License to Lie Page 16

  “As I said, that poor girl was a kidnapper. If you saw the news last night, you probably heard about a man named Richard Tanner. He was kidnapped and held for five million dollars ransom. The kidnappers were using one of the apartments.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I seen that on the TV last night. Wait a minute. You’re the guy who found that kid a coupl’a days ago. Right?”

  “That’s me.” Local folk hero, thought Skip. How long would he be hearing about this one? “Can I talk to you for a second? Without the gun.”

  Skip stared through the opening between the door and the jamb. Her eyes darted down and to the left as the gun wavered. “I suppose.” The chain went slack, he heard the chain clank, and the opening widened.

  To his right, Skip caught the gangly guy hauling in another load of boxes. “That girl I hit was part of the kidnapping scheme. She would have been with two men. Did you ever see them?”

  She stuck her head out the door and glanced around. She nodded and her chin puckered. “I seen ‘em with that drunk.” She scratched at her left cheek.

  “What drunk?”

  “Yesterday. A man and that woman from 6 was bringing in some blonde. She was wearing big sunglasses and stumbling all over the place. I couldn’t believe it. It weren’t much after noon. I figured they was gonna have some type of orgy or something.”

  She pronounced the word “orgy” with a hard “g,” as in “go.” Skip held back. He wanted to tell this woman that if she’d paid attention instead of prejudging, she might have noticed something was off kilter with the scene she’d witnessed. If she had called the police, she could have cut the whole scheme short.

  He decided to press for more details. “Was this blonde woman wearing a white blouse and blue jeans?”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. She was falling all over the guy. I thought she was gonna have him do both of them right there on the grass.”

  Skip took a deep breath. “She was the victim. Her eyes were covered with duct tape and if you’d looked closely, you might have noticed that she was handcuffed.” He hadn’t intended to do it, but he’d finished the sentence in a sarcastic tone.

  The old woman’s face paled. “Jesus. I missed all that?”

  Skip nodded. “What did the man look like?”

  She swallowed a lump in her throat. When she continued, her voice was less judgmental. “The guy was taller than her by a few inches. I guess he was kinda skinny, but not too much. He was definitely lighter than you.”

  Skip felt certain she was describing Jimmy Dane. “His partner shot at me yesterday.”

  “That’s when I called the cops. I heard that gunshot and knew there was something wrong. I figured it was drugs. I thought maybe they was in that apartment—never mind, guess I was wrong. What else you wanna know?”

  “This man, was he friendly with the woman from Apartment 6?”

  “I couldn’t say. Wait, yeah, later.”

  “Later?”

  “Yeah, when she brung him out to their car . . .”

  The scene flashed in Skip’s mind. The woman prattled on in her recitation. He wanted to stop her because it reminded him of how his failure to observe had let one of the kidnappers get away.

  “. . . and that was just before you showed up. That guy didn’t look good at all when she put him in the back seat of the car. He was leaning all over her, kind of limping along like maybe he was hurting or something.”

  The memory came back. The windows had been rolled down, not up. He should have checked the car after getting Stella under control. He asked the question, but already knew the answer.

  “Did this other guy drive the white car away?”

  “Yeah, right after the gunshot. I seen him gettin’ into the driver’s seat while I was calling the cops. He pulled out of the parking lot just before they got here. Hey, mister, you don’t look so good yourself. You feeling okay?”

  He nodded. “I’ll be fine.” After he kicked himself, he thought.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Roxy

  As I walked away from Skip, I smiled to myself. I hadn’t intended to park in one of the tenant spots. The truth was that I didn’t see the sign because I was gawking at one of the pieces of furniture in the back of the rental truck. The one that really caught my attention was an antique rocker with a red fabric back. It was made of dark wood and was small and squatty as though it had been designed for someone who might be considered tiny by today’s standards. I know it was stupid, I could have hit something, but the chair in the back of the truck looked exactly like my mother’s—and that was handed down to her from her mother, who stood a whopping five feet tall when she was young. Anyway, once I was in the spot and I saw that Skip was a bit tweaked by my parking faux pax, I decided to push his buttons a bit. He’d been hitting mine hard lately, so it was time to pay him back.

  As I left him and headed off to find the manager’s apartment, I swear he was watching me. He’s cute, but his spring is wound way too tight. Guy needs to loosen up. If I wasn’t going to be leaving as soon as I had my money—how’s that for positive thinking?—I might be interested in taking the guy on as a project. You know, teach him to enjoy life a little. But right now, I had work to do.

  The manager’s apartment wasn’t hard to find. Little “Office” signs all along the way guided me and there was even a little sign on the door. Talk about uptown. I heard music coming from inside. It sounded vaguely familiar. I knocked and waited.

  A tall, heavyset woman opened the door. She had a full head of graying hair that she let hang loose around her shoulders. She should know it would look better up. That lioness hairdo might work on Lady Gaga, but on the sixty-year-old version? Not so much. Her makeup wasn’t too terribly overdone—for a hooker. That went for her clothing, also. A cropped blouse tied at the waist and a pair of skintight capris completed the look. To top it all off, she was chewing gum. I wondered if this was the woman I’d spoken to earlier on the phone. She was certainly in the right age bracket.

  “Hi, I’m Roxanne Tanner.”

  The woman’s eyes twinkled. Beneath all that mascara and eyeliner, there was a spark of recognition. Then she coughed. That settled it, this was the voice. “I heard about that on the news just a few minutes ago. You’re the one whose father was kidnapped and held in 4. I can’t believe Stella’s dead.”

  I nodded. Tears seemed to be pushing at my eyelids again. “I wondered if you might be able to tell me anything about the man who rented that apartment.”

  “They say you shot Stella.”

  “Actually, it was one of the kidnappers who shot her. I was trying to get the gun away from him when it went off.”

  The manager stared at the floor a few feet away for a moment. To my surprise, she started to blow a bubble with the gum she’d been chewing. She winked, “Got my 40th reunion in a couple of hours.”

  Oh gawd, I thought, a picture of a hundred seniors dressed like hookers and barflies rushed into my mind. “How nice,” I said. “I won’t take up much more of your time, but did Stella rent her own apartment?”

  “She did, but she was hardly ever there after she met that ex-con boyfriend of hers.”

  “Jimmy Dane?”

  “It was lust at first sight for those two. She’d been here a couple of months when they—what do you kids call it? Oh yeah, hooked up.”

  The thought of who the landlady might be hooking up with tonight was enough to make me want to swear off sex. I shoved that thought as far away as possible. It wasn’t far enough. “Did they know each other from before?”

  She cocked her head slightly, then shook it side to side. “I doubt it. She rented the apartment after I evicted him. That was for nonpayment. It didn’t have anything to do with his time in prison.”

  “Yeah, you said he was an ex-con.”

  “He’d been paroled after doing five years for attempted kidnapping.”

  “You knowingly rent to ex-cons?”

  “Not usually, but in his case I did. He’d done hi
s time. It wasn’t like he was a sex-offender. He kidnapped his five-year-old son after his wife started doing drugs. Least ways, that’s what he said. Course, then he didn’t pay his rent, so I had to get rid of him. He was a nice enough kid, but he didn’t have any money.”

  I thought about the news story Skip and I had read earlier. Had Stella and Dane gotten along because they were both criminals? I smiled. Here I was stereotyping people. And look at me. Would I get along with them, too?

  “What’s so funny?” she asked.

  “Oh, sorry, I was just thinking how ironic life can be. Say, did you know that Stella might have had a criminal record also?”

  “Not till after she was here. I met her one day in the laundry room. We started talking and next thing I know she’s telling me how she got arrested for shoplifting, but she was innocent and it was someone else who looked like her that stole the stuff.”

  “It wasn’t shoplifting, it was armed robbery. And it wasn’t mistaken identity, she made a deal with the DA to testify against the guy she was with—Jimmy Dane.”

  Her jaw fell wide open. A few moments later, she recovered enough to speak again. “I can’t believe how some people will lie to your face like that!”

  I nodded. “I hear you. It’s a bitch getting some people to tell the truth.” Smooth, Roxy. So smooth. I was at the top of my game.

  “Well, I’m damned glad they’re both gone. What else do you know about them?”

  “Not much, that’s why I came here. I was hoping you might let me into Stella’s apartment. I might be able to learn more about her.”

  She stroked her chin. “That’s kind of irregular. Isn’t that considered a crime scene?”

  “Nothing happened in her place, just the other one. The crime took place in—” The words caught in my throat. I coughed. “In the other apartment.”

  “You’re a tough one, coming back here like this.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that, but put on a smile to reinforce the impression. “If I get something good, I can tell you and you’ll have more to talk about at your reunion.”

  She stammered, “I—wouldn’t.”

  I winked. “No problem. Just between us girls, this ought to be pretty spicy stuff. You’ll be the center of attention.”

  She couldn’t stop from grinning, much as she tried. Finally, she bit at her lower lip, but it didn’t help. Her eyes widened. “You’ll tell me what you find?”

  I extended my hand, “Pinky swear.”

  Five minutes later, after having pinky-promised my new BFF Marjorie that I’d spill all the beans when I was done, I was standing alone in Stella’s living room. A faded putrid-green couch with worn cushions took up most of one wall. Next to it was a rattan end table with a glass top, behind that, a torchiere lamp. On the wall next to the entry, a small entertainment center housed an old TV and a component stereo system, a couple of speakers sat on the floor on either side of that. Stella also had a nifty collection of CDs in a wire tower. I’d had no idea that she was such a music buff. My opinion changed as I glanced through her collection. Her taste ran almost exclusively to country. I spotted a couple of the obligatory Kenny G and Michael Bolton cases, but other than that, this girl was country all the way, except for her surfboard and paddle.

  Another thing I’d never realized about Stella was that she paddle surfed. And apparently, she was proud of it. I guessed her board to be about nine feet long, too tall to stand upright in one of these apartments. It rested horizontally on the wall on a couple of brackets. The paddle hung on a separate bracket just outside the bedroom door. The idea of using sports equipment as design elements had never occurred to me before, but why not?

  The room was neat and tidy, nothing out of place. It was probably easy to keep the place this way because she spent a lot of time at Jimmy Dane’s according to Marjorie. I went into the kitchen and checked the refrigerator, which smelled heavenly. The aroma flooded the room when I opened the door. I expected to find an open can of coffee in there, but it only contained a half quart of stale milk, two yogurts, and an orange. Closer inspection revealed a little sachet that hung on a lacy ribbon from the interior light. The little packet contained a few tablespoons of ground coffee. I took a last whiff before closing the door.

  The freezer had the heavenly coffee aroma, but the food supply wasn’t any better. There was the can of coffee, another sachet, and a few frozen entrees. Stella obviously wasn’t a gourmet cook. Of course, neither was I. We’d compared notes on that subject a couple of times while she’d worked for me. I chuckled at the memory of our last food conversation. We’d agreed that our best cooking skills were in picking good restaurants—and men who knew their way around a kitchen.

  I checked a few of the cabinets, but found only a sparse sampling of cookware, dishes and glasses. With the kitchen a bust, I went into the bedroom. Stella’s penchant for minimalism was apparent in this room also—a bed, a dresser, and a nightstand. She really had put all her money into cosmetic surgery and clothes. I checked the dresser drawers. Oh, Frederick’s all the way. Everything from the latest in no lines to see-throughs. My eyes nearly bugged out when I found something Stella probably called a nightie. Sorry, but I just couldn’t help myself. I pulled it out and held it up. Three pieces, sort of. A bra—if you could call it that, panties—which were almost nonexistent and I’m pretty damn sure had teeth marks, and a cover-up that left little to the imagination other than how long it would take to get it off. I felt my face going hot as I stuffed the set back into the dresser. I was about to close the drawer when I heard noises coming from the living room.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Skip

  Skip realized that his conversation with the old woman had given them both something to think about. Each seemed to be in some sort of contemplative state—she probably wondering how she could be so judgmental, he remorseful over letting two kidnappers escape—when Davy approached.

  “Hey, Skip. Can you move your car?”

  Skip started at the intrusion. He looked out at the parking lot and saw that another car had parked behind the moving van. “What happened?”

  “I finished up. Everything else is going to storage.”

  “You can’t get out?” The situation didn’t look that bad to Skip, but he wasn’t the one driving. His car was parked about ten feet in front of the truck, the new car about twenty feet behind, and Roxy’s car—which was taking up one of those tenant spots—was almost directly opposite the new car. To get the truck out, Davy would have to move forward, jockey the truck to the middle of the lot, then back out through a space several feet wider than the truck itself. The last thing he needed was for Davy to hit the Porsche. If he needed to move the car, so be it.

  Skip continued, “Looks like we’ve got you boxed in.”

  Davy’s chest moved up and down rapidly. His breaths came fast and shallow. “So, can you?”

  “Sure.”

  Relief seemed to wash over Davy. “Thank goodness.” He crossed his arms over his chest and stared at the lot. He shook his head in a negative fashion as he turned back to Skip. “Man, I can barely drive that thing forward. But backing it up between two cars? I need someone to guide me out.”

  The woman from the apartment stepped out to join them. “How come you didn’t tell that guy who parked behind you to move?”

  “I tried, but he just ignored me. Acted like he was deaf or something. Asshole.” Davy winced. “Sorry.”

  The other tenant said, “Don’t worry, Davy, I even say ‘shit’ now and again.” She winked. “Barbara Allman. Welcome to the neighborhood.”

  Davy shook Barbara’s hand enthusiastically. “At least I know somebody now.”

  Barbara squinted at him. “Just no loud parties, understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Don’t ma’am me, either, I hate that. Along with loud parties.”

  “Yes, ma—sorry, Barbara.” Davy glanced at his watch. “I hate to rush, but I’ve still gotta get to the stora
ge place and then return this heap or they’ll charge me for another day.”

  “No problem. I can guide you out. Let me move my car first,” Skip said.

  As they walked to the lot, Davy pointed at the Porsche. “That’s a nice 911. I don’t even want to take a remote chance of hitting it. Put it on the other side of that guy’s car, but park parallel. That way I’ll have an extra few feet.”

  “I don’t know. What if another tenant comes in while I’m taking up two spaces?”

  Davy thumped himself on the chest. “Look, man, blame it on me. Besides, I’ll be backing up Big Bertha here. Who’s gonna want to be near that, huh?”

  His laugh was nervous and he had beads of sweat on his forehead.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Roxy

  I stood stock-still in the bedroom of Stella’s apartment. Maybe I was getting paranoid, but for some reason I didn’t dare make a sound. The noises from the front room continued. I listened. Slip. Clunk. Slip. Clunk.

  Whoever was out there was searching for something. My first reaction was to hide in the closet. While I’d lied to Marjorie about it, the truth was that the cops probably were interested in Stella’s place. If the cops had sent someone up here, I’d have a lot of explaining to do. I could always lie to them and tell them I was thinking about renting the apartment, but they could expose that with one quick trip downstairs—a trip they would have already made. Marjorie knew I was here, why hadn’t she warned me? Why hadn’t the cop announced himself?

  Maybe it was Marjorie and she’d decided to join in the hunt. But, again, why hadn’t she called out when she’d entered the apartment? As the noises continued, I ruled out both Marjorie and the cops.

  Either of them would have said something. That left Skip. I ruled him out, too. Skip would have wanted me to know he was here—unless he was playing another one of those stupid little mind games of his. That meant he wouldn’t announce himself and would try to scare me. Well, as the saying goes, paybacks are hell. And that meant it was my turn. I considered my options, how I might return the favor for scaring me last night. But what if it wasn’t him?