But nothing here. I went from room to room, thinking that somewhere in this house, Conrad must have had a study or an office. Maybe it was upstairs. Maybe I should ask Rachel, although I didn’t want to come off as nosy.
I walked back into the kitchen, poured myself another glass, and sat down at the kitchen table. Rachel’s fanny pack was still on the table where she’d tossed it earlier. The zipper was halfway open, some of the contents hanging out. There was a bandanna, a ring of keys, a radio with wires leading to headphones, and, of all things, a beeper.
A beeper, I thought, what in heaven’s name would Rachel be doing with a beeper!
I looked closer. The overheads were off in the kitchen. The outside light was fading fast. It was difficult to see. I didn’t want to go messing around with her stuff, but there it was, the base of it visible just outside the bag: a small black plastic box a little smaller than a cigarette pack, with a belt clip on the flat side.
“Mmm, how about that?” I said out loud.
“How about what?” a voice said behind me.
I jumped about a foot off the chair and spun around. “Don’t do that!” I yelped.
Rachel smiled as she walked into the kitchen. She wore only a man’s white dress shirt, presumably one belonging to her dead husband. She walked past me, over to the sink, and grabbed a fresh glass out of the overhead cabinet. The tail of the shirt pulled up as she reached above her; she wasn’t wearing anything underneath. Despite the exhausting afternoon we’d spent, I found myself wanting her all over again.
“Been up long?” She opened the refrigerator door, light spilling over her.
“Maybe twenty minutes,” I said. “I tried not to wake you.”
She pulled a pitcher of orange juice out. “That’s sweet. I woke up a few minutes ago, and you weren’t next to me. I was afraid you’d left without saying goodbye.”
“I wouldn’t do that.” I stood up and walked around the kitchen island. She poured a glass of juice, and while she drank it, I ran my arms around her waist and nuzzled into the back of her neck.
“You feel great,” I purred.
“So do you,” she said, but her voice was distracted. “What were you doing down here?”
I pulled my face out of her hair. “Nothing. Just hanging around. That okay?”
She set the glass down and turned to face me, my arms still around her, her bare legs rubbing against me.
“Harry,” she said, “it’s going to take me awhile to get used to this. I’ve been through a lot. I need to know you’re not going to hurt me. To tell you the honest truth, I’ve had enough of that.”
“I know. And I agree with you, things are moving a little too fast. But we’ve got time, Rachel.”
She came back into my arms, pressed her face into my bare chest. I could feel her breath on me, hot, short gulps of air as if she were in a panic. I brought my right hand up and ran it through her hair, rubbing her softly, feeling her next to me.
“All the time in the world,” I whispered.
24
I pulled out of Rachel’s driveway at 9:20 the next morning, wondering how I was going to get through the next sixty hours without seeing her. That was part of the deaclass="underline" to give each other time and space, we weren’t going to meet again until dinner Sunday night. She wanted it that way, not me. She was the one who needed time to recover. I understood and went along without question.
Neither of us mentioned again my searching for Conrad’s killer. I was in a fog as I pulled out of her neighborhood onto Hillsboro Road, drove toward town a couple of blocks, then got on the entrance ramp for I-440.
I wasn’t even sure where I was going. Back to my apartment first, I supposed, for a shower and a change of clothes. Then I had to figure out what was next. Albert Zitin, maybe. If I could track him down, check out his story against Jane Collingswood’s, then maybe I’d have some idea if my suspicions were on target.
Mrs. Hawkins was in her front yard weeding a flower bed when I coasted into the driveway. She was a sweet old lady, a tad on the dumpy side, with those rhinestone teardrop glasses that were popular thirty-five or forty years ago. She reminded me in a way of my grandmother, except that my grandmother had exceptional hearing until she died. Mrs. Hawkins, even with her hearing aids, was nearly as deaf as a box of rocks.
After parking the car, I walked to the front yard just to be polite. “Hello, Mrs. Hawkins,” I yelled about five feet away from her.
She looked up from her weeding. She was wearing a faded pair of stretch denims, a checked workshirt, and an old pair of work gloves.
“Good morning, Harry,” she said, her voice high and loud. “I didn’t hear you leave this morning.”
“You wouldn’t hear me leave if I’d shot my way out of the house,” I said in a normal voice.
“What was that?”
“I said I left really early this morning,” I yelled.
“Hot case, I suppose. It’s so exciting having a private detective as a tenant.”
“I’m flattered, Mrs. Hawkins. Listen, I’ve got to get back to my office. I just came by to grab a quick shower.”
“Fine, Harry. By the way, do you think you could see to the lawn this weekend?”
“Just freaking great,” I muttered under my breath, then raising my voice back to noise pollution levels: “Sure, Mrs. Hawkins. I’ll take care of it this weekend.”
“Thank you. You’re such a nice boy.”
I laughed to myself. If Mrs. Hawkins knew how I spent last evening, she’d probably evict me.
It took one last call posing as Dr. Evans of Neurosurgery for me to learn that Albert Zitin lived a block or two off West End. He rented one side of a duplex near St. Thomas Hospital. He was off rotation until ten o’clock tonight. I figured he’d be at home mustering his reserves.
The brick house sat on a corner of a four-way stop intersection. The neighborhood was quiet, middle-class, a mix of rental property and owner occupied. A pair of fir trees maybe twenty feet high and badly in need of a trim grew on either side of the concrete front porch, nearly blocking the front door from view. I parked the Ford in front and killed the ignition. The engine chugged for a few seconds, then backfired and let loose a puff of smoke before finally sighing itself into silence.
I shook my head, both embarrassed and disgusted. I walked up the long stretch of concrete to the front door. There was a picture window behind the overgrown shrubbery with no curtains. I peeked through a branch and saw Albert Zitin lying on the couch in a pair of jeans, no shirt, no shoes. A book was propped on his chest, but it was lying facedown where it had settled when he dropped off to sleep.
I folded a branch of the fir out of the way and rapped on the glass storm door. There was no sound for perhaps thirty seconds, so I made a fist, knuckles out, and pounded on the glass a little harder. The echo reverberated in the space between the storm door and the front door.
This time, I heard a shuffling and the thud of a book falling on the floor. A sleepy voice yelled, “Hold on a minute.” There was a fumbling with the lock, then a sleep-logged face surrounded by a mop of thinning, curly hair appeared at the door.
“Sorry to wake you up,” I said.
“Oh, hell. It’s you.”
I smiled at him, trying friendly first to see how it worked.
“Jane said you’d probably find me.”
“Then you’ve been expecting me. Mind if I come in?”
“Yes, I mind. I mind very much. But I’m afraid if I don’t let you, I’m never going to be rid of you.”