Chapter Thirty-Eight
Mr. O’Neal no doubt thought CJ had lost her mind, but she didn’t care. She’d knocked on his door and borrowed a number of tools, more than a hammer and nails this time. Though he hadn’t been able to go to the garage with her, he’d told her where to find what she needed.
Hammer, small crowbar, screwdrivers, and flashlight.
Her neighbor hadn’t always been wheelchair-bound. He’d once been quite the handyman around the house as well as a shade-tree mechanic. And he still had the tools to prove it.
Tools in hand, she’d begun her mission.
That had been a full hour ago.
And she still hadn’t found anything other than dust and the occasional earring along with a few nickels, dimes, and pennies. Not even a quarter for her trouble.
“Shit.” She surveyed the mess she’d made in Shelley’s room. She’d pulled up several loose floorboards and turned a small hole in the wall behind an old junk sale painting into a new entry into the next room.
Braddock had said that her sister was planning to video an encounter that would get him busted. To do that she would have needed equipment. A setup. The way people who videoed their sex activities did. But there was no equipment anywhere in the house that she’d found. Nothing.
And yet it had to be here.
She had practically torn apart the sparse furnishings. Two windows, walls, floor, and a dinky closet were all that remained. She’d explored every crack in the wall in addition to all the loose floorboards. She’d torn the closet apart.
Think! CJ looked at the bed. If she were going to video a sexual encounter, the most logical place to set up the camera would be aimed at the bed. The only thing on the wall across from the bed was the closet.
Just get it over with and look again.
The closet door stood open already; all the clothes and shoes it had held were now piled on the bed. CJ stepped into the small rectangle and slowly checked the walls. No cracks. No holes. She looked up at the shelf overhead. Nothing there either. But the ceiling.
CJ grabbed the one chair in the room and dragged it to the closet. She climbed onto the seat and poked her arms above the narrow shelf. The ceiling seemed awfully close to the shelf.
The boards moved. Her breath stalled in her lungs. The ceilings in this old house had once been old-fashioned beadboard, the kind that came in four-inch strips. Most of the rooms had been plastered at some point. But not inside the closets.
She pushed until the boards were out of the way.
It was nothing. Dammit! Just the small square hole that provided entrance to the attic. What was it called? A scuttle hole.
Frustrated, CJ stepped off the chair and considered whether she should clean up the mess now or later.
Later, she decided. She should check the other two bedrooms. Just in case. She’d checked this one from top to bottom already.
Wait. She looked up. She hadn’t checked the ceiling. Hadn’t even thought about anyone trying to go up in the attic. Truth was, she hadn’t even known where the attic access was.
There was a small round hole on the ceiling above the center of the bed and right next to the light fixture. The hole was so small she almost missed it. It didn’t really appear big enough to provide camera access, but it was worth a look.
She climbed back onto that chair, considered her options, and then just went for it. It took a bit of pulling and swearing, but she finally levered herself into the attic via that small scuttle hole.
On her hands and knees, CJ surveyed the rafters and uneven boards that made up the rustic floor.
The steep pitch of the roof made the attic large enough for another floor.
Light from the small windows on each end kept the darkness at bay to some extent.
She’d had no idea it was so large. And dusty.
She sat back on her heels and swiped her palms together to dispel the black dust. Years of burning coal in these old houses had left its mark.
Between the dust and the smothering heat, it was difficult to pull in a decent breath. Boxes were scattered about. Medium to large boxes with product imprints boasting the contents. A part of her wondered what was really inside. Remnants of her and Shelley’s childhoods?
No time to get lost on memory lane. She pushed up to her feet and moved carefully between and around the boxes. Years of dust covered everything. She tried to estimate where the center of the room below would be.
Right here. She stopped, stared down at the box at her feet. Now that she really looked, this box was the only one not layered in dust.
Anticipation detonated in her veins.
A hand on each side of the box, she lifted.
Rather than heavy with junk as she’d expected, it felt empty.
When she tossed it aside, her heart stumbled into a frantic pace. A video camera, the kind used for security purposes, and an accompanying recording device—an old boxy VCR—sat on the wide plank floor where the box had been.
She dropped to her knees. An electrical outlet had been wired directly into some of the light fixture’s wiring. The red light on the VCR glowed, indicating there was power. Hands trembling, she reached for the eject button. A grinding sound, then nothing.
No tape popped out.
Dammit. She bent down, pushed back the door on the VCR, and tried to see inside. Black hole, but no tape. The camera had no storage tape or disk.
But the VCR remained powered on.
Someone had gotten here before her.
That had to be the case.
Unless Shelley had had the tape with her the night she was murdered.
But Braddock said they’d never hooked up to follow through on the pseudo taped scene for Nash. It didn’t make sense that the equipment was turned on but there was nothing inside.
No dust on the equipment, which meant it hadn’t been up here long.
Could there be other tapes hidden up here somewhere?
CJ looked around the attic, at all the boxes. Only one way to find out.
She searched the next box, then the next and the next after that. Old toys. Mostly junk. As she scooted across the boards she noticed that wherever she stepped, the dust was, of course, disturbed, leaving an easy-to-follow trail of where she’d been.
Digging the flashlight from her waistband, she scanned the floor carefully. Other trails where the dust had been disturbed jumped out at her. There had definitely been some serious traffic up here.
As she followed each trail of disturbed dust, she found another spot, still over Shelley’s room—the one they had always shared. A perfect square of the wood floor, approximately twelve by fifteen inches, was relatively dust free. A small hole, this one about the size of a dime, was nearby.
Had Shelley changed the placement of the equipment?
CJ moved back to the VCR and camera she’d found beneath the box.
The hole for the camera was so close to the light fixture it wouldn’t be easy to see from below.
The camera was one of the high-tech sorts, a long snakelike projectile that would curl or twist into most any position.
Similar to the kind used for performing exploratory surgery.
Wait. CJ stared at the small hole. Wait. Wait. This wasn’t the hole she’d seen from the bedroom. The one she’d noticed was the other one. Her gaze shifted to the second place, where she’d estimated that maybe Shelley had first set up the equipment.
But there was no electrical access there.
CJ looked around the attic again. An outlet had been installed on one of the rafters. She made her way to the outlet. New. Much newer than the ones in the house.
Why hadn’t Shelley used an extension cord to access this spot?
Why go to the trouble to tie another outlet into the light fixture’s hot wire?
Then she got it. The VCR and camera had been hidden beneath a box.
An extension cord running to the overhead outlet would have given away what was concealed under the box.
What had her sister been up to? Had she been making videos and blackmailing her johns, those who were married or held prestigious positions in the community? Those who would do anything to prevent being exposed?
What the hell were you doing, Shelley?
1407 Dubose Street, 3:30 p.m.
CJ parked her car in front of Tyrone’s house and got out. She was covered in soot and dust. Her clothes were wringing wet with sweat. She had searched the entire attic and every single box.
The effort had not been for naught, she had found a single tape in one of the boxes.
“Dr. Patterson?”
She glanced back at the car that had pulled up behind hers. Jenkins was climbing out.
She wheeled on him. “You listen to me, Detective,” she snarled, surprising herself with the ferocity. “This won’t take long. You stay in your damned car, do you understand me? If I need you, you’ll hear me scream.”
He blinked. “Ah . . . okay. Yes, ma’am.” He climbed back into his car.
CJ turned back to Tyrone’s house. Took a breath and pushed the hair out of her face as she hustled up the sidewalk. Like her clothes, her ponytail had wilted. But she didn’t care how she looked or how she smelled.
“Better turn your nasty ass right back around,” one of Tyrone’s goons advised. He lounged in a generic plastic chair on the end of the porch where the overgrown trees provided the most shade.
“I need to see Tyrone,” she said, not slowing down. She stopped on the porch and glared at the man. “Now.”
He pushed out of his chair and started in her direction. “You think he ain’t got nothing better to do than sit round here waiting on you to pay him a visit?”
“Actually”—she folded her arms over her chest since he appeared to prefer staring at her breasts—“I don’t care. Tell him I’m here.”
“Who do you think you are, bitch?” He halted two paces away. Glared down at her.
Fear tap-danced up her spine. “The bitch who has what he wants.” That her voice remained steady startled her.
He stared at her, apparently searching that fat head of his for some sort of comeback.
Rap music blasted the air. The goon reached for the cell phone clipped to his waist. “Yo.”