Chapter 5 #2
“I didn’t hear you scream, or shoot anyone, so I guess the place is empty?”
“You could say that,” Mendoza said. “Come and take a look.”
“Really?” I stuck my hands in my pockets. “Thank you. And don’t worry, I won’t touch anything.”
“I’m not worried,” Mendoza said and led the way through the door into the dining room.
I could see why. There was nothing to touch. As we moved from room to empty room, our footsteps echoed hollowly.
“I don’t understand,” I said when we were back in the kitchen. “There’s nothing here.”
No furniture, no carpets, no pictures on the walls. No beds and no bedding. When I yanked open one of the kitchen cabinets, there were no dishes or glasses. No food in the pantry.
“No one lives here,” Mendoza said.
“I can see that. Unless... You don’t think there’s any chance that they moved out overnight, do you?”
“Someone would have noticed that,” Mendoza said.
“Maybe not. Nobody noticed the neighbor getting shot.”
“It probably took all of three minutes to shoot Mrs. Grimshaw, including the time it took the shooter to walk from his car to the house and back. But you don’t empty a whole house of furniture in a couple of minutes.
If someone pulled a moving van into the driveway and started carrying out furniture, someone would have noticed.
And they couldn’t have done it in the dark.
If it was dark, they would have needed flood lights to see what they were doing. ”
All good points.
“Maybe Mrs. Grimshaw noticed,” I said. “And that’s why they shot her.”
Mendoza didn’t answer. I looked around again. “The girl was here yesterday. So was Steven. For more than an hour. And there isn’t even a bed in here!”
Mendoza’s mouth quirked. “There are other ways, you know. Ways that don’t require a bed.”
I’m sure there were. “For more than an hour, though? That can’t be comfortable. And Steven must be close to David’s age, wouldn’t you say? Fifty, at least.”
Well past the age of picking anyone up, propping her against the wall, and proceeding to have his way with her. Or so one would think.
“Nothing to sit on here,” Mendoza said with a look around. “No bed. No sofa. Not even a table.”
There was the kitchen counter. But that was hard to imagine too, frankly.
“So what were they doing for more than an hour?” I asked.
“Maybe she was a real estate agent,” Mendoza suggested, “and she was showing him the house.”
It made as much sense as anything else. None, in other words. “Hard to see how anyone would spend an hour and a half looking at half a dozen empty rooms. And there’s no sign in the yard.”
“Maybe it’s for rent and not for sale,” Mendoza said. “Or maybe they sat on the floor and pretended to have a picnic.”
Maybe. At this point, I’d accept almost any explanation. “At least no one’s dead in here.”
Mendoza shook his head. “And nobody’s likely to complain that we took a look, either. We didn’t invade anyone’s privacy. Time to go.”
He gestured to the back door. I headed in that direction, and waited for him to close and lock the door behind us. “You don’t think Steven had anything to do with what happened to Mrs. Grimshaw, do you?”
Mendoza gave me a look out of the corner of his eye. “Do you?”
“I don’t know him well. Although I wouldn’t think so. He’s a normal person. A university professor. Married to a lawyer. Not the kind of person who’d go around shooting someone for no reason.”
“I’m sure he had a reason,” Mendoza said, “whoever he was.”
“Or she.”
He nodded. “Tell me more about the girl who was in the house last night.”
I couldn’t tell him anything beyond what I’d already told him, and said so.
“You’d have to talk to Zachary about her.
He was the one who took the pizza up to the door and actually spoke to her.
I was waiting in the car, and the angle was wrong.
I didn’t get a good look. All I know is that she had long, blond hair.
Zachary said she was very pretty, and maybe a couple of years older than him.
But he capitalized her pronoun when he came back to the car, so I’m sure he’d be able to give you a good description. ”
Mendoza’s eyebrows had elevated. “Excuse me?”
“She,” I said. “When he said ‘she,’ it sounded like it had a capital S. She obviously made an impression on him.”
“Ah.” Mendoza’s lips quirked. I kept amusing him, it seemed. I tried to tell myself that it was a good thing, but honestly, I wasn’t sure. He might be laughing at me instead of with me.
This seemed like a good segue to ask about the blond newscaster, but I wasn’t sure how to bring up the subject without sounding like I was jealous. And before I could figure it out, we had reached the front steps of Mrs. Grimshaw’s house.
“Stay here,” Mendoza instructed me. “I’ll get you the dog stuff.”
“Thank you.” I had no desire to go inside. I had already seen the blood on the floor, and I had no need to look at it up close and personal. Mendoza got paid to deal with it. Let him.
He disappeared inside, and I waited. When my phone rang, I pulled it out and glanced at the display. “Diana.”
“Gina.” Her voice was tight. “Steven isn’t answering his phone. I called the university, and his assistant said she hadn’t seen him today.”
“The assistant doesn’t happen to be blond and beautiful, does she?”
“No,” Diana said. “Black girl. Very professional. Not at all the type to sleep with her boss.”
Good to know. “So you have no idea where he is?”
I imagined her shaking her head. There was a faint clicking noise, as if an earring was hitting the speaker.
“I left messages. With Jeanette. With the office. At home. On Steven’s cell.
I’ll let you know if I hear from him. And now I’m driving home, to make sure he hasn’t had a heart attack and is dead on the floor. ”
“I’ll meet you there,” I said. “I’m just about to leave where I am. I can be there in about twenty minutes.”
Diana said she’d see me there, and hung up. I turned toward the door as Mendoza came out, a bag of dog food under one arm, and a plastic bag in the other hand. “Food and water bowls,” he told me, lifting it. “And a leash. There are some chew toys in there, too, and a bag of dog treats.”
I reached for it, but he shook his head. “I’ll carry it to your car.”
“That’s kind of you.” And hopefully it wasn’t because he looked at me and thought I was too old to carry my own dog food. Not that I particularly wanted to haul the bag, but I’m forty, not eighty-five. I can still pull my weight.
“No problem,” Mendoza said and set off across the grass. If nothing else, he wasn’t worried about me being too decrepit to keep up. “Did I hear your phone ring?”
“Diana called back.” I told him what she’d said as we made our way across the lawn. “I’m going over to their house to meet her. Just in case something’s wrong, I don’t want her there alone.”
Mendoza nodded, and waited for me to open the trunk of the Lexus. It slid up elegantly with the push of a button. Mendoza dumped the dog food and plastic bag into the back. He straightened. “Call me if you find anything. Or even if you don’t.”
I said I would. “Let me know what you find out about the dog. If any of the relatives want her. And if Steven’s name comes up anywhere in your investigation.”
I opened my car door. Mendoza made sure all of me was safely inside the car before he shut it. Then he set off across the grass toward Mrs. Grimshaw’s house once more, while I reversed down the neighbor’s driveway and headed up the street.