Cleanup (2 page)

“Every day?” he said. “That's a lot of cleaning up after one man.”

“It's a big house,” I said. But that wasn't the real reason Maria and I were here so often. “I think Mr. Withers liked the company. I think he was lonely.”

“He was a wealthy man,” the detective said. “And you're telling me he was lonely?”

“He liked to talk. I guess he liked someone around to talk to.”

“And it was just you?”

“Pardon?” I wasn't sure what he meant.

“Are you the only person who comes in to clean and to…talk?” he asked.

I thought about saying yes, but the police aren't stupid. Sooner or later Bodie would ask who I worked for. He would contact the agency and its owner Mike Czernecki. Mike would tell them that he had assigned two maids to the Withers house. Besides, I had lied enough.

“There's another girl,” I said. “We usually come together.”

“Usually?” Bodie said. “Where is she now?”

“She called me this morning to tell me she couldn't come in today.”

“So she wasn't here?”

Hadn't I just said that? Was he trying to trip me up?

“No,” I said. “She wasn't.”

“So you're saying that you were the only one who came in this morning?”

The way he asked the question—and the fact that he asked it—made me nervous. Did he doubt me?

I nodded.

“The other girl,” he said. “What's her name?”

“Maria Gonzales. We work for Missy Maids.” I gave him Mike Czernecki's name.

CHAPTER
THREE

D
etective Bodie asked more questions. When a forensics team showed up, he had them fingerprint me and asked for permission to take a cheek swab for
DNA
.

“We need to know what's what when we process the room,” he said. In other words, he wanted to know if I had anything to do with Mr. Withers's murder.

I knew I could have said no, but I didn't. After that, he let me go.

I thought about calling Mike Czernecki on the way home and telling him that the police would be coming to see him. And that he'd lost a good customer. In the end, I decided to leave that to Bodie. I would check in with Mike later. I went home and waited to hear from Maria.

She didn't call.

After I was sure that the police must have talked to Mike, I reached for my phone. Without Mr. Withers, I didn't have steady work anymore. And I couldn't afford to lose more than a couple of days' pay.

“Mike?”

“Yeah?” He growled as usual, like a mean old bear ready to attack. I pictured his burly body jammed in behind the desk in the closet-sized office that he called the nerve center of Missy Maids. I was sure he was scowling. Mike was always scowling.

“It's me,” I said. “Connie.”

I heard only silence on the other end of the line.

“I guess you heard what happened to Mr. Withers,” I said.

“The cops were just here.” He sounded grumpier than usual. “When were you going to tell me, Connie? Or
were
you going to tell me?”

“Of course I was going to tell you,” I said. He was probably worried about the reputation of his company. “I'm sorry. I should have called you as soon as I got home.”

I hate apologizing when I haven't done anything wrong. A few years ago, I never would have done it. But I was getting used to it. I had no choice. After being downsized out of my job as a legal assistant, the only work I had been able to find was non-skilled work paying minimum wage.

Like working for Mike's maid service.

Those jobs, I had learned, involved a lot of kissing ass—“Yes, ma'am,” “No, sir,” “Of course you're right, ma'am.” I had wondered more than once if Serafina, our maid back home, had felt the same way toward my parents, her employers, as I felt toward Mike and the clients he sent me to work for.

“But I thought the police—” I continued.

“Screw the police,” Mike snarled. “I'm talking about Maria. When were you going to tell me she was working off the books?”

“What?” What was he talking about?

“Don't play me, Connie. Not if you want to keep your job.”

“I'm not playing you. What do you mean, Maria was working off the books?”

“Right. Like you don't know.”

“But I don't,” I protested.

“You don't know that she waltzed in here a month ago and told me she quit? Give me a break, Connie. You don't build a business by being the dullest knife in the drawer. The cops told me what you said to them—that you and Maria were working for Withers five days a week. Give me one good reason why I shouldn't fire your ass right now.”

“What do you mean, she quit?”

I must have sounded as surprised as I felt, because instead of ranting at me, he was silent.

“You're telling me you didn't know?” he asked finally. His voice was heavy with suspicion.

“No. I didn't.”

“That little gold digger didn't tell you?”

“No. And, by the way, neither did you.” Wait a minute. “What do you mean, gold digger?”

I heard a snort on the other end of the line.

“You're kidding me, right, Connie?” Mike said.

I took a deep breath. I reminded myself that I
needed
this job. None of the law firms that I had approached in the past year were hiring legal secretaries—even ones who, like me, had a law degree, even if it was from a foreign country. Many of them were laying people off. Most of the places that were hiring—stores, hotels and maid services— had no interest in someone who had recently been a legal secretary. They wanted dumb, unskilled people who wouldn't make a fuss. I had found that out the hard way.

I started leaving my legal secretary job off application forms the same as I had left off my law degree when I realized that most law firms didn't want a legal secretary who knew as much as, if not more than, her boss.

Mike, however, had guessed the truth.

“I've met plenty of girls from your neck of the woods,” he had told me as he looked over my application. “Most of them don't speak English as good as you do. They sure as hell don't spell as good as you. So, what were you back home—a doctor? An engineer? A lawyer?” He watched my face the whole time, and nodded. “Lawyer, huh? I knew it had to be something like that.”

“So you're not going to hire me?”

“Not hire you?” He looked at me as if I were crazy. “Hell, yeah, I'm going to hire you. Welcome to the American dream, sweetheart.”

If I wanted Mike to find me another job, then I had to be nice. But I also wanted an answer.

“What do you mean, Maria is a gold digger?” I asked him again.

“Come on, Connie. I'm not stupid.”

“Mike, I swear I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Maria,” he said. “I'm talking about Maria. When I hired her, she told me the neighborhoods where she was prepared to work.
Prepared
to work, mind you, like she was calling the shots. Don't give me lazy bourgeois housewives, she said. What does that even mean, bourgeois?”

I kept my mouth shut. I knew Mike well enough to know when he wanted an answer and when he didn't.

“She wanted rich neighborhoods and what she called mansions,” he continued. “She wanted bachelors and widowers. Especially widowers.”

I don't know what surprised me more— that she had said those things to Mike or that I hadn't known.

“And that's what you gave her, just because she asked?”

“I gave her Withers,” he said, as if that explained everything. “You know how many maids I've sent Withers over the years? Dozens. Think about it, Connie. The man wanted two maids five days a week. That doesn't scream obsessive clean-freak to you? When Maria quit, I figured that he had finally broken her the way he'd broken all the others—except you.”

I thought about the way Mr. Withers smiled whenever he encountered us on his rounds. I recalled the respectful tone he used when he handed over his list of assignments to Maria—always Maria—every day. He seemed almost apologetic, unlike many Missy Maids clients who seemed to enjoy bossing people around.

“Are we talking about the same person, Mike?” I asked. “Richard Withers?”

“The old coot? Yeah. I was surprised she lasted as long as she did. Then she quit and I thought good riddance. That dame was high-maintenance. Now I find out she didn't quit at all. She was still working for him, only off the books. That's a no-no, Connie. Check your contract. I wouldn't be surprised if that little tramp was banging the old man.”

I thought about Maria's wet hair and the way she had said she was “always” careful.

“Did you tell the police that, Mike?” I asked.

“Damn right I did.”

Mike promised to find me more work. He also said, “But if I find out that you knew about Maria and you didn't tell me, you're through. You got that?”

I said I did. And I vowed to use every minute that I wasn't working to look for a new job—one where I didn't have to take orders or give them. One where I could help people. Maybe something in immigration settlement or helping low-paid workers.

Definitely one where I wouldn't have to put up with Mike Czernecki.

* * *

The next morning, I still hadn't heard from Maria—or Mike. It was so noisy outside my apartment door that I couldn't think. The building management was making improvements. Putting new floors in the kitchens and bathrooms as well as new countertops. Everyone was afraid they were going to raise the rent after they finished. If they did, I would have to move.

It was one more reason for me to start looking for a new job.

I grabbed my decade-old Prada—a gift from my parents in the good old days— and glanced in the mirror. I hadn't had a decent haircut in months, and it showed. But there was nothing I could do about that now. As I locked my apartment door, I saw workmen going in and out of the two apartments at the far end of the hall. They would get to my apartment soon.

I walked to the public library a few blocks away and booked time on a computer. I was searching job openings online when my cell phone vibrated. The display read private number. Someone didn't want me to know who was calling.

I glanced at the computer. If I left now, I might not get it back again for hours. With a sigh, I shoved my pen and notebook into my purse and stood up.

“Hello?” I said, heading for the exit.

“Connie, you have to help me,” a breathless voice said in Spanish.

Maria.

CHAPTER
FOUR

“W
here are you?” I asked. “At a police station. They arrested me. They said I could call a lawyer, so I called you, Connie.”

“Yes, but—”

“They think I killed Mr. Richard. You have to tell them I would never do such a thing.”

“But, Maria—”

She interrupted me to tell me which police station she was in. She begged me to hurry. Then the phone went dead.

I stood where I was for a few moments, thinking about the Maria I knew and the Maria that Mike had told me about. Mike said she had her sights set on a rich man. A lot of women did, even if they never admitted it. Mike said she had quit the agency, and she hadn't told me. But not telling someone something wasn't the same as lying. And no matter how I looked at it, I couldn't see that Maria had anything to gain by killing Mr. Withers. And I couldn't imagine her beating him—or anyone else—to death.

I called one of my former co-workers, a legal assistant who worked for a criminal lawyer.

“He's in court, Connie,” she said. “I can't reach him. But I'll let him know as soon as I can, okay?”

“Thanks, Emma.” I gave her Maria's full name, the name of the detective on her case, and the station where she was being held. “I really appreciate this.”

“No problem, kiddo,” she said. That always made me smile. She was twenty-six. I was five years older than her. “Hey, where are you working these days?”

“I'm between jobs at the moment,” I said. Technically, it was the truth. “Oh, and Emma, my friend is Spanish-speaking, so if your boss needs a translator—”

“He will,” she said. “I don't suppose you could do it?” When I hesitated, she said, “He'll pay you for your time.”

And bill Maria, I thought. “It's probably a legal-aid case, Emma.”

I heard her sigh. “He's still going to need a translator,” she said.

“I'll give you my number. He can call me if he needs me.”

* * *

I was at home, staring at the
TV
and not caring that Rosie O'Donnell was drowned out by the hammering and the loud voices of the workmen down the hall, when Emma's boss called. His name was Gregory Mason. I told him what I knew.

“Emma said you can translate,” he said. “Can I pick you up?”

I told him it would be faster if I met him at the police station. I was nearly there before I realized that I had left Maria's keys in my uniform pocket. If they released her, I would have to go all the way back home to get them.

I had no trouble spotting Gregory Mason. I'd seen him in the building where I used to work. He got out of a silver Lexus and strode up to the police station in the mainly immigrant neighborhood south of Richard Withers's house. To my surprise, he recognized me.

“You're just as Emma described,” he said. “Thanks for coming. Does Ms. Gonzales speak any English?”

“Yes,” I said. “But she's much more fluent in Spanish.”

“Okay. Then we'll do it in Spanish. I want the whole story. I don't want her to have to struggle to get it out. Come on.”

I hesitated.

“Did Emma tell you it will probably be a legal-aid case?” I asked. “Maria has been working as a house cleaner.”

His smile was polished. “Let's not worry about that until we see what we're up against, okay?”