Ricky had been worried about renting the upstairs to a straight couple, especially a TV person, but Nick Nesbitt was willing to pay the high rent and they seemed like nice people. Ricky used to say there were three kinds of straights. Those who hated gays, those who bent over backwards to prove they were okay with it and those who didn’t give a shit. Nick and Maggie didn’t give a shit.
Nick had been standoffish at first, but he was that way with everybody. He was on television, he had to be careful. Maggie, however, had swept into their lives as if she’d been there forever. They swiftly became fast friends. The three of them did everything together. Then Ricky died. Without Maggie, Gordon would have taken his own life.
At least Maggie never knew about Stephanie. She’d spent the night last night. Maggie not even buried yet and they were sleeping together. There was only one explanation for it. They’d been doing it before Maggie’d been killed. A man didn’t jump in the hay with someone the night after his wife was murdered, unless he’d been rolling in it for sometime.
A motive?
Not Nick, surely. Gordon couldn’t believe that. But the girl? He’d have to give it some thought.
He stepped into his jeans, pulled on a pair of running shoes without socks. He was out of coffee and besides, the walls were closing in. He had a yellow Spooner Hawaiian shirt half on when he heard a noise. He paused. It sounded like somebody was upstairs. He listened for a second. Nothing. Just ghosts in his imagination.
Maggie went to the closet, pulled out a pair of faded Levi’s. Though she wasn’t so wet she was dripping, she was uncomfortable. An Angels sweatshirt with cut off sleeves followed. She shucked off the wet clothes. Nick was going to know someone had been in the apartment anyway, if he noticed the wet spot on the carpet, it’d just confuse the cops. She put on the dry clothes and felt better right away. After wrapping the wet ones inside another sweatshirt, she stuffed them in the grip along with a second pair of Levi’s. She was a sweatshirt and Levi’s person and there were three more pairs of the jeans and a couple sweatshirts left in the closet, Nick wouldn’t notice what she’d taken.
But he’d notice her jewelry box. Too bad.
She hated rings on her fingers or in her ears. Necklaces seemed like a noose around her neck. And even though she hardly ever wore the engagement and wedding rings Nick had given her, she wanted them. She also wanted the gold crucifix her mother had given her. And she wanted the pearl earrings her father had given her when she graduated from high school. She loved the memories associated with her jewelry, the love that went with the giving of it. And besides, despite how she felt about it, sometimes she’d put some on for a dinner party or something.
She remembered she was barefoot and went back to the closet where she found and slipped on a pair of well used Nikes.
Now all she wanted was a photo album from the bottom bookshelf in the living room. She pulled out the album and flipped through it. She was there as a little girl, with her mother, with her dad, with both during birthdays, graduation, holidays. She closed it, dropped it in the grip.
She was about to let herself out when she noticed all the correspondence on the coffee table. There was plenty enough light coming in from the streetlamp out front for her to go through it.
She sat down on the sofa and started. Condolence cards. Heaps of them. Already? She’d only been dead a couple of days. There was a clipping from the Press Telegram with her photo in it. Not a good one, she thought, but anyone would recognize her. She hoped Margo’s friends or classmates didn’t see it.
She read the caption and gave a start. She was being buried tomorrow at noon.
Poor Margo. Maggie fought tears. Life was so unfair.
Horace found the house, an upstairs duplex. The lights were out. That made sense if the guy did the eleven o’clock news. He’d be at the station in L.A. till midnight. He parked in front of the garage in back as if he lived there, got out of the van without locking it.
He paused, took out a pair of latex surgical gloves, put them on.
There was some light from the apartments next door, but the alley behind was dark. He went for the steps, confident he wasn’t seen.
A squeak rippled through the night. Horace pulled his foot off the tattletale step as if it were red hot and he’d been barefoot.
Maggie heard the squeak. Somebody was on the steps out back. Not Nick, he’d have stepped over it as she had. Someone else. She started for the front door. Stopped. If it was the police they’d be out front, waiting. If that was it, then someone had called them. Could Gordon have heard something from downstairs? Was that it?
Gordon was on his way to the front door when he heard the telltale step. Nick? No, he said he’d be doing the news as usual. Probably that Stephanie.
Horace stood still as the night. Any second he expected lights, shouting. But it didn’t happen. He thought about Virgil. He thought about Ma rocking in that chair. He thought about Sadie. He thought about Striker and Congressman Nishikawa. And he thought about Margo Kenyon back from the dead.
A cool breeze wafted between the duplex and the apartment building next door. Someone put a CD on or turned on an oldies station. The Beatles, “Yellow Submarine.” Stupid song, but he found himself softly humming along with Paul McCartney’s vocals as he ghosted the rest of the way up the stairs.
At the landing, he unzipped the bomber jacket, fished a leather pouch from the inside pocket, opened it and smiled as he fingered the picks. Standard lock, probably the one that came with the house when it was built back in the ’50s. Piece of cake.
He went to work.
Maggie forced herself to be still, though her heart was racing. The doorknob clicked as someone tried it. She grabbed the grip. More clicking sounds. Someone was out there trying to pick the lock.
The police didn’t do that. They’d bang on the door, wake up the whole neighborhood.
Instinct said run. She rose from the sofa, started for the front door. Stopped. She flashed on Ferret Face and Virgil. What if it was them? One could be waiting somewhere out front.
She inched her way toward the bathroom. A mistake, she realized as soon as she slipped in. There was no way out and the lock on the door wouldn’t keep out a child, much less someone able to pick locks. She was about to leave, to take her chances going out the front way, when the back door opened.
Too late, whoever he was, he was in.
She took her hand from the door. It was open a crack. She heard quiet footsteps tiptoeing through the kitchen. She backed up to the bath, sat on the rim and fished in the bag for the gun. She let out a silent sigh when she found it, wrapped a hand around the grip, finger on the trigger as she pulled it out.
Gordon strained his ears, searching for sound from above. He’d heard the step. Heard the door open. Heard someone ease it closed. Nick never did that and there was no reason why Stephanie would either. He expected to hear footsteps cross the kitchen. And he expected to see the reflection of the upstairs light on the trees outside his windows when it came on. Whoever was up there was taking pains to be quiet and they were moving around in the dark.
He went into the bedroom, reached under the pillow, pulled out his thirty-eight. He took the holster out of the top drawer of the nightstand, clipped it to his belt at the small of his back.
Armed now, he opened the front and back doors, turned off the lights, then stood in the dark, gun in hand, in the center of the living room. Not even God could get out of that upstairs apartment without making some noise and Gordon planned on hearing it. When whoever was up there came down, he would be waiting.
Horace stopped in the middle of the kitchen. The lights were out, but the house seemed alive. He eased a hand into the shoulder holster, brought out the Beretta. He sipped at the air, but heard no sound.
There was a hallway off the kitchen. He was familiar with the layout, there were a lot of duplexes built to the
