| |
––––––––
“WE ARE HERE to celebrate the life of Geoffrey T. Boatwright the Second.” Father Kade projected his voice to ensure that no one present at the graveside service would miss a word. Not that he had to project far. Only seven individuals had shown up, including me, and I’d been paid to do so.
You guessed it, this was one of my Death Diva gigs. I’d made all the arrangements, which hadn’t been too involved since there’d been no church service in this case.
“Geoffrey was loving and loyal,” Father Kade intoned, as Agnes Boatwright began to sniffle, “and will always be remembered for his happy-go-lucky nature.”
It was Wednesday afternoon and unseasonably mild for January, as it had been for the past couple of weeks. Today my usual funeral uniform—the gray suit, the faux pearls—was completely hidden under a sedate camel-colored coat. I could have paired a sexy leather corset with my ladylike black pumps, and no one would have been the wiser.
No, I do not own a sexy leather corset, and thank you very much for reminding me that I have no one to buy one for. Or to buy one for me. Oh, you know what I mean.
Agnes’s sniffles turned to loud weeping. She was a small woman of around sixty. Her grown daughter stood next to her, patting her back, murmuring words of consolation, and offering the occasional sunflower seed to the crow sitting on Agnes’s shoulder. The inky black bird wore a little red harness attached to a leash.
Well, you don’t want your crow taking off in the middle of a funeral, do you? I mean, be sensible.
Father Kade wore a black overcoat, his clerical collar visible in the vee of his neatly tucked gray scarf. He continued to sing the praises of Geoffrey T. Boatwright II. “His loved ones tell me he made friends easily. A better listener never lived.”
The crow occupied itself by emitting the occasional caw and trying to snatch its grieving owner’s eyeglasses off her face. Suddenly it screeched, “Geoffrey, no!”
I jumped. So did Father Kade, who shot me a reproachful look for not warning him about the bird. Well, how could I have warned him if I didn’t know myself that Agnes would be bringing it? And yes, apparently crows can learn to mimic human speech. Who knew?
“Geoffrey loved physical activity,” he continued. “His favorite pastimes were swimming in the pool and going for long walks. And I’m told he never met a tennis ball he didn’t like.” This prompted a warm chuckle of remembrance from the deceased’s nearest and dearest.
“Geoffrey, no!” the crow cried again, as Agnes tried to hush it. The shells of sunflower seeds littered her hair and coat.
“Geoffrey was obedient,” Father Kade said. “He never chewed furniture or did his business in the house.”
On cue the crow screamed, “Geoffrey, no! Bad dog!” It flew off Agnes’s shoulder and landed on the small, ornate casket next to the open grave, which was about three feet long. The tombstone was already in place. The deceased’s portrait had been etched onto it, along with his name, the years of birth and death, and the words Loving Husband of Agnes.
Agnes tugged on the leash, to no avail. “Geoffrey, stop that!” she said. “Come back here.”
Yes, the bird had the same name as the dead dog. Well, not exactly the same. The crow was Geoffrey T. Boatwright III. You see, it’s the reincarnation of the deceased pug, who was Geoffrey T. Boatwright II, who in turn was the reincarnation of Geoffrey T. Boatwright, Agnes’s beloved husband. The original Geoffrey, the human one, had died fifteen years ago. Does that clarify things?
Yeah, I know, but a girl has to make a living. So does a boy. Tending bar at Murray’s provided the padre with a modest living, but just that. He supplemented his income by helping me out with the occasional Death Diva gig.
Oh, didn’t I mention? When Martin is impersonating a priest, he calls himself Father Kade. He thinks he’s being fiendishly clever since his full name is Martin Kade McAuliffe.
I almost had a real priest willing to do the service, but when he found out reincarnation was involved, that was the end of that. And I’m telling you, when Martin’s wearing that collar and doing his priest shtick, you’d never know he wasn’t the real deal. Agnes probably suspected, but she was so emotionally invested in a Catholic sendoff for Geoffrey II that she refrained from asking too many awkward questions.
Martin paused in his eulogy while Agnes and her daughter struggled to corral Geoffrey III, who was having none of it. He hopped into the neatly dug hole, which caused Agnes to sob and scream, “Geoffrey, no! It’s not your time!” The other mourners got into the act, prompting the bird to try to fly off, still tethered to Agnes by its leash.
At this rate it would be dinnertime before I got home. My phone vibrated in my pocket. Using the escalating mayhem for cover, I discreetly checked the screen. It was Jim Manning. I’d handed over the flash drive to him just yesterday. Normally I wouldn’t answer the phone in the middle of a funeral, but no one was likely to notice at the moment, and I was curious about Jim’s reactions to the videos.
I moved a few yards away. The Best Friend Pet Cemetery was devoid of visitors except for our little group. I paused next to a row of three doggie headstones I was intimately familiar with, having arranged myself for their carving and placement, and having spent many years delivering flowers to these little graves on behalf of Irene McAuliffe. I’d started out pet-sitting for her when I was a teen, an after-school gig that gradually, through referrals, morphed into my Death Diva business.
Irene had been a movie buff. The markers I was looking at bore the names of her previous toy poodles: Annie Hall, Dr. Strangelove, and Jaws.
I answered the phone, keeping my voice low and one eye on the action at Geoffrey II’s gravesite. Geoffrey III was cawing up a storm, pecking and biting anyone who attempted to grab him.
“Can you talk?” Jim asked.
“Um... only for a minute. What’s up? Did you watch any of the videos?”
“I watched all of them,” he said. “Once I started, I couldn’t stop. I was up all night. I have to tell you, I’m a little disturbed. What’s up with that Barbie doll?”
“Oh, that,” I said. “Yeah, it bothered me too at first.”
“It’s sick,” he said. “That someone would leave that thing for her to find.”
“There was never anything else as far as I know,” I said. “I mean, no other incidents like that. It was a one-shot deal.”
“Is that supposed to be comforting?” he asked. “Someone tried to freak her out. Maybe threaten her.”
“I know it looks that way, but the thinking is that it was just a kid playing a prank.”
“Whose thinking?” he said. “Who did you talk to about this?”
“A couple of police detectives I know. They actually looked into it a little on their own time, asked around to see if anyone had it in for Allison, that kind of thing.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about this yesterday?” he asked.
I continued to monitor the activity at the gravesite. It appeared that Martin had finally had enough. I watched him wade into the fray, and hoped Geoffrey III didn’t decide to go for his eyes.
“Jim, I know it’s upsetting,” I said, “that headless doll, but what does it matter at this point? It had nothing to do with what happened to Allison.”
After a moment he asked, “How can you be sure?”
“The detectives didn’t find anything useful,” I said. “Not that they spent that long on it, but it was clear—”
“What do you mean? How long did they work on it?”
“A couple of days,” I said. “Um, Allison’s mom asked me to call them off. It was causing her and her husband more grief, and really, she was right. Jim, listen. The cops who were at the scene, the medical examiner, all the experts, they looked at the physical evidence and decided Allison’s death was an accident.”
Somehow Martin managed to seize Geoffrey III. He took the leash from Agnes and prepared to resume the eulogy with a pet crow perched on his right arm. He shot me a pointed look. Would you care to join us?
“Okay, I get it,” Jim said, “but just tell me, could there be any more videos besides the ones on this flash drive? I’m asking because Allie maxed out the space on this drive, and the last video on it was made nine days before she died. She’d been making at least one a week since June, so I’m thinking we might be missing one or two.”
“There are no more that I know of. Listen, I have to go.”
“Do you think her husband would let you look around?” Jim asked. “You know, for a second flash drive. I mean, I heard what Allie had to say about him, I know the guy’s not likely to be cooperative, but maybe it’s worth a try.”
What did he think, that if more videos came to light, all his questions would be answered? That he’d see Allison laughingly relate her discovery that a neighbor’s mischievous kid had left the doll in her mailbox? Or perhaps he envisioned her horror at learning that a particular individual wanted her dead.
There was a desperate edge to his request. I understood his concern. I’d felt the same way until four days earlier when Joleen’s visit knocked some sense into me.
Geoffrey III scooted up Martin’s arm to his shoulder, where he promptly pooped, then screamed, “Geoffrey, no! Not on the rug!”
“If she left another flash drive, I’ll find it,” I promised Jim. “I’ll figure out a way.”
*
“WHAT AM I supposed to do now?” I asked.
“That depends,” Martin said. “Do you think there’s another flash drive floating around?”
“How should I know?”
We were in his 1966 Mustang convertible. Candy-apple red, natch. No, the top wasn’t down—it was January, remember? But that didn’t diminish the car’s appeal. It might not be as sexy as the big Harley the padre customarily rode, but it was still one hot ride. We were driving through Crystal Harbor’s residential back streets, having left the cemetery a few minutes earlier. I’d been telling Martin about my conversation with Jim.
I plucked a tissue out of my purse and started scrubbing at the white blob Geoffrey III had deposited on the shoulder of Martin’s coat. “Jim does have a point,” I said. “There’s a nine-day gap after the last video, and she was making them more frequently than that. And since there was no more room on the flash drive she was using...” I shrugged. “Yeah, there very well could be another one. But if so, it would be well hidden, like the first one.”
“You’ll find it. I have faith in you.”
“You’ll excuse me if that doesn’t make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.” I wasn’t having much success cleaning Martin’s coat—unless making a small spot into a big spot and grinding it into black wool counted as success. I wagged the dirty tissue. “Where can I put this? Do you have a trash bag?”
He snatched it from my fingers, lowered the window, and tossed it outside. Which, I must point out, is something I never, ever do. Not because I’m such a responsible citizen, but because I’m convinced that the instant the thing left my fingers, I’d be surrounded by a phalanx of cop cars, complete with screaming sirens and blaring bullhorns. Hands where I can see them!
Martin said, “Just get in there and look for it.”
“What, just knock on the door of Allison’s house and ask Nick if he minds me snooping through his stuff on the off chance I might stumble across his late wife’s secret video diary? Dang, why didn’t I think of that?”
“It isn’t his house, though, is it?” Martin asked. “Doesn’t it belong to Allison’s folks?”
“Yeah, but they’re giving him a decent amount of time to move out. That’s how her mother put it.”
“Good luck with that,” he said. “They really think the guy’s going to give up a cushy crib like this without a fight?”
Like this? I glanced out the window and saw we were passing Allison’s house. I’d been so absorbed in our conversation I hadn’t noticed where Martin was taking us. He made a couple of turns and parked on a quiet side street behind the neighborhood. The houses were spaced far apart, the backyards abutting a patch of woods.
Martin said, “It looked like Nick was home.”
How could he tell that from one quick drive-by? There’d been no car in the driveway, no one walking past a window. This questionable skill came under the general heading of Things I Would Rather Not Know About Martin. I was at peace with my ignorance. Kind of. I suspected that if I ever got the full story about this man’s mysterious and possibly felonious past—and present?—I’d run in the opposite direction as fast as my legs could carry me.
The padre pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and handed it to me. “You’re going to call him and get him out of the house.”
“Oh, I am, am I? Just like that. Hey.” I looked more closely at the phone. It was smaller than the one Martin usually carried, cheaper looking. “Is this new? What happened to the last one?”
“Oh, I still have it.” He patted a different pocket. “Trust me, you don’t want to make this call from your personal phone, and I don’t want it traced back to me either.”
It took my wee brain a couple of seconds to figure it out. Then I gaped at him, bug-eyed. “This is a burner phone!” I dropped the thing as if it might indeed burst into flames. It was one of those prepaid, no-contract phones that criminals bought with cash, used for some nefarious purpose, then discarded, along with the phone number. Not trackable, no incriminating trail.
“Careful.” He reached over and picked it up from the floor. “This thing won’t take much abuse.”
He tried to hand it back to me. I glued myself to the passenger door, palms raised. “Don’t give that to me. I don’t want it. You shouldn’t even have it.”
“You’ve been watching too much Law & Order,” he said. “People buy these for a lot of reasons, most of them perfectly legit.”
“Why did you buy it?” The question was out of my mouth before I could stop it. Burner phones definitely qualified as one more Thing I Would Rather Not Know About Martin. Fortunately, his selective deafness prevented him from answering.
“The goal is to get Nick out of the house,” he said. “An hour should do it, with both of us in there searching. Forty-five minutes minimum. Put on your thinking cap.”
“Um...” My thinking cap was on the fritz. What would motivate Nick to run out of the house? I was coming up empty.
“Does he have family that you know of?” Martin asked.
“No one who was at the funeral. At least I didn’t get introduced to anyone. I hope you’re not thinking I’d call pretending to be from a hospital or something, like your mama’s been in an accident.”
“An oldie but a goodie,” he said. “There’s always Skye. It doesn’t have to be an accident. Maybe his baby mama has a bad case of food poisoning. He’d go running to hold her hand in the ER.”
“Forget it, Padre, that’s just too mean. I won’t do it.”
He spread his hands. “Hey, I’m just brainstorming here. You’re the one who wants to find out if someone offed Allison.”
“Correction,” I said. “I know no one offed Allison. I’m just trying to put Jim’s mind at rest. I owe him that much. I’m the one who gave him the videos and got him thinking along those lines.”
“Back to Nick. Let’s look at it from his perspective. What does he want more than anything?”
That was easy. “Allison’s money. But I don’t see how we could use that to— Oh. Hmm.”
Martin was staring at me. “‘Oh hmm’ what? What’s going on in that devious little mind of yours?”
“My mind isn’t devious.”
“Yes it is, whether you know it or not.” He wore a silky smile. “And I find it sexy as hell.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, fully aware that the blush warming my face contradicted my blasé tone. “Okay, so here’s what I’m thinking. Sten Jakobsen’s office is a good twenty minutes from here.”
“Closer to thirty with rush-hour traffic.”
He was right. It was a little after four. The roads were starting to get congested. I said, “Nick gets a call from Sten’s paralegal saying, I don’t know, we found a loophole in the prenup or something. A mistake in your favor. You stand to inherit oodles of money after all.”
“But you have to get here right this instant or the coach will turn back into a pumpkin.”
“Right,” I said. “Think it’ll work?”
“Depends how convincing you are.” Martin shoved the burner phone in my face. “He’ll recognize your voice, so find a way to disguise it.”
I hauled my own phone out of my bag to retrieve Nick’s number from my contacts, then took a deep breath, tapped the number into the burner phone, and waited for the young widower to pick up.
“Hello?” Nick said, with the suspicious tone of one who doesn’t recognize the number on his screen.
I roughened up my voice and went all nasal. “Mr. Birch?”
“Yeah?”
“This is Sharon from Sten Jakobsen’s office. I’m his paralegal.” I let out a couple of coughs. “’Scuse me, I have a bad cold.”
Martin gave me a thumbs-up for effective voice disguising.
Nick asked, “What happened to Jeanie?”
“Who?”
“Jeanie,” he said. “Mr. Jakobsen’s paralegal.”
“Oh. She quit. I’m new.” Before he had a chance to question the abrupt change in staff, I said, “Mr. Jakobsen would like to see you at his office.”
“Forget it,” he said. “Anything that old shyster has to tell me, he can say to my new lawyer. You guys have his name and number. Don’t call me again.”
Before he could hang up, I said, “Wait! Wait! Mr. Birch, this is about the prenuptial agreement you and your late wife signed.”
“You mean the prenup I was tricked into signing? That prenup? Like I said, he can talk to—”
“Mr. Jakobsen made a, um, technical error,” I blurted. “The prenup is invalid. It’s like it never existed.”
I waited while he digested that. “Really? Then does that mean I get my share?”
“It’s my understanding,” I said, “that in the absence of the prenuptial agreement, you would be eligible to inherit one third of your late wife’s estate. We need your signature, though, on the paperwork.”
Nick almost blew out my eardrums with, “Yes! I knew it would work out. Tell him I’ll be in sometime this week.”
“I’m afraid Mr. Jakobsen won’t be in the office for the rest of the week, or even for the next...”
I cast about for an appropriate time frame. Martin held up six fingers.
“For the next six days,” I said, and watched the padre smack his forehead. “Weeks! He’s going away for six weeks, to... to Mongolia for a, um, an international legal symposium. He’s leaving for his trip in a half hour, and he has to be present to witness your signature, so you have to come in right now.”
“I don’t know... I just nuked a chicken pot pie. The paperwork will still be there when he gets back.”
“Um, no, it won’t,” I said, thinking fast. “The deadline for filing the papers is five o’clock today—that’s forty-seven minutes from now—otherwise the prenup stands and can never be undone. You need to get here pronto, Mr. Birch.”
Radio silence as I imagined what was going on inside his handsome head. Hmm... four million bucks or a chicken pot pie? Yeah, I could see how he might be conflicted.
“All right, all right,” he said, “I’m leaving now. Tell him to wait for me.” The line went dead.
I tossed the burner phone at Martin and slumped back against my seat, feeling like I’d just run a 10K. Not that I’ve ever run a 10K, but I can, you know, imagine it feels something like that.
“You’re a natural.” Martin patted my thigh, his hand lingering just long enough to accelerate my pulse and supply a reviving boost of energy. He threw open his door and jumped out of the car. “Tick-tock, Jane, we have a home to burgle.”
“Don’t say that.” I got out of the car, arranging my purse strap crossways, bandolier-style. “It’s not like that, Padre. We’re not burglars.” Well, I wasn’t. The jury was still out on Martin. “What we’re doing is... well, all I know is it’s not burglary.”
He opened the car’s trunk. “Sorry to burst your bubble, but once we get in, you’re talking second-degree burglary.”
“What if we leave empty-handed?”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said cheerfully. “Our intent matters, and we intend to take something that doesn’t belong to us. You could get up to fifteen years in the slammer. Maybe more if they tack on criminal impersonation. Glad you asked?”
Well, they say you should try everything once, right? No, I don’t know who says it—they, all right? The same they who tell me to exercise for thirty minutes every day and replace my mascara every three months. Both of which are as likely to happen as my trying everything once.
He closed the trunk and tossed something small at me. I fumbled the catch and had to bend to pick up the item, which turned out to be two items: a pair of latex gloves. I watched him pull on a pair.
This was getting too real. Up to that point, the only thought I’d given to fingerprints had been how to keep them off Irene’s—now my—obscenely expensive glass-topped coffee table with a burl-wood cube base.
I started to whine about the gloves, but Martin had already taken off through the winter-bare woods. I struggled to catch up, picking my way cautiously in my impractical pumps. I stuck close to him as he located Allison’s sprawling backyard and paused behind the cover of a large fir tree. Within moments I heard an unmistakable metallic rumbling. Peering through the branches, I spotted Nick hurrying from the back door of the house to the old carriage house, which apparently had been updated with an automatic garage door opener. Within moments a white Audi emerged and raced down the long drive to the street.
Martin peered at our surroundings for long moments, listening intently, as alert as a jaguar, before grabbing my hand and sprinting with me across the tree-studded yard to the back porch. We passed the covered hot tub, which should have been an inviting sight on a cold winter day, but all I could think, considering its notorious history, was Eww...
Opening his coat, he reached into a pocket of his black pants, part of his priest getup, and produced a credit card. Only, it wasn’t a credit card. I knew this because I’d seen it before. It was solid black and a little thicker than an actual credit card, and when he slid the back off as he was doing now, one could see the five adorable little lock picks nestled inside.
“Possession of burglar’s tools.” He grinned. “Class A misdemeanor.”
“Shut up.”
“Well, aren’t we grumpy,” he said as he went to work on the lock. “I’m doing this for you, remember, risking serious jail time so you can—what’s your story again?—oh yeah, so you can reassure this guy Jim, a virtual stranger, that there was nothing suspicious about the death of his old girlfriend, a woman he hadn’t laid eyes on in, what, nearly a decade. Do I have that right? And we’re in.”
It took me a moment to realize that last comment had to do with the lock. “That was fast.”
“There’s probably an alarm. Stay here. And get those gloves on.” Martin eased the door open. I expected a warning tone indicating an armed house alarm, but heard only silence. He stepped into the mudroom and glanced at the alarm pad near the door before beckoning me to join him. “He didn’t set it.”
I knew from experience that if Nick had set the alarm, it wouldn’t have caused much of a delay in our breaking and entering. I myself had finally stopped installing newer, better, wowee kazowee alarm systems in my house. If the padre wanted to get in, he got in. This was both disturbing and strangely exciting. Disturbing because if he decided to slip into my home in the middle of the night, I had no way to stop him. Exciting because if he decided to slip into my home in the middle of the night, I had no way to stop him.
The padre strode swiftly into the kitchen, checking the time on his phone—one of his phones. I still couldn’t believe he’d manipulated me into using a burner phone. Correction: using a burner phone to commit criminal impersonation so we could burgle the place. And I’d been worried about littering.
“Shake a leg, Jane. In thirty-nine minutes we’re out of here, with or without that flash drive.”
“If it even exists,” I said.
He was yanking open drawers and cabinets, quickly pawing through utensils, dishes, pots and pans as Nick’s uneaten chicken pot pie cooled on the counter. The darn thing smelled better than it had a right to. I wondered what the young widower would think if he came back to find a bite or two missing.
I went into the butler’s pantry and opened the freezer, shoving aside a half gallon of rocky road and about two dozen chicken pot pies to peer into the corners. That’s a favorite hiding place, right? The freezer?
We split up on the first floor. I emulated Martin, rifling quickly through every conceivable hiding place in the living room and sunroom while he took the dining room and den, both of us being careful to leave everything as we’d found it. We met up in Allison’s office.
Martin checked his phone. “Twenty-seven minutes left.”
“You know, there’s a basement,” I said. “Not to mention the second floor and the attic. This is a huge place.” The subtext being: There’s no way we’ll search the rest of this house in twenty-seven minutes and I’m getting really nervous, so let’s get the heck out of here.
Either he was oblivious to the subtext or he chose to ignore it. My money was on that second thing. He was rifling through Allison’s desk drawers. “Did you check behind the pictures?” he asked. “Something that small could be taped—”
“Yes, of course,” I snapped, in the wounded tones of a seasoned criminal whose expertise had just been challenged. I’d have to slip back into the rooms I’d searched and look behind the darn pictures.
“Ha!” he said.
My pulse leapt. “Did you find it?”
“Her phone.” He displayed his booty, a sleek smartphone in a silver-pink case, and slipped it into a pocket. “Might be something useful on it.”
“You can’t take that.”
“I just did.” He closed the drawer and opened another. “Don’t worry, I’ll return it. Nick will never know it was gone.”
“It probably doesn’t even work,” I said. “She must have had it on her when she went into the lake.”
“I’ll try to power it up later. No time to mess with it now. Shake a leg, Jane. Time’s flying.”
My heart was no longer in this project, if it ever was. Yeah, that’s right, it was a project, not a burglary, so you can just save the judgmental attitude for a, you know, real burglar.
I made myself cross to the antique cherry-wood bookcase and start tipping back the books to check behind them. There were best-selling novels, anthologies of short stories and poetry, and volumes on photography and history—including, yes, the history of photography. Several shelves had been set aside for small framed photos and assorted souvenirs and tchotchkes, crammed together in sociable groupings.
An African figurine carved from dark wood. A small silver box encrusted with amethysts. A marble paperweight. A crystal hedgehog. Russian nesting dolls. An ornate Victorian teacup and saucer with gilded edges and an intricate floral design. A bowl carved from petrified wood and filled with small seashells and chunks of frosty beach glass in pastel tones.
I peered at a small, framed snapshot of a grinning Allison standing on a crowded sidewalk—Times Square, by the looks of it. She wore a sundress and sandals. A camera hung from her neck by a strap, a serious-looking camera with a long lens. I smiled. She’d been doing what she loved best.
I poked my gloved finger into the bowl of shells and felt around for something the size and shape of a flash drive. As I did so, my gaze skated over the objects behind it and came to a startled halt on one object in particular, half-concealed behind a painted porcelain Buddha. It was a small piece of handmade ceramic, two to three inches tall, glossy black blending to an oatmeal-colored glaze at the edges. I saw a rounded top studded with tiny holes.
“Martin?” I said.
“Twenty-five minutes, Jane.” He was digging around in a cardboard accordion file crammed with papers filed in alphabetical order. “More searching, less talking.”
I reached behind the Buddha and picked up the little shaker shaped like a mushroom. I turned it upside down and shook it. No pepper came out. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that I was holding the missing mate to the salt shaker Joleen had given me. She’d assumed it had been broken.
My breathing quickened as I pried the tiny cork out of the bottom. A dab of poster putty had been stuck to the inside of the cork, and pressed into that—yes, I know you’re way ahead of me, I’m so proud of you—was a tiny flash drive identical to the one I’d handed over to Jim yesterday.