| |
Fred and I sat patiently waiting for Bonnie to finish reading the letter out loud. I’m sure it was for his benefit, for she knew I had already read it. He sat there watching her lips form every word. Then again, maybe it was Bonnie’s uneaten breakfast Fred wanted.
“My Dearest Mary, I pray you never see this letter, but if you are reading it, I want you to know I loved you more than life itself. I was hoping to make it through this terrible war and spend the rest of my life with you, but evidently, God had other plans. I have no idea how I died. Was it a land mine, a grenade, or God forbid, one of my own men? I hope it wasn’t a mosquito from this awful jungle; that won’t make much of a story to tell Mikey when he asks about me. Whatever it was, doesn’t matter. What matters is that you know how much I love you and that it’s not over. Our time on earth is but a tick of the clock compared to the eternity we will have together once you join me again. Take care of our Mikey, and maybe someday you can tell our grandchildren how their grandfather would have loved them. All my love, Michael.”
Fred gave a short bark when Bonnie finished. I don’t speak dog, but I knew it wasn’t his way of showing sorrow. He would have to wait for her leftovers until she wiped the tears from her reading glasses.
“Oh, Jake, it’s so sad. Are you sure she never read the letter?”
“Pretty sure.” I pointed to her plate. “If you’re finished with that, I think Fred wants it, Bon.”
She laid the letter on the table and looked over at Fred with sad, glassy eyes. “Did Aunt Bonnie forget to feed you, Freddie?” she asked and put her plate down for Fred while patting him on the head.
Fred answered by thumping his tail on the floor and cleaning Bonnie’s plate in record time.
Bonnie looked up, staring me in the eyes. “Pretty sure?” she asked.
She caught me as I was drinking the last of my coffee. Somehow I managed to answer without choking. “Okay, I’m sure. It was never opened. Debbie, the woman I’m doing the remodel for, says she inherited the house from her grandmother who rented it out during the war, and that the letter must have belonged to one of the renters. She told me to throw it in the dumpster with all the other lath and plaster I tore out. But you know me, I had to read it first.”
Bonnie started to tear up again. “That’s terrible. The poor woman never knew how much he loved her. You’ve got to find her, Jake.”
“And how would I do that? The postmark is nineteen forty-three. Assuming she was in her twenties during the war, she would be pushing a hundred now. I think she has probably joined Michael by now.”
“Then you have to find her children or grandchildren. Promise me you’ll try, Jake. Please.” Bonnie knew I was a sucker for her little girl act. Even though she would be seventy soon, she could still plead like a seven-year-old.
“Maybe tonight I’ll search the web and see what I can find,” I said while watching Bonnie’s ceiling fan spin. It was a habit I had, to stare at nothing in particular while processing facts in my head. “I can’t ask Debbie, not with the mood she’s in, but she has a sister. I’ll try to find her email or Facebook page and send her a message. She might be willing to tell me something about the place and its previous residents.”
“I can’t see why the letter would upset her, Jake. Unless it’s that time of the month.”
I stopped watching her ceiling fan and stared at her.
Her smile made her crow’s feet more noticeable. “PMS, Jake. Not that I’d know much about that anymore.”
“Oh, you had me going there for a minute, but no, I don’t think it’s that time of the month. She’s had a lot on her mind lately. Between the realtor and her boyfriend, she couldn’t care less about who the letter belongs to.”
Now it was Bonnie’s turn to stare – at me. “What’s the realtor’s boyfriend got to do with it?”
“Not the realtor’s boyfriend, Bon, Debbie’s. She hasn’t said so, but I think the creep is draining her.”
Bonnie’s jaw literally dropped, and her eyes grew wider.
“It’s the little things she says and does, like when she shows me a Tag Heuer Chronograph and asks me if I think he’d like it.”
“A what?”
“Those were my words, too, so she spent fifteen minutes telling me how much he wanted a Rolex and hoped he wouldn’t be disappointed with the Tag.”
Bonnie had been holding her cup so tightly her knuckles had turned white. “He must be some hunk of burning love.”
“I wouldn’t know, Bon. But I do know he’s at least ten years younger than her, and he treats her like crap.”
Bonnie seemed to consider it before relaxing her grip and moving on. “And the realtor? What’s her problem?”
“He, Bon. The realtor is a guy.”
She rolled her eyes before answering. “I stand corrected. Again. So what’s his problem?” She put the emphasis on the word, his. Bonnie had been a teacher in her younger days and didn’t like being corrected.
“She won’t say, other than to call him every four-letter name in the book. Debbie has a real temper and an acid tongue when she doesn’t get her way.”
Bonnie raised the corner of her mouth, causing a few wrinkles and a dimple to appear. “Must be why she buys her boyfriend expensive presents.”
Fred had tired of our conversation, or the lack of more handouts, and went over to the door. My mind was too occupied trying to understand how buying presents for the boyfriend had anything to do with the realtor.
My muddled look must have begged an explanation. “Her tongue, Jake. I assume she uses it on him, too, and then buys him presents to make up.”
Fred barked to let me know he wanted out. “Oh,” I said, and got up from my chair. “Well, it looks like Freddie wants me to get going before we get fired.”
Bonnie grabbed my hand before I could get out of my chair. “Promise me you’ll find Mary’s children.”
I paused long enough to notice her eyes had changed from tired gray to piercing blue, or so it seemed. “Yes, Bon. I promise I’ll try.”
***
FOR SOME REASON, THE walk back to my cabin on the upper road seemed to be getting longer. Maybe it was the weight of the promise I’d made to Bonnie. Then again, it might simply be a sign I was getting older. I stopped at the small rock wall between our properties and pondered how I was going to keep my promise while I caught my breath. I had built the wall years ago, more as a retaining wall than a fence. It was one of several that served to create level terraces on the steep hill between our two houses.
Fred had been lagging behind,and lay down at my feet panting when he caught up with me. Ordinarily, he would have made the trip between our houses several times by running ahead, and then coming back to see what was taking me so long. “What’s the matter, old boy?” I asked, reaching down to pet him. “Are you trying to get out of going to work today?”
He raised his head to look at me. I couldn’t help but wonder when the hair on his face had started to turn white.
***
I WAS DEAD TIRED BY the time Fred and I made it home from a day of tearing down walls and hauling the debris to the dumpster. Well, I was tired. Fred had slept most of the day and woke only twice, once when I uncovered a rat’s nest, and the other time for lunch. Whatever had been bothering him earlier had long passed. All I wanted now was a hot shower and some sleep, but the promise I’d made Bonnie came first. I owed her at least that much, and a lot more.
My first wife, Natalie, considered Bonnie a nuisance when we’d bought property to build a weekend cabin in the hills above Denver several years ago. Bonnie’s house was right below us and she’d come to visit, bearing food and gossip every time we came up from the city to work on our cabin. Natalie didn’t seem to understand that Bonnie was simply a lonely widow. Her husband had died several years before, but not before taking out a reverse mortgage, so she wouldn’t have to worry about making payments he knew she wouldn’t be able to afford. She was stuck in her house. She couldn’t sell because there was no equity, and she couldn’t afford anything in town. Her only income was her social security check. The few hundred she got from the reverse mortgage barely paid the taxes and insurance on the house. Of course, Natalie and I knew nothing about Bonnie’s finances at the time. That information only came out in bits and pieces after I’d gotten to know her.
Natalie left me soon after I’d been laid off from a lucrative job as a software engineer. I had stopped by the insurance company where she worked to take her to lunch and break the news. She worked for a local agent who kept a small office with just a secretary and a couple brokers. Natalie was the secretary. The sign on the door said the office was closed for lunch, but I knew Natalie rarely took her lunch hour, so I went in anyway. I suppose what I had really wanted was some moral support, but got something entirely different instead. Natalie came out of her boss’s office frantically trying to zip up her skirt and button her blouse. I could see her boss pulling up his trousers just before she closed his door.
We separated shortly after that and divorced six months later. I moved to the cabin, and Natalie kept our house in town, along with our daughter, Allison. I got Fred, a golden retriever puppy, I had bought for Allison’s tenth birthday. I cashed in my 401K, my stock options, and took my severance pay then split it with Natalie. I put my share in a trust fund to pay Allison’s child support, for I knew I would have a hard time finding work. Nobody wanted to hire a middle-aged programmer, not when a twenty-two-year-old kid, or someone with an H1 visa, will do the work for a fraction of what I had been making. In the end, I realized my heart wasn’t in working a corporate job anymore and decided to follow a dream I’d had ever since I had learned to read. That dream was to write a book. Unfortunately, after finishing the first draft of what had to be the next best-selling mystery, it was rejected by no less than two hundred agents. It soon became clear that the book wasn’t going to pay the bills, so I went back into construction, a trade I’d learned while working my way through college, and later honed by building my cabin.
I don’t know if I’d have made it through the first year if Bonnie hadn’t kept giving me work as a handyman. It wasn‘t until later I found out she wasn’t much better off than me. There was no way I could let her down and go back on my promise to find Mary’s progeny, but I’d take that shower and feed my dog first. Maybe I wasn’t hungry, but Fred was. He always was.
***
“WELL, AT LEAST THE cemetery gives me a place to start looking,” I said, and put my plate down for Fred. We had stopped by Bonnie’s for coffee and to tell her about my near fruitless Internet search until I had the epiphany to check out headstones at Fort Logan cemetery.
Bonnie had already fixed me a huge ham and cheese omelet, and a smaller one for herself, so once more, we stayed for breakfast. I made a mental note to spend the lion’s share of my next paycheck on restocking her refrigerator. Fred cleaned my plate and went over to sit by Bonnie.
She smiled at my beggar and gave him her plate. She had barely touched it. “I suppose she might be there, but I doubt if her husband is. Most Marines were buried on the islands where they died back then. Are you sure you can’t find her on the Internet? I thought you were a whiz at that.”
“Mary Johnson, Colorado, resulted in over thirty-eight million possible leads, Bon.”
Her jaw dropped, exposing missing lower dentures. “Thirty-eight million?”
“Yep, it seems Johnson is the most common surname on the web.” I noticed Fred had finished his imitation of a dishwasher and was quietly watching Bonnie. I took a sip of my coffee before continuing. “Then I added the word, obituary, and put her name in quotes. That gave me only fifteen thousand results. Fred fell asleep at my feet long before I gave up at two in the morning, and went to bed.”
The mention of my mutt made Bonnie look down at him. His soulful look made her smile. “Still, you’ll stop and get me first, won’t you?” she asked.
“Are you sure you want to visit a cemetery? It may be after six by the time we get to Littleton. It gets dark early this time of year, you know.” I told her how I had searched the Social Security death records and found a Mary Johnson from Idaho Springs whose age at the time of her death came close to what I assumed would be the age of Mary in the letter.
“I’ve never seen a ghost in seventy years, Jake, I doubt if I will now, even if it is Halloween.”
***
I HAD COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN next week was Halloween. The kids in our neighborhood were too old to trick or treat, and we were too far from town for parents to drive their children, so I quit buying candy and decorating soon after moving to the mountains. It was only when I reached the job site that I noticed witches and skeletons on the lawns of nearly every house on the block.
Debbie Walker, the woman who owned the house, was sitting on her doorstep waiting for us when I pulled into her driveway. She didn’t look happy. Evidently, she must have had another argument with her boyfriend or realtor. Then again, it could have been with a neighbor as well. Debbie seemed to have a huge chip on her shoulder, just like my ex. She even resembled Natalie. They were both about five-seven, had long black hair, and still good looking. However, those looks didn’t come cheap, for neither were teenagers anymore.
“Where have you been, Jake?” she asked, once I reached the first stair. I had a brief bout of déjà vu, the tone of her voice reminded me of my ex when I was late or had forgotten to do something.
I bit my tongue before I told her I didn’t punch clocks anymore. “Sorry, Debbie. Is something wrong?”
She threw the cigarette she had been smoking on the ground and stomped on it. “Something wrong?” By the tone of her voice and the way she rolled her eyes, I knew it wasn’t a question. She stood and waved a piece of paper at me. “Of course, something’s wrong. The inspector just slapped us with a stop work notice, and you were nowhere to be found. Don’t you ever answer your damn phone?”
Fred had stopped at the bottom of the stairs to inspect a Halloween pumpkin that already smelled ripe. He came to stand by my side when he sensed Debbie’s anger. I patted him on the head, then walked up the three steps to where Debbie was standing. He matched my stride, step by step, as though he were on a leash. “Why’s he shutting us down?” I asked, reaching for the dark-red paper.
“You didn’t get a permit.”
“We need a permit to replace a few sheets of drywall?”
Debbie swept her long, black hair behind her ears and stared at me. I was caught off guard when I saw her ear was bright red, thinking she must have cut herself. “You didn’t know that? What kind of contractor are you?”
Suddenly, I remembered reading somewhere that a person’s ears turned red when they were mad. “I’m not a contractor, Debbie. You knew that when you hired me. I’m a programmer. I do handyman work on the side.” I didn’t feel like adding I was presently unemployed, and that handy-man work was all I did lately. I had thought about getting a contractor’s license, but that wasn’t something controlled by the state. Every town and county had different rules and requirements, not to mention all the red tape I’d be getting into with taxes, insurance, workman’s comp, and on and on.
She stood with her hand on her hips, looking at me like a lioness watching a gazelle. After a few moments, her head tilted forward, making her eyes seem half closed. “Get your damn tools and get out of here,” she said before turning and walking back into the house.
Fred had been by my side the entire time Debbie browbeat me and now tried to stick his snout in my hand. “Think I should ask her for the money she owes us?” I asked him while removing my hand.
He answered by pushing his wet nose back in my hand.
Debbie was nowhere in sight when we went into the house. I wasn’t surprised, for the house was a huge two-story, or three if you counted the finished attic. There were more rooms, nooks, and crannies where she could have gone off to than in a fun-house maze. The house had been built sometime in the late twenties. My guess is it had been started when times were good, but not finished until after the big stock crash, because the upper level didn’t come close to the extravagant finishes of the lower level. The bedroom I had been working on didn’t have any of the mahogany woodwork, cove ceilings, or lavish touches of the main floor. There were no crown moldings, fluted door trim, or corbels. The walls and ceilings were as plain as the painted pine trim around the doors and windows. All it needed to finish the look of a mental ward were green walls.
The starkness of the room made me feel sad. I tried to imagine how Mary Johnson would have felt if she had read Michael’s letter before getting the dreaded news of her husband’s death from a telegram. I had found the letter inside an armoire attached to an exterior wall when I removed a drawer to get to the screws keeping it in place. It was a tall piece of furniture, and a little top heavy, so I assumed they had screwed it to the wall to keep it from falling over if a child should decide to use the drawers as steps. The letter must have fallen out of one of the lower drawers and been stuck there for over sixty years. I couldn’t help but wonder how it got in the drawer without Mary seeing it. Had she put it there and been too afraid to open it? Or had it been stuck in with other letters and she hadn’t noticed it?
Out of curiosity, I went over to the old armoire and pulled out all the drawers. There had only been a couple screws at the top and two more at the bottom when I found the letter. I didn’t get to the other drawers that day because by the time I’d read the letter, Debbie had come back and reminded me she wasn’t paying me to sit around reading. Well, she wasn’t paying me now, so I removed the other two drawers. I can’t say I was surprised to find more unopened letters at the bottom of the armoire.
“Are you still here?”
I turned to see Debbie standing in the doorway watching me. She had her arms folded across her chest. “Look, Deb, I know you’re pissed off with me, but really, I never heard of having to pull a permit to fix a little drywall. And how did the city even know about it?” I no sooner asked the question, when the answer came to me. “Oh, the dumpster. Of course. I can’t believe they have nothing better to do than go around checking dumpster deliveries. It must have been a neighbor who called them.”
Debbie started to say something, but stopped and closed her mouth. I could almost see the light go on in her head. “It’s got to be that busy-body next door,” she said, dropping her arms and turning to leave. “I’ll give that witch a piece of my mind.”
“Deb, wait,” I said, holding up the letters. “I found more of these in the armoire.”
“Throw them in the trash with the other one,” she answered, and stormed down the stairs.
Fred had been in the corner of the room, trying to sleep, but woke up when Debbie first came in. I could feel his presence behind me. “I know, I should have asked for our pay,” I said without turning to face him. “Don’t worry, Freddie, I won’t let you starve. I’ll call her later after she’s had time to cool off.”
Fred seemed to have a better idea and went over to where my portable scaffolding was set up and barked. “You think we should leave it so I have an excuse to come back after she’s cooled off?”
He sat down and I swear he smiled. I knew he wasn’t that smart and realized my subconscious was telling me something I’d failed to think of, but I gave him credit for the idea anyway.
“Okay, Fred. We’ll try it your way. I’ll make up some excuse about not having room in my Jeep for the scaffold, and tell her I’ll have to come back with a trailer to get it tomorrow. Maybe she’ll have reconsidered by that time, or at least be in the mood to pay us.”
***
“AND SHE NEVER OPENED any of them?” Bonnie asked when I stopped by to show her the letters.
“Strange, isn’t it?” I said before sniffing my cider to make sure it wasn’t fortified with Jack Daniels. We were sitting on Bonnie’s back deck, sipping hot cider to fend off the chilly air. The weatherman had said there was a possibility of an early snow storm in the mountains, so Bonnie insisted we drink the cider. She read somewhere it would protect us from catching a cold. I knew her well enough to know there was more than cider in her cup.
She held one of the letters up to where the sun would be if it hadn’t been obscured by clouds. The envelope was so thin it was almost possible to read through it. “Think it’s okay if we open one of them?”
“I doubt if you’d be arrested, if that’s what you mean. It’s not like I took them from her mailbox, but it isn’t right, Bon. It’s bad enough we read the first one. Would you want total strangers reading your love letters?”
Bonnie stopped trying to read through the envelope and pretended to pout. “Spoilsport.” She placed the letter on the table and fumbled in her pockets for her cigarettes without saying another word.
I waited for her to light up and exhale before answering. “Then again, it may lead us to the rightful owners.”
She was all smiles again and had the envelope opened almost before I stopped talking. “My Darling, Michael,” she read then stopped. “That’s weird. This is one she wrote. I wonder how it got in the letters from Michael.”
I picked up the envelope for a closer examination. “There’s no stamp or postmark. Mary never sent it to him. She must have gotten the dreaded telegram before she had a chance to send it.”
“You would think the war department could have sent someone to your door when a soldier died instead of sending a telegram,” Bonnie said, then went back to reading the letter. “My Darling, Michael, I don’t know how to tell you this...” Bonnie stopped again and pushed the letter across the table. “I can’t read her writing without my glasses. Do you mind, Jake?”
I didn’t bother to tell her they were stuck in her hair, resting on the top of her head, for her glazed-over eyes told me the glasses weren’t the only reason she couldn’t read it. I skipped over the salutation and most of the letter, looking for names of anyone who might lead us to the rightful owners.
“Read it out loud, Jake. I’m not a mind reader.”
I put the letter down and tried not to look disappointed. “You can read it later, if you want, Bon. There’s nothing in here for us and I feel like a Peeping Tom reading it.”
Bonnie knew me well enough not to insist I read the letter to her and changed the subject. “Well, I hope you’re not going to let her get away with stiffing you. She should at least pay you for the time you worked.” It took a second before I realized she was talking about Debbie and not Mary. It’s not that I’m dense, despite what my ex says, I had been thinking about something in the letter.
“I’ll give her a call later after she’s had time to cool off. Or maybe I’ll call the building department first and see if I can’t get them to back off. I really can’t believe they would require a permit to patch some walls and ceilings. There’s got to be more to it.”
“What if it’s the witch next door, Jake? What if she knows something about the letters and didn’t want you to find them? I’ll bet she knows someone at City Hall and got them to shut you down.” The excitement was back in Bonnie’s eyes. Her crow’s feet nearly disappeared when she raised her eyebrows.
I had to laugh at how her mind worked. “That was what Debbie called her. I doubt if she’s really a witch, Bon. And I think you’ve been reading too many murder mysteries. Anyway, I need to find my dog and get back to work looking for a real job. I haven’t searched any of the online sites lately. Maybe somebody is looking for an over the hill programmer to fix some legacy code.”
“Legacy code? What’s that, Jake?”
“COBOL, FORTRAN, and even some C. It’s code written in the last century. The new kids don’t want to learn it.”
Bonnie looked as interested in my answer as a kid at the ballet. “Oh. What about our visit to the cemetery? You said you wanted to check on some headstones, remember?”
“That was before I got laid off, Bon. I need to get back to work or Fred might leave me and come live with you if I don’t feed him.”
Bonnie had looked a little upset at first, but now she tried not to smile. The dimples at the corners of her mouth gave her away. “I should be so lucky,” she said. Then almost as quickly as the smile had replaced the frown, her eyes seemed to grow wide with a revelation. “I could hire you, Jake.”
I would have dropped my untouched cider if it wasn’t already sitting on the table. “I can’t take your money, Bon. And why would you want to hire me? I’ve already fixed everything on your house that needed repair, and I’m sure you have no need for a programmer.”
“Okay, not me, but Margot would, if I ask her nicely.”
If ever there were two identical twins that were so different, it was Bonnie and Margot. I suppose if Margot were to remove all her makeup, and let her hair go a month or so without expensive boutique appointments, she might resemble Bonnie, but that would never change their personalities. Margot had the ‘better than you’ attitude that comes with money. She wasn’t in the same league as Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, but she had more of the ‘root of all evils’ than most. Enough to make her feel superior, and she had no qualms telling you so.
I had already stood up from the table and was ready to leave, but stopped. I wouldn’t take a dime from Bonnie if she begged me, but her sister was another matter. “You know how she despises me. She would never give you a penny if she thought I was involved.”
Bonnie motioned for me to sit back down and pushed her cup toward me when I did. “Maybe you better have a drink of my cider. I’m going to tell you something about her that you won’t believe otherwise.”
I ignored the cider and sat down. “Go on.”
“She thinks you’re some kind of genius.” Her smile had become a grin.
She was right, I didn’t believe her. The few times I had spoken to Margot she had treated me like the hired help, but in a way I guess that’s what I was. She had hired me to edit a book her and Bonnie’s father had written, and I had done a lot of work on Bonnie’s house before that, so I suppose I was the hired help.
“Don’t look so surprised, Jake. Margot’s not as cold hearted as you think. I know once I show her the letter, she’ll be begging you to find the rightful owner.”
“Then you really don’t need me, Bon. Get her to hire a real PI. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to see where Fred took off to.” I didn’t wait and left before she could object.
***
IT TOOK ALL OF TWENTY minutes for me to regret telling Bonnie to let her sister hire a PI. It would have been sooner if not for Fred. He had been on the hunt for something on the hill behind our cabin and came running over with a stick in his mouth when he saw me. After our ritual of throwing the stick several times so he could retrieve it, I finally went into the cabin to check my messages. Fred stayed outside chewing on the stick, so I left the door open for him, knowing the chance of any bugs flying into the house was next to zero this time of the year.
There was a text message from my daughter. She had dropped her phone and cracked the screen and needed six hundred dollars for a new one. She was asking me because her stepfather refused to buy her another. This was the second phone she had broken in as many months. Allie hardly asked me for anything since her mother divorced me. Part of our agreement was that I wasn’t supposed to contact Allie, so I couldn’t let her down now that she needed me. The problem was I didn’t have six hundred dollars to give her, and for the hundredth time, I wondered if trying to write the next great American novel was nothing more than a foolish dream. True, I had made a few bucks writing how-to eBooks, and I even had my first novel self-published, but neither one was making the kind of money Allie needed. It was time to call Debbie and ask for the money she owed me.
After sending Allie a text that I was good for the phone, I called Debbie.
“This is Deb. You know the routine. Leave your name and number and I’ll call you back if I feel like it.”
“Debbie, it’s, Jake. Call me back, we need to talk.” I would have slammed the phone down, but I didn’t need to break my cell phone, too. It made me wish I had one of those ancient landlines.
Fred had wandered in while I was leaving Debbie a message, and looked up at me. His ears went flat at the sound of my voice. “Did I scare you, Freddie?” I asked, reaching down to pet him. Almost instantly his ears moved forward and his tail began to wag. We were interrupted by Beethoven’s Fifth. I had wanted to use his Moonlight Sonata for my ringtone text messages, but at the time I chose it, all I could find was his Fifth.
It was Allie asking me for a credit card number. I didn’t have a card with six hundred dollars credit left on it, so I texted back my debit card number, knowing it would just about wipe out what little I had left in my account. Now I really needed Debbie to pay up, so I tried calling her again.
“Deb, it’s Jake again. I’ll be down tomorrow to get my scaffold. I’d come now but it’s after three and I’d be driving home in rush-hour traffic. Hope you’ve had time to reconsider. See you tomorrow,” I said to her recorder.
“Well, Fred, that’s another fine mess I’ve gotten us into,” I said while going over to close the door. My imitation of Oliver Hardy was lost on my furry sidekick.
***
DEBBIE’S HOUSE WAS nearly an hour’s drive from my cabin outside of Evergreen. It would be quicker to take I-70, but I preferred the back way down through Morrison with far less traffic. Big mistake. My seventies-era Jeep Wagoneer needed water somewhere between Kittredge and Morrison. Finding a place to park on the two-lane road with a steep hillside on one side and Bear Creek on the other had been difficult. Then I had to climb down to the creek below to fill the empty water jugs that hadn’t been refilled since the last time my Jeep needed a drink. A normal hour’s drive took three times that long. It was after six by the time I made it to her neighborhood.
Fred had his big head sticking out the passenger window and would bark at almost every skeleton and carved pumpkin he saw, especially those with lights shining through menacing mouths and triangular eyes. We passed one turn of the century house that could have been the setting for the sixties’ Addams Family. The owners had huge plastic spiders, cobwebs hanging from windows, and a mockup of a coffin standing in the front yard with its lid open. I was so engrossed in the Halloween theme that when I pulled up behind a vehicle marked “Coroner” parked outside of Debbie’s, it took a moment before I realized it was real.
We arrived in time to see them load someone in a body bag into the coroner’s van. “Stay here, Freddie, while I see what’s going on,” I said before getting out of my Jeep and walking over to some spectators standing on the sidewalk.
An older woman, wearing a red DU sweatshirt turned from the younger man she had been talking to and pointed toward me. I couldn’t hear what she said, but knew in an instant he wasn’t selling vacuum cleaners or recruiting for the Jehovah Witnesses. He had “cop” written all over. He wasn’t in uniform, but his close-cut hair, khaki pants, and blue blazer didn’t fit in with any of the other neighbors who were dressed in jeans and sweatshirts with Denver Broncos and Rockies’ logos.
“Excuse me, sir,” he said as I stepped onto the sidewalk. “Are you the contractor who’s been working on Ms. Walker’s house?”
“No. I mean, yes, I’ve been working for her, but I’m not a contractor, just the hired help. Why, is something wrong?”
He paused for a second and looked at his notepad before speaking. I’d almost expected him to answer, “Duh. Why do you think the coroner’s here?” but he answered with another question instead. “Is that your scaffolding in the house?”
“Yes. It’s why I’m here. Debbie—Ms. Walker—fired me yesterday, so I came to gather my tools and equipment.”
He proceeded to reach into his breast pocket for his identification. “Sergeant Hopkins, and my partner, Sergeant Cruz up there,” he said, showing me a badge and pointing toward the house where I could see a woman standing in the doorway, watching us. Hopkins had been easy to spot for what he was, but his partner was a total surprise. She was too good-looking, in my mind, to be a cop. She had long hair, the color of a raven, and wore a tight skirt that came nearly to her knees. From this distance, she reminded me of Morticia Addams.
“I’ll have to ask you to hold off on that for a few days until we finish our investigation. Ms. Walker was found this afternoon, under your scaffold.”
“Under my scaffold? What was she doing...”
Hopkins didn’t let me finish. “Do you mind coming inside? We’d like to ask you a few questions.”