Cold Case

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Cold Case

A Carlotta Carlyle Mystery

Linda Barnes

For Susan Linn
,

my matchmaker
,

my friend

“
The past is never dead. It isn't even past.”

William Faulkner

PART ONE

She knows not what the curse may be
,

And so she weaveth steadily
,

And little other care hath she
,

The Lady of Shalott
.

A
LFRED
, L
ORD
T
ENNYSON

August

She wasn't home, which was just what he'd hoped after his casual telephoned question about her weekend plans. She'd never been one to volunteer information
.

He patted his jeans, fingering the tiny half-pocket over his right hipbone. The outline of the little key felt hot, even through denim. He kept the larger house key on a five-and-dime chain, a pair of lucky dice balancing the weight of the ring. Rigged, oversized dice, but they always came up boxcars
.

The neighbors on the run-down street were used to him. If she left for a few unexplained days, he'd cruise by, pick up the mail. Like a faithful mutt, he could be counted on to perform such services. Why not? He'd followed, dumb and dutiful, all his life
.

For a moment, he saw himself as she must see him
,
frozen like a bug in amber, trapped at some younger age. When had he stopped growing in her eyes? At fifteen, sixteen? With narrow shoulders, skinny arms, unkempt hair
.

One thing: she'd frozen him before he got his full height. She hardly ever lifted her head anymore to meet his gaze. Instead, her eyes stayed fastened somewhere on his chest, as though she were communicating with a shadow boy, not a man
.

Before he'd moved out, if he was working around the house, doing chores, he'd deliberately slip off his shirt. He'd wanted her to notice the dark hair on his chest, the taut, wiry muscles in his arms
.

A man, twenty-two, even if he still had to show his driver's license at every bar in Seattle
.

He yanked the small key from his hip pocket, grasped it tightly in his sweaty palm. Six nights ago, after spaghetti and meatballs and meaningless conversation, he'd stolen it from her jewelry box
.

He aimed his motorbike up the narrow driveway, parked it, walked across the faded grass, his boots leaving no impression on the hard turf. Quickly he used the house key, walked through the living room and down the hall without noticing either peeling paint or crooked wallpaper, straight to the side door that led to the narrow garage. Pressed the button
.

The garage door, one of those old wooden jobs converted for an automatic opener, shrieked in protest. He wished he'd thought to oil the springs
.

He unloaded the wasp spray from his saddlebag, fastened a plastic jar of premixed poison to a metal cylinder with a long red handle, like a tire pump
.

She was unpredictable, capricious. If she suddenly came home, he'd need a good cover story. She'd asked him to eliminate the wasps, even if it was way last spring. Shame he'd put it off so long. The insects would fold up their tents and leave once the cool weather came. Why shouldn't they live another day? Die from Northwest chill? Why should he, the executioner, get stung for his trouble?

The metal footlocker had been with them since the beginning. When they moved, it came along, no matter how cramped the space. Often it took two to carry it, two of the semi-strangers who loaded the rent-a-car, the borrowed van, the rusty Cherokee
.

Growing up on the move, a nomad, never staying more than a year at each grammar school, finally two years so he wouldn't have to be the new kid his senior year of high school, objects from the early days were scarce
—
like friends, and ready cash, and gas for the old motorbike he'd bought secondhand with the money he'd saved from mowing lawns
.

He could lift the footlocker easily. He swallowed the fear that he'd find it empty. It seemed light only because he was strong now. Stronger than those guys she had known when he was a kid. They'd seemed enormous then. If one of
them
had been his dad, he'd probably have grown taller, wider, maybe developed a beer gut
.

He remembered a trip to Disneyland, a rare time out, a normal-kid day. She'd paid for his silhouette, cut on the scene with a quick snip of tiny scissors, smell of cotton candy. His profile was hers, a duplicate. Same broad forehead, full lips. Shape of his nose had changed after a schoolyard brawl. He didn't look effeminate, though. No way. Girls at the junior college could testify to that. But never the right girl. Maybe the local JC wasn't exactly the place to spot Miss Wonderful
.

A racehorse with no papers, no pedigree, couldn't enter a decent race, sure couldn't aim for the Triple Crown
.

Even horses had papers
.

His, he was certain, would be in the footlocker, carried so carefully through Tennessee, Arkansas, New York State, Illinois, Montana. Towns he'd forgotten, never known. He examined the footlocker, gray and black metal, studded leather at the corners. Hadn't come from any dime store
.

Brass lock, like the gas tank on his motorbike. Small keys, both. Use a hairpin on it, a junior college girl had said, stifling a giggle behind a hand full of rings, hiding an overbite
.

His hands were really sweating now, fingers slippery. Photos, he thought. Letters. From my dad. Stuff about me. My birth certificate. Dad's birth certificate
.

The key turned easily. He choked down his disappointment at the contents. Row after row of tightly packed notebooks. No photo albums. She rarely snapped pictures, casually stepped aside to escape a pointed Kodak. No legal documents embossed with notary stamps
.

He stuffed the contents of the locker into his saddlebags for later study. Whatever the locker held was
his,
due him in unearned wages, unanswered questions. He flipped through a notebook, pages silky smooth, covered with words. Reminded him of stuff he'd read in high school
.

He stared at his lucky key ring. Maybe it was time to start gambling on himself, instead of dogs and horses, cards and dice
.

He relocked the footlocker, hurriedly returned the key to its velvet-lined cell. Stopped in the kitchen. Drank a tall glass of water, cool from the faucet
.

He could have left, but he went back for the wasps. He was careful, methodical, pulling the plunger all the way out, shoving it in, listening to the whoosh of liquid death as he soaked the mud-brown nests. He'd always been good with his hands. The mindless exercise gave him time to think. The wasps died silently, en masse. Not a single one escaped to warn the others
.

1

August, one year later

“If his word were a bridge, I'd be afraid to cross.” Or as my
bubbe
, my mother's mother might have said, in Yiddish rather than English, “
Oyb zayn vort volt gedint als brik volt men moyre gehat aribertsugeyn.”

Trust me; it's funnier in Yiddish. I know. I also know that Yiddish is the voice of exile, the tongue of ghettos, but, believe me, I'll shed a tear when it joins ancient Greek and dead Latin. For gossip and insult, you can't beat Yiddish.

I imagined that shaky bridge the entire time I was talking on the phone. Caught a glimpse of it later that evening, while interviewing my client. But that's getting ahead of the story, something my
bubbe
would never do. “
A gute haskhole iz shoyn a halbe arbet,”
she'd say: “A good beginning is the job half done.”

The lawyer's voice oozed condescension over a long-distance connection so choppy it made me wonder if Fidel Castro were personally eavesdropping.

“Excuse me,” he said firmly, the words a polite substitution for “shut up.” Enunciating as though attempting communication with a dull-witted four-year-old, he said, “I believe this conversation would be better suited to a pay phone. I'll ring you in, say, half an hour.”

I've never met Thurman W. Vandenburg, Esq. My mind snapped an imaginary photo: the tanned, lined face of a man fighting middle age, a smile that displayed perfectly capped teeth, pointed like a barracuda's.

“The same phone we used before. I have the number,
if
you can remember the location—” he continued.

I stopped him with, “I'm sitting in that very booth, mister. And you're eating my dwindling change pile. I don't want trouble. I want the shipments to stop.
¿M'entiendes?”

There: I'd managed five sentences without interruption. I'd included the key words: Trouble, shipments, stop. I hadn't said “money.” He'd understand I meant money.

“I'll call back in ten minutes,” he replied tersely.

“Wait! No! I have a client, an appointment—”

Click.

I white-knuckled the receiver. I hate it when sleazy lawyers hang up on me. Hell, I hate it when genteel lawyers hang up on me, not that I have much occasion to chat with any. Classy lawyers with plush offices and desks the size of skating rinks are not exactly a dying breed. It's just that I don't come into contact with the cream of the crop in the normal run of my business.

I compared my Timex with the wall-mounted model over the pharmacist's counter.
If
he actually called within ten minutes, and
if
my after-hours client ran on the late side, I might barely squeak in the door with minutes to spare.

I wish drugstores still had soda fountains. I could have relaxed on a red vinyl stool, spinning a salute to my childhood, sipping a cherry Coke while reviewing my potential client's hastily phone-sketched plight, a situation distinguished more by his breathless, excited voice than the unique nature of his problem. I sighed at the thought of disappointing him face-to-face. Missing persons are a dime a dozen. Amazing the number of people in this anonymous big-city world who think they can make a fresh start elsewhere, wipe their blotted slates clean.