Sally Berneathy - Death by Chocolate 01 - Death by Chocolate (13 page)

“When was the last time you saw him?”

Stinson heaved himself onto the third floor landing and turned toward Fred. His red face and the way he was wheezing combined with his melodramatically intent expression made him look like he was intently considering having a stroke. “Last Saturday night. He come to my door a little before eight o’clock, right in the middle of the football game. It was kinda strange to see him there. He’d kept to hisself ever since he moved in. Anyway, he said his sink was stopped up. I told him I’d take a look at it and tried to close the door, but he held it open. He was real excited, talking fast and couldn’t seem to stand still, like he had ants in his pants. Said he was leaving to meet somebody and he’d sure appreciate it if I could have the problem took care of by the time he got back in two hours. I guess he could tell I wasn’t real happy about having to miss the rest of that ball game, so he smiled and said this was the big meeting he’d come to town for and that when he got back, he’d have that bonus he promised me.”

“But he didn
‘t come back?”

Stinson turned his key in the door of apartment C, and I thought for a minute he wasn’t going to answer
Fred’s question. Then he straightened and seemed to come to a decision. “About an hour after he left, I got a phone call. The game was still on, so I wasn’t listening real close at first and whoever it was on the other end was mumbling like he was drunk. I just caught a few words, like
bitch
and
no money
and
dying
. I asked,
Who is this?
and he kinda moaned and said,
Mackey. Help. Call cops.
Something like that. He was gasping all the time.”

“Did you call the police?” Fred asked.

Stinson shrugged. “Not right away. I thought maybe it was some of my friends being funny, trying to get me in trouble, making me call the cops when nothing was wrong. But then this Mackey guy didn’t come home and I started to get worried. Told me when he rented the place that he was what you call a creature of habit, and he was, till Saturday night. I knew something was bad wrong when he didn’t come back, especially after that phone call. So Sunday morning I called the cops.”

“
So what do you think happened to Mackey?” Fred asked.

I could almost hear those rusty wheels turning in Stinson’s sweaty head. “
I don’t know. If he’s dead, do I still get the money?”

“Maybe, if you help us find the body,” I said. Well, it wasn’t any more outrageous than Fred’s assertion that an inheritance expired fast.

Stinson opened the apartment door and stepped inside. We followed him.

It didn’t look like anybody lived there. The room had nothing personal anywhere. The cheap, mismatched furniture smelled like mildew and stale cigarette smo
ke. No T-shirts had been tossed onto the sofa, no shoes and socks dribbled around the green carpet…no sign of male habitation…discounting, of course, obsessive/compulsive males like Fred who wouldn’t live in this sort of place.

“Can you give us a description of Mackey?” Fred asked.

“Tall, but not as tall as you are. Big chest, like he worked out in one of them gyms all the time. Good shape for an old guy. Gray hair cut short. Wore them little gold wire glasses. Had a big, ugly mole right here.” He touched his left cheek with a pudgy finger. “Every time I saw him, he had on a suit and tie. Looked like a banker except for that mole.”

Bankers couldn’t have moles?

“And you haven’t heard from him or seen him since? No more mysterious phone calls?”

“Nope. All his stuff’s still here. His razor, his clothes. Even if you figure he’s trying to get out of paying me that bonus, it don’t seem right, leaving everything he owns. He’s got some expensive suits in there.”

“What about family?” Fred continued. “Did he list anybody on his rental application?”

“He paid cash. I didn’t get a rental app on him.”

“I see. What kind of car was he driving?”

“A blue Oldsmobile. Big and old. The paint was faded, and it made a lot of noise. That’s how I could always tell when he was coming or going.”

“Do you have a license number of this vehicle?”

“Yeah, sure, downstairs.”

“Would you mind getting it while we look around a little more for anything that would give us a clue as to his whereabouts?” Fred really sounded official. That suit seemed to have transformed him. Interesting.

“Sure.”

Stinson started to leave, but Fred stopped him with another question. “Did you get his sink fixed?”

“Yeah. Somebody dropped a rag down the drain. People don’t take care of things.”

He left, and I turned to Fred. “You’re good at this.”

He put on his glasses then pulled two pairs of rubber gloves from his pocket and handed one to me. “Put these on.”

“Oh, come on! It’s not that filthy in here!”

“Fingerprints. Put them on.”

Fred just continued to amaze me. Maybe he was a burglar in another life.

He headed toward the kitchen, and I followed. Like the living room and Mother Hubbard’s cupboard, it was pretty bare. No dishes, not even a water glass, no beer in the refrigerator, no peanut butter in the pantry, no dishtowels.

“I wonder what kind of a rag that was that got stuck in the drain,” I said.

“Just what I was thinking.” Fred peered under the sink.

“Either this Mackey guy is as obsessively tidy as you are, or he eats all his meals and drinks all his water at restaurants.”

“Let’s check the bedroom.”

At least that room showed signs of habitation. The bed was unmade, the rumpled sheets thrown back, and white T-shirts, boxer shorts and navy blue socks littered the bed and the floor.

Fred examined a scrap of paper on the nightstand. “Paula’s name and number,
Saturday’s date and eight o’clock p.m. Must be what the police found. Interesting they left it here. Apparently they don’t consider this a crime yet.”

I moved over beside him to look, then picked up a matchbook, the only other thing on the nightstand except the lamp. “Last Chance Watering Hole,
Dallas, Texas. Guess that explains why the cops asked Paula if she was from Dallas.”

“Interesting, especially since there aren’t any ashtrays around.”

“No matches used, either. Somebody’s been smoking in here, but I suppose it could have been a previous tenant. I doubt if the place got aired in between.”

“Maybe.” He laid down the paper and began picking up the clothing, studying each piece. I wasn’t sure what we were looking for, but I followed his lead, like he’d told me to.

All were a large size, all well worn, but the brands were different. “This is strange,” I said.

“What?”

“Well, a woman may own several brands of underwear. We buy for style or color or sale price or because we’re depressed. But you men, when your underwear has so many holes in it, you can’t tell which are the ones your arms and legs go through, you buy a dozen of the same brand, same size, all at once.”

“I never wear clothes with holes in them. But you are right about the rest.”

“Unless he’s so broke, he buys from garage sales and thrift stores.”

“That’s a possibility.” He strode purposefully
—yeah, he did; that suit was like Jim Carey’s mask—over to the closet.

Two suits, half a dozen white shirts, and a couple of conservative, out of style ties pretty much filled the tiny space. A suitcase that looked like it had been dragged behind a car all the way from
Dallas to Kansas City sat on the floor.

Fred took out one suit and held it up to examine it. “If Stinson thinks these are expensive, I’d hate to see what he considers
cheap
suits.” He put the garment back and flipped through the closet. “Different labels. Same thing with the shirts and ties.”

“Well, we knew he wasn’t rich or he wouldn’t be living here, so maybe he did shop at thrift stores.”

“But he was planning to come into some money.”

“And not from an inheritance,” I sniped.

Fred shrugged. “It got us in here.”

I couldn’t argue with success. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking about the source of this expected money?”

“For once, I think you and I are on the same track. Doesn’t look too good for Paula since she’s obviously got something to hide, something she could be blackmailed for.”

“But on the plus side, she doesn’t have any money to pay a blackmailer.” The ramifications of that hit me like a brick upside the head. I could tell by Fred’s expression he’d already thought of the fact that Paula would have had to find another way to deal with a blackmailer. “Maybe that’s not a point on the plus side after all. But it doesn’t matter! W
e know she’d never hurt anybody.”

“Let’s check the bathroom.” He headed out the door.

“Is that a male euphemism for saying you need to go potty?” I called after him.

He turned back. “The bathroom is where you find out the most about a person.”

I came up beside him and took his arm. “Fred, if this was anybody but you, I’d think you were suggesting something kinky.”

He ignored me. He does that a lot.

We went down the hall and found the small bathroom even messier than the bedroom. Stinson was right about one thing. Mackey had planned to come back. His soap, toothpaste, toothbrush, razor, comb…all his personal items were still in the bathroom.

Using just the tips of his gloved fingers, Fred picked up and examined a black comb with short gray hairs in it. More hairs littered the sink, and there were several pieces of toilet paper with dried blood on them as if he’d cut himself shaving. Lester Mackey was not a tidy person. Even so, I didn’t think I liked him.

I pushed the shower curtain aside. “No hairs in the bathtub. Either Mackey’s tidier in the shower than everywhere else, or he wears a hairpiece.”

Fred peered over my shoulder. “He wore a hair piece.”

“That’s my guess, too. Slobs in the bedroom are slobs in the shower.”

“I meant because the hairs in the comb aren’t natural. They’re from a hair piece.”

“Oh.”

Fred moved away and opened the medicine cabinet. “This is interesting.”

I stepped over to look, half expecting to see a bottle of aspirin-sized pills that were scored in half.

Fred lifted out a paper cup that held a tangle of longer, darker hairs with golden roots.

“Damn.”

I expected Fred to say something about my language, but he didn’t. “My sentiments exactly.”

“That looks like it was pulled out of a brush, like maybe—” I hesitated, not wanting to use Paula’s name and make this real— “like maybe somebody cleaned her brush and tossed the hairs in the trash and then some slimeball came along, digging through somebody’s private trash and found these hairs and saved them. What kind of a sicko would do that?”

“A sicko collecting evidence that somebody really has blond hair, not brown, and she really is the person he’s looking for and he has proof of her true identity in order to blackmail her.”

“Damn,” I said again. My vocabulary’s really not limited. I just couldn’t come up with any other word that fit the occasion quite so well. “Maybe Mackey had a girl friend who dyed her hair.”

Fred didn’t bother to dignify that absurdity with a response.

“I got that license number!” Stinson called from downstairs.

“He probably couldn’t make it up here twice in the same day,” I speculated. “Just as well. I’m not about to give him mouth-to-mouth if he has a heart attack.”

Fred stuck the paper cup of hairs back in the medicine cabinet and closed the door. “Let’s go.”

“You go on,” I said. “I need to use the facilities.”

He looked at me suspiciously. “You want to use
these
facilities?”

“When you gotta go, you gotta go.”

“You can’t wait until you get home?”

“No, I can’t. It’s a female thing.” That always sends men running.

It worked with Fred.

I closed the door behind him, opened the medicine chest, took out the paper cup, dumped the hairs into the filthy toilet and flushed it. Yes, I admit it. I destroyed evidence. Possible evidence. We didn’t even know a crime had been committed. But I was certain of one thing, if there had been, Paula didn’t do it.

And if she did, she had a damn good reason.

Chapter Nine

We went downstairs. Stinson offered Fred a dirty slip of paper with Mackey’s license plate number written on it. Fred, having removed his gloves, took it tentatively between the tips of his thumb and index finger, and we left.

Outside in
the fresh air, I drew in a deep breath and tried to get all the smelly ugliness of that place out of my lungs. Fred waved the paper in the air a few times before folding it and putting it in his shirt pocket.

I felt like I needed to take a shower before getting back into the immaculate, air-conditioned cleanness of Fred’s car. But I wasn’t about to be left behind at that place, so I scooted in anyway.