Sticky Fingers (13 page)

“But she didn’t come home after last night’s meeting.”

Eckelstine pushed his eyeglasses more firmly up on his nose. “Correct.”

Gary said to me, “I’m going to call Duffy.”

“Good idea.”

“Who’s Duffy?”

Neither one of us wanted to tell Eckelstine that Duffy was a homicide cop.

The passenger door of the old Mercedes opened with a creak, and a teenager said, “Dad?”

“It’s okay, Richie.”

The kid took that to mean he could get out of the car. He was about sixteen, I guessed. He had the same curly hair as his father, but a silver stud shone in his nose and another poked through his eyebrow. He wore an expensive-looking black leather jacket, and underneath it, his faded T-shirt had a skateboard company’s graffitilike logo printed on it. I wasn’t sure, but I thought he was wearing eye makeup.

He slouched against the hood of the Mercedes, looking bored. “Where’s Mom?”

“We’re trying to establish that, Richie,” Eckelstine said.

Richie rolled his eyes. “Was she here, or not?”

The kid wasn’t necessarily addressing his father, so I said, “She was here last night.”

“I don’t know why she keeps coming back.” The kid sent a glare up at the house. “She already took everything she wanted.”

“What did she want?” I asked.

“Richie.”

The kid ignored his father. “Grandpa’s research papers, probably. Who cares? It’s all bullshit anyway.”

“Richie—”

“Oh, who gives a flying fig? Can I go to class now? I’m late already.”

If he’d been my kid, I’d have told him to start walking. But his father said, “Just a minute. Let’s get some information.”

Richie turned around and kicked the bumper of his old man’s sixty-thousand-dollar car.

Gary ambled back. “Duffy’s on his way.”

“Who’s Duffy?” Eckelstine asked again.

I was standing there thinking about Clarice, the woman who had married an absentminded professor, which seemed in character. What didn’t make sense was that her son was sixteen. I’d been pregnant with Sage at my high school graduation, which meant Clarice must have had her baby within the same year or so. She hadn’t struck me as the kind of teenager who got pregnant by accident. Rather, she had seemed like a girl who wouldn’t discover sex for another decade. So … how did she end up with a snotty teenager who wore eye makeup?

There was obviously more to Clarice’s story than I had first figured.

About that time, another vehicle pulled up—a snazzy Volvo station wagon.

Just like the one Clarice Crabtree drove, I noted, except this one was black, not silver.

A tall, athletic man got out of the station wagon. Late thirties, I guessed, and handsome as hell. He knew it, too. Fluffy brown hair, a golden tan. When he stepped out of the car, he straightened his broad shoulders as if a camera crew might catch him in action. He wore a blue warm-up suit with clean white sneakers, perfect for acting in a commercial for men’s deodorant or maybe jock-itch cream. He approached us in long, brisk strides. “Excuse me, Officer.”

Gary looked him up and down like he was dressed for a costume party. “Yes, sir?”

“I’m Mitch Mitchell.”

“Congratulations,” Gary said.

“I’m looking for my wife.” Mitchell glanced around, but appeared unconcerned about the emergency vehicles and the bomb squad cleaning up their gear. “She was supposed to be here last night, checking on her father’s house. Clarice Crabtree. Have you seen her?”

Gary said, “Your wife is Clarice Crabtree? Or she’s your ex-wife?”

“Wife,” Mitchell said crisply.

Eckelstine said, “What?”

As the two men sized each other up, I thought about Clarice’s thong underwear and wondered which one she wore the sexy stuff for.

Mitchell squinted at Eckelstine. “Who are you?”

Gary said, “This is Mr. Eckelstine. He says the lady is
his
wife.”

“No, no, she’s
my
wife. We’ve been married almost ten years.”

Gary looked hard at Eckelstine, who squeaked out, “We’ve been married for eleven years.”

The two men stared at each other. Angry, at first. Then with seeds of doubt clearly sprouting in their minds.

“You’re married to Clarice Crabtree?” Mitchell said finally. “Curator at the museum?”

“Yes, exactly.” Eckelstine fumbled with his ID tag and held it up like Exhibit A. “We both work for the museum.”

Mitchell said, “I don’t get it.” He glared accusingly at Gary. “What’s going on here?”

Gary looked at me. “I think I better call Duffy again.”

“Tell him to hurry,” I said.

Gary left, and the next person to join the extended family group was a girl who climbed out of Mitch Mitchell’s Volvo. Another teenager. She had a long black ponytail and wore tight black pants and a fleece jacket unzipped to reveal a tight pink T-shirt that said, When the Going Gets Tough … in sequins. The main thing? She was Asian. If she was the daughter of Clarice and the jock-itch commercial, she had been adopted.

“What’s going on, Daddy? Where’s Mommy?”

In my lifetime I’ve been known to whap a tire iron upside a few heads, and I don’t take guff from anybody, but I have a big, gooshy soft spot for kids. I’d kick the ass of anybody who’d say so, of course.

But one glance at that girl, and I wondered if I was staring at a kid who’d soon be losing her college tuition money to a kidnapper demanding ransom.

Her dad said, “Just a minute, sweetheart. There’s a mix-up about Mommy.”

“What kind of mix-up?”

Eckelstine had been staring at the kid like she was a snake that might bite him. “Who’s this?”

Mitch Mitchell put his hands protectively on the girl’s shoulders, and with gentler pressure he spun her around. With a fatherly push, he sent her back to the station wagon. “That is my daughter. Our daughter. Clarice’s daughter and my daughter. Sherelle. Her name is Sherelle. We call her Sugar.”

Eckelstine suddenly lost his balance. He staggered over to the curb and sat down hard, hyperventilating. He put his head between his knees and gasped for breath.

Mitchell jutted his jaw at me, belligerence in his eyes. “What’s he so upset about?”

“Because you’re both married to the same woman, dipshit.”

Which I guess was the wrong thing to say, because Mitchell punched me in the mouth.

10

Bug Duffy pulled up about the time the bomb squad slammed their doors and started their engines. He got out of his cruiser with a cup of coffee in one hand and went over to talk to the driver of the panel van. Whatever they talked about made Bug laugh, so I assumed the bomb squad admitted they’d just blown up somebody’s lunch. They pulled away, and Bug strolled over to us.

The Eckelstines still sat on the curb. The father looked sick. The son looked annoyed. Mitch Mitchell had joined his daughter in their Volvo. Through the windshield, he glared at me. Like the situation was all my fault.

Me, I was holding a wad of fast-food napkins against my bleeding mouth and wondering if I might lose a tooth.

“Hey, Gary.” Bug put out his hand to the uniformed cop. “How come you’re not at the concert venue, learning how to protect the life of a rock singer?”

Gary shook his hand. “I don’t need the overtime. You?”

“I don’t need the aggravation.” Bug took a slug of coffee and eyed me over the rim of the cup. “What’s with the blood, Roxy? You getting too slow to duck a punch these days?”

I said, “You’re just worried about the paperwork. Well, cool your jets, Detective. I’m not pressing charges.”

He nodded once. “Okay, that makes my morning simpler. What’s the story here?”

Gary gave Bug the lowdown, and during the telling, Bug glanced from the Eckelstines to the Mitchells and finally back to me. I held his gaze while Gary finished up the story.

“A woman bigamist,” Bug said finally. “There’s a switch.”

“Must not have been getting enough attention from the first team,” I said. “She needed a second string.”

“And what are you doing here, exactly?” he asked. “Again?”

“You mean before I was assaulted? Just watching the bomb squad have their fun.”

“Did they let you push the detonator?”

“Darnit, no. Did you find Clarice Crabtree yet?”

“I haven’t been looking. We’ve got the Homewood homicide on the front burner at the moment. And she’s not even officially a missing person.”

“But…?” I prompted.

Grimly, he said, “I’m thinking maybe it wouldn’t hurt to get a jump start on things. I’ll go talk to the husbands. Which one looks the guiltiest?”

“They both seem pretty shaken up,” Gary observed.

Bug sighed. “My money’s always on the husband in these disappearance cases. But this time it’s a crowded field.”

Gary said, “I’d go after Mitchell first. The pretty boy with the bleeding knuckles. What do you bet he has a girlfriend on the side?”

“Libido’s not a motive for making your wife disappear,” I said, surprising myself.

Bug raised one eyebrow. “I think I’ll talk to Eckelstine first, give Mitchell time to get nervous. Maybe you ought to go use your feminine wiles on him, Rox. Get him to confess.”

“Or maybe he’ll just hit me again.”

Bug smiled and strolled over to talk with the Eckelstines.

Mitchell worked up the courage to get out of his car and come over to me.

“I’m sorry about hitting you.” He almost managed to look contrite. “I was upset.”

“No kidding,” I said.

“Considering the circumstances, I hope you won’t press charges.”

I glanced past him at his daughter. She had pulled a cell phone from her jacket pocket and was listening to a call. And sobbing softly.

My heart twisted at the sight of tears streaking down her cheeks. “Yeah, okay,” I said to Mitchell. “No harm done.”

“I’m sure there’s an explanation for all this.” Mitchell wagged his head in disbelief. “Clarice will be able to straighten everything out as soon as we locate her. I’ve been trying to reach her since yesterday, but she’ll call soon. Clarice always keeps in touch.”

I remembered the two cell phones Clarice clipped to her belt. “She’s a good communicator, huh?”

“Yes. Usually, I know where she is at any time—even making a speech in California, maybe, or working at the site in Siberia.”

“Siberia?”

“Yes, she travels to important digs.” Mitchell looked surprised at my ignorance. “That’s where we met, working together.”

I remembered my discussion with Tito. “Digging up dinosaur bones?”

“Not dinosaurs. Later mammals.”

“Megafauna.”

“Exactly. We worked on the site where her father discovered all those woolly mammoths. We had some great success there. It’s where we married. And adopted Sugar, too.”

I couldn’t help glancing at their daughter one more time. “You got married and started a family all at once, huh?”

“Yeah. Clarice ran across Sugar in the village where we had a base camp. She’d been orphaned, and Clarice wanted to help. It’s impossible not to fall in love with Sugar.” Mitchell glanced back at his daughter and glowed with pride. “Even back then she was obviously something special.”

“So you married Clarice and adopted the kid before you left Siberia?”

“Yes. And since then, she’s made my life complete.”

“Daddy?”

Sugar had gotten out of the car and come over. She tugged at her father’s sleeve. “Daddy, I need to get to practice. My coach says we only have the rink reserved until eleven.”

Mitchell checked his watch. “We’ll leave as soon as we get some answers, sweetheart.”

“But, Daddy—”

From the curb, Eckelstine’s teenage son mocked her in a falsetto singsong. “But, Daddy!”

“Shut up, kid,” I said to him.

“Make me,” he shot back.

“I could make you eat that face jewelry you’ve got on.”

“You try, you’ll eat something else, too, bitch.”

“Give it a rest, jagoff,” I said.

Which was enough to get his father on his feet and swinging a punch at my face. He missed and hit Mitchell instead. Sugar screamed. The Eckelestine kid burst out laughing. Mitchell made a fist and swung for Eckelstine. He missed, too.

And hit me again.

This time, I hit him back.

11

When the brawl ended, Bug loaded me into the back of his cruiser, and we headed downtown for me to be booked for disturbing the peace, which was totally bogus. I sulked in the backseat.

I also thought about Mitch Mitchell and his angelic daughter, and Eckelstine and his snotty son. How did Clarice fit into those family portraits? And why did she feel the need to have two whole families? Wasn’t one set of problems enough?

Boy, there was a lot more to Clarice than I first thought.

That’s when Bug took a cell phone call. Then he drove down to the bank of the Ohio, where I saw a river patrol boat bobbing offshore, and the forensic cops standing over a rolled-up carpet. Bug got me out of the car, and we went over to check out the scene.

“Hell,” Bug sighed after we established that the body in the carpet was that of Clarice Crabtree. He looked up at the sky for a while and finally said, “You going to stay out of my way while I work this case?”

I didn’t feel so good.

Clarice was definitely dead. Not kidnapped. Dead.

To Bug, I said, “Why would I get in your way?”

Maybe I sounded too flip. Or sarcastic. But suddenly he was angry, and I was the nearest target.

“How about this for a reason?” He got right in my face, his voice going up a notch. “I talked to my wife this morning. She has a better memory of high school than I do. She says you and Clarice not only knew each other back in the good old days, but you hated each other’s guts.”

I tried to rouse my temper to match his. “What does that make me? Your prime suspect now?”

“All I know for sure is you’re probably lying about something.”

“I did know Clarice,” I snapped, “and okay, we didn’t get along. But until last night, I hadn’t seen her since Mrs. Strohman’s sixth-period science class. So back off, Detective.”

Bug’s face was dark. “You notice me using a nightstick on you?”

“I was handcuffed in your car a few minutes ago!”

He threw up his hands. “How else am I supposed to calm you down? Besides, I’d have cuffed your hands behind you if I’d been serious. You’re a heck of a lot easier to handle when you’re tied.”