Primed for Murder (24 page)

Finally, Toby was all set up and drew a bucket of cold water from the spigot of the tub in a bathroom off the hall upstairs. Dezi brought him a carafe of coffee and left him alone as he went to work. He faintly heard her bustling around downstairs, humming to herself, as he got mud for the walls mixed to a nice, even consistency. By the time she returned to invite him to lunch a couple hours later, he’d finished mudding and taping and was cleaning tools, ready to move on to another room. Dezi glanced around, an eyebrow cocked. “Doesn’t look like much now, I know.” Toby followed her gaze. “But once it’s sanded and painted, you’ll love it.”

He washed up in the upstairs bathroom. Through a window looking down on the street out front, he saw French stroll casually away down the sidewalk in front of the Colangelo house. What was he up to now? As Toby watched, the detective climbed into his own vehicle and drove away. Good riddance!

Toby clomped downstairs to the kitchen, where Dezi had crust-less tuna sandwiches—with chopped celery and onions, the way he liked—iced tea and potato chips all spread out. She nibbled, watching him eat while he downed two sandwiches.

“You work quickly. I can’t believe all you’ve done with the game room already.”

“I’m making good progress.” He munched a handful of chips, eyeing a white wall phone across the room.

“I’ll be working outside for awhile. Will you be okay all alone in here?” She stood.

Toby rose with her, as his mother had taught him. “Sure. I’m a big boy now.”

“You certainly are.” She gazed up at him with large, dark, moist eyes. “How late will you work tonight, Toby?”

“I’ll prep another room or two. Probably work till five or six.”

“I may not be here when you leave. You can lock up. Just turn the top latch and pull the front door closed behind you when you leave. It locks automatically.”

She waved him back into the chair. “Take your time over lunch. No hurry.”

Dezi strode briskly from the room, long, pale legs flashing. Toby heard her dash upstairs, tracked her light footsteps overhead. In a moment she was back, now wearing a broad-brimmed sun hat with a bright-green scarf as a hatband trailing from the back, to give him a smile and a quick wave. “Bye-bye for now.”

The front door opened and closed. Toby saw the top of the hat move past a kitchen window and got up to watch her progress. He waited until he saw Dezi, her hands in dirt-stained gardening gloves, squat to scrape with a claw-like implement at a bed of low purple flowers. Then he put his dishes in the sink—another lesson in etiquette from Mom—and got to work.

Chapter 20

Toby went to the second-floor bedroom where his painting gear was piled. He quickly spread drop cloths. Taped woodwork. Removed switch plates, outlet covers and hinges. He brought down the ladder from the attic, stirred up a gallon of primer and poured a quantity into a pan. He fixed the pan to the ladder and, climbing halfway, began pushing paint onto the ten-foot ceiling using a roller with a yard-long handle. Toby worked steadily until the pan was empty, covering perhaps an eighth of the overhead surface area, then filled the pan again. He balanced the roller across the pan and went to the window overlooking the back yard. Mrs. Colangelo was just visible on the left, weeding among tall yellow flowers toward the back fence.

Feeling guilty, Toby crept downstairs. The wall phone he’d spied in the kitchen had no number tag. It needed to be pried apart. The job of planting the bug took five nerve-wracking minutes because his clammy fingers felt dead and clumsy. Finished, and sweating as though he’d been in a steam bath, Toby dashed to a window. Dezi was still there, on her knees now, a little farther along, digging among a bed of low blossoms like many-colored jewels.

Toby found the next phone, an old-fashioned black rotary type, in the TV room at the front of the house. He unscrewed the mouthpiece, peeled tape off the back of a bug to activate it, placed it as French had taught him, jotted down the number, then cradled the phone. When he’d finished with all phones, he was supposed to call the cop shop—from outside the house—and give them the numbers, some of which, French had said, there might not be a record of. When the police called back each number, the bugs would be live.

As he left the TV room, Toby saw Dezi round the corner of the house, coming towards the front door. He raced across the entranceway and pounded up the stairs two at a time. I’m not cut out for this spy stuff, he thought, chugging down the hall.

He was on the ladder, panting as he painted, when she entered the house merely to use the downstairs bathroom. The toilet flushed and she went out again.

Toby finished the pan and scoped the yard again: Dezi had reached a corner and was clipping a bush with pruning shears. He slipped into the hall and made for the nearest closed room.

It was a big, square bedroom, all done in old-rose-and-gray. Dezi slept here: her perfume lingered in still air. By light shafting through half-drawn drapes, Toby saw a six-foot-tall armoire, vanity, matching highboys, matching armchairs. A huge bed with knurled, seven-foot-high posts and massive headboard dominated the room. Beneath a summer-weight bedspread, one lone pillow showed in the middle of the mattress at the head of the bed. What did the single pillow mean? A pink phone sat on a stand beside the bed. Its number, Toby noticed as he pried the handset apart and inserted a listening device, matched that of the downstairs phone. The nightstand held a pink cell phone, but French had said not to bug mobile devices so Toby left it alone.

Across the room were two closed doors.

The first led into a cedar-lined walk-in closet. Racks on one side were crowded with a rainbow of women’s clothing, arranged chromatically from dark to light. In compartments beneath were dozens of pairs of women’s shoes in a spectrum of colors. Racks on the opposite side, by contrast, were almost empty. A few men’s garments—ugly, out-of-fashion sports jackets, iridescent suits, wool slacks with a busted zipper, a hanger draped with hideous ties—hung lonely and abandoned above torn sneakers, down-at-heel loafers and scuffed wingtips.

The other door led into a tiled bathroom that continued the bedroom’s color scheme. Beside a round, sunken tub-shower combo was a cordless phone and charger. Same number as others he’d found so far he noticed, inserting the little black button.

Coming out of the bedroom, he ran smack into Mrs. Colangelo.

Dezi walked toward him, looking wrung-out. She had removed the sun hat. Her face was flushed and damp. Dirt smudged one cheek. Her hands, thanks to the gloves she’d worn, were clean but her forearms were dusty. Her knees were black from kneeling on the soil. She stopped as Toby stepped through the doorway, lifted her beautifully shaped eyebrows in question.

Toby said the first thing that popped into his mind. “I had to use the john.” Even as the words left his mouth he thought, what a stupid lie! She’d wonder why he hadn’t simply used the hall bathroom where he’d washed up for lunch.

But if she thought anything was wrong, she didn’t show it. “Hot out there.” She flicked away a wisp of hair plastered to her forehead and pulled the damp, clingy cloth of her blouse away from her ribs.

“In here, too.” Toby’s clothing was soaked with sweat squeezed from his pores more by anxiety than by honest labor.

“Too hot and humid to work any more out in the garden today.” She fanned her face with her fingers. “Think I’ll cool down with a bath.” She drifted past him into the bedroom. A few minutes later, Toby heard the muted spray of water.

“Enough of doing French’s work for him.” He fingered remaining bugs. “I’ve got a paying job to get to.” If there were more phones in the house, they’d have to wait.

By the time Mrs. Colangelo reappeared, an hour later, Toby had finished the bedroom ceiling and was painting a wall. Windows were wide open to let out fumes and admit a gentle cross-breeze.

“Like a cooling drink, Toby?” Dezi said suddenly from behind, startling him. He hadn’t heard her come in.

Toby turned and his breath caught.

Dezi stood a few feet away, letting Toby get a good eyeful. She looked yards better than when he’d last seen her: redone makeup subtle and understated, clean smelling with a light floral perfume touchup, all scrubbed so her skin glowed peachy-pink. He could see plenty of skin wherever the folds of a diaphanous emerald-tinted, thigh-length peignoir contacted her body. She wasn’t wearing a stitch under the almost invisible garment and looked like a very grown-up little girl trying on mother’s clothes.

He supposed the outfit would be cool on a hot day. It had the opposite effect on him. He tore away his gaze, but in seconds it drifted back.

Dezi’s long hair was caught up in a fluffy towel turbaned on her head. Her seashell-pink painted toenails peeked from the ends of wedge-shaped slippers that gave definition to the muscles in her calves and added two inches to her height. “Tea?” She turned a palm upward. The slight movement made a rosy nipple nose against the sheer cloth. “Lemonade, beer, or something stronger? We have most anything you’d like.”

“Lemonade sounds perfect.” Toby swiped at his sweat-blistered face with a paint-dappled hand.

Dezi laughed. “You look like an Indian in war paint.”

“It’s not hard to get dirty in this job.” If she only knew how dirty it could get. “Lucky for me, somebody invented turpentine.”

“Water can work wonders, too. You’re welcome to bathe here when you’re done for the day. I’ll bring our drinks.” She swished from the room, revealing a set of firm, round cheeks that flashed provocatively through green gauze.

Toby worked feverishly while she was gone, finishing a wall, starting another. The sooner he got out of here, the better. French was right: this was crazy, getting crazier by the minute. First, it was murder, Mayan manuscripts and mobsters. Then it degenerated into planting hidden mikes. Now it was spiraling downward again: a daughter of the big boss—and wife of a reputed killer—was making eyes at him. What next?

Dezi returned with a tray bearing a tall, frosty glass of lemonade and a shaker full of her drink—gin-and-tonic, she said. The towel was looped over one arm. Her damp hair, adorned with a brush stuck bristles-first in the thick tresses, flowed in dark streams around her neck and cascaded over her small, conical breasts.

Toby built an impromptu table of paint cans, and she set the tray down. He took his lemonade and sat in a windowsill while she stood facing him, an elbow braced on a ladder rung as she ran the brush through her hair.

They drank greedily. It was homemade lemonade, sweet and tart and refreshing. “This is good.” He half-emptied the glass in huge swallows.

“Ditto.” She lifted her glass. “Want some?” The hairbrush reached the end of its three-foot journey south and rose to the crown of her head to repeat the trip.

Toby watched bristles press the glistening masses of black hair against the contours of Dezi’s head and neck and shoulders and breasts. “I’d better stick to lemonade if I expect to get work done.” He took another pull off the glass. Delicious!

“You’ve already done a lot for day one. You could knock off early.”

Toby glanced at his watch: nearly three. And he still had to find another place to sleep tonight. Why not pack it in? “You’re the boss.” He drained the lemonade and held out the ice-filled glass.

“Not every man would admit that.” Dezi kept the shaker playfully out of reach. “If you’re quitting, clean up. There are towels in my bathroom. I’ll save a drink for you.”

“Aye-aye, captain.” Toby stashed gear, dunked pan and roller in a bucket of water, saluted and marched out of the room.

The bathroom floor was damp with Dezi’s tiny footprints. Her bra and panties hung draped over a towel rack. Toby stripped and got the shower going. A knock sounded as he was about to step under the stream of water. Dezi’s voice came coyly from the other side. “Need someone to wash your back for you?”

It took a minute to work up a reply. “No, thanks. I can manage.”

“All right, then.” She sounded disappointed.

Toby lathered hands and hair several times to make sure all traces of paint were gone. He vigorously toweled himself dry, looked in vain for a masculine-scented roll-on deodorant in the medicine cabinet, then climbed back into his underpants and sweaty T-shirt and coveralls. He left the bathroom refreshed ten minutes after he’d entered.

Mrs. Colangelo waited for him in the master bedroom. She sat facing the lighted mirror of the vanity, still brushing her hair. “Paint fumes were getting to me in the other room,” she said. The reflection of her eyes studied him and she nodded approval. “You look much better now. Pour yourself a drink.”

The drink tray was on the telephone stand by the bed. Toby bent to sit on the bedspread covering the mattress and pour a healthy one into the glass provided. But Dezi said, “Wait. Do you have wet paint on you?”

Toby felt his coveralls. His fingers came away tacky. “I’ll stand.”

“Nonsense! Get comfortable. At least take off your outer garment.”

“I don’t have much on underneath.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t either.” Her dark eyes seemed lit by an inner flame. “A worker ought not to wear more than the employer. Come on, Toby, drop them.” He hesitated, weighing options. “My house. My money. My rules.”

Toby shrugged and let the coveralls puddle on the floor. At least his underwear was clean, fresh out of the package. Besides, the extra-long tail of the T-shirt covered him to mid-thigh. He could sense Dezi appraising him as he filled his glass with gin-and-tonic, emptied it, and filled it again. It went down as easily as the lemonade.

He lolled on the bed while she remained at the vanity. They chatted about the weather, about the progress of his work, about nothing in particular as ice in their glasses melted and the level in the shaker dipped. By the time he was halfway into his second drink, Toby felt loose and relaxed. His T-shirt was almost dry. Dezi was right: it was better to sit around in your skivvies on a hot afternoon. The problems of the last few days seemed far away. It was pleasant to watch this attractive, nearly naked woman brushing her hair. It was exciting to find someone to listen as he prattled with the enthusiasm of someone who didn’t get much chance to talk. “How did you get into painting, Toby?” she’d asked, and he was off at the mouth as if she’d fired a starting pistol. He rambled on for ten minutes about how the twists and turns of life had eliminated other occupations from consideration.