I headed to the kitchen for plates and heard them pop lids and arrange entrees behind me at the kitchen table.
“Smells good,” I said. “You bring me anything that wasn’t fried?”
I already knew the answer.
“Where would be the fun in that?” Jeannie said. “Did I miss anything?”
“Not yet,” Vince said. “Richard’s trying to figure out what that list of famous people was supposed to mean. So far, all we’ve found is an obituary for the neighbor’s mom. Seems she left her son quite a haul.”
I pulled some forks from the silverware drawer and joined the others. Richard helped me pass out plates and then stacked his high with fried rice and mandarin chicken. He returned immediately to what he was doing on the laptop. The rest of us filled our own plates and fit where we could in the remaining space around him.
“So the guy next door to Platt is loaded,” Jeannie said. “And his caretaker’s skimming.”
Richard glanced at her. “Understatement.”
“Platt must have noticed and tried to report it,” I said. “But since Saunders didn’t know better than to give Burke everything he asked for—”
“There’s no crime.” Richard said. “Everything Saunders gave Burke is probably legally considered a ‘gift.’”
Vince shook his head. “That makes me sick.”
“Platt must have confronted him.” Jeannie dipped an egg roll in sweet and sour sauce. “That’s the only way Burke could have known he had suspicions.”
“Makes sense,” Vince said. “Then Burke got paranoid because Platt had his number. So he killed him.”
“Sure,” I said. “But not at that confrontation. It would have taken planning to pin it on Claire.”
We stopped talking momentarily, all too busy thinking or eating.
Jeannie, not one for silence, tapped her fork on her plate. “That’s a good reason to want Platt dead. For a long time Burke had been living carefree in a fancy house, driving nice cars and using a bottomless supply of cash.”
I remembered Burke’s recent e-mail to Claire, the one I’d found in her closeted curio box. “He told Claire he was an artist, working on an important sculpture or something, and that’s why he never had her over at his place—because he needed the solitude for his art.” I took a sip of the Coke Jeannie had brought me.
Vince reached across my plate for more soy sauce packets. “Framing Claire to get even for breaking up sounds extreme.”
Jeannie was chewing but waved a finger to reserve space to comment. She swallowed. “Getting dumped might be even tougher on a sociopath’s ego than it is for the rest of us. And let’s not forget there’s more to the Claire thing. He was swindling money from the Gastons too.”
Vince looked up. “Really?”
“Oh yeah, big time,” she said. “Daniel had a girl on the side and she told Emily all about it.”
Richard looked up from the monitor. “A girlfriend?”
I took another pull on my Coke. “We went to Rice Village to check out the murder scene. I tracked down the woman who rents the place where he was shot. Daniel had noticed extraneous charges on his credit card statements for a while, but since he and Claire still shared those accounts, he assumed the charges were hers. When she went to jail, the charges didn’t stop, so a few days ago he started asking questions.”
I took a bite of cashew chicken and Jeannie relayed what we’d learned from the manager at Brewster’s. She explained how the Mustang coincidence had made me suspicious enough to re-visit the Tone Zone parking lot footage from last week. Sure enough, a car by the same description had been in the lot Thursday morning.
Vince glanced at me with a subtle smile. I wasn’t sure if he was impressed or amused.
“Then Platt wasn’t the only one onto Burke’s ruse,” Richard said, scrolling down his screen without looking at us. “Daniel confronted him too. And they both ended up dead.” He punctuated the statement with a double mouse click.
Jeannie dipped her egg roll again. “I wonder how he met Claire in the first place.”
“Through Platt, I’m sure.” Vince emptied the last of the ginger beef from its paper container.
I shook my head. “Claire and Platt didn’t know each other. At least not according to her.”
“She met Burke at Tone Zone months ago,” Richard said, glancing up for an instant. “He was helping a friend move a piece of furniture to the club one day. Claire was there working out. The rest is history.”
Inexplicably, I suddenly felt sorry for Claire. “More likely he was helping a
neighbor
. Platt was an older guy, not many friends or relations. I wouldn’t blame him for asking the young, athletic caretaker next door for a hand. And Burke and Claire are both charismatic flirts,” I said. “So Richard’s right. All they’d have to do is meet.”
“How she met Burke isn’t important,” Richard said. “What we need to know is how he set her up. The murder weapon came from her garage.”
His comment conjured the image of a dark stain on the floor in Platt’s study and, without meaning to, I imagined a bloody screwdriver lodged in the dead surgeon’s neck. Appetite lost, I set down my fork and reached for a napkin.
“With Burke at her house all the time, it’s easy to see how he got the screwdriver,” I said. “And we know he got her to the crime scene with that bogus note about a neglected dog. Having lived with her, Burke would know she was a sucker for critters and that she’d respond to a situation like that. That’s how he got her prints at the scene. But how’d he get them on the screwdriver? She hardly seems the fix-it type.”
Richard must have finished his drink because he started stabbing his straw up and down through its plastic lid, moving around the ice that was left behind. Still focused on his monitor, his attention was obviously divided between our conversation and whatever he was reading. He went through another series of mouse clicks and then, with apparent effort, finally pulled his eyes off the monitor and glanced around the table. He stopped at me.
I suffered through an awkward moment while it looked like he was remembering something he’d wanted to say. He scratched his cheek the way men with stubble sometimes do and said, “I’m starting to wonder if Burke isn’t way smarter than we’re giving him credit.”
Personally, I’d been giving Burke lots of credit but I didn’t interrupt Richard to say so.
He continued. “You wanted to know when they broke up.”
I nodded. “Because I thought that’s when the weird credit card charges would have started.”
“Young says it was a slow, languishing separation. Not a clean break.”
Jeannie made a disgusted face to convey that, like Claire, she’d been there. I assumed it was for Richard and Vince’s benefit because I already knew and didn’t care.
Richard continued. “Claire thought she’d finally found a decent role model for the boys and was reluctant to cut him loose, despite her instinct that things weren’t right.” Without picking up his cup, he fiddled with his straw again. “What if she’d tried to break it off a few times, but Burke was tuned in to her reluctance? Maybe he was sweet talking her, or promising to change.”
“If he was siphoning money from her, I’m sure he’d exploit any weakness he could if it meant he could stick around longer.”
“Exactly,” Richard said. “And I think he was successful to a point. But when Platt figured out the scheme with Saunders, and Claire kept talking Splitsville, suddenly Burke’s castle in the sky began to crumble. The on-again, off-again break-up might be what saved him and ruined her. Surely he saw the writing on the wall. What if he got her prints on the weapon before she kicked him out for good?”
Jeannie snapped her fingers. “Maybe when she was sleeping.”
Richard shrugged. “If he’s as shrewd as I think he is, I wouldn’t put anything past him.”
“So I’m being electronically stalked by a practiced con-man and meticulous killer.” I looked at Richard. “I should be earning hazard pay.”
He didn’t look up from his screen.
“I’m scared,” I continued. “He knows who I am and why I’m asking questions. He’s warned me several times to stop. He’s been here and he knows about Annette. What if he comes back and goes after her?”
My breath caught.
Vince put a hand on my arm. “She’s safe with Betsy and Nick,” he said. “And you’ll stay at my place for a while like we talked about.” He wrapped his arm around me and pulled me into him sideways, trying to be reassuring.
A new idea came to me and I straightened. Burke had tracked me down on-line, broken into the apartment, and stolen some jewelry—all scary things, but hardly anything life threatening.
“Burke’s a pro,” I said. “He knows I’m suspicious. When Platt and Daniel got suspicious, they ended up dead. All I got were e-mails. Why?”
Richard pushed back from the table and stood. “I think I’ve figured that one out,” he said, wiping his hands on a paper napkin. “Printed something.” He walked through my little kitchen toward the printer in the laundry room and returned with a sheet of paper that he passed to me.
It was a list of excerpts, all in different fonts and formats, that he’d obviously cut and pasted from various websites while we’d been eating.
“The theme was clear,” he said. “I only copied from a few of their bios.” He nodded to the paper in my hand. “You’ll see.”
Vince faced me and I read aloud from Richard’s haphazard list:
“Bach’s mother died in 1694 and his father in 1695, when the boy was only ten years old.
“Tolstoy’s mother died when he was two and his father died when he was nine.
“Aristotle, whose parents died when he quite young, was raised by a guardian who later sent him to Plato’s academy in Athens.
“Born Norma Jean Baker to an unmarried woman, Monroe was in foster care until she was nearly seven.
“Malcolm X’s father was murdered by white racists in 1931. Years later social workers removed him and his siblings from his mother’s care and put them into a children’s home.
“Fitzgerald never knew her father and her mother passed in 1935.”
I could hardly believe it. When I glanced up from the page, Richard was the only one watching me. Vince stared at the table and Jeannie at my front window. Both seemed lost in somber thought, same as me. I stepped backward and felt for the couch. Finding it, I took a seat and exhaled. “He’s telling us he was orphaned.”
“That’s not all,” Richard said. “What’s frightening is that he counts himself among great people in history who grew up without parents. I think he views himself as some sort of…overcomer.”
I squeezed the back of my neck, thinking. “I wonder if he found out about Annette when he broke in here,” I said. “Or maybe he knew about her already, from looking up articles about me on-line.”
Richard shook his head. “Impossible to know, but I think Annette saved you. He knows you’re her only parent and he has a soft spot for orphans. He’s anxious, though. I don’t think he’ll hesitate if we cross him again.”
“Me either,” Vince said. Then, turning to Richard he added, “I suppose you’re taking it from here then? Emily can’t stay involved now.”
Richard shook his head. “Not me,” he said. “Homicide. When the detectives download her report there’s going to be an instant follow-up.” He looked at his watch. “They’re probably at the Saunders house right now.”
I wanted nothing further to do with Kevin Burke and his twisted schemes but couldn’t help thinking about William. No matter how much care was taken, detectives would confuse and frighten him. There was no getting around that and William had nobody left to soften reality for him.
For my part, I didn’t like the way Richard and Vince were suddenly making decisions for me as if I weren’t in the room. But the rational part of my brain, where my maternal instincts lived, told the willful, independent remainder to sit down and shut the hell up.
So while they talked about packing bags and coordinated plans for Jeannie and me to relocate, I didn’t say a word.
I’d been to Vince’s house plenty of times but it felt strangely foreign when I stepped inside carrying an overnight bag for the first time.
Jeannie brushed past me with her bag-on-wheels and oversized tote and stood in the middle of his vast living room to have a proper look around. “Nice place, Cowboy. I especially like this vaulted ceiling.”
I flipped on his porch light and closed and locked the door behind us. Vince’s Yellow Lab, Cindy, was in the back yard scratching at the glass door, whining to be let inside. I dropped my bag beside the couch and left Vince to enumerate all his recent home improvement projects for Jeannie. When I opened the back door, Cindy rushed to greet me and nearly took me out at the knees. Her tail wagged so violently that the back half of her body twisted with every swing. She followed me to his couch where I sat down and coaxed her into rolling over for a belly scratch.
Vince told Jeannie to make herself at home. “Emily knows where everything is.” He walked past the dog and me on his way to the kitchen. “Beer?”
“Yeah, thanks.” Jeannie paced the room’s perimeter, inspecting shelves and photos.
“Emily?” Vince said from the kitchen.
“None for me,” I said. “Not in the mood.”
As if she understood, Cindy licked the back of my hand. I leaned close to her face and ignored the dog breath. “What am I supposed to do here tonight?” I whispered.
She only thumped her tail. Glasses clinked in the kitchen, the familiar sounds of a warm, inviting house. Exhausted, I slipped off my shoes and curled up under an afghan Vince kept draped over his sofa. Mostly reclined, I scratched Cindy’s ears with my free hand.
Vince returned with the beers and tapped me on the leg with a cold bottle of Shiner Bock as he passed. I pulled myself further under the blanket.
“You look tired.”
He passed a bottle to Jeannie. I nestled into a throw pillow and let my silence speak for me.
“Can I get the five cent tour?” Jeannie said. “Or do guys not do that?”
“Sure,” he said. “Let’s start back here.”
I listened to them chat as Vince led Jeannie down the hallway. My eyes closed and I made no effort to keep them open. Sleep was near and I was weak for it.
***
When I awoke, I had no idea how much time had passed. The house, dark now, gave no hint about where Vince or Jeannie might have gone, but judging from its stillness, I could guess. I sat up. Someone had laid a quilt over me. I pressed the Indiglo button on my watch and saw that it was 11:21.
Going comatose on the sofa had solved the problem of sleeping arrangements, but I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or disappointed about where I’d ended up. I thought about Vince, only a few yards away in his room, and felt lonely without him. I leaned back onto the pillow and pulled the quilt over me again. In the dark, all I could see was a green, blinking LED on the ceiling. I assumed it was a smoke detector and stared at its persistent little light, asking myself on a scale of one to ten how ridiculous it was to be sleeping alone on Vince’s couch with him so near that I could almost smell his cologne.
Jeannie was right about him. He was too polite for his own good. And I’d made so many big decisions, so fast, lately that the prospect of initiating another huge life change was terrifying. With this much self-doubt it was no wonder I couldn’t send consistent signals. I wondered what was keeping him around.
Well, I knew. We both knew, didn’t we? We could just never find the right words.
In our short history, we’d always said more when neither was talking. There’d been our first dance. Surrounded by hoards of mostly drunk people, I remembered the way he’d pulled me close and how I’d eventually rested my head on his shoulder, eyes closed. Despite the noise and hullabaloo, while we were dancing it had seemed we were having our own private conversation. In the time between the beginning and end of that song, something between us changed. Maybe something inside me had changed as well.
Once, he’d found me crying. He hadn’t said a word then either, just held me close and kissed my forehead. That was special, too.
I pushed the quilt back and sat up a second time, listening to nothing and staring into virtual blackness. The ice maker in the kitchen rumbled, then stopped. My chest felt a little bit tight, but when I stood, anxiety faded into resolve.
His door had been left partially open, which I hoped was a good sign. I entered slowly, unsure if he was asleep, and silently closed the door before walking toward the bed. In the shadows, I made out the form of his silhouette but couldn’t tell whether he was facing toward or away from me. For a moment I stood over him, wanting to crawl in but scared of screwing everything up.
I needn’t have worried. Blankets rustled and shadows changed as Vince slid the covers back.
I slipped in with him and my feet felt something solid at the end of the bed. Cindy’s collar jangled as she gave up her spot and slinked to the floor. Vince’s arms enveloped me under the sheets with him.
The bed was already warm.
He was shirtless, nearly motionless, and his touch was talking in that silent way I cherished. I couldn’t find his eyes, and it didn’t matter. He ran a hand lightly up my arm to my shoulder and barely squeezed, enough to reassure me we were having the same conversation.
He kissed me slowly then, deliberately, and retraced his path down my arm so tenderly that the gesture was incredibly seductive. I gave myself fully over to him then for the first time, feeling everything coming back—his vulnerability, desire, all of him.
Even though no words were said, in the morning I awoke beside him, comfortable in knowing we’d finally talked it all out.