So Kelson left and drove a half mile from the greystone to the bungalow on North Hermitage where Jeremy Oliver had lived. After finding him dead in the dormered attic, Kelson had talked to Bruce McCall, who’d rented Oliver the apartment and detached garage and who’d also said Oliver ran his whole life from the van. The van was a bust, but Kelson hadn’t searched the garage, and he’d given the attic only a quick look before skipping out.
Now, he walked around to the back of the house and went to the garage. He tried the handle on the big garage door. Locked. He went to the little side door and looked through the window into the dark. Like last time, he saw two bikes along the far wall and gardening tools in a corner. He tried the knob. Locked. So he smacked his elbow against the windowpane closest to the knob. It shattered on to the garage floor. ‘Bad, bad idea,’ Kelson said. He reached through the broken pane and unlocked the door. ‘Why do I think this is acceptable?’ He stepped inside. ‘Or smart?’
The air in the garage was cool and smelled of dirt and motor oil. Kelson left off the light and walked around the open space, peering into the gaps between the two-by-fours on the unfinished walls. He pulled the bikes into the middle of the room, inspected them, and looked at the wall where they’d stood. He took a garden shovel from the corner, laid it on the floor, and did the same with a broom, a rake, and another shovel. He rooted through a basket of spades, clippers, and loppers. Something – the dustlessness, the way the tools rested against each other – made him think another person had come into the garage and searched it. ‘But with a key,’ he told the broom, as he put it back in the corner.
‘Screw it,’ he said, and he went back to the door and hit a switch that turned on a single bulb hanging from the middle of the garage ceiling. He gazed at the two-by-four ceiling beams. If a thumb drive lay on one of them, he couldn’t see it. Maybe Jeremy Oliver kept a stepladder in his kitchen pantry. Or maybe Kelson would find the thumb drive in the dormered apartment and wouldn’t need a ladder.
He left the garage, crossed the yard, and went up the stairs to the attic door. He tried the knob. Locked too. He tapped the window, loud enough for anyone inside to hear. No one heard. He smacked another pane with his elbow, reached inside, and let himself in. ‘Here we go again,’ he said.
The kitchen looked and smelled as it did on the day when Kelson found Oliver’s body. ‘Which means nothing,’ he said, and opened the pantry.
The pantry had shelves of mac and cheese, Chex Mix, tomato sauce, and instant oatmeal. There were also a lot of cans of green beans. No ladder. Kelson pulled a vacuum out from under the shelves, opened the dirt canister, and stirred the inside with a finger. Dust. ‘Figures,’ he said. He went to the sink and tried the drawers and cabinets. They held the stuff that kitchen drawers and cabinets hold.
He searched the bedroom closet and removed the dresser drawers in case Oliver had taped the thumb drive to the back of one of them. In the bathroom, he checked the medicine cabinet and stood on the toilet to peer into the exhaust fan.
He said, ‘Why bother?’ and went into the living room. He checked under the couch cushions – sure now, without good reason, that someone else had gone through the house just as he was going through it. He moved the furniture from the walls, peered under it, and pushed it back where it belonged. Peters had told him about a bullet hole near the shelves. Kelson found it and stuck the tip of his pinkie into it. ‘Like a hole in the head,’ he said.
He went back through the hall to the kitchen. ‘Due diligence,’ he said.
He went outside and downstairs into the yard. As he started along the side of the house, a paunchy man in his sixties came out the back door of the house downstairs. He smiled like the kind of man who smiles easily and often. ‘Hey there,’ he said, ‘you a friend of Jeremy?’
‘Hardly,’ Kelson said. ‘Are you Bruce McCall?’
The man smiled. ‘Hardly. I heard you upstairs and thought Jeremy came home.’
‘Unlikely,’ Kelson said. ‘Does Bruce McCall live here?’
‘I’m his tenant,’ the man said. ‘Mr McCall owns a bunch of properties in the neighborhood. You mind if I ask what you were doing up there?’
‘Looking for a thumb drive,’ Kelson said. ‘And a stepladder. Do you have one? – I mean a stepladder.’
The smile stayed on the man’s face, but he got a look in his eyes that Kelson saw often when talking to strangers. ‘Why were you …’
Kelson smiled back. ‘Do you watch Jeremy’s place when he’s gone? You see anyone up there lately?’
‘No one that doesn’t belong,’ the man said. ‘Except you.’
‘Good to have neighbors,’ Kelson said. ‘I live in a high-rise, and you’d think everyone would watch out for each other, but—’
The smiling man’s smile started to fall. ‘Is there anything I can help you with?’
‘Unless you have a stepladder or want to hold my feet while I do chin-ups on the garage beams, you can tell me where Bruce McCall has his office.’
‘No office,’ the man said. ‘This is like his hobby. He works out of his house. His wife’s dad runs some kind of big-money company. What do you want up in the garage beams?’
‘A thumb drive. Never know where someone might hide it.’
‘I see,’ the man said, and, like so many others, he seemed to dismiss Kelson as harmless and confused. ‘Well, I can’t help you there.’
‘Nope, you’ve reached your limit.’ Kelson turned to leave.
The man sounded as firm as he probably ever could. ‘Don’t come back unless you’re with Jeremy, OK? Or Bruce McCall. Or someone who belongs here.’
‘I see no reason I’d want to,’ Kelson said. He got halfway to the front of the house before turning back again.
The smiling man was climbing the stairs to check on Oliver’s apartment. He stopped when he saw Kelson.
‘One more thing,’ Kelson said. ‘Do you know the name of the company owned by Bruce McCall’s father-in-law?’
For some reason, that triggered another little smile. ‘Don’t remember the name. It’s one of those places you know about if you’ve got the money to know about it. If you aren’t loaded, don’t knock.’
Kelson said, ‘Could it be G&G Private Equity?’
The man’s smile widened. ‘That’s it. G&G. Marry a woman like that or win the lottery – either one’ll do for me.’