Play Dead (27 page)

“I’ll give the matter some thought,” I
grumbled as I got out of the car.

“Hmm. Well, sounds as though I’d better
not hold my breath.” She gave me a wave out the window as she took off.

Tracy was nothing if not energetic. And,
in this case, perceptive. Much as I admired her humor and spunk, a little of
her went a long way. The thought of working every day in the same room with
that woman made me shudder.

I drove back to my office. Much to my
consternation, there was a silver Mercedes convertible in my parking space. I
continued up the hill and found a space on the street, then marched toward my
building wondering what kind of ignoramus could miss the reserved-parking sign.

When I arrived, a man was seated in one of
the two chairs I’d placed by the entrance. He’d rotated the chair to face away
from the glass. Judging by his dark hair and gangly frame, I thought it was
Chet Adler. He turned and rose as I opened the door. Bill Wayne, Kaitlyn’s
husband.

He gave me an uneven—and
unappealing—smile. My day was complete. And here it was, not even noon.

“Hello, there,” he said. “I found your
office.”

“So did I. Is that your car in my parking
space?”

“Next to the green Volvo?” he asked. To my
nod, he replied, “Sorry, but it was the only off-street parking I could find.”

As if owning an expensive vehicle
necessitates special parking privileges. “What brings you here?”

He chuckled. “Dog troubles. Seems as
though I’m still married to one.”

I made no comment and held his gaze.

“I see that you’ve moved out. You told
Kaitlyn about my fixing her up on that date, didn’t you?”

“You’ve spoken with her?”

He shook his head. “Her new ‘boyfriend’
called her to ask her out again last night. He got quite an earful. I wish you
hadn’t spilled the beans. I told you she’d just be hurt.”

This conversation was more than a little
annoying. Did he think I had nothing better to do than to worry about his
relationship with my ex-housemate? “You got what you wanted from me. I moved
out. Why are you here?”

“I drove by my house this morning. Kaitlyn’s
pretending to be sick so that she can keep guard on the place. Noticed she had
cardboard up in one of the windows. Did the two of you have a fight?”

“Mr. Wayne, I’m busy. Please tell me what
you want, then leave.”

“All right. Here’s the deal. Kaitlyn’s got
some new hiding place for her important papers. I need to know where that is.
Before I left town a couple years ago, I had over sixty thousand dollars in a
savings account. We’d agreed we wouldn’t touch that money. First thing this
morning, I went over to the bank to check the balance, and I found out she’s
been taking two thousand out of the account every month. It’s now down to
nothing.”

He paused and studied me as if to assess
the effect his words had had on me. If so, I hoped he could tell that I didn’t
care. This was Kaitlyn’s and his divorce and was of no concern to me.

“I’ve already served papers on her, and
whether she wants to attend or not, the divorce hearing’s coming up next week.
If I can’t find some legal documents to prove she’s still got that money, I’m
going to lose all of it. Even if I find it, the judge’ll split it down the
middle, and I’ll lose half. But that’s better than nothing. I’ll pay you a
hundred dollars if you can get me the bank statement that can show what she did
with my money.”

“What makes you so sure she has the money
in another account? Maybe she spent it.”

“No way. I checked the closet. She hasn’t
bought so much as a new sweater or done anything to fix up the house since I
left.”

“Maybe she went on a cruise or two,
though. In any case, Mr. Wayne, I am not going to get involved. This is between
you and her. She’s no longer my roommate. I returned my key, and I have no
desire to see her again.”

“Five hundred dollars. That’s my top
offer. I’ve looked every place I can think of. If I have to go in there again,
I’ll have no choice but to completely trash the place.” He pulled out his key
chain while he spoke and removed a brass-colored door key. “Tell you what. I’ll
give you this, my only copy of the key to the dead bolt.”

“I’m not going to help you, regardless of
how large you make the fee.”

He gave me that smart aleck smile of his
that I so detested. “Don’t get involved, then. Let her get away with stealing
all of my savings.” While he spoke, he pulled a business card out of his
pocket. “But, by not helping me, you are helping a woman who once beat an
eight-week-old puppy to death for peeing on her bedspread.”

While I stared at him in revulsion, he
slammed the key and his business card onto the top of my filing cabinet,
pivoted on a heel, and strode out the door. In the meantime, alerted by Bill’s
raised voice, Russell opened the door to his office and stood in the doorway.
He looked at me. “Jeez, Allida. Is he telling the truth?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.” The image of
her throwing that can at my head last night made me shudder. It was possible
she’d killed a puppy. Damn Bill Wayne to hell, but now I had to know the truth.

But how? If the puppy had been only eight
weeks old, they could only have owned the puppy for a few days at least three
years ago. I could talk to the neighbors and see if they remembered the Waynes’
owning a puppy, but if they said no, that was no guarantee. Bill had said
he’d
installed the dog door. I might be able to find out if that part was true.

I was not about to accept blood money from
him, but if I could find out that Kaitlyn had lied about the puppy, I would
gladly turn over to the authorities whatever documentation they needed to make
her pay financially. Besides, finding out whether any of his story was true
could go a long way toward allaying my fear that he was somehow tied to Beth
Gleason’s murder. If there really was a ton of money missing from his account,
I’d be more inclined to believe that his searching my room the other day had
been unrelated to Beth’s murder.

The more I thought about it, the more I
was certain I knew where Kaitlyn’s important documents were hidden. That meant
I had to get her out of the house, somehow, while I searched. I looked at
Russell. “You’ve never met my ex-housemate, Kaitlyn Wayne, have you?”

He shook his head. “No, why?”

“Have you made any plans for lunch?”

Somewhat to my surprise, Kaitlyn’s blue
Plymouth was not out in front of her house. She might have parked a distance
away to lure Bill here though, as she’d done the other day. I slid down in
Russell’s car so she wouldn’t see me and said, “If we’re lucky, she’s gone in
to work. If she’s home, tell her Bill Wayne said to meet him at the Food Court
in Crossroads Mall.”

“Got it, chief,” Russell said as he left
the car. He rang the doorbell. There was no answer. After waiting a suitable
length of time, I came out. Russell, hands cupped over his brow, was peering
through the window closest to the door. “Nobody’s home,” he said as I neared.

I used Bill’s key. Russell followed me
inside. I went straight to the kitchen and slid the table away from the wall. I’d
once noticed that the three-by-six foot section of paneling on this wall was
almost falling off. When I’d mentioned it to Kaitlyn, she’d blushed. Russell
helped me pull the nails out, which we could manage with just our fingertips,
then we removed the section of paneling. As I’d suspected, a section of the
Sheetrock behind the paneling had been cut out, forming a sizable—if
inelegant— cubbyhole between the studs. I grabbed a brown, manila file
folder stashed there.

“Your roommate used to have to move this
section of paneling every time she wanted to access her papers?”

“Like I told you on the way here, she’s a
bit odd.” I spread the contents of the folder on the kitchen table. I soon
located what I was looking for: the closing papers from the sale of the house.

“I’m in luck. The names of the former
owners are Stu
art and Linda
Perlyon.” I’d been worried the former owners would turn out to have the last
name of Smith. “If they’re still in the area, which is probably a pretty big ‘if,’
there won’t be many Perlyons for me to call.”

Russell got me the Boulder directory, and,
to my delight, I found the listing for Stuart Perlyon. An elderly sounding
woman answered on the third ring.

“Hi. My name is Allida Babcock. I’m a dog
psychologist here in town. You don’t know me, but—”

“Then why are you calling me?” she
snapped.

I winced and tried again. “I’m renting a
room at the house you used to own on North Street, and I need to know if you
had installed a dog door at that residence.”

“Oh, yes. I thought when you said you were
a dog psychologist, you meant there was a problem with my poodle.”

“No, I haven’t met your poodle. Did you
install a dog door at your former residence?”

“I already told you. Yes. Heaven knows we’ve
had enough of this particular conversation with the people who bought the house
from us.”

“With Kaitlyn Wayne?”

“No, with her husband. After they bought
the place, some squirrel got into their house through the door. Her husband
hounded us for months, saying we owed them a new door. He said he couldn’t
stand animals and didn’t want the door. Even though we legally didn’t have to,
we finally got so sick of his calls, we sent him a check. You know what? Our
friends that live behind the house told us he never replaced the door.”

“Huh. That’s very helpful information.
Thank you so much for your time.” I hung up, feeling greatly relieved.

Russell had been fishing through an
inch-thick stack of bank statements. “Know what?” he asked. “Bill Wayne’s
lying. Looks as though he cleared out their joint accounts when he left. She
did have a batch of money in a savings
account under the name Kaitlyn Feroska, which she moved to another
bank right around the time all of her joint accounts were being depleted.”

“Let me guess. Three years ago?”

“Right.”

I scanned the documentation myself, my jaw
clenched in anger at Bill’s having manipulated me. “So, he’s trying to get half
of what little he left her—money she came into the marriage with. What a
scumbag. And he wound up tricking me into sinking to his level.”

We returned everything to its hiding
place. “Now comes the hard part,” I said. “I need to tell her about my sneaking
a look at her private papers, and warn her about what Bill’s been up to.”

“Didn’t she throw a can at your head the
last time you tried that?”

I’d shared that story with Russell on our
way over here, but ignored his warning now and dialed Kaitlyn’s work number. I
told her where I was and that I had “something important to discuss” with her.
She agreed to meet me at the house in half an hour, telling me to “make myself
at home.” That was something I hadn’t managed even while living here, but I
thanked her and hung up. She must’ve forgotten that she now had my key and
should’ve wondered how I’d let myself inside.

Russell’s stomach growled. He glanced
surreptitiously at his watch, then at the refrigerator. “I’d better wait here
with you.”

“Thanks, but why don’t you go get yourself
some lunch? I’d rather talk to her alone. This is going to be painful enough
for her without witnesses.”

“Don’t you think you might
need
some
witnesses, in case she lashes out at you again?”

I shrugged. “I’ll be fine. I’ll see you at
the office later.”

“How? We drove here together in my car.”

“I’ll get a ride from Kaitlyn, or I’ll
walk. It’s only two miles.”

After insisting, despite my protestations,
that he was going to come back in half an hour and give me a ride, Russell
left. Kaitlyn arrived not five minutes later. I had already cleared any obvious
hurlable objects from reach. I sat her down at the table and told her about
Bill’s visit, and how I’d located her papers in reaction to his assertions. For
once, she didn’t burst into tears or shout at me, but rather, listened in
stunned silence.

When I’d given her the full story, she
stayed silent for a long time. Finally, she said quietly, “I can’t believe any
of this.”

“It’s the truth, Kaitlyn. I’m sorry.”

She sunk her head in her hands and stayed
motionless.

“Kaitlyn, why are you trying to hang on to
him?”

She straightened, the flash of anger back
in her eyes. “He’s my life’s partner! I need him!”

“No, you don’t. You’ve gotten by
completely on your own for three years now. You made the house payments by
yourself all that time. You supported yourself completely. You made a life for
yourself. You don’t need to take this abuse from him.”

She averted her eyes and sat with her lips
pursed for a minute or Two. Finally she said, “You’re right. I’ve wasted years
of my life on a man that sees me as a meal ticket. That money was mine, and it
was all I had left. He wiped out all of our joint accounts. Next he’s going to
force me to sell, and I won’t even have a place to live.”