Drip Dead (24 page)

I bit my cheek to hold back the scream of pain, and fought for control.

Slow even breaths, the way the sensei taught me. Control the breathing, control the body.

My heart still raced, but I presented a calm exterior.

I hoped.

I stepped outside, letting my gaze sweep across the lawn and the street beyond. As Sue had warned, a trim man in a dark suit was walking across the street toward Gregory’s house.

I set down the toolbox and pulled the door closed, locking it carefully before turning back around to face the man.

I nearly laughed with relief.

Gregory’s neighbor stood at the gang mailboxes on the sidewalk, flipping through a thin stack of envelopes. He looked up and caught sight of me in my coveralls and ball cap. He waved distractedly, and I knew he hadn’t taken any real notice of me or the van.

I strolled down the driveway, deliberately taking long strides and rolling my gait slightly as if compensating for the barrel chest and beer belly that strained the zipper of my coveralls. I wanted him to remember a small round man, not a woman.

I tossed the toolbox in the back of the van and opened the top as though retrieving something from inside.

I fought back a giggle when I saw Sue crouched behind the front seat, trying to hide. I stood at the open doors for a minute longer, waiting for the man to move.

He finally glanced back up, saw me fiddling inside the open toolbox, and nodded before walking back across the street. He dropped a handful of junk mail in the trash can next to his garage door and went in the house without another look in our direction.

As soon as he was gone I shut the toolbox, slammed the back doors shut, and climbed behind the wheel. Seconds later we were headed down the street and away from Gregory’s house.

Sue didn’t say anything until we had put several blocks between us and the house.

“Can I get up now?”

“That might be a good idea,” I answered. “Before I get pulled over and your boyfriend, or one of his buddies, gives me a ticket for a passenger without a seat belt.”

Sue scrambled between the seats and slid into the passenger’s side, hastily dragging the seatbelt across her shoulder and snapping it in place.

My biggest worry right now was where to park the van. I hadn’t found what I was looking for so I would have to go back and try again. Parking the van in front of my house in the meantime wasn’t a great idea.

“Why don’t you put it in your mom’s garage?” Sue said. “You have the keys”—she pointed to the key ring hanging out of my pocket—“and Fred’s released the house.”

The idea appealed to me, but I was reluctant. I hadn’t been in that house since the day I’d found Gregory’s body, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to go back there. It had only been a few days and I wasn’t sure I was ready.

On the other hand, it would give me a chance to see the hallway where Gregory had fallen through to the crawl space.

I dropped Sue off at her place to pick up her car. I stopped a few blocks away in the half-empty parking lot of the market. I found a space far enough away from the other vehicles that it afforded a little privacy and did a two-minute makeover, pulling off my coveralls and the padding, wiping my face, taking off my cap, and fluffing my hair with my fingers.

Mom’s nosy neighbors would see her daughter in her typical jeans and T-shirt going into the house, not a round man in coveralls.

A few minutes later I pulled the van into Mom’s driveway. I left the engine running while I hopped out and used the override key to trigger the garage door opener.

The garage stood empty. Gregory’s car had been impounded by the sheriff, and Mom’s car was still at the Whitlock Estates office, where she had parked it the day she was arrested.

I parked the van in the garage and closed the door. Running back and forth to operate the door with a key was a nuisance, but it was better than trying to haul the door down one-handed.

The garage was dim and gloomy after the warm sunshine of the early summer afternoon. I shivered and wished I’d brought a jacket. But a jacket wouldn’t have taken care of the chill that passed through me.

I debated waiting for Sue. If I had someone with me, it might not be as bad. But would she be willing to help me search the house, or would she dismiss it as a lost cause?

She couldn’t argue with me if I was already searching.

I took a deep calming breath, let it out slowly, and unlocked the kitchen door.

The kitchen was as neat as Mom had left it, but there was something just a little off. Things were mostly in the right places, but there were subtle changes. The teakettle that always sat on the left rear burner was on the right rear. The row of canisters—who still used canisters besides my mother?—had the largest one on the left, not the right.

Little things that signaled someone besides my mother had been in the kitchen last. Reminders that the police had searched the house.

I did my best to ignore the evidence of the police search as I prowled through the kitchen. The dishwasher was empty, and I remembered telling Sheriff Mitchell about the dirty glass on the counter.

I riffled through Mom’s files in the kitchen, but there wasn’t anything I hadn’t already seen in the prenup. The one thing I wanted to know about was the one thing Mom was not involved in: Veritas.

I heard Sue’s car pull up outside. I walked to the front door and opened it, waving for her to come inside.

While I waited for her to lock the car and come up the walk I glanced up and down the street. Harry Hamilton stood in his living room, watching the street like it was downtown Tombstone and he was Wyatt Earp. Shouldn’t he be at work in the middle of Tuesday afternoon?

Sue dragged her feet but eventually she reached the door and came inside. I took a last look at Harry Hamilton and closed the door behind Sue.

I was definitely going to have to do something about Hamilton when I moved in—
if
I moved in. No telling what effect Mom’s arrest would have on the sale of the house.

“You got the van put away?” Sue asked.

I nodded. “Locked in the garage. I can take it tomorrow when I go back to Gregory’s.”

I walked into the living room toward the hallway.

“You said you found the wine,” Sue protested as she trailed after me. “What do you need to go back for? You want to sample it?”

“I didn’t find it.” My voice sounded strange. I was just a couple steps from the hallway, and my throat constricted with dread. I wasn’t sure what was in the hall, but I had to see it before I went to see Mom.

The house was cool, but not cold. Still, goose bumps covered my bare arms as I approached the doorway to the hall.

I clamped my jaw tight and stepped through the doorway and into the hall. There wasn’t much to see and I exhaled with a rush.

It was a relief, and a letdown.

The rug that normally covered the floor was missing, probably in the same place as the missing dishes. There were two or three dark spots on the wood floor, and the outline of a large square in the middle of the hall.

It was the inside of the hatch I’d seen from under the house. I didn’t remember any opening in the floor while I was growing up. It must be a recent modification.

I switched on the light to get a better look at the hatch, and Sue came up behind me. She breathed in sharply when she saw the floor. I followed her gaze and involuntarily made the same noise.

With the light on, it was clear that the spots on the floor were bloodstains.

Gregory’s blood.

My ears buzzed and my head felt as though it wanted to drift away from my shoulders and bounce against the ceiling.

It took me a couple minutes of careful breathing and concentration before the light-headed moment passed. Once it did I knelt down, careful to avoid any of the spots. Although they were dry I was loathe to touch them.

I peered closely at the square of flooring that had been cut out of the surrounding floor. The edges had been sanded and sealed, and there was a small recess routed into one side for a finger grip.

I pushed one fingertip into the recess and gave an experimental tug. The hatch moved with surprising ease, and I realized it was hinged on the opposite side. It swung open revealing the empty crawl space.

For a fraction of a second I imagined Gregory’s body still beneath the open hatch, the stack of wine crates next to his lifeless form.

Then my eyes focused on the emptiness where his body had been and the image was replaced by one of bare dirt and a square of light shining down through the hole.

I looked carefully at the hatch door. The hinges were designed so that the door could fold back against the floor, allowing unobstructed access to the hole in the floor.

It was a clever design, if you were moving things in and out a lot. Had Gregory been putting enough wine in Mom’s crawl space to make that worthwhile? Or had the hatch been built for some other purpose? I couldn’t think of a reason, but I would ask Mom when I saw her later.

One more question on the growing list of things I wanted to ask Mom.

I kneeled over and stuck my head in the hole. The crawl space was dark and chilly, with the dank smell of damp soil. There was nothing to see but concrete footings and pier posts disappearing into the gloom.

I sat back on my heels. Sue was right, there was nothing to find in Mom’s house. The sheriff would have taken anything significant, yet I suspected very little was missing. They hadn’t found anything because there wasn’t anything to find.

I pulled the hatch cover back into place with a sigh and stood up.

“Let’s go,” I said to Sue.

She didn’t answer, just turned and led the way to the front door. My disappointment surrounded both of us as we climbed in her SUV for the short drive to my house.

Airedales are a good antidote for a pity party, and mine take their job quite seriously.

As soon as Sue and I opened my door, Daisy and Buddha appeared, begging to go outside. I glanced at Sue and she grabbed the leashes from the hook. A walk would do us all good.

Sue took pity on my injured wrist and handed me Buddha’s leash. Today she would take the fractious Daisy.

We made a long, lazy circuit of the neighborhood, walking along the unpaved shoulder of the streets. As though by unspoken agreement we talked about everything except the topic that was foremost in both our minds: Gregory Whitlock’s murder.

Sue asked about my upcoming exams. Once I passed the licensing exam I would be a full-fledged plumber. Then what?

It was a good question, and one I had been asking myself.

“Well, since I am buying Mom’s house,” I said, skipping over all the questions Gregory’s murder presented, “I guess it looks like I’m going to stay in Pine Ridge. Barry seems happy with me, and Megan would never forgive him if he lost the only woman plumber on his crew.”

“What about Angie? Didn’t you say she’s started taking the classes?”

The mention of Angie, Barry’s receptionist, made me smile. I don’t think her ambitions had risen above answering phones and picking up the mail until I went to work for Barry.

Angie had quizzed me several times about the class work, afraid it would be too hard. I had assured her each time that she was capable, and during the slow winter season she had enrolled in her first college class.

“She has a long way to go,” I reminded Sue. “It’s four years to get a license, at least.” I chuckled, remembering Barry’s reaction when Angie told him she needed to get off early on Tuesdays for her class. “But I’m betting she’ll make it.”

“And you?” Sue stopped and turned to look at me. Daisy strained against the leash for a moment, then settled down next to Sue.

I glared down at Daisy. “Traitor!” I looked back at Sue. “You know what happened when I was gone, Sue. My life in high tech stopped being fun a long time before I came running back to Pine Ridge.”