“Good news, Miss Novak,” Officer Mason announced from across his cluttered desk at the police station. “Mrs. Toth says she won’t press charges since she was able to recover the pin. You’re free to go. Consider yourself lucky.”
Sadie thought Officer Mason should consider himself lucky that she didn’t boot him in the groin. Also, Mrs. Toth should consider herself fortunate that Sadie didn’t rev up her car and mow the woman down in a parking lot.
“What about my statement?” Sadie asked through clenched teeth as she got to her feet. “I told you that Kent Lasko was obviously the one who stole the brooch and that he also took an emerald pendant. He made an elaborate show of getting his sweater snagged on my coat last night at dinner. I’m sure he somehow tucked that pin into the lining of my pocket in order to frame me. What are you doing about that?”
“Mrs. Toth doesn’t know anything about a missing necklace and we haven’t been able to reach Mr. Lasko,” Officer Mason admitted. “I’ll try him again later.”
But the tired, dismissive look on his face said that he wouldn’t bother.
“You should just be thankful that your client isn’t filing charges. I’m sure that wouldn’t be good for your business.”
Sadie’s blood was boiling. She doubted the cop had even tried to reach Kent, but you could bet your ass she planned on getting hold of him. The possibilities for retaliation were endless. At the very least, she was seriously considering filling his car with all the maggots and decomp fluids recovered from her next job.
Officer Mason was bang on about one thing. Sadie knew a scandal like this could ruin Scene-2-Clean, so she was grateful Sylvia Toth had dropped the charges. Who the hell would use her services if they thought she would steal them blind? There was a good chance, however, that she could kiss all future referrals from detectives and the medical examiner’s office good-bye if she didn’t clear her name.
She took a taxi home from the police station. Clouds hung low, pressing against the city, and the weight of those clouds expressed Sadie’s mood perfectly. She felt like putting her fist through a wall. Instead, as soon as she got home she tugged Hairy onto her lap and stroked him from ears to tail.
“I was framed,” she told the rabbit.
Hairy didn’t care about her plight. The black-and-white bunny only wriggled out of her grasp and hopped away. Sadie tried to put it behind her, but she was still seeing red. She snatched her cordless phone from the side table.
“That Kent son-of-a-bitch Lasko has some explaining to do,” she said out loud.
She forcefully punched in his home telephone number, but she got no answer, not even a machine.
She thought of calling Zack, but she wasn’t up to a lecture. No, she had to handle this herself. Getting abruptly to her feet, she snatched her jacket and keys. She was planning to take her car, but when she got into her garage she noticed the Scene-2-Clean van looked odd. Tilting her head, she looked closer.
“Oh God,” she moaned, walking around the vehicle.
All four tires were flat. Not just flat but slashed, with deep gashes in the sidewalls. She straightened and looked around. The door leading from the backyard into the garage was partly open. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d used that door. It may even have been unlocked. Stupid.
As she inched between the van and her car, she noticed a message scrawled in the dirt on the van.
Stay away from Taylor Street.
The Toth house.
Her hands shook with fear and anger as she squeezed between the van and her Honda. After opening the garage door, she put the car in reverse and sped down the driveway and out of her neighborhood. Minutes later she was parked in Kent’s driveway, staring at his house.
Although it was early evening, there wasn’t a single glimmer of light behind the tightly drawn curtains. Still, she couldn’t leave without making sure.
Stomping to the front door, she rang on the bell. She could hear it sound inside the house. She considered that he could be out, maybe showing houses to clients or even just working at his office.
She called information for the number and was soon talking to the cheery receptionist at Kent’s real estate firm. She informed Sadie that Mr. Lasko had gone out of town but another of their sales specialists would be pleased to assist her with her real estate needs.
“When do you expect Mr. Lasko back?”
“He didn’t say.”
Sadie hung up her phone, put it back in her purse, and stomped her feet like a two-year-old.
“Damn. Damn. Damn,” she hissed as she walked back to her car. “What kind of man goes on a date with a woman and then slashes her tires before leaving town?”
The kind of man who also slips a stolen diamond brooch into his date’s coat, her mind replied. The kind of man who leaves threats in the dirt on a woman’s vehicle to scare her.
Sadie thought of Kent’s steamy kisses and felt betrayed and defeated.
With her hand on the door handle of her car, she did an abrupt about-face and decided to take a quick detour around the back of the house.
The blinds covering the back windows were closed, but luckily they were the cheap metal kind and were slightly bent. After slipping between some small shrubs, Sadie was able to press her face against the dining room window and get a view inside. From her vantage point she could clearly see the kitchen eating area and the living room beyond. Nobody was lurking in the corners or cowering under the kitchen table. Apparently there was a good possibility that the dirt-bag actually was out of town.
“What the hell are you doing?” The warbly old man’s voice came from the next yard.
Sadie squeaked in surprise and jumped back from the window.
“I’m trying to find Kent Lasko,” she replied, gathering her wits about her and walking toward the voice.
“Looks like you’re a Peeping Tom,” he shouted. “You can’t be looking inside people’s homes when they’re not around. That’s against the law!”
“It’s important that I reach Mr. Lasko. Would you happen to know where I could find him?”
“No, but I’m head of the neighborhood watch, so if you don’t move your arse out of his yard, I’m gonna call the cops on ya.”
“I’m a friend of Kent’s and I have an important message for him,” Sadie explained, offering the neighbor a reassuring smile. “As head of the neighborhood watch, you’re probably informed about the activities on the street,” she continued in a relaxed and soothing tone. “Did you notice him leaving today?”
“Of course I noticed,” he snapped. “The two of them were hauling suitcases to their car at four o’clock in the morning. I never sleep through the night anymore, so I catch stuff like that. We haven’t had a break-in on this street since I was made captain of the block watch. Who the hell goes on a holiday at that time of the night?”
“A lying no-good asshole, that’s who,” Sadie murmured under her breath. She cleared her throat and said louder, “Did you happen to talk to Mr. Lasko or his brother and ask where they were going?”
“No, and now I’m missing Law and Order, so move it along before I call the authorities.”
Sadie returned to her car, where she sat shivering in her rain-soaked clothes and fumbling for the ignition. She cranked the heat up as she drove away. With an exasperated breath, she realized there was nothing more she could do to find Kent Lasko. Still, she needed to make a living, so she would have to call a garage to take care of the tires on the company van.
Sadie searched her memory and came up with the name of the mechanic she’d used before. Unfortunately, he was also an acquaintance of Zack’s. Regardless, she called Information for his number and dialed.
“All four tires?” Nick asked in disbelief after she’d explained the situation.
“Yeah, all four, and I need them installed immediately. Like tonight. I’ll make it worth your while, Nick, but you can’t tell Zack, because he’ll go all cop on me.”
“He should go all cop on you if you had four tires slashed,” he grumbled. “But you’re the customer. If I happen to run into my ol’ buddy Zack, I won’t mention it.”
“It’s no big deal,” she assured him. “Really. Probably neighborhood kids. I left my garage door unlocked.”
“Huh.” His response sounded like he didn’t really care.
By the time Sadie had driven back home, Nick’s truck was already parked in her driveway. She let him into her garage and then left him alone to do his job.
She tried to busy herself with housework, but she was still jumpy about finding her tires slashed. Someone had come into her house. Even though it was only the garage, she felt invaded and vulnerable. She couldn’t wait to blow off some steam. The best way she knew to do that was to work a scene.
As soon as Nick was done, Sadie paid him a hefty fee for the tires and his after-hours time and sent him on his way. She double-checked all her windows and doors and then left the house herself, eager now to tackle the job in Tacoma.
She called Zack and joked about finding out the real reason for the aroma in Tacoma.
“Oh, you mean all this time the smell wasn’t from paper mills?” he joked back. “You need help?”
“Nah, I’m going to do the walk-through for paperwork and take the pictures.”
“And there’s something you aren’t telling me.”
Damn. Had he heard about the tires already? She’d kill Nick!
“Um, what do you mean?”
“C’mon, did you really think you could spend time at my old station and I wouldn’t hear about it?”
“The brooch.”
“Yeah, the expensive diamond brooch.”
She took a deep breath and told him about everything except the tires. She probably would’ve even told him about the tires, but by that time he was blowing such a gasket about Kent Lasko planting a stolen pin in her pocket that she was getting a headache.
“And the worst part is you brought it on yourself by agreeing to have dinner with a lunatic!” he screamed in her ear.
Sadie pulled the cell phone away from her head and shouted back. “We were in a public place the entire time and I only went so I could ask him about Trudy.”
“You’re not a cop, Sadie!” he yelled and added a few more curses.
“I gotta go,” she said and hung up.
The drive over wasn’t easy. She couldn’t find a song on the radio good enough to distract her from thoughts about her trip to the police station earlier, the slashed tires, the threatening message in dirt, and her argument with Zack. Obviously, that was a lot of pressure to put on a song.
Instead, twice she punched in Mrs. Toth’s phone number and twice she hung up before completing the call. She gave herself a mental pat on the back for not calling the woman and blowing off steam. The only thing that stopped her was realizing the truth. Mrs. Toth had acted logically. Let’s face it: The woman let a total stranger into her son and daughter-in-law’s house to clean, and the result was that valuable jewelry went missing. The conclusion Mrs. Toth drew wasn’t a stretch, and Sadie highly doubted she would believe the truth if Sadie spelled it out for her.
Sadie turned her wipers on high to combat the constant drizzle. She took the Bridgeport Way exit into Tacoma. The street she was looking for was only a few blocks from Lakewood Towne Center, but she wasn’t in a shopping kind of mood.
A turn down a side street took her to an area of older, unremarkable homes in a middle-class neighborhood with large lots and mature trees. She found the house, pulled into the long narrow drive, and pressed the remote provided to her by Mr. Yenkow. The door to the attached garage slid upward and she pulled her van inside and closed the garage door behind her. It was always nice to have a garage area as a safe zone where she could store her things and change. She also wouldn’t have to cart her supplies through the rain to get them to the house.
The pungent smell of death hung in the air even in the garage. No matter how many unattended death scenes Sadie cleaned, the stench was never easy to handle.
Once she was suited up in full gear, she entered the house. First she would take pictures of the area to be cleaned, and then she’d search the home for the insurance papers needed to make the claim. Mr. Yenkow had said his wife took care of the bills and he had no idea where she kept such records, so Sadie expected it might take a while to find the documents. The day was young, though, and she was confident that there’d be time to get down to the nitty-gritty.
Telltale flies greeted her when she entered the house. Since the body had been removed a week ago, many of the flies and maggots would have died off by now, but there were still enough of them to cause her to wave them away. At the end of the job, she would sweep up all the dead ones throughout the house and flush them down the toilet—although the idea of filling Kent Lasko’s car with them was appealing.
The scene was contained in the living room, where Mr. Yenkow said he had discovered his wife. Since the woman had passed a couple of weeks before he’d found her, there was no doubt it was an image he wouldn’t quickly forget. At least Sadie’s work would prevent this family from undergoing further trauma. When she was done, the place would be like new. Still, it was doubtful that Mr. Yenkow would choose ever to move back in. People seldom did.
Sadie had no problem locating exactly where the body had been. Small bits of tissue that had sloughed off it clung stubbornly to the carpet. Dried skin and yellowish fluid covered an expanse in the center of the living room and the surviving flies and maggots were having a drunken party in the residue.
Mrs. Yenkow had been a petite Japanese woman in her early sixties. She had a penchant for seductive lingerie, specifically fuchsia teddies. Sadie knew this because Mrs. Yenkow, or the essence thereof, stood before her now, worriedly wringing her hands.
“Hello,” Sadie said and the woman jumped.
“You—you can see me?” she stammered, her eyes growing large in her round face.
“Yes, although I’d rather not,” Sadie said, referring to the ghost’s scantily clad body. Most of the time it was a relief to see the body of a natural death as it had passed, rather than its decomposing corpse. Today she wasn’t so sure.
Sadie looked up at the ceiling instead of directly at the woman.
“I thought I was losing my mind,” Mrs. Yenkow continued, giggling nervously. “I hid when George came home, of course, because I didn’t want him to see me like this, but for some reason I haven’t been able to change my clothes….” Her voice trailed off.
“George? Oh, right. Mr. Yenkow. I met him earlier today.”
“It would break his heart to see me wearing this. He might figure out about me and Ted.”
“Ted?”
“He’s our neighbor.”
“Ahh.” Sadie nodded in understanding. “That’s why the lingerie?”
“Yes. Please pardon my appearance.”
First Trudy and now Mrs. Yenkow. Was nobody on this planet faithful anymore?
“I don’t understand it,” Mrs. Yenkow murmured. “People have been coming and going, but nobody seems to be able to see me. At least, not until you showed up.” She shook her head slowly from side to side. “By the way, who are you?”
“George hired me to clean your house.”
“Really? That’s quite the getup you have on.” She smirked and waved her manicured hand at Sadie’s blue Tyvek jumpsuit. “I usually just wear a sweat suit when I clean. You must use some pretty powerful cleansers.”
“You might say that.”
“Oh, I get it!” Mrs. Yenkow clapped her hands together excitedly. “This is my anniversary gift, right? George did that before—you know, hired Molly Maid to come in and tidy up for my birthday. So sweet of him, really.” She was wringing her hands again and began pacing.
“Mrs. Yenkow, I think we both know that’s not why he hired me,” Sadie said softly.
“Of course it is,” she protested. “The place is an absolute mess and I’ve been working such long hours at the hotel it’s been hard to find the time to get everything done. When I retire next year it’ll be different, though. Why, just look at the dust that’s collected on the furniture—and what’s that sticky, disgusting goop all over the floor?”
“That would be you, Mrs. Yenkow,” Sadie said evenly.
“What?!”
The woman had finally stopped pacing, but now she looked as though she’d been slapped.
“You had a stroke and died alone here in your house while George was out of town. It was probably shortly after Ted left you that first evening, because nobody noticed you’d passed until George returned. For some reason, your spirit has held on to this place.”
“No,” Mrs. Yenkow whispered. Then she shook her head violently and her voice rose to a shout. “You’re insane! You’re a crazy person! How can I be dead? That’s just not possible.”
“I’m afraid it is.”
“If I’m dead, then how come we’re standing here talking?” she demanded triumphantly, placing her hands on her hips and thrusting out her chest, making her look even more ridiculous in her tight lace teddy.
“When I clean death scenes, the spirit of the deceased can sometimes communicate with me. I don’t know why it happens, but it usually means they’re in denial about their passing, or sometimes they have a message that they want me to relay to those they’ve left behind.”
“Noooo!” she screamed, and the shrill sound was a siren in Sadie’s head that caused the fillings in her teeth to vibrate. Then, just as suddenly as she had appeared, Mrs. Yenkow was gone.
“She’ll be back,” Sadie grimly said to herself.
There’d been no shimmer or gradual fading to indicate that the spirit had made the transition to go beyond this world.
With her ears still ringing, Sadie began her search for the insurance documents. She looked in all the usual places, like drawers and cabinets, and finally located them in a shoe box on the top shelf of the bedroom closet. She took the paperwork out to the van.
Then she made a few more trips back and forth to bring in supplies and waste bins. She needed emulsifiers to soften the dried tissue, cleansers, and scrub brushes.
Sadie worked hard and sweat soon ran down her back and pooled under her breasts. She’d wanted to clean this job alone, to work through her day’s frustrations, but after she and Zack had talked on the phone he had insisted on showing up.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone off on you,” he said.
“I’m okay.”
“Okay, huh? Is that why you’ve been scrubbing the same square inch for ten minutes?”
“I hate that Sylvia Toth accused me of stealing.” Sadie was surprised at how calm her voice was, since her heart was thumping so hard.
“Nobody who knows you would call you a thief,” Zack said.
“The cops found it in my coat, Zack. If word gets out, Scene-2-Clean could be ruined.”
Zack’s face grew serious. His dark eyes were hard and slitted, and Sadie could see the cop he used to be written all over his face.
“Let’s start again—and this time tell me everything.”
She told him about the tires then, using the same detached, calm voice that was contrary to the way her blood was boiling beneath the surface of her skin.
“I’m going to kill him,” Zack snarled when she’d concluded her tale. “I’m going to rip his arms right out of their sockets and stuff them up his—”
“First you’d have to find him,” Sadie interrupted. “And I want first crack at killing him.”
They worked together then, ripping out the carpet and scrubbing the floor beneath.
“I can do what’s left on my own,” Sadie announced.
“Okay. I’ll carry the bins out to the van and then be on my way,” Zack said.
Once he’d left, Sadie was revisited by Mrs. Yenkow.
“I bought a card for George for our anniversary. I didn’t get to give it to him,” she said.
Sadness colored the woman’s tone, and Sadie felt a surge of emotion. She knew it all boiled down to moments like these.
“I can help you, Mrs. Yenkow,” Sadie said, suddenly eager to do just that. “You’re still here because you wanted George to have that card. Do you remember where you left it?”
Sadie found the card in the dresser, where Mrs. Yenkow had said it would be, and at her insistence Sadie read it to the woman out loud.
“You’ll always be my knight in shining armor,” she read. The words were printed in glittery silver letters over a comical Adonis riding an equally funny stallion. Inside Mrs. Yenkow had signed it, “Forever, your Pooky-Bear.”
“I really loved him.” Mrs. Yenkow sniffed.
“And yet you were sleeping with the neighbor,” Sadie couldn’t resist adding. She immediately regretted her tone when she saw the injured look on the woman’s face. “Sorry. That’s really none of my business.”
“Our sex life may have been lacking, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t love each other deeply,” Mrs. Yenkow said haughtily.
Although it was difficult to take a sixty-year-old woman in a fuchsia teddy seriously, Sadie got her point.
“Right. Again, I’m sorry.”
“We were married for over forty years. That’s not an easy thing to accomplish. Sure we had some rough times, but I assure you that most of it was perfectly fine.”
God save me from forty years of “fine,” Sadie thought.
“I’ll make sure that George gets the card, Mrs. Yenkow. Is there anything else? I’m here to help you.”
“It must be hard for you to be a sort of middleman,” Mrs. Yenkow said.
“I sure fought it in the beginning,” Sadie admitted. “I thought I’d been cursed.” She chuckled. “But you know what? It’s given me a purpose on this planet that I never had before.”
“Don’t tell me you actually enjoy this?” Mrs. Yenkow asked incredulously.
“When I can help, yeah, I love it.” Sadie grinned. “Is there a message you want me to give to George with the card?”
“Can you just make sure that he knows that I loved him very much?”
“I’ll tell him,” Sadie said, her tone softening.
“Good.” Mrs. Yenkow sighed. “I feel kind of funny.”
Sadie watched as Mrs. Yenkow’s edges faded and a soft flicker began at her fingertips and toes and worked its way inward.
“You’re ready,” Sadie said breathlessly. Sometimes the wonder of it all still amazed her. “Good-bye, Mrs. Yenkow.”
The woman faded, her essence shimmering until, finally, she was gone.
Sadie broke into a laugh and fisted the air.
“Yes!” she cried. “I’ve still got it!”
She stripped off her gear in the garage and dumped it into one of the remaining bins before climbing into her van. She turned up the radio on the drive home and loudly sang along. She realized that this was what had been missing lately. The adrenaline rush of pure joy she got from helping someone go over.
At home, she did a triple rinse and repeat to wash away the stench of decay. Then she brushed her teeth and gargled to remove the taste of it from her mouth. It never totally worked. At least not as well as a few shots of sambuca.
With the tall dark bottle and a shot glass in hand, Sadie made her way to the couch and used the remote to flip on the TV. She was channel-surfing and on her second shot of the licorice-flavored liqueur when Dawn called, wanting to chat.
“You’ll never believe the strange day I’ve had,” she said.
“Did it involve the police or conversing with a ghost wearing nothing but a lace teddy?”
Pause.
“Never mind,” Sadie said. “I’ve had a weird day myself but you go first.”
“Well, our office received some letters that were to go to a company on the floor above us, so on my break I walked them up. I like to take the stairs as often as possible because it’s good cardio.”
“Hmmm.” Sadie downed her second shot and poured herself a third.
“Anyway, to make a long story short, I got a new job.”
“What?”
“Dr. John Irwin, who runs the office upstairs, offered me a job. Turns out his office manager quit on him this morning because of a family emergency, and he was pulling his hair out when I showed up.”
“So you’re going to walk out on your current job, just like that?”
“Of course not. I’d never get a good reference that way, right?”
“I’m not a good one to ask. When employees quit Scene-2-Clean it’s usually sudden and they run away screaming or crying.”
“Riiiight. Well, in the real world we give two weeks notice,” Dawn said. “Anyway, he’s hiring a temp from an agency until I can finish off my two weeks, and I’m going to go up at the end of each day to train for an hour or two. And get this—he’s going to pay me almost double what I’m making now! That’s not even the best part. He seems like a really nice guy. Not like the ass I’m working for now. Dr. Irwin is kind and considerate. I’m going to love working for him. Don’t you see? It’s just like Madame Maeva predicted.”
“Hmm,” Sadie said, flipping channels once again, trying to find a show that wasn’t about cops or crime scenes.
“You know, if Madame Maeva can help me find a new job, I bet she could find you a man.”
Before Sadie could respond to that comment, Dawn put her on hold to take an incoming call from Noel and then left her in limbo so long that Sadie realized she’d been forgotten and hung up.
Half an hour later it occurred to her that she had the television tuned to a bad cooking show and still had no idea what they were making. Thanks to Dawn, her brain had been tuned instead to Madame Maeva of the Psychic Café. The more she thought about the woman and her so-called knack, the more an interesting idea percolated in her mind.
With another shot of sambuca for courage, Sadie found Madam Maeva’s Psychic Café listing in the phone book and dialed quickly before she could change her mind. Since it was just after eleven, she was mentally preparing the message she’d leave on the company’s machine.
“Hello?”
Unfortunately, Madame Maeva herself answered the phone. Sadie was tempted just to hang up but Sambuca was a powerful persuader.
“Hello?” Madame Maeva said again.
“This is Sadie Novak.”
“Yes, I know.”
“It doesn’t take a psychic to figure that out. Lots of people recognize my voice,” Sadie said, immediately going on the defensive.
“Actually, I have caller ID.”
“Oh.”
“But you weren’t calling to test my abilities over the phone.”
“No, I’m calling to set up an appointment. You never finished my reading.”
“I can’t give you a reading—at least not without vomiting all over you.”
“But it was a two-for-one deal,” Sadie protested. “It’s false advertising to offer two for one and then back out on the second one.”
“Tell your sister that she can bring someone else. Anyone else.”
“I’ll be honest—I’m trying to locate someone and I don’t know where else to turn.”
“I don’t do missing persons.”
“I wouldn’t ask unless it was important.” Sadie stopped short of begging. Maeva was quiet, but Sadie could sense her wavering. “Look, this guy is at the very least a thief who tried to frame me. At worst he may have murdered two people.”
“Fine.” She sighed and relented. “Come in tomorrow morning when I open at nine, but if I throw up, you pay double my regular rate.”
“Deal,” Sadie said and added silently, with the devil herself.