Sticky Fingers (19 page)

Today, a bunch of satellite trucks were parked in the street in front of the house. Now that the story of the bigamist lady was out, news reporters milled around on the sidewalk, drinking coffee out of Starbucks cups and waiting for the next update. As I cruised past, I recognized a guy who wrote up crime stories for the newspaper. I’d slept with him last summer, except we hadn’t exactly slept.

He caught sight of me going by, and his head nearly swiveled off his neck as he tried to make sure it was really me.

To avoid talking to the reporter, I decided not to park and stroll through the crowd to Eckelstine’s front door.

Instead, I drove around the block, past a bus stop and a lady walking a sheepdog.

The next block over was another row of nice old houses that shared backyards with the houses on Eckelstine’s. I parked the truck and looked through somebody’s driveway at the back of the Eckelstine house. What I hadn’t seen from the front was a plumber’s truck parked beside the Eckelstine garage.

The side of the truck said, Busted Flush Plumbing.

“Aha,” I said.

Before I formed a complete plan, who should come popping out from behind a hedge but Richard Eckelstine himself. He must have gone out his back door and crossed the neighbor’s yard and come out on this side.

It was him, all right. There was no mistaking his gray corona of hair. But instead of his bow tie and khaki pants, today he was dressed in a shapeless army surplus jacket and jeans. A throwback to grad students back in the hippie days. He hit the sidewalk, walking fast and adjusting his backpack straps on his shoulders.

To me, he didn’t look like a grieving husband. He looked a lot like my daughter when she was happily bebopping down the porch steps to skip school with her new boyfriend.

Which raised my blood pressure all over again.

What the hell did I have to lose? I drove up beside Eckelstine and pushed the button to roll down the passenger window. “Hey,” I said. “Can I give you a lift somewhere?”

Next thing that happened didn’t seem like the act of a grieving husband either. Eckelstine’s face got all surprised, and he bolted. He ran pell-mell down the sidewalk, holding on to his backpack straps for dear life.

“Something I said?” I asked Rooney.

I pulled to the curb, shut off the truck, and told Rooney to stay. Then I bailed out and started chasing Eckelstine. It was purely instinct—like when a lion sees a juicy gazelle come running out of the tall grass. Hard to suppress the urge to run it down and kill it.

I was lighter and faster than Eckelstine, but I held back, letting the pace tire him out. When he turned the corner and began to run for his life, I ducked into somebody’s driveway. It was another big house—this one with lace curtains in all the windows and a decorative wreath on the double doors. I headed for the backyard, dodging trash cans, skirting a vegetable garden covered in straw, and jumping a koi pond with a little bridge over it. I hurdled a picket fence into the next yard and nearly landed on a dachshund taking a crap on the lawn. Two more dachshunds jumped out from under a deck and streaked in my direction, yapping murderously. I guess they didn’t notice I could have crushed them with my boots. But I like dogs, so I jumped another fence and ran across several more backyards. The lawns were soft underfoot, and I ran until I reached the corner. Then I popped out and there was Eckelstine, running toward me and glancing over his shoulder.

When he turned back and saw me in front instead of behind, he missed a step, tripped over a hump in the sidewalk, and fell,
splat
, on his face. His backpack went flying.

I went over to the grass and picked up the backpack. Surprisingly heavy, like maybe he had a bowling ball inside.

“Jeez.” I stood over him, listening to his labored breathing. “You okay?”

He panted and groaned at the same time. “No, I’m not okay!”

“Want some help up?”

He rolled over, clutching his nose. “No!”

I crouched down on one knee. “Wow, you sure took a header.”

“You were chasing me!”

“Following,” I corrected. “I was following, not chasing. Why did you run, anyway? Got something to hide in here?”

I dangled the backpack over him, and he forgot about his nose and made a grab for it. I pulled the backpack up again, playing keepaway.

He summoned some anger, which was quite a trick being that he was still on his back on the sidewalk. “Give me that. It’s private property.”

“This? Whatcha got in it, Mr. Eckelstine?”

“Doctor. I’m Dr. Eckelstine.”

“Oh, yeah? Got a minute to look at the rash on my ass?”

“Not that kind of doctor.”

“Then how about you give up trying to impress me? What’s in the bag? Should I take a peek?” I tugged at the zipper.

“You open it, I’ll have you arrested.” He sat up stiffly and touched his nose with tentative fingers. “It’s just some of my wife’s papers. Confidential papers. And a key to her safety-deposit box. She’s dead, you know. There are matters to take care of.”

“My condolences. That still doesn’t explain how come you took one look at me and ran like a rabbit. Or why this bag weighs a hell of a lot more than papers.”

“I ran because I—I thought you were the press. From a newspaper or something.” He gave me a disgruntled glare. “They’re all knocking on my door, trying to get a statement. Trying to get me to say something incriminating.”

“Incriminating?”

“They think I killed my wife.” Eckelstine looked insulted.

“Did you?”

“Of course not! I loved Clarice! We made a good team.”

“That’s what keeps a marriage fresh, I hear. Teamwork.” I was starting to think Clarice married the other guy because Eckelstine’s view of married life was Dullsville.

His glare turned suspicious. “What do you want?”

“How about a little information?”

“Will you give my bag back?”

“Sure, why not? Just tell me this. Did you know your wife was married to somebody else?”

Eckelstine opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

I said, “I had a feeling you weren’t totally blown away by Mitchell when he showed up. Did you know Clarice had married him?”

“No.” Carefully, Eckelstine said, “I knew a little about him, but not that they had married.”

“You knew they worked together? In Siberia?”

“Yes.” Eckelstine gingerly felt his left arm, maybe searching for broken bones. “Years ago, Clarice called me from a dig in Siberia, wanting to adopt an orphaned child. I refused, of course, and—”

“You refused to adopt an orphan? Why?”

“Because Clarice wasn’t fit to be a mother.”

I had expected him to say he didn’t want a kid who might have fetal alcohol syndrome or whatever problems he imagined came with foreign adoptions, but he surprised me. “She wasn’t fit? Why not?”

Coldly, Eckelstine said, “May I stand up now?”

I put my hand down and pulled him to his feet.

He dusted himself off. “If you must know, Richie isn’t Clarice’s child. He is my son with my first wife, who died. Clarice became his stepmother when we married. Richie was seven. She—well, she never really took to motherhood where Richie was concerned, and I didn’t want her trying a second time with another child—let alone a girl.”

“What’s wrong with a girl?”

Eckelstine didn’t want to answer, but I began to swing the backpack, so he said reluctantly, “Clarice had too many unresolved issues concerning her own mother. I knew she’d make a terrible mess of a daughter, so I refused. But she was very stubborn, and I should have guessed she’d find a way around me.”

“So she married Mitchell in Siberia to get custody of Sugar?”

Eckelstine rolled his eyes. “That’s her name? Sugar? See what I mean? Clarice had no common sense where children are concerned. I knew it would turn out badly, and I was right, wasn’t I?”

“Sugar seems okay to me.”

“But isn’t it obvious? Mitchell must have killed Clarice. Probably over some issue with the girl.”

“What issue?”

“Who knows? Clarice ran hot and cold with Richie, either ignored him or went overboard with discipline. It all stems from her own childhood and abandonment issues, I’m sure. Somehow, Clarice blamed her mother for dying, and her displaced resentment boiled over.”

I was trying to process all the psychobabble and didn’t say anything.

As if I were a dense student, Eckelstine sighed and said, “Don’t you get it? Clarice and Mitchell must have clashed over their adopted daughter. And Mitchell killed her.”

“Or maybe you found out about Mitchell,” I said. “And you got mad at Clarice and killed her for stepping out on you.”

“That’s ridiculous. I’d never let my emotions run away with me like that.”

I could see Eckelstine was more annoyed with Clarice for getting herself killed than grieving for his loss. I said, “You wouldn’t lose control? Not even if you learned Clarice was having great sex with another man?”

“Don’t be insulting,” Eckelstine said with disdain.

“What about Clarice’s father?”

“What about him?”

“Could he have killed Clarice?”

“Why would he do that? He was a giant in his field, and Clarice followed in his footsteps. He should have been proud of her.”

“Should have been?”

“I’m sure he was,” Eckelstine amended. “What parent wouldn’t be proud of a woman like her? Besides, he’s hospitalized now. For his own safety.”

“Could he be violent?”

“Leeford Crabtree is an intellectual, not violent. Mark my words, it was certainly Mitchell who killed Clarice. Isn’t it usually the husband in these cases?”

“Usually, yes,” I said, looking him straight in the eye.

Icy again, he said, “May I have my property now, please?”

I handed over the backpack. “Can I ask you one more thing?”

“If you must.”

“How did Clarice’s mother die?”

“She was killed during a robbery.”

“Could she have been deliberately murdered? Targeted, I mean, and the killer made it look like a robbery gone wrong?”

“I very much doubt that,” Eckelstine said. “It was a mistake, that’s all. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“And Clarice?”

“What about her?”

“She never got over her mother’s murder?”

“She never wanted to,” Eckelstine said. “That’s my educated guess. She liked blaming all her problems on a thing that happened long ago. It was a kind of crutch for her.”

When I didn’t respond, Eckelstine shouldered his bag and walked away.

I let him go. I walked back to my truck, and Rooney gave me a wet greeting.

I sat in the truck for a while. Thinking. Trying not to feel anything, but thinking about Clarice and her kids. About her dead mother. And her screwed-up life.

Then I thought about her kids a little more and decided they deserved to understand how their mother died.

As for me, I needed some sex before I killed somebody.

14

Before any of the reporters caught sight of me, I trotted up the back porch steps of Eckelstine’s house and looked through the glass in the door. I had pulled my hair into a ponytail and jammed a ball cap over it.

Inside, the kitchen was a mess. I saw dirty dishes and glassware everywhere. A carton of milk forgotten on the counter. Bowl of bananas turning black. A stack of pizza boxes four feet tall. Sure signs of men living alone. I guessed Clarice hadn’t been here in days.

The door was unlocked. Which is practically an engraved invitation, right? So I opened the door and went inside.

From under the sink, the lower half of Reggie Ricco, owner of Busted Flush Plumbing, stretched out onto the kitchen floor. I recognized his belly, because his sweatshirt was all hiked up. He had a tattoo of a mermaid on his stomach, riding the wave of his considerable body hair. His head, shoulders, and arms were inside the cabinet, at work on the water pipes.

“Reggie?”

“Huh?” He banged his head as he came out from under the sink. When he saw it was me standing there, he dropped his wrench.

Reggie had graduated from high school with me, and his wife was Stripper Betty. She wasn’t really an exotic dancer, but back in tenth grade she’d accidentally lost her shirt when it got caught on the school bus door, and she’d been known as Stripper Betty ever since. High school humor is timeless.

The color drained out of Reggie’s face. “Roxy! What are you doing here?”

“I’m your assistant.”

“I don’t have an assistant.”

“Shut up and listen, Reggie. For the purposes of the newspeople outside and anybody else who might wander in, today I’m your assistant, and if you say otherwise, I’m going to tell Betty about you and me.”

Okay, I’m not proud of it. One afternoon a bunch of years ago, I’d bumped into Reggie, bought him a couple of beers, and ridden him like a circus pony. It was before he’d married Betty, but the interlude had so frightened Reggie that he still lived in fear that anyone—particularly his wife—might find out what he’d allowed to happen.

On the floor, Reggie stared up at me and gulped.

I said, “I’m not here to jump you, Reggie. I’m just going to have a look around the house.”

“You c-can’t do that. I’m bonded. If you steal something—”

“I’m not going to steal anything. I’m just looking.”

“But—”

“Dammit, is there anybody else in the house?”

“A kid. Teenager. He’s upstairs in his room, I think.”

“Okay, when does the father get back?”

“He said he’d be gone a couple of hours. He called me because the sink backed up, and he says they’re having some kind of funeral thing here soon, so I came right over to— Look, Roxy, I—”

“It’ll be okay. Forget I’m here.”

While Reggie stared in horror, I prowled out of the kitchen.

I peeked into the dining room. The table was covered with books, newspapers, and coffee cups. And more pizza boxes. In the living room, I decided the furniture had been chosen by a decorator who liked hotel lobbies. A big sofa and chairs in contrasting prints, tables with no scratches, color-coordinated lamps.

The only weird thing about the living room was a giant, ugly painting over the fireplace. It depicted an elephant with long hair, chasing what looked like cavemen with spears.