Sticky Fingers (8 page)

Tonight, a gray Volvo station wagon sat parked in the driveway. The vehicle of university professors, arty types, and liberal ministers. A university parking sticker glowed on the back bumper. A dry-cleaning bag hung on a hook inside the back window. Good chance this was Clarice’s car.

The house looked as if it was being emptied out, all right. On the porch, somebody had left some sad-looking furniture–a rump-sprung armchair and an end table missing a leg. The front door was propped open with a brick. A dim light shone from inside the house, and I could see a ladder standing in the front hallway. Boxes were stacked by the door.

“Look,” I said to Nooch, “how about we play it this way? I go inside for a minute while you stay here and keep an eye on things.”

“What are you going to do inside?”

“Talk to somebody. Crabtree’s daughter, if I’m lucky.”

“How come you want to talk to her?”

“Because maybe she needs some help.”

Nooch said, “Looks like the house needs help.”

“Yeah. So you stay here and watch out for things.”

“What things? You mean cops?”

Nooch hadn’t been in trouble with the law for ten years, but he was still spooked about the police. I said, “Anybody. And don’t start visualizing. I don’t want you falling asleep.”

“Right.” Nooch nodded firmly, as if accepting a very difficult task.

I bailed out of the Monster Truck. Before I could stop him, Rooney jumped out too. The dog had been cooped up for most of the day, so he made a beeline for the picket fence, where he lifted his leg and peed for about a minute. When he finished, he nosed open the gate, ran across the small, overgrown yard, and disappeared around the bushes into the darkness at the side of the old house. I called him, but he didn’t return. But he’d come back eventually, so I wasn’t worried.

I knocked on the jamb. When I didn’t get an answer, I leaned into the foyer and called, “Anybody home?”

It was a big, gloomy house. Some doctor or college professor had probably built it back in the heydey of steel mills. But not a lick of maintenance had been done since then. When I stepped inside, the wooden floor creaked, and it slanted downhill at a fun-house angle. An oak staircase marched up crookedly to the second floor. The oak paneling’s veneer was peeling.

I poked my head into the parlor, where the remaining furniture had once been kinda froufrou. But now the upholstery was stained and patched with duct tape. Tall bookshelves were so stuffed with books and archive boxes that they seemed to lean into the room.

I checked out the clutter on the big desk. More books and lots of papers. The drawers hung open and overflowed. A lot more papers were scattered on the floor. Some were filled with numbers, but most of them were printed with long paragraphs. I picked up one page and scanned it. Lots of big words.

Glancing around, I decided somebody had ransacked the desk looking for something.

From deep in the house, a voice called, “Back here!”

I followed it, my boots grinding grit into the floorboards, and found Clarice Crabtree standing with a clipboard in the middle of kitchen.

“You’re not the electrician,” she said at once.

I put my hands into the front pockets of my jeans to look as unthreatening as possible. “Sorry, no. I do architectural salvage. I’m Roxy Abruzzo.”

Clarice hadn’t changed much since high school. Thin as an icicle, she still had blond hair that stayed perfectly combed no matter what, and a certain curl to her upper lip—like Elvis, only not sexy.

“Roxy,” she said slowly, trying to remember. “Roxy Abruzzo.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I heard you might be breaking up the house.”

I don’t know why I didn’t come clean immediately and just warn her that somebody was looking to kidnap her. I guess it’s just not my nature to be honest right away.

She skewered me with a look, still not sure why she recognized my name. I was a little insulted. But she said, “Who did you hear that from?”

“In my business, word gets around. Plumbers, carpenters, you know. This is a beautiful place. I mean, it was beautiful once. Shame about the current condition. You the homeowner?”

She said, “I’m in charge of the estate. It’s my father’s house, but he won’t be coming back. I’m Dr. Crabtree. Clarice Crabtree.”

I put on my good manners and shook her hand firmly.

“Architectural salvage,” she said, wiping her hand on her pants. “What’s that, exactly?”

“I strip stuff out of fancy houses and resell it. Woodwork. Fireplaces. Staircases. That kind of thing. Here’s my card. I only deal in quality goods, though. Has anyone else been here yet?”

Clarice accepted my somewhat grubby card, read it carefully, and then gave me a more complete once-over, an inspection I let happen even though I felt the old sensation of dislike and resentment rising up inside. My uncombed hair and the layers of jeans and sweatshirts that passed for my fashion statement didn’t seem to impress her. My sartorial choices hadn’t changed in … well, not ever.

“You’re the first,” she replied.

By contrast, Clarice wore a trim silver pantsuit with gold cuff links on her sleeves. The cuff links might have been old coins. I thought, What kind of woman wears cuff links? Her earrings matched, only the coins were smaller. Her face had always been kind of snooty, but it was patrician now—short nose, pointed jaw. Her shoes had straps and very high heels, as if she were one of those desert birds that try to make themselves as big as possible. She still looked like the kind of person who’d laugh if you couldn’t fake reading stupid
Ethan Frome
.

She had two cell phones clipped to her belt, both of them blinking with messages. What kind of person carries two cell phones?

In a different tone, Clarice suddenly said, “Roxy Abruzzo.”

“Yeah.” I smiled. “Remember me now, Clarice?”

“Vaguely.” But her face said she recalled every unfortunate second we’d ever spent in each other’s company.

Like Tito had said, high school was the great leveler—the last time in life that everybody’s almost on equal footing. We were all subject to the same pressures and humiliations. Some of us emerged smarter and stronger for all the tortures, though, while others simply walked out of the hallowed halls the same jerks they had been from the beginning.

Clarice said, “I never liked you.”

“Sorry to say, I didn’t care much for you, either.”

“It’s odd,” she said. “Because you were the only person with whom I had anything in common.”

“Let’s not get insulting here, Clarice.”

She ignored that, but fixed me with a stare, tapping her pencil on her clipboard. Finally, she said, “Our mothers were both murdered.”

For once, I couldn’t make a comeback.

“You’d think that might draw us together,” she said, “but actually it made me want to avoid you even more.”

As teenagers, you really don’t care much about why people act the way they do. You’re too busy trying to survive yourself, I guess. It never occurred to me that Clarice might have some baggage, too.

When I could breathe again, I said, “I didn’t know your mom was killed.”

“Yes. She was mugged outside a bank when I was fourteen. Yours?”

“I was thirteen,” I said stiffly.

“How did she die?”

Normally, I wouldn’t have answered. But I said, “Beaten. Strangled.”

“At random? By a stranger?”

“No,” I said.

“I see.” Her smile returned. “Well, at least I have that to hang on to. Nobody in my family is a murderer.”

A delicious white heat of rage promptly seethed in my veins, and I felt almost happy again. “Still the same humanitarian, huh, Clarice?”

“We all find ways to cope, Roxy. At least I’m a productive member of society.”

I could have knocked her down and shoved all her stupid gold coins down her throat just then, but I held back. That’s me—the new master of my impulses.

If I’d had any urge to protect her—to warn her that somebody wanted to do her harm—it evaporated. Suddenly I didn’t care if Muslim terrorists snatched Clarice off a street, tied her up in a cave, and left her to rot. They could have her, for all I cared.

And the whole sisterhood of the murdered mothers? Screw that. I’d lived through it and done just fine on my own.

With a cold smile on her face, she watched my storm of emotions. She enjoyed it, I could see. When I finally got control of myself, she said, “Are you interested in wine racks?”

“Wine racks?” I knew I sounded stupid and hated myself for it. “Like—you mean wooden racks for bottles?”

“Is there any other kind?” Her tone was withering. “The realtor tells me I should get rid of all the junk in the basement. Your arrival is timely. There are some big wine racks I’d like to dispose of. Would you like them? Could they be removed soon?”

“Sure. We do our own demo.”

She lifted her eyebrows. “We?”

“My assistant and me. He’s outside.” I hooked my thumb at the door. “You want to meet him? Maybe check his résumé?”

She gave me the smug stinkeye for another second. Then she put the pencil in her mouth and champed down on it. I could see she’d already chewed it so there was barely anything left of the yellow part. She removed the pencil and said, “That won’t be necessary. Shall we take a look at the racks?”

“Lead the way.”

With military precision, Clarice led me across the gritty-floored kitchen.

As she walked away from me, I couldn’t help noticing her butt. It’s not like I’m in the habit of looking at women’s bodies, honest. But there it was. Unmistakable evidence that under her expensive, professorly pantsuit, Clarice wore a thong.

Kind of surprising, since she’d been a cold fish back in high school.

I shrugged and followed her down a set of wobbly steps, past the fuse box to the cellar, where only a single bulb with a dangling pull string cast a gray light across the eerie shapes of junk the old professor had collected over the years. Not just boxes and barrels of crap, but a whole crazy zoo was spread out across the vast floor.

Maybe I was already off kilter. But suddenly I had to clamp down every iota of self-control not to break out in the screaming meemies.

Because it was a horror show down there. Stuffed animals frozen in weird poses, glass eyes gleaming. An antelope, a leopard. A stuffed grizzly bear stood beside a rusted deep freeze, alongside a pair of barrels that contained something that smelled disgusting. A dozen stuffed birds hung upside down from the ceiling, laced with cobwebs. An arctic fox stared out from a corner, teeth bared in a snarl.

I could hardly keep from running back up the stairs and into the night.

Clarice enjoyed watching my reaction.

But suddenly one of the beasts growled. It lunged out from behind a wooden crate. Ferocious growl, huge body, threatening teeth. I almost shrieked.

Except the monster turned out to be Rooney.

I sagged against a pillar, relief sweeping over me so fast I felt weak.

But Clarice screamed, dropped her clipboard, and jumped up on the freezer, fancy shoes and everything.

I grabbed Rooney’s collar and held him back. “Easy, big fella.”

He twisted in my grasp and gave me a whine of complaint. He liked scaring people.

“Good boy,” I said, patting his huge head.

Instead of looking smug, Clarice was spazzed out, on her hands and knees on the freezer. It was good to see her looking unhinged.

She snapped, “How did that get in here?”

“I feel a breeze. There’s a door open somewhere.”

“That’s impossible! I checked all the doors myself.”

“Then the wind must have come up. Say hello, Rooney.”

My dog was as big as the wild boar in the corner and twice as ugly, blind in one eye, and with a head that was a mass of scars. He looked right at home in the professor’s menagerie.

When she realized Rooney wasn’t on the attack, Clarice climbed down off the freezer and pulled herself together. She dusted the dirt from the knees of her trousers and accepted the clipboard as I handed it back to her. “You should keep that animal on a leash.”

“He can’t do his job on a leash.” I patted him and set him loose again. He went straight to Clarice and put his nose in her crotch. “Hey,” I said to him, and he obediently shied away.

Clarice brushed invisible hairs from her pants. “Just keep him away from me, will you? Or I’ll send you the dry-cleaning bill.”

Rooney knocked into one of the dead animals, and I reached down to prevent it from falling over. As I set it upright again, I said, “What the hell is this? Some kind of badger?”

“It’s a
Castoroides.
A relative of the modern beaver.” Clarice smoothed her hairdo. “It’s been extinct for a hundred years.”

“Shouldn’t it be in a museum?”

“Most of my father’s mounts are infested with moths. No curator would want them contaminating an important collection.”

I looked around a little more. Of course, I had never been one of those Girl Scout types that hiked around in the wood, breathing fresh air and learning how to treat snakebites with leaves and berries, but to me the grizzly bear had teeth that didn’t look like they belonged in the real world, and the rhino head hanging on the wall had plates on his neck that might have been designed for a sci-fi movie.

I said, “What did your old man study, exactly? Mutants?”

“He researched many things. None of them thoroughly.” Coldly, Clarice added, “He was more of a dilettante than people thought.”

“That means you aren’t?”

“You’re asking my academic specialty? I don’t think you’d understand, Roxy. Let’s just say I didn’t fly on my father’s coattails. I’ve made my own success,” she went on, starting to sound like her high school self. “I’m sought after in my own right. I do some seminars, but my research keeps me very busy. Plenty of international travel. I’m the foremost expert in my field.”

“Impressive,” I said. “Now, about those wine racks? I don’t want to waste any more of your valuable time.”

She glowered. “Very well. This way.”

We brushed past more junk. I took care to stay away from the creepy animals. Eventually we came to the back of the basement, and I took a look at some dusty shelves that had been built into the original frame of the house. They were crude wine racks, nothing special, built of hickory, I guessed. But Clarice got all rapturous.