Chapter 10 #2
“Just meet me there,” I told Mendoza. I could hear him draw breath—probably to tell me I didn’t need to bother coming; he knew where it was—and I hung up before he could get the words out.
He didn’t call back to tell me not to come, so I guess he was OK with it.
Or at least not so upset about it that he felt he needed to stop me.
I left Edwina in the office, with a note for Rachel to let her out when she got there, which ought to be sometime within the next hour. The dog would be OK until then.
“I’ll be back,” I told her—Edwina—and headed out.
Mendoza had either teleported or been passing the exit when I called him, because when I pulled into Griselda Grimshaw’s driveway, his car was already there. He must have just arrived, though, because he was still sitting behind the wheel.
Texting, I realized, when he got out with a grimace. “Sorry. Talking to my wife. Ex-wife.”
None of my business. None at all. “Everything all right?”
Another grimace. “Fine. Just figuring out kid stuff.”
That can be hard. Not that I have any personal experience with it, but David had two kids when I married him. I spent the first few years of my marriage trying to make friends with Krystal and Kenny, who wanted nothing to do with me—and who could blame them?
“Does your son like his step-father?”
Mendoza muttered something.
“Krystal and Kenny hated me,” I said. “Not only did I break up their parents’ marriage, but I took David away from them.”
“Surely not?”
“That’s what they saw. He dumped their mother and married me, and would rather spend time with me than with them. They weren’t wrong. Although it wasn’t my fault. He just wasn’t that interested in what they were doing.” And more interested, at that time, in bedding my twenty-two year old self.
Mendoza nodded. “Elias doesn’t blame Mitch for anything. Or Lola. He blames me.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Mendoza shook his head. “All Lola did was hire Mitch. And all Mitch did was what Lola hired him to do. I was the one who cheated. And got caught.”
“But she didn’t have to marry him.” And make him Elias’s step-father.
Mendoza shrugged. “Water.”
Under the bridge, I assumed. And the end of the discussion. Time to change the subject.
I glanced at the house. “Here we are.”
Mendoza nodded.
“I guess you’re going to ask me to wait outside?”
“No,” Mendoza said. “You can come with me. As long as you stay behind me and make sure you don’t get shot.”
I translated that in my head. “You don’t think they’re here anymore.”
“I think they left here two minutes after Steven hung up the phone last night,” Mendoza said. “But just in case I’m wrong, I’m going in first. And keeping you behind me.”
Fine by me.
“Lead the way,” I said, and fell in behind him as we made our way to the front door.
Mendoza unlocked it, and reached for his gun. I watched as he pushed the door open and ducked under the crime scene tape, leading with his gun hand. “Metro Police! Stay where you are!”
He hadn’t told me I couldn’t come inside, so I waited until he’d slithered along the wall to the dining room and turned the corner, still leading with the gun, before I crouched under the crime scene tape and shuffled into Mrs. Grimshaw’s house.
I could hear Mendoza moving stealthily down the hallway to the left. Other than his quiet footsteps, everything was silent. If anyone was here, they were being very quiet about it.
The blood was still on the floor in front of the door, and I avoided looking at it as I glanced around. There was nothing I hadn’t expected, that I hadn’t already seen. The only new addition since yesterday was a lot of fingerprint powder on the doorjambs and flat surfaces.
Mendoza came back, holstering his gun. “Nobody here.”
I nodded. I hadn’t expected there to be, although part of me had been worried that he’d find Steven dead in one of the bedrooms. It was probably a positive sign that he hadn’t. If nothing else, we knew that Steven had been alive, and seemingly unhurt, last night.
“Any clue as to what they were doing here?”
Mendoza shook his head. “I can’t see anything that wasn’t here yesterday. Or anything missing. Maybe they just came in to use the phone.”
Maybe. Although you wouldn’t find me breaking into the home of a murdered woman, with crime scene tape all over the door, to use the telephone. If I didn’t want to use my own phone, I’d find a telephone booth—they still do exist here and there—or go to a library or something.
“Hard to do at one in the morning,” Mendoza remarked.
The library, at least. Although I might not want to drive around looking for a phone booth at one in the morning, either. Not that I’d be likely to want to call anyone at that time, anyway. “I wonder what Steven wanted.”
“Something he didn’t want the blonde to overhear,” Mendoza said, “since it seems like he waited until she fell asleep before he hoofed it next door to use the phone.”
Maybe that’s what he’d done. Waited for Anastasia Sokolov to fall asleep, before he braved the elements and the murder house to make a phone call to me, to… what?
“Why didn’t he call Diana?”
“You’ll have to ask him,” Mendoza said, shooing me toward the door, “when we find him.”
I ducked under the crime scene tape and back out on the stoop. “Now what?”
Mendoza followed me. I stepped back while he locked the door behind us. “Now we go next door.”
I glanced over at Araminta Tucker’s house. “You don’t think they’re still there, do you?”
“Not likely,” Mendoza said. “At least not since one o’clock. But I want to see if they left anything.”
If they hadn’t left anything the first time—not even the trash in the cans—it wasn’t likely that they’d have left anything this time, either. But I wouldn’t mind another quick look at Araminta Tucker’s house, so I followed him across the grass and up the driveway to the back of the house.
Where he shoved me behind him with one hand while he pulled his gun with the other.
I peered around his shoulder.
Ah. Yes. Unlike yesterday morning, when we’d been here, now the door stood open, the jamb splintered where the lock had been kicked or pushed in.
“Stay here,” Mendoza told me, his voice tight. “I mean it.”
I nodded. And stayed there while he slid sideways into the kitchen, gun at the ready, and disappeared.
I spent the time while he was gone alternately biting my fingernails and checking the trash and recycling cans, which were still empty. Then Mendoza came back, holstering his gun.
“What?” I demanded.
“Nothing. Aside from the broken lock, it looks exactly the same as yesterday.”
So no furniture, no dishes in the cabinets, no empty pizza boxes or Chinese food containers. “No sign they were here?”
He shook his head.
“But we know they were next door.”
He nodded.
“Why would they break the lock? They had a key, didn’t they?” They must have. The lock hadn’t been broken the last time we were here.
“I don’t imagine they did,” Mendoza said.
“So someone else did? Who?”
He shrugged. “Whoever shot Mrs. Grimshaw?”
“Why would whoever shot Mrs. Grimshaw wait twenty-four hours to break into the house next door? They had plenty of time to do it while Mrs. G was bleeding out on the floor.”
“This place was occupied then,” Mendoza said.
Yes, but… “If they’d shot Mrs. Grimshaw, it’s not like they balk at shooting Anastasia. Or so you’d think.”
Mendoza seemed to agree with that. Or at least he didn’t argue.
We stood in silence a moment.
“What do we do now?” I asked.
He nodded to the cars in the driveway next door. “I guess we just keep doing what we were doing. I’ll go see Araminta Tucker, and tell her that her house was broken into last night. And see if she can tell me anything she didn’t tell you yesterday. And if Steven calls again, let me know.”
I told him I would, and asked that he return the favor. And then we got into our separate cars and went our separate ways.