Nowhere to Hide (3 page)

He turned his gaze to Doris. “I’m Deputy Graham Harrigan, Mrs. Walters. I came by a little after seven. I rang the bell, but nobody answered.”

“
I didn’t hear any doorbell,” Doris said. She gave the deputy a hasty once-over and started cleaning her glasses with the hem of her shirt.

“
Mrs. Walters,” Harrigan said. “Your nephew is Jeffrey Walters, correct?”

“
Yes.” Doris squinted. “He’s not home.”

Harrigan pulled out his notebook before continuing. “His daughter said he’s not returning her calls. She asked us to make sure he’s all right. Anything you can help me with?”

“
Daughter?” Colleen heard the scorn in Doris’ voice. “You mean Kimberly?”

“
That’s right,” Harrigan said. “Kimberly Simon.”

Doris raised her head to glare at Harrigan. “Pah! Stepdaughter. Actually, she’s his ex-stepdaughter. Jeffrey married her mother when Kimberly was twelve. The marriage lasted eight years, and I was surprised it held together that long. No matter. Kimberly wants his money. She’s always asking, saying it’s for her kid. Five’ll get you ten she squanders it on herself, or bails out her husband. He’s a real loser. Gambling debts up the yin yang.”

Colleen watched Harrigan write as Doris spoke. Why weren’t his eyes on Doris? Body language and tone of voice were more important than taking notes. What kind of a cop was he?

“
Well, Mrs. Walters,” he said. “That’s all very interesting, but it doesn’t tell me where Jeffrey is. If you can put me in touch with him, I can call Mrs. Simon and put her mind at ease.”

“
Pah! Her mind won’t be at ease until he gives her another handout. But you can’t reach Jeffrey. He’s in Alaska.”

“
Alaska?” Colleen asked. She waited for Harrigan to push, but he remained silent. None of her business. He was the cop.

“
Yes, Alaska. He left about six weeks ago. He buys and sells land, you know. There’s a lot of that in Alaska.”

Harrigan spoke. “Do you have any way to reach him? Hotel, phone, anything?”

Doris took off her glasses and held them aloft, peered through them, exhaled on them, then wiped the lenses again. “E-mail, maybe. He has a cell phone, but I don’t think there’s much service where he goes. I had an e-mail from him last week, so you can tell Miss Moneygrubber he’s fine.”

“
Do you think you could give me his cell number? Or his e-mail address?” Harrigan asked. “The name of his company? Someone he works with?”

“
What do you need all that for? I told you, his cell phone won’t work, and I had an e-mail from him. I don’t know the address. I click his name in the computer and it’s automatic.”

Colleen could see the frustration building in Harrigan’s face. She knew as well as he did that he couldn’t force Doris to say anything, but she sympathized with him. Twenty minutes with Doris had been enough for her. Must be a carryover from the woman’s schoolteacher days, the way she spoke and tolerated no rebuttal.

“
Thank you, Mrs. Walters,” Harrigan said. “I’ll let her know.” Doris walked through the garage to the house and closed the door behind her. Harrigan turned to Colleen. “Nice to see you again, Ms. McDonald. If you don’t mind, I have a couple of questions for you as well.”

Her mouth went dry as paper. Colleen managed to swallow. “What can you possibly want from me? I’ve been in town all of one day.”

“
It’s routine. Background. Let me help you with your bags. It looks like it might pour any minute.” He reached into the trunk and lifted several of the plastic shopping bags.

As if on cue, a curtain of water moved from the street toward the house like a marching band on parade. “What the hell?” Colleen muttered.

She grabbed some bags and started jogging toward her apartment, Harrigan right behind her. Head down, she almost ran into her suitcases stacked outside the door.

“
Surprise, surprise,” she said. “The airline delivered the bags when they said they would. About all they did right. Then again, they lost them to begin with.” She fumbled in her purse for her house key.

Harrigan set the plastic bags down and hoisted the suitcases. “Let me get these for you.”

By the time she got the bags inside, he was already trotting to the car for another load. Somewhere, she knew, she’d packed an umbrella, but what did it matter? She was already soaked. She dashed after Harrigan.

By the time everything was in the house, they were both waterlogged. “Doris was right,” Colleen said. “Florida rain plummets. I’ll get you a towel.” She toed off her sneakers and went into the bathroom. When she returned, Harrigan was still on the tiles in the foyer. Nice of him not to muddy the carpets. She tossed the towel in his direction.

As he wiped himself down, she followed his gaze around the apartment. “Landlady seems to like green and yellow,” she said.

“
You don’t strike me as the greenhouse type.”

“
Once the rest of my stuff gets here, it’ll feel more like home.”

He dried his hands, then folded the towel and held it out.

“
You didn’t have to help, you know,” Colleen said. “One trip, and I was as wet as I could get.”

“
Typical Florida rain, although storms like these usually hit in the summer. It’ll be gone soon. Where are you from? The desert?”

Was he being polite or pumping her? “Out west.” She took the towel from his outstretched hand, careful not to make contact. “You said you had some questions. I’m going to put away my stuff and you can fire away.” For an instant, her eyes met his and she hurried to the kitchen.

He leaned against the door. When he spoke, his tone was pure interrogation. “What can you tell me about Doris or Jeffrey Walters?”

Colleen concentrated on unpacking bags and lining everything up on the counter until she decided where she’d put it. “Nothing. I already told you that.” She saw Harrigan pull out his notebook, shake water droplets off, then wipe it on his trousers. He flipped through some pages.

“
What division are you in, Deputy?” Unless things were totally different in Florida, detectives wore plainclothes, not uniforms.

“
I’m a Patrol officer, ma’am. Nobody was home this morning, so I came back. A routine precaution. If anything looks funny, it’ll go to the Criminal Investigations Division.”

“
What else do you want, then?” She made no apology for the irritability in her tone. “As you can see, I’m kind of busy.”

“
I promise I won’t bite and I’ll be gone before you know it. The daughter says Jeffrey was going to put Mrs. Walters in a home. That she’s starting to forget things. You notice anything?”

Colleen started putting the perishables in the refrigerator. “No. I drove her to the shopping center, we each did our own thing, and I drove her home. She seemed perfectly fine. Just … just like what you saw. She says something, that’s the end of it.”

He crossed to the table and started making notes. “Yeah, I noticed. Moving on. How did you come to rent this place?”

“
A friend told me about it. She said Doris needed a tenant, and I needed somewhere to stay. The rent was reasonable, and I didn’t want some huge apartment complex.”

“
Who signed your rental agreement? The tax rolls say the property is in Jeffrey’s name.”

“
Doris.” Colleen pondered that one. “So you’re saying maybe I don’t have a legal right to be here?” She forced herself to meet his eyes. They were the color of the sky right after the sun went down. And that dark rim around the irises made the blue all the deeper.

He shrugged. “I have no idea what authority she has. It’s probably fine. I want to find Jeffrey Walters so I can get Mrs. Simon off my back.”

The way she wanted this deputy off hers. “I still have unpacking to do. Are we done?”

“
Almost. A couple of questions about you and I’m gone.”

“
Me? What do you want to know about me? I told you, I’m brand new here.”

“
Let’s start with the easy ones. How do you spell your last name?”

She gave him a half-smile. “M small C.”

“
Thanks.” He flashed a full-sized grin. “That wasn’t so hard now, was it?”

Her smile widened of its own volition. She forced it away. Too easy to succumb to his charming good looks. “Go on.”

“
You have a driver’s license?”

“
Yes, I do, as a matter of fact. And I’m smart enough to know you can’t make me show it.” She hesitated, debating how much to tell him. He wanted to play detective, he should be able to figure it out if he dug hard enough, but she saw no reason to hand it to him. “Get real, Harrigan. You can’t think I have anything to do with the missing man. You’re doing personal pumping here, right?” He changed his smile into a look of detached professionalism. His embarrassed expression told her she’d hit home.

“
Ms. M small C, I’m doing my job.”

She hesitated. “Okay, but I decide when this interview is over. I used to work at a place called Pine Hills. That’s all you’re getting. What about you?”

“
What?”

“
Turnabout’s fair play. To use your terms, one Celt to another, will you answer my questions too? Starting with where you’re from?”

He smiled. “San Francisco. My turn. What brings you to Orlando?”

“
Delta Airlines,” she snapped. “As I’m sure you deduced from the luggage on the porch.” His expression hardened at the testiness of her reply. Too many of her own encounters with chip-on-the-shoulder citizens mellowed her tone. “Sorry. That was rude of me. I wanted a change, okay?” She grabbed some cans and stuck them in a cabinet. “Enough, Deputy. Interview is finished. I have things to do.”

“
One more question. What did you do in Pine Hills?”

Colleen made sure her gaze didn’t waver. “Desk jockey. You know. Phones, filing, faxes.” Not a lie, that’s exactly what she’d been doing before she quit.

He gave her a lopsided grin. “Thanks. That should do it. But I might be back.” He opened the door.

He’d walked about five paces when she hollered after him. “Don’t you think it’s a little strange that Jeffrey would be looking at land in Alaska in November?”

With that, Colleen stepped inside and closed the door. Something about Harrigan unsettled her, so she was going to forget him and turn this yellow and green floral arrangement into something she could live in. She found a rock station on the stereo, changed into dry clothes and let her mind float as she put away her things. She was home. She had a bed, a hot shower and an adequate food supply. And thanks to Blockbuster, some entertainment.

Colleen opened one of her suitcases and dug beneath a pile of shirts and sweaters until her fingers made contact with the bubble-wrapped packet. She opened it and stared at the photograph, then set it in the center of the shelf directly above the television.

Squinting at the picture, she saw herself at age ten, already hitting a growth spurt, all knees and elbows, her hair a mass of frizzy red curls. Her three brothers mugged for the camera, blissfully unaware of the grown-up responsibilities that awaited. A family portrait, taken right before her oldest brother, Michael, left for college. Such happy times. Her mother’s face glowed with pride. How young her father looked, with his red hair still thick and wavy. Colleen had his green eyes, although everyone said she took after her mom.

Colleen concentrated on that image and pushed away the memory of her mother’s face when they’d said their goodbyes. The look of pain, of defeat, knowing she couldn’t make the hurt go away for her baby girl, but a look that said she accepted Colleen’s decision.

Well, she wasn’t a baby girl anymore. It was time to move on. She unearthed one more bubble-wrapped package from the depths of her suitcase. Slitting the tape, she carefully unrolled the wrap and pulled out the half-full bottle of single malt Scotch.

She put it on the shelf next to the family photo, rotating it so the black line glared at her. The line she’d drawn with an indelible marker, at the level of whisky in the bottle. She ran her fingers run down the smooth glass. She gripped the cap.

No. Suck it up.
She wasn’t a drunk. Until the incident, she hardly drank at all.

She set the bottle back on the shelf. With shaking fingers, she turned it around so the line wasn’t visible.

For dinner that night, her first real night in her new home, Colleen made herself a salad, sautéed a salmon filet, squeezed a lemon over it and nuked some broccoli. Half of her cooking repertoire. The alternative was a chicken breast and green beans. She carried everything into the living room and settled in front of the television for her date with Bond. The original James Bond.

When the closing credits rolled, she carried her empty plate to the sink and grabbed a giant chocolate chip cookie. An explosion resounded through the room. Her heart jumped to her throat and she instinctively reached for the nonexistent gun at her hip. The cookie fell, and she hit the floor.

She tried to quell her pounding heart, forcing herself to concentrate on the sounds. Not gunfire. Besides, this neighborhood didn’t look like the drive-by type. She raised herself to a half crouch and went to the door. Easing it open, she peeked toward the street.

Doris stood at the edge of the driveway, caught in the glow of a streetlamp. Colleen hurried to join her, ignoring the trickle of sweat running down her back, trying to control her rapid breathing.

“
Oh, hello, Colleen. I so enjoy fireworks. Don’t you?”

“
Fireworks?” Colleen followed Doris’ gaze. Sure enough, a globe of red, green and blue lights erupted in the sky, followed by the sounds of multiple explosions.

“
Universal Studios. We’ll get them at eight every night until after Thanksgiving. Wait until New Year’s. They do a show that’s over the top. And we get it for free.”