Hot Tea (31 page)

The whole thing was lovely, and inviting, and a place I would love to come home to at the end of a long day.

I took a moment to turn off the GPS, then the car.  I locked my purse in my glove compartment, put my sunglasses in the middle compartment, and was reaching for the door handle as I pulled the key out of the ignition, when I damn near soiled my leather seats. 

There was a woman standing at my window, which I’d left down just a little, a major error in Florida in the summer time.  You can walk away from a car and come back to a mini swimming pool.  When it starts to rain, it really rains.  It can rain multiple inches before you even realize that you are doing a bunch of damage to your upholstery.  I need to focus, before something goes really wrong.

Anyway, the lady used her rather large ring to tap loudly on my car.  I swear to you, if she damaged my paint, we are going to have a problem.  I’m a little OCD about such things.

For such a welcoming area, this woman was not looking very welcoming at all. 

“Girly, this is private property.  Move along now.”

I smiled, “Is this your property?  Do you manage the complex?”

“That’s no never mind of yours.  Now you just move along.”

I tried for a nice neutral tone.  “Actually, I have business here and permission to be on the property.  I appreciate your watching out.  If you will just excuse me…”  I gently pushed my car door, I didn’t want to knock down a little old lady, no matter how unwelcoming she appeared to be, but I didn’t want to sit in the car melting either, so I figured a little nudge would do the trick. 

She planted her boney little legs in a fighting stance and set herself to ready.  She blocked my way out of my car.  I couldn’t believe it.  She was going to scratch my paint with the buttons on her sweater.  A sweater.  In Florida.  In the summer.  She must be out of her ever-loving mind.  It’s hot and humid every minute of every day around here.  If the woman had a drop of human blood running through those loopy veins of hers, she’d be as heated as I was fast becoming.  I know older people can become chilled, but this is Florida for goodness sake.  I know, always show your elders some deference, but come on now, I was starting to melt.

I tried for a smile, but think it might have looked more like I was baring my teeth, “Excuse me, I’m going to open this door and I don’t want to hurt you.”

She didn’t respond at all.

I was just about to start the car and pull up ten feet to try it again when a woman came running across the grass.  She’s about 5’10” tall wearing a burnt orange caftan that was flapping behind her as she covered ground at a good clip.  About 20 feet away, she said in strangled holler, “Mother, it’s ok, I’ll take care of it.  This must be the lady Louis’s brother called about.”

“Yep, that’s me.”

The guard dog woman left us and shuffled across the grass.  I looked around to try to figure out where she’d come from, since I hadn’t seen any evidence of her before she scared the crap out of me.  I wondered why she’d changed from hound of the Baskerville, to feeble, in seconds.  Funny how her daughter arriving on the scene changed everything.

 Caftan woman said, “You must be Carol.”

“Cara.”  I corrected her and I gave her a big smile.  “It’s an Irish name, people mistake it for Carol all the time.  I have lots of brothers and sisters, so I answer to just about anything, especially if food is involved.”

She chuckled.  “Louis’s brother called and said he’d hired a service to come and go through Louis’s things.  He asked that we keep an eye on the place till you got here.”

“He told me that you had been watching.  That’s very kind of you.  Sometimes bad guys watch for a death notice in the paper and come wipe the place out before anyone notices.”

Caftan woman said, “I wasn’t going to let that happen to my Louis.”

“Were you close?”

She blushed.  “No.  He was just a very kind man.  Whenever Mother and I had a problem, he was Johnny on the spot.  Mother fell last year, at first, we thought she’d broken her hip, but it turned out to be a bone bruise.  Louis would carry her out to the car for me when she had an appointment and he happened to be at home.  It was so much faster than waitin’ on her to get down the walkway, and she felt wonderful in his arms.  Her words, not mine.”

I smiled.  “He sounds like a nice man.  It’s a shame that he passed.  His brother didn’t give me any details.”  Sometimes you have to chum the waters.  I hoped she’d take the bait.

“That’s because he didn’t have any details to tell you.  They were estranged.  Louis never told me why, but if you ask me, it had to be something that that brother did.  Louis would never do nothing to hurt nobody.”

Damn.  No details.

All I could come up with was, “Well, I need to get started.  I have a key here, and permission to be here from next of kin.  Do you want a copy?”

“No.  I knew you were comin’ and besides, I got no legal right to say who comes and goes.  All I can do is call the cops if I see something I don’t like.  I won’t be callin’ the cops on you.”

“I appreciate that.  Handcuffs and I don’t get along.”

“You’ve worn handcuffs?”

“Only a couple of times.”

Her mouth went into a perfect ‘O’.  She was rethinking her decision to let me into the condo.  I gave her my most innocent smile and said, “My younger brother is a cop.  When he was in the academy, he ran around arresting everyone in the family.  We gave him our best moves to try to get his gun or run away.  I never tried for the gun, was always afraid he’d forget to unload it and someone would get hurt, but I did escape a couple of times.  Had the bruises to prove it.  Handcuff bruises will get you some funny looks in church.”

Mollified, she wished me well and walked in the general direction her mother had taken. 

I took a couple of deep breaths to center myself, and headed for Louis’s condo.

The condo was much nicer inside than out, which was saying a lot.  Either Louis had passed very recently, or he had a cleaning service.  The place would make my mother proud, and my mother is pretty darn picky when it comes to all things cleaning.

As you enter the front door, there is a brick wall to your immediate right and a small office to your left.  The brick wall turned out to be the backside of the fireplace.  I guess the fireplace was designed that way to warm the living room on the three nights we have each year that are a little chilly. 

The living room had been furnished in the traditional male style, big black leather sofa, big black leather easy chair, coffee table and matching end tables, huge flat screen TV.  The only thing that seemed a little bit personal was a ceramic fairy under glass.  Interesting.

I walked through the living room, into the kitchen, again, everything in its place.  I opened the fridge, and although there was food inside, there was nothing that would spoil today, so I closed it and kept investigating. 

Back through the living room, past the fireplace that kept drawing my attention, and down a short hall.  Half way down the hall on the right was a half bath.  Done in black and white.  Continuing down the hall was a master bedroom suite.  A king sized bed took center stage, it was a platform bed, very modern looking.  The first thing I’d seen out of place, the bed wasn’t made.

At the foot of the bed, there was an archway that delineated the bathroom, although there was no door.  A walk in shower, nice long countertops, a lowboy toilet, and a linen closet.  All his towels were neatly folded, first a black one, then a dark brown one, then a black one again.  No guest towels on the towel bar.

I opened a couple of drawers and the medicine cabinet, more out of habit and nosiness than necessity.  Nothing interesting.  No meds.  Guess the guy wasn’t sick before he died.

Back through the bedroom and out into the hall, I noticed a door I hadn’t seen on the way in.  When I tried it, it was locked.  Wonder what secrets were in there?  People usually don’t go to the trouble of locking doors that they aren’t using to sequester something. 

Chances are good the key is somewhere in the condo.  Although lots of people lock things up, very few are actually good at security.  They use a combination lock, then write the combination down where it can easily be found, or they stick cash in the freezer, and don’t write ‘beef’ on the package like the rest of the stuff in there, or they buy one of those fake cleanser cans and stick it under the sink and everything else is environmentally friendly. 

A tiny bit of being observant goes a long way in this world, but most people
don’t take the time to be observant, especially in their own homes. 

I’m observant by nature.  Combine that with being nosey by nature, and paid to snoop, and I notice things.

I wandered back into the office.  At first glance, it was looking like this project wasn’t going to take very long at all. 

I sat down at Louis’s desk and took a minute to let the condo talk to me.  I know it sounds silly, but all buildings have a voice.  That’s why you can walk into a monochromatic modern masterpiece and feel it’s homey, or into a southern country comfy place and feel it’s cold as stone.  I think some places just take on the personality of those that shelter there.

Louis’s condo was telling me that he is organized to a fault, a characteristic I really like in a person.  He was a little lonely, no personal stuff anywhere.  He lived alone, and women didn’t visit often, if at all, no female touches, and Lord knows, it doesn’t take us long to implement them if we wish.

Louis was a big guy, cause I’m tall and his desk chair was perfectly comfortable for me. 

I got up, wandered back out to the kitchen counter, where I’d left a tablet and pen, and started to the back of the condo.  I figured I’d work my way forward taking quick notes for my email to Steven, my one real client, tonight. 

For some reason, known only to God, I walked over to the front door and locked the deadbolt, just as the doorknob turned.  Freaked me out a little bit, but I assumed it was the guard dog and her daughter coming to make sure I didn’t take Louis’s valuables.  I looked out the peephole, feeling a little superior, since I was on the inside with a key, and they were at my mercy, but it wasn’t them behind the door, it was a man.  A really good-looking man.  I mean REALLY good looking.

My first impulse was to fling the door open wide, but when you are raised by an otherworldly type mother, you learn to listen to that little voice that everyone has, but most people ignore.  My little voice said
Hello?  You reached out and locked the deadbolt for a reason.  The cosmos is being kind.  Be careful.  PAY ATTENTION!!

Just then, the man on the other side of the door said, “Hello?”

Which, you know, freaked me out again.  I don’t usually freak out so easily.  I mean, I come from a very large family; there is always something weird happening.  If I freaked out at every little sound and situation, I’d be freaked out all the time, so the fact that I’d already been freaked out several times today was beginning to freak me out.