Out of the Blue: A Pengram Mystery (10 page)

“Yeah. She has a good recollection of the incident. It became a joke among the employees that still lives on in their company to this day. Their trash really was someone else’s treasure. The person carted off stuff not worth the gas it took to drive away. She can’t figure out how anyone even stumbled across the junk back there. You couldn’t see it from the road. None of the employees would have come back to snatch it; she’d informed them that they were welcome to take anything they wanted when it was heading out the door. They skimmed off some of the filing cabinets that weren’t too ruined, and that was it. So the stuff was there when she left work for the day around five, and it was still there when the Acchio night cleaning crew Pan-Tastic uses left after midnight to go to their next office. They picked through the stuff themselves and didn’t find anything to take. Hold on a second, Blue.”

I waited while he had a muffled conversation with one of his daughters. He came back and picked up the thread of his story without delay. “The lead cleaner of that crew went home after his last job, realized he’d lost his wallet somewhere, grabbed a flashlight and drove back to the three places he worked that night. His wallet had fallen out of his pocket in the back parking lot at Pan-Tastic, and the stuff was
still
there. It was a little past four a.m. But by the time the Beater Boys arrived to take it away at six, a fair chunk of it was gone. Tons of the partitions, chairs and desks, all of the computer stuff, it got discovered and carried off in less than two hours.”

That was a very short window of time. I turned off the television and sat in the darkness. “That was nineteen years ago, though, if these are even the same partitions,” I said. “Anything could have happened to them since then. Sold off, used in some other company . . .”

“True. But keep in mind no one would likely have wanted them.”

“And how old is this man? Nine times out of ten, they turn out to be twenties or thirties, occasionally forties. They’re still building up their fantasies in their teens and a lot of them poop out in their fifties or sixties if they aren’t caught first.”

A female voice called on Halloran’s end. “I’ve got to go,” he said. “Anyway, I thought it was interesting.” He hung up.

I thought it was interesting, too. Even if he hadn’t been the one to acquire them initially, the perp had gotten hold of them somewhere over the years. As to the person who raided behind the business . . . how had he found that stuff, and how had he taken it away? Had he just happened to be driving a truck?

Or a smaller vehicle. A smaller one that could make several trips to his home in Darby.

I stared out the window, thinking.

The moon stared back at me.

Chapter Thirteen

Early in the morning, I blindly fumbled through my underwear drawer and came up dry.
Fuck
. I’d been ignoring Laundry Mountain for so long that it had probably achieved sentience by now and consumed the last of my clean panties while I slept.

The choices were to go commando, stop at the mall and buy a three-pack on the way to work, or turn a used pair inside out. Staggering to the machine, I chose the least offensive pair from the basket and stuffed the rest into the washer with socks, bras, and T-shirts. When I got home, I needed to remember to transfer it to the dryer.

While going through the motions of getting ready, I could barely keep my eyes open. As soon as this case resolved, I was calling my doctor and throwing down for an increase of my thyroid medication. It was ridiculous to always be so exhausted, like I was ninety-one instead of forty-one. But I just didn’t have the energy to engage in this fight. There was a reason why I hadn’t checked my mail in days, why dishes were forever piled up in the sink and Laundry Mountain reached stratospheric heights. It wasn’t because I was a slob. All of the energy I did have went to work, leaving me with nothing in the reserves for home.

And then there was smiling, bow-tied Doctor Haglan, suggesting I needed to talk it over with a therapist and his pen poised over a pad to write me a prescription for antidepressants. Last time he had suggested I make time to go out with the girls. I was beginning to hate that smug, sexist old man.

No one had called to report another murder overnight. That was good. Or maybe it just indicated the body hadn’t been discovered yet.

You sick son-of-a-bitch
, I thought as I brushed my teeth. I didn’t want anyone else to die at his hands, but I was not in control of that. For all of our best efforts, we weren’t moving as fast as he was.

Before I left, I pulled everything out of the packed mailbox and dumped it on the coffee table. Bills. Ads. Catalogs. More bills. Then I saw my mother’s handwriting on an envelope and swore under my breath. What was it going to be this time? A guilt trip? Boudoir pictures of herself? Articles cut out of magazines? Rambling thoughts composed while drunk? It wasn’t my birthday. Her latest kick was news about celebrities who had had babies in their forties and fifties, and phone numbers to sperm banks. She wanted a granddaughter to buy cute clothes for. Some of the sperm banks listed donor information online, and she enjoyed going through them to select good candidates.

I thought that was weird, but hey, maybe that was just me.

Opening the envelope, I pulled out a card and groaned as glitter fell everywhere on the table and floor. Really? My own mother had glitter-bombed me? Who still
did
that past high school?

The card itself had a rather passionate picture of two silhouettes embracing with wine glasses in hand, something suited more for a lover than a daughter. On the inside, it said
tee-hee! Love, Mom!
Also included were pictures of her on a beach with a guy at least a decade younger than she was. Both of them were dressed in swimsuits and smiling cheekily to the camera. My long bouts of being single bothered my mother intensely; she couldn’t last a month between relationships. Having a man gave her a definition, almost a container for herself. Without that, she could not keep hold of who she was.

The guy was wearing the tiniest pair of swim briefs ever made, and it was not a pretty sight. A thick mat of hair on his chest and a big gut protruding above the hem of his suit, he had goggles making a second set of eyes on his forehead. Mom looked the same as ever: clinging to a man with too much makeup on and her hair sprayed out like a lion’s mane. It was dyed fire engine red.

Now I had to find the energy to vacuum.
Dammit, Mom
. Ferrying the card and envelope directly to the trash, I dumped everything in before more glitter could escape. Then I washed my hands, the tiny pieces of sparkle sticking on stubbornly.

What did people
do
with parents like her? Parents who were essentially impulsive, temperamental kids riding around in adult bodies? If I sent a glitter bomb in return to mess up
her
house, she would either be delighted I was playing along or else furious that she had to clean it up despite doing the same to me. If I told her I didn’t appreciate the prank, she would scoff and dismiss me as having no sense of humor. Or worse, she would get tearful about how she just wanted to be close and why did I make everything so hard on her? If I ignored it, she would ask incessantly if I’d received her card and then send another one.

There was no way to win. There was never any way to win with her. Over the years I had moved past the need to win, but I just wanted stupid little things like this to stop. The calls from strange men, the prying into my personal life and the terrible sexual over-shares she liked to make, sending me subscriptions to porn or perfect home magazines, depending on her mood, the information packets from reproductive centers given my address . . . All I wanted was a nice, normal relationship with my mother. Not someone who thought I’d like to know about her boyfriend’s erectile dysfunction problems or how she had made two hundred dollars supplying her feet for a fetish party at a BDSM club.

The next time she sent a card, I would return it unopened. And when she called to demand why, I might be tempted to actually unload the truth. Unless she could act like an adult, I wanted to be left alone. Let her throw a tantrum and tell Mr. Tiny Briefs what a horrible, ungrateful daughter I was. I had to stop caring so much about her feelings because she certainly didn’t care about mine. She was worse than dealing with an actual teenager, because teenagers eventually grew up and matured. Mom wasn’t ever going to get any more mature than she was now.

When I got to the station, it was full of tense anticipation. The night had been quiet but tips had come in in a steady stream. They were sorted into credible and not credible, and the credible ones needed to be investigated. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how one looked at it, most were not very credible. A homeless man at the Cheerio Gas on Fourth was asking for money and just looked like a killer. Two psychics thought we were looking for a woman instead of a man; Psychic Sue called back in a rage that we hadn’t followed up on her previous reading. Someone called in to say that Chloe Rogers was a prostitute and Francisco Hernandez was her pimp, and the government had had the two killed for stumbling over state secrets in a zip drive found in a john’s pocket.

“Guess there’s always a chance of that,” Halloran said, and then we picked up a list of newly discovered phone numbers for volunteers and sat down at our desks to call.

No addresses, only initials for names, we were a few minutes in when Reuter came over and said, “Alice Shacter contacted me again. She remembered something about the partitions last night that would help us identify if they used to belong to Pan-Tastic. She used to go to work with her father when she was a kid, she and her younger brother, and the two of them would get bored. They’d sit on the floor in an empty cubicle and try to poke holes through the partitions with pencils, pens, a letter opener, whatever they could get their hands on.”

“Those partitions are already pretty chewed on,” I said.

Reuter blinked at me oddly. “The holes they made would be down real low to the floor. They did it there hoping nobody would notice. And they’d stick gum wrappers and candy wrappers inside the partitions they messed around with before taping or gluing the hole back up.”

“Why are you looking at me like I’ve got something hanging out of my nose, Reuter?” I demanded.

“I’m sorry, Detective. Did you know you have glitter on your cheeks?”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” I pulled a compact out of my desk drawer and opened it. A little glitter sparkled along my cheekbones like I was twenty-two and headed out for a night on the town. Grabbing a tissue, I wiped at my face furiously.

“What did you do last night, Blue?” Halloran asked with a snort of amusement.

“Partied hard,” I snapped. “The way I do.”

“I was wondering who would take all that trash,” Reuter said contemplatively. “But I guess it’s kind of obvious.”

“Please enlighten me then, because I don’t find it obvious,” I said.

“Either someone so dumb or desperate that they thought it was worth something, or a hoarder. Have you seen that show on TV?”

“Reuter, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“It’s called
American Collectors
, about people who pack their houses so full of stuff that they can’t hardly live in them anymore. Like ten thousand dolls or art supplies or plates, but they go totally overboard with it. There was a woman with a mansion full of toys that she’d bought for her kids and grandkids and friends’ kids, but she’d never given them. She just hung on to everything until every room of her home was engulfed in stuffed animals and sticker books and whatnot. And there was this woman who started collecting survival supplies for Y2K and she’s never stopped in all these years. She’s convinced the world is about to end at any second. Her whole house and the yard were filled with supplies in garbage cans and she was going broke paying for storage units to keep more. Some of the stuff wasn’t even good anymore, like the old granola bars and cans of soup, but she couldn’t get rid of them. Her neighbors were calling the county to complain about the state of her property and she was pissed off at them, saying they’d be singing a different tune once the apocalypse began and she was the only one prepared.”

I’d thought he was about to stop but Reuter kept on chattering. He’d come in at the same time as obnoxious Eller, but Percy Reuter was a sweetheart. He just talked too much. “One man had to walk two blocks to use a fast food restroom because his hoard of garbage was so bad he couldn’t reach his own toilet. It was the new episode that aired last weekend. His family has been trying for years to help him get rid of the trash, but he won’t let go of a thing. In his head, he’s saving the environment. His adult kids, they were twins, the two of them told their dad that it was them or the trash collection. He chose the trash and yelled at them to get out. It was a great episode.”

Reuter swiftly amended his somewhat callous statement as Halloran scribbled down the name of the show. “I mean, it was sad. So, anyway, that’s what the Pan-Tastic theft reminds me of, the guy who collected junk.”

After Reuter excused himself, Halloran said, “What are you thinking, Pengram?”

“We need to have Evidence go over the partitions,” I said. “If those really did once belong to Pan-Tastic Breads and if Alice Shacter’s memory is correct . . . but still, this was almost twenty years ago! Those could have landed in the perp’s hands by countless routes. I think we’re wiser to focus on these Service on Wheels employees and volunteers.”

Halloran grumbled and looked down at his list. “We aren’t getting anywhere with these. Last three numbers I called turned out to be little old ladies who haven’t worked for Service on Wheels in years.”

We weren’t getting anywhere with anything. I picked up the phone to call Evidence, my eyes already scanning down the numbers for the next person to contact when I was done.