a nice piece of blackmail you
pulled back there.”

“I like to feel useful. Did you believe
anything she said?”

“Most of it. She may or may not be there
now, but Cyn’s been in that house. I can’t blame Dana for not
saying more. She’s scared.”

We got back in Richard’s car. “So what’s
next? We pull stakeout duty here and wait for Cyn?”

I shook my head. “Dana would only warn her
away. Our best bet is to find Walt’s fancy lady, Veronica. She
might know Gene, or might be able to point us in the right
direction.”

“And how do we find her? More gay bars?”

“The bartender at Lambrusco’s said she’d
moved up. We might have to try all of them.”

“Didn’t you say most of the bars only have
drag shows on weekends?”

“That doesn’t mean we can’t flash her
picture around.”

The dashboard clock said 7:12 p.m. “Most
bars don’t even start to fill up until at least ten,” Richard
said.

“Most popular bars,” I clarified. To my
knowledge, The Whole Nine Yards had never filled up.

“May as well go home to wait,” he said, and
turned the key in the ignition.

Three hours.

“Some of those drag queens had their own Web
sites. You think maybe this Veronica does?” Richard asked.

“It wouldn’t hurt to do a search.”

Three long hours.

Bloodied hands. A rivulet of scarlet
cascading down a wrist . . .

Whose hands? Whose damn blood? And was it
already too late to save him or her?

* * *

Thunderclouds
threatened
the sky to the west. Nightfall looked
imminent instead of two hours away. Richard pulled his car up the
driveway, parked the car in his garage. The humidity had almost
doubled since we’d left Dana’s house some twenty minutes before. A
storm hadn’t been predicted, but the weather along Lake Erie
changes fast.

Richard hit the button on the remote above
the visor and the garage door obligingly closed. “We don’t have to
take my car tonight, do we?”

“No, it can rain on mine or Brenda’s.”

We got out of the Lincoln, went out through
the side door and headed for the house. Brenda was waiting for us
in the kitchen. “Got a message for you.”

“Me?” Richard asked.

“No, Jeffy. Dana Watkins called.”

“That was fast,” Richard muttered.

“She said Gene Higgins lives on Norwalk
Avenue, off Hertel. Here.” She handed me a slip of paper with the
full address.

“Why didn’t she just tell us when we were
there?” Richard asked.

“My guess is she had to wait until Cyn
wasn’t listening.”

“Cyn was there?”

“I had a feeling she was close by. I’ll bet
her car was in Dana’s garage. I should’ve looked.”

“Why wouldn’t Dana want Cyn to know she gave
us the address?”

“The bigger question is why doesn’t Cyn want
us talking to Gene? Especially if she’s so angry with him—angry
enough to close her business?”

Richard looked thoughtful.

“I guess this means you’re going out again.”
Brenda said.

“I guess.”

“What about looking up Veronica on the
Internet?” Richard asked.

“Yeah, let’s do that first.” So off we went
to the study.

Brenda accompanied us, plunking down on the
leather couch and picking up her novel. We spent at least an hour
jumping back and forth between the Buffalo gay bar Web sites
looking for Veronica. If she had moved on to bigger and better
things, she hadn’t shown up on anyone’s radar.

The sky outside had darkened. Brenda got up
to turn on another lamp. Thunder rumbled, and the phone rang. She
picked up the extension. Richard clicked back to Google, typed in
another keyword.

“Who is this?” Brenda asked, annoyed.

Richard and I looked up.

Brenda held out the phone, covering the
mouthpiece. “It’s for you, Jeffy. Sounds like a nutcase. Got one of
those voice disguisers working.”

I got up from my chair. More thunder
reverberated overhead as I took the phone. “Jeff Resnick here.”

“You will cease poking your nose into other
people’s business,” said the slow, electronically altered
voice.

“And if I don’t?”

“I could’ve killed you in that ramp
garage.”

My spine stiffened, my hand growing tight
around the receiver.

“I won’t be so generous next time.”

The connection broke.

Lightning flashed out the window.

I hit the phone’s rest buttons, then punched
*69.

“That number is out of range,” came the
prerecorded voice. Whoever it was had probably called from a cell
phone.

Thunder boomed and I replaced the
receiver.

“What was that all about?” Richard
asked.

I exhaled through my nose. “A nutcase,” I
said, echoing Brenda’s assessment.

“Did that person threaten you?” she
asked.

“Sort of. Just that—” The image of Richard
lying on the cold stone floor, shot, blood soaking his London Fog
raincoat, came back to me. “That I’d be sorry if I didn’t mind my
business.” Lightning flashed again. “You’d better log off before
the storm fries your hard drive.” As though to reinforce my words,
thunder crashed overhead.

Richard turned back to his monitor, logged
off and shut down the computer. “You worried?” he asked, swiveling
his chair to face me.

“I’d be a fool not to be concerned, all
things considered. But worried?” You bet. “No.”

“Where does someone get one of those
voice-altering devices?” Brenda asked.

“At the mall. Radio Shack sells them. Or the
Internet. Anybody can buy one.”

Neither of them looked too worried and I was
glad I hadn’t mentioned the incident at the parking garage. “You
about ready?” I asked Richard.

“Yeah.” He got up, kissed Brenda good-bye,
and we headed for the back door.

We crossed the drive and made it to the
garage just seconds before the rain hit, coming down in drenching
sheets of liquid silver. For a long minute or two Richard and I
stood under the eaves looking out at the house with the curtain of
rain before us. I can’t read Richard at all, but a weird kind of
electricity crackled between us. He kept looking out at the rain
pouring down and his smile grew wider and wider.