Chapter Eleven
Thirty minutes later I still hadn’t found the wall. I’d tapped on every square inch of this room that I could reach. I was running out of time, and Burton would be coming back soon. He’d texted to say he had a few things to look over in the mansion. What was I going to tell him?
And twenty minutes later, there he was. “We’re out, Tallie. I have other things to do today and not enough time to do them all. Have you found anything?”
I had to shake my head and admit that I’d found nothing.
“It’s okay. Maybe there really isn’t a half wall, and the photo has a strange shadow. Or just the way Bethany took the picture made it look like a half wall. I tried to call Marg, and she had no idea what I was talking about.”
I didn’t know what to do with his niceness. Normally, he’d blame me for taking up his time or wasting his time, like he had an hour ago. But now he just looked tired and defeated. I didn’t know what to do with that, either.
“It’s going to be okay. We’ll figure this out. I promise,” I told him. Not that I could really do that, but I wanted to assure him, because I didn’t want him to feel like all was lost. It was still only day two.
Burton flicked the curtain at the window. “Marg just pulled up. I don’t know what she’s going to say. Probably that I’m not working fast enough. I’ve been up for almost twenty hours.”
Helpless, that was how I felt. I just wanted to go clean something and maybe try to figure out who the murderer was, so Burton didn’t have to worry anymore.
That was a very strange feeling, considering that normally, we were at each other’s throats. But not this time. He was looking older than his age, which made me feel worse. Even mad. He usually didn’t look even his age, but now he looked older, a little depressed, and a lot defeated.
“We’ll figure this out, Burton. I promise,” I repeated since he hadn’t responded to my first try at reassurance.
“I’ll figure it out, Tallie. It’s my job. Remember, you’re just a concerned citizen,” he said as we both turned toward the door, having heard Mrs. Petrovski calling out to see who was in the house.
“Get ready,” I muttered right before Mrs. Petrovski entered the room.
“Tallie and James. I’m glad I found you here. We have work to do. Tallie, I need you at this address.” She handed over a piece of paper, along with two sets of keys, then turned her back to me. I guessed I had been dismissed. It wasn’t the first time. It probably wouldn’t be the last. But still . . .
I looked at Burton, who shrugged and pretty much dismissed me himself.
Great. Now they both had decided I was not worth talking to.
I left the room, but stood just outside it to listen in on their conversation and see if I could glean any info I did not already have. What happened next really was what Burton had predicted. Mrs. Petrovski berated him for not moving fast enough—at a pace that pleased her—and for not closing this investigation. For not taking her needs and the needs of the community into consideration. In her mind, Audra’s death was an unfortunate accident that needed to be swept under the rug.
I could just imagine Burton’s face getting redder and redder, and I thought I should definitely not be there when it came time for him to walk out of that room. I’d be the first person he saw and probably the one he took his frustration out on. I did not need that today, or any day, really.
As I made my way through the house, I collected Letty and my other crew members and gave them the piece of paper with the address of property we were to clean and the keys. I would follow along soon enough, but first, I had to place a call to Max to see how things were going with him. Once the ladies left the mansion with their gear, I pulled out my phone and dialed Max. He picked up almost immediately. After the pleasantries were out of the way, I got down to business.
“Okay, so I don’t know what this wall thing is, and I pretty much made a fool out of myself in front of Burton. Mrs. Petrovski wants us to clean another house while she’s waiting for this one to be released, and I had a crazy idea that I should start offering cleanup after murders and suicides to the cops. I dismissed the idea almost as soon as I had it, because it wouldn’t just be socks crammed into a couch, but some pretty gruesome things. So that’s out.”
“Wow. All I did was read some papers and use a ruler to make sure I was on the right line of a column of numbers.”
“You’re funny.”
“Seriously, Tallie, I don’t think death cleanup is the way you want to go with your life. I understand it can be lucrative, but you might want to consider what exactly you’d be cleaning up and the extra equipment you’d need to acquire before doing something like that. You have a hard enough time being near dead bodies. Do you really want to be near parts and pieces instead?”
” That’s pretty much the whole thought process I went through as soon as I considered it. Plus, the ladies might be even more grossed out than me.” I smiled, even though Max couldn’t see me. “Moving on, then. Will you be home for dinner tonight?”
“Yes, and I have a recipe I want to try out, so get ready to eat.”
I groaned. My pants were not going to be able to handle me after a month of this. “I’ll be ready,” I said, anyway, knowing I’d eat whatever he made and probably love it to distraction, like I loved him.
We said our good-byes, and then I mentally made a list of all the things I wanted to talk with him about tonight. I needed a different set of eyes on this picture, ones that hadn’t seen the actual house and didn’t have anything to compare it with. He’d seen the pictures once already, but maybe seeing them again revealed something I was missing. I had to be missing something, or I would have found that missing wall.
Out in my car, I turned the engine over and watched as Mrs. Petrovski and Burton came out the front door. Mrs. Petrovski was first, full steam ahead, as if she had places to go and things to do; and Burton trailed along behind her, as if he’d rather be anywhere else.
She was still talking, so I rolled down my car window, just in case I could get a hint of what they were talking about.
“There is no such wall. I’ve been in and out of this house for almost seventy years. I would know if there was such a wall. Let that go for the moment and get me a killer. Do your job as you’re meant to, and leave the frivolous things alone. Tallie is not my first choice of people to help. She shouldn’t be yours, either.”
And then there was that saying that you never heard anything good about yourself when you eavesdropped.
I rolled up my window, but Burton still caught my eye. He shook his head, but I didn’t know if it was because he was ashamed of me for not having left already or because he didn’t agree with what Mrs. Petrovski had said. I didn’t stick around to find out, since Mrs. Petrovski looked like she was about to head my way. Probably to tell me I should have already be working on her other property. I could just see her doing that. But a thought kept circling through my mind: How would Mrs. Petrovski not know about the half wall, unless she was lying?
I pulled out of my parking spot near the front of the house and eased my way down the driveway. I needed these moments to think about what I had seen and not seen since I’d found Audra dead. I still felt horrible that her life had been cut short. The few times we interacted, she’d seemed like a really nice person, someone I would have wanted to become friends with, but sometimes it turned out that people were not at all what they seemed. So we’d have to see what, if anything, Max had found, while digging into her background. Burton had said she was a peach, but that didn’t always mean he’d tell me everything. He’d proven it before with his comments about being a concerned citizen, not a vigilante. I hoped Max had been able to find something on Audra that maybe Burton had missed or was keeping from me. So I’d ask Max about any progress he’d made on his Audra search. And also the boyfriend. And maybe that helper of hers, though I’d have to remember her name first.
I also had an absurd curiosity about Preston Prescott. He seemed to be following people around like a bloodhound. Though that was not unusual, it also wasn’t usual, unless he thought he could get something from you.
But what did he want from me?
I knew what his aunt wanted—for me to clean that house. And I wouldn’t get any peace until it was done. In fact, my phone dinged on the seat next to me, and I had little doubt that it was her trying to tell me to hurry up.
* * *
Cleaning a house that was nearly clean was never a hardship. From the info I had already got from Letty, the tenants of this rental property were always very fastidious about keeping things clean. I wasn’t sure why Mrs. Petrovski wanted us to do this house, but I supposed it was that gift horse thing and not looking in its mouth, because you might find cavities. The property was in the next town over, so about two miles away, and was easy enough to find.
Pulling into the driveway, I was gratified to see everyone else’s car here, except Bethany’s. She was off today, and I had let that stand. I had left her a message, just to make sure the pictures were all of the house, and hadn’t heard back from her yet. There was no need to pull in another person when I didn’t know what all needed to be cleaned, and she was on vacation.
I wished I were, too.
Instead I was here, checking up on my ragtag crew and hoping that I hadn’t taken on more than I could handle just to play nice with those I used to air kiss before I’d performed my swan dive from the upper crust of our small society by divorcing Waldo.
Letty greeted me on the front steps.
“Did she say what she wanted us to do with the place? I swear there’s not a lick of dust in the whole place. Like nothing at all, anywhere.”
That was strange. I’d have to see this for myself. Wandering around for ten minutes, I found nothing. Nothing in the corners, nothing on the ceilings, nothing anywhere. I had never seen a place that was this immaculate before.
“Well, what are we supposed to do with this?” I asked no one in particular.
I got three shrugs in return.
“I can’t charge for us being over here when there is nothing to clean,” I noted. “Did you check the lint trap in the dryer? Under the utility sink? Mud on the back porch?”
“Everywhere, Tallie, as in every single place, and there is nothing.” Letty shrugged. “Why do you think she sent us out here?”
“Let’s ask.” I pulled out my phone and hit the number for Mrs. Petrovski.
She answered on the first ring. “What?”
Okay then. “I, uh, just wanted to check in with you. I’m in the house, and there is literally nothing to do here. The place is absolutely spotless.”
“Are you sure you’re in the right house?”
I put my hand out, and Letty gave me the piece of paper with the address of the house we were supposed to clean. I rattled off the address, and Mrs. Petrovski scoffed at me.
“I most certainly did not send you there. Why would I send you there? I just had poor Audra clean that the other day, so it is absolutely perfect. Go next door. That’s the house that needs to be cleaned. And don’t take all day. You’ve already wasted an hour by being at the wrong place and taking way too long to leave the Astercromb mansion. Please do this right, or I will not be above asking for help from someone else.” With that, she hung up.
I gathered the troops around. “I know I wrote that address down right,” I said to my crew. “But whatever. Okay, I don’t know what this woman is doing, but apparently, we’re supposed to be next door and getting our hustle on. Let’s move.”
I led the way. I locked the door behind us and opened the front door to the house next door, where we found a special kind of chaotic mess. I couldn’t help but think, Hoarder, when I saw it.
“Holy cow.” Letty put her hands on her hips.
My thought exactly.
At that moment my phone rang, and I didn’t know what more I could handle at the moment. I almost wished we were next door, trying to pick up miniscule pieces of carpet fluff off the shiny tile floor.
“Hello?”
“What time are you coming back?” My father did not do pleasantries unless you were a client or the relative of one.
“Uh.” I looked around the front room and could not even begin to calculate how much time this was going to take, even with four of us working. “I’m not sure. We just got a huge job, and we have to come up with a battle plan.”
“Well, I really need you here today. Francine just called out sick—some bug going around—and I have no one to drive the hearse. Normally, I could do it myself, but Jeremy is going to be doing that ceremony, because I just got a new client in, and we have three days to get her ready for the service. Another is coming in this evening, and I have a third funeral booked today. I don’t know how we overbooked, but I can’t tell the relatives that today is not a good day to say good-bye, and therefore they’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”
My dad was a pretty succinct guy, so that was a lot of words for him. Sometimes he communicated only in grunts. To have him go on and on about the schedule was shocking enough. To learn that we were overbooked was astounding. I could not recall a single time that had happened in the past.
I looked at the room before me again and at the women, who were picking through things to make a path to the back of the house. This wasn’t like a former suspect’s house, which had been filled with knickknacks and doodads. This house had serious clutter and junk, and some things had been thrown around willy-nilly, while other things had been stacked all the way to the ceiling. I couldn’t leave these women here to handle this all by themselves. But I also couldn’t leave my father in a bind.
“Let me call you right back. I know that’s not the answer you want, but I have to talk to Letty. I promise to call back within five minutes.”
“Please do.” He hung up without saying good-bye. That seemed to be a running theme today.
“Letty, can I have a moment?” I did not want to do this, and under normal circumstances, I would never walk away from a job to do something else unless that job was life-threatening. But whereas Burton had sounded defeated earlier, my dad sounded frantic, and a frantic Bud Graver was not something I thought I had ever heard before.
“Sure, boss. This is going to be quite the cleanup. We might want to divide and conquer, because this is going to take days. I hope you tell the old broad that.”
The old broad . . . Yes, I’d have to deal with her and her demands soon, but I had other things at the top of my list at the moment.
“I hate to do this to you . . .” I didn’t even know where to start, so I dove in, even as her eyes narrowed. “My dad really needs my help. There’s some confusion at the funeral home, and I can’t leave him hanging, but I don’t want to leave you guys hanging, either. I don’t know what to do. I wish I could be two places at once.” Wasn’t that the truth? “Can you take the lead on this one? I promise to give you all a bonus. I won’t take a single penny, even though I’ll be back to help as soon as chauffeur-to-the-dead duty is over. I promise.” I seemed to be making a lot of promises today, but it was the best I could do, and I only hoped I could keep them all.
“Is that all?” She smacked me on the arm. “I could have sworn you were going to say this was too much for us and call it quits. I want my hands on all this stuff. This place is going to shine when I’m done with it. Me and the ladies, that is.”
I breathed out a sigh of relief. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath in and had been like a balloon about to pop. “Seriously? You’re not mad? I don’t want to cut out, but I have to help my dad as best I can.”
“Tallie, I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it. Go. Go now. I’ll talk to everyone, and they’ll all be fine with it. I’ll make sure. And if you want to spend some time with Max instead of coming back later, I guarantee you we can handle this ourselves. No problem.”
“I feel horrible, though. This place is a mess.”
She laughed and tapped me this time instead of socking my arm. “I’m telling you, it’s a challenge, and it’s going to be fine. Now go, and I’ll talk to everyone.”
“You’re the best.”
“And don’t you forget it, even when you become the queen of Squeegeedom, with a battalion of awesome women at your back.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed at the image of me standing with a squeegee held high, going into battle with my ladies armed with caddies. “Okay. Let me know if there are any issues, or if anyone needs to talk to me about why I left. I’m in this as much as you all are. I might write the checks, but I also do the work.” It still smarted that Mrs. Petrovski had said I was above all this and messed things up deliberately. But once we finished cleaning this house and showed her what we could do, then she’d have to eat her words. I’d tie the bib around her neck myself.
In the meantime, I had a hearse to drive and some assistance to give to my father.
I called him back on my way out to the car and told him when I’d be there. I’d have to go change first, I thought as I looked down at my grimy jeans and faded shirt. I could check in with Max as I buzzed through. I hoped that we could be together later. In the meantime, chauffeur duty was calling.