Caskets & Conspiracies Page 2

  “Kiss her!” I demanded from my thoughts, willing the man to lean a little closer. My thoughts spilled out of my lips as I watched the target lean into the woman.

  “Kiss her,” I hissed through clenched teeth.

  “If you insist,” Ryder’s voice sounded in my ear. His lips met my cheek, and my eyes bulged as he kissed me.

  Gaining a grip on my own reality, I snapped a picture of the couple in the corner, in flagrante delicto, and then a second of Ryder and myself to cover my tracks.

  He pulled back, laughing, and stared at the second picture. “You’re one heck of a girl, you know that?”

  I tried to stop my cheeks from blazing and burning, but I was pretty sure I was out of luck on that one. It did not matter. I got the shot.

  He pulled my phone from my hands without so much as asking. “I need a copy of the good one.”

  He scrolled through the photographs while I held my tongue. I did not want him to see the other pictures or how much it bothered me that he was holding my cell phone, but he remained oblivious until he found what he was looking for. After just a moment, his phone buzzed in his pocket, and my phone was back in my hands without any fanfare.

  The bell at the door jingled, and a man walked in, immediately gaining Ryder’s attention. He nodded to the man and then looked back at me as he said, “I have a meeting. It’ll only be a minute.” He cleared his throat. “Look, my life just got turned upside down, but tonight has been really fun. The first fun I have had in a long time. Will you still be here in ten minutes?”

  “Maybe,” I replied, truthful for the first time that night.

  His fingers drummed on the counter for a second. The man he needed to meet sat in a corner booth and flashed his watch at Ryder. Renee, the queen of all good rumors, took note of it all. Meanwhile, I wondered who would have a meeting in a bar on the outskirts of town only a few minutes shy of midnight.

  Grabbing a napkin, Ryder pulled a pen from his jacket and scribbled something down. He pushed it toward me. “If you have to leave, call me later, okay?” I did not give him any indication that I would. It was the first crack in his confidence that I had seen all night. “Just think about it?”

  To appease him, I slipped the napkin in my handbag. “I’ll think about it.”

  Ryder looked me over one more time as if memorizing my features and then went to join his companion.

  Johnny slid in from the far side of the bar. “You’re wicked, you know that? I saw what you did.” He mimicked me in a girlie voice, “Oh, I don’t know how to use this phone to take a proper picture.”

  I had only ten minutes left to upload. I logged in to my account, cropped a couple of pictures, attached them to the e-mail, and pressed send. When I realized Johnny was still waiting for an answer, I shrugged. “It got it done, didn’t it?”

  The couple from the corner disbanded, the man leaving first and the woman not long after. My phone rang. I knew who it would be.

  “Hello, Wendy. Did you get my e-mail?”

  She was completely unwound, destroyed by the irrefutable proof that her boyfriend was seeing someone else. I could not even begin to make out her words. I should have felt bad, maybe even sympathetic, but I had seen it too many times. Between her sobs I managed to fit in my favorite words, “Don’t forget to pay me.”

  Johnny glared at me as I hung up the phone only a minute later. He did not approve of my cold exterior, but what was I supposed to do? Stay on the line and console her? Offer to pick up ice cream and cookies? I was not her therapist. I was her private investigator and a good one at that. After an entire week of following her boyfriend, Nate, I caught him in the act, something that had eluded two other investigators. Sure, he had caught me once, and I nearly blew my cover. And yes, I went right down to my deadline, but I got it done.

  There was only one other ritual after I finished a job. I logged in to my mobile banking site, watched, and waited. After a couple of minutes and about twenty refresh buttons later, the money showed up. I slipped my phone into the handbag I had brought along and snapped it shut with finality.

  “Until next time, Johnny.”

  The rain had slowed to only a drizzle as I walked to my car. I slipped the key into the slot and turned it to unlock the door, my clothes only slightly damp in the nighttime moisture.

  “Hey, wait up!”

  Ryder burst from the door of the bar and jogged toward me.

  He just wouldn’t give up, would he?

  “Hey, are you leaving?”

  I opened the car door and moved just inside of it, as if I might disappear a little quicker. “Yeah, it’s late, so I thought I would go home.”

  “How can I find you? Can I see you again?” The gray skullcap had come off in his jog, revealing dark brown hair, messy and matted in a few places from the cap.

  I wanted to spare him any further confusion. “I think it’s better if you don’t. Trust me. It’s for your own good. Easier this way.”

  Ryder took a step closer. “I think it could be worth it. Come on. Just tell me your name.”

  I stopped and wondered why he still pursued me. With an average height, a slender build that my father had often called athletic, and incredibly average brown hair with a funny cowlick in the back, I was not anything spectacular. It would not take him long to find a woman that outranked me in looks. My true personality was nothing to write home about either. He had fallen for my act and it was time to cut him free.

  My phone rang. I could not ignore the number. “Sorry. I have to take this.” I slipped inside my car, closed out the world, turned on the ignition and pulled away into the night.

  Chapter 2

  “I would apologize for waking you up, Lindy, but I’m not sure I’ve seen you this dolled up since Grandma’s funeral.”

  My Uncle Shane always teased whenever I ended up wearing makeup around him. In his defense it was about as common as seeing a double rainbow or finding a four-leaf clover. Not probable but certainly possible. It worked well for a disguise when I needed it and served its purpose. In the case of Ryder Billings, it had worked a little too well.

  I took a moment to clarify as I walked with him past cop cars with flashing lights and into a suburban home.

  “I was working a case. I had to blend in.”

  He flashed his detective’s badge at the officer that guarded the entry, and we were both granted access. The other cops knew me. I had consulted in the past for the department. Many were not very fond of me as a person but had to respect my results. Granted, that represented most relationships in the rest of my life as well. The hallway was dimly lit, somewhat typical of the cases Uncle Shane brought me to. Crime scenes remained untouched while the crime scene unit collected the necessary evidence and pictures. I was accustomed to the blood, the violence, all of it. For the most part at least.

  Just don’t let it be a kid, I thought as we turned the final corner.

  It was a modest home. Nothing ostentatious about it. Average mismatched picture frames, furniture, and knickknacks. They had obviously tried hard to make it nice but lacked the means to turn it into a show home.

  I wish I could say that the bodies on the floor shocked me or made me sick. Something was wrong with me. Always had been. I watched “Old Yeller” as a kid, and my father had bawled like he had shot the dog himself. But not me. It was logical to shoot the canine. The dog was dangerous, and it had to die. None of that negated the years they had been friends. I could clearly remember looking at my father and my younger sister as they sniveled and sobbed, and I wondered why they felt the need to react that way.

  I had only gotten worse with age. Logic turned into curiosity and a deep desire to understand human psyche. I watched people. I analyzed their actions to understand their behavior. If I could understand their behavior and what motivated them, I could predict their future choices. It sounds like a fun party game, but when you can tell that your significant other is going to lie before he ever makes that decision, the fight can g
et pretty messy.

  “They’re bankers, no kids, late thirties. You see a lot more of this these days. Young folks not willing to settle down and have a family. Your generation is so focused on careers and money. I don’t know who is going to populate the earth.” Uncle Shane’s lecture was certainly not directed at the corpses on the floor. It was meant for me.

  “There are always the religious types, Uncle Shane,” I reasoned with him as I crouched to examine the male that lay closest to the door where I stood.

  He was not satisfied with my answer, but he also knew it was a losing battle with me.

  “Friends were with them earlier tonight, said these two drove to dinner and dropped them back at their house at around 9:00. We wouldn’t have heard about this until this morning, except the friend,” he consulted the notebook in his hand, “Melanie, said she left her purse in,” he looked at his notebook once more, “Ashleigh,” he pointed his pen at the woman sprawled out by the window then pointed his pen at the man, “and Brayden’s car.” Uncle Shane closed the notebook. “She called, and they didn’t pick up. She had a bad feeling, so she drove over. Melanie could not get a response, so she started peeking through windows. When she saw the bodies, she called us.”

  I was barely listening. The man, Brayden, had three stab wounds to the gut. From the looks of the blood pattern and body position, he had fallen backward and bled out without much of a fight. There was a strange break in the pool of blood and a few drops leading away from the body. Part of the puzzle, but I was not sure where it fit.

  “Did you see this void?”

  My uncle nodded. “Of course, but I don’t know how it ties in. Do you?”

  I didn’t, and it bothered me. Unsolved puzzles always bothered me. When I was younger, I obsessed over jigsaw puzzles. The bigger the better. My little sister, Eleanor, liked to steal a few pieces just to see me sweat a little. Sure, the questions and mysteries were what I craved, but the resolutions and explanations were what left me satisfied.

  The body had collapsed backward. “He didn’t struggle,” I said it as much to myself as I did to Uncle Shane. I followed the trajectory up from the body on the most logical pathway of the crime. “The killer was in the closet,” I concluded.

  A suit jacket lay in a heap near the door, right where Brayden had dropped it. I stood and carefully avoided the pool of blood near the body. Using the side of a pen, I pushed the closet door open and peered inside. Hanging clothes had been shoved to one side, likely so that the killer could hide more effectively.

  “He was going to hang up his suit coat, and he was blitz attacked by the killer. In all of the shock, he never had a chance to react.”

  “We know all this, Lindy. The killer took out the wife next. We can see from the defensive wounds that she did struggle but ultimately lost.”

  I backed out of the closet, careful of where I put my hands and feet. Even with the foot coverings and gloves my Uncle had given me, evidence could be damaged or lost with the slightest bit of thoughtlessness.

  “Then why did you call me?”

  I tried not to sound annoyed, but, really, I could be sleeping. It had to be close to 1:00 a.m., and it was rare that I ever made any money from these little meetings we had in the middle of the night. Quickly, I brought my attitude into check once more. At times my lack of sleep brought on a sense of entitlement or ill-placed pride. He was just as much a service to me as I was to him.

  “The house was locked up tight, every window, every door, no evidence of tampering on any of them. I would assume it was someone close to the family, someone with a key, but this is the fourth couple to die this way in a couple months.”

  The weight of my uncle’s words settled over me, and my senses sharpened. A serial killer in Northern Washington? It was not unheard of, but it was unusual.

  “Anything else? Any connection between the couples?”

  “They were all out for dates earlier in the evening but different locations.” He flipped through his little notebook again as he listed them. “There was a water park, a fundraiser, and two restaurants.”

  I spotted the woman’s purse on the nightstand, already bagged as evidence. “Anything in that thing?”

  “It’s a purse, Lindy. You say it like you’re scared of it.”

  I shot him one of my most winning smiles, the kind that turns your skin to stone like medusa’s snakes.

  Uncle Shane grabbed a neighboring bag and handed it to me. The contents of the purse were easy to examine through the plastic and without any risk of contamination. I saw lip gloss, a movie stub from three weeks ago, a valet ticket, designer sunglasses, and one press-on nail. I stared at the contents again. It was here. My gut told me it was here.

  “Every door was locked?” I asked slowly, a twinkling of a theory formulating in my mind.

  “Every door and every window,” Uncle Shane reiterated.

  A cop near the door took his chances by correcting my uncle. “The door that led into the garage from the kitchen was unlocked, sir.”

  Uncle Shane did not like being corrected. “But the garage itself was locked up tight. It’s the same difference.”

  But it wasn’t. Not at all.

  “Was there a GPS built into the car?”

  He knew that look in my eye. I had a theory. We moved down the hallway to the garage. Two cops were standing guard and snapped to a more orderly stance when my Uncle walked into the room. Carefully, Shane eased into the front seat, only setting his knee in the driver’s seat to turn the key in the ignition. The center console screen lit up, a fully navigational GPS ready to go. I recognized the model right away from an old boyfriend’s vehicle.

  “It’s voice command. Press the upper left button, and tell it to go home,” I said.

  Uncle Shane carefully pressed his gloved finger to the upper left button and repeated my command. “Take me home.”

  The screen flashed while it calculated for a moment, and then the map displayed a red dot over our location, indicating that we were, in fact, home.

  “Check the GPS log. I would wager that Ashleigh and Brayden didn’t need directions to get back to their house after dropping off their friends.”

  He did not understand my theory yet, but he checked the log anyway. “It was brought up at 7:00 p.m. tonight. But that doesn’t make sense,” he pulled himself out of the car. “They were at dinner at that time. Do you think the other couple, Melanie Brunswick and her husband, were lying?”

  “No,” I answered quickly.

  I considered warning the cops that leaned against the garage door but decided if my theory was right, it would be a justified reward. Stooping in the same manner as my Uncle had inside the sedan, I searched the ceiling. Four buttons were set in a vinyl casing. I pressed the first to no effect, then the second, and the third. As I pressed the fourth, my reward came as the sounds of two shocked cops bounded from the rising garage door. I stood up next to my Uncle and looked at him expectantly, wondering if he had caught on to the theory yet. His bewildered expression told me he had not.

  “The valet card. That was my clue,” I hinted.

  Still nothing.

  The cops I had startled were skeptical. The taller of the two spoke up. “Valets have to turn the keys in and lock them up until the patron returns. I would know because I was one back in my college years.”

  “They probably made a copy.” I pressed on despite his alleged expertise in the area. “The valet took the car, searched the home address on the GPS, and copied the car key so they could turn the original in. Then on a break, he drove here with the copy, and hid in the closet until the couple returned.”

  Uncle Shane protested. “But they drove that car home tonight. How did the car get back if the killer was in the closet?”

  My use of the word “they” had been deliberate. I hadn’t even bothered to explain it. “It was the partner that drove back, obviously.”

  The cops started to chuckle at my theory but stopped when my Uncle Shane caught the
m. “Lindy, it’s quite the theory, but we have no reason to suspect a partner in these crimes.”

  The tall cop piped up again, “Maybe it was the boogeyman.”

  I paid him no mind, though he irritated me.

  “The void in the pool of blood and the droplets leading away could be explained by a partner, couldn’t it?”

  He was unconvinced, so I continued. “They take turns. One does the killing, and the other does the watching. The watcher stood too close, and the blood got on his shoes as the man bled out. He was likely so enthralled with the murder of the wife that blood moved around his feet and left that void. When he noticed, his only option was to remove the shoes and carry them out. If he had walked out, he would have left prints.” I paused and let them consider my theory for a moment before I continued.

  “You’re looking for two valets, thrill seekers, and they probably have at least a few warnings on their record. Start with the restaurants, and vet those employees first,” I suggested.

  The tall cop was not totally convinced. “Sir, this is totally circumstantial. She’s making it up on the fly. It’s all a story. Anything could have made that void. Maybe there was a garbage can there, and the killer took it with him.” He was obviously one of the cops that did not enjoy my little consultations with the department. “If she could give us some kind of hard proof, maybe we could follow through. But, come on, if it sounds like a horse, it’s probably not a zebra.”

  His simplification made me crazy.

  With my gloved hand, I removed the keys from the ignition and a tissue from the center console. Without a word, I wrapped the tissue around the shaft of the key and pinched my fingers down hard, pressing the tissue into the grooves. I pulled the key free of my grip while simultaneously dragging the tissue across the center channel. I held it out for my Uncle Shane, who flipped on the flashlight from his belt to examine the tissue. There was not much, but what was there was not supposed to be.

  “Putty,” he whispered just loud enough that the other two could hear it.