“No need to be,” Goober said. “Say, where’s Al?”
“Don’t ask,” she said. “Want some hamburger? I warn you, it may have gone off.”
“Give it to me, baby,” Goober said.
Tess fed him a chunk of the hamburger, then came in, closed the door, and turned on the lights. Why not? It was only her and Goober, after all.
Alvin Strehlke had kept a neater house than his younger brother. The floors and walls were clean, there were no stacks of Uncle Henry’s Swap Guide, and she actually saw a few books on the shelves. There were also several clusters of Hummel figures, and a large framed photo of Momzilla on the wall. Tess found that a touch suggestive, but it was hardly proof positive. Of anything. If there was a photo of Richard Widmark in his famous Tommy Udo role, that might be different.
“What are you smiling about?” Goober asked. “Want to share?”
“Actually, no,” Tess said. “Where should we start?”
“I don’t know,” Goober said. “I’m just the dog. How about some more of that tasty cow?”
Tess fed him some more meat. Goober got up on his hind legs and turned around twice. Tess wondered if she were going insane.
“Tom? Anything to say?”
“You found your underpants at the other brother’s house, right?”
“Yes, and I took them. They’re torn… and I’d never want to wear them again even if they weren’t… but they’re mine.”
“And what else did you find besides a bunch of undies?”
“What do you mean, what else?”
But Tom didn’t need to tell her that. It wasn’t a question of what she had found; it was a question of what she hadn’t: no purse and no keys. Lester Strehlke had probably thrown the keys into the woods. It was what Tess herself would have done in his place. The bag was a different matter. It had been a Kate Spade, very pricey, and inside was a sewn—in strip of silk with her name on it. If the bag—and the stuff in the bag—wasn’t at Lester’s house, and if he didn’t throw it into the woods with her keys, where is it?
“I vote for here,” Tom said. “Let’s look around.”
“Meat!” Goober cried, and did another pirouette.
– 45 –
Where should she start?
“Come on,” Tom said. “Men keep most of their secrets in one of two places: the study or the bedroom. Doreen might not know that, but you do. And this house doesn’t have a study.”
She went into Al Strehlke’s bedroom (trailed by Goober), where she found an extra-long double bed made up in no-nonsense military style. Tess looked under it. Nada. She started to turn toward the closet, paused, then pivoted back to the bed. She lifted the mattress. Looked. After five seconds—maybe ten—she uttered a single word in a dry flat voice.
“Jackpot.”
Lying on the box spring were three ladies’ handbags. The one in the middle was a cream-colored clutch that Tess would have recognized anywhere. She flipped it open. There was nothing inside but some Kleenex and an eyebrow pencil with a cunning little lash-comb hidden in the top half. She looked for the silk strip with her name on it, but it was gone. It had been removed carefully, but she saw one tiny cut in the fine Italian leather where the stitches had been unpicked.
“Yours?” Tom asked.
“You know it is.”
“What about the eyebrow pencil?”
“They sell those things by the thousands in drugstores all over Amer—”
“Is it yours?”
“Yes. It is.”
“Are you convinced yet?”
“I…” Tess swallowed. She was feeling something, but she wasn’t sure what it was. Relief? Horror? “I guess I am. But why? Why both of them?”
Tom didn’t say. He didn’t need to. Doreen might not know (or want to admit it if she did, because the old ladies who followed her adventures didn’t like the ooky stuff), but Tess supposed she did. Because Mommy fucked both of them up. That’s what a psychiatrist would say. Lester was the rapist; Al was the fetishist who participated vicariously. Maybe he even helped with one or both of the women in the pipe. She’d never know for sure.
“It would probably take until dawn to search the whole house,” Tom said, “but you can search the rest of this room, Tessa Jean. He probably destroyed everything from the purse-cut up the credit cards and tossed them in the Colewich River, would be my guess—but you have to make sure, because anything with your name on it would lead the police right to your door. Start with the closet.”
Tess didn’t find her credit cards or anything else belonging to her in the closet, but she did find something. It was on the top shelf. She got off the chair she’d been standing on and studied it with growing dismay: a stuffed duck that might have been some child’s favorite toy. One of its eyes was missing and its synthetic fur was matted. That fur was actually gone in places, as if the duck had been petted half to death.
On the faded yellow beak was a dark maroon splash.
“Is that what I think it is?” Tom asked.
“Oh Tom, I think so.”
“The bodies you saw in the culvert… could one of them have been a child’s body?”
No, neither of them had been that small. But maybe the culvert running beneath Stagg Road hadn’t been the Strehlke brothers’ only body dump.
“Put it back on the shelf. Leave it for the police to find. You need to make sure he doesn’t have a computer with stuff on it about you. Then you need to get the hell out of here.”
Something cold and wet nuzzled Tess’s hand. She almost screamed. It was Goober, looking up at her with bright eyes.
“More meat!” Goober said, and Tess gave him some.
“If Al Strehlke has a computer,” Tess said, “you can be sure it’s password-protected. And his probably won’t be open for me to poke around in.”
“Then take it and throw it in the goddam river when you go home. Let it sleep with the fishes.”
But there was no computer.
At the door, Tess fed Goober the rest of the hamburger. He would probably puke it all up on the rug, but that wasn’t going to bother Big Driver.
Tom said, “Are you satisfied, Tessa Jean? Are you satisfied you didn’t kill an innocent man?”
She supposed she must be, because suicide no longer seemed like an option. “What about Betsy Neal, Tom? What about her?”
Tom didn’t answer… and once again didn’t need to. Because, after all, he was she.
Wasn’t she?
Tess wasn’t entirely sure about that. And did it matter, as long as she knew what to do next? As for tomorrow, it was another day. Scarlett O’Hara had been right about that much.
What mattered most was that the police had to know about the bodies in the culvert. If only because somewhere there were friends and relatives who were still wondering. Also because…
“Because the stuffed duck says there might be more.”
That was her own voice.
And that was all right.
– 46 –
At seven-thirty the next morning, after less than three hours of broken, nightmare-haunted sleep, Tess booted up her office computer. But not to write. Writing was the farthest thing from her mind.
Was Betsy Neal single? Tess thought so. She had seen no wedding ring that day in Neal’s office, and while she might have missed that, there had been no family pictures, either. The only picture she could remember seeing was a framed photo of Barack Obama… and he was already married. So yes—Betsy Neal was probably divorced or single. And probably unlisted. In which case, a computer search would do her no good at all. Tess supposed she could go to The Stagger Inn and find her there… but she didn’t want to go back to The Stagger. Ever again.
“Why are you buying trouble?” Fritzy said from the windowsill. “At least check the telephone listings for Colewich. And what’s that I smell on you? Is that dog?”
“Yes. That’s Goober.”
“Traitor,” Fritzy said contemptuously.
Her search turned up an even dozen Neals. One was an E Neal. E for Elizabeth? There was one way to find out.
With no hesitation—that would have almost certainly have caused her to lose her courage—Tess punched in the number. She was sweating, and her heart was beating rapidly.
The phone rang once. Twice.
It’s probably not her. It could be an Edith Neal. An Edwina Neal. Even an Elvira Neal.
Three times.
If it is Betsy Neal’s phone, she’s probably not even there. She’s probably on vacation in the Catskills—
Four times.
—or shacked up with one of the Zombie Bakers, how about that? The lead guitarist. They probably sing “Can Your Pussy Do the Dog” together in the shower after they—