A Body to Spare (The Odelia Grey Mysteries) (22 page)

I dashed across the living room and turned left in the hallway. “Mom!” I called. Her bedroom was empty, and the bed was made. I went the other way. Both the bathroom and extra bedroom were empty. Everything was neat as a pin.

“She’s not here,” I said to Greg when I returned to the living room.

“No, but her cell phone is.” He held up a smartphone that I recognized as my mother’s. “It was on the kitchen counter, plugged into the charger,” he explained. “That’s probably why she didn’t take it with her. It was probably low on juice.”

My racing heart slowed back to normal. “Maybe she’s at the rec room playing cards with friends,” I suggested. “You stay here in case she’s not and returns. I’ll just pop over there.”

When I left Mom’s, I stopped dead in my tracks on the sidewalk, trying to remember where the recreation room was located. The community had a nice setup, with a large pool, game room, and exercise room located somewhat in the center of the sprawling property, which was honeycombed with sidewalks. An elderly couple strolled by in matching track suits. “Where’s the rec room?” I asked them. They pointed across the street to a wide green belt with a sidewalk running down the middle of it. I walked in that direction at a fast clip.

There were three groups of people playing games at card tables in the rec room. One table consisted of two couples playing bridge. At the other, three women played a different card game. It looked like hearts. At the third table, two men played chess. No one was at the pool tables. I glanced through the glass wall that revealed the gym and spotted one man walking on a treadmill while watching a game on the overhead TV.

“Hi,” I said, approaching the table of women. “I’m Odelia, Grace Littlejohn’s daughter. Have you seen my mother?”

A roly-poly woman with cotton-candy hair answered, “Not today. But most Sundays she’s here playing cards with us.”

“Maybe she went to church,” another woman answered, which caused a ripple of titters. My mother is many things, but a churchgoer is not one of them, and she’s quite vocal about her atheist status. The woman making the remark was pale and thin and wore a lovely dress and a string of pearls. Hanging on the back of her chair was a jacket that matched the dress. I remembered meeting her and thought her name was Rose. I also remembered that Mom didn’t care for the woman. I’ll bet Rose had probably gone to services earlier in the day.

One of the chess players looked up at me. He was a bald African American man with a gray stubbly beard who I’d met several times before. Mom liked him. His name was Art, a widower who I’m pretty sure had his eye on Mom when she had first moved into the complex. I don’t think anything romantic came of it, but they did become friends. “I saw Grace driving off with a friend of hers when I was on my way over here,” Art told me.

I turned to him with interest and annoyance. Mom had orders not to go anywhere, but my mother’s general policy was that orders, like rules, were made to be broken. “Are you sure, Art?”

“Pretty sure. She waved at me as she got into his car.”

“His car?” I repeated. “So it was a man?”

He stopped playing and scratched his stubble as he tried to remember. It sounded like fine sandpaper. “More like a kid, really. A red-haired young man, kind of spindly.”

Swayze.

Art peered at me with concern over the top of his glasses. “Do you know who that is, Odelia?”

“Yes, I do.” I wiped the worry off my face and replaced it with a smile. “Thanks, Art.” After I wished them all a good day, I left the rec room and headed down the greenbelt toward my mother’s place at a jog. With all the jogging I was getting, maybe I should listen to Greg about more cardio or at least start wearing a snugger bra.

When I turned at a bend in the walkway for the home stretch, I saw Greg sitting outside Mom’s place waiting for me. He was holding something in his hand and waving it in my direction. Did Mom leave a note? Stupid me. Why didn’t we look for one earlier? It would have saved time and my legs.

I kept up my jog until I reached him, then collapsed forward, hands on my knees to steady myself as I gulped air. There was another catch in my side. I half expected Greg to say something about my condition, but he didn’t; instead, he shoved the paper in front of my lowered nose.

“Odelia, we have a serious problem.”

“Besides me having a heart attack?”

He didn’t laugh as I expected. Instead, he shook the paper under my nose again. “Grace has been kidnapped.”

I straightened up so fast I nearly fell to the ground in a dizzy lump. “What?” I scooted over to the patio wall and leaned against it for support.

Greg handed me the note. “I found this on the kitchen table, under the phone,” he explained. “It was facedown, so I didn’t realize it was addressed to you until after you took off.”

It was a single piece of paper folded in thirds. On one of the outside folds my name was printed in a juvenile hand that looked familiar. Inside the note was neatly printed in the same manner:
If you want your mother back, stay by her phone. No cops or she’s dead.

“Grace didn’t leave her phone behind to charge it,” Greg said. “It was left by the kidnappers to communicate with us.”

I rubbed a hand over my face and squeaked out between breathes, “Swayze has her.”

“Swayze?”

I nodded. “Mom’s friend Art saw her get in a car with a young guy that fit John Swayze’s description. He said Mom waved at him.”

“Was she waving at Art or trying to get his attention?” Greg asked.

“Good question,” I said, finally speaking normally. “But why would Swayze grab Mom? And why in heaven’s name would she go off with him after we specifically told her to stay home?”

“Maybe she didn’t have a choice.” Greg ran a hand through his hair several times, creating haphazard furrows. His jaw was clenched from stress, much like my stomach.

“We need to get her phone.” I started to move inside the condo, but Greg stopped me by holding Mom’s cell phone up. “Got it.” When I took it from him, he added, “I know what the note said, but cops or no cops? It’s your call. Swayze is obviously someone other than who he says.”

I fell back against the low block wall again in fright. “Oh my gawd, Greg. John Swayze must be the hitman.”

I could tell Greg was whirling my comment around in his brain by the way his eyes moved. They almost circled, then darted from one side to the other, as if actually searching for information stored in his gray matter. “I don’t know, sweetheart,” he finally said. “If he was, why didn’t he take you out when he had the chance back at our place? He recorded you. He didn’t kill you. And didn’t you pat him down, looking for a weapon?”

“I only grabbed his wallet.” I shook my head. “I really should have checked for some sort of weapon. It was slip-shod of me.”

“Not really, sweetheart. You’re not a cop. It’s not like you called in sick the day they covered pat-downs at paralegal school.”

Greg was trying to make me feel a little better, but it wasn’t working. John Swayze had my mother, and until he called we wouldn’t know why or what he wanted. We were stuck waiting for a call, with no idea of when it would come. I took several breaths of air—not out of exhaustion but to try and center my emotions and thoughts. Like us, Mom lived close to the ocean, and the air was heavy with both salty sea moisture and the dampness of the overhead storm clouds. It hadn’t rained yet today, but the threat was there, just as it was in the note.

“Who knows why Swayze did what he did,” I finally said. “Maybe he was only scouting for the real killer.” I looked down at the note again, studying it closely. “But I think whoever wrote this might also have written the note found on Zach’s body.”

Greg put on his reading glasses and held out his hand for the kidnapper’s note. “Are you sure?” I handed it back to him, and he pored over it like it was a map to buried treasure. “The other note only had two words, as I recall,” he said, not looking up.

“No, I’m not absolutely sure, but I think it’s a possibility.” I took another few breaths. “Both are printed in a similar juvenile hand.” I closed my eyes and concentrated. “I really don’t recall coming across Swayze before now, so if he did kill Zach and put the body in my trunk, why? What’s the connection to me?”

Silence as thick and gummy as oatmeal fell over us while we put our brains through their paces again. After a few moments, I asked, “What do you think we should do, honey?”

“I’m not sure, Odelia.” Greg put away his reading glasses. “Other than just wait for whoever has Grace to contact us.” He paused. “I don’t want to put Grace’s life in danger by involving the police, but they need to know that Swayze might be involved.”

“I agree.” I pushed off from the wall and went inside and grabbed my purse. Greg came in behind me. I pulled out my cell and called Andrea Fehring and put it on speaker so Greg could participate.

“What’s up, Odelia?” she answered after two rings.

“I’ve been thinking,” I began, choosing my words carefully. “I think maybe John Swayze might have had something to do with Zach’s death or at least with putting him in my trunk.”

“Why do you say that?” she asked.

“Something about the note left with the body has been bothering me since I met Swayze,” I continued. “I think I recognized his handwriting.”

“And where did you see it?” Fehring asked.

Next to me, Greg mouthed, “Careful.”

I hesitated just long enough to swallow. “When I went through his wallet after I bashed his hand. I was looking for ID.”

“And he just happened to have a handwriting sample on him? Maybe he was practicing forgery.” Fehring offered up a very terse laugh bordering on a woof. “Give me a break, Odelia. What’s really going on?”

“It was sort of a to-do list,” I quickly answered. Greg gave me a thumbs up on my speedy creativity. “I remember it having a similar look to the writing on the note left with Zach’s body. You know, precise block printing like a kid who never learned cursive.”

Now Greg was mouthing, “Don’t oversell.”

“Greg and I were talking about it and thought I should tell you. Did you dust the note for fingerprints?”

A big sigh came through the phone. “Of course we did, and we found nothing. Not Swayze’s. Not anyone’s.” A pause. “Look, I’m very busy. We brought in Finch, but Glick’s disappeared.”

“Yeah,” I said, “Dev told us about it. Any breaks?”

“Not yet.” There was another pause. “By the way, Odelia, I’m not happy that you didn’t tell me about Elaine Powers contacting you yesterday.”

Greg mouthed, “Say nothing.” It was difficult, but I kept my mouth shut.

“What else are you not telling me?” Fehring prodded.

I took a deep breath. Greg was now silently telling me to tell her about Clark. Instead, I handed him the phone. I was tired of dancing around Fehring’s questions and was too worried about Mom to be careful.

“Andrea,” Greg began, “Greg here. We also wanted to tell you that Clark has been looking into some background on the Finch family.”

There was a long silence on the other end. “I should be mad, but I’m not,” she finally said. “At least he’s a trained cop and knows how to be careful. So spill it.”

Greg filled her in on what Clark had told us about the Finch family dynamics and the theory that maybe Zach used the kidnapping as an opportunity to hit the road on his own. “He could have even escaped,” Greg suggested. “Went into hiding, and maybe the kidnappers found him after all these years. Maybe he was Jean’s roommate?”

“No,” Fehring said, “we’ve located the roommate. We got his name from the occupant information on file with the complex’s security company. He is an actor who just moved to New York, just as Jean said, and he has long blond hair like on the comb. We also showed a photo of Zach to Jean’s neighbors, and none of them recognized him as living there, but one woman who lived in the condo across from Jean did say she saw Zach visiting from time to time.”

“So Jean
did
know that her brother was here in SoCal?” I asked, moving back closer to the phone.

“Sure looks that way,” Fehring said. “And from fingerprints we took from the body, it looks like he was going by the name of David Moreland. The address on file with the DMV is a mailbox place, just like with Swayze’s. We’re trying to get their records now to see what physical address Zach put down. We’re also going through all of Jean’s contact lists from her phone, computer, and address book to see if she had a physical address for him under that name, but we’re coming up with nothing. Whatever Zach was doing to support himself, it was off the grid.”

“Off the grid,” I echoed. “Maybe that’s what got him killed. Maybe Elaine was wrong about recognizing Nathan Glick’s voice.”

“As much as I don’t want to show support for your killer pal,” Fehring said, “she stays alive remembering details like that, so I’m not so ready to dismiss Glick just yet, especially since he ran.” Another pause. “So are you following orders and staying put?”

“We’d love to go home, Andrea,” my hubs said, getting a thumbs up from me on his own quick thinking. He hadn’t lied to her but had offered up a comment that could be taken as an affirmative response.

“Not just yet,” she told us. “We’ll call you as soon as we feel it’s safe.”

“What about work tomorrow?” Greg asked. “Can I at least go to my shop? I have a business to run.”

“Sit tight, Greg,” Fehring said. “But it wouldn’t hurt to have someone cover for you tomorrow.”

“How about my employees—are they safe?” he asked.

“Your business is in Huntington Beach, correct?” she asked.

“Yes, it is.”

“I’ll make a call to their police chief and see if he will post someone to watch it tomorrow—how’s that? I’ll see if I can arrange something at Odelia’s work, too, just in case.”

“We’d feel a lot better about it,” Greg told her. “Thanks.”

Another cell phone rang. It was Mom’s. When I made the call to Fehring, I’d placed it on the counter by my purse. Neither Greg or I made a move to touch it. Instead, we stared at each other with the wide eyes of lemmings who’d just received orders to march off a cliff.

twenty-five

“What’s that phone?” Fehring
asked. “I thought Dev took the phone Powers gave you.”

“He did,” I said quickly. “That’s Greg’s phone.”

“Yeah. It’s my parents,” he lied. “I need to take it.”

“I’ll let you two go, then,” Fehring said, “but stay close to both of your phones.” She hung up.

Mom’s phone rang again, and Greg and I continued to stare at each other, afraid to answer and at the same time afraid not to. Worry for Mom won out, and I grabbed the phone and hit the answer button.

“I see you found the note,” said a woman on the other end of the line.

“Yes,” I stammered. “We found it.” Greg grabbed the phone from me and put it on speaker.

“Who’s
we
?” the voice asked. I didn’t recognize it at all but continued to push my memory through its paces.

“My…my…,” I said, struggling to get the words out.

“It’s Greg Stevens, Odelia’s husband,” Greg said in the phone. “We found the note and Grace’s phone. Please don’t hurt Grace.”

“Wow,” said the woman, “a son-in-law worried about his mother-in-law. That’s unusual.” She laughed, but it wasn’t a fun laugh. It was sharp as a knife and edged with cruelty. “Grace will be fine if you follow instructions.”

Greg looked at me and silently asked if I knew who the caller was. I shrugged my answer.

“What do you want?” Greg asked the caller.

“Odelia.”

“I’m here,” I squeaked out, trying to keep my tears at bay. “Please don’t hurt Mom.”

“No, it’s you I want,” the woman said.

“Me?” I asked with surprise, staring at the smartphone and wishing it was a visual call. “I don’t even know you!” I paused. “Do I?”

“Dumber than a box of rocks,” the voice said almost under her breath.

The blood in my veins instantly turned to ice. I shook my head, unsure if I had heard it or not. “Excuse me,” I said. “I didn’t catch what you said.”

“If you don’t want to bury your mother, Odelia, then show up at the address I’m going to give you. Show up alone.”

“No,” Greg said quickly. “I’m coming with her.”

“We only have Greg’s van,” I added quickly. “And I can’t drive his van.”

“Bring your old man, then,” she said with a laugh. “It’s added value. But no cops or you will all die. And that is non-negotiable.”

She gave us an address. I stopped her so I could grab a pen from a cup of them Mom kept on the counter along with a small notepad. She sighed and waited. When I was ready, she repeated the address and told us we had thirty minutes to get there.

Greg looked at the address. “If we hit traffic, it might take longer than that. Maybe even an hour.”

“Then make it forty-five,” she said and disconnected.

I stumbled to the sofa and lost it. Burying my face in my hands, I sobbed, my shoulders shaking like I was being electrocuted. And I was—with fear.

Greg rolled over and stopped in front of me. He put a hand on each of my knees and squeezed. “It’s going to be okay, sweetheart,” he said, trying to reassure me. “We’ll get Grace back. You’ll see.”

I shook my head, still keeping it buried in my hands, which were now sopping wet. He put one hand gently on the top of my head. “Who was that, Odelia?” he asked gently. “You know, don’t you?”

Still bent forward, I nodded. “It was Lisa.” I raised my tear- soaked face to him and sniffed back mucus. “Elaine’s bodyguard.”

He took his hands off of me as if he’d touched a hot stove and stared at me. “Are you sure?”

I nodded. “About 90 percent sure. She said I was dumber than a box of rocks just now. She’s said that before.” I took a deep breath.

Greg ran a hand vigorously through his hair. “So Elaine
is
involved?”

I shrugged as my brain exploded with possibilities. “Either Elaine lied to us about knowing about Zach or Lisa is acting on her own.” I stood up and took another deep breath. “But if Lisa is acting on her own, then Mom is as good as dead. She doesn’t have the same warped code as Elaine. Lisa has no code. She’s a killer through and through.”

I grabbed tissues from a box Mom kept on the table between the sofa and her favorite chair and mopped up my face. “Let’s get going. We don’t have much time, and Mom doesn’t have much of a chance of surviving, but she has zero chance if we don’t show up. Don’t forget to bring Mom’s phone.”

Greg nodded slowly as he held up the phone as proof he still had it, then turned his wheelchair toward the door while I grabbed my purse.

“What about the police?” Greg asked once we were on the road.

“If we call them and Lisa finds out, Mom is dead. It never dawned on me that Lisa might be acting as a freelance killer. I was thinking that John Swayze was the killer.”

“Speaking of which, what do you think his connection is to Elaine and her crew?” he asked.

“I have no idea. As far as I know, Elaine’s people are all women.” Pieces of information were floating in front of me like helium balloons. I kept trying to catch one or two, but they floated out of my reach. “But if Lisa decided to freelance separately from Elaine, she might not be so choosy.” My right knee was bouncing up and down on the floor of the van. “Damn it. If Dev hadn’t taken that phone, I could call Elaine and ask her a few questions.”

Greg glanced over at me. “You still believe Elaine, don’t you?”

“Yes, Greg, I do. I’m not sure why, except that she’s had plenty of opportunity to grab Mom and harm us, and she never has. If I’m right and it is Lisa who took Mom, Elaine might not know she’s gone off the reservation. And Lisa has always disliked me. Maybe she killed Zach and put him in my car as some sort of sick joke.”

“What I still don’t understand is if Swayze is working with this Lisa, why didn’t he do something when he had you alone?”

“I don’t understand that either, Greg.”

I pulled out my phone and called Fehring again. This time it went to voice mail after four rings. I hung up and called again. This time she picked up on the third ring. “I’m trying to get in a few hours at home with my family, Odelia, so this had better be good.”

“And I’m trying to save my butt,” I snapped. Before she could say anything, I ploughed on. “I think Swayze is involved in this in a big way,” I told her. “Do you have any information on someone named Lisa who works on Elaine Powers’s crew?”

“Not at my fingertips, but I can look it up. Give me a minute, and I’ll call you back.”

“I don’t have a minute. Look for a connection between Swayze and this Lisa—I don’t have a last name for her. I think she’s broken away from Elaine’s group and Swayze is working with her.”

“Hold on,” Fehring said, “I hear traffic noise. You two are supposed to be at Dev’s, not driving around.”

“I don’t have time to explain. Dev might be able to contact Elaine through the phone he took from me. Have him ask her about it.” I ended the call.

A second later my phone rang again. It was Fehring. I ignored it. Shortly after, Greg’s phone, which was on the console between us, rang. “Should we get that?” he asked.

“No.”

“Maybe we should turn them both off so they can’t track us.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think they can do that as quickly as they do on TV. Besides, maybe being tracked at this point is a good thing.”

I looked out the window at the scenery whizzing by as we traveled south on the 405. Greg was heavy on the gas, but this time I wasn’t worried. If I could have made the van go faster from my side, I would have. My only worry was that we didn’t have time to be stopped by the CHP for speeding.

“Also,” I said, amending my last comment, “they’ll need to track us to find our bodies.”

I felt Greg’s eyes on me but couldn’t meet them with my own. I couldn’t face the fact that not only was I probably going to my own death, but I was taking the man I loved with me.