Chapter 5
Five
Mendoza did not look happy to see me, although he was polite as he blocked the door into the house. “Mrs. Kelly.”
“Detective,” I said, peering over his shoulder. I’m as tall as he is in heels. When I’m wearing heels, I’m as tall as Mendoza is without, I mean.
He shifted to block my view. “What can I do for you?”
I turned my attention from what was behind him to his face.
Between you and me, it was no hardship. I was interested in what was going on inside the house, but Mendoza is just so pretty it’s no problem to look at him.
“Two things. I need the dog’s food and leash.
Unless you want me to go out and buy food and a leash for her.
But I figure there is probably already some of that here, and it makes more sense that I just pick it up. ”
Mendoza sighed. “That’s what you’re doing here?”
“That, and I wanted to tell you something.” I peered over his other shoulder.
He shifted again. “What’s that?”
I subsided. “Zachary just came back to the office. I sent him to the university this morning, to see if he could find the girl from next door.”
Mendoza nodded.
“She wasn’t there. Or if she was, he didn’t see her.”
“OK,” Mendoza said. “So maybe she’s not a student.”
“Maybe not. But Zachary said Steven wasn’t there either.”
“Maybe he took the morning off.”
Maybe he had. “I’m not saying there’s anything suspicious about it. He could be home with his wife.” Or next door with this girl. Although if he was, his car wasn’t parked in the driveway today. “It just occurred to me that one unusual incident might be connected to another.”
“First,” Mendoza said, “we don’t know that Steven’s absence is unusual. Maybe he always comes in late on Wednesdays.”
Maybe.
“And secondly, even if it is unusual for Steven to miss work, we don’t know that it has anything to do with Mrs. Grimshaw’s murder. Which happened last night between ten and midnight, by the way. Do you know where Steven was then?”
I shook my head. I had no idea. “I assumed home with his wife.”
“Have you spoken to Diana?”
I said I hadn’t.
“Call her,” Mendoza said.
“Why do I have to call her? It’s your murder case.”
“We don’t know that Steven’s involved in my murder case,” Mendoza told me. “It’s your cheating husband case. And you’re working for Diana. She won’t think anything of it if you call to see whether Steven’s home. If I call, she’ll wonder why.”
He had a point. I pulled out my phone and dialed.
It was the middle of the workday, and Diana was a busy divorce attorney.
I thought it was possible that she was talking to a client, or having lunch with a colleague.
Part of me wished she wouldn’t answer the phone, so I wouldn’t have to tell her what Steven had been doing yesterday.
You’ll notice I hadn’t written up a report or filled in my client yet.
There was a reason for that. Diana wasn’t just a client.
She was a friend. And I didn’t want to give her bad news.
She was available to talk, though. The phone rang once, then twice, and then her voice came on. “Gina.”
“Diana,” I said. And didn’t know what else to say. I could hear the tension in her voice, and I didn’t know what to do about it.
“He’s cheating, isn’t he?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I followed him from the university yesterday afternoon. He drove to a house in Crieve Hall. Do you know where that is?”
“Neighborhood south of Nashville,” Diana said. “Lots of ranch houses.”
“Do you know anyone who lives there?”
“I can’t think of anyone. What was he doing there?”
“He went inside a house,” I said. “Spent more than an hour there. Then he left and drove back to the university.”
“Who lives there?”
“We’re trying to figure that out,” I said. “Zachary knocked on the door last night, with a pizza, and said the girl who opened the door was around twenty-two or twenty-three, blond and very pretty.”
Diana moaned softly.
“But that was later. There could be other people living in the house, as well.”
Diana didn’t answer. Mendoza waved at me to go on.
“The reason I’m calling,” I said, turning my back on him, “is that I can’t find Steven this morning. Zachary went to the university to see if he could track down the blonde. We thought maybe she was one of Steven’s students. But he didn’t see her. He also said that Steven wasn’t around.”
I waited for her to tell me that Steven was home, in bed, with a bucket next to him.
She didn’t. “That’s strange. I talked to him this morning. He didn’t say anything about not going to work.”
If his absence from the university had anything to do with the girl, then he probably wouldn’t mention it to his wife. But now at least we knew he really wasn’t where he was supposed to be. “Maybe you could call him? Try to figure out where he is, so I can pick up his trail?”
“I can do that,” Diana said. “I’ll call you back.”
She was gone before I even had the chance to say goodbye, let alone mention anything about Mrs. Grimshaw’s murder. I turned back to Mendoza. “She doesn’t know where he is. She’s going to call him and get back to me.”
Mendoza nodded.
“So Mrs. Grimshaw was shot between ten and midnight last night?”
“That’s the ME’s preliminary determination. It could change upon further examination, but it’s probably pretty close.”
“I was home by then,” I said. “I have no idea what happened.”
“I didn’t think you would,” Mendoza told me.
“Have you spoken to the neighbors?” I glanced at the house next door, where Steven had been yesterday.
“There are two uniformed officers going door to door asking if anyone saw or heard anything last night.”
“And did anyone see or hear anything?”
“Not so far,” Mendoza said.
“Was anyone home next door?”
He didn’t answer, and I added, “I didn’t tell you this, but this morning, before I saw the dog and discovered Mrs. Grimshaw, I checked the trash cans outside the house next door.”
Mendoza’s lips twitched. It was the first time they’d done that during this conversation. “The trash cans?”
“Private Investigating for Dummies says you can learn a lot about someone from their trash.”
The twitch became more pronounced. Practically a grin. “What did you learn?”
“That they don’t care about the environment.”
He looked blank, and I added, “They don’t recycle. And apparently they don’t generate trash, either. All the cans were empty.”
“That’s interesting,” Mendoza said.
I had thought it was. Until I forgot all about it in the horror of discovering that Mrs. Grimshaw was dead.
“Come on,” I told Mendoza. “I’ll show you.”
I’m sure he was capable of walking across the lawn to the trash cans on his own, to look for himself, but he didn’t say so.
Instead he just followed as I led the way across the grass to the next driveway and around the house.
“There.” I pointed to the trash can and recycling bin lined up under the carport. “Empty. Just like I told you.”
Mendoza checked for himself, wrinkling his nose at the residual stench, just as I had. I did my best not to admire his rear view, but I didn’t succeed very well.
Once he had satisfied his curiosity and turned back to me, I gestured to the house. “All the curtains are drawn. I’m sure you noticed. There’s no way to look inside.”
Mendoza nodded.
“If Mrs. Grimshaw had been living here instead of next door, I wouldn’t have seen her through the window. She could have been lying there for days before anyone noticed she was dead.”
Mendoza gave me a look. He was clearly following the train of my thoughts. “Do you have any reason to suspect that the inhabitant of this house has been shot?”
“Not a reason,” I admitted, “per se. But if you consider that the inhabitant of the house next door was shot, and the inhabitant of this one isn’t answering the door, I think it bears looking into.”
Mendoza contemplated me for a second. “You just want a look inside.”
I did. But— “I’m still right.”
“You might be,” Mendoza said. “It’s a long shot. But under the circumstances, I can make a case for opening the door and taking a look.”
“Great.” I refrained from rubbing my hands together gleefully.
He eyed me. “I said I can take a look. Not you.”
“That’s mean,” I said.
His lips twitched. “Just stay back.”
I made a face, but I stayed out of the way as he pulled a key chain out of his pocket and chose what I assumed was a universal key. The first thing he did, was knock on the back door. “Hello? Anybody home?”
Nobody answered, of course. So Mendoza called out again. “This is the police. If you’re in there, please answer the door.”
Nobody answered the door. Mendoza inserted the key in the lock and twisted it. “Metro Nashville PD,” he called out again as he pushed it open with one hand and dropped the keys into his pocket with the other. “I’m coming in.”
He pushed the suit jacket aside to pull a gun from the holster at his hip.
My breath caught in my throat. He looks like a matinee idol to begin with, with that gorgeous face and sleek, black hair.
Add in the gun and the heroic expression, and it was like watching James Bond in action, right in front of me.
Mendoza slipped through the door. I followed, all the way up to the threshold, and stuck my head into the room.
The back door opened into a kitchen, circa 1950s vintage. Original to the house. Wood, slab-front cabinets, Formica counters with an aluminum edge, and fake brick vinyl on the floor.
There was no sign of occupancy. No dirty dishes in the sink or on the counter, no trash in the can I spied sitting next to the plain, white fridge.
Mendoza had disappeared through the doorway to the right and couldn’t see me. I slithered through the open kitchen door and into the house.
When he came back three minutes later, he found me standing in the middle of the kitchen floor. “I didn’t go beyond this point,” I told him. “I know you said to stay outside, so I only went as far as the kitchen.”
He didn’t answer, just holstered the pistol.