Grounds to Kill Page 14

  “Who is it?” Mallory asked.

  I explained briefly about Charlie from the bakery and about Mrs. Rudnicki being his grandma.

  “Huh. Small world,” Mallory muttered.

  Mojo was busy sniffing my damp shoes, and, every time she inhaled a big sniff of Mastiff, she sneezed and went back for more.

  We turned on the TV and watched Sex in the City reruns. I emptied the pockets of my jeans onto the coffee table. For some fur baby comfort, I picked up Mojo and we sat on the sofa together. I patted the short, stunted length of her as I stared at the coffee table holding my phone, Zelma’s crumpled pamphlet and the ominous key. After a while I slumped over and fell asleep with Mojo snuggled into the crook of my arm.

  When I woke up it was because Mallory was snoring loudly in the opposite corner of the sofa. I felt disoriented and uncertain of the day or time. I glanced at the clock on my Blackberry and it read 7:30 p.m. I got up from the sofa and put Mojo on the floor. She promptly ran off to snuffle my shoes.

  “He’s not your type,” I told her, whispering so as not to wake Mallory. “He’s got control issues.”

  She whined softly and went to sleep in the corner on her princess bed with one of the shoes. I went to the linen closet for a spare pillow and blanket and covered Mallory.

  When I walked into the kitchen for a drink, I felt a slight tingling in my left hand. I yanked open a drawer and pulled out a pad of paper and a pen. With the pen in my left hand I closed my eyes and murmured a small prayer.

  #207B

  After reading that brief note, I threw the pen across the room where it pinged off a lamp and rolled to the floor. Mallory snored louder and snuggled deeper under the blankets on the couch.

  I decided to think about all this in a hot bath. After the tub was filled with steaming water and overflowing with fragrant bubbles, I snagged a cold beer from the fridge and Zelma’s “how to” pamphlet off the coffee table and placed both items on the side of the tub while I stripped and stepped into the water. I slid down until the water was up to my neck and the bubbles were tickling my nose. I wanted the bath to take away all my troubles, but realized that would only be possible if I drowned myself in it. Instead, I sipped my beer and soaked until I pruned.

  Just before getting out of the tub, I read over the brochure. It basically outlined how important it was to be relaxed, calm and at peace in order to receive full communication from the metaphysical world. I didn’t think I was going to get more relaxed than I was, but I didn’t feel any better connected to my spiritual side than I usually did. I drained the tub and toweled off.

  Once dressed in clean clothes, I ate a piece of toast with peanut butter and started up the new-to-me laptop that Mallory had kindly donated. I checked my emails online and declined all offers to enhance my penis. Then I checked my friends’ statuses on Facebook and liked a couple of things that I really couldn’t care less about. I Googled some erotica and then shut it down when Mallory woke up and clicked on the TV to watch an Oprah rerun.

  I texted Mitch to please keep an eye open for my dad, and if he saw him set up across the street from Merlot’s he was to call me immediately. He responded with “K.”

  Mallory and I got out some spray cleaner and began cleaning the fingerprint powder from various surfaces.

  My phone rang and it was Beth letting me know she was on her way over. She was bringing Fred so I should make sure I was decent.

  “I’ve got clothes on, but it’s been a long time since I was decent,” I told her.

  “Fred has information for you,” Beth announced.

  The call was dropped before I could ask if the news was good or bad. I crossed every finger that I could and prayed for the best.

  Chapter Nine

  Fred came in and confirmed that he had news, but the way he said it made me realize he wasn’t going to say he’d solved the murder by finding the random stranger who killed Misty and we’d also all won a trip to Hawaii to celebrate.

  “You might want to sit down,” he told me.

  We all found space in my small living room and waited.

  “My contact at SPD says there’s BOLO out on your dad.”

  “I’m hoping BOLO stands for something good,” I said.

  “Be on the lookout,” Beth said.

  “Yeah.” Fred nodded. “Things are getting serious. They want to bring him in to question him.”

  My stomach tightened.

  “Oh, God. When Kellum told me that, I was hoping he meant they’d keep looking around for him. A BOLO makes it sound like he’s a suspect on the run.”

  “Can I see the key you found?” he asked.

  I fumbled to get it out of my phone case then handed it over.

  He turned it over in his hands.

  “Obviously to a padlock,” he announced.

  “We believe it may be to something important,” Mallory said.

  “You can keep the flyer,” I told him. “But I need to hang on to the key.”

  “Sure.” He returned the key to the coffee table between us. “If I had to make a random educated guess, I’d say that somewhere there’s a storage locker with a lock that matches that key.”

  We all stared at the key.

  “Okay.” I nodded, because that did make a weird kind of sense. I could totally see my dad stashing things away in a storage locker. I couldn’t see him paying for a locker though. “How can we find out if that’s true?”

  “Well,” he rubbed the back of his neck. “There are probably a hundred storage companies in the King County area.”

  “So basically you’re saying it’s a needle in a haystack,” I said grimly.

  “I’m thinking we don’t focus on finding a storage locker that could turn out to be a big zero. You’re on a time crunch here and you want to clear your dad’s name, right?”

  “Right,” I said. Mallory and Beth joined me by nodding emphatically.

  “What do you suggest?” Beth asked.

  “I suggest you leave it to me and the police and keep yourselves out of it.”

  He opened a sack he’d brought in and took out a new lock and a few other packages.

  “If you plan on staying in your apartment, you need to be protected.”

  Within half an hour he’d replaced my flimsy lock with a powerful deadbolt and an alarm system.

  “Set the code whenever you leave and again once you’re inside. If anyone comes inside, the police will be notified immediately.”

  It was both terrifying and reassuring.

  Mitch texted that he still hadn’t seen my dad around Merlot’s. He mentioned that on his break he even took a walk down all the alleys within a few blocks, but had no luck. I replied, thanking him, and mentioned the alarm system.

  His next text read: Stay safe. I’m worried about you.

  After Fred was gone my friends kidnapped me and took me for a pity supper. We went to Sage Bakery & Café in Capital Hill. I had the Thai curried gyroto and felt full of vim, vigor and determination by the time we were all done eating.

  “I understand Fred is going to do whatever he can, but I just can’t sit around doing nothing,” I said. “I think I need to at least start calling storage places in Seattle to see if there’s one in my dad’s name somewhere.”

  Beth said we could set up at her place.

  Back at Beth’s we began by Googling all the greater Seattle area public storage companies. There were close to three hundred.

  “Well, that’s ridiculous!” Beth cried. “And a total waste of money. People are spending hundreds of dollars every month to keep junk they probably don’t even look at.”

  “Are you done?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, let’s see if we can narrow it down to places within a couple of miles o
f Merlot’s. I can’t see Dad keeping storage somewhere he can’t physically walk to.”

  “Good point,” Mallory said. She tapped on the keyboard and managed to narrow it down to just over a hundred. “It sounds like a lot, but we each have our own phones so we can dial, like, thirty-something places each and that won’t take so long.”

  “Sure,” I said trying to sound positive. But over thirty places still sounded like a lot of places to call and if it turned up a big fat zero, that’s a lot of time wasted.

  Mallory printed off the names and numbers of the storage places we’d be calling and gave us each a sheet. Beth got the first third of the alphabet, I the middle and Mallory got R thru Z.

  “Let’s get busy,” she said. “How should we work this? Do they have a privacy issue? I’m sure we can’t just ask ‘does Jack Hamby have a unit with you?’”

  “Do you happen to have power of attorney, given your dad’s condition?” Beth asked.

  “No, I don’t,” I admitted. “It was one of those things I always meant to do, but never got around to.” I rolled my shoulders. “How about this? Tell them you’ve had a death in the family and you’re under the impression Jack Hamby had a storage unit at their place. If we can get a simple yes or no, we can go from there.”

  Two hours later we were each about seventy-percent through our list and about one hundred percent through our patience. Some places put us on hold for so long we just hung up. Other places said they couldn’t release information without proof we were family and suggested we check bank records. Who knew storage units were such a complex business?

  I wondered aloud if Fred would be able to get any more information for me.

  “Let’s face it,” I said. “He doesn’t have as much invested in this as I do.”

  “Hon, nobody has as much invested as you do,” Beth said. “But I think he’ll make progress. You just gotta give him time.”

  Sadly time was the one thing we didn’t have.

  “Okay, thanks for all your help, but I’m going home,” I said. “I’ve gotta walk Mojo and I’ve got the opening shift tomorrow so I’m up at six.”

  It wasn’t that late, but I was looking for an excuse to go home and sulk. My day sucked and I had at least expected to hear from Mitch, but he didn’t call or text after his message this morning. I tried not to judge him for it. After all, even if I was attracted to a guy, I’d probably run screaming in the other direction if he had half as much drama going on in his life as I did going on in mine.

  I drove a little out of my way to pop in at Bread of Life and see if Dad had turned up for the night. As I drove slowly past, I noticed a police cruiser parked out front. When I was near them the officers did a double take at my car. Uh-oh. I wasn’t exactly going under the radar driving a bright blue Neon with Die Bitch in red spray paint. I gunned the accelerator and cornered onto First to get out of there fast without breaking any speed limits. A couple of blocks more and I took a right on Yesler, deciding to head up to the Union Gospel Mission on Second Avenue. A block away, I could already see the patrol car out front.

  Damn! Couldn’t the cops be out chasing murderers and rapists instead of hunting down a mentally ill man? At this rate Dad would have no choice but to sleep on the street, because he’d never be able to get past the cops to get into any of the shelters. I was grateful that spring was now morphing into summer, but I knew he was on borrowed time. At any moment he’d be seen and then snatched up by SPD. He’d be questioned and refuse to answer. They’d lock him up and possibly have him undergo a psych evaluation, but I doubt he’d ever see the light of day again. He had evidence against him in a murder and would be mentally unable to defend himself. He had a better chance of ending up in jail permanently than receiving warmth and compassion from cops eager to solve a murder.

  I turned my car around and began heading in the opposite direction, looking into alleys and doorways. At one point I thought for sure I was being followed, but when I turned a corner from Western onto Vine, nobody was behind me. Time to go home and give my worry and paranoia a rest.

  Just as I was reaching that conclusion, I spotted the shopping cart woman from the other night. What had Melvin from Bread of Life said her name was? I tapped the side of my head with my hand until it came to me. Alice!

  I wanted to talk to her and find out what she heard about Dad and see if she had any idea where he’d be spending the night. Not wanting to scare her off, I pulled to the curb and parked on Vine as she turned a corner up ahead. It would be easier catching up to her on foot. I tugged my purse onto my shoulder and jumped out of the car.

  For a woman pushing a heavy loaded shopping cart, Alice was surprisingly nimble. The minute she heard footsteps coming, she glanced over her shoulder and took off. She zigzagged between parked cars and whipped into alleys and around Dumpsters that she knew would slow me down. This was her backyard and I was on unfamiliar turf.

  I decided to stop trying to outrun Alice and to try to out think her. When she zipped behind a building, I made an educated guess where the alley behind that building would exit and I headed in that direction. Even speedy Alice would be slower maneuvering a cart down an alley covered in trash and debris than I could be on the sidewalk around the building. When I got to where the alley exited, I pressed up against the building and waited. My breath was coming out in huge ragged gasps so I put both hands over my mouth to cover the sound of my wheezing.

  Soon I heard the quick click-clack of shopping cart wheels coming closer. Ten seconds later Alice burst through the alley exit and I grabbed hold of her hoodie, which used to be my hoodie, but now smelled like she’d rolled around in castoffs from Pike’s fish market.

  Alice tried to wriggle and yank from my grasp.

  “Stop!” I shouted. “It’s me, Jack’s daughter. I’m trying to find my dad!”

  She stopped trying to get away and turned and looked at me.

  “You and everyone elth,” she said. “Everyone looking for Jack. You need to go home and not try and find him.”

  “But I want to help him. The police want to bring him in for questioning about a murder.”

  “Jack would never hurt anybody. He would never do anything bad like a murder.” She glanced anxiously around where we stood. “I can’t be seen standing around talking to you. I’ll get in trouble. You just gotta believe Jack didn’t do whatever they said he did.”

  “I know that, but the police have evidence that he was there. I just need to talk to my dad and find out the truth.”

  “You want to help Jack—you’re better just to leave him. He can hide. He’s a good hider. The poleeth won’t help him. They’re bad.”

  “But he can’t hide forever,” I insisted. “And he shouldn’t have to hide. He’s innocent.”

  “Innocent don’t got nuth’n to do with that and you know it.” She wiped her dripping nose on the sleeve of my old hoodie. “He’ll lay low until they find out who really did it and then Jack’ll be fine.”

  “But I don’t think they’re looking for anyone else,” I cried. “I think the police have hold of the idea of Jack killing Misty and they don’t want to let that go.”

  “Well, I can’t help that,” Alice said. She was looking up the road like she was going to take off again.

  “Just tell me this,” I said. “Do you know of a storage locker where my dad might’ve kept some stuff?”

  “Storage locker?”

  “Yeah. There was a key in that backpack and I think it might be to a storage locker that might have stuff in it that might prove he’s innocent.”

  “That’s a lot of mights,” Alice said. “Even if the key ith for a locker, how would you know what it had in it?”

  “I don’t,” I admitted. “I guess I’m just hoping.”

  “Well, a bucket of hope and handful of oranges won’t make you a fruit salad.”
<
br />   “What?”

  “Honey, you ain’t got nuth’n. Leave Jack alone until you have evidence to prove to the poleeth that he is innocent. You go looking around harassing ladieth like myself, well, that just going to bring the copth around looking harder at Jack, know what I mean?”

  I took my purse off my shoulder, reached inside and handed her a couple of bucks.

  “If you see my dad, please tell him I’m trying to get proof he didn’t do this thing.”

  She nodded that she understood then took off. I let her go. Alice was right. I had no hope of helping Dad at this point anyway. Even if I found him, I couldn’t bring him back to my place, because the cops would definitely be watching for him there too.

  I slowly made my way back to my car a few blocks away. It was getting late now and it wasn’t a good idea to wander the streets alone at night. Business people had closed up and left happy hour for the ’burbs.

  Soon I was standing in front of my parking spot, but my car wasn’t there. I looked up and down the street, but it wasn’t anywhere. For a few minutes I walked around thinking that, in my hurry to catch Alice, I parked in a different location, but it was no use.

  My Neon was gone.

  Chapter Ten

  I sat down on the curb and cried. After a few minutes a well-dressed man walked by and tossed me a quarter.

  I dug my cell phone out of my purse and debated who to call. I wobbled between calling Beth or Mallory. Finally I decided on Mallory, but the funny thing is, when my fingers hit the buttons, it was Mitch’s number that I dialed.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi,” I sniffed. “Whatcha up to?” I asked trying to sound casual and not like I’d been crying.

  “Um. Nothing. Are you okay? You sound weird.”

  “My car was stolen.”

  “Where are you?”

  I gave him the cross streets.

  “I’ll be right there,” he said.

  While I waited, I texted Mallory and Beth about my car being stolen and told them Mitch was coming to get me. They urged me to wait somewhere safe until he got there, but I was too tired to move. Someone walked past and tossed me change.