Dead Lift (7 page)
“Thank goodness you’re here,” Jeannie shouted from my bedroom. “I can’t move!”
Vince had rescued me on his second pass down the boulevard and wrapped me in a blanket he kept in his truck for his dog to lay on. With it still draped over my shoulders like a cape, I flipped on my living room lights and we wound around the sofa, through my short hallway, and found Jeannie lying flat on her back in the shape of an X on top of my rumpled comforter. She’d left my nightstand lamp on and had
Cosmo
draped over her chest. For once, she’d selected modest sleepwear—thank God.
“Your fan blades are dusty,” she said, staring overhead.
The comment, made in front of Vince, ratcheted up my already-high irritation.
“What do you mean you can’t move?” he said.
Jeannie pulled her eyes off the fan and turned her head as if it were the only mobile part of her. “Hi, Cowboy.” She sighed in a familiar, self-pitying way. Without energy she added, “This is all
your
fault, Em. It was that trainer from hell.”
I dropped my blanket-cape and yanked the pillow from under her head. Her big blond curls rebounded off my Serta. “Why didn’t you answer the phone? I thought somebody broke in here and slashed your throat.”
“I told you.
I can’t move
.”
“Bullshit.” I clutched her ankle and pulled it over the edge of the bed. She winced.
“Uh, Emily—” Vince edged in, but I ignored him and tugged again.
“Get up,” I said. “It can’t be that bad.”
Jeannie shrieked. “My
back
!”
Vince pulled me off her and whispered. “I think she really is hurt, darlin’.”
“She’s faking.” I said it loud enough for her to hear. “She didn’t want to interrupt her beauty sleep to get up and answer the phone.”
Jeannie glared at me. “You’ll be sorry for that if I end up paralyzed.” She closed her eyes, her side of the conversation over.
“Too much estrogen in here,” Vince said. “I’ll make breakfast.”
He disappeared around the corner and I stomped to the bathroom and peeled myself out of soaking wet clothes I didn’t care if I ever saw again. Then I wrapped myself in a towel and scuttled back for the last word.
I leaned close to Jeannie’s ear.
“Faker,” I whispered.
Then I bolted for the bathroom before she could answer.
***
“Amazing what a shower and dry clothes does for you,” Vince said when I joined him at the breakfast table. “Hope you never come after
me
like that.”
I bit into a piece of jelly-smeared toast. “You wouldn’t ignore my calls.”
He smiled.
Because Jeannie’s a good actress and Vince is a softie, he’d delivered breakfast to her in bed before I could stop him. It was just as well. I was too annoyed for more theatrics. Jeannie could make a paper cut seem like a skin graft. I didn’t understand how a crybaby like her had endured so many nips, tucks, lipos, and lifts.
Under the table, my bare foot was in Vince’s lap and he massaged it with his free hand.
“I’m going to talk to Platt’s neighbors today,” I said. “And Jeannie made spa appointments for us that I’d rather skip.”
“Keep the appointment. It’s a chance to relax and you might learn something at the club.”
“Maybe.” I nodded toward my bedroom. “Doesn’t look like Queen Diva will be stepping out anytime soon.”
He stood, put his dishes in the sink, and kissed the top of my head. “I’ve got a long day.”
I followed him to the living room, where he gathered up the now-folded dog blanket I’d borrowed. “Thanks for rescuing me.”
He slipped his arms around my waist and buried his face in my neck. “Don’t make a habit of it.”
I turned and kissed him. “I probably will.”
He palmed his black Stetson off my cluttered end table and winked. “I know.”
***
The sun came up as I left I-10 to turn onto Heights Boulevard at 6:25. It was a majestic road with a lush, wide median full of huge shade trees and a twisty gravel walking trail. The temperature was down and so were my car windows. I barreled through puddles and listened to the violent spray hit my fenders.
It was too early to knock on doors but I at least wanted to get a feel for Platt’s neighborhood. The best way to do that was on foot, so I’d come dressed to run.
I found and passed his address, not wanting to park in front. A block west, on the corner of Heights and 7th, I pulled into a small grass lot that adjoined the most extravagant playground I’d ever seen. On the spot, I resolved to bring Annette as soon as she returned.
At a slow jog, I backtracked to Platt’s street and noticed the homes. Each was as likely to be a grand, restored Victorian as it was to be a well-maintained cottage.
Platt’s wooden siding was the color of weak chocolate milk. His front door and windows were accented with cream and burgundy, and the skillful blend of colors impressed and bugged me the same way it had at Claire’s.
A wrought-iron fence at the sidewalk, coupled with wooden privacy fences in the side yards, gave the home a false air of impenetrability. Under different circumstances, I might have adored that little cottage, but an irrational distaste for it washed over me. I didn’t like when things weren’t what they seemed.
“Starting or finishing?” It was an approaching runner. A ninja, judging by her eerily silent stride.
I fell in step beside her. “Starting.”
Her breathing was hard. She’d been at it a while. “You live on this street?”
“My sister lives a few blocks down,” I lied.
“I saw you checking out that house.”
“She told me what happened.”
“My daughter…” She took a breath. “…and I were coming home from soccer. Five police cars.”
“Never good.”
“I slowed down to ask a cop about it,” she said. “I’m nosey that way.”
“Wasn’t your little girl scared?”
“She was playing her Nintendo. Anyway, the guy said there’d be a ‘death investigation.’ But we didn’t find out until the next day that it was a murder.”
We passed the first imperfect house I’d seen in the neighborhood—a bungalow with garbage bags on the porch and a random, upside-down clawfoot bathtub in the side yard.
“Did you know the guy?” I asked. Somewhere, bacon was frying.
“My housekeeper did.”
I wanted to stop and shake her. “You had the same housekeeper?”
At the next cross street, she veered left without warning. I made a late correction and followed.
“No, Monica cleaned the house next to his. But she said the guy was real nice—” She held a hand out, as if to confide something. “—Not like the nut she works for.”
“Everybody has a kooky neighbor,” I said. “Mine swears there’s a ghost in her shower.” That was actually true. Florence, bless her heart, had quirks.
Ninja Runner chuckled and then stopped abruptly. She nodded to a cottage, this one quaint and clean. “This is me.”
I stopped too, already breathing hard. “I like it.”
A lady-bug flag that said “Welcome, friends” waved over her landscaping bed.
“We like it too,” she said. “
Now
. It was built in thirty-four.”
“Fixer upper?”
The smile she gave me said
You have no idea
. She raised the latch on her gate. “Have fun with your sister.”
I waved goodbye and went back to the running. As I circled the block and criss-crossed the boulevard, my thoughts drifted to Annette as they so often did. She’d be in a cozy bed somewhere in Wichita right now, dreaming of horseback rides at her faux-grandparents’ hobby farm. I regretted letting her leave for so many days. The Fletchers were an unrelenting imposition on our delicate relationship and, right or wrong, I viewed each day she spent with the people she
thought
were her parents as a setback to her future with me. But to Annette, I knew
I
was the imposition—on her life with them.
Frustrated, I ran faster and breathed harder. I imagined I was strong. I’d have to be. The only fair way to mother Annette was to let go when every instinct screamed to hold on tight.
I showered at Tone Zone and made myself presentable for my very first facial, which, like everything else at the club, sounded inviting but was overpriced. Asked to choose between treatments derived from desert plants, marine elements, or sunflower seeds, I’d reclined for forty-five minutes and had my face washed with a series of cleansers made from “real crushed pearls” and come away with a hundred and twenty dollar invoice that I was fairly certain Richard wasn’t going to reimburse. The crowning jewel was being advised by the esthetician—whose youthful face was frozen in an unnaturally innocuous stare—that Botox would be my best friend in five years.
Happy Birthday
.
In the locker room, I gave Richard the run-down on my cell phone while gathering my things. “This entire subculture is nuts. Women here do this
all
the time. They call it ‘maintenance.’” I was alone; I’d looked under shower curtains and bathroom doors to be sure. “I almost didn’t come this morning, and now I wish I hadn’t. But I do have some good news.”
“At least one of us does.” He sounded far away and his words were discontinuous. I worried that the earlier storm had ruined my phone.
Tone Zone’s locker area offered upholstered love seats and lounge chairs, a step up from the shiny metal benches I used at the Y. I dropped into a Victorian high back and crossed my feet on its lush ottoman. “The Westside Cosmetic Surgery Center had a cancellation,” I said. “I’m seeing Chris King at two.”
“To find out what it’ll take to fix your schnoz?”
“Shut up.”
“Be careful,” Richard said. “If he’s a bad guy, you don’t need to be on his radar.”
“I don’t?”
He ignored the joke. “When will you go back to the Heights?”
“Straight from the appointment. How’s it going with Platt’s family?”
“It’s not.” Even the poor sound quality couldn’t hide that he sounded pissed. I didn’t ask for the story.
“You dig anything up on Kevin Burke?”
“No.”
“Well, what am I paying you for?”
“It’s next on my list,” he said, not amused. “And I’ve been thinking about your Daniel angle. It doesn’t make sense. If he were hiding assets, it’d come out in the divorce. Claire’s attorney would uncover it during the discovery process. A big chunk of change turns up missing, someone’ll ask.”
Beauty treatments were confusing, but I knew even less about divorces. Richard was probably right, but my suspicion lingered. “If he’s responsible for this, surely he’s smart enough to find a way around a paper trail. You’re thinking like Joe Public. Think like a sophisticated criminal. They get away with things we can’t imagine.”
“Daniel had no reason to want Platt dead.”
“Neither did Diana.”
“No reasons that we know about, anyway.”
“True.”
I thought he sighed but it might have been a yawn.
“How about Jeannie?” he asked. “She your partner again today?”
“No. We were supposed to come here together but she threw her back out. For all I know, she’s watching soaps and eating all my ice cream. I’m going home for a sandwich and a nice, long Internet surf before my nose job consultation. I want to learn more about how insurance works between business partners.”
“I’ll check out Burke.”
We said goodbye and I snapped my phone closed and dropped it into my bag, wedged in the chair beside me. When I stood to leave, I wasn’t alone.
Kendra, the one normal person I’d met since working on Claire’s case, stepped out from a partition that divided the changing area from the sinks. The disappointment on her face said I should spare any weak excuses I was considering.
I did a fast mental rewind, trying to gauge how much she might have overheard.
“Janitor’s closet,” she said. “I was re-stocking. What are you really doing here at the club?”
I checked my watch. So much for spending my pre-King hours surfing the Net.
“Come with me.” I flung my gym bag’s strap over my shoulder. “Let’s have lunch.”
***
“You joined the club to spy on Diana.” Kendra’s tone implied she thought I was an idiot. She lifted a bite of salad onto her fork.
“She spends a lot of time here,” I said. “And the note that sent our client to the murder scene was left for her here, in her locker.”
“Do you have the note? I might know the handwriting.”
I shook my head.
“Did you see it?”
“No.”
“So there might not even
be
a note. Maybe the right person’s already in jail.”
I didn’t tell her I’d once shared similar thoughts.
We picked at our salads. The Bistro, one of two healthful eatery nooks nested inside the club, had been Kendra’s idea. I rolled a cherry tomato to the side of my plate and stabbed a crouton. Kendra took a sip of her bizarre aloe-seaweed drink.
She lowered her voice and leaned in. “Diana would never kill someone. She’s a great lady.”
“She’s weird if you ask me. Why do you like her?”
“She turned my life around.”
I leaned back in my chair, floored. “Don’t tell me she recruited you to some kind of new fangled church or something?”
“She got me this job.”
I relaxed a little. “So you’re loyal, not born-again.”
She smiled, but only a little. It was genuine, though. “Seriously. I couldn’t afford a membership here without my employee discount. And being a member of the club has opened so many doors. I do odd jobs for some of our members, everything from personal errands to babysitting to clerical stuff. Fat checks, easy work.”
“And you ascribe this good fortune to Diana?”
“Who else would hire an inexperienced girl at a fancy place like this?”
“Why’d she take you?”
“I’m friends with her daughter.”
“The waxer.”
She nodded. “You know Megan?”
“We’ve met.”
A tiny Asian waitress, who could have been twelve or thirty for all I could tell, deposited a marinated Portobello mushroom in front of Kendra and a spinach quesadilla in front of me.
Kendra began slicing her mushroom and I did the same with the quesadilla. Anywhere else, I’d have picked it up and eaten it like a pizza wedge. But we were seated near a ceiling-mounted security camera and I imagined that somewhere in the vast building, in addition to what I was wearing, my table manners were being monitored and discussed.
I pointed toward the camera. “Are those things all over the club?”
She turned to see what I was indicating. “Sure.”
I returned to my entrée, probably pressing my knife a little too hard into the dish.
“Why’d you ask that?” She sipped her seaweed juice and watched me over the rim.
“Where’s the footage archived?”
Kendra squinted at me. For the first time, I noticed expertly blended eye make-up. I felt a little betrayed by that.
Her eyes widened again. “Oh no. You are
not
.”
“I have to, Kendra. It’s my job to get to the bottom of this.”
“What if you get caught?”
“I won’t. I’ll have inside help.”
“Who?”
“You.”
She set down her utensils and straightened. I’d overstepped.
“I told you how much I need this job,” she said. “I won’t risk it.”
“But you
like
me.” It was another attempt at levity and, like all others that day, it flopped.
“I like Diana more.”
There we go
, I thought.
Cover blown
.
I tried again. “Instead of looking at it as helping me, maybe you could look at it as helping Diana. If she had nothing to do with Dr. Platt’s death, then whoever really left that note will be somewhere on Thursday’s tapes. Diana will be cleared.”
“She’s already cleared,” Kendra said. “Nobody else thinks she’s done anything wrong. There’s no way she killed Dr. Platt. They were
friends
. And even if she did—which is ridiculous—why would she pin it on a club member? That’s a stretch.”
“Her husband’s a big time cheater. He slept with the woman arrested for Platt’s murder. They had a long term affair and Diana knew about it.”
Kendra opened her mouth to say something and, presumably thinking better of it, closed it again.
“I don’t know why Diana would kill her friend,” I said, “But if she’s guilty, it’s easy to imagine why she’d hang it on our client. The point is, if there was a note, and if I find out who left it, these questions might disappear.”
Her gaze fell to the tabletop. To my half-eaten salad, actually. “There are no tapes,” she said. “The security recordings are digital. They get saved to a computer.”
“Even better,” I said. “I’ll copy the files. Where’s the machine?”
She looked at me again. “In Diana’s office. She’s the manager.”
We agreed I’d come back later with a thumb drive. Fearing she’d have second thoughts, I steered the conversation toward another topic of great interest to me—her exquisitely strange drink. When the bill came, I picked up the tab. Kendra’s twenty dollar mushroom would be worth every penny if I ended up scoring Thursday’s security footage.