“Just in case the neighbors are watching.”
Okay, that was a good idea.
We stood a few seconds, and Jeff punched at the doorbell a couple more times. He leaned around and tried to look in the windows, but the shutters were closed tight. “Let’s go around back,” he said.
I looked up and down the street, because now I worried we’d be perceived as burglars and the cops would show up any second. But nothing. Maybe the neighbors were all at work.
The back was as deserted as the front. A stone patio, a small grill perched at the corner, stuck off the back of the house as if it were unfinished. I thought about Dan Franklin, living alone and grilling his little piece of steak on it. And then I had a vision of myself doing the same thing. I shuddered as I checked out the steps that went up to a back door. A curtain hung over the window, but Jeff indicated a window to the left of it and just out of reach for him. “Can you see in there?” he asked me.
Nice to know he didn’t have any sort of Napoleon issues when it came to my height.
I got on the top step, stood on my tiptoes, leaned over, and looked into a kitchen. No dirty dishes, nothing out of place, like that car. “It seems fine,” I said.
“But what about this?”
Jeff was no longer standing right behind me. I spun around to see him bending over, picking something up.
When he stood and turned around to face me, I caught my breath.
He was holding what looked like an empty animal cage.
Chapter 15
“That doesn’t prove anything,”I said.“It’s an empty cage.
Could’ve been a cat or a small dog in there.”
Jeff brought it over and we studied it a minute.
“You’re right,” he admitted, “but it does seem a little suspicious.”
“The man works with lab animals,” I said. “Of course he might have cages and critters around. We don’t know for sure that the dead rat belonged to him.”
“Who else would have a rat?” Jeff asked.
I sighed. He was probably right. It was possible that rat had lived in this very cage while he was alive. “I wonder why he put the cage out here,” I said, stepping around Jeff and around the side of the house where he’d found it. A trash can was shoved up against the side of the garage.
“It was right next to the trash can,” Jeff said, putting the cage back down. He leaned over and wiped the handle with the tail of his shirt. “Fingerprints,” he said when he saw me watching.
Oh, right. We were trespassing. If Flanigan ever found out we were poking around Dan Franklin’s rat cage, he might have issues with that.
“When you looked inside, did you see any sort of security keypad?” Jeff asked.
I shook my head. “No. What-” I stopped. “You want to get into the house, don’t you? Like you got into my house last night?”
“You really need to talk to Tim about better security,” he said as he walked past me and up the steps to the door. “You might not want to watch.”
I turned my back and looked out over Dan Franklin’s small patch of yard and into the backyard of the house on the next street over. A flutter in a window caught my eye.
“Jeff,” I hissed. “Jeff!”
“It’s open.”
I swung around and saw Jeff in the doorway.
“We have to leave,” I said as I hurried over to him. I indicated the house where I’d seen the curtain move. “Someone’s watching us. The cops could be on their way.”
Disappointment crossed Jeff’s face, but he closed the door with his hand over the tail of his shirt to get rid of those pesky fingerprints, and we ran back around the house to the Pontiac. Jeff had just started the engine when I glimpsed a cruiser coming down the opposite street.
“Get going!” I said, and the car shot forward, the tires screeching across the pavement.
I caught the cop car in the side-view mirror as we turned the corner.
I took a deep breath and leaned back in my seat. “That was close.”
Jeff grinned. “Don’t you like living on the fast side, Kavanaugh?”
“I could live without it,” I said.
“But you got your rocks off going through that guy’s mail, all right, didn’t you?”
I rolled my eyes and stared out the window.
“Hey, Kavanaugh, can you get it out?”
I turned back to see Jeff shifting up in his seat, his butt facing me, the white envelope he’d taken from Dan Franklin’s mailbox flapping against the back of his seat.
I didn’t really want to be that close to Jeff Coleman’s butt, but I reached over and snatched it out.
It was a bank statement.
“We really shouldn’t open this,” I said, but my fingers were itching to.
Sister Mary Eucharista would have slapped those fingers with a ruler if she could.
What was wrong with me? Was being with Jeff Coleman turning me into a felon? We pretend to be getting married to get information; we steal mail; we almost break into a man’s house. What else? Oh, right, I looked into a man’s locker at That’s Amore. But I couldn’t exactly blame Jeff for that. I was alone at the time. But it was his influence, for sure.
Jeff Coleman wasn’t good for me.
He was grinning. “Oh, go ahead,” he egged me on. “Everyone does their banking online anyway now. Don’t you throw those mailed statements in a box and not even look at them?”
How did he know what I did with my bank statements?
He was still talking. “Dan Franklin might not even realize that he didn’t get a statement this month.”
I sighed and tossed the envelope on the dashboard. “I can’t do it,” I said. “It’s bad enough we took it.”
We were stopped at a light at the Home Depot. Jeff grabbed the envelope, slid his finger into the crease, and opened it. He pulled out a couple of sheets of paper with Dan Franklin’s personal business on them.
And he let out a low whistle.
“You ought to look at this, Kavanaugh,” he said, throwing it into my lap as the light turned green and he hit the accelerator.
I jumped as if he’d thrown a snake at me.
“It’s not going to bite,” he teased.
I didn’t even have to pick it up. It landed in such a way that I could see exactly what Jeff Coleman had seen.
Dan Franklin had made a withdrawal of ten thousand dollars two weeks ago.
Chapter 16
As with the cage, this might have not meant anything. “Maybe he needed a new air-conditioning unit or something for his house,” I said. “We don’t know what he used that money for.”
“It’s a lot of money,” Jeff said. “And maybe you’re right. But he withdraws this kind of money and then disappears? After his coworker is murdered? With a dead rat underneath him in your trunk?”
“It still doesn’t mean anything,” I insisted. “And we committed a crime. We should bring this back.”
Jeff indicated the torn envelope. “Don’t think so. I wonder where he is.”
“Well, it’s clear he hasn’t been home in a couple days at least.”
“Three, if you count the newspapers. But why is the car there?”
I didn’t answer as I stared out the window. Jeff had gotten onto the highway and was heading back downtown. The mountains spread out in the distance, their charcoal color clashing with the clear, light blue sky, clouds looking like cotton balls. A jet left a long white trail behind it as it sailed out of sight.
“Earth to Kavanaugh,” Jeff was saying. “What is it about those mountains for you?”
I sighed. “It’s peaceful up there. No worries. No schedules, no clients, nothing but me.”
“Don’t turn into one of those crunchy granola types.”
I lifted my leg to show off my Teva sandals. “I already wear these.”
“As long as they’re not Birkenstocks.”
“What’s wrong with those?” I thought about the sandals in my closet at home.
He laughed. “You’ve got a pair, don’t you?”