A Body to Spare (The Odelia Grey Mysteries) (4 page)

four

Before leaving the bedroom,
I changed out of my still-damp jeans and panties into dry, comfy yoga pants. The food was already on the table, along with plates and utensils. Greg was pouring iced tea for us while he brewed Mom a cup of decaf coffee. Mom was still on the sofa poring over her iPad.

“Clark will be here tomorrow,” I told Greg. “He’s going to dinner with us and Dev.”

“Yeah, your mother just told me he was coming,” Greg said, putting down the iced tea pitcher.

“He sent me a text while we were at the police station,” Mom called from the sofa. “He asked if I wanted to go to dinner with you all, but I declined. I have plans tomorrow night.”

Greg and I exchanged glances. My mother seemed to have a very busy social life, but we were only privy to part of it. Sometimes she did things with Greg’s parents and sometimes with friends from her retirement community. For all we knew, the rest of the time she was a CIA operative. “What’s up tomorrow night, Mom?” I asked.

“Me and a few of the girls are going to one of those Indian casinos tomorrow,” she explained, not looking up from her tablet. “We’re even staying overnight. It’s one of those bus trips for old people designed to rob us of our social security money. They’re running a special for a two-day, one-night trip. Should be fun.”

I looked at Greg and shook my head. He just grinned. “Fun to be robbed or fun to spend time with friends?” I asked her.

“I’m not much of a gambler,” my mother said, still keeping most of her focus on what she was doing, “and sometimes those old biddies get on my nerves, but I love to people watch at the casino. And there’s always some great food and entertainment. I’ve been on these trips before.”

“You have?” I asked. This was news to me.

“Sure,” she answered. “They’re usually on Tuesdays or Wednesdays, when the casinos aren’t as busy, but this one was for Thursday since Monday was a holiday.”

“Did you tell Clark you’ll be gone?” I asked, walking into the living room from the dining area. Except for the bedrooms and bathrooms, our home has a huge open floor plan, with the living room, dining room, and kitchen flowing one into the other. Greg designed it, buying a duplex and turning it into one very large easy-care home. “He said he was staying with you while he’s here.”

“He’s a big boy, Odelia. He can stay by himself a day or two. And he has a key to my place.” She looked up at me. “But I guess I should tell him, shouldn’t I?”

“Ya think?” I scowled at her. Grace Littlejohn had never been mother of the year, and she wasn’t about to start now. She’d had three kids by three different fathers. Clark had been fathered by Leland Littlejohn. I was conceived with Horten Grey, whom my mother had married after taking off and leaving Clark with his father. When I was sixteen and my parents were already divorced, Mom left me and ran off with some guy who impregnated her with our half brother Grady. She returned to Leland after Grady’s father abandoned her, and Leland adopted Grady and gave him his name. And that’s where she was when I finally caught up to her several years ago. Both my father and Clark’s are now deceased, and so is Grady.

For better or for worse, that leaves me with just two blood family members. Clark and I have become quite close; we are a lot alike and even resemble each other a bit. And both of us have this love-hate relationship with our mother, which has improved over the past few years. I have friends who complain that their aging parents have no life outside of that of their children, but Clark and I worry about the life Mom has away from our watchful eyes. What’s worse, she seems absorbed in my occasional trips to murderland and sees us as a sort of mother-daughter PI team. I can’t tell you how many times Greg has told me how thankful he is that his parents are normal. They are, and I love them for it.

Mom looked up at me through her glasses, the thick lenses enlarging her eyes. She looked like a startled lemur. “But maybe I shouldn’t go.”

“I’m sure Clark won’t mind, Grace,” Greg told her. “And you’re only going to be gone one night.”

“I’m not worried about him,” Mom told him. “I’m worried about that dead body. Odelia might need me to help figure out where it came from.”

I had to nip this line of thinking right in the bud, and pronto. “The police are handling it, Mom,” I told her firmly. “Tomorrow I’m going to work, then later to dinner with Dev, Clark, and Greg. That’s it.”

“I’m sure you’re going to do all that, Odelia, but I’m not stupid. Your brother, Dev Frye, and even you and Greg are going to be looking into this, and I want to help. In fact, I already have.”

I moved closer until I was right in front of her, staring into her lemur eyes. “What do you mean, Mom?”

In answer, she turned her iPad around. “I’ve been online looking up whatever I can on that Finch guy.”

I was annoyed. Not because she looked up the dead man online, but because she had done it before I did. It was something I had been planning to do later. “And?” I asked, putting aside my pettiness in favor of information.

“And if this is the right guy,” Mom said, pointing at the tablet, “the top just got popped off a whole different can of worms.”

I sat down on the sofa next to Mom and picked up the iPad to study it closer. As I read, my eyes widened and my heart nearly stopped. I checked the date of the old news article Mom had unearthed. It could be the same Zach Finch, or Zachery Finch. The age of the person in the article about matched up with the age of the guy in my trunk, given the time lapsed. There was even a photograph, taken years ago, and I could see similarities. I hadn’t gotten a good look at the man’s face while he was in the trunk, but the police had shown me and Seth photos of him taken after the tape across his mouth had been removed. He’d had a high forehead and small eyes, between which was a long nose with a bump on the bridge, like it had been broken a long time ago. In the photo, his thin lips were gray and waxy. It was too early to be definitive, but the initial cause of death was thought to be suffocation, and the time of death was estimated as sometime late Tuesday night or in the wee hours of Wednesday morning.

“Honey,” I said to Greg, “you need to see this.”

“The food’s getting cold,” Greg complained as he rolled into our living room. In his hand was Mom’s coffee.

“I’ll take that,” Mom said to him, holding out her hand. Greg handed her the coffee mug. Mom wrapped her hands around it and brought it close to her thin chest like it was a teddy bear.

“We can nuke the food if we need to,” I told Greg. “This is important.” I handed him the tablet. “Read that.”

Greg pulled his reading glasses from a pouch on the side of his wheelchair where he kept things he needed quick access to and slipped them on. I watched as he scanned the page, then moved to the next, then back to the first one. Behind his glasses, his eyes swelled in surprise like inflated party balloons. “Do you think this is our guy?”

“The article says that Zach Finch was from Illinois, and the age in the article would come close,” I pointed out. “The cops told me the guy in my trunk was from Illinois, but that’s all they said besides his name.” I looked at Greg while my mind wrapped around the information in an effort to contain it. “The cops had to know about this, right?”

“If he’s the same guy in this article, I’m betting they did.” He tapped the screen of the tablet. “Kidnapping is a federal crime. No wonder Special Agent Shipman was there. It’s also why they didn’t say much to you. They’ll be playing it close to the chest until they get more information. At least I would if I were them.” He looked up at me. “Are you hearing me, Odelia?” he said, changing to his lecture voice. “The
feds
.” He said the word as if invoking the power of God himself. “If Shipman’s presence wasn’t enough to put you on alert, this sure should be.”

“Are you saying to forget about it?” I asked.

He hesitated. “I’m saying we need to be very, very careful with this or we’re going to get our asses in a sling and possibly a few of our friends’ asses too.” I knew immediately that he was talking about Willie. Although Elaine had done me a solid in the past, I didn’t think Greg cared about protecting a killer.

He put the iPad down on the coffee table. “Nice work, Grace.” Next to me my mother beamed and took a sip of her coffee. Greg started back to the kitchen. “Zach is dead, and I’m not. Let’s discuss this further over dinner.” He stopped and spun his chair around. Looking straight at my mother, he said, again using his lecturing voice, “Grace, you cannot put this up on your blog or anywhere else. Do you understand?”

“Clark already said the same thing,” Mom snapped back, “and so did Seth Washington. But none of you are the boss of me. Got that, hot wheels?”

“Grace,” Greg said, rolling back closer to her. “You’re my mother-in-law and I love and respect you, but don’t think for a minute I won’t lock you in our guest room if that’s what it would take to keep you safe.”

Holy crap.
I watched the scene play out, wisely keeping my nose out of it. My mother could be a cantankerous and willful battle-ax at times, but my husband took his duty as head of the household and its protector very seriously; in that respect he was very old- fashioned. I didn’t doubt for a minute that he would find a way to take Mom out of commission if he had to. Being in a wheelchair wouldn’t slow him down for a second. It seldom did.

Mom twitched her nose, a habit we shared, and took a drink from her mug. For the time being, she seemed to surrender. “How about sending the link to that page to Clark,” I said to her. “He’s going to do some checking for us. He can add that to the list.” She put down her coffee and got right on it. She was really quite good at this kind of stuff, which was both surprising and worrisome.

I got up but didn’t head for the table. Instead, I retrieved my phone and dialed Clark. “Hi, it’s me,” I said when he answered. I went back into our bedroom to talk to him.

“So the display says, sis. What’s up?”

“Mom is going to send you a link to a website in a minute. It’s something she found about a Zach Finch. We think it’s the same Zach Finch that was found in the trunk of my car today.”

“So is he some wanted criminal or something?” Clark asked. “His name is really setting off bells in my head.”

“More of a something,” I answered, “if it’s the same Zach Finch.” I paused and closed my eyes, knowing this was not going to be a simple matter. No dead body was, but this had the potential of blowing up into an epic problem. “His father is some big mucky-muck. When he was fifteen, Zach was kidnapped and held for ransom. According to the article, the ransom was paid but neither Zach nor his abductors were ever found.”

“Geez,” Clark said and was silent for a very long time. Then he added, “That’s why the name sounded familiar. I remember when that all happened.”

“Me too now, sort of. It was in the news back then, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. As I recall now, it was kept quiet until after the ransom disappeared and Zach wasn’t recovered,” Clark explained. “Then it was in the news constantly. So what does this have to do with you or anyone you know?”

“That’s the fifty-million-dollar question, Clark. This kid’s been missing for more than eight years. And this doesn’t sound like anything connected to either Willie or Elaine, does it?”

“No, it doesn’t,” he agreed, “but you never know. Was Elaine ever involved in kidnapping for cash?”

I didn’t have to scratch my memory very deep to answer. “She kidnapped Mike Steele a few years back for someone. That’s how we met.” I let that tidbit of information sink into Clark’s skull for a moment. It had happened before I’d found Mom and met Clark. “Still,” I added, “as strange as it sounds, Elaine does have a moral code. It’s not the same as ours, but she does have one. I don’t think she’d involve me in one of her jobs like this.”

Clark took a deep breath. “I’ll do some snooping and hopefully will have something to tell you tomorrow. In the meantime, keep your head down, you hear? This is going to involve the feds, and that’s way out of your league. They won’t be as accommodating as your local cops.”

“Um, the feds are already involved,” I told Clark. I held my breath for a heartbeat before continuing. “There was an FBI agent questioning us along with Andrea Fehring.”

“Then they already know who this guy is,” Clark said. “The local cops probably called the feds after they ran his prints. Like I said, you’re out of your league, but at least you have some sense of what’s appropriate.” Clark groaned. “Mom’s another story. I don’t like the idea of her running wild on the Internet with this information. It could bring the bad guys out of hiding sooner than later.”

“Don’t worry,” I assured my brother. “Several of us have already told Mom to keep all this to herself. Greg even threatened to lock her up if she blogged about it.”

Clark laughed. “I’ve always liked your husband, sis. From day one I liked him. He would have made a damn fine cop.”

“By the way, Mom is leaving tomorrow for some old geezer bus trip to one of the Indian casinos. She’ll be gone for two days. She forgot to tell you.”

“She just did,” Clark told me. “I just received the email with the link about Finch. It included the news that she’s going out of town. Pretty convenient timing.” He paused. “Just make sure she gets her skinny ass on that tour bus tomorrow.”

five

“Was that your car
on the news last night?” Jill Bernelli asked as she offered up a cute basket full of her outstanding cranberry scones. Jill’s a secretary at Templin and Tobin, the law firm where I work as a corporate paralegal. We’re in the Orange County office, a satellite office of the mothership based in Los Angeles. Mike Steele is the managing partner of the OC office. Jill is also the wife of Sally Kipman, one of my high-school classmates. Together for many years, Jill and Sally got married this past New Year’s Day in a small ceremony that Greg and I attended. Feeling magnanimous and in love himself, Steele paid for their honeymoon in Hawaii, but not before extracting the promise from Jill that she would be back in the office bright and early the day after she returned.

“My car was on the news?” I asked, feigning surprise.

“Don’t play dumb with me, Grey,” Jill said, addressing me by my last name as Steele did. She only did that when she wanted to cut through the bull—or rather my bull. “I saw you pull into the parking garage this morning in a different car, and even though they blocked out the license plate, the vehicle on the news looked just like your car, right down to the
I brake for Ben and Jerry’s
bumper sticker.”

“Got me,” I said and took a big bite of scone. Jill should be working for the FBI instead of Gregory Shipman.

“So what’s the story?” she asked. “I promised Sally I’d worm it out of you and call her.”

“Good grief,” I said after taking a slurp of coffee. “Is that why you brought the scones? Did you think you could bribe the information out of me?”

“Yep,” she answered honestly. “Both you and Steele are putty in my baker’s hands, although he’s a tougher customer. With him I usually have to throw in a chocolate bundt cake or blueberry muffins on the side to get what I want.”

“Nice to know I’m such a pushover.” I wiped my mouth with one of my good linen napkins—a piece torn from the paper towel roll I kept in my office.

“So what’s the story?” Jill pressed. “Sally’s waiting for my call, and she has a busy day.”

“Well, pardon me if I hold up her schedule,” I snapped.

Jill smiled at my sarcasm. She could roll with it like a pro. After all, Sally was the queen of snark, and Steele was no slouch in that department either. I was the featherweight of the group. “According to the news last night,” Jill said, not missing a beat, “a body was found in the trunk of a car at a Long Beach car wash yesterday—Twinkle Clean. Isn’t that where you go?”

“A lot of people go to Twinkle Clean.” I took another bite of scone and took my time chewing and swallowing. Across from my desk, Jill sat in front of me with the serenity and patience of a Tibetan monk. Over the years, she and Sally had become very important in my life, and not just at the office. Even though Sally and I were frenemies in high school, we’ve now become close; I consider them both like sisters, as I do Zee. I trusted and loved them. Sally had been a bridesmaid at my wedding.

“Yeah, that was my car,” I finally admitted after swallowing the bite I’d masticated into pulp. “And yes, a dead body was in the trunk.”

“Did you know the dead guy?” she asked, picking at a corner of one of the scones in the basket, which was now sitting on my desk.

I shook my head. “I didn’t have a clue who he was or how he got there.” Which was true. I hadn’t known who he was when he was found. I wasn’t ready to tell Jill what we’d discovered since. I still needed to sort that information out for myself.

“Yes!” Jill cried. No longer calm and collected, she pumped a victory fist into the air. Her head bobbed with excitement, each thrust causing her cropped brown hair to shimmer like short fringe on a suede jacket.

“I beg your pardon?” I looked at her with surprise.

“Sal and I had a bet,” she explained. “She bet you knew the corpse; I bet you didn’t. I just got out of doing all housework for two weeks. Thanks, Odelia.” She grinned at me.

“That’s what this is about?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at her. “A stupid bet? Don’t you care about who and why that body was there?”

“Sure I do, and so does Sal,” she answered, trying to slap a serious look on her face. I gave her a C+ for the effort. “But it’s not often,” she continued, “that I win a bet with Sal. You find bodies all the time.”

“I didn’t find this one,” I explained. “The car wash people did when they opened my trunk. I had no idea it was there.”

“Wow.” Jill leaned forward, now paying close attention to the details. “If you hadn’t gone to the car wash, you might not have found it for several days—at least not until it started to stink.”

It was the same possibility Greg had voiced when we were in bed last night watching the news account of the story. The news report had not disclosed my name, just the name of the car wash and the information that a body had been found in the trunk of a car there. They also didn’t disclose the victim’s name. Maybe the police hadn’t given it to them. There was footage of the car wash and my car, with the license plate blurred as Jill had said, but the Ben and Jerry’s bumper sticker was plain as day. Anyone watching who knew me well would know that was my car. More to the point, anyone watching would know that was me.

Greg and I had watched in horror as the news showed a video clip taken by someone’s cell phone. The person had obviously been waiting with us at the car wash and had whipped out their phone as soon as all of the excitement started. On the clip you could see me from behind standing with the Twinkle Clean people in front of my open trunk. It was definitely not my best side. You could hear shouts and screaming while I slipped to the ground in a big wet puddle. Next to me wobbled my mother. It cut there while the reporter on location, a perky blond named Gloria Connors, stood with Twinkle Clean in the background and explained that the police were questioning the owner of the car containing the body but that no arrests had been made. She also reported that the police were withholding the victim’s name pending notification of family. When the reporter was finished, one of the anchors made a joke about checking his trunk before going to the car wash next time.

Yuk. Yuk.

Greg hadn’t helped my mood when he commented, “Talk about great advertising for Twinkle Clean.”

Yuk. Yuk. Times two.

What if I hadn’t gone to the car wash? How long would it have been before I realized something was amiss in my car that no amount of air freshener would remove? I shuddered at the thought. That car, which I really liked and which wasn’t that old, was lost to me either way, as I honestly didn’t think I could ever get over the idea that a dead body had been stored in its trunk.

Getting up, I went to my door to close it. Just as I did, Jolene McHugh, an attorney, walked up to Jill’s vacant desk. “Hey, Odelia,” Jolene said, “have you seen Jill? I need to give her something.” Before I could say anything, she glanced at me and added, “Did you know that there was a car on the news last night that looked just like yours? Someone found a dead guy in the trunk. Sure sounds like something that would happen to you.”

Instead of answering, I waved Jolene by the arm into my office, closing the door behind us both.

“You wanted Jill,” I said to her. “Here she is.” I moved to sit back behind my desk. “And while you’re here, Jolene, have a seat.”

Jolene, Jill, and I had all followed Steele over to Templin and Tobin from Wallace, Boer, Brown, and Yates, our last firm, although I came a bit later after a whole lot of drama and Steele coming to my rescue. The three of us knew each other well.

“Are you leaving the firm?” Jolene asked me in a panic. “You know Steele will go ape-crazy if you do.”

“No, he won’t,” I told her. “At least not as long as he has Jill here. But no, I’m not leaving the firm.”

Jolene rubbed her tummy in relief. She’d had a baby a few months before, and even though she was back in her skinny clothes she hadn’t lost the habit of unconsciously rubbing her stomach. I guess it was like rubbing a buddha belly for good luck.

“This is about my car,” I told her. “As I was just telling Jill here, that
was
my car on TV last night. Couldn’t you tell by the video of me on my butt on the ground?”

“There was video of you?” Jill asked with disappointment. “They didn’t show it on my station.”

“OMG,” said Jolene, slowly saying each letter with individual emphasis.

“Come on, Jolene,” Jill said to her with a chuckle. “It’s not like Odelia’s never been involved with a corpse before.”

“But in your car?” Jolene was clearly more horrified than either Jill or I. Jill was finding it amusing. I was finding it a huge pain in my behind. “Ewwww,” Jolene said with a curl of her lip. “Why would you hide something like that there?”

“I didn’t. Someone else did,” I explained, “and we don’t know why. Both the police and the FBI are looking into it.”

“OMG!” Jolene said again, her pale freckled face turning pastier, which made her red hair look like a lit match. “The FBI?” If she rubbed her belly any harder, the fabric of her skirt was going to catch fire and match her head. “Why are they involved?”

I looked from Jolene to Jill. “What I tell you cannot leave this room. Do you both understand?”

“I have to tell Sally,” Jill said.

“Okay, you can tell Sally,” I told her.

“If she gets to tell Sally, then I get to tell my husband,” sniffed Jolene. “And who’s going to tell Steele?” She looked at Jill. “Has he even called in yet?”

“No, he hasn’t,” Jill answered. “It’s a first. He’s usually on the phone to me at least once a day when he’s on vacation, so he must really be in love.”

“Or Michelle threatened to push him off the side of a mountain if he called,” Jolene said. The two of them broke into giggles.

I stared at them with the wide eyes of someone about to jump the sanity track until they got the hint and shut up. “No one is to tell Steele if he calls. Got it?” I ordered. They both clamped their mouths shut and nodded. “Like I said, the feds and the Long Beach police are looking into why that body ended up in my trunk. Who knows, they might even come sniffing around here asking questions about me. If they do, be polite and tell them the truth. I have nothing to hide.”

“Just a dead body in your trunk,” Jill pointed out. The two of them giggled again like they were a bit tipsy.

I wrapped a knuckle on my desk. “Do you guys want to know about this or not?”

Both of them sat up straight and zipped their lips. Jolene pantomimed toward the basket of scones. I tore off a couple paper towels. “Knock yourself out,” I told her as I handed her the towels.

While they nibbled on cranberry scones, I told them about finding the body and being hauled into the police station. I told them about the questioning and about Zach Finch and how I didn’t have a clue who he was outside of being a teen kidnapped many years ago. I left out the part about Willie and Elaine being long shots. I didn’t know if either knew about them from my past experiences, but just in case I certainly wasn’t going to parade my underground criminal connections in front of Jolene and Jill. The less they knew, the safer they would be.

“So what are you going to do now?” Jolene ventured, once she was sure I was finished with my story.

“I’m sure the police, especially the feds, are going to play this close to the chest,” I said, “so my brother is looking into any possible tie-in to me on his own. He’s a retired cop, you know, and still has a lot of connections.” Yeah, connections I can’t talk about.

“Can’t Dev Frye help?” offered Jill. “He’s been a big help to you in the past.”

“Clark is coming into town today, and we’re meeting Dev for dinner tonight. Not for this purpose,” I quickly explained, “but I’m sure it will come up.”

The phone on my desk chirped. It was the front desk. I answered it by punching the speaker button. “Yes, Mandy.”

“At least I reached one of you,” our receptionist said. “I’ve been paging Jolene and Jill. Do you know where they are?”

“Right here with me.” I looked over at my two companions, who were listening with interest while licking crumbs from their fingers. “We can’t hear the paging system with my office door closed.”

“Do you need me, Mandy?” asked Jolene first.

“Actually, I need all three of you,” Mandy said. “Steele’s on the line. He asked for Jill first, then you, Jolene. Now Odelia.”

The three of us looked at each other and shook our heads. Steele couldn’t even make it through his honeymoon without calling the office. “Put him through,” I told Mandy, then to the others I said, “Not a word, do you understand?” They nodded.

Once the call was transferred, I answered it. “Hey, Steele.”

“Hey, Grey.” He sounded relaxed and not at all annoyed at having to wait while we were rounded up.

“Jolene, Jill, and I are all in my office. So you’ve got a threefer.” I steeled myself for a smart-ass remark about us not working while he was gone, but it didn’t come.

“Great,” he responded again with enthusiasm. “One-stop shopping. I just wanted to check in and make sure the place was still standing. Everything going okay?”

“Everything’s peachy,” I told him.

“Yep, boss,” added Jill. “Did you get the emails I’ve sent you?”

He laughed. “To tell you the truth, I haven’t checked my emails even once since I’ve been gone.”

The three of us looked at each other in disbelief. “Don’t they have an Internet connection at the hotel?” Jolene asked.

“Sure they do, McHugh,” Steele said with another laugh. “But I’ve been sort of busy.” He paused so we could read between the lines. Jill sneered. I rolled my eyes. Jolene blushed. “Anything I should know now or can it wait until I return next week?”

“It can all wait,” Jill told him. “I’ve given Jolene anything that couldn’t.”

“Yes, a couple of things came up yesterday on the Maxwell deal, but they’ve all been handled,” Jolene reported.

“Perfect,” said our boss. “And are you staying out of trouble, Grey?”

I shot my two office pals a warning look. “Trouble? Me?” I answered and thought—not for the first time—that he had my office bugged. “I filed those two incorporations you wanted on Tuesday, and the drafts of the organizational documents are on your desk. Other than that, it has been pretty quiet on my end.” Across from me, Jill smirked and elbowed Jolene.