Carpet Diem Read online

  “Things aren’t going so well for him?” I leaned back against my car and waited for Matt to respond. I didn’t know if he’d actually answer me, but it was worth asking.

  “We had a big drug bust go down and found opioids in the area. He’s angry. We almost had a kid die on his watch. He’s trying to handle that with our diminished force, and now with this murder, things are going to take some maneuvering to get it all done.”

  He probably shouldn’t have told me that, but I hoped he knew he could trust me. “All right, let’s make a deal. Let me help you so I can be involved, and we just won’t bother Burton with how much I’m actually doing. He said I could help, even if it was grudgingly, so let’s take him at face value. That way, I can do my thing, you can do yours, and Burton can feel like progress is being made, so he can concentrate on other things without worrying about us.”

  Matt cupped his hand against the back of his neck. “I don’t know, Tallie. He sounded like he was saying you could help only because he’s frustrated and defeated. Under normal circumstances, he would not want you in on this, and you know it. And what if he changes his mind? I don’t want to get into trouble. I’m trying to move up in the department, not be busted down to traffic control.”

  “ ‘Doesn’t want’ doesn’t mean ‘doesn’t need.’” I focused on that one thing. I could help. I knew I could. And this way, everyone could get what they needed. Including justice for Audra and freedom for Caleb, with no doubts haunting my cousin. Even if Caleb had an airtight alibi, that didn’t mean they wouldn’t keep looking at him if they couldn’t find someone else.

  “I’m not going to touch that one.” His eyes looked tired, and I didn’t want to press, but I knew I was going to, anyway.

  “Just let me help like I normally do. I won’t look for anything in particular, but if I find something, I’ll give it to you. How about that?”

  “This is a bad idea. I can feel it in my gut. What if you get hurt? Burton would never forgive me.”

  Why did they persist in making this so hard? “It’s a good idea, a brilliant one even, and Burton is going to think you’re amazing for solving this thing for him while he does his thing. Think about it.”

  “I will . . .” He trailed off, looking over my shoulder. I didn’t want to turn around, just in case it was Burton coming to yell at me.

  In the end I couldn’t keep myself from looking, though. As always. I’d rather know about the attack, so I could brace myself. But instead of Burton, it was a shiny, brand-new sports car in bright yellow. It pulled up to us, and Preston Prescott leaned out the window.

  “Tallie, I was told I might find you here. And Matt. Good!” Preston climbed out of his car, all smiles and shooting his cuffs. “I’m glad you’re here, too. Aunt Marg wants me to help in any way I can. She wants this taken care of before the news gets out that there’s been a death in the house and the press is here to cover the thing. So what can I do first?”

  Matt looked at me with a grimace; I looked back with a smile. Things were about to get interesting.

  “Well, Preston, if you could look through the house with us to see if there’s anything missing, that would be great.” I spoke first because I knew Matt was going to try to send him off with a wave and a handshake. This might not be the way Burton would want this handled, but surely we could rule out any fingerprints that belonged to Preston, anyway, since this was his aunt’s property. And if Mrs. Petrovski really was going to offer me the job, then I wanted to rub Preston’s nose in the fact that I would be here working, despite all his attempts to derail and discredit me.

  Before Matt could do more than growl low in his throat, I hooked my arm through Preston’s and walked him up to the front door. “Let’s start downstairs, and we can go up from there.”

  “Tallie, if I could have a word with you.” Matt stood his ground and tried to stare me down.

  Good luck with that, cousin.

  “Come along, and you can talk to me while we hunt through the rooms and make sure nothing is missing.” I was taking a chance that Matt would not follow me and would instead call Burton, to have him haul tail out here to stop me, because he was nervous that Burton didn’t actually want me to help. I was also taking a chance of contaminating the scene and possibly messing up evidence. I wasn’t stupid. But I wanted to know if anything was missing in the house, though I had no reference for what had been in there before, since I’d never gotten those pictures from Bethany.

  I sincerely wished I had.

  Preston, surprisingly, did not shake me off or even make angry faces at me. He was going right along with the plan, as if we had always gotten along. I’d work my mind around that later. He waited at the front door for me and then produced a key to open up the mansion.

  “Wait!” Matt yelled from the spot he had yet to move from. “At least let me call this in to Burton. I don’t want to get my ass handed to me for not following protocol. Just give me a second.”

  I sighed but complied, stilling Preston’s hand to prevent him from turning the knob on the door. “It really would be better if we wait to get the okay. I don’t want to mess anything up. I just want to know what happened.”

  “What are we looking for?” Preston asked, shooting his cuffs again. Was this his thing? I didn’t remember it from back in the day, but then, I didn’t remember a lot from days gone by with Preston. Only that he’d been a pain. We should have been the best of friends. He’d been a partyer, and so had I, living the high life, not taking responsibility for much, and going from one inane thing to another.

  I actually had no idea how Preston made money. Maybe he was just a trust-fund baby. I knew his family had money, as evidenced by the fact that they had let a house the size of my parents’ three-story funeral home go to rot and were able to afford to clean it up from the ground to the attic. Obviously, I would have loved to benefit from that money at this point, but dealing with him was not my favorite thing to do in any circumstance. He had always gotten on my nerves and made me feel like I didn’t belong. With trying to trash my chances at cleaning his aunt’s mansion, he hadn’t exactly changed my mind about him. And now that he was acting like we got along, I didn’t quite know what he was aiming for. It could be anything. I wasn’t going to take him seriously no matter how nice and accommodating he was being. At least he wasn’t wearing a cravat today, so that was one less thing I had to overlook in his laundry list of faults.

  “Anything that is missing or has been misplaced. When was the last time you were here before yesterday?”

  “Wow. I wouldn’t even know. Other than yesterday, it’s been a long time, as far as I can remember. No one ever really comes out here anymore.” His eyes widened to the size of a turkey platter. “Are you sure it wasn’t some domestic dispute? I’ve also heard that some kids have used this as a hangout. Maybe we shouldn’t go in, after all. Or do they have the killer in hand?”

  “Uh, we’re just looking around with Matt while you’re here. I don’t know if they have anyone yet.” Of course, that was a lie, since the police had no one in custody, but I didn’t think I should tell Preston that.

  He backed away from the door. “I don’t think I want to go in there. What if we touch something we’re not supposed to? I don’t want to be scrutinized for prints or falsely accused if I touch the one thing I shouldn’t.”

  I sighed, because really what else could I do? I did understand, but I also knew that the longer we waited, the more time we would lose in the effort to find the person who murdered Audra and put him or her behind bars to face justice. Audra had been a sweetheart and shouldn’t have had her life ended so soon. I didn’t know why someone had felt the need to kill her and wrap her up in a carpet. I might never know, but I at least wanted to know who had done it. I had Letty depending on me for closure, after all.

  Matt chose that moment to join us at the wide front stoop. “Okay, look, Burton is on board, barely, with us doing this. But we all have to wear gloves, and please, don’t touch a
nything that you absolutely do not have to touch. Doorknobs and whatever are fine, but don’t be running your hands over anything. The crime-scene guys are on their way back over here to go over everything once more, but it would help to know if anything in particular is missing.”

  He sounded doubtful, and I wondered how much he’d had to fight Burton to get him to agree to this. It was one thing for Burton to have me help because he was in a bad spot. It was something else entirely to have another person come in to the house with Matt and me. Maybe I should offer to clean Burton’s house for free. Then again, I knew what a messy bachelor he was, and I didn’t think I wanted to put myself in the position of having to pick up his dirty clothes.

  In we went. The house was spacious, and so this could take hours, but I had nothing else going on at the moment, since I had scheduled the whole day to be here cleaning. I had a funeral to drive for tonight, but that was it, and Max was at his job across the river.

  Once I’d told Letty what was going on, I’d also told her to please call everyone and tell them they had the day off. I would be juggling schedules for the next few days to find other jobs for them to do so they didn’t lose money, but there was nothing that could be done about it until this was taken care of.

  Room by room, we went through the house. Preston was surprisingly pleasant as he explained that he didn’t see anything missing or anything that had been moved. I made absolutely sure I didn’t touch anything, but of course I ended up tripping over a wrinkle in a rug and falling against a wall. Face to nasty wallpaper would not be a favorite place of mine if I was to list a top ten places I liked to find myself. Fortunately, the gloves kept me from touching anything with my bare hands when I hit the wall, but the wall gave just a little under my weight. I knew having Max here to feed me had increased my poundage a little, but not enough to make a wall give. At least I hoped not.

  I pushed on the wall, but nothing happened. I pushed again and still nothing. So weird. But Matt and Preston had already moved on to the next room. I put the info in my mental bank, then scrambled to keep up with them. It was something I might need to talk about with Mrs. Petrovski. If she had actual rot in the walls, behind the wallpaper, then she might have a bigger job than even I would be able to handle. Cleaning, yes. I could do that. Even the cleanup after construction, if asked. Replacing structural walls was totally not on my résumé.

  I whisked into the second bedroom upstairs in time to hear Preston say, “There should be a rug here.”

  Sure enough, there was a dusty outline on the floor. Outside the outline, the floor was dull, but inside it, it was highly polished. Turning in a circle, I looked for the window. As I did so, I wondered if the opening’s dimensions would allow the killer to toss Audra, wrapped up in the carpet, out the window and into the Dumpster. Not that I really wanted to think about that, but the logistics kept bothering me. I had a hard time imagining how one person could have done this. Maybe there were two killers . . .

  And the window was right there, the sill low enough that the carpet could have been tipped downward and then released to fall into the waiting Dumpster below. The Dumpster sat empty now, as the police had taken out all the debris, and the coroner had taken away the body, along with the carpet. The new coroner would take care of the body and would hopefully do a better job than our last one.

  I peered down into the Dumpster. The thing was clean, and the truck that was sent to pick it up had gone away empty.

  “Hey, did anyone ever find out who sent that truck out here?” I asked.

  Matt was talking, and he stopped in midsentence. I’d been listening with half an ear to his and Preston’s conversation, but nothing had been said that I needed to pay attention to. Preston had just been saying over and over again that nothing was missing, as far as he could recollect. Nothing except the carpet, anyway.

  “I’ll make a note.” Matt took out his notepad and did just that, frowning as his pencil ran over the curled paper.

  Maybe a career change to private investigator wouldn’t be such a far stretch. I asked the questions and thought the thoughts of someone trying to get to the bottom of a mystery. I had no idea how much schooling that would take or if I would have to do some kind of internship, but it might be worth looking into. It wasn’t the tea shop I’d dreamed of, but maybe it would be better. And then I’d be able legally to get all up in Burton’s business. Wouldn’t that chap his hide?

  I was smiling over that when Matt and Preston moved into the next room. I felt a little like a puppy when I trotted along behind them, but I didn’t want to be left behind. So far we hadn’t found anything of note. Everything appeared to be where it belonged, and everything was accounted for, other than the rug.

  I didn’t know why I had thought that some huge sign was going to pop out of a wall and say HERE. HERE IS WHERE BAD THINGS HAPPENED. AND THIS IS WHERE YOU SHOULD LOOK TO FIND OUT ABOUT THEM. But I had, and being proven wrong was disappointing. Usually, by this time I would have found a scrap of paper with a cryptic message or a clue of some sort. Here there was nothing.

  Finally, we made it through the rest of the house, and my disappointment did not recede. I’d fought to get us into the house, and then we’d found nothing at all. I might have just used a card that I wouldn’t be able to use again.

  We met the crime-scene guys out front, and Preston offered to go through the house with them again, just in case they needed anything.

  I didn’t stick around to listen to their answer. I decided to head home, make myself something to eat, and then try to figure out what my next move would be, because at this point I had a dead body, no viable suspects, no known motive, and not a single question to ask or anyone to ask it of, except the person who had done this.

  I guess there was also why, but without a who, the why wouldn’t make sense.

  I bade farewell to Preston and Matt, and returned to my car. When I got behind the wheel, I decided to call Letty before I left the mansion. She didn’t pick up, so I cranked my engine over and headed home. I had a few hours until Max would be home. I would use the time to look up Audra and would wait for Letty to call back.

  Chapter Eight

  I entered my apartment and inhaled the delicious smell of something both sweet and bacon-y wafting through the air. And there was my man, standing in my small kitchen, at the stove, with one of my aprons tied around his waist. This one at least didn’t have ruffles.

  “So you’re going to get involved in another murder?” He turned from the stove and gave me a raised eyebrow when I closed the door. Leave it to Max to point out the obvious.

  “It’s not like I go looking for these things,” I said, sidling up to him and sneaking a piece of bacon from the paper towel to his right. Crunching away, I silently relished the fact that foodwise, having Max here for a month was going to be awesome. He liked to cook and was very good at it. I liked to eat and was also very good at it. A match made in heaven. It wouldn’t necessarily be so good for my hips, but who cared? “Wait, what are you doing home? I thought you were going into the office.”

  “They told me to wait for the moment and they’d call me in this afternoon.”

  Bonus for me. Now I knew what to do with my day.

  The bacon was delicious, and I had to say that for once, I was happy that my apartment was small, because the smells of a good breakfast permeated every corner. Peanut was happy, too, and she paced throughout the whole place with her nose in the air and her tail wagging.

  Yet I kept thinking that I just didn’t know where to start this time. I didn’t know Audra that well. We had been on our way to a better friendship, but it had been a budding friendship, not a solid one. I didn’t know her boyfriend well, though Letty could help with that. I wasn’t sure about where Audra came from, since she hadn’t lived here her whole life. I felt unequipped this time, as I hadn’t before.

  On the other hand, I had a lot going on with Max, and I should be able to trust that the cops could do their job. At least that w
as what I was telling myself while I stood and ate a piece of cinnamon-sugar toast. It was not the cheesy goodness of the bread Max had made the other day to go with his pasta, but it was still good.

  Max shepherded me toward the small table and got out plates for the quiche that he had pulled out of the oven and that smelled amazing. I wasn’t ready to sit down, though, as I munched on my toast.

  “Who are you going to irritate this time? And what are you doing home? Aren’t you usually out chasing down clues by now?”

  I scoffed, then told him about the whole morning, following up on new developments with Caleb and Preston and Matt. “I just feel so bad for Letty. She seems really shaken up by this.” I tried to sneak another piece of toast while Max dished out the quiche and then placed my slice on the table.

  “No more bread, or you’re not going to eat the main dish.” He pulled out my chair for me and held it for me while I sat before he got his own plate of quiche and put it on the table.

  I waited for him to join me at the table with a big bowl of fruit before I continued my thoughts. “I am never going to be able to eat all this.”

  “Leftovers are even better. Now, what’s going on?”

  I admired my quiche as I filled a little bowl with fruit. “Caleb is her nephew, and she says there’s no way he could have done this. My understanding is that life had not been overly nice to him when he was a teen, and Letty used to work with him at the youth center. Now that he is in his twenties, Letty has been trying to get him to get his life in order, and she was really helping him get back on track before he was dragged down to the station.”

  “That’s horrible.” He crunched into his bacon, and I was taken in again by his face and the set of his chin, his eyes. I didn’t know what I had ever done to deserve someone like this, but I was happy I’d done it.

  “She wasn’t exactly happy about him dating a woman that was significantly older than him, but she’d started to like Audra, at least a little. And now Audra is dead, and Caleb has apparently been through the ringer with the police.”