Leave No Stone Unturned (A Lexie Starr Mystery, Book 1) (14 page)

"Of course," I said, and smiled casually. "We always do." I glanced out the window
and saw Stone stepping out of the phone booth at the gas station across the street.
"My man, Carl, should be right in, and we'll get this one knocked out in a hurry."

Stone came inside a minute or so later, wearing a T-shirt that matched mine and carrying
a three-gallon, sloshing, yellow plastic spray bottle. He put on a cheap paper mask
that wouldn't keep dust out, much less toxic fumes, and I pulled up an identical one
that I had hanging around my neck. Stone started walking around the perimeter of Jake's
living room, spraying water into the crevasses where the wall joined the floorboard,
just as Jake walked back through the door with a gym bag, his wallet, and car keys.

"Wait a second, Carl. Give Mr. Jacoby a chance to leave so he doesn't breathe in these
hazardous fumes. He's getting ready to go to the gym," I said. "Thanks, Mr. Jacoby.
Now you'll be able to sleep better at night, knowing that your house is not infested
with poisonous spiders. Please leave the front door open when you leave. I'd suggest
you give it about an hour and a half, or so, for the fumes to dissipate. Okay?"

"Sure, Ms. Hill. I usually work out for two hours anyway."

* * *

"Well, that worked pretty slick, didn't it, Carl? Or is it Leo?" I asked, after Jake
had departed.

"It sure did, Ms. Hill."

"How illegal do you reckon this is?" I asked, seriously.

"Well, technically, he did let us in, and he did ask us to lock the door behind us.
And, technically, we are spraying his home," Stone said, as he gave the sofa a few
squirts of harmless water.

"True. And I'll bet that his home isn't infested with brown recluse spiders tomorrow."

"Assuming it wasn't infested today."

"True again. Well, let's get cracking. You start snooping in the living room and kitchen,
and I'll look around in the bedrooms."

Chapter 14

Jake had the most generic house I've ever been in. It reminded me of a Super Eight
Motel room with its lack of personal effects. There were no photos or paintings on
the wall, no houseplants or signs of any pets, no knickknacks on shelves, not even
a newspaper on the coffee table. Each room held just the basic furniture, and that
furniture had a flea market appearance. There was a stereo system in the living room
that looked as if it were worth more than everything else in the home put together.
Jake had more invested in earrings than he did in home furnishings. Snooping through
Jake's place would not take long.

There was one enlarged photo of Jake and another man, walking arm in arm through a
heavily wooded area. They were laughing and the sun was glinting off the earrings
scattered about Jake's face. The photo was propped up behind the phone on the kitchen
counter, as if placed there to remind him to make a call to his friend.

The only other framed photo in the house was on the chest of drawers in Jake's bedroom.
It was an eight-by-ten enlargement of Jake with his arm around Clay. Jake was looking
at the camera, but Clay looked distracted and disinterested. It was one of those photos
that looked like Jake had turned the camera backward, extended his arm as far as he
could, and snapped the photo himself. The two men's faces were a bit blurry and distorted.
Their eyes looked glazed, as if they were drunk or on drugs.

After I sat the photo back down on the bureau, Stone picked it up again and studied
it further. He turned to me and asked, "How's that old saying go—'if you're left,
you're right, and if you're right, you're wrong'?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"It's an old saying that means that if a man wears an earring in his left ear, he's
straight, and if he wears one in his right ear, he's gay."

"Are you saying you think Jake might be gay?"

"It seems highly likely, considering a couple of magazines I found in a drawer in
the kitchen." He took me into the kitchen where there was a small desk in the corner.
On top of the desk was a roll of stamps, a box of security envelopes, and a pen—bill-paying
stuff and in the desk's only drawer we found bank statements, extra books of checks,
two magazines, pens, pencils, a roll of tape, and several packets of developed photos.

Stone removed the magazines. They had the title
Out
across the cover, and one had a photo of two men who reminded me of the one Jake
had propped behind his phone.

"Out?" I asked. "Out of what? Out of money? Out of luck? Out of your mind?"

"Out of the closet," Stone answered, dryly.

"Why would Clay live with a gay guy if he's straight?" I asked, my voice raising a
notch, as if on the verge of hysteria. This whole situation was getting stranger and
stranger. I couldn't imagine what there was about Clay that attracted Wendy so much.

"I don't know," Stone said. "Is it possible he didn't know his roommate was gay, or
he just didn't care as long as he had a place to stay during the week? I guess they
could have just been friends, and not lovers. I assume gay men have male friends they
aren't romantically involved with."

We sorted through the other photos, inside envelopes from a local one-hour processing
store. The outer packets were gone, but the envelopes full of photos and negatives
remained. The enlarged photo of Jake and Clay had the original smaller version in
one of the packets. There were snapshots of an older couple, possibly Jake's grandparents,
several of a golden retriever leaping up to catch a Frisbee, photos of a white-tailed
doe and twin fawns, several of bare-chested men lifting weights at the gym, and one
of Jake's Mustang convertible with the top down. The only photograph that really grabbed
our attention was one of Clay crouched down behind a dead moose. It had been taken
at short range; only Clay and the head of the moose were visible in the photo. Over
Clay's shoulder in the photo there was a small log cabin that looked to be in a sunny
spot deep in the woods. Clay's face was positioned between the two massive antlers
of the moose. He was smiling proudly for the camera. There was blood on the hand steadying
the right antler and what looked like more blood on the arm of his camouflage shirt.

Stone stared at the photo for a few moments before handing it to me. He pointed to
the bottom right corner, "Check this out."

The camera used to take the photo had date-stamp capabilities and in the bottom right
corner was a date. "April 12, 2001—Stone, that's the date Eliza disappeared from the
Food Pantry parking lot!" I said.

"That would place Clay in the woods on the day his wife was most likely murdered.
Could it have been the Adirondacks, near where her body was found? There are increasing
numbers of moose there. Or could he have been in a different state?" Stone was thinking
out loud, not really expecting an answer from me.

"I would assume that the blood on his hand is from the moose?" I asked.

"Probably so. He would've had to bleed it out," Stone said. For some reason it bothered
me that Stone knew so much about hunting, killing, and "bleeding out" moose.

"Do you know what Clay gave as an alibi? Where did he say he was the day Eliza disappeared?"
Stone asked.

"According to the newspaper he never did come up with an acceptable alibi for his
whereabouts on April twelfth," I said. "Couldn't or wouldn't, I'm not sure which.
But the article did say that Clay claimed to be studying alone at a Boston library,
although no one could remember seeing him there. The library where I donate my time
is much, much smaller. Even then it would be hard for me to recall who all came in
there on any given day, so it's not unimaginable that no one could place him there
on that date."

"If Clay shot this moose on April twelfth, it was poached, whether he was in New York
or Vermont. Moose bear their young in the spring; it can't be legal to shoot moose
anywhere that time of year, I wouldn't think. The penalty for poaching is pretty steep,
particularly if you are poaching a protected species. Perhaps that's why he didn't
want to tell the authorities where he was, or what he was doing, on the day his wife
disappeared," Stone said. "I would've thought he'd use that alibi as the lesser of
two evils, but then again, he was training at the police academy, and I imagine they
frown if their cadets are arrested for any reason."

"Clay wasn't alone, either. Someone else had to have been there to take this photo
of him with the dead moose. They're Jake's photos, so I'd say it was obviously Jake.
Could Jake have been an accessory to the murder of Clay's wife? If someone like Clay
needed assistance in disposing of a wife and unborn child he no longer wanted to be
burdened with, whose help would he be more apt to enlist than a guy who was his friend
and roommate?" I asked. "But why murder, Stone? Why not divorce?"

"He may have been trying to avoid alimony and child support obligations, or it may
have been a 'heat of the moment' type of thing. We also can't rule out the possibility
that Clay was not involved in his wife's murder."

I knew Stone was right. I needed to keep an open mind. Clay had constitutional rights
and was innocent until proven guilty.

Stone handed me the packets of photos and continued to speak. "Let's take the negatives
out of these envelopes, Lexie, and get reprints made. Jake will never miss them. And
if he does notice they're gone someday, he'll just think he lost them. Probably by
then, he won't even remember us having been here."

I nodded and removed the negatives from the packets. I stuck them inside my notebook.
Then I picked up Jake's bank statements, dated just a couple days prior, and glanced
at the balances. Jake had $109.26 in his savings account and $31.09 in checking. I
hoped for his sake that Monday was payday. I'm glad that I don't have to try and live
on a shoestring that short. "What does Jake do for a living?" Stone asked, after I'd
shown him the statements.

"I don't know, but inside his checkbook is a pay stub from a place called the Fantasy
Club."

Stone picked up a phone directory on the kitchen counter and thumbed through it. After
he located the listing for the club, he handed me a pen out of the drawer, and said,
"Write this down in your notebook, Lexie."

I wrote the address as he read it to me. Stone waved the phone book and asked, "Should
we take this back to Harriet as a souvenir from Massachusetts?"

We put everything back the way we remembered it being when we'd first arrived. We
then closed and locked Jake's front door, and headed to the Fantasy Club. Jake wouldn't
be there. He'd still be working out at the gym, waiting for the toxic water fumes
to dissipate. With any luck at all, we could get a hamburger, a beer, and a few answers
at the club, located just nine or ten blocks from Jake's house.

* * *

We didn't eat lunch at the Fantasy Club after all. We didn't get a hamburger or even
a beer there, but we did eventually get some interesting answers.

Jake Jacoby was a male stripper at an all-male dance club. No wonder he looked so
good in just cutoff sweatpants. It was more clothes than he usually wore at work.

After we walked into the dimly lit building, Stone cornered the club's owner, standing
behind the bar talking to one of his employees. He flashed a shiny badge, then jammed
it back in his rear pocket, and said, "I'm Detective Wesson with the NYPD. Are you
Baines McFarland?" He'd gotten the owner's name from the bouncer at the front door.
McFarland was a tiny, effeminate-looking man who made Stone look like a Mr. Universe
contestant in comparison. Stone dwarfed the club owner, who was about my height, and
very slim.

"Yeah, what of it?" Baines replied. He never even glanced at Stone. Instead, Baines
turned to his employee, and said, "You can go now, Brett."

Earlier I'd given Stone a photo of my son-in-law taken at Clay and Wendy's wedding.
Stone held it up for Baines to see and asked, "Have you seen this individual in your
joint?"

Baines glanced at the photo of Clay, gave Stone an insolent look, and then turned
away, ignoring him. Stone took another step closer to him and asked, "Do you have
a Jake Jacoby working here at your joint?"

"I don't have to answer your questions, copper," Baines finally responded.