The front door had lace curtains hanging in the window, making it impossible to see inside. Lindsey pushed the buzzer by the door that read “Property Manager.” The rest of the apartments were listed by number only. No names.
“Yeah,” a gruff voice sounded through the intercom.
“Hi, I’m Lindsey Norris. I have an appointment with Eloise.”
“You’re early,” the voice snapped.
“Sorry,” Lindsey said. “I can come back in three minutes, if you’d like.”
A heavy sigh transmitted through the box. “Don’t bother. You’re here; you might as well come in. My door is the last one on the left on the first floor.”
They heard the large front door click as it was automatically unlocked.
“Well, she sounds like a charmer,” Lindsey said as she held the door open for Beth.
“A snake charmer, maybe,” Beth muttered as she stepped into the foyer.
Hardwood floors gleamed and the walls were painted butter yellow with white trim. They passed three other apartments until they came to the one at the end.
They stopped in front of the door, and Lindsey raised her fist to knock. The door opened before her knuckles connected. A plume of smoke wafted out the door, and in its wake a short, stubby blonde woman, wearing a Hello Kitty nightgown and fuzzy slippers, appeared.
Probably somewhere in her fifties, her blonde hair was limp and hung around her face, and there was a coffee stain down the front of her nightie.
She looked Lindsey and Beth up and down. “Ernie sent you?”
“Sort of,” Lindsey said, going for vague.
“He didn’t happen to send his last month’s rent with you, did he?” The woman took a drag off of the cigarette in her hand before stubbing it out in the ashtray she clutched in her other hand.
“Uh, no,” Lindsey said. She had to resist the urge to step back.
“Pity,” the woman said. Her voice was a rough, tobacco-encrusted growl. “I’m Eloise. Are you two a couple?”
Beth and Lindsey looked at each other.
“I don’t care,” Eloise said. “I’m just asking so I know if you want a one-bedroom or a two-bedroom.”
“Actually, we’re here to ask about Ernie,” Beth said. “I need to know if this is him.”
She fished out two photos from her purse; both were of Rick Eckman. Lindsey noticed her fingers were shaking as she held the photos out to Eloise.
Eloise took them and squinted at them. “Aw, hell, I can’t see these. Let me get my glasses.”
She shuffled back into her apartment. Lindsey and Beth followed. The apartment had the same hardwood floors but was painted a soft blue. A large television was on in the corner, tuned to the Food Network. The furniture was worn but clean; in fact, the small space was surprisingly neat, and a fat pillar candle was burning as if to cover the smell of the cigarette smoke.
As she reached for her reading glasses, which sat in a case on top of a pile of books on her coffee table, Eloise waved for them to have a seat. Beth and Lindsey sat together on the edge of the beige corduroy sofa.
Eloise slipped on her glasses and studied the photographs. “I don’t know. It’s been five years.”
“Please. It’s very important,” Beth said.
Eloise switched to the second photograph. She bit her lip and then gave a slow nod. “The haircut is different, but yeah, that’s him. I’d know that self-satisfied smirk anywhere.”
She took off her glasses and handed the photographs back to Beth. Beth put them back in her purse and zipped it shut. The devastation on her face told Lindsey more clearly than words that Beth had been hoping that Rick hadn’t been Ernie, that their five years together hadn’t been one big lie. No such luck.
“Why are you asking if that’s him?” Eloise asked. She sounded suspicious. “I thought he sent you. Oh, no; don’t tell me he owes you rent, too.”
Lindsey wondered how much she should say. Obviously, Eloise didn’t know that Rick Eckman was Ernie Shadegg and that he had just been murdered. Was it really her place to tell her all of this?
“No, nothing like that,” Beth said. “It’s a personal matter.”
“Oh,” Eloise said, and then her eyes widened and she said “Oh” again in a way that seemed to have much more meaning.
“What do you mean by that?” Beth asked.
“By what?” Eloise asked.
“Oh,” Beth repeated, the way Eloise had said it.
“Nothing,” Eloise said too quickly. Then her gaze grew sly. “But which one of you is it?”
“Is what?” Lindsey asked.
“Well, the one who’s going to have his baby, of course.”
“Oh, gross,” Lindsey said.
“Hey!” Beth protested.
“Sorry,” Lindsey said. “But do I look like someone’s baby mama?”
Eloise studied her. “No, you’re too uptight looking.” She said this as if it were a bad thing. “Then why are you two looking for him?”
“It’s complicated,” Beth said.
Eloise sat back and fired up another Pall Mall. “I’ve got time,” she said.
Lindsey and Beth exchanged a look. They weren’t going to get out of here with any information unless they ponied up some of their own. Lindsey nodded, letting Beth take the lead since it was her personal business they’d be disclosing.
Beth gave an annotated version. She did admit that she’d been dating Rick, but she didn’t mention that he’d stolen her work and passed it off as his own.
“We can’t think of anyone who wanted Rick, I mean Ernie, dead, so we thought maybe it would be someone from his past.”
Eloise considered her through a plume of smoke. “Ernie was a putz. He was always late with the rent, and he liked to chat up the pretty residents, as if any of them wanted to be with an unemployed loser like him.”
“Did he have any enemies?” Lindsey asked.
“None come to mind,” Eloise said. “You know, I have a box of his junk down in the basement. He fled the night before I was going to have him tossed for nonpayment, and he took only his clothes, most of his artwork and his supplies. I gathered up the bits and pieces of what he didn’t take. I was going to hold it until he came back to pay his rent, but he never came back for it. I meant to pitch it, but . . .”
Eloise shrugged, and Lindsey took that to mean that she had never gotten around to it.
“Well, you might as well take it,” Eloise said. “I don’t think he had any other family.”
“No, he was a foster child,” Beth said. “But I wouldn’t feel right taking his things since we broke up.”
Lindsey glanced at her quickly and said, “But we’d be happy to take it back and give it to the police if you think there might be something of interest in there.”
“No idea,” Eloise said as she stubbed out her cigarette. “Either you take it, or I’ll toss it in the Dumpster, up to you.”
The box sat on the backseat of the Buick on the ride home. Standard-issue brown cardboard, sealed with silver duct tape. It had a musty odor that clung to it as if the basement had wanted to climb out into the light with it.
“I still don’t want anything that belonged to Ernie Shadegg,” Beth said. “I don’t know him. He’s not the man I dated.”
“No,” Lindsey agreed. “I’m sorry that Rick lied to you. I can’t imagine how that must feel.”
“Like the entire relationship was a sham,” Beth said. “You know, even though I knew he had stolen my work, I kept thinking there had to be a mistake, but there wasn’t. It was all a lie, even when he said he cared about me.”
“No,” Lindsey disagreed. “That was probably the only time he was telling the truth.”
Beth shrugged. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Yes, it does,” Lindsey said. “Because until we know who killed him, you are the prime suspect, and I don’t think Chief Daniels will look further than the end of his nose when it comes to solving this murder.”
“Would you mind if I napped?” Beth asked. “Suddenly, I am just feeling overwhelmed.”
“Go ahead,” Lindsey said. “It’s at least an hour until we’re home.”
“Thanks.” Beth wedged herself between the edge of her seat and the door. In a matter of minutes her breathing had evened out and she was asleep.
Lindsey glanced in the rearview mirror at the box. She wondered what secrets about Ernie Shadegg it contained. Yes, she would take it to the police station but only after she had her own little look-see.
She dropped off Beth and headed to her own house. She would return the car in the morning after she dropped off the box at the police station. Feeling as if she’d duly rationalized the situation, Lindsey parked the car and hefted the box out of the backseat and headed into the house.
Several years’ worth of dust coated the front of her shirt and her hands when she put the box down on her table. She brushed it off and washed her hands while she made a cup of chamomile tea.
She stared at the box while she debated what to do. Was Ernie Shadegg’s life any of her business? Well, for that matter, was Rick Eckman’s life any of her business? Other than the fact that he’d been dating her friend, no, not really. Did she have a right to go through his personal effects?
She cradled her tea in her hands and blew across the top of the mug. She thought about her dad. He was a researcher, and she knew he sometimes bent the rules to get the answers he needed. She put down her mug and grabbed a steak knife and carefully slit the tape. She pried apart the edges and peered inside.
It wasn’t as if she’d been expecting gold coins or a pearl-encrusted tiara like this was a treasure chest she’d found at the bottom of the sea, but the wadded-up papers that were stuffed inside the box were a bit of a letdown.
Sketches, some charcoal, some pen and ink, and a few pastels had been tossed into the box without any regard for preserving them. It pained Lindsey’s archivist soul, and she suspected Eloise had done the packing as the faintest stink of cigarette smoke tainted a few of the papers.
A portrait of a girl’s face caught and held Lindsey’s attention. As she studied it, she had to acknowledge that despite his loathsome personality, Rick—or Ernie, or whatever his real name was—had been a talented artist.
The girl’s face was rounded, her eyes wide and her lips parted as if she expected to be kissed at any moment. She looked vaguely familiar, with blonde ringlets and a perky nose, and Lindsey wondered if it was someone she knew in Briar Creek, but that would be impossible since these pieces were from before Rick’s time here.
She put the artwork aside and dug deeper into the box. There were several sketch pads and a few syllabuses from school. There were also some art supplies, broken pieces of charcoal and a few worn-out paintbrushes. Blue ribbons from art shows and award certificates made up another layer in the box. Beyond those, at the very bottom, was a photo album. The edges were moldy, and it smelled as if it had absorbed the very essence of Eloise’s basement.
Lindsey put the album aside. It was time to eat something other than junk, so she made herself a spinach salad with hard-boiled eggs and mushrooms with a drizzle of raspberry vinaigrette to give it some zip.
She repacked the art and the supplies while she ate and pondered why Rick had changed his name? Had he just wanted to start fresh? Had he been trying to leave someone or something behind? Who or what?
She rinsed her bowl and placed it in the dishwasher. Although it was early evening, with the sun just beginning to set, she decided she would peruse the album from the comfort of her bed.
She put on her pajamas and climbed into bed, bracing herself against the chill of the sheets. She hadn’t switched from cotton to flannel sheets yet, and the first five minutes of warming up the bed were always the worst.
She rested the album on a towel, so as not to grime up her bedspread. The album looked to be about twenty years old, and it was stuffed full of photographs. She could pick out Rick’s distinctive features, the thatch of dark hair, the glasses and the smirk.
Even now, knowing that someone had murdered him, Lindsey found it difficult to identify what Beth had seen in him. A yawn caught up to her, and Lindsey tried to shake it off, but it was no use. She was dead-dog tired, and whatever secrets she might learn from Rick’s personal things would just have to wait until morning.
She wrapped the album in the towel and put it on the floor. She switched off her light and burrowed low under her covers. She was asleep before the second yawn overtook her.
Lindsey’s eyes popped open. Someone was in her apartment. She knew it as surely as she knew the plots of her favorite comfort books. These were the books she reached for when she needed to be soothed by the familiar old friends who chased away what Holly Golightly called the “mean reds” in Truman Capote’s
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
. The mean reds being the feeling that something bad was about to happen. Lindsey knew exactly what Holly meant. As she listened and heard the sound of footsteps in her apartment, she was hit with a bad case of the mean reds.
The creak of the old wooden floorboards called out a hoarse warning, and Lindsey felt her heart pound in her throat. Why would someone be in her place? She wondered if it was Nancy, but there was no storm tonight, and Nancy had always been very respectful of her privacy. Then she thought it might be Beth. Maybe she couldn’t sleep, maybe she had changed her mind about looking through Rick’s things or maybe she was just having a hard time reconciling what they’d learned today. But surely Beth would have called first.
One thing was for certain—Lindsey did not feel like lying in her bed, cowering in fear from the unknown. She pushed her covers back, and let her feet slide to the floor below. The fluffy area rug cushioned the sound of her steps as she slowly crept forward.
Her door was ajar, and she pressed herself against the back of it. Her apartment was dark except for the night-light in the kitchen, which gave off a soft orb of blue light. She could see a person move in front of the light. The person was average in height and build and appeared to be dressed all in black, from a stocking cap and turtleneck all the way down to a pair of gloves. Lindsey felt her breathing become shallow and her heart thumped hard in her chest as fear clutched her in a hard grip.