Tail of two killers, p.16
Tail of Two Killers, page 16
part #4 of Dog Groomer Mysteries Series
I was looking into the empty, dead eyes of Riley Lee.
41
HOT POCKET
I stood and stumbled backwards. “It’s Riley. She’s dead.”
Granny hurried around the desk. “My goodness. We got here too late.” She spun around. “You think the killer is still in this building? Was her body warm?”
“I didn’t touch her,” I said, as though it was obvious. “I’m not going to touch her, either. If you want to know if her body is warm, then you can find out for yourself.”
Granny leaned over to get a better look at Riley’s body. “Well. It looks as though she still has a little color on her cheeks. From the looks of it, she hasn’t been here long, maybe an hour or two at most.” Granny looked over at me. “Poor girl. I don’t think she was the killer anymore, do you?”
I shook my head. “I think somehow she must’ve pieced this whole thing together. Maybe she went to the killer and threatened to expose them, and then they chased her down and killed her here.”
Granny put her hand to her mouth. “Maybe she found out about Chuck and the ring. Riley felt like she was the rightful owner of that family jewel. It’s possible she got killed over it.”
My eyes scanned the room for signs of a fight. The place was cluttered and messy, but it didn’t look like there had been a scuffle.
“No. Something tells me she was poisoned. Neither the front door nor the back door showed any signs of tampering, and this room is neat in its own cluttered little way. And her body looks… uninjured. Except for the dead part.” I let out a big sigh and looked back down at Riley. “Someone needs to write a eulogy template that makes sense for murder victims you barely knew. I don’t know what to say about this girl. Her visit to Creature Comforts helped guide us into this case. She had an elegant way about her and a natural beauty that I’m sure no one denied. She died way too young. That’s not fair, so I hope we can set it right.”
“We need to call the local cops before we leave today and drop an anonymous tip. But before we get to that, I vote we keep looking around this place for clues.” Granny sifted through some papers on Riley’s desk. “Riley was still a mystery to us. But maybe there’s something among her personal effects in this office that might help us figure out who killed her and who killed Brian.”
“Chuck is my top suspect. He’s connected to both Brian and Riley. He has the ring she was looking for. What if she figured out Chuck found the jewel and went after him for it?”
Granny walked the perimeter of the room, dragging her pointer finger along the wall. “No point in asking what if at this particular moment. We’re at an important crime scene before the cops. We need to make the most of it.”
“You’re right. I’ll search the desk. You search the cabinets, and maybe check out the closet.”
Riley’s desk was surprisingly old-fashioned. There was an old-school pencil sharpener in the corner. I already mentioned the bulky, ancient computer. There was even a Rolodex perched on top of the desk with names and addresses written out by hand.
Brian’s name was not in the Rolodex, and neither was Chuck’s, Jenna’s, or Matt Calderoni’s. Instead, the little flipbook was filled mostly with phone numbers and addresses for suppliers of textiles, fabrics buttons, and zippers. “Riley had a legitimate business going here,” I said. “Looks like she was manufacturing a lot of clothes and had all the right contacts to make a name for herself in fashion. Well, I suppose you need to know people other than manufacturers, but it looks like she had a good start here.”
Granny didn’t look up from the filing cabinet she was leafing through. “Receipts in this filing cabinet go back an entire decade. The girl wasn’t just getting her start. She was established and doing well. It’s so annoying that some jerk had to go and murder an enterprising young businesswoman like this.” Granny looked over at me. “You be careful as Creature Comforts gains momentum. There are some people out there that just don’t like to see women succeeding. I’ve faced that in my businesses and at the poker table my entire life. Old men in casinos have been condescending to me for sixty years. And even now, though I’m older than everyone else who plays, they still call me sweetheart and baby and act shocked every time I win a hand.”
“Whatever happened with those tourists from the British Isles, by the way?” I said.
“They went back to the Isles with my entire bankroll for the week. Don’t want to talk about it.”
I opened a drawer, but it was filled with promotional pens for Riley Fashion. Another drawer contained a complicated ledger, which listed the prices and sales tax for hundreds of items. I was about to give up searching when something caught my eye. It was a jacket hanging on an old-fashioned coat rack. The jacket looked out of place and wasn’t coated in the same thin layer of dust as many of the other fabric swatches in the room.
“I think this is her jacket,” I said. “Let’s see what we can find.”
Granny glanced my way. “Good call. Check the pockets.”
I was already in the process of shoving my hands into the jacket pockets, and so far, I’d come up empty. There was, however, a surprising number of pockets in the jacket, including a couple hidden inside.
“This jacket has, like, fifteen pockets. It’s like something a magician would wear. I guess since Riley worked in fashion, it makes sense she would have some… avant-garde clothing?”
Granny nodded. “I suppose so. Have you checked them all?”
I shook my head. “I’m not sure. I haven’t found anything… Oh, wait, here’s something. Her wallet, I think? It’s not a normal wallet either, it’s, like, made of steel or something.” I fished deeper in the pocket. And my hand connected with something firm.
But I couldn’t extricate it.
“Weird. There’s something else in here, past the wallet, but it’s, like, stuck inside the lining.”
Granny came over, swiftly yanked the pocket inside out, and pulled a tiny pair of folding scissors out of her purse. Grannies, I thought. They have all the right tools, all the time.
There was an obvious new seam, with a sloppy, different colored thread sewn over it and holding the fabric together. Granny snipped at the seam with her tiny scissors, and after a few cuts, I was able to wiggle my finger inside…
…and I pulled out Brian’s giant ruby ring!
I was speechless for a few seconds, shocked by the glamour of the ring and the unexpected discovery. Before I could get my words out, I heard an unwelcome sound…
A police siren wailed in the distance. The sirens got louder and louder as the sound got closer and closer…
Then I heard a car screech to a halt in front of the warehouse. I darted across the hall and looked out the front windows of another room. Sure enough, two cops were hurrying out of a squad car toward the warehouse. Granny poked her head into the room. “What’s going on?”
I gulped and looked back at her. “We need to get out of here. Now.”
42
DEAD RINGER
M y chest and throat tightened. I turned to Granny. “We need to get out of here. Those aren’t Toluca Lake police officers down there. Those guys are LAPD.”
Granny did a quick turnaround, eyes darting around the small room in which we were trapped. “No windows or anything in here, kid. How are we going to escape? Dig through the wall one centimeter at a time like those guys in Shawshank Redemption? Those cops are probably gonna be up here sooner than that.”
I held my finger to my lips to get Granny to quiet down. Then I looked out into the hallway. The coast was clear, so I signaled for Granny to follow me. Granny gave me a quick nod, and in two big steps she was by my side, clutching my hand like she was about to fall off a cliff. “Are you sure we shouldn’t turn ourselves in for breaking and entering?” said Granny. The suggestion was unwonted of her, but she seemed more intimidated by the LAPD than anything else, ever.
I shook my head. “We can’t take that chance. Chuck had the ring. Somehow Riley stole it back. Now Riley is dead. We need to find out what happened, and we don’t wanna get picked up by the LAPD first. They’re not going to take the word of a couple of small-town sleuths who were discovered beside a dead body.”
Without waiting for a reply, I stepped out into the hallway, pressed my back against the cinderblock wall, and edged toward the room that had the rickety ladder outside. The cops down on the first floor must have been walking just as quietly as we were. I imagined them creeping through the room, scanning every nook and cranny with their flashlights, looking for criminals. I was sure both cops had one hand on their guns and would be ready to shoot if they encountered us.
Granny held my hand so tightly my fingers tingled, but I didn’t dare let go or adjust my grip. Once we were about halfway down the hall, I heard heavy footsteps on the stairwell. Then I noticed the beam of a flashlight reflecting off the wall in the stairwell. I gulped. We’d had plenty of close calls, but this call was too close.
Without saying a word, I trotted toward the door at the far end of the hall. I noticed a door I hadn’t tried yet, and as silently as I could, I turned the knob and let the door swing open. Then, still pulling Granny behind me, I ducked inside.
We found ourselves in a staircase leading down. With the police right behind us, Granny and I had no choice but to descend.
The stairwell was dark and moist. It had a sweet, forgotten smell, and the stairs were slippery with something unseen.
“I don’t like this, kid,” said Granny.
“Quiet,” I whispered. “We don’t have much of a choice.”
We descended deeper and deeper into the bowels of the building until, finally, we came to another door. I took a quick look back up the stairwell before I opened the door. The police had not discovered our escape-in-progress, not as far as I could tell. The stairwell was dark and quiet, just as Granny and I had found it.
The second doorway led to a short, narrow tunnel. I had to stoop down ever so slightly as I walked. Granny, an inch or two shorter than me, did not. The hallway was dotted with remnants of a homeless encampment that looked recent. A grease-soaked pizza box contained three moldy slices. Other random detritus littered the ground, all of it looking relatively fresh. I kicked a beer can, and it was still half full.
“This place looks like your father’s bedroom the year after he dropped out of college,” said Granny. “The smell is the reason I kicked him out of the house. Say what you will, but I never regretted it.”
“Dad always told me he left with your blessing.”
Granny scoffed. “It wasn’t a good kind of blessing, kid, trust me.”
The tunnel came to a dead-end where we found a ladder leading up to what looked like a steel trapdoor. I climbed the ladder first and pushed at the door, but it didn’t budge.
“Come on, kid. Hit that thing like a hockey player.”
I threw my weight into the door with a grunt, and it scooted to the side. I pushed a few more times and created an opening big enough to climb through.
Seconds later, Granny and I were standing on a sunlit, downtown Los Angeles street. As luck would have it, we had emerged from the tunnel within sight of the Creature Comforts van. I laughed, and so did Granny.
“Can’t believe we made it out of there,” I said. “Turns out we got a better parking spot than we thought. You have the keys, right?”
Granny narrowed her eyes. “I thought you had the keys. You were driving the van.”
My eyes widened. “But I asked you to hold them, and you said yes! Granny, you can’t be telling me—”
Granny tossed me the keys. They bounced off my chest and hit the ground. I glared at her as I scooped them up. “Not funny.”
43
DEAD ENDS
G ranny and I caught our collective breath as I slowly cruised out of downtown LA toward the freeway. Then she let out a deep sigh and swiveled her gaze to me. “So you think Riley stole the ring from Chuck, and he killed Riley while attempting to steal the ring back.”
I nodded. “I think that ring was worth a lot of money. Chuck found out Brian was in possession of the ring and killed him with the plan of stealing the ring and selling it off. Everything went according to plan until Chuck saw our advertisement.”
“Oh. Right!” Granny scowled. “Why would he come to us and tell us he had the ring if he’d killed Brian and stolen the precious jewel?”
“Sometimes, there’s no better hiding place than in plain sight,” I said. “I think Chuck panicked and told us he had possession of the ring to try to get us to quit snooping around.”
“You think he was hoping to avoid our scrutiny, then he was going to make a run for it or something?” said Granny.
I shrugged. “Maybe. But then Riley stole the ring back from Chuck, and things got even more complicated. He was able to track her down to the warehouse, and he killed her in his attempt to steal the ring back. But the big lug was too dumb to actually find the jewelry after Riley was dead.”
Granny looked out her window. “Or we showed up, and he needed to make his escape. Maybe the guy didn’t have enough time to do a proper search.”
“Also possible.” I turned onto the ramp for the one-ten freeway, which would eventually lead us to Burbank and to Chuck. “I’m excited to find out. And a little scared.”
On the rest of our drive, Granny and I took turns admiring the ring. It really was beautiful. Some primal part of me understood how it could’ve motivated so much greed and violence. Granny also looked through Riley’s wallet, where she noted, oddly, that Riley went by a different name: Riley Wilson. Strange. Riley’s business, and her relation to Brian, would indicate that Lee was her real name. But why did her ID say otherwise? We didn’t have time to reach a conclusion because we reached Chuck’s house first.
Granny knocked on Chuck’s door with three resounding thuds. Then she looked over at me with a little smirk.
“I saw, Granny. Good knocking. You should teach that in your class.”
“You better believe it’s in the curriculum, kid.”
I glanced around the porch. All of Chuck’s Adobe “artifacts” were gone. I nudged Granny and pointed to the spaces formerly inhabited by the artifacts. “You think all the so-called artifacts that were here are now buried somewhere at the California Culinary Institute?”
Granny shook her head. “This guy is the worst kind of loser.”
The door swung open, and Chuck greeted us with a low growl. “You two. Again. Why?”
“Actually,” I said, with my brightest smile, “I was hoping I could take one more look at that ring you found amongst Brian’s things. We were thinking there might be an inscription on it, or some other identifying marker, that might lead us to his killer.”
Chuck’s shoulders slumped. “For real? It’s all the way upstairs in my room. I’m lazy, and I hate stairs.”
Granny leaned forward. “For real.”
As soon as Chuck set off up the stairs, Granny turned to me. “What was that? I thought we were going to question him about Riley’s murder. Now he’s probably upstairs getting a gun.”
“If he was going to get a gun, he would’ve already had it by the time he opened the door. I wanted to gauge his reaction. Seems to me like he thinks the ring is really up there.”
“Seems to me he’s up there loading his crazy assault rifle or something,” said Granny. “We had the element of surprise, and now we lost it.”
Chuck took the last steps to a time and hurried toward us. “I’m sorry… I don’t have it. I can’t find the ring. Is this some kind of sick joke?”
“Maybe if you’re the one who’s telling it,” said Granny. “We found Riley Lee.”
Chuck turned up his hand. “Who is that? I’m sorry, I’m confused here.”
Granny groaned and leaned in the doorway. “Quit playing games with my heart, Chuck.”
“That’s a Backstreet Boys quote,” I said.
“I know when I’m quoting BSB, Amy. Let me talk.”
“Sorry,” I said.
Granny crossed her arms. “Amy and I know all about your fake Adobe artifacts scheme, you creep. How dare you spuriously profit off the indigenous peoples of this land? How do you sleep at night?”
“With a CPAP machine,” said Chuck.
“Does it look like I’m in the mood for jokes, kid?” Granny snarled.
Chuck began shaking his hands anxiously. “Sorry. Sorry. OK. You got me, alright? The whole bid for historical significance is a lie. I withdrew my application. Please don’t rat me out to the cops or anything. I just… I needed the money for the campus. The place has been around for decades. I couldn’t see it go out of business under my watch.”
Granny took a step toward Chuck and cackled right in his face. “You’re not some scared little boy. You’re a shrewd man, and you knew exactly what you were doing. You’re a thief and a fraud and a killer.”
Chuck turned back into his house. “I didn’t kill anyone.” He looked back over at me and Granny, his eyes big and watery. “I wasn’t even really joking about the CPAP machine. But… I hadn’t needed it for months before this. I was sleeping better. Then you two started coming around and acting like I was a killer. I could barely sleep five minutes without it. Anyway, Richard was the mastermind of all that fake Adobe stuff. More than half the sites he’s verified over the years have been scams. He was going to take half of the money for CCI every year. Seriously. He was the mastermind, not me.”
Granny looked Chuck up and down. “Interesting. I’ll admit ‘mastermind’ is not the first word that pops into my brain when I see you.”
“Ouch,” Chuck said. “You don’t have to be so harsh.”
I, too, sized Chuck up. His hands were still shaking. His chin trembled. His mouth looked dry. The guy was genuinely nervous, and he looked like a kid who had been caught stealing from a candy store.
