The Zen Man, page 24
Heavy clunking footsteps interrupted my thoughts. Garrett and Ziggy wove their way through the kitchen, each carrying a box. Garrett, smelling like a grass hut on fire, stopped at the table, and after shifting his box and pulling something from his Rasta hoodie pocket, set Brianna’s cell phone on the table.
“Found this in that storage room,” he said.
Laura stared at it, frowned. “Why does this cell phone look familiar?”
“It’s Brianna’s,” I answered.
“How’d it get…” She looked toward the stairs, back to me. “In the storage room?”
My cell phone rang. I glanced at the caller ID, couldn’t place the number, answered it anyway. Couldn’t be worse news than the feds luring my girlfriend into a sting, announcing they were my new roommates, and promising thousands of dollars to an organized crime lord to kill me.
After a few moments, I terminated the call.
“Have a lead on where Scraggy Scarpello might be headed when he leaves Denver,” I said to Quinn. “After all, he gave you the slip in Boston. Might do the same here, too.”
“Who was that on the phone, Mr. Le—Rick?”
“The pal of mine who just finishing running a pixel software program on the photo Dixon used as a screen saver. Seems the picture was taken by a camera purchased in Nevis, an island nation in the West Indies.”
“Extremely tight privacy laws in their banking industry,” Quinn said.
“Yeah, probably easy-breezy for Scraggy to hide assets there.”
I could see the proverbial wheels turning in Quinn’s head. He was taking what I’d said in, analyzing it, and if I was correctly interpreting that look on his face, I was getting some r-e-s-p-e-c-t.
“Good to know,” he finally said.
“Back to this Brody meeting,” I continued, “I’ll tell him I want to put a hit on me because I want Laura to have my life insurance policy. Ten grand upfront, forty on conclusion, and I give him a copy of the flash drive to show good faith—”
“Absolutely not,” interrupted Laura, emotion filling her eyes. “He might as well shoot you right then before the FBI has a chance to do squat.” She turned to Quinn. “I’m in. Let’s make that call.”
Forty-Five
Not one, not two, not both, not either
—Zen saying
At eleven the next morning, I knocked on Brianna’s front door. Back in the day, it’d been dingy white with peeling paint in the top right corner. Now, it was smooth, a pewter color like the surface of the ocean on an overcast day. Had to have been Joe’s choice as Brianna loved pinks and yellows in her home. Funny how such a rough-and-tumble girl went all soft and fairy when it came to her house. I blamed it on that peculiar southern trait where a home is treated like the dream of a long-ago lazy, still summer’s day, even if one had put down roots thousands of miles from the Mason-Dixon line.
A latch clicked, and the door opened. Brianna stood there, a washed-out version of her former self. The angular, jaunty imp had turned into a raw-boned, lifeless shell. A drawn face crowded by a mess of blond waves, wearing a shapeless pink robe and sheepskin slippers spotted with caked mud.
“Well, ah’ll be,” she whispered in a ragged voice. With a start, she patted her hair, a stricken look on her face.
“Should’ve called first,” I mumbled, started to turn. “I’ll come back another time.”
“No,” she said quickly, “it’s okay.” She stepped back, opened the door wide. “This is one of my days off from work, so we’re lazing it, not quite dressed for the world but presentable.” She laughed, or I suppose that’s what the empty sound was supposed to be.
How often I’d walk in here, darn near suffocating in the rich, greasy scent of frying chicken mingled with baking peach pie. I knew her tastes in music were more Dave Matthews, Dixie Chicks, Keith Urban, but for me she’d play a CD I’d given her, the Dead’s complex, orchestral Terrapin Station.
I paused, my senses snapping back to the present. The only scents were coffee, the only sounds the ticking of the grandfather clock and a distant scramble of music and voices from another room, probably a TV show.
I looked around at the new furniture, all of it coordinated in various shades of beige. Not the hodge-podge of flea-market bargains and family heirlooms that used to fill this space. A built-in bookcase had been added to the far wall. Toward the top, an entire shelf was dedicated to photos of Joe, the largest being a professional portrait of him in his Arapahoe County Sheriff’s uniform, the American flag forever unfurled behind him.
“I’ll cut to it. Tell me why you killed—”
I stopped as a little girl in yellow flannel PJs covered with smiling cowboys on horses ran into the room. Seeing me, she halted behind Brianna, peeking at me with bright blue eyes. Her hair was curly, like her mother’s but darker. More of an auburn. The color of my hair before I went the salt-n-pepper route.
“Rose, darlin’,” Brianna said quietly, stroking her little girl’s hair, “this is Rick Levine.”
The little girl held up her green-monster toy. “This is my Shrek. I am going to get Donkey next. Then they will find the princess.”
“She got a Shrek doll for Christmas,” explained Brianna, “and DVDs for all the Shrek movies. Which one are you watching on mommy’s laptop, hon?”
She felt up two chubby fingers. “They’re having dinner with her parents.” She tucked a thumb in her pouty lips.
“Mommy and Mr. Levine are going to talk, okay, sugah? Go back to your room and finish watching your show. We’ll make cupcakes with Shrek green frosting when it’s over, just like Mommy promised.”
Clapping, the little girl skipped out of the room.
After she left, I glanced at the photo of Joe in front of the flag. His eyes were gray. Mine are blue. Blue, recessive gene.
“Rick,” Brianna whispered, stepping closer, “I didn’t kill Deborah. I swear on my daughter’s life.”
I shook, couldn’t control myself. Stepped forward, my insides roiling with anger and confusion, and I grabbed her arm. “And my daughter’s life? Am I really her father?”
“You’re hurting me.”
“Answer me!”
“She’s your child,” she cried softly. “Trust me, I know.”
“Were you seeing Joe before I was given the boot? Expect me to trust anything you say after you screwed around behind my back?”
“I didn’t screw around—”
“Liar!”
“Rose, please, she’ll hear this.”
I lowered my voice to a growl. “Everyone, including that crazy cousin of yours, told me you were with Joe before giving me the boot.”
She shook her head fervently. “You? Believing hearsay? Lindy always had a thing for you…”
Her words trailed off as she glanced up at the ceiling and rolled her head slowly from side to side as though her very thoughts were battling it out in her mind. When she looked back at me, it was as though someone else had stepped into her skin. Her face was blank, her eyes dim. A single tear spilled down her cheek.
“Want a drink?” she asked dully.
“I’m not staying.” I released my hold, hating myself. Me, who’d conducted hundreds of interviews as an attorney, just as many as a private investigator, knew how to sway, cajole, manipulate with words to dig for the information I wanted. But I’d lost it with Brianna. Stripped her and myself of dignity.
I fished in my pocket. “Here’s your phone.”
She looked at her cell in my hand. “How’d you—?”
“It was lying on the front seat.” I pressed my thumb and index finger on my temples, closed my eyes. “Look, I’m sorry for acting like an asshole. The other day in the Jeep, today…”
“Hush.”
I opened my eyes, met a look of concern in her velvety brown ones.
“I’m scared,” I admitted.
“Me, too, darlin’. Me, too.” With a small, sad smile, she dropped her hand, took the phone from me. “I reckon you didn’t find whatever it was you were lookin’ for.”
“No, I didn’t.”
Her tone was so sincere, her look so sweetly incredulous, I started to doubt myself about everything I’d been thinking. “Maybe I will take that drink. Root beer if you got it.”
“Lemonade?”
“Close enough.”
I settled onto one end of the couch while she exited to the kitchen. I eyed the mess of women’s magazines on the coffee table, a tattered yellow blanket in a child’s rocking chair, a picture of Brianna holding a newborn on the fireplace ledge. Next to it, a photo of Rose, her face covered in what looked to be chocolate ice cream, grinning at the camera with such innocent glee, my heart ached.
Brianna came back, set a frosty glass on the coffee table in front of me. “Lemonade for you.” She settled onto the couch next to me with her glass.
“Lemonade for you, too?”
“Plus a splash of spirits.” She took a sip, swallowed. “What happened to Mellow?”
“After Deborah’s will is probated, I’ll probably make a bid on it.”
“You can do that?”
I nodded, even as a little voice inside said screw it. Mellow was another life, a scrap of an age-old lullaby.
She mindlessly pulled a loose thread on her robe. “Deborah, she may have had the goods on someone—and that person killed her to stop her from ever revealing it. Any idea whose career, reputation, financial well-being could’ve been crushed by something she had or knew?”
I thought of Lou, who despite his bumbling hysteria had a cold, hard reason to rid the world of Wicked. And then there was Iris who may have been hot for Wicked, but nobody got homicidal about hiding their lesbian tendencies in this day and age. Like those faux-lesbos at the party, it was cool to make-out with the same sex and be photographed doing it. Justin was too much of a party twit to do anything but snort, swill, and manage to get himself to court on time.
Brianna stared out the window, bit her lip. “What I’ve guessed has made it to the wrong ears. The killer doesn’t want me around because I’ve correctly guessed the cause of death and I’m stirring the waters, dredging up the truth. I’ve become a problem.” She took a long sip.
A chill skittered across my skin. “Who have you told?”
She stared at her drink as though the answers lay within. “You. Sam. Actually, everybody at your place the other night. Finally got Bill Lashley to return my call, told him too. He wasn’t happy I accidentally saw evidence—his emphasis, not mine. Told me to mind my own business. Prick.”
“William Lashley doesn’t want anybody to question his pronouncement that stabbing was the cause of death.”
But Brianna was somewhere else in her thoughts. Holding onto the arm of the couch, she pushed herself to a standing position, crossed to the picture window. Looking outside, she said quietly, “Somebody came back to my house the other night. They were in my Jeep.”
Her house sat at the end of a cul-de-sac. Didn’t make a lot of sense for anyone to drive here unless they had a reason.
“What makes you think that?”
“Dirt—a dirt clod—was on the floor, passenger side. I’m no neatnik.” She glanced over her shoulder at me. “I still don’t know what those silly wire hangers are for.”
I’d always teased her about her clothes lying all over the bed, floor, dresser, everywhere but her bedroom closet, and didn’t she know those wire contraptions were for more than dangling empty in her closet?
She looked back out the window, her drink in one hand, fiddling with the sash on her robe with the other. “But I know that dirt hadn’t been on the Jeep floor earlier ‘cause I’d had to fumble under the seat looking for Rose’s Shrek doll. There were no dirt clods then.”
“Got ’em on your slippers.”
She looked down, shrugged. “I helped a neighbor look for her cat the other night. Stepped in some mud. Guess I didn’t get it all off. But the dirt in my car wasn’t from my slippers. I never wear these to drive.”
“Don’t you lock your car?”
“Since the other night, yes.”
“Maybe somebody wanted to steal the Jeep?”
She was silent for a few moments. “If somebody had wanted to steal it, they could’ve jimmied the ignition. No, somebody wanted something else. Maybe a more convenient place from which to watch my house.”
Pivoting, she paced to the hallway, stood there listening to the muted sounds of Shrek. Satisfied the little girl was occupied, she returned to the couch and sat down, so close our knees almost touched. Taking another sip, she looked at me over the top of the class. I could see flecks of gold in her russet eyes.
Lowering the glass, she continued, “That peeping tom…I think he came back, didn’t want to chance being seen by my neighbor again, so he slid into the car for a vantage surveillance point. Maybe he was there a short while, maybe until dawn.”
“And maybe you’re getting carried away with maybes.”
She gestured toward a box on top of the bookcase. “I keep Joe’s gun in there. Just in case.”
“Is it loaded?”
“Yes.”
I looked up at the box, glad it was out of reach of Rose, but that didn’t mean I liked it in the house. The time it takes to load a gun gives a person time to reflect, not act rashly, but a loaded gun? Open invitation to stupidity.
I watched her down another mouthful. “Making this a mid-day habit?”
She wiped the corner of her mouth, flashed me a spare-me-the-sermon look. “It’s almost five. Official cocktail hour.”
“Bad idea to be boozing at home with your little girl.”
“I’m not boozing. I’m coping. Never more than two drinks a day, Girl Scout’s honor.” When she gestured to her cell, I noticed her chewed nails. “So whose numbers were you lookin’ for?”
“Walt Dixon. Brody Scarpello.”
She frowned. “Those are the names you asked me about the other day, right? Are they suspects in the murder?”
“Yes. Feds are involved now, too.”
She made a small o with her lips. “Who called in the big boys?”
“The big boys. They’re working another case, which appears to overlap mine. Laura and I have met with them.” I felt that dull throb in my gut again, thinking about Laura’s upcoming meeting with Brody.
Brianna shifted, and I caught the soft curve of her ample breast underneath the pink robe. Old memories surfaced…the silkiness of her skin, how she felt like liquid heat, the scent of baby powder after her baths. The long nights in her bed, the two of us on fire, uncontainable. Booze and drugs had fueled our greed for each other, but I’d taken the partying to the next step where it’d fueled my every waking moment. Sitting here now, I knew it’d been smart of her to cut me loose—smart and sane—and maybe one day I’d be man enough to admit it to her face.
Time seemed to slow as I watched her hand—thin, trembling—reach over and touch mine.
“Rick,” she whispered.
A traitorous heat spiked through me. I liked to think I was stronger with my sobriety, but at this moment, I felt weak. Wanted an escape from my problems, my life. How easy it’d be to lean over, lower her head back onto the couch, fit my lips to hers, taste her…
With great effort, I eased my hand from hers and stood, jammed my paws into my pockets.
“Time to go,” I rasped. I turned, headed to the front door.
“Wait.”
I halted, my back to her.
“I still love you.” In the following beats of silence, I knew she wanted to hear me say the same. There was a part of me that wanted to acknowledge that I still cared, maybe even loved, but I knew better than to go there. Instead we listened to the ticking of the clock, a child’s distant laughter.
“I’m trying to save you,” she continued in a trembling voice, “not only because I believe you’re innocent, but because we—you, me, Rose—we could be a family.” Her voice broke on family. She started crying softly, the sound pummeling my heart. “Just like we’d always dreamed, remember?”
I’d be lying if I said some part of me didn’t still want that life. That’s the southern pull on a soul, luring you back to memories of long-ago still summer evenings. Of a home where I’d watch my little girl grow up, smell the scents of peach pie, hear Terrapin Station playing in the background. Nights filled with long kisses and scents of baby power.
“Scarlet Begonia,” I murmured, “I had to learn the hard way to let you go.”
I crossed to the bookcase, lifted the box, and nestled it under my arm.
“What’re you doin’?”
“I’m watching out for my little girl.”
She may have said more, but I wasn’t listening. I knew I had to make it to that front door, open it, and close it forever on old dreams. The past was in the past, and I needed, wanted, to stay grounded in the present.
On the way home, I called a sergeant I used to know at the Denver PD, explained about the recent peeping tom, asked if he could set up some drive-bys on Brianna’s place. He owed me a favor, although we didn’t refer to it. He said it’d be set up starting tonight.
I didn’t turn on the radio. Wasn’t in the mood to hear another lovesick country song. Instead, I watched the afternoon turn to dusk, my thoughts deepening with the encroaching night. I thought about the day my dad was walking to a studio session in L.A., carrying his trumpet, and just like that—dropped dead of a heart attack. We all thought he’d live to be a hundred—he was so full of life with so many plans for his future, but nobody knows what’s really in store.
Me, I maybe had only a few weeks of freedom left. The preliminary hearing would decide that. Or maybe I’d be found not guilty, and have years, decades, of freedom ahead. Or, like dad, life was a lot briefer than I hoped.
However short or long, I didn’t want to be my old impulsive self, grasping at dreams on a whim. Leave that to the drunks and junkies. I wanted to be conscious, aware, real.
I wanted to go home, hold Laura.
Forty-Six
“Zen martini: A martini with no vermouth at all. And no gin, either.”
