Death at the Wheel (7 page)

I found the key where Julie had said it would be and let myself into the silent house. The scattered bits of toys and clothing against otherwise impeccable neatness spoke of a hasty departure, as though the family had suddenly been swept away by a genie or taken by thieves. I picked my way carefully through the semidarkness, not wanting to advertise my presence by using lights. The master bedroom was pure
House Beautiful,
with deep white carpet, a mahogany king-size bed with tall pineapple posts, a huge double dresser, a second dresser with doors and drawers, a writing desk in a white curtained alcove, and an armoire entertainment center hiding an oversized television set. Someone had left dirty footprints on the white rug. Thinking about cops and footprints, I slipped off my own shoes at the door.

The his-and-hers closets were in a separate dressing area. I slid open the first door to reveal a row of pinstriped suits, shut it, and opened the door on the other side. The faint scent of lily of the valley drifted from the carefully hung clothes. I went back, closed the dressing room door, and switched on the light. On the floor of the closet, back in a corner, was a letter addressed to Julie. Another was beside it, stuck into a black loafer, but no briefcase. I picked up the letters and tried the other closet. Not there, either. I went back to the first closet and found a battered brown briefcase underneath some balled-up sweaters. I shoved the letters into it, shut the door, put on my shoes, and went downstairs.

I put the briefcase in my trunk with all the other junk, jamming it underneath the beach chair and the picnic blanket and my dry cleaning, which I keep forgetting to take in. I was about to leap in and roar off into the sunset in search of a sandwich when I remembered the house key in my pocket and went back to put it under the plant pot. On my way up the steps, I saw something white fluttering in the grass. I picked it up and saw that it was another one of Julie's letters, though I was sure I hadn't dropped any. Before I had time to reflect on why it might have been there, I heard a car pull up at the curb and someone started running toward me. I shoved the letter down into my bra and bent to replace the key under the pansies.

"All right, lady," a voice called. "Put your hands on your head and turn around slowly."

Andre says if you want to get along with the cops, you do what they say without arguing, so I put my hands on my head and turned around slowly. "Are you police officers?" I said. "Have I done something wrong?" One way cops keep the upper hand is by making you feel ridiculous. It's hard to assert yourself when you're standing there looking like an idiot with your hands parked on top of your head and the buttons on your blouse gaping like a fool's mouth. I slowly lowered my arms.

"Yes, ma'am, we're police officers." He flapped a badge in my face. "You have some kind of identification?" The speaker was a wide man with a dark mustache and a receding hairline. He wasn't in uniform, but the two men behind him were. Not Grantham uniforms, either. Connecticut. They all looked like they wanted to cuff me and throw me in the car. All except their leader. He was staring at my chest like he wanted to pat me down for weapons. I hoped the letter wasn't showing.

"In my car. My name is Thea Kozak."

"Your address, Ms. Kojak?"

"Kozak." I told him my address.

He shook his head. "You're kind of a long way from home, aren't you?"

"Not really. Grantham is home. That is, I grew up here. My parents live here."

"Their address?" he growled again. I told him. He shook his head. "Nobody named Kozak on that street."

"McKusick," I told him. "My maiden name was McKusick."

His eyes dropped to my ringless left hand. "You mind telling us what you're doing here?"

It was a good question. One I intended to ask myself once I was out of this mess. What was I doing here when I knew I should have stuck with "no" instead of being Thea the Fix-it Lady, just as Suzanne had predicted. Wasn't I breaking my promise to her? And why was she so grouchy lately? All questions for another time. He was waiting impatiently for an answer. Stick close to the truth, that's my motto. Especially since I don't lie well. "I'm a friend of Julie's," I said. "She asked me to come by and see that the house was secure."

"What were you doing just now, as we drove up?"

"Putting the key back under the plant pot."

"She keeps a key under a plant pot and she's worried about the house being secure?" he said to his companions. They grinned obligingly.

I wanted to say "Yeah, the broad is much too dumb to have killed her husband," but I refrained. Experience has shown that most cops don't appreciate my sense of humor.

"You've been in the house?" I nodded. "Did you take anything?"

"She said she didn't need me to pick up anything."

"That's not what I asked. Did you take anything?"

I lied. "No."

He jerked his chin toward the Saab. "That your car?"

So far, he'd asked perfectly reasonable questions, but I could feel my temper rise. Partly because of the way they'd treated Julie, so they already had one strike against them. Partly because except for Andre and my friend Dom Florio, I don't like cops, so that was two. And partly because I don't like men who only stare at my chest and never at my face. And that's what he'd been doing. So he'd had his three strikes and he was out.

"The Saab?" I said demurely, though it was the only car besides his in sight.

"That's right. The Saab."

"It's mine," I said cheerfully. "I love it!"

"Save the testimonials for someone who cares," he growled. He must have taken lessons, to have cultivated such an indifferent tone.

I wanted to stick out my tongue and wave my hands beside my ears and say, "Nya, nya, you're a real big man when you have your stooges behind you," but I didn't. My mother taught me to curb such impulses. This was one case where she was right.

"Why don't we step over there, find that identification of yours, and take a look inside the car?" he said. It wasn't an invitation.

My heart sank. I knew my rights. Growing up a lawyer's daughter has given me that. One of them was that they had no right to search my car without probable cause; and probable cause didn't arise from finding me putting a key under a flower pot more than a hundred feet from the car. But knowing your rights and knowing what to do aren't the same thing. I was in a tight situation without a lawyer in my pocket. My dad was across town. If I opened the car to get my license, would that be inviting them in? Then there was the downside, which was that if I didn't cooperate, they might arrest me on some pretext and then get a warrant to search the car. If I let them search now, I might get lucky and they'd miss the letters.

Keeping my pose of good girl scout, I said, "Certainly, Officer. I'm afraid it's an awful mess," in my best demure and innocent way, and led the parade over to my car. They all shifted nervously when I stuck my hand in my pocket and hauled out my keys. I'm sure I don't look like the gun-toting type but we live in uncertain times. I unlocked the car, got out my briefcase, fished out my license, and handed it to my inquisitor. All the while, the stooges kept their hands near their guns, waiting for me to pull my own gun out of the case and blow Mr. Hot Eyes away. They seemed a little disappointed when I didn't.

It must be hard to live on the edge all the time. Like being half aroused. Irrationally, the idea of pale blue balls floated through my mind. I almost couldn't keep the smile off my face. Lately my irreverent side had been working overtime.

I apologized for the Dunkin' Donuts bags and the Burger King bags and the empty Styrofoam coffee cups, the empty plastic salad containers with bits of dead lettuce swimming in murky dressing, the three empty boxes of Bridge Mix and the apple core and the old newspapers. Usually I clean my car on weekends, otherwise the mound of trash would overwhelm me, but I'd been busy. I vowed that as soon as I got home, no matter how late, I'd hoe it out. My mother would die of embarrassment if she ever had to ride in my car. Besides, I had the vague feeling that clean cars were like clean underwear. I wouldn't want to get in an accident and have emergency personnel haul me out of the wreckage through a mountain of greasy wrappers and the dregs of a dozen cups of coffee. I could picture the headlines: Slightly damaged car condemned by Health Department.

"Mrs. Kozak?" Someone dropped a heavy hand on my shoulder and interrupted my reverie about trash. I glanced sideways at it. He was a nail biter. "May we look in the trunk?"

My stomach clenched as I nodded and said brightly, "Go right ahead. But I warn you, it's as bad as the rest of the car." And I never once uttered the words "take your hand off me, you pig." Under my jacket, I was sweating. It was only a matter of time before it soaked through. I felt like there was a giant red light on my forehead flashing "guilty" into the deepening darkness. I watched as they pulled out the beach chair, my rain boots, the picnic blanket, a spare raincoat, an umbrella, a canvas tote bag full of books, the shopping bag with my dry cleaning, the briefcase I'd just stowed in there. Hot Eyes held it up, initial side away from him. I beamed mental messages at him, telling him not to turn it around. If he did, my goose was cooked.

"What's in here?"

"Stuff I keep thinking I'll get around to reading. Boring financial stuff."

"You don't mind if I look?" he said, reaching for the zipper.

I considered grabbing the case and running but the image of the stooges with their eager hands by their guns deterred me. Well, Thea, I thought. This is it. Your golden opportunity to go to jail. Look at it as a chance to see how the other half lives. Or an opportunity to keep Julie company. A chance to see Andre mad. My stomach tightened. Bright smile in place, I said, "Of course not."

Slowly—or so it seemed to me, for whom time had become deranged—he unzipped the case, stuck in his hand, and pulled out a sheet of paper. I held my breath, waiting for the explosion as he discovered intimate details of the relationship between Julie and Calvin Bass lurking in my trunk.

"Very interesting," he muttered. I leaned over and looked at the paper. The heading was the Metro-Boston Real Estate Board and the page was covered with charts and graphs about demographics and sales prices.

"I'm glad you think so," I said. "I find it all rather dull." Relief was followed by a sense of futility. I'd taken the wrong papers. Hot Eyes and his companions were bound to find the right ones soon, and there was nothing I could do.

He put the papers back in the briefcase and the briefcase back in the trunk. "Okay, let's put this stuff away and get on with what we came to do." They piled my stuff back into the trunk and slammed the lid. "You can go, Mrs. Kozak, but let me give you some advice. The next time a murder suspect asks you to go to her house and do anything, talk to the police first. You could have gotten yourself in a heap of trouble."

"I'm sorry," I said. "It never occurred to me that there would be a problem."

He just walked away, shaking his head, the Connecticut cops behind him. I could almost hear him thinking "dumb broad." I wanted to scoop up a handful of the gravel, dirt and leaves from the gutter and fling it after him, but it would have been stupid. I was lucky that they hadn't dug farther into the case and found the letters I'd stuck in there. Otherwise, I'd just risked an ulcer for a bunch of old statistics.

I got in the car and started the engine. In the aftermath of fear, though, I was shaking too much to drive. I closed my eyes and put my head down on the wheel, waiting for the trembling to stop. All that for nothing. I hadn't gotten what Julie sent me to get. I took a deep breath and reviewed my search. No. I hadn't been careless. Hot Eyes wouldn't get them because the letters hadn't been there. And if they weren't there, someone had gotten to them before me. Maybe that was what the guy I'd seen leaving had been doing. It explained the letter I'd found in the grass. A strange chore for a doctor. Though if Julie had asked him to get her letters, why had she also asked me to do it? Because she didn't trust him to follow through?

It would have bothered me more at any other time. Now I was too shaken by my constabulary encounter to dwell on it. To dwell on anything other than pulling myself together and getting out of there. I'm always amazed at how much fear takes out of me. I put the car in gear and drove home.

 

 

 

Chapter 6

 

The next morning I took a green plastic trash bag, pulled on rubber gloves, and made my car a safe and decent place. By the time I was showered and dressed and driving to work, I no longer feared being in an accident. The EMTs would find me prepared. I was so conscientious I even carried my Styrofoam cup inside and threw it away and got the crumbs from my chocolate doughnut on my desk instead of the car seat. I was a woman reformed.

I hit the stack of messages waiting for me with all the zeal of the converted. I was hot, I was ready, the world had better watch out. At 9:30 my secretary, Sarah, looked in and shook her head. "Whatever you had for breakfast, I want some," she said. "At the rate you're going, there will be nothing left to do tomorrow."