Lexie Starr Cozy Mysteries Boxed Set Read online

  "That's good, but still—"

  "If you're prepared to—"

  "I don't—"

  "—vacate the premises for an hour or so, we can get started. I have one of my men getting the sprayer ready. It's out in the trunk."

  I noticed Jake look out at his driveway. An odd expression crossed his face when he saw Stone's sports car parked next to his own.

  "All of our regular vans are tied up spraying homes, since, of course, the entire neighborhood has been affected," I explained. "Out of necessity, we had to bring Carl's car instead." Don't all exterminators show up in 2003 Corvettes and fill their tiny trunks with sprayers full of toxic chemicals? Jake still looked skeptical, so I had to get more dramatic. I lifted up my pant leg and showed him a large, mottled scar on my calf. A look of revulsion crossed the young man's face as he stared at the disfiguring wound.

  "You wouldn't want an ugly scar like this from a bite that takes months to heal," I told him. "Brown recluse bites cause your skin to rot—down to the bone. Very, very painful. You obviously take pride in your body, Mr. Jacoby, treat it as a temple and all. You wouldn't want a bunch of unsightly scars like this all over you, would you? No, I didn't think so. I guarantee you, you wouldn't want to be bitten by a brown recluse."

  You wouldn't want to lean up against the hot muffler of your little brother's motorbike either, I thought, as I pulled my pant leg back down over the old burn mark.

  "That does look nasty all right," Jake said.

  I removed Stone's cell phone from my back pocket and punched in the number written on the slip of paper he'd handed me earlier. "Here, Mr. Jacoby, Leo Friar is on the line. He's the head of the health department." It was a safe bet that a guy Jake's age would have no idea who the director of the local health department was, or even what the department did for the city.

  "Hello, Mr. Friar? Uh, this is Jake Jacoby over on Eighth Avenue. I have the Celtic Exterminating people here to spray my house for brown recluse spiders. And—uh—I guess I just wanted to check the situation out," Jake said into the phone. He looked over at me after a few seconds and asked, "What's your name, ma'am?"

  "Mandy Hill."

  "Yes, Ms. Hill is here. Un-huh, yes, I see. Okay, Mr. Friar. Thanks."

  He pushed the "end" button and handed the phone back to me. "I guess it's okay. Mr. Friar said that the stuff you spray is pretty toxic, though. He suggested I find something to do away from the house for an hour or two. I was getting ready to go down to the gym anyway. Could you lock the door when you leave?" Jake asked in a polite manner.

  "Of course," I said, and smiled casually. "We always do." I glanced out the window and saw Stone stepping out of the phone booth at the gas station across the street. "My man, Carl, should be right in, and we'll get this one knocked out in a hurry."

  Stone came inside a minute or so later, wearing a T-shirt that matched mine and carrying a three-gallon, sloshing, yellow plastic spray bottle. He put on a cheap paper mask that wouldn't keep dust out, much less toxic fumes, and I pulled up an identical one that I had hanging around my neck. Stone started walking around the perimeter of Jake's living room, spraying water into the crevasses where the wall joined the floorboard, just as Jake walked back through the door with a gym bag, his wallet, and car keys.

  "Wait a second, Carl. Give Mr. Jacoby a chance to leave so he doesn't breathe in these hazardous fumes. He's getting ready to go to the gym," I said. "Thanks, Mr. Jacoby. Now you'll be able to sleep better at night, knowing that your house is not infested with poisonous spiders. Please leave the front door open when you leave. I'd suggest you give it about an hour and a half, or so, for the fumes to dissipate. Okay?"

  "Sure, Ms. Hill. I usually work out for two hours anyway."

  * * *

  "Well, that worked pretty slick, didn't it, Carl? Or is it Leo?" I asked, after Jake had departed.

  "It sure did, Ms. Hill."

  "How illegal do you reckon this is?" I asked, seriously.

  "Well, technically, he did let us in, and he did ask us to lock the door behind us. And, technically, we are spraying his home," Stone said, as he gave the sofa a few squirts of harmless water.

  "True. And I'll bet that his home isn't infested with brown recluse spiders tomorrow."

  "Assuming it wasn't infested today."

  "True again. Well, let's get cracking. You start snooping in the living room and kitchen, and I'll look around in the bedrooms."

  Chapter 14

  Jake had the most generic house I've ever been in. It reminded me of a Super Eight Motel room with its lack of personal effects. There were no photos or paintings on the wall, no houseplants or signs of any pets, no knickknacks on shelves, not even a newspaper on the coffee table. Each room held just the basic furniture, and that furniture had a flea market appearance. There was a stereo system in the living room that looked as if it were worth more than everything else in the home put together. Jake had more invested in earrings than he did in home furnishings. Snooping through Jake's place would not take long.

  There was one enlarged photo of Jake and another man, walking arm in arm through a heavily wooded area. They were laughing and the sun was glinting off the earrings scattered about Jake's face. The photo was propped up behind the phone on the kitchen counter, as if placed there to remind him to make a call to his friend.

  The only other framed photo in the house was on the chest of drawers in Jake's bedroom. It was an eight-by-ten enlargement of Jake with his arm around Clay. Jake was looking at the camera, but Clay looked distracted and disinterested. It was one of those photos that looked like Jake had turned the camera backward, extended his arm as far as he could, and snapped the photo himself. The two men's faces were a bit blurry and distorted. Their eyes looked glazed, as if they were drunk or on drugs.

  After I sat the photo back down on the bureau, Stone picked it up again and studied it further. He turned to me and asked, "How's that old saying go—'if you're left, you're right, and if you're right, you're wrong'?"

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "It's an old saying that means that if a man wears an earring in his left ear, he's straight, and if he wears one in his right ear, he's gay."

  "Are you saying you think Jake might be gay?"

  "It seems highly likely, considering a couple of magazines I found in a drawer in the kitchen." He took me into the kitchen where there was a small desk in the corner. On top of the desk was a roll of stamps, a box of security envelopes, and a pen—bill-paying stuff and in the desk's only drawer we found bank statements, extra books of checks, two magazines, pens, pencils, a roll of tape, and several packets of developed photos.

  Stone removed the magazines. They had the title Out across the cover, and one had a photo of two men who reminded me of the one Jake had propped behind his phone.

  "Out?" I asked. "Out of what? Out of money? Out of luck? Out of your mind?"

  "Out of the closet," Stone answered, dryly.

  "Why would Clay live with a gay guy if he's straight?" I asked, my voice raising a notch, as if on the verge of hysteria. This whole situation was getting stranger and stranger. I couldn't imagine what there was about Clay that attracted Wendy so much.

  "I don't know," Stone said. "Is it possible he didn't know his roommate was gay, or he just didn't care as long as he had a place to stay during the week? I guess they could have just been friends, and not lovers. I assume gay men have male friends they aren't romantically involved with."

  We sorted through the other photos, inside envelopes from a local one-hour processing store. The outer packets were gone, but the envelopes full of photos and negatives remained. The enlarged photo of Jake and Clay had the original smaller version in one of the packets. There were snapshots of an older couple, possibly Jake's grandparents, several of a golden retriever leaping up to catch a Frisbee, photos of a white-tailed doe and twin fawns, several of bare-chested men lifting weights at the gym, and one of Jake's Mustang convertible with the top down. T
he only photograph that really grabbed our attention was one of Clay crouched down behind a dead moose. It had been taken at short range; only Clay and the head of the moose were visible in the photo. Over Clay's shoulder in the photo there was a small log cabin that looked to be in a sunny spot deep in the woods. Clay's face was positioned between the two massive antlers of the moose. He was smiling proudly for the camera. There was blood on the hand steadying the right antler and what looked like more blood on the arm of his camouflage shirt.

  Stone stared at the photo for a few moments before handing it to me. He pointed to the bottom right corner, "Check this out."

  The camera used to take the photo had date-stamp capabilities and in the bottom right corner was a date. "April 12, 2001—Stone, that's the date Eliza disappeared from the Food Pantry parking lot!" I said.

  "That would place Clay in the woods on the day his wife was most likely murdered. Could it have been the Adirondacks, near where her body was found? There are increasing numbers of moose there. Or could he have been in a different state?" Stone was thinking out loud, not really expecting an answer from me.

  "I would assume that the blood on his hand is from the moose?" I asked.

  "Probably so. He would've had to bleed it out," Stone said. For some reason it bothered me that Stone knew so much about hunting, killing, and "bleeding out" moose.

  "Do you know what Clay gave as an alibi? Where did he say he was the day Eliza disappeared?" Stone asked.

  "According to the newspaper he never did come up with an acceptable alibi for his whereabouts on April twelfth," I said. "Couldn't or wouldn't, I'm not sure which. But the article did say that Clay claimed to be studying alone at a Boston library, although no one could remember seeing him there. The library where I donate my time is much, much smaller. Even then it would be hard for me to recall who all came in there on any given day, so it's not unimaginable that no one could place him there on that date."

  "If Clay shot this moose on April twelfth, it was poached, whether he was in New York or Vermont. Moose bear their young in the spring; it can't be legal to shoot moose anywhere that time of year, I wouldn't think. The penalty for poaching is pretty steep, particularly if you are poaching a protected species. Perhaps that's why he didn't want to tell the authorities where he was, or what he was doing, on the day his wife disappeared," Stone said. "I would've thought he'd use that alibi as the lesser of two evils, but then again, he was training at the police academy, and I imagine they frown if their cadets are arrested for any reason."

  "Clay wasn't alone, either. Someone else had to have been there to take this photo of him with the dead moose. They're Jake's photos, so I'd say it was obviously Jake. Could Jake have been an accessory to the murder of Clay's wife? If someone like Clay needed assistance in disposing of a wife and unborn child he no longer wanted to be burdened with, whose help would he be more apt to enlist than a guy who was his friend and roommate?" I asked. "But why murder, Stone? Why not divorce?"

  "He may have been trying to avoid alimony and child support obligations, or it may have been a 'heat of the moment' type of thing. We also can't rule out the possibility that Clay was not involved in his wife's murder."

  I knew Stone was right. I needed to keep an open mind. Clay had constitutional rights and was innocent until proven guilty.

  Stone handed me the packets of photos and continued to speak. "Let's take the negatives out of these envelopes, Lexie, and get reprints made. Jake will never miss them. And if he does notice they're gone someday, he'll just think he lost them. Probably by then, he won't even remember us having been here."

  I nodded and removed the negatives from the packets. I stuck them inside my notebook. Then I picked up Jake's bank statements, dated just a couple days prior, and glanced at the balances. Jake had $109.26 in his savings account and $31.09 in checking. I hoped for his sake that Monday was payday. I'm glad that I don't have to try and live on a shoestring that short. "What does Jake do for a living?" Stone asked, after I'd shown him the statements.

  "I don't know, but inside his checkbook is a pay stub from a place called the Fantasy Club."

  Stone picked up a phone directory on the kitchen counter and thumbed through it. After he located the listing for the club, he handed me a pen out of the drawer, and said, "Write this down in your notebook, Lexie."

  I wrote the address as he read it to me. Stone waved the phone book and asked, "Should we take this back to Harriet as a souvenir from Massachusetts?"

  We put everything back the way we remembered it being when we'd first arrived. We then closed and locked Jake's front door, and headed to the Fantasy Club. Jake wouldn't be there. He'd still be working out at the gym, waiting for the toxic water fumes to dissipate. With any luck at all, we could get a hamburger, a beer, and a few answers at the club, located just nine or ten blocks from Jake's house.

  * * *

  We didn't eat lunch at the Fantasy Club after all. We didn't get a hamburger or even a beer there, but we did eventually get some interesting answers.

  Jake Jacoby was a male stripper at an all-male dance club. No wonder he looked so good in just cutoff sweatpants. It was more clothes than he usually wore at work.

  After we walked into the dimly lit building, Stone cornered the club's owner, standing behind the bar talking to one of his employees. He flashed a shiny badge, then jammed it back in his rear pocket, and said, "I'm Detective Wesson with the NYPD. Are you Baines McFarland?" He'd gotten the owner's name from the bouncer at the front door. McFarland was a tiny, effeminate-looking man who made Stone look like a Mr. Universe contestant in comparison. Stone dwarfed the club owner, who was about my height, and very slim.

  "Yeah, what of it?" Baines replied. He never even glanced at Stone. Instead, Baines turned to his employee, and said, "You can go now, Brett."

  Earlier I'd given Stone a photo of my son-in-law taken at Clay and Wendy's wedding. Stone held it up for Baines to see and asked, "Have you seen this individual in your joint?"

  Baines glanced at the photo of Clay, gave Stone an insolent look, and then turned away, ignoring him. Stone took another step closer to him and asked, "Do you have a Jake Jacoby working here at your joint?"

  "I don't have to answer your questions, copper," Baines finally responded.

  "Oh, I think you will."

  "This is my club," Baines said, with emphasis on "club," having apparently resented Stone's use of the word "joint" to describe it. "I don't have to answer to you or allow you on my property. So, you and your partner can get your asses out of here right now."

  Oh, cool, I thought; now I'm a detective. That's much more fascinating than being an exterminator, or a writer—or, egad, a library assistant. I can't wait to tell my buddies back in Kansas, whom I'm sure will be duly impressed. Or possibly, in the case of a few of my more conservative, stick-in-the-mud-type friends, merely appalled by my acts of subterfuge and deception. Sometimes I wonder how I even acquired such boring pals.

  I turned my attention back to the scene unfolding in front of me. Stone was now positioned right in front of Baines McFarland, practically shouting. "My partner, Detective Smith, and I will get our asses out of your sleazy joint just as soon as you answer my questions. You got that, McFarland?"

  "You got a search warrant?"

  "No, because I hadn't planned on searching the place. I was trying to spare you a lot of grief. But we can play it your way if you'd rather. I can have a search warrant here in ten minutes, along with my team of investigators, who will search this place from top to bottom, looking for any little reason they can find to shut a place like this down. I know it would give them a great deal of pleasure to see this kind of dive become history. They absolutely despise low-class establishments, and strip clubs of any kind."

  "They won't find anything here illegal, or not within code," Baines challenged.

  Stone looked at me, and asked, "What do you think, Detective Smith? Think they'll find a reason to shut this place down?"

&nbs
p; "I'd be willing to bet next month's salary that they find a dozen reasons to shut it down," I replied, in my best detective voice.

  "Yeah, and you'd win that bet."

  Stone turned back to Baines McFarland. "They better not find you've ever served liquor to a minor here, or that you ever do in the future, because your every move will be monitored. And there'd better not be one gram of illegal drugs on the premises or the building will be confiscated. Have you checked your employee's lockers recently? Because if there is one gram, I can guarantee you that my team will find it—while you're down at the station being interrogated on a charge of accessory to murder and/or obstruction of justice." Stone could be very intimidating when he was impersonating an officer. I began to wonder how many crimes we would be guilty of before the day was over. We were on a fairly impressive roll so far.

  "I haven't been involved in any murder," Baines countered anxiously, obviously caught off guard by Stone's last remark. "I don't even know what you're talking about."

  "So, then what are you trying to hide?"

  "Nothing. I'm not trying to hide anything, Wesson. I just don't like cops coming in here threatening me, and demanding answers."

  "And I don't like people who aid and abet murderers!"

  "I didn't aid or abet anyone!"

  "Then do you want to talk to me, or do you want me to go make a call to have a search warrant and the A team here in ten minutes? That's 'A' for asshole, McFarland, because that's what you'll be calling them when they're putting a padlock on your front door."

  "All right, all right, Wesson. Jesus, you damn cops are all alike. What the hell do you want to know?" Baines asked wearily.

  Stone jabbed the photo of Clay right in the smaller man's face and said, "I want to know if you've ever seen this individual in your 'club', like I asked you before."

  This time Baines McFarland studied the photo momentarily, while wiping beads of sweat off his forehead. I noticed a slight tremble in his hand as it held the photo.

  "No, never seen him in the club that I recall, but I do know the guy. Can't think of his name right offhand, but he used to live with one of our strippers, Jake Jacoby. He picked Jake up here once when Jake's car was in the shop." He stopped talking as if suddenly afraid he was telling us too much.