A Catered St. Patrick's Day (11 page)

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Authors: Isis Crawford

BOOK: A Catered St. Patrick's Day
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“Anyone home?” Sean called as he stepped into the living room and took a quick look around.
Everything seemed in order. The TV was off. The sofa and the chairs seemed to be where they were supposed to be. The landscapes on the wall were still on their hooks. Sean stepped over and lifted the newspaper off the coffee table and checked the date. It was eight days old.
“Liza might not even be staying here,” Marvin pointed out as Sean walked into the dining room.
“Maybe,” Sean said, as he shuffled through the pile of mail on the dining room table. “But someone’s been bringing in the mail. At least until recently.” Sean gave the dining room another quick look before moving on to the kitchen.
“It could be one of the neighbors,” Marvin said, forgetting his vow to himself to remain quiet.
Sean grunted as he opened the refrigerator. There was nothing in it except tofu, smoothies, and melon. One thing was for sure—the man in the house with the kid and the dog had been right about a woman staying here—no guy that he knew would be caught dead eating or drinking that stuff.
“Or maybe,” Marvin went on, “Liza is here and she just went to the store or is off visiting a neighbor.”
Sean sighed. Perhaps if he didn’t answer Marvin, he’d get the idea and be quiet—although past experience told him that Marvin didn’t pick up on cues very well.
Sean turned to him and in a fit of irritation said, “You’re certainly not the strong silent type, are you?”
Marvin turned red. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “It’s just that when I’m nervous I tend to talk a lot.”
Sean instantly felt bad. Being nasty to Marvin was like being nasty to a puppy. No matter which way he went, he couldn’t win.
“Let’s go upstairs, shall we?”
Marvin nodded.
As Sean climbed the stairs he got that feeling he always got in th says>
Walking down the hallway, Sean noticed that everything was in place, from the Oriental runner on the middle of the floor to the landscapes on the walls. He entered the first room. It obviously served as Renee’s master bedroom. It had a canopy bed, a large chest of drawers, a couple of bamboo nightstands, and a large plasma TV hanging on the wall across from the bed. Everything looked nice and tidy. Marvin stood in the doorway and watched Sean take a linen handkerchief out of his breast pocket and use it to open first the closet and then the dresser drawers.
Marvin pointed to the handkerchief. “I didn’t know people had those anymore.”
“Got a big supply of them,” Sean told him as he finished the second drawer and went on to the third.
“Can we go now?” Marvin asked.
“No,” Sean replied, closing the bottom drawer. “We can’t.”
Marvin shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “May I ask why you’re doing this?”
“Because I like to be thorough.”
Sean left and walked into the second bedroom with Marvin trailing behind him. Again, nothing seemed to be disturbed. Sean observed that the furniture was a conglomeration of styles instead of a set, leading him to speculate that the pieces had been acquired over a long span of time and that this was the guest bedroom. The bed was made up. The blinds were down. A digital clock radio on the nightstand ticked off the minutes. The only thing out of place was a suitcase sitting on the carpet over by the closet.
Sean went over and opened it. It was empty. Then he walked over to the dresser and opened the drawers. The left side contained enough woman’s belongings to tide someone over for a couple of weeks, while the other side was stuffed with more woman’s clothing, leading Sean to surmise that Renee had made room for Liza’s belongings.
“I bet this is where Liza’s sleeping,” he said to Marvin.
“If she’s here,” Marvin said.
“Oh, she’s here,” Sean replied as he moved on.
Marvin didn’t say anything else. He just watched and thought, uncharitably, that Sean had been easier to deal with when he’d been less mobile. When Sean was done with the second bedroom, he and Marvin moved on to the third. That didn’t yield any more information than the first two had. The third bedroom had been turned into a hobby room and contained a sewing machine, boxes of material, a table for cutting out fabric, an iron and an ironing board, along with a sofa and a coffee table that was covered with patterns.
“Can we go now?” Marvin asked again, when Sean was through poking around. “There’s nothing here.”
“After the bathroom,” Sean told him.
“There isn’t going to be anything in the bathroom,” Marvin said.
“We’ll see,” Sean told him, although privately he thought that Marvin might be correct and that maybe his gut was beginning to fail him after all.
As it turned out, Marvin was wrong.
Chapter 11
 
S
ean saw Liza the moment he walked into v thin"2e the bathroom. There was no missing her. She was lying stretched out, fully clothed in the bathtub. From the looks of the large dried splotch of blood on her white shirt, she’d been shot in the chest. Blood had pooled under her body as well. Marvin was right behind Sean. He looked at Liza’s body and cursed silently.
“Okay. You were right,” he told Sean. Now he was really sorry they’d come, instead of just a little bit sorry. This was going to mean nothing but trouble.
“Always am,” Sean told him, grinning.
“You like this, don’t you?” Marvin asked indignantly.
“The fact that she’s dead? Hardly. What kind of man do you think I am?”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” Marvin protested.
Sean’s grin grew. “Okay. You got me. Yeah. I got to admit that I do. Reminds me of old times. And who knows? We may even learn something. I saw some rubber gloves by the kitchen sink. Why don’t you run down and get them for me?”
“What’s wrong with your handkerchief?” Marvin asked.
“It’s a bit awkward for what I need to do. Come on now. Time’s a-wasting.”
Marvin didn’t move. “We have to call the cops,” he told Sean.
Noting that Marvin already had his cell out of his pants pocket, Sean said, “Put that away.”
“I can’t.”
“You can’t or you won’t?”
“I won’t.”
“Why is that?” Sean asked as he took in the crime scene.
“What do you mean, why is that? Are you kidding me?” The words just slipped out before Marvin could stop them, but that’s what happened when Marvin got flustered. Unlike Sean or Brandon, he was the antithesis of cool. He’d fought that tendency his whole life but there didn’t seem to be anything he could do about it. “Because what we’re doing is illegal, that’s why,” Marvin cried.
Sean turned and gave Marvin his full attention. “You’re wrong. What we’re about to do isn’t illegal. Exactly. We’re operating in a gray area here,” Sean said, which was pretty much true, although he had to admit there was a lot of room for interpretation here and that he was definitely pushing the envelope.
Marvin raised his phone. “I don’t like gray.”
“Who does?”
“You do.”
“I used to uphold the law.”
“Not anymore, as far as I can see.”
Sean raised his hand. “Hold on a second before you make that call.”
Marvin began tapping his toe on the floor. “I’m waiting,” he said.
“Okay, most people don’t like gray,” Sean conceded. “Unfortunately few things in life are black or white. Most are judgment calls.”
“Is that what you wanted to tell me?” Marvin asked. “Because I don’t think that’s a very good argument. At all.”
“No. What I want to tell you is this. If we don’t look around now, we won’t be able to after the police come. They’re certainly not going to allow us access to the crime scene. This is our only shot. We have a responsibility to our client to find out as much as we can.”
Marvin frowned. “But aren’t the police supposed to tell Duncan’s lawyers if they find something that will help with his defense?”
Sean snorted. If he’d been Bernie he would have rolled his eyes. “Yes, and the world could end tomorrow, but neither is very likely.
Supposed to
being the operative words here.”
“They really won’t tell us?” Marvin asked.
Sean laughed. “Welcome to the real world.”
“Didn’t you when you were on the force?” Marvin asked.
“I have to confess that most of the time I did, but there were times when I didn’t.”
“But why?”
Sean shrugged. “A variety of reasons. Because it was expedient. Because I thought it was going to let the bad guy get away. That’s why I’m saying what I am.” Sean pointed to Liza. “You know, she’s not going to tell and I’m not going to tell, and if you don’t tell no one is going to know.”
“But someone might see us,” Marvin said. “Like one of the neighbors.”
“They might,” Sean conceded. “However, if you noticed, there weren’t any cars in any of the neighboring driveways, meaning that no one is home yet.”
Marvin hung his head and lowered his phone. “No. I hadn’t noticed.”
“You should because things like that are important.” Sean checked his watch. “Now my guess is that everyone is still at work or making their way to the train station right about now, which gives us a small window of opportunity to finish up here. So the faster you get me those gloves the faster I can do what I’m going to do so we can get out of here.”
Marvin nodded at the body in the bathtub with his chin. “Maybe that’s not even Liza.”
“That,” Sean replied, “is what I’m hoping to find out. And while I’m doing that you can look through the laptop on the dining room table and see if there’s anything interesting in that.”
“I just hope you know what you’re doing,” Marvin muttered.
“You’re right,” Sean snapped. “I’ve never done this before.”
“Sorry,” Marvin said.
“Apology accepted. So,” Sean said after a moment had gone by, “do you want to tell me how long ago you think she died? Do you think you can do that?”
“Of course,” Marvin said, affronted that his expertise was being questioned. He stepped forward and studied the body. “I’ll tell you one thing. From the look of her, she’s been dead for a while,” Marvin said, his training taking over.
“How much is ‘a while’?” Sean asked him.
Marvin shrugged. “One week at least. Maybe two, would be my best guess. I bet that’s why the house is so cold. Keeps the deterioration down to a minimum.”
“Kind of like a big cooler,” Sean said.
“Something like that,” Marvin told him.
“That’s a long time for someone to be out of touch,” Sean mused. “Especially these days with all the Facebooking and Twittering that’s going on. You’d think someone would have sent out the alarm already.” He thought back to the conversation he’d had with Dwyer, remembering what Dwyer had said about Liza being out of touch.
“Not if she was angry and had cut off communication with them,” Marvin pointed out, echoing Sean’s thoughts. “Or maybe she told them she was going away. Then they wouldn’t expect to hear from her. Or maybe she didn’t have any friends,” he suggested. “That’s another possibility {r ped out, ec.”
“No. She had friends,” Sean said.
“Why do you say that?” Marvin asked.
“Because these days you have friends even when you don’t have friends. In any case, I’d be willing to bet that someone in the Corned Beef and Cabbage Club knew where she was because they were responsible for putting her here.” And Sean pointed at the bathtub.
“You think?”
“Well, it sure wasn’t an alien.”
Marvin nodded and went to get the gloves. While he was doing that, Sean took a tissue out of the box on the top of the toilet tank and used it to open the medicine cabinet. There wasn’t anything of interest in it. Judging from the contents, Renee was evidently subject to migraines and sinus infections and owned a large collection of perfumes and an even larger array of face creams. Looking at them made Sean glad he was a guy. Being a female seemed way too much work. Marvin came back up with the gloves just as Sean was closing the medicine cabinet door.
“Find anything?” he asked Sean.
Sean slipped the rubber gloves on. “Nope. Don’t touch the laptop with your hands,” he cautioned. “Use a paper towel.”
“What am I looking for?” Marvin asked.
“Something of interest,” Sean repeated, although he didn’t have the vaguest idea what that could be.
“Like what?”
“Like you’ll know it when you see it. Now get going. The faster we get this done, the faster we can get out of here.”
“I’m on it,” Marvin said, and hurried out of the bathroom and down the steps.
The moment Marvin left the room, Sean slowly and carefully lowered himself until he was kneeling next to the bathtub. He only hoped he’d be able to get up again as he leaned over and slipped his hand into the woman’s pants pocket. He came out with a thin bright pink wallet, with a picture of Cinderella on it. A kid’s wallet, he thought as he flipped through it.

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