Hard Eight (20 page)

“Someone killed her father,” Sebring said. “That’s not a good sign. Unless, of course, it was Annie’s mom who hired the hit. Then everything works out roses.”

“Do either of you know how Eddie Abruzzi fits into this puzzle?”

“He owned Soder’s bar,” Jeanne Ellen said. “And Soder was afraid of him. If Annie actually was in danger, I thought the threat might be tied to Abruzzi. Nothing concrete, just a feeling I had.”

“I hear you found Soder sitting on your couch,” Sebring said to me. “Do you know what that means?”

“My couch has death cooties?”

Sebring smiled and his teeth almost blinded me. “You can’t wash away death cooties,” he said. “Once they’re on your couch, they’re there to stay.”

I left the office on that cheery note. I got into my car, and I took a moment to process the new information. What did it mean? It didn’t mean much. It reinforced my fear that Evelyn and Annie were running, not just from Soder, but from Abruzzi, as well.

Valerie called again. “If I go out to lunch with Albert, would it be a date?”

“Only if he rips your clothes off.”

I hung up and put the car in gear. I was going back to
the Burg, and I was going to talk to Dotty’s mom. She was the only connection I had to Evelyn. If Dotty’s mom said Dotty and Evelyn were peachy fine and coming home, I’d feel like I was off the hook. I’d go to the mall and get a manicure.

Mrs. Palowski opened her front door and gasped at seeing me on her porch. “Oh dear,” she said. As if the death couch cooties were contagious.

I sent her a reassuring smile and a little finger wave. “Hi. I hope I’m not imposing.”

“Not at all, dear. I heard about Steven Soder. I don’t know what to think.”

“Me, either,” I said. “I don’t know why he was put on my couch.” I did a grimace. “Go figure. At least he wasn’t killed there. They packed him in.” Even as I said it, I knew it was lame. Leaving a sawed-in-half corpse on a girl’s couch is rarely a random act. “The thing is, Mrs. Palowski, I really do need to talk to Dotty. I was hoping she might have heard about Soder and gotten in touch with you.”

“As a matter of fact, she did. She called this morning, and I told her you were asking after her.”

“Did she say when she’d be home?”

“She said she might be gone a while. That was all she said.”

There goes the manicure.

Mrs. Palowski wrapped her arms tight around herself. “Evelyn dragged Dotty into this, didn’t she? It’s not like Dotty to take off from work and pull Amanda out of school to go on a camping trip. I think something bad is
going on. I heard about Steven Soder, and I went straight to mass. I didn’t pray for Soder, either. He can go to hell for all I care.” She crossed herself. “I prayed for Dotty,” she said.

“Do you have any idea where Dotty might be? If she was trying to help Evelyn, where would she take her?”

“I don’t know. I’ve tried to think, but I can’t figure it out. I doubt Evelyn has much money. And Dotty is on a tight budget. So I can’t see them flying off to someplace. Dotty said she had to stop at the mall yesterday to get some last-minute camping things, so maybe she really is camping. Sometimes, before the divorce, Dotty and her husband would go to a campground by Washington’s Crossing. I can’t think of the name, but it was right on the river, and you could rent a little trailer.”

I knew the campground. I’d passed it a million times on the way to New Hope.

Okay, now I was cooking. I had a lead. I could check out the campground. Only thing, I didn’t want to check it out alone. It was too isolated at this time of year. Too easy for Abruzzi to ambush me. So I took a deep breath and called Ranger.

“Yo,” Ranger said.

“I have a lead on Evelyn, and I could use some backup.”

Twenty minutes later, I was parked in the Washington’s Crossing parking lot, and Ranger pulled in beside me. He was driving a shiny black 4×4 pickup with oversize tires and bug lights on the cab. I locked my car and hoisted
myself into his passenger seat. The interior of the truck looked like Ranger regularly communicated with Mars.

“How’s your mental health?” he asked. “I heard about Soder.”

“I’m rattled.”

“I have a cure.”

Oh, boy.

He put the truck in gear and headed for the exit. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “And that wasn’t where I was going. I was going to suggest work.”

“I knew that.”

He looked over at me and grinned. “You want me bad.”

I did. God help me. “We’re going north,” I said. “There’s a chance that Evelyn and Dotty are at the camp-ground with the little trailers.”

“I know the campground.”

The road was empty at this time of day. Two lanes winding along the Delaware River and through the Pennsylvania countryside. Patches of woods and clusters of pretty houses bordered the road. Ranger was silent while he drove. He was paged twice and both times he read the message and didn’t respond. Both times he kept the message to himself. Normal behavior for Ranger. Ranger led a secret life.

The pager buzzed a third time. Ranger undipped it from his belt and looked at the readout. He cleared the screen, reclipped the pager, and continued to watch the road.

“Hell
o
,” I said.

He cut his eyes to me.

Ranger and I were oil and water. He was the Man of
Mystery, and I was Ms. Curiosity. We both knew this. Ranger tolerated it with mild amusement. I tolerated it with teeth clenched.

I dropped my eyes to his pager. “Jeanne Ellen?” I asked. I couldn’t help myself.

“Jeanne Ellen is on her way to Puerto Rico,” Ranger said.

Our eyes held for a moment, and he turned his attention back to the road. End of conversation.

“It’s a good thing you have a nice ass,” I said to him. Because you sure as hell can be
annoying
.

“My ass isn’t my best part, babe,” Ranger said, smiling at me.

And that truly did end the conversation. I had no follow-up.

Ten minutes later we approached the campground. It sat between the road and the river and could easily go unnoticed. It didn’t have a sign. And for all I knew, it didn’t have a name. A dirt road slanted down to a couple acres of grass. Small ramshackle cabins and trailers were scattered along the river’s edge, each with a picnic table and grill. It had an air of abandonment at this time of year. And it felt slightly disreputable, and intriguing, like a gypsy encampment.

Ranger idled at the entrance, and we scanned the surroundings.

“No cars,” Ranger said. He eased the truck down the drive and parked. He reached under the dash, removed a Glock, and we got out of the truck.

We systematically went down the row of cabins and trailers, trying doors, looking in windows, checking the grills for recent use. The lock was broken on the front
door to the fourth cabin. Ranger rapped once and opened the door.

The front room had a small kitchen area at one end. Not high-tech. Sink, stove, fridge circa 1950. The floor was covered with scuffed linoleum. There was a full-size couch at the far end of the room, a square wood table, and four chairs. The only other room to the cabin was a bedroom with two sets of bunks. The bunks had mattresses but no sheets or blankets. The bathroom was minuscule. A sink and a toilet. No shower or tub. The toothpaste in the sink looked fresh.

Ranger picked a pink plastic little girl’s barrette off the floor. “They’ve moved on,” he said.

We checked the refrigerator. It was empty. We went outside and investigated the remaining cabins and trailers. All the others were locked. We checked the Dumpster and found a single small bag of garbage.

“Do you have any other leads?” Ranger asked me.

“No.”

“Let’s walk through their houses.”

I picked my car up at Washington’s Crossing and drove it across the river. I parked in front of my parents’ house and got back into Ranger’s truck. We went to Dotty’s house first. Ranger parked in the driveway, removed the Glock from under the dash again, and we went to the front door.

Ranger had his hand on the doorknob and his handy-dandy lock-picking tool in his hand. And the door swung open. No lock picking necessary. It would appear we were coming in second in the breaking-and-entering race.

“Stay here,” Ranger said. He stepped into the living room and did a quick survey. He walked through the rest of the house with his gun drawn. He returned to the living room and motioned me in.

I closed and locked the door behind me. “Nobody home?”

“No. There are drawers pulled out and papers scattered on the kitchen counter. Either someone’s been through the house, or else Dotty left in a hurry.”

“I was here after Dotty left. I didn’t go into the house, but I looked in the windows and the house seemed neat. Do you think the house could have been burgled?” I knew in my heart it wasn’t burglary, but one can hope.

“Don’t think the motive was burglary. There’s a computer in the kid’s room and a diamond engagement ring in the jewelry box in the mother’s room. The television is still here. My guess is, we’re not the only ones looking for Evelyn and Annie.”

“Maybe it was Jeanne Ellen. She had a bug planted here. Maybe she came back to get her bug before she left for Puerto Rico.”

“Jeanne Ellen isn’t sloppy. She wouldn’t leave the front door open, and she wouldn’t leave evidence of a break-in.”

My voice inadvertently rose an octave. “Maybe she was having a bad day? Cripes, doesn’t she ever have a bad day?”

Ranger looked at me and smiled.

“Okay, so I’m getting a little tired of the perfect Jeanne Ellen,” I said.

“Jeanne Ellen isn’t perfect,” Ranger said. “She’s just very good.” He slung an arm around my shoulders and
kissed me below my ear. “Maybe we can find an area where your skills exceed Jeanne Ellen’s.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Did you have something in mind?”

“Nothing I’d want to get into right now.” He pulled a pair of disposable gloves out of his pocket. “I want to do a more thorough search. She didn’t take a lot with her. Most of their clothes are still here.” He moved into the bedroom and turned the computer on. He opened files that looked promising. “Nothing to help us,” he finally said, shutting the computer off.

She didn’t have caller ID, and there were no messages on her machine. Bills and shopping lists were scattered across the kitchen counter. We rifled through them, knowing it was probably wasted effort. If there had been anything good, the intruder would have taken it.

“Now what?” I asked.

“Now we look at Evelyn’s house.”

Uh-oh. “There’s a problem with Evelyn’s house. Abruzzi has someone watching it. Every time I stop by, Abruzzi shows up ten minutes later.”

“Why would Abruzzi care that you’re in Evelyn’s house?”

“Last time I ran into him he said he knew I was in it for the money, that I knew what the stakes were. And that I knew what he was trying to recover. I think Abruzzi’s after something, and it’s tied to Evelyn somehow. I think it’s possible that Abruzzi thinks this
thing
is hidden in the house, and he doesn’t want me snooping around.”

“Any ideas on what it is that he’s trying to recover?”

“None. Not a clue. I’ve been through the house, and I didn’t find anything unusual. Of course, I wasn’t looking
for secret hiding places. I was looking for something to direct me to Evelyn.”

Ranger closed the front door behind us and made sure it was locked.

The sun was low in the sky when we got to Evelyn’s house. Ranger did a drive-by. “Do you know the people on this street?”

“Almost everyone. Some I know better than others. I know the woman next door to Dotty. Linda Clark lives two houses down. The Rojacks live in the corner house. Betty and Arnold Lando live across the street. The Landos are in a rental, and I don’t know the family next to them. If I was looking for a snitch, my money would be on someone in the family next to the Landos. There’s an old man who always seems to be home. Sits out on the porch a lot. Looks like he used to break kneecaps for a living, about a hundred years ago.”

Ranger parked in front of Carol Nadich’s half of the house. Then we walked around the house and entered Evelyn’s half through the back door. Ranger didn’t have to break a window to get in. Ranger inserted a small slender tool into the lock, and ten seconds later the door was open.

The house seemed just as I remembered. Dishes in the drain. Mail neatly stacked. Drawers closed. None of the signs of search that we’d seen in Dotty’s house.

Ranger did his usual walk-through, starting in the kitchen, eventually moving upstairs into Evelyn’s room. I was following behind him when I had a sudden flashback. Kloughn telling me about Annie’s drawings. Scary drawings, Kloughn had said. Bloody.

I wandered into Annie’s room and flipped pages on the pad on her desk. The first page contained a house drawing similar to the one downstairs. After that came a page of scribbles and doodles. And then the childish drawing of a man. He was laying on the ground. The ground was red. Red spurted from the man’s body.

“Hey,” I called to Ranger. “Come look at this.”

Ranger stood beside me and stared at the drawing. He turned the page and found a second drawing with red on the ground. Two men were laying in the red. Another man pointed a gun at them. There were a lot of erasure marks around the gun. I guess guns are hard to draw.

Ranger and I exchanged glances.

“It could just be television,” I said.

“It wouldn’t hurt to take the pad with us, in case it isn’t.”

Ranger finished his search of Evelyn’s room, moved to Annie’s, and then to the bathroom. He stood hands on hips when he’d completed the search of the bathroom.

“If there’s something here, it’s well hidden,” he said. “It would be easier if I knew what we were looking for.”

We left the house the same way we came. Abruzzi wasn’t waiting for us on the back porch. And Abruzzi wasn’t waiting for us by Ranger’s truck. I sat next to Ranger and I looked up and down the street. No sign of Abruzzi. I was almost disappointed.

Ranger rolled the engine over, drove to my parents’ house, and parked behind my car. The sun had set and the street was dark. Ranger cut his lights and turned to see me better.