Dead Ringer (22 page)

Then she trudged up over the sand, toward home.

Only it wasn’t home anymore.

It was a risk going there, someone might see her, but not Nick. He’d be at the station. He might miss his Sunday magazine show to identify his wife’s body, but the news was sacred to him. He’d be at his desk, wearing that blue blazer. He’d be heartbroken, but he’d do the news.

And then there was Gordon. She hated deceiving him as much as she hated deceiving Nick, maybe more. Nick had his work, his friends, family. Gordon didn’t have anyone, except maybe Jonas, for a shoulder to cry on. She wished there was a way she could tell him.

Close to the duplex, she came up the alley behind, was about to take the stairs, when she remembered the newspapers on the garage floor. Nick was a newsman and he wasn’t stupid. If he saw those papers like that, he’d know she’d gone through them. He’d want to know what she was looking for and he’d find it.

Maggie tried the door. It wasn’t locked. Inside she turned on the light. There were no windows, so there was little danger anybody would see. They’d have to be close enough to see light coming out from under the door, a risk she had to take.

The papers were where she’d left them. For a second a flash of anger rippled through her. Nick never failed to park his precious Mercedes in the garage. But her Mustang, that was too much trouble. Maggie took a breath, pushed her anger away. It was stupid. Her job here was to put the papers back the way they were as quickly as possible and get out and that’s what she did.

Outside again, she took the back stairs, careful to step over the fifth step because it squeaked. At the top, she found the key under the mat where she’d expected it. A quick breath and she opened the door. She eased it closed, locked it. The house was dark, but enough light seeped in from the apartment building next door for her to see her way around.

Bedroom first. She stopped at the door. The bed was rumpled. The place smelled of sex. Nick was fastidious, he’d never leave an unmade bed. Not ever. That girl must have been in it when he’d gone to the station. Where was she now? Would she be back soon?

She closed her eyes for a second and examined her feelings. The affair must have been going on for some time. How come she wasn’t hurt? Maybe she hadn’t been as much in love with Nick as she’d thought.

She went to the closet and pulled out her flight bag. Then to the bottom bureau drawer, Nick’s drawer. She fished under his ski sweaters, found the pistol. She didn’t know much about handguns, but she knew about this one, a Smith & Wesson Sigma nine millimeter automatic. Nick’s plastic gun. Better than a Glock, he’d boasted. Seventeen rounds in the mag, plus one in the chamber. Just point and shoot. And Maggie knew how to do that, Nick made sure of it by taking her to the range more afternoons than she could count. It was the only gun she knew, but she knew it well.

She checked to make sure he’d chambered a round. He had. She dropped it into the bag. Nick would miss the gun and undoubtedly report it stolen, but that couldn’t be helped. She wanted protection now, tonight.

* * *

Gordon Takoda stepped out of the shower, pulled a towel from the rack and dried his hair. Despite the shower, he felt like he hadn’t slept in a week. Losing Maggie had been as bad as losing Ricky.

Ricky had been worried about renting the upstairs to a straight couple, especially a TV person, but Nick Nesbitt was willing to pay the high rent and they seemed like nice people. Ricky used to say there were three kinds of straights. Those who hated gays, those who bent over backwards to prove they were okay with it and those who didn’t give a shit. Nick and Maggie didn’t give a shit.

Nick had been standoffish at first, but he was that way with everybody. He was on television, he had to be careful. Maggie, however, had swept into their lives as if she’d been there forever. They swiftly became fast friends. The three of them did everything together. Then Ricky died. Without Maggie, Gordon would have taken his own life.

At least Maggie never knew about Stephanie. She’d spent the night last night. Maggie not even buried yet and they were sleeping together. There was only one explanation for it. They’d been doing it before Maggie’d been killed. A man didn’t jump in the hay with someone the night after his wife was murdered, unless he’d been rolling in it for sometime.

A motive?

Not Nick, surely. Gordon couldn’t believe that. But the girl? He’d have to give it some thought.

He stepped into his jeans, pulled on a pair of running shoes without socks. He was out of coffee and besides, the walls were closing in. He had a yellow Spooner Hawaiian shirt half on when he heard a noise. He paused. It sounded like somebody was upstairs. He listened for a second. Nothing. Just ghosts in his imagination.

* * *

Maggie went to the closet, pulled out a pair of faded Levi’s. Though she wasn’t so wet she was dripping, she was uncomfortable. An Angels sweatshirt with cut off sleeves followed. She shucked off the wet clothes. Nick was going to know someone had been in the apartment anyway, if he noticed the wet spot on the carpet, it’d just confuse the cops. She put on the dry clothes and felt better right away. After wrapping the wet ones inside another sweatshirt, she stuffed them in the grip along with a second pair of Levi’s. She was a sweatshirt and Levi’s person and there were three more pairs of the jeans and a couple sweatshirts left in the closet, Nick wouldn’t notice what she’d taken.

But he’d notice her jewelry box. Too bad.

She hated rings on her fingers or in her ears. Necklaces seemed like a noose around her neck. And even though she hardly ever wore the engagement and wedding rings Nick had given her, she wanted them. She also wanted the gold crucifix her mother had given her. And she wanted the pearl earrings her father had given her when she graduated from high school. She loved the memories associated with her jewelry, the love that went with the giving of it. And besides, despite how she felt about it, sometimes she’d put some on for a dinner party or something.

She remembered she was barefoot and went back to the closet where she found and slipped on a pair of well used Nikes.

Now all she wanted was a photo album from the bottom bookshelf in the living room. She pulled out the album and flipped through it. She was there as a little girl, with her mother, with her dad, with both during birthdays, graduation, holidays. She closed it, dropped it in the grip.

She was about to let herself out when she noticed all the correspondence on the coffee table. There was plenty enough light coming in from the streetlamp out front for her to go through it.

She sat down on the sofa and started. Condolence cards. Heaps of them. Already? She’d only been dead a couple of days. There was a clipping from the Press Telegram with her photo in it. Not a good one, she thought, but anyone would recognize her. She hoped Margo’s friends or classmates didn’t see it.

She read the caption and gave a start. She was being buried tomorrow at noon.

Poor Margo. Maggie fought tears. Life was so unfair.

* * *

Horace found the house, an upstairs duplex. The lights were out. That made sense if the guy did the eleven o’clock news. He’d be at the station in L.A. till midnight. He parked in front of the garage in back as if he lived there, got out of the van without locking it.

He paused, took out a pair of latex surgical gloves, put them on.

There was some light from the apartments next door, but the alley behind was dark. He went for the steps, confident he wasn’t seen.

A squeak rippled through the night. Horace pulled his foot off the tattletale step as if it were red hot and he’d been barefoot.

* * *

Maggie heard the squeak. Somebody was on the steps out back. Not Nick, he’d have stepped over it as she had. Someone else. She started for the front door. Stopped. If it was the police they’d be out front, waiting. If that was it, then someone had called them. Could Gordon have heard something from downstairs? Was that it?

* * *

Gordon was on his way to the front door when he heard the telltale step. Nick? No, he said he’d be doing the news as usual. Probably that Stephanie.

* * *

Horace stood still as the night. Any second he expected lights, shouting. But it didn’t happen. He thought about Virgil. He thought about Ma rocking in that chair. He thought about Sadie. He thought about Striker and Congressman Nishikawa. And he thought about Margo Kenyon back from the dead.

A cool breeze wafted between the duplex and the apartment building next door. Someone put a CD on or turned on an oldies station. The Beatles, “Yellow Submarine.” Stupid song, but he found himself softly humming along with Paul McCartney’s vocals as he ghosted the rest of the way up the stairs.

At the landing, he unzipped the bomber jacket, fished a leather pouch from the inside pocket, opened it and smiled as he fingered the picks. Standard lock, probably the one that came with the house when it was built back in the ’50s. Piece of cake.

He went to work.

* * *

Maggie forced herself to be still, though her heart was racing. The doorknob clicked as someone tried it. She grabbed the grip. More clicking sounds. Someone was out there trying to pick the lock.

The police didn’t do that. They’d bang on the door, wake up the whole neighborhood.

Instinct said run. She rose from the sofa, started for the front door. Stopped. She flashed on Ferret Face and Virgil. What if it was them? One could be waiting somewhere out front.

She inched her way toward the bathroom. A mistake, she realized as soon as she slipped in. There was no way out and the lock on the door wouldn’t keep out a child, much less someone able to pick locks. She was about to leave, to take her chances going out the front way, when the back door opened.

Too late, whoever he was, he was in.

She took her hand from the door. It was open a crack. She heard quiet footsteps tiptoeing through the kitchen. She backed up to the bath, sat on the rim and fished in the bag for the gun. She let out a silent sigh when she found it, wrapped a hand around the grip, finger on the trigger as she pulled it out.

* * *

Gordon strained his ears, searching for sound from above. He’d heard the step. Heard the door open. Heard someone ease it closed. Nick never did that and there was no reason why Stephanie would either. He expected to hear footsteps cross the kitchen. And he expected to see the reflection of the upstairs light on the trees outside his windows when it came on. Whoever was up there was taking pains to be quiet and they were moving around in the dark.

He went into the bedroom, reached under the pillow, pulled out his thirty-eight. He took the holster out of the top drawer of the nightstand, clipped it to his belt at the small of his back.

Armed now, he opened the front and back doors, turned off the lights, then stood in the dark, gun in hand, in the center of the living room. Not even God could get out of that upstairs apartment without making some noise and Gordon planned on hearing it. When whoever was up there came down, he would be waiting.

* * *

Horace stopped in the middle of the kitchen. The lights were out, but the house seemed alive. He eased a hand into the shoulder holster, brought out the Beretta. He sipped at the air, but heard no sound.

There was a hallway off the kitchen. He was familiar with the layout, there were a lot of duplexes built to the same plan in the Shore. In his younger days he’d been in several.

He passed the bathroom on the left, checked the bedroom on the right. Empty. Sterile. A guest bedroom most likely. Back in the hall, he started for the bedroom at the end, stopped a few feet from the door. The house seemed more alive now. He had to piss. A look over his shoulder at the bathroom door. It was ajar. If there was anybody home, they’d be asleep in the master bedroom. He’d check it out, piss after.

* * *

Maggie sat on the rim of the tub, elbows on her knees, bracing her arms, two hands wrapped around the butt of the Sigma. She sucked air as if she were taking it through a straw, slow and silent. He was just outside the door. She heard the rustle of the thick pile on the carpet as he started toward the back bedroom. He was quiet, but she was quieter. However, she wasn’t moving and he was.

* * *

Horace stepped into the room gun hand first, Beretta ready to fire. The bed was empty, but he smelled the sex. That must have been what made him think the place was occupied. He wrinkled his nose. What kind of guy fucked around right after his wife died?

Then he saw it. An eight by ten color glossy, surrounded by a silver picture frame on the nightstand next to the bed. He picked a miniature flashlight out of his jacket pocket and lit up the photo. It was a wedding picture, groom in tux, bride in white. And the bride was her, spitting image.

How?

Twins, had to be. No other explanation. And he’d killed the wrong one. Wait! Not possible. He and Virge grabbed her from the parking lot in Huntington Beach where Margo Kenyon lived. And the red Porsche, that was Margo Kenyon’s car. The woman he did was Margo Kenyon, no doubt about it.

Something strange was going on.