This seemed like a good segue to ask about the blond newscaster, but I wasn’t sure how to bring up the subject without sounding like I was jealous.And before I could figure it out, we had reached the front steps of Mrs.Grimshaw’s house.
“Stay here,” Mendoza instructed me.“I’ll get you the dog stuff.”
“Thank you.”I had no desire to go inside.I had already seen the blood on the floor, and I had no need to look at it up close and personal.Mendoza got paid to deal with it.Let him.
He disappeared inside, and I waited.When my phone rang, I pulled it out and glanced at the display.“Diana.”
“Gina.”Her voice was tight.“Steven isn’t answering his phone.I called the university, and his assistant said she hadn’t seen him today.”
“The assistant doesn’t happen to be blond and beautiful, does she?”
“No,” Diana said.“Black girl.Very professional.Not at all the type to sleep with her boss.”
Good to know.“So you have no idea where he is?”
I imagined her shaking her head.There was a faint clicking noise, as if an earring was hitting the speaker.“I left messages.With Jeanette.With the office.At home.On Steven’s cell.I’ll let you know if I hear from him.And now I’m driving home, to make sure he hasn’t had a heart attack and is dead on the floor.”
“I’ll meet you there,” I said.“I’m just about to leave where I am.I can be there in about twenty minutes.”
Diana said she’d see me there, and hung up.I turned toward the door as Mendoza came out, a bag of dog food under one arm, and a plastic bag in the other hand.“Food and water bowls,” he told me, lifting it.“And a leash.There are some chew toys in there, too, and a bag of dog treats.”
I reached for it, but he shook his head.“I’ll carry it to your car.”
“That’s kind of you.”And hopefully it wasn’t because he looked at me and thought I was too old to carry my own dog food.Not that I particularly wanted to haul the bag, but I’m forty, not eighty-five.I can still pull my weight.
“No problem,” Mendoza said and set off across the grass.If nothing else, he wasn’t worried about me being too decrepit to keep up.“Did I hear your phone ring?”
“Diana called back.”I told him what she’d said as we made our way across the lawn.“I’m going over to their house to meet her.Just in case something’s wrong, I don’t want her there alone.”
Mendoza nodded, and waited for me to open the trunk of the Lexus.It slid up elegantly with the push of a button.Mendoza dumped the dog food and plastic bag into the back.He straightened.“Call me if you find anything.Or even if you don’t.”
I said I would.“Let me know what you find out about the dog.If any of the relatives want her.And if Steven’s name comes up anywhere in your investigation.”
I opened my car door.Mendoza made sure all of me was safely inside the car before he shut it.Then he set off across the grass toward Mrs.Grimshaw’s house once more, while I reversed down the neighbor’s driveway and headed up the street.
Six
The Mortons live in a big,old foursquare house in Richland.The neighborhood isn’t too far from the house I shared with David in Hillwood, but a mile or two closer to downtown, and fifty years or so older.The houses are all early twentieth-century: foursquares, Tudors, and big Craftsman bungalows, on neat rectangular lots spaced precisely seventy-five feet apart.Nothing like the rambling hillsides of Hillwood, but very pretty and quite affluent.Full of doctors and lawyers and university professors.
The house is yellow brick, with a stately three-step staircase leading up to a set of double doors and a sitting porch.A concrete urn with a curly topiary tree stood on each side of the door.I knocked on the wooden frame and refrained from pressing my nose against the glass.Without going to that extreme, I could make out gleaming wood floors in a high-ceilinged foyer, a Persian rug, and a console table against the wall on the right.
Nobody answered.If Steven was here, he either wasn’t conscious, or he didn’t want to talk to anyone.
I thought about trying the doorknob, but then I realized that Diana might not be thrilled to drive up and find that I had made myself comfortable in her home.Better to wait until she got here.
So I sat down in one of the wicker chairs on the porch instead, and no sooner had I gotten comfortable than she pulled up at the curb.I got up again and went to greet her.“I knocked on the door.Nobody answered.”
Diana is a few years older than me, an elegant blonde in a cream colored business suit and blue blouse.Small gold studs caught the afternoon sun and glittered in her ears.“That’s not good,” she told me on her way over to the door, keys already in her hand.
I followed.“I don’t think it’s bad.It’s probably just that he isn’t here.He can’t answer the door if he isn’t home.”
Diana nodded.“Just as long as nothing’s wrong.”She pushed the door open and rushed inside.“Steven?Steven!”
I followed, more slowly.While Diana ran up the stairs to the second floor, I took in the downstairs.
What I could see of it from where I was standing, was lovely.Not ostentatious, but clearly a product of good taste combined with enough money to indulge it.
I grew up poor.It was just my mother and me in a small apartment, and she worked two jobs to make ends meet.I put myself through college—until I met David and he proposed and I dropped out to marry him.Quite the Cinderella story, rags to riches and all that.David also had enough money to make his house look good, but he hadn’t trusted my taste to do it; he had hired an interior decorator instead.I still felt a bit inadequate about that, and just a little out of place here.Not that I thought Diana looked down on me for my background—she probably didn’t even know about it—but I still felt like I’d climbed above my station in life.While I like antiques and quality furniture, I can’t reliably tell the difference between a real Duncan Phyfe sofa and a copy.
