I Have a Secret (A Sloane Monroe Novel, Book Three) (13 page)

Since I was already in the area and still had three hours to kill, I thought I’d take a moment to visit my old friend Nate before going to Trista’s house for dinner.  Of the Rat Pack bunch, we had been the closest.  My junior year we’d even attended the Sadie Hawkins dance together.  My mom never had much money once she became a single parent, and since it was up to the girl to spring for matching shirts for the event, the most I’d been able to provide at the time was a pair of red sweaters on blue light special at the Kmart in Mojave.  The best thing about Nate was he didn’t care.  He wore it with a pair of acid-washed jeans and Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses and practically started a new trend.  It could have been a shirt made of cellophane wrap—it didn’t matter.  If Nate wore it, everyone assumed it was cool, and the next week at school, a new fad was born, all thanks to The Natemeister.

Nate lived on a ranch passed down to him by his parents when they retired and left to travel the world in their Winnebago.  Of course, once they moved out, he bulldozed the ranch-style home and replaced it with a shiny new bachelor pad that towered over all the other homes in the valley.  He was a lot of flash and flare all balled up into one giant kid who refused to grow up and face adulthood.

The gate to the ranch was open when I arrived, but I still took a moment to admire the oversized letter N welded into the center.  A shiny silver BMW sat in the driveway with a dealer plate attached to the back window.  I parked beside it, and when I walked by, I noticed the driver’s side of the car was dented in like it had been in a recent collision.  Interesting.  Since he had the top down, I poked my head in and wasn’t surprised to discover a pair of black Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses on the dash.  Some things never changed.   

I ascended the twenty-something steps to the second-story front entrance and rang the doorbell.  No answer.   I jiggled the handle.  Locked.  I walked back down the stairs and around the side of the house and spied a sliding glass door leading to the backyard.  It was open.  I peered in and saw no one, but what my eyes couldn’t make out, my nose made up for in the form of an overwhelming stench that smelled like a slaughtered cow. 

I cupped my hand over my mouth, squeezed my nose with the other and yelled out, “Nate?  You here?”

Silence.

I stepped inside, and as I neared the kitchen, I located the cause of the odor.  Several packages of hamburger had been left out on the counter like he was preparing for a party, except it looked like they’d sat there for days.  They were brown, and dried blood had seeped out and was fused to both the packages and the countertop.  Wherever Nate was, it couldn’t have been anywhere near a smell like that. 

I started to head out the door when something barked.  In the doorway down the hall, a cute little pug dog appeared.  It looked at me, turned around and vanished.  I followed.  When I reached the room the dog was in I was overtaken once again by an odor far worse than anything I’d ever smelled in my life.  I leaned my head inside the room and let out a scream that rivaled Jamie Lee Curtis in
Halloween
.  Flattened on the master bed was the decomposing body of a man I wished was anyone other than Nate.  A knife protruded from his chest.  I took one baby step closer which proved to be a big mistake and then whipped my body around, fled outside and vomited into the hedges. 

After it seemed everything was out of my system, I dialed 9-1-1.  The operator answered and I said, “There’s been a homicide.”

I gave her the information and she gave me her usual spiel about how she wanted me to stay on the phone, but I’d done what I needed to, and I wasn’t going anywhere until police got there.  I hung up and dialed again.

“I know, I know.  You’re mad at me for sending him down there,” a voice said on the other end.  “But before you say anything, you need to understand, I thought it was in your best interest.”

“Maddie, I’m at a…there’s a dead body, and…”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.  Slow down.  You’re with a dead body?  Did you kill someone?”

“No.  I stopped by to see an old friend and I think he’s the dead guy.  I mean, from the five seconds I was in there I could tell the body had started to decompose, and I haven’t seen him in a long time, but who else could it be?  Once a detective gets here—assuming the town has a homicide unit—I’m sure I won’t be able to find out anything, so I was hoping you could…”

“How long has the guy been dead do you think?”

“I don’t know,” I said. 

“All right, you’ve seen the body up close, right?”

“Yeah…”

“Describe it to me.  What did it look like?”

“Bloated,” I said.  “Kind of a greenish color.”

“Does his skin look like marble?”

I thought about it for a moment, and actually, it did.  “Yeah.”

“Have you upchucked yet?”

“Multiple times.”

“All right, then I need you to go back into the house and send me some photos of the body—get as close as you can, okay?”

“I don’t think my stomach can handle round two,” I said. 

“You can do this,” she said.  “Get to the bathroom as quick as you can.  Open the medicine cabinet if he has one or whatever he keeps stuff like that in and look for some Vicks VapoRub.  Stick a good chunk of it under your nose.  I mean a big one—plop it on there.  It’ll help with the smell.  Then go back into the bedroom, snap whatever photos you can and send them to me.” 

I returned to the hotel, discarded the clothes I’d worn that day outside in the dumpster and showered for what felt like several hours.  But it didn’t matter.  The smell was in my nostrils and clung to my body like a wet bikini.  No matter how much soap I used, I couldn’t get the stench of rotting flesh to go away—not completely. 

After my shower, I slumped down on the bed and allowed the past few hours to settle in around me.  I wished I could have stomached Nate’s house long enough to get a good look at everything, but that chance came and went when the wheels of the first police car squealed to a stop in Nate’s front yard followed by another vehicle that contained the police chief and one of his sergeants.  It was my queue to leave.  The few photos I took I forwarded to Maddie.  But since they were all surface shots, she could only estimate his death which she agreed could have occurred on poker night.  The question was: Why hadn’t anyone discovered him until now?

I regained all five senses, got dressed and texted Trista.  I had one final stop to make before heading over for dinner: Nate’s Automotive.  When I arrived, I fully expected my car to be swarmed with salesman like a bunch of peppy cheerleaders at a car wash, but when the wheels touched the inside perimeter of the lot, nothing happened.  I parked and searched for signs of life, but the area was more deserted than the town of Tombstone in the thirties. 

I entered the dealership and looked around until I spotted a warm body.  A boy with long black cornrows and a slender frame weighing in at about a buck fifty, approached me. 

“Hey,” he said.  “What can we do for you today?”

“Why isn’t anyone out on the lot?”

He laughed.  “You’ve never been here before, have you?”

I shook my head.  “Why?”

“We don’t do that here.”

“What?”

“Pester customers.  We let you to come to us.  No pressure.  It’s better that way.”

“Nate teach you that?”

He nodded.  “Do you know him?”

“We went to school together.”

From his chipper attitude I deduced he hadn’t heard the news about Nate’s untimely demise, but it hadn’t been long since I’d made the discovery.  

“When was the last time you saw Nate?” I said.

“He’s in Fiji, and he doesn’t take kindly to phone calls when he’s on vacation unless it’s an emergency.”

It explained why his body went unnoticed for days. 

“How long has he been gone?”

He shrugged.  “A few days I guess.”

It added to my suspicion that the last time anyone saw him alive was poker night.  I swallowed and realized if I wanted to get the details on Nate’s final hours, I’d have to talk to Jesse—yet again. 

“Did Nate vacation alone?”

He swiped his hand through the air like he was swatting a fly.  “Naw, he took someone with him.”

“Do you know who?” I said.

Cornrow Boy yelled over his shoulder to another guy who stood several feet away.  “Hey, you know the name of the girl Nate took to Fiji?”

The other boy scratched his head.  “Ahhh, I think her name was Janice?” 

Cornrow Boy shook his head.  “Naw man, that’s not right.  It started with a C.”  He slapped the thigh of his pants with his hand and laughed.  “I actually heard Nate call her Candy once, cuz she smelled so sweet, but Candy wasn’t her real name or nothin’.”

It couldn’t have been.  Could it?

“Was her name Candice?” I said.

In unison both boys nodded.  “Yeah, that’s right.”     

The other guy winked at Cornrow Boy. “For an older woman, she is F-I-N-E fine, mmm mmmh!”

“How long had Nate been dating Candice?”

Cornrow Boy threw his head back and thundered with laughter.  “You may have known Nate back in the day, but you obviously don’t know nothin’ about him now.  Nate’s never
with
anyone.  He dates two, three girls at a time.”  

The two boys glanced at each other and nodded like they wanted to smack hands together in a high five.

“Did the girls Nate dated know he was with more than one woman at the same time?”

Cornrow Boy looked at me.  “Uh, I dunno.  That Candice chick didn’t.”

“How do you know?” I said.

“Cuz she found out he was dating some other girl and drove her car into his brand new beamer—get this— while my man was driving it.”

The other guy nodded and said, “That chick’s got balls, yo.”

I couldn’t believe it.  “And he still wanted to take Candice on vacation?”

By this time the other kid had walked over and was eager to join the conversation.  “Nate likes the feisty ones.”

“Yeah,” Cornrow Boy said.  “The crazier the better.”

It made me uncomfortable to be even a minute late for any event no matter how simple, but when I arrived at Trista’s house carrying a pie in each hand from one of the local bakeries, no one seemed to mind my tardiness.  One look at Trista’s smiling face revealed she hadn’t heard the news about Nate either.  And with all three kids around, it wasn’t the right time to tell her.  

“C’mon in.  I was just showing Alexa a picture of us from senior year,” she said. 

“I don’t remember us ever being in a picture together.”

We walked into the living room.  A plastic bin the size of a shoebox rested on the coffee table.  It was filled with photos of Trista at different stages in her life.  She shuffled through a few of them and said, “Ah, here it is,” and then handed it to me.

The photo had been taken on the homecoming float in 1991.  The two of us were arm in arm in our black, white, and green Warrior paint that covered both our faces.  The paint masked a lot, but couldn’t hide my bright blue eye shadow or my spiral-permed hair.  

Trista pointed at the photo.  “I put that spirit paint on your face.  Do you remember now?” 

I didn’t, but it was one of those situations where I rationalized how much better a white lie was than hurting her feelings.     

“Good times,” I said.

A girl with blond crimped hair stepped into the kitchen.  She looked over at me and said, “Hey.”

Trista held her hand out like she was giving a formal presentation.  “This is my daughter, Alexa.”  

“I hear you want to be a doctor,” I said.

Her cheeks flushed and she teetered back on the heels of her Mary Jane shoes.  “Yeah, one day.”

“I’ll go check on dinner,” Trista said. 

I glanced at Alexa.  “Are you an intern?”

She nodded.  “I work a couple hours here and there at Guardian.”

“Never heard of it,” I said. 

“It’s a children’s hospital.” 

“Is that what you want to go into—pediatrics?”

She nodded.  “I love working with kids.” 

Trista emerged from the kitchen donning hot pads on both hands and carrying several pieces of silverware.  “Who’s ready for dinner?”