More hurried snooping, trying to get a handle on things. With the sound of water as a cover, I ducked into the smaller of the two bedrooms and looked around. A computer was on top of an oak desk against a wall beneath a window. An inkjet printer was on top of a bookshelf beside it. I opened the top drawer of the desk. Stamps, stationary, a ruler, paper clips. Office stuff. Next drawer down held bank statements, phone and power bills. I found a rent receipt for nine hundred forty dollars. Bills were in the name of Danya Fuller. Fuller. I didn’t know anyone by that name. The bank statement was from First Interstate on South Virginia. I knew the place, a block or so south of Vassar Street. It wasn’t a joint account. She had a thousand and sixty-four dollars in checking. The bottom drawer of the desk held two reams of printer paper and a stapler.
I hurried into the kitchen and opened drawers, found flatware, Ziploc bags, aluminum foil, half a dozen dish towels rolled up into neat tubes, Tupperware. One drawer held the usual detritus that can’t be thrown out because it might be useful sometime in the next thirty years—stale rubber bands, nails and screws, picture hangers, pencil stubs, dried-out pens, a modest collection of matchbooks, a bent screwdriver that might have been used as a pry bar, a small rusted claw hammer purchased around the time of the Korean War.
Matchbooks were classic hot-ticket items for clues, so I took particular notice of those—half a dozen big-name Vegas casinos, a few no-name places I’d never heard of on Highway 93, one from the Pahranagai Inn in Caliente, Nevada, site of a hot springs and where a juvenile girls’ correctional facility was located.
“Find anything interesting?”
I looked up. She was wrapped in a fuzzy cream-colored towel. Pretty short one, too—one disadvantage of being tall, not that I saw it that way, but I try to see things from the viewpoint of others.
I held up a pen. “You oughta toss this one. It’s dried out.”
“Danya said you’re a private investigator.”
“Uh-huh. World-renowned.”
“You might investigate the backyard while I get dressed. See if anything looks out of place out there.”
“Okey-dokey.”
Back outside. A glance down the side of the house toward the street. No Cruze. I went scratching around the yard without a clue as to what might be a clue since I didn’t have the slightest idea what Danya or Shanna wanted. The yard didn’t look any more promising than it had half an hour ago—dead patchy grass as dry and tough as broom straw, powdery dirt, a few boards stacked in weeds against the back fence, old doghouse, faint funky smell in the vicinity of the garage, which might be a garbage can ready to be hauled out to the curb.
I looked over the west fence into the neighbor’s backyard, same to the east and north, didn’t see anyone mowing, weeding a garden, hammocking, sunbathing nude—nothing interesting. The day was relentlessly quiet, eighty degrees. Sunshine and blue sky, a few puffy white clouds—
Shanna came out in jeans and a green short-sleeve shirt that did little to hide the curves, hair still damp, brown sandals, hot-pink polish still on her toenails. As she came closer, I refined my estimate of her height to six-one in order to keep my eyes where they wouldn’t get me in trouble—though after that business in the shower, I couldn’t tell how much it mattered. She was a hell of a sight. And married to Danya. That had taken me by surprise.
“In case you’re wondering,” she said, “she’s Danya Fuller-Hayes and I’m Shanna Hayes-Fuller. Now.”
“Bet the IRS hates you two.”
“We haven’t had to file married yet. Next April we might file ‘married filing separately.’”
“Expect an audit.” I glanced down the driveway, checking to make sure Vince wasn’t still around, then turned back to Shanna. “You two’re really married, huh?” Not that I didn’t believe her, but I hoped the question would provoke a bit more elaboration.
She held up a finger with a ring on it I hadn’t noticed earlier. Gold, tiny diamond. Not much in the way of elaboration. She looked back at the house. “Um, in there . . . that wasn’t . . .”
“No need to explain.” Or apologize, I didn’t say.
“It’s just, you should know—I’m trying really hard not to hate men, all men, since it’s like really bad karma.”
“Right.”
Not hate all men? I got a little whiff of something there. Not sure what it meant though.
Shanna looked around the yard. “So, what’d you find?”
“Look at this place. What’s to find?”
She shrugged. I was about to suggest that she phone Danya and get this employment thing settled one way or another. Maybe I didn’t want any part of it, terrific-looking girls or not. So far, for all I knew, they’d lost a dog—empty doghouse against the fence—and Ma doesn’t take missing-mutt cases, and I wouldn’t know where to begin anyway.
Shanna reached into a pocket and pulled out a torn piece of paper. “Here, read this.”
It was a note, rough masculine-looking print, barely legible.
Get $1000000 redy in smal bills by tusday and I will get him down and take him away no problum. I will fon monday and tok to you.
The amount was hard to decipher without commas. I had to count zeros. Today was Sunday. I looked at Shanna. “Where’d you get this? And when?”
“It was left in our mailbox four days ago. And, no, we don’t know who put it there or why. Get who down from where? And a million dollars? Seriously? It had to be kids. We couldn’t figure it out.”
It might be why
