Sticks and Stones Page 2
“How does your hair stand up at this speed? I have to admit, it’s impressive. But more importantly, how’d you find him?”
“This morning I was at the firing range—”
“Ah yes, your daily fantasy about shooting Walter.”
“Of course,” she grinned. “Anyway, I got hungry and was thinkin’ pizza sounded pretty good. Then I thought about how much Walter and I loved Gino’s Pizzeria. Ding! Ding! Ding! I knew Walter couldn’t live without his emergency ballgame pizza pie.”
“Wow. It’s amazing how your mind works.”
“I schmoozed Gino’s delivery boy. It only cost me twenty bucks and a case of beer.”
“That delivery kid is seventeen.”
“Sixteen.”
“Promise me you’ll never have children.”
Cleo cranked the volume up on the radio and jammed to Memphis Minnie. Here’s the thing about Cleo. Her painful, nails-on-blackboard squawk transforms to a rich, sultry vibrato when she sings.
We powered down the Dan Ryan to Bridgeport, feeding every car on the road our dust. Cleo’s shoulders shimmied and her hands drummed the wheel.
“I’m a bad luck woman, I can’t see a reason why,” her voice purred.
I watched the rearview mirror for flashing lights. “You stole a car, babe. You might want to chill a bit, or you’ll be singing those blues from a cell.”
“Good point.” Cleo eased the gas and sighed. “I just don’t get why Walter’s avoiding me.”
“Hmm. It might have something to do with the last time you saw him. You shot him in the bum. It could make him a little touchy.”
“Pansy-ass. You should have seen him running away screaming like a little girl.”
“Or maybe Walter didn’t answer the door because he wasn’t home.”
“His car was there.” Cleo’s lip pouted out a little farther.
Was being the operative word.
Cleo slammed on the gas. “Okay, fine. Maybe he caught a ride with my sister, the Ho.”
A low hiss issued from between clenched teeth.
“You do realize everyone in Walter’s neighborhood now thinks you’re dangerously unbalanced.”
“I hate to shock you Cat, but people thinking I am ‘unbalanced’ is no newsflash. Besides, what else could I do? I had to call out his lying, cheating, sneaking around, dog-stealing ass.”
I flicked open a mirror from my purse and began slathering my lips with Dr. Pepper Lip Smacker. “Not when you work for me, you don’t. The Pants On Fire Detective Agency is a first-class organization. We have an image to uphold.”
“What image? You say ‘Pants On Fire’ and I see tighty-whities and a whole lot of flames.”
“Discretion, Cleo. Our clients need to know we keep their secrets. We don’t scream in the street and we don’t draw attention to ourselves. We discreetly let ourselves through the door.”
“What if I don’t know how to pick a lock?”
“Then shut up and learn.”
Cleo drove in sulky silence almost a block.
“You of all people should know how I feel. Your husband cheated with half of Bridgeport right under your nose. He played you like a violin. Can you honestly say you never wanted to choke the life out of him?”
My head whipped right, then left. “Not even once…in front of witnesses.”
Chapter Three
It was after three by the time we arrived back in Bridgeport. Cleo was mastering the parade queen wave for Walter’s neighbors. That’s a sure way to get a one way trip to the slammer for grand theft auto. I, on the other hand, was mastering my “invisible” look.
Our mission for returning to the scene of the crime was an easy one. Get Cleo’s dog back. Walter’s house was in Bridgeport Village, a tree-lined street with newer, high-dollar homes. It seemed Cleo’s liar liar husband was doing well for himself.
Cleo muttered under her breath, coasted to a stop behind her Toyota Camry, and pocketed the key.
“Well, I’m dividing our assets. From now on Walter can drive the Camry.”
“You look hot in a Corvette.”
“Better than Walter.”
“Damn straight. Now focus. In and out with your dog.”
I palmed my lock and pic set and followed Inga onto the curb. Cleo scooted around to join us, her eyes scanning the street.
I flashed a smile and reached down to pluck a weed from the lawn. “When you B&E, act like you own the place.” I said.
Cleo tried to smile. She mostly showed a lot of teeth. I thought her smile looked like a chimpanzee’s grin of fear and I told her so.
She snorted. “Easy for you to say. The men in your family are Chicago cops. Your cousin’s a prosecuting attorney. If you get caught, odds are your case disappears, your troubles go away, and you get awarded some sort of medal.”
It was true. The DeLuca men are cops and the women breed more cops. Somewhere there’s a glitch in my genes. I never fit into the family mold.
Papa is something of a local hero. He was wounded in the line of duty by friendly fire. That rookie cop’s future is now cemented in traffic duty. I have three cop brothers and one crazy sister. Mama rules us all with staggering amounts of pasta and guilt.
My shoes clacked on the stone walkway as I led my entourage to the door.
“Observe, Grasshopper,” I said. With a flick of the wrist the door swung open. I pushed Inga and Cleo inside kicking the door closed behind me.
“Walter, are you home? It’s Cat DeLuca. Nobody’s going to shoot you. Isn’t that right, Cleo?”
Cleo waggled her hand and lifted her shoulders. “Maybe… Maybe not… I guess he has to ask himself one question…”
I gave her an eye roll. “Your Dirty Harry impression needs work. Besides, the house feels empty.”
A shrill howl, sounding oddly like Cleo, wailed from upstairs. She screeched back and a frenzied bundle of black fur hurled down the winding oak staircase, taking flight and landing in her arms. Cleo clung to the dog, sobbing.
“I gotchu now, Beau,” she cooed. “You’re coming home with Mama as soon as I divide more of Papa’s assets.”
Beau was a Tibetan terrier with soft black hair and bright, happy eyes. I stroked his head and pulled my hand back. He felt sticky.
“Eeuw! You need a bath. You are disgusting.”
“Hey! He has ears you know. Don’t worry, baby. Mama’s taking you home and giving you a good, long soak. You can’t help it that your kidnappers have you a flippin’ mess, now can you?”
Cleo set Beau on the floor and wiped her hands on her leopard print spandex.
“This is Inga,” she said. “Make nice.”
The ritual butt sniffing began.
“Oh.” She made a face. “Maybe not that nice.”
I turned to my assistant. “OK, Cleo, you have what you came for. Let’s hit it before Walter gets back.”
“Not so fast.” Cleo strolled through the modish living room. She scooped up a Tiffany lamp and placed it by the door.
“Uh, Cleo? Whatcha doin’?”
“I’m dividing our assets. Last month Walter cleaned out our bank account and ran off with my dog and my sister. I’m taking my stuff back. He can keep my sister.”
“That was your lamp?”
“It is now.”
She added an antique Waterford Crystal candy jar and an ebony and ivory chess set to her haul. Then she ducked into a coat closet.
“You don’t want to piss off the judge before he divides your property.”
“Like that coward is going to say anything,” she called from the closet. “Aha! My wine- colored leather jacket. The Ho borrowed it last winter.”
Cleo flung the jacket out and I tossed it by the door. Next came Beau’s leashes, his winter coat, and rain jacket. I added them to the pile.
“Ooooh,” Cleo gushed. “Here’s Beau’s Chicago White Sox tee shirt and his itsy bitsy baseb
all cap.”
The beagle and I exchanged glances.
“Find your rubber ducky, ” Cleo said.
The fast friends raced up the winding staircase.
Cleo smiled. “Beau loves his rubber ducky. He refuses to take a bath without it.”
“Uh huh.”
Cleo’s voice muffled as she moved deeper in the closet. “Mmm, what’s hiding back here? I’m likin’ this.” Cleo hauled a RB designer leather travel bag and heaved it onto the cream colored chaise lounge chair. “It’s heavy. And it’s locked. Open it.”
“Ok. But then we are leaving.”
I stomped my foot for good measure, bent over the case, worked the pick until the lock popped opening the top. I choked on a gasp. The bag was stuffed full with cash. I blinked, temporarily blinded by a veritable fortune of dazzling green bills.
Cleo squealed and looked up to the heavens. “Thank you, Jee-sus.”
“Oh my god, Cleo.”
She clapped her hands and snapped the bag shut. “We’re finished here. Walter can keep his Corvette. There’s not enough room in his trunk for my assets.”
She loaded her arms and darted out the door to the Camry.
“Right behind you,” I said and called the dogs. “Inga! Beau! We’re leaving!”
The beagle bounced down the steps, tail wagging, with Beau hot on her heels. Inga carried something in her mouth and dropped it at my feet. A man’s white athletic sock, stained a hideous red.
I smelled blood, wet and fresh. My stomach lurched. I looked closely at Beau’s hair that had felt sticky when I’d touched him. It was too dark to tell but when I took a whiff, he smelled like the sock. I had a really bad feeling this was not going to end well.
Cleo called from the door. “Let’s go! We have a wild night ahead of us, and Chicago’s never gonna be the same.”
“You’re half right. I’m thinkin’ we’ve got trouble. Put the dogs in the car and come back in.”
She called the dogs to follow her. “Listen, girlfriend, the only trouble we got is blowin’ this joint before Walter comes home.”
I reached down and pinched a white edge of the bloody fabric with two squeamish fingers. Then I extended an arm in front of me and followed the sock up the winding staircase. Hardly breathing, I forced one foot in front of the other and hooked a left at the top of the steps. I barely glanced into the master bedroom and exercise room as I passed. I was following the dark red paw prints to the office at the end of the hall. The door was ajar.
I took a deep, steadying breath and entered the office. An early summer breeze gusted through an open window, billowing the lace curtains. A gnarled old maple would have many tales to tell. But the only story I cared about told of the stains on the soft white carpet. I followed the grisly tracks around the side of the desk to where Walter lay in a gooey mass of blood. His shock of black hair was slicked back as if he’d just combed it. His dark eyes were wide open with shock. My stomach lurched and I tasted vomit.
What I knew about Walter wasn’t pretty. He stole from his boss, pocketed donations from an MS fundraiser, and abandoned his wife, leaving her penniless. Walter was a man void of scruples and he certainly had his share of enemies. It appeared he finally pushed one too far.
A fat wad of bills rested beside a jewelry box on the dresser. On his wrist a gold Rolex shimmered in the sun. This wasn’t a burglary it was personal.
I stood there hardly breathing with the bloodied sock limp in my hand. I scanned the room for the smallest clue the murderer might have left behind. There were blood and beagle prints everywhere. Great. The Pants On Fire Detective Agency was first to discover a grisly homicide and we contaminated the crap out of the crime scene.
I knelt beside Walter and felt for a pulse. I knew I wouldn’t find one and didn’t. His body was still warm. I felt a deep sadness in my chest.
“You were a schmuck, Walter. But Cleo saw something good in you once. If you had more time, maybe you would’ve turned yourself around.” I thought about that. “Yeah, right, here’s for hoping.”
“Cat!” Cleo yelled her cat-on-hot-coals screech and her footsteps pounded the stairs. “Quit screwing around. We gotta get—”
Cleo skated through the door and froze. Her eyes took in the bloody carpet and me standing behind the desk, sock in hand. Every drop of color drained from her face. Her body swayed and I rushed over to catch her arm.
“Walter’s dead, Cleo. You don’t want to see him like this. Go wait downstairs.”
“Knock it off, Cat,” she squawked, pushing me away. She began moving quickly around the desk. “He is not….” When she saw him her face contorted.
And then she kicked his leg with her boot. “Get up, you big piece of crap. Get up! Do you hear me, Walter?”
Walter wasn’t going anywhere. He’d taken a chest hit from a large caliber bullet.
Cleo’s lip trembled. “Why’d you always have to go and piss people off? I warned you you’d get yourself killed. You made me so mad I could’ve killed you myself.”
I grabbed Cleo by the shoulders and shook her. “Now would be a really good time to quit saying that.”
“Ah, you know I don’t mean it, Cat. Sometimes I say things I don’t mean. Walter understood that. He was good to me that way. Probably the only way he was good to me, now that I think about it.”
I pulled my phone from my pocket. “I need to call this in. Listen to me, Cleo. Be careful what you say when the cops come. Answer their questions honestly but carefully. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Not at all.”
“Nine one one. What is your emergency.”
“This is Caterina DeLuca. I want to report a murd…”
The hair bristled on the back of my neck and suddenly I knew we were not alone. Maybe my subconscious detected the slightest brush of fabric on the stairway or maybe this house that felt empty earlier, didn’t feel so lonely anymore.
Had the murderer returned to the scene of the crime? There could be only one good reason to do so. It was in the trunk of Cleo’s Camry.
“911,” the voice repeated with more urgency. “What are you reporting?”
My hand dropped the phone in my pocket and emerged with a pistol. The murderer’s gun, judging by the size of the hole in Walter, was bigger and meaner than mine. I’d be a fool to pretend size doesn’t matter. In fact, I never do.
Cleo sensed a hostile presence in the house too. Or maybe she just took her clue from the hot shot detective with the trembling nine millimeter in her hand.
Her lip curled and she seized a golf club from the bag by the door, swinging it over her head. “He’s not taking my money,” she mouthed.
I gotta give it to Cleo. She looked freakishly calm in a totally crazed kind of way.
I motioned for her to move behind the door. She refused until I pointed the gun at her.
It was his arm I saw first, wearing a pressed and starched long sleeve blue shirt. Two steady, beefy hands gripped the hard cold steel of a Glock, a standard police issue. It’s the gun of choice for the old timer Chicago cops. The tattoo on his right hand was a lion. Leo. That was his sign and his name.
I lowered my gun.
“Come in, Leo, and don’t shoot. It’s Cat DeLuca.”
“Cat?”
Leo rounded the corner, gun drawn. His face crumbled with relief when he saw me.
“Jeezus almighty, Cat, I could’ve shot you.”
Leo was a tad shorter than me. Compact but strongly built with short brown hair and shrewd blue eyes.
Cleo came out from behind the door with her golf club. His eye flickered to the blood on the floor and his face tightened.
Leo raised the gun again and leveled the barrel at Cleo. Moving guardedly, he circled the desk to the body. He crouched and pressed two fingers on Walter’s neck.
“He’s dead,” I said.
“And still warm,” Leo noted.
He pulled the radio from his belt and called in a one eighty-seven.
r /> Leo jerked his head. “Get out of here, Cat. Go out the window. Back-up’s on the way.”
“She didn’t kill him, Leo. Walter was dead when we got here. What are you doing here anyway?”
“A neighbor called about a disturbance. A woman fitting your friend’s description was overheard threatening to kill a man named Walter.”
“Well technically many women fit Cleo’s description.”
“This woman was wearing leopard print spandex and a sparkling gold shirt.”
“Not many women can pull that look off,” I admitted.
Leo cocked his head toward the body. “Is it safe to assume the victim was one of the many Walters in the world?”
“Chicago Police,” a voice bellowed from downstairs.
“Up here, Tommy.” Leo‘s eyes gleamed, gun trained on Cleo. “You know Tommy,” he said to me. “I’m breakin’ him in.”
I knew Tommy alright. He’s a rookie from rural Wisconsin, hardly more than a kid. He was there the day somebody blew up Dorothy, the Mustang Jack gave me for a loaner. It was Tommy’s first day on the force and he was way too close to the fireworks. You could say I did my share of breaking Tommy in too.
Tommy’s boots pounded the steps, taking two at a time. “What the heck, Leo. I was around back. You were supposed to call me before—”
Tommy stomped into the room. He glimpsed Leo’s weapon trained on Cleo and fumbled for his gun. Waving the forty caliber Glock between Cleo and me, he tracked the bloody paw marks to Walter’s lifeless body. The red headed rookie’s lips paled when he saw all the blood. He wrenched his eyes from the body and saw me for the first time.
“Cat?” Tommy stammered. “What’s going on here?”
“Don’t you point that gun at her,” Leo said. “That’s Tony DeLuca’s daughter. Show some respect.”
“Oh. Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Put the gun away, Tommy,” I said. “Cleo and I are trained detectives.”
Leo snickered.
“Pants On Fire Detective Agency,” Cleo said crisply. “It’s a highly regarded operation.”
Leo let out a bark of laughter.
I ignored him. “My assistant—”
“Partner,” Cleo said.
“Cleo Jones was worried about her husband, Walter,” I said. “We stopped by to check on him. The door was unlatched so we came in.”