A Hot and Sultry Night for Crime, page 31
“Say, do you eat fish?” He leaned toward the open space.
“Everything but crab.”
“I know how to barbecue fish,” he said. He sounded like a little kid saying, “Watch me ride my bike.”
I waited.
“Would you, uh, like to come over sometime and try it?”
“Sounds great!” I said with real gusto. “What can I bring?”
He looked startled, as though he hadn’t really expected me to say yes. “Uh, na-na-nothing. I can fix dinner.”
“When would be a good time?” I pressed.
He rubbed his shiny forehead with the fingers of his right hand as though he was trying to find the answer there. “Tomorrow? Tomorrow night would be good. Is seven o’clock all right?”
“That’s super.” I fumbled for a pen and a piece of paper. “What’s your address?”
This time there was no hesitation in his voice. “1234 Main Street.”
Could this be bingo?
By dawn the next morning, I sat in my cousin Bea’s Honda drinking a cup of lukewarm McDonald’s coffee. Still sweating. It was going to be 102 today, and although the sun hadn’t been awake long, it was on the job.
I was parked on the curb a block or so from John Wistrich’s house, armed with a pair of small binoculars and the newspaper. So far, in spite of the Neighborhood Watch signs I’d seen, no one had asked me what I was doing there. Bea’s car hardly looked like something a burglar would drive. She’d been my backup plan the night before since I’d arranged to call her at a certain time, told her where I was headed, and asked her to call out the cavalry in the event that I didn’t call her in time. Of course I had.
At 6:43 a.m., John Wistrich came out of his house and got into his pickup. I watched him drive down the block, thankfully the same direction I was facing so I didn’t have to cover my face with the newspaper.
I waited another thirty minutes to make sure that he wasn’t returning and then, after grabbing a dog leash and a picture of Mrs. Fierce, my cock-a-schnauz, I got to work. My first step was to ring his doorbell. I rang and rang, and no one answered. Of course I knew he wouldn’t, since I’d seen him leave. This was all for show. I made a big pretense of trying to look in the windows. Impossible to see anything, since his blinds were drawn. I called out his name, although as far as I knew, no one was listening.
Finally, I quickly stepped around the side of his house. His backyard was fenced with that old redwood slat fencing. I peeked through the crack between the gate and the fence, scouting for a watchdog. After making catlike sounds and getting nothing in return, I decided the coast was clear.
It was no trick to reach over the top of the gate and unlatch it.
The yard was neat and clean and bricked. Not surprising, I guess, since John was a mason. No sign of a recently dug grave. There were a few struggling oleanders along the far fence and a built-in barbecue on his masonry deck. Probably the scene of tonight’s crime against fish.
I went to the back door and tried it. Locked. It was a good one, too. I’m not the best lockpicker in the universe, but I’m good enough to know I’m no match for a Schlage.
I peeked through the window in the top part of the door. It was the kitchen. Wall telephone, gas stove, and what looked like the morning newspaper sprawled across yellow tile countertops. Very cheery. John appeared fairly organized, as the small Formica table was set, I assumed, for our dinner tonight. In my assessment, there was nothing extraordinary in what I was seeing.
The drapes were drawn on the second window facing the backyard.
I was disappointed. I don’t know what I’d expected, but there was nothing suspicious here. Short of breaking in, there weren’t any clues. Sure, I was on Main Street and Main is what Marisal had written down on her scratch pad. But there were a lot of other houses on Main, too. If in fact the clue had meant Main Street.
Besides, I go a lot on gut instinct, and none of my antennae had been up on this guy. He was a nerd, but that didn’t make him a murderer or the David Copperfield of disappearing women. Besides, it was too damned hot to be playing Nancy Drew.
I had just pulled the gate behind me when I heard her.
“Who on earth are you, and what are you doing in Johnny’s yard?”
I jumped and faced my inquisitor, a small elderly woman with a face like one of those shriveled apple dolls. She was wearing an apron frosted with flour and armed with a rolling pin.
“I, uh, I’m looking for my dog.” I pulled the leash out of my hip pocket and dangled it in front of her, I hoped convincingly.
“Well that gate was closed. Mrs. Murphy saw you open it,” she said suspiciously.
“Mrs. Murphy?”
She pointed to herself.
“I heard a noise in there.” I pointed to the backyard. “I thought it might be Ginger.” I fumbled in my Levi’s again and pulled out the picture of Mrs. Fierce and handed it to her.
She squinted, I suppose in an effort to make out what she was looking at.
“Humph.” Her faint gray eyes looked me up and down. “Snooping is what you’re doing, miss.”
“No, really, I lost my dog.” I threw my hands up in supplication and tried to look sincere.
“We got us a Neighborhood Watch program here and don’t take kindly to strange people snooping around.”
“I’m really sorry. Obviously, I made a mistake.”
“You sure did, missy. John’s got his own dog. Now, be on your way.”
I retrieved Mrs. Fierce’s picture and got the hell out of there, fervently hoping that Mrs. Murphy would not see fit to tell John Wistrich that she’d caught a stranger trespassing in his yard.
“How long have you lived here?” I asked in an effort to keep the conversation going. It was like pulling hen’s teeth. If anything, John was even quieter on his home turf than he’d been in the restaurant. The few times we’d gotten a conversation going this evening, he seemed to get easily distracted, changing the subject abruptly.
“Two years.” He aimed a lemon wedge at his salmon and ended up squirting me. If he noticed that his aim was a bit off, be said nothing as I wiped my face with the paper napkin I’d been issued.
Tinkerbell, the Tibetan terrier, was under the table. Although the TV was blaring in the living room, the terrier was sound asleep, his head on my boot.
I’d already complimented Wistrich on the fish—a mild lie, since it was the driest piece of salmon I’d ever eaten.
In the living room, I could hear scenes from The Lion King. It had been playing since my arrival.
“What was your favorite part?”
“Pardon me?” I had no clue what he was talking about.
“In this one.” He waved a fork vaguely in the direction of the living room.
“Ah...” Boy, I was in medium trouble now. I hadn’t had enough time to study all the Disney movies, although of course I’d professed to be an aficionado when I’d answered Wistrich’s ad. I’d sort of passed a pop quiz given to me by Ginny Eske’s kids. Fortunately, I’d crammed on The Lion King. “The part where Mufasa, king of the lions, tells Simba he’ll always be with him.”
He beamed, his mouth full of fish. “Me, too.”
I had liked The Lion King. Its themes of guilt and redemption reminded me a lot of Hamlet. Somehow, I suspected that was not a discussion I was going to have this evening.
I was beginning to think that Marisal had disappeared after her date with Mr. Wonderful.
I helped him clear the table, and then he said, “I’ve got a surprise for you.”
My hand instinctively reached around to my back. I could feel the butt of my .38 holstered there, hidden by my overshirt.
He returned with two pieces of mud pie. They looked great, covered with what looked like chocolate fudge topping and pieces of pecans. The perfect dessert for a hot, sultry night.
“You didn’t make these, did you?” I had to ask, for they really did look homemade.
He shook his head. “My mom. She loves to cook.”
Mud pie hardly qualified as cooking, but I wasn’t going to mention that.
We finished the rich dessert, and then I helped him with the dishes. It worked out great because he was washing and I was drying, a responsibility I take seriously, since a good dish dryer can always get the dishes clean.
It was finally time for me to chum a little. When he wasn’t looking, I dropped the dishrag on the floor.
“Oh dear,” I said in an effort to get his attention.
I bent over to retrieve it, thankful that I’d worn a blousy shirt so he couldn’t make out the .38. As I bent over to retrieve the wet towel, I made sure he had a good look at my butt. Like using nymph flies for trout, this usually works. It’s been my experience that most men when faced with a bent-over woman see this as a sexual invitation. Hell, when I accidentally dropped towels in the kitchen with my ex-husband, I was usually rewarded with getting dry humped against the kitchen sink.
John Wistrich wasn’t quite that blatant. He waited until I retrieved the towel and then turned to me and quickly made his move. I turned my head and felt his wet tongue slide across my cheek. Yuck.
Remembering I was doing this for work, not pleasure, I turned back to him and let him kiss me. There was nothing tentative as he grabbed me in a bear hug and pressed his lips to mine. Foreplay apparently wasn’t much of an issue, as his right hand moved quickly up my side. I clenched my arm tight against my ribs to stop his campaign.
We’d just gone from zero to sixty in seconds flat. “Whoa,” I muttered.
“Let’s go somewhere comfortable,” he muttered into my hair.
I tried to push him away, but he held me tight. He was a lot stronger than I’d thought. “John.”
Still, he held me as he whispered crazy love-type things in my hair.
I squirmed. I was beginning to get worried. I needed my hands free for my gun in case I needed it.
He was kissing my neck, which under normal conditions would have been very fruitful. But right now all I could think of was my gun.
He was walking me across the kitchen floor now, toward the hallway.
I didn’t need my investigative skills to know where we were headed.
“John, really, no,” I said as firmly as I could with my arms pinned. I was really getting worried. Is this what had happened to Marisal? I stomped down hard with my boot, catching him on his instep. Suddenly I was free.
I took a deep breath and stepped away from him. “Oh.” He seemed startled, his eyes glassy. “Gosh. I’m sorry.”
I took a quick peek. His pants were bulging with something I suspected was not a pickle.
Had I been on the way to being date raped? I wasn’t sure, since I’d never felt threatened enough to really fight him. On the cusp, sure. But not quite there. I didn’t want to push it.
“I think I’d better be going.”
“Oh, please, please stay. I’m sorry I got carried away. Say, I could put on The Little Mermaid. I’ve got the Disney remake. Have you seen it?”
“Dozens of times,” I lied. “But it’s late, and I have to be at the hospital early in the morning.” I’d told him I was a nurse. Another lie. They were beginning to stack up.
He opened the front door for me and flipped on the porch light. A blast of hot air greeted me. I could barely make out the walkway.
I held out my hand. “Thank you for a wonderful evening.” And thank you, Jesus, for giving me those words to tumble out of my mouth.
“Say, would you consider going to a movie with me sometime soon?”
I glanced downstairs and noticed that his friend had calmed down.
“Sure. I’d like that, “I said as I skipped down his front porch steps, leaving him in the light of the porch.
I was almost at Priscilla when his porch lights went out. I fumbled in my purse for my truck keys, cranky with the heat and the evening. Just as I unlocked my truck door and the light from the cab spilled out, I felt something.
I jumped when I saw Mrs. Murphy, the nosy neighbor standing next to me.
This time the rolling pin had been replaced with a gun. A major gun. Like a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun.
“Close the door quietly, missy,” she said.
Her house was not dissimilar to the one I’d just left two doors down, other than the prominent Neighborhood Watch sticker in the front window. It was as neat and tidy as John Wistrich’s was, but this one was filled with the smell of fresh bread baking. Not too comforting, given the shotgun.
“Back there. I don’t want to burn my bread.” We ended up in the kitchen.
“Good thing Johnny didn’t walk you to your car,” Mrs. Murphy said as she leaned over and squinted at her kitchen timer. I could hear the steady tick-tick-tick of the mechanism. “But then I knew he wouldn’t. Scared of the dark, he is.”
I thought she was taking this Neighborhood Watch thing to extremes.
“You should have left well enough alone, missy.”
“Look, I’m not a prowler. I was supposed to be there tonight. John invited me to dinner. Call him; he’ll tell you.”
“That’s one of the things I was talking about.” One? What in the hell was she talking about? “No one likes a snooper.”
“I can explain that.”
“And Mrs. Murphy saw you kiss him.” Jesus, the old hag had been spying on us. “He’s married, you know.”
‘Tm sorry. I didn’t know that.” Where had she gotten an illegal sawed-off shotgun? It didn’t much matter if she knew how to use it or not. At this range, she could hardly miss.
The good news, if there was any, was that I still had my .38 tucked in the back of my belt.
“He has a beautiful bride. Stupid boy, I don’t know why he ran that ad again. It just got you snooping around, stirring up his lust.”
I thought I was beginning to get the picture. “Come, you can meet her.”
My mouth went dry and my stomach plummeted.
She nodded to an enclosed porch attached to the kitchen. Herding me into the enclosure, she prodded me with the barrel of the shotgun as she pulled the chain for the overhead lightbulb. The porch was hot and still, without the benefit of the refrigeration from the house.
As the light snapped on, I saw a door to the outside. It had a deadbolt on it. I couldn’t make a run for it. She’d still nail me with the shotgun.
Although there were windows looking out on her dark yard, I still felt terribly confined in the small space occupied by me, Mrs. Murphy, and a chest-type freezer.
“Go ahead, open it.”
In spite of the heat, there was no way I wanted to open the cold, white chest.
She prodded me with the shotgun barrel. “Go ahead.”
Looking at Mrs. Murphy, I slowly lifted the lid to the freezer, pushing the top back against the wall.
And then I looked.
Deep in the freezer, Marisal Valdez was curled in a fetal position, face up. Her beautiful, big brown eyes had shriveled as the fluid in them had dried up. Dull and flat, they were framed with eyebrows resembling arctic caterpillars. She looked browner than I remembered, and her skin was splotched with random patches of a greenish mold. Her lips were pulled back from her small, shiny teeth in an unbecoming grimace, and her long black hair was stiff and encrusted with ice crystals.
My stomach lurched as the salmon threatened to reappear.
Marisal’s hands were folded over her chest. Her beautiful long fingernails that had always been a source of pride to her were ragged and broken, with the skin peeled back from the tips of her fingers. Her nails were covered with glacial blood.
My eyes drifted to the inside of the freezer lid that was scarred with deep scratches and blood where she had tried to claw her way out of her frozen grave.
“Jesus Christ,” I said, fighting tears.
“Isn’t she lovely?”
Balanced on Marisal’s bent knees was a wedding cake topper of a bride and groom. The figures were ancient, faded and cracked.
I pointed to it and took a deep breath. “That was yours, wasn’t it?”
“Oh yes,” she said.
Next to Marisal’s head was half a tin of frozen mud pie.
I fought the bile rising in my throat.
“He’ll never be afraid of the dark as long as his bride is with him.”
“What’s that?” I said, pointing above Marisal’s head. It was a ruse. I was hoping if I could get her close to me that maybe I could grab the barrel of the shotgun and deflect it from me.
“I don’t think so, missy.” The little old lady was very cagey.
Suddenly there was a loud ping as the kitchen timer went off.
Mrs. Murphy glanced for a fraction of a second toward the kitchen.
It was enough for me. Probably as good a chance as I’d ever get. I slammed into her while at the same time pushing the barrel of the shotgun toward the floor.
There was a deafening explosion as the pelleted load shattered the wood beneath us. I was vaguely aware of a smattering of pressure against my feet, but I held on for dear life, pushing Mrs. Murphy backward into the kitchen.
I pressed the barrel hard into her stomach, and the force of my action was enough to let the air out of her. She stumbled against the kitchen counter, all the while trying to hang onto the weapon.
I hit her hard in the stomach with my right elbow, and she started slipping to the ground. As she struggled to regain her balance, I pulled up hard on the stock of the shotgun and wrested it from her grasp.
She hit the floor hard as I turned the gun on her. She floundered around on the linoleum for a minute, grabbing her side.
“My hip!” She wailed. “My hip! I think I broke it.”
“So sue me,” I said, feeling not at all kindly toward her. I reached across the counter for her wall phone and dialed 911.
A few minutes later, I heard a police siren in the distance.
And then I heard the front door open.
“Hello?” The voice was tentative and familiar. I stepped over Mrs. Murphy so the shotgun could cover her and the kitchen entrance.
