Cockatiels at Seven Page 9

  “Peter Willoughby in the computer support division,” Jack said. “Want his office number?”

  “Please. Although from what Ashok told us, today probably isn’t the best day to visit Mr. Willoughby. Next, someone named Trey.”

  Jack typed, then shook his head.

  “Cell phone,” he said. “I’m sure there’s a way to find the owner, but I’m afraid I don’t know it.”

  “Well, there’s an easy way to find out,” I said. I pulled out my cell phone, dialed the number, and listened while it rang.

  “No answer,” I said, after about seven rings. “And looks as if Trey hasn’t set up his or her mailbox.”

  “Feckless,” Jack said. “When will people learn to use technology effectively?”

  I decided not to mention that it had taken me six months before I’d gotten around to setting up the mailbox for my own cell phone.

  “And the last one is from Jasper, according to the message. Let’s see if he answers.”

  I dialed and we both waited. Eventually his voice mail kicked in and I hung up.

  “No answer,” I said. “And under the circumstances, I’m not sure I want to leave a friendly message for the guy. Wish I had a nickel for every minute I’ve spent listening to phones ring over the last two days. Anyway, that’s the lot. Not much use.”

  “Sorry about that. Anything else you want me to investigate?”

  I thought about it for a moment.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Nadine.”

  “Nadine have a last name?”

  “Probably; most people do. Unfortunately, I don’t know it. But she works in the college’s Financial Administration office. She’s Karen’s boss.”

  “Let’s check the college Web site, then.”

  After a few minutes of typing, interspersed with frowns and the occasional muttered insult at the amateurism of the college’s Web site designers, Jack broke into a smile.

  “Here we are. Nadine Hanrahan. Office in the third floor of Grover Pruitt Hall.”

  “That’s her,” I said.

  “What do you want to know about her?”

  I frowned. Jack waited, patiently.

  “I don’t know,” I said, after a few moments. “I’m not even sure why her name popped into my head when you asked who else I wanted you to investigate.”

  “Maybe your subconscious finds her suspicious.”

  “Yeah,” I said, slowly. “Or it could just be that my subconscious doesn’t like her. I know my conscious doesn’t. She’s exactly the kind of college bureaucrat who makes Michael’s life miserable. Now that I’ve met her, I understand why everything that comes through the Financial Administration office takes so much paperwork and hassle. What else can you find out about her?”

  “I could probably figure out where she lives. You could flamingo her yard.”

  “It’s a thought,” I said, with a laugh. “Actually, I’d really like to flamingo Michael’s department head’s yard, but only if he never finds out I had anything to do with it. But yes, let’s see where she lives.”

  “Nadine seems to have an unlisted number,” Jack reported after a little bit of typing. “Let me check the county property records. Ah, here she is. In Westlake.”

  “Westlake? Are you sure?”

  “See for yourself.” He turned the monitor so I could see the record on Nadine’s home. My eye landed on the purchase price and my jaw dropped.

  “Two million dollars!” I exclaimed. “Holy cow! Working in financial administration must pay a whole lot more than working in the drama department.”

  “I doubt it,” he said. “And it’s just her on the property record, so it’s not like she’s got a husband who’s a real estate tycoon or anything.”

  “Maybe she divorced some rich guy and got the house in the settlement?”

  “No, she bought it outright eighteen months ago,” Jack said. He pointed out the place on the screen where I could see for myself. “Of course, it could still be loot from divorcing the rich guy if she got a cash settlement and decided to sock it away in real estate.”

  “Yes, but eighteen months ago,” I mused. “That’s very soon after the college fired Jasper Walker, possibly without taking a careful look at the code he left behind. Look, tell me if this sounds like wishful thinking because Karen’s my friend—but if Karen’s involved in the embezzling scheme, where’s her share of the loot? She’s living in the College Arms and driving a fifteen-year-old beater—does that sound like an embezzler’s lifestyle? And here’s Nadine in a two-million-dollar mansion. Which one of them looks more like an embezzler?”

  “Nadine, no question,” he said. “Ashok’s rumor just said that Walker had an in with some woman in Financial Administration—it didn’t specify who the woman was. Could have been Nadine as easily as Karen.”

  “Yes, and since Nadine runs the whole office, it would be a lot easier for her to cover something up for two years,” I said. “Of course, there’s still the whole question of why Karen ran away, and who she’s running from. From Jasper, or Nadine, or the police or what. I need to find her. Preferably before the police do. Even if she didn’t before, by now she really needs a lawyer.”

  “Anything else I can look up for you?”

  “Not that I can think of,” I said. “But I’ll let you know. Thanks a lot for the info. I’ll take Timmy off your hands now; I’m going to go out and see if I can find Jasper’s uncle’s house.”

  Fifteen

  Timmy wasn’t too happy to leave the tractors and the fish behind—in fact, he pitched a fit that probably registered about 7.5 on the Richter scale over at the college’s geology department and earned him a time-out. At least I assume making him stand in a corner and be quiet was something like what parents did when they talked about giving their kids time-outs. Between that and a promise that we’d come back soon if he behaved, I finally managed to maneuver him out to the car—where he promptly fell asleep as soon as I started the engine. His instruction manual didn’t mention the possibility of a second afternoon nap—was this a sign that he was getting ill? Or only that we’d have a hard time getting him to settle down at bedtime? Time would tell.

  Of course, his instruction manual also hadn’t mentioned the concept of time-outs, or any other hints on what kind of discipline he was used to. Did Karen simply let him run wild? Or did she assume that was one of the things everyone already knew? I made a mental note to skim one of Rose Noire’s childcare manuals when I got home, to make sure time-outs hadn’t been redefined as cruel and unusual punishments since my nieces and nephews had outgrown them.

  In the meantime, I followed the map Jack had printed to Jasper’s uncle’s house—which was at the far end of the county, where most of the land was too swampy to farm and had been given over to raising pines for the pulp mills or just left alone. The directions were admirably precise, but every time I turned I found myself on a smaller road with the houses farther apart—if they were visible at all.

  I finally found 14953 Whitetail Lane. Its mailbox stood beside another mailbox at the head of a dirt lane that led off into the deep woods. No name on the mailbox, only the number, but the lane’s other resident made up for 14953’s terseness by providing not just a number and a name on the mailbox—14955, Aubrey Hamilton—but two other signs. One, nicely painted, advertised the Prancing Poodle Kennels (A. Hamilton, proprietor), with what looked like a conga line of purple poodles against a pink background. The other, less professionally painted and unillustrated, proclaimed that the Belle Glade Bird Farm had canaries, parakeets, and cockatiels for sale. The bird farm sign looked brand new while the kennel sign was so weathered and faded that it looked as if the poodles had been prancing for decades. I deduced that Aubrey Hamilton had either recently added bird breeding to the longstanding kennel’s operation or perhaps had given up dogs for birds.

  The dirt lane looked badly rutted and little used. I glanced back in my rearview mirror. Timmy was still asleep. Odds were he’d wake up once I left the ro
ad. Ah, well; at least I’d had half an hour’s respite. And it was getting hot out here in the sunshine—odds were it would be cooler in the woods.

  I eased the car into the lane and lurched along at five miles an hour. It was like entering a green tunnel, as the dense woods closed around us. At first I could see the entrance, an arch of sunlight slowly shrinking in my rearview mirror. And then I went around a curve in the lane and the entrance disappeared.

  “Truck!” Timmy exclaimed. I glanced in the rearview mirror. No truck visible behind me, but then I realized that Timmy was pointing to the right of the car. He had good eyes—there was, indeed, a truck by the side of the road, or at least the skeleton of a truck. It was so completely overgrown with vines that I hadn’t immediately spotted it, but now I could make out the shape. Probably a surplus army troop truck, to judge by the patchwork of olive drab paint and reddish brown rust on its frame and hood. Maybe even World War II surplus, by the shape of it.

  “Truck,” I echoed.

  To the left of the road I spotted another truck—this one a pickup, slightly newer and less decrepit than the first, and with a correspondingly less dense mat of vines concealing it.

  “Truck!” Timmy said. He was bouncing up and down as well as he could in his car seat and pointing happily. “Tractor!”

  “Yes,” I said. “A truck and a tractor.”

  Just beyond the pickup was a partially disassembled front-end loader. Up ahead on the right was an abandoned Airstream trailer. Beyond that were a pinball machine, a rusty horse trailer, and a convertible that would have qualified as vintage if it hadn’t been visibly falling apart.

  “It’s like a mechanical elephant’s graveyard,” I said aloud.

  We proceeded along the lane for another half a mile, accompanied by Timmy’s regular cries of “Truck!” “Tractor!” and “Car!” Occasionally I’d see what looked like the beginning of a smaller lane, or perhaps a driveway, to one side or the other, but they always petered out in the vines or ended abruptly with a truck carcass. The farther we drove back into the woods, the more densely the vines covered the hulks of rusting machinery, making them harder and harder to identify. Farther from the road, I could see small hillocks completely covered with vines like modern burial mounds.

  Then the road split. Another haphazardly lettered sign for the Belle Glade Bird Farm pointed to the right. I eased the car to the left.

  The car and truck skeletons began appearing more densely. Ancient vine-covered hulks alternated with vehicles that looked as if they were actually in running condition, or had been within living memory. I also saw stocks of lumber, cinder blocks, bricks, and other building supplies. Flocks of oil drums were scattered here and there, along with enough car batteries to power a small city if they were still alive, which seemed unlikely.

  Finally, a few hundred yards along, I spotted the house—more like a low, rambling shack with a small clearing to serve as the front yard. Here, the construction and automotive junk gave way to a more general collection of household debris: old appliances, abandoned pots and pans, remnants of furniture, and rags that might once have been garments or linens. The junk flowed up onto the front porch and around the sides of the house, though it was mostly clear of the driveway, which meandered up to the porch and then curved away again. I followed the driveway and stopped the car at the foot of the porch steps.

  Hanging crookedly by one nail over the front door was a carved wooden sign that said BASS’S TAVERN: FREE BEER TOMORROW. A high school shop project, by the look of it. At least I was probably in the right place.

  Timmy was still excited by the cars and trucks, but he didn’t seem to show any interest in the house. No cries of “Daddy!” Of course, if Sandie was right, odds were he didn’t remember being here, if he ever had been. In fact, odds were he hardly remembered Jasper.

  I parked at the very foot of the front steps and, after considering my options, reluctantly released Timmy from his car seat and picked him up. Clearly if I were going to spend much more time trying to trace Karen’s whereabouts, I needed someone to ride shotgun and take care of Timmy while I snooped. I climbed carefully onto the front porch, which turned out to be a lot more sturdy than it looked, and knocked on the door.

  A lean brownish gray dog ambled out of the woods onto the porch, where it stood looking up at me. Great. Just what I needed—a watchdog between me and the car.

  “Doggie!” Timmy exclaimed, squirming to be put down. “Want doggie.”

  “But doggies chase kitties,” I said. “You don’t want the doggie to chase Kiki, do you?”

  He frowned and pondered that. The dog sat down as if waiting for me to let him in.

  I knocked again and then stood on the porch for a few moments, listening for footsteps or any other sound from the house and hearing nothing but bird songs, insect buzzes, and the whining drone of a window air-conditioning unit laboring to keep the small house cool in the humid Virginia heat.

  The dog wagged his tail slowly whenever I glanced at him.

  I squatted down and held out my hand. He came over to me, unafraid.

  “Nice doggie,” Timmy said. The dog seemed friendly enough, so I didn’t interfere when Timmy reached out to pat him. And I didn’t mind at all when the dog began licking Timmy instead of me.

  While Timmy and the dog made friends, I looked at the tag attached to the dog’s collar. His name was Scout, and anyone who found him was urged to call J. Walker. I pulled my notebook out of my pocket and checked the phone numbers I’d written down from Karen’s “While-you-were-out” stack. Yes, the J. Walker number matched the one Jasper had left when he called her office.

  “Good boy, Scout,” I said. I reached in my other pocket and found a couple of cheese crackers I’d picked up from the floor of the car. I offered Scout one. He took it eagerly, but it seemed like normal canine eagerness, not the desperation of an abandoned and starving animal.

  I knocked several more times. I called out, “Mr. Walker? Jasper? Mr. Bass?” a couple of times.

  No answer.

  I peered into the front window. The house was—well, empty wasn’t the word. Less junked up than the yard, but not by much. But empty of people, as far as I could see. Not unoccupied, though. On a coffee table in the living room I could see a pizza box and a couple of beer and Pepsi cans, none of them dust-covered. Someone had been here recently.

  Scout followed as I left the porch. He seemed happy to have me around. I wanted to circle the house, maybe find someplace to climb in, but I couldn’t very easily do that carrying Timmy. Too much junk to trip over, not to mention the undergrowth to wade through. No wonder Sherlock Holmes had stayed a bachelor.

  Just then, Timmy threw his head back and began uttering wordless howls of misery.

  I set him down and squatted down beside him so I could get a better look at him. And also to get his mouth a little farther from my ear.

  “It’s okay,” I said, while scanning for injuries.

  He sniffled for a few seconds and then hurled himself back into my arms. He didn’t feel overheated—if anything, a little chilled, so perhaps I’d been overdoing the car air conditioning on his account. And judging from the Hansel and Gretel-style trail of Cheerios leading from the car to my feet, he couldn’t have eaten enough to give himself a stomach ache. Okay, he was genuinely upset—though I couldn’t tell why. I sat on the ground for perhaps twenty minutes, rocking him and murmuring whatever soothing words came to mind. Scout sat beside me, whining, wagging his tail, and intermittently licking whatever parts of Timmy he could reach.

  About ten seconds after the crying finally subsided, Timmy popped his head up.

  “Juice?” he asked. “Please?”

  I took him back to the car and fished in the cooler for another sippy cup. He grabbed it with both hands and began gulping the contents with the sort of intensity you’d expect from a traveler who’d just crossed the Sahara. With him safely occupied, I set him down at my feet and glanced back at the house, wondering if
it might be a good idea to see if I could pick one of the locks and snoop inside. No, probably not—I’d have to take Timmy with me, and even if I managed to snoop without leaving traces, I suspected I couldn’t keep him from doing so. Besides—

  Never turn your back on a two-year-old. I heard Timmy smack his lips and sigh with satisfaction, and by the time I glanced down, he was vanishing into the shrubbery.

  I spent what seemed like an half an hour playing tag with Timmy. Timmy and the dog, who seemed to think we’d invented a really superior game. The two of them were better suited to darting through small openings in the vines and shrubbery, and more uninhibited about crawling onto and into dangerous bits of rusting machinery.

  I finally sat down in a clearing, out of breath and rapidly losing my temper. Maybe I was going about this the wrong way. Maybe I should go back to the car and find some bait. Some Cheerios, or maybe a candy bar. I had a few Snickers bars in the cooler, in case I needed a sudden jolt of energy. They weren’t on Timmy’s approved diet—in fact, candy bars of any kind were on the list of things he wasn’t supposed to have under any circumstances. But if Karen was going to be that persnickety about his diet, she should stick around to supervise it herself.

  Just then Scout stuck his head through some shrubbery and pulled it back. I pretended not to notice.

  “I’ll just have to go back without him,” I said.

  Scout stuck his head out again, as if he thought I might be talking to him.

  “No idea where he’s gone.”

  The shrubbery behind the dog rustled as if he were wagging his tail. From somewhere to my left, I heard a slight giggle.

  “I should probably just go home for dinner,” I said.

  “Want dinner,” came a voice from the shrubbery.

  I peered in the direction the voice had come from.

  “Timmy?” I asked. “Is that you?”

  He giggled, and stuck his head out from behind some leaves. Then he ducked in again and giggled.