Drop Dead Beauty (18 page)

Sadie drove to Redmond and could smell the small ranch house the minute she got within a couple yards of the place. She had her camera to take before and after photos, and she completely suited up before going inside.

The house was thick with flies and you could tell the woman had never been a good housekeeper. If she’d had a subscription to
Good Housekeeping
it would’ve been revoked had any of the editors stood downwind of the place. The furniture was sparse, but the rooms were littered with piles of dog excrement in every corner. The walls were lined with photos of dogs in all shapes and sizes. The woman had obviously loved her dogs, but not enough to give them a decent life that involved allowing them to do their business outdoors and having clean beds or water bowls.

The woman had died of natural causes while sitting at her kitchen table. Sadie could tell that by the level of decomposition fluids and remains at that location. Sadie snapped photos of that area specifically and then took general pictures of the two-bedroom house, grateful that it was just over nine hundred square feet.

There was a covered back deck that was a helluva lot cleaner than any area inside the house. After the photos, Sadie set up all her bins and cleaning supplies on the deck area and designated it her safe zone. Then she went to Subway and bought a sandwich, a yogurt, and a bottled water. While she sat in her van eating, she got a call from Rudie.

“It might just need a minor adjustment,” he told her. “Maybe I should add more bloodroot and less toadflax.”

“Okay. I don’t know when I’ll be able to drop off the bag you gave because I’m cleaning up a crappy dog house today.”

“A dog house? As in, a small house made for dogs?” he asked, confused.

“No, a person’s house that she turned into a large doghouse with crap everywhere.”

“Oh. Give me clay and paint messes any day,” he said. “Well, you know where I am. Come by when you have time and I’ll see if I can add a few ingredients and take some away.”

“You know, I might need to be looking at the bigger picture here,” she told him. “Maybe all this isn’t just about having a conjure bag that keeps me from feeling the pain of spirits. What if what I really need is a paranormal and life-sized makeover? Something that’ll fix my love life, my spiritual life, and my business all in one fell swoop.”

“I’m not God,” he snapped. “For that kind of makeover you need to see a priest.”

“Okay. Guess I’ll settle for whatever you’re able to work up for me.”

“It could be worse. I’m stuck with my Hex of Strife forever. I’ll be wearing a conjure bag up until I’m dead and maybe even after that. The only peace I might get is if I come back in my next life as a goat. At least for you there’s an excellent chance your abilities will return, either once the baby is born or once it’s weaned.”

He made a good point. Sadie decided to stop feeling sorry for herself and go back to work.

It took Sadie three hours just to take dog excrement from the house. After that she focused on the kitchen and specifically the location where the body had been. She opened the windows to allow in fresh air and to give the flies a chance to save themselves before Sadie began sweeping and vacuuming maggots. The lawyer had told her that all the flooring in the entire house would have to be removed, and he wasn’t exaggerating.

The ozone generators were still at the site of the home invasion and Sadie made a mental note to pick them up the next day when she returned for the next stage of cleaning. A little after eight p.m. Sadie decided to call it a day. She was slick with sweat and distracted by the niggling recollection that she had Jane’s keys in her purse. She wanted to know if the woman’s condo would yield any information about her death.

When Sadie had the van loaded up, she headed home to discuss the situation with Dean. She showered first and then told him her idea.

“You got the keys off old lady Brun?” He clapped his hands excitedly. “Chances are good the cops have taken some of her stuff for evidence. Her laptop, address book . . . those kinds of things.”

“I have no idea what I’ll even be looking for. Signs she was being overly massaged? What will it matter?”

“You need to find her diary. She’s kept one since she was a little girl, and very few people know about it. She loved to write things down. Hell, I only found out about it when I started searching for evidence that she was cheating on me with Car Boy.”

“But wouldn’t detectives have taken a diary too?”

“If she’d left it out or in a side table, sure, but she wouldn’t.” He grinned wickedly. “Chances are good even Martin didn’t know about it. When I say she wrote down everything, I mean
everything
. The woman would write down how she felt about comments I made about a meal I didn’t even remember eating.”

Sadie had always thought keeping a journal would be cathartic and powerful but the idea of writing about her day only appealed to her once she was in bed and winding down to sleep. At that point she always lacked the three ingredients necessary: pen, paper, and a desire to get up from a warm bed to get a pen and paper.

“So once you found her diary and confirmed she was cheating, she probably stopped hiding it in the same location,” Sadie replied.

“I never told her I found the journal, because I wanted to keep reading her entries,” he confessed. “Once I read about her sneaking around with Car Boy I kept hoping she’d end it with him. I wanted to give her the chance to choose me. I gave her more attention. Took her away for a weekend to a stupid bed and breakfast upstate. All that kind of BS. But she was tired of playing second fiddle to my job, and there was nothing I could do about people being killed in Seattle.”

She saw the pain in his eyes and felt sorry for Dean.

“So eventually she told you about Martin and that was that?” Sadie asked gently.

“No. I read in her journal that she loved Car Boy and was going to ask me for a divorce. I beat her to the punch. Told her I didn’t love her anymore and that I wanted her to move out.”

He’d wanted to save his pride and Sadie got that, but she knew it must’ve been a painful kick to his manhood to have his wife leave him for another man.

“And she never suspected you were reading her journal entries?”

“Not until recently. I told her about it over coffee and I guess that’s what got her thinking about wanting to get back with me, because she knew what I said wasn’t true. I did love her. Always had.” He cleared his throat noisily. “Anyway, she kept her journal hidden in a big Tampax box in the cupboard under the bathroom sink. Every evening she had a long, hot bath and while the water was running, she wrote about her day.”

“I guess when you’re married for a while you get to know someone’s routine.”

“Yes, but I never figured out the writing thing until I suspected her of cheating. Then I began watching and listening more closely. I heard that bathroom cupboard door open and close every evening and investigated. As far as detectives go, I was slow on the uptake. If I’d known she was writing down everything in our marriage, I could’ve been more proactive years before.” He shrugged with resignation and then pointed a finger at Sadie. “You go to her apartment and you find that diary and bring it back to me. I’m sure we’ll find her killer in those pages.”

Sadie had a feeling it wouldn’t be that easy.

Chapter 13

Jane’s condo was located in an older wood building on Cougar Mountain Way in Bellevue. The good news was that it was a ground-level unit with its own entrance, so Sadie didn’t need to go through the building to gain entry. The bad news was that she had no idea if she was going to encounter Martin hunkered down for the night or if he’d gone home to momma. She wasn’t about to take the chance of using Mrs. Brun’s keys and walking in on him, so she decided to do a little surveillance first.

After driving around the maze of tight roads within the crowded complex, she backed her Corolla into a visitor parking stall between a Prius and a minivan. From her vantage point she had a clear view of the front door of Jane’s condo. There were two driveways side-by-side with entrances to each unit next to its own drive. Sadie opened the glove box and pulled out her Mariner’s ball cap and put it on. It was about as covert as she knew how to be.

Sadie cut the engine, then sunk down in her seat and watched for any sign of activity inside. The complex was eerily quiet. Filled with hardworking people who had to get up and rush the kids out the door to school and then fight traffic to get to jobs they hated. Sadie daydreamed about what it would be like to have a baby. To be a working mom trying to make ends meet and still have enough energy to help with homework and read bedtime stories.

A light suddenly flickered on in an upstairs bedroom inside Jane’s condo. Damn. If Martin was home chances were good he was there for the night. At least she knew he’d be at work the next day, so she’d simply have to swing by once he was at the auto dealership. As the upstairs light flicked off in the condo, Sadie started up her car. She was just putting on her seat belt when the front door opened. Speedily, Sadie turned off her engine and slouched down lower in her seat.

He stepped out of the condo, locked the door, and then walked down the sidewalk. Sadie’s eyes bugged out of her head. It wasn’t Martin but Emilio, the sexy yet perverted masseuse, and he was walking directly toward her!

Sadie yanked the ball cap over her face and slouched as low as she could in her seat. She held her breath when Emilio climbed into the Prius parked next to her and didn’t breathe again until he’d zipped out of the parking lot.

“Holy shit!” she gasped, sitting upright.

Sadie tugged the baseball cap off her head and ran shaky fingers through her hair as she debated what to do. She felt like peeling out of the lot and following Emilio but realized that she still needed to get inside the condo and find that diary.

With the condo keys in her hands, Sadie walked purposefully toward the unit as if she had every right to go inside. After all, if the woman’s esthetician could gain entry, why not the trauma cleaner that worked with her ex-husband? Each separate unit had its own sidewalk and a very short drive that led to a single-car garage. Sadie walked up to the front door, let herself inside the unit, and waited while her eyes adjusted to the darkness. She didn’t dare turn on a light. After a while she made her way up to the second floor.

A glow from the parking lot lights illuminated the master bedroom enough that Sadie could see the bed was neatly made with no signs anyone had slept there recently. Some dresser drawers stood open, though, with tufts of panties and T-shirts dangling out. Sadie wondered if it was Emilio rifling through the drawers or if Seattle PD had done it before him.

Wasting no time, Sadie hustled into the en suite bath and stopped short. It was a tiny three-piece bathroom with a shower stall, toilet, and pedestal sink. An extra roll of toilet tissue sat on the back of the toilet but there was no other place to stash a Tampax box. With a frown, Sadie headed out of the master bedroom and into another bathroom across the hall. It had a tiny vanity that held an extra set of towels and a couple bottles of shampoo. Nothing else.

Cursing quietly to herself, Sadie headed back down the stairs to the main floor, where there was a tiny two-piece bathroom with a toilet and, again, only a pedestal sink. Where the hell was a woman supposed to keep her hygiene supplies?

“Think, think,” she muttered to herself, tapping the side of her head.

She ran back up the stairs and decided to check out a linen cupboard. There she hit the jackpot of pads, liners, and tampons all in tight little packaging incapable of housing even the smallest of journals. Still, Sadie rooted around the packaging and all the surrounding area but came up empty.

Sadie began to consider the possibility that Jane had given up on the whole journal-writing thing. After all, it was a huge time commitment. The more she thought about it, though, the more Sadie considered that if Jane had been journaling her entire life, she wasn’t about to stop now with such excitement as a diddling masseuse to write about. And maybe that’s why Emilio had been there. Was it possible he’d found out about the journal and came to retrieve it?

Sadie returned to the master bedroom and began going through drawers, but the only thing she discovered was that Jane had a helluva lot of yoga wear. She went to the closet next and discovered the dead woman’s fondness for sandals and boots, but still no journal. Sadie plunked herself down on the edge of the bed and pursed her lips in serious thought.

“If I was a woman wanting to hide stuff from my man, I’d keep it somewhere he’d never think to go,” she said, tapping her fingers on her knee. Abruptly an idea hit. “Got it!”

She hit her forehead with the palm of her hand and hustled down the stairs again, making her way toward the back of the unit to where a large closet doubled as a storage and laundry facility. This small room had no windows so Sadie turned on an inside light and closed herself inside. Mrs. Brun said that it had always been either Jane or herself doing Martin’s laundry, so if Jane was bent on hiding a journal from her man, the laundry room would be a pretty safe bet. She opened a high cupboard above the washer and moved around the detergent boxes and bottles. One out of many of the boxes of Tide powder detergent slid far too effortlessly to be heavy with detergent. Sadie hoisted it down, noting the lid of the box was entirely cut away, and inside was a Ziploc bag containing a black spiral book and a pen.

“Bingo!”

Sadie took out the bag and was about to leave the room when she heard a key in the front door lock. Her heart jumped as she quickly flicked off the light and crept into the corner of the small space behind the door. Holding her breath, she listened intently as the front door opened and someone came inside. Whoever it was went directly upstairs. Sadie heard banging around as if drawers and cupboards were opened and closed in a big hurry. Next the person was racing back down the stairs and then walking around the main floor, opening cupboards in the kitchen. A light was flicked on and Sadie could see a shadow as someone walked past the room she was in. Maybe it was Emilio returning to search the house again. Or it could be Martin and he was here for the night. Whoever it was, they were doing a thorough job of searching for something and that meant it was just a matter of time before she was discovered.

With trepidation, Sadie closed her eyes and tried to devise a plan. Unfortunately, she realized her purse containing her pepper spray was in the car. If she was closer to the laundry cupboard, she could at least make a play for the bleach and toss it in someone’s face if she felt threatened, but she was too terrified to move. Instead, she prayed silently and made silent promises to God as she watched the doorknob turn, and the door to her hiding place opened a fraction of an inch just before Jane’s doorbell rang. Sadie had to cover her mouth to stop herself from squeaking in surprise.

The person hesitated, then shut the laundry room door and walked to the front door, hastily opening it.

“You’re blocking my driveway,” the person outside the door said. “Could I get you to move?”

Sadie strained but couldn’t hear a word from whoever opened the door, but the mysterious person did leave the condo to presumably move the vehicle. Sadie didn’t waste any time. She left her hiding place, went to the back living room area, and slid open the patio doors and snuck outside into the darkness, clutching the Ziplocked diary in her hands. The postage-stamp backyards were open without any dividing fences, so she was able to easily dash across the backs of a number of units and circle around to the front lot and to her car. She turned the key in the ignition and rocketed out of the parking lot before she even had her seat belt on. Once she was a couple blocks away, Sadie pulled to the curb and paused to catch her breath.

“That was just too damned close,” she gasped.

Glaring at the journal now taking up space in its Ziploc bag on the passenger seat, Sadie added, “You’d better be worth it.”

Feeling a little calmer, she pulled out onto Lakemont Boulevard and then took the right at Forest Drive to get home. It was a quiet night with hardly anyone on the road. She was no more than half a mile down the tree-lined street when someone’s brights blinded her in her rearview mirror. Sadie adjusted her mirror and saw with horror that it was a dark Ram pickup truck that was nearly on her bumper.

She told herself it could be a coincidence and that she didn’t need to panic every time she saw a truck. As that thought formed in her mind, though, the truck sped up and rammed her bumper. Sadie went from trying to remain calm to frenzied hysteria in one pounding heartbeat.

Sadie pressed down on the accelerator to get away. She considered turning onto a residential street, but the truck was so close that if she slowed enough to make the turn he would intentionally slam into her. She thought longingly about her cell phone at the bottom of her purse on the floor of the passenger seat, but she didn’t have time to consider reaching for it because the faster she went, the faster the truck came up behind her. The speed limit was thirty and Sadie’s speedometer was inching up to seventy. The normally peaceful stretch of tree-lined residential road now felt desolate and terrifying. She knew her Corolla was no match for the Ram, and her hope was that the police who often patrolled this road for speeders would pull her over for an infraction and also catch the Ram for either attempted murder or terrorizing a trauma worker, whichever carried the longer jail time.

Sadie saw a vehicle approaching in the other direction and decided to lean on her horn to attract attention. Just as she honked she was again slammed from the back and her car lurched forward. She struggled to regain control of her car on the rain-slicked curve and managed to straighten the Corolla’s fishtail easily.

“Ha!” she shouted. “I’m not going down that easy!”

She sneered at the truck in her rearview mirror and tried desperately to see the driver but was only blinded by the headlights as they forcibly pounded into the back of her car once more. This time the jolt of being hit from behind caused her hands to slide from the wheel long enough to lose control. Her Corolla went careening up the embankment and through someone’s backyard fence. She yelled in fear until the force of the airbag punched her in the face and muffled her screams.

“Owww,” she cried in a shaky voice as the car settled on an odd angle.

The next hour was a blur of police, ambulance, and Zack, who was called by the responding officer who was an old pal of his. The friend thought they were still a couple, and sometimes the old boys in blue network was a mighty speedy communication line.

Sadie just looked at Zack with a mixture of shock and sadness when he showed up.

“He just assumed I’d want to know,” Zack told her.

“Oh.” Sadie rubbed her sore chin, which was bruised from the airbag. “Sorry about that.”

“Don’t be sorry. He assumed right.” He cleared his throat. “You need to go to the hospital and get checked out.”

“I’m fine. Just a little banged up.” Then her hand went to her abdomen. “But I want to make sure everything’s okay.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“No!” Sadie said, and when Zack looked away with a hurt expression on his face she added, “I’ll go in the ambulance. I want you to search for the damn Dodge Ram that’s been following me and just ran me off the road.”

“Can you narrow that description down a bit?” he asked.

Sadie told him about the paint on the fender, and when she closed her eyes she remembered the license plate number had a couple eights in it.

“Any idea who it could be?”

“The vehicle started following me after I cleaned a suicide in Auburn, and my tires were slashed when I was working a home-invasion clean on Southwest Brandon Street. I saw the truck then too.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “I’m not positive, but there’s a chance it could be Martin Brun, Jane Petrovich’s boyfriend. I don’t know what he drives, but when I was inside Jane’s condo someone came inside and then left the building to move a vehicle. I didn’t see who but it was after that the truck followed me on this road.”

“Just for once it would be nice if you made friends instead of enemies!” Zack threw his hands up in the air with frustration.

“I know.”

“And you’re sneaking around and investigating a homicide that you have no business looking into! You broke into the victim’s house?” His voice was tight.

“When you put it that way it makes it sound like I was doing a bad thing. I had keys to Jane’s house.” Sadie pushed a finger in Zack’s chest. “And I’d like to point out that I’m not the only one who should be looking into this. Petrovich was always good to you too. I’m not the only one who should be trying to clear his name!”

Zack thrust out his chin and nodded.

“Maybe I just have faith that the SPD are doing a good job and don’t need me messing around in their investigation.”

“That’s a cop-out and we both know it,” she said quietly.

“Fine.” Zack nodded. “I’ll look into it. You get your ass to the hospital and make sure everything’s okay.” He waved the paramedics over. “Call me if you need a ride home when you’re done.”

Sadie glanced over at her car, which was up on two wheels and half through a fence.

“My purse and a bag with a book were all on the passenger side.” She nodded to the car. “Would you . . .”