Skeleton in a Dead Space (A Kelly O'Connell Mystery) Read online

  He shrugged. “Old car. Indeterminate model. Looked like three or four guys inside, teenagers or young men.” He hesitated a minute. “The shooter for sure was Hispanic.”

  “Gangs? Why would some gangers shoot up my house?”

  “No reason at all that I can think of,” Mike said. “But it wasn’t random vandalism.”

  “Thanks,” I said wryly. “I figured that out. But why my house?” I wished I’d told him about the threatening phone call. Maybe this was all linked to the skeleton and the Fairmount house, but how could that be? How would people even know where I lived? Indignation mixed with confusion, and I thought seriously about screaming.

  He looked straight at me. “Yeah, I didn’t want to scare you. But all this is no coincidence.”

  So then I told him about the call. “All this over a skeleton? It makes no sense. But it makes me mad. The shooter could have killed the girls.”

  “And you,” Mike said. “Kelly, this is getting serious. I tried to find you this afternoon to talk about last night. Now it’s urgent. We have to talk”

  The girls were in the backseat, Em crying for her mother and Maggie asking over and over, “What happened to our front door?”

  “Mike, I’ve got to get them settled. They’re scared.”

  “For the time being, there’ll be an officer on duty ’round the clock. I’ll take the first shift. You get the girls settled, and then we’ll talk.”

  A policeman guarding my house? What kind of insanity was this?

  The girls had questions. “Who did this, Mommy?”

  “Why would anyone want to tear up our front door?”

  “Mommy, what’s happening to us—everything seems wrong. There was the skelton”—Em reverted to her own pronunciation—“and then you left last night. Now….” She raised her hands in that age-old “I-don’t-know” gesture and for just a moment I smiled.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong, girls, but I know one thing: you’re safe. You go to sleep. I’ll be here, and so will a police officer. No one will hurt you.”

  “Is someone trying to hurt you, Mom?” Maggie asked, hugging me tightly.

  “I think they’re trying to scare me, Mag. But I promise I’m not scared.”

  Just as I was tucking them in, the phone rang. Joanie. “Hi, Kelly? What’s going on? I was kind of blue, and I thought maybe….”

  I know my voice was too short. “Not tonight, Joanie. We’ve had a bad night. Someone blasted the front door with a shotgun.”

  “Omigosh.” Her astonishment was loud in my ear. “Why would they do that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but the police think it has to do with the skeleton in that house I’m redoing. I…I just can’t think right now, Joanie, and the police are waiting to talk to me.”

  She sounded let down. “Okay. We’ll do it another night.”

  “Yeah, we will.” But I knew I didn’t sound enthusiastic. It had nothing to do with Joanie—and I wanted to support her right now—but I was just too confused by what was going on in my own life.

  Tired, so tired, but after I got the girls tucked in bed—they both insisted on my bed, of course—I opened the door and waved to Mike Shandy, who was parked in front of the house next door in a battered and old Honda Accord. I waited while he came up the walk to the house.

  “Everything okay with the girls?”

  “They’re scared. And I’m angry.”

  “Good. You should be. Somebody’s out to get you. Somebody doesn’t want the truth found out about that skeleton—and they know or at least they suspect you’re looking into it.” He paused a minute. “You aren’t trying to do police work, are you? We can take care of it.”

  I wanted to say, “Yeah, while my house gets shot up, my girls terrified, and my work on the Fairmount house stopped. And besides, who’s worrying about that skeleton that deserves identification and a decent burial. And maybe family notified.” But I didn’t say any of that. Instead, I asked, “Coffee?”

  “If it’s made, I’d love it.”

  “I have a single-cup coffee maker. I can make it in no time. Black?”

  He nodded. Going to the kitchen to make coffee gave me time to think, but thoughts tumbled in my head. Carrying Mike’s coffee into the living room, my hand shook.

  “Why would gangers be interested? That makes no sense.”

  He leaned back, comfortable on the sofa, coffee cradled in his hands. “Somebody's got connections and hired people to do their dirty work. The question is, how did they know about everything so quickly? Whoever is so worried about the secret of that house isn’t the kind for drive-by shooting. I can’t figure why it happened, but I know it wasn’t a case of mistaken identity. So maybe someone has hired some gangers to frighten you—or worse.” His voice dropped.

  Mike’s theory held true if the skeleton was there a long time—years ago the families in Fairmount were upper class, respectable, and they would want a secret kept. But if it only been there since the ‘60s, no telling.

  I took a deep breath. “I have something to show you.” I went to my briefcase and pulled out the locket. “Anthony gave this to me this morning. I was going to call you about it in the morning.” Okay, a small white lie.

  “Like the phone call you didn’t tell me about. You were right. I would have dismissed the phone call as a wrong number, but now I’m sure it wasn’t.” He shook his head.

  “I…I went to check city directories this afternoon. I thought I might find something that matched.”

  “Kelly, you’ve got to start telling me everything. You can’t solve this…and it’s dangerous for you to try.”

  “Nothing dangerous about city directories. I was saving your guys some time. I’m going to check titles at City Hall too.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Kelly, if whoever’s behind this finds you’re even scratching the surface, it will make them more determined.”

  “Mike, there are a couple of things here. One is…oh, I don’t know…compassion, whatever. I don’t want that woman to go to a nameless grave, and I’m afraid it would be too easy for you guys to let that happen.” I took another deep breath. “The other is pretty crass and commercial. I want to sell that house. I don’t want any potential buyer thinking it’s jinxed or dangerous or whatever.”

  “I think the first one is what’s bothering you.”

  I shrugged. “You may be right.” Then, “Look in that locket—there’s a picture of a woman that I’m pretty sure was taken in the ‘60s. Hairdo, makeup.”

  He opened the locket and looked. “Yeah, I expect you’re right. Looks like my mom.”

  “Mine, too,” I said. I told him what I’d found in the city directories, even dragging out the notes I’d made, which he copied into a small spiral that he carried.

  “I’ll check it out, but I don’t expect much. It’s the worst kind of cold trail. I don’t suppose you’d take the girls and go somewhere?”

  I shook my head. “No, but I’ll do whatever it takes to keep my girls safe.”

  “You have an alarm system?” he asked.

  “Yeah, but I never use it. I guess I better start setting it at night.”

  “And get an emergency alarm button that you can keep in your pocket or someplace handy all the time.”

  “Yessir,” I replied. I was tempted to salute, but I didn’t think he’d find it funny.

  “We’ll keep all of you safe,” he said, but I wondered how he could be sure.

  ****

  Tired as I was, sleep wouldn’t come. The shattered door kept reappearing before my eyes and so did the skeleton in its box. And then, as I slept fitfully, the skeleton walked through the shattered door, trailing a chiffon-like gown in a floral pattern, bony hands pushing at the broken panels of the door. This time the brown hair was in an upsweep, as though she were going to her senior prom. I woke in a cold sweat.

  “Mom?” Maggie cuddled close to me. “You were making a funny noise.”

  Guilt. Now my children were sc
ared. I threw back the covers. “I had a bad dream.” As I drifted off to more peaceful sleep, I thought, This is the way it is—the three of us against the world. Little did I know.

  When I went to get the paper, I gave a sort of half-wave to the man who sat in front of the house in a car, this one a new Toyota Camry. He didn’t even look my way. I supposed being invisible was one of the policeman’s responsibilities. Or maybe he wasn’t police but someone else watching the house. I was getting paranoid. Settled in the kitchen with coffee, I busied myself with the paper. Drive-by shootings often make the news but only if death was involved. Shattered front doors don’t make it, and I was relieved that there was no mention of the incident.

  The phone rang. A tentative, “Hello?”

  “Kelly, what in the world is going on down there?”

  “Hi, Mom. How are you?”

  An indignant voice. “Well, I’m worried about you. My goodness, I told you not to stay in Texas once what’s-his-name left. You should have come back to Illinois, where it’s safe.”

  Sigh. No sense pointing out that crime was a lot worse in suburban Chicago than inner-city Fort Worth. My mom has been a worrier since the day I was born and before. When she fretted that I would “take cold,” my dad always said, “Let the child be.” As a youngster, I longed for brothers and sisters, just to take some of Mom’s attention off me. Now, at thirty-six, I still had her full attention, especially since Dad died ten years ago. “How did you know something was going on, Mom?”

  “That neighbor of yours, the one I liked so much—I can’t remember her name….”

  I could see Florence Dodson, the eighty-something-year-old who lived three houses down the street and complained that the girls picked her flowers, when I knew that my girls were too well trained to do that.

  “Did Florence call, Mom?”

  “Yes, she did, and it’s a good thing. I can’t rely on you to tell me a thing.”

  “There’s not much to tell. We found a skeleton in a house, and then someone set the house on fire.”

  “And shot up your front door. Florence called early this morning.”

  That’s an understatement—it’s barely after seven now.

  “And she told me you had policemen outside your house all night.”

  If Florence Dodson recognized the policeman, so did the bad guys. So much for their cover.

  “Mom, it’s nothing. It’ll blow over in a day or two.”

  “Nothing, my foot. I’m getting the first plane reservation down there I can.”

  My backbone stiffened. “Mom, you can’t do any good, and you might only make things worse. I don’t want you to come. Wait till Christmas when you can enjoy the girls.” Cynthia O’Connell, alone at sixty-eight and bored with a widow’s life, was always looking for some diversion. Too often, she looked to me, an only child. Tim’s leaving sent her careening to Texas in a disaster of a visit, Cynthia crying all the time until the girls were edgy and tearful and I was so irritable that I became short with both the girls and my mother. Since then, in spite of begging, I never took the girls back to Chicago, and my mom visited only twice. But this year, she was scheduled to come for Christmas, a visit that loomed big on my horizon until the last two days.

  I used to be afraid to make Mom worry, especially if she took to her bed with a headache. But since I’d flown the nest and then I married Tim, I’d gotten more independent. These days, I stood up to her. I didn’t want her worrying over me, and I didn’t want her scaring the girls.

  “If you’re still alive by Christmas,” she sniffed.

  In the end, I prevailed, as I usually did with my mother. “I’ll keep in touch, Mom. Don’t worry, and don’t listen to Florence. She needs to get a life.” And so do you.

  The phone rang again, just as Maggie wandered into the kitchen. I know my, “Hello,” was short in tone.

  “Kelly? What’s going on?” It was Tim.

  Tim’s voice was friendly, caring, and for a moment I was taken back to the days when a call from Tim was the highlight of my day. I remembered how he could make me laugh, how I treasured his concern, how pleased I was when we planned things together, from a special dinner out to a much-anticipated bedroom rendezvous. Then I told myself, that was then, this is now.

  “I’m fine, Tim,” I said in a careful voice. “How are you?” I couldn’t resist adding, “Where are you?”

  He laughed. “I’m in northern California. But this isn’t about me, Kelly. It’s about you. What’s going on?”

  Caution crept into my mind and my voice. It was what? Five in the morning in California? Why would he be awake, let alone calling? “What do you mean?”

  “I hear you’re having trouble—arson in one of your houses, our own front door shot up. I’m coming to Fort Worth. I’ll bring the kids back to California, so you don’t have to worry about them.”

  The idea of Tim taking the girls to California sent cold fear into my heart. They were my girls, and I wouldn’t be separated from them. Besides, Tim could hardly be called an ideal father. No, there was no way that would happen. I’d make sure of it. If he once got them to California, I might never get them back.

  “No, Tim, they’re safe. And they’re in school. They can’t just leave. You don’t need to come. Believe me, they’re safe.” And it’s not our front door, it’s mine.

  His voice turned cold. All the charm was gone. “Kelly, they’re my kids too, and I don’t want them in danger. I don’t know what stupidity you’re in the middle of, but I won’t have the girls involved. I’ll go to court and get an order.”

  That ripped it. “Go on and go to court, Tim. It will cost you money. Money that you should be sending to your children. No judge in Tarrant County will give you custody, even partial custody. You left. You haven’t called or anything for six months, and you haven’t paid child support.” The strength of my voice surprised me, but I was angry, really angry.

  Dimly I was aware that Maggie crept out of the kitchen, as though she didn’t want to hear. I cursed myself for talking so loudly—and Tim for causing me to.

  He slipped back into his charming role. “Kelly, Kelly, I’m just trying to help.”

  “Don’t try,” I said. “You will make things worse for me.”

  “I’m coming to Fort Worth,” he said and hung up.

  How do I tell the girls that he’s coming? What do I do? My thoughts were almost desperate, and there was no one I could turn to for advice. I could have called Joanie, but she had her own problems—and she was preoccupied with them. Well, I guess that wasn’t fair—an unexpected pregnancy is a major problem. Besides, her advice usually wasn’t practical. But still I had no one to call.

  Somehow I managed to hide the anger and the fear as I got the girls ready for the day and off to school. Maggie was subdued, casting looks at me as though she were wary of something, but at the school, she kissed me lightly on the cheek and said, “Have a good day, Mom.” When I walked Em into pre-school, the child said, “Mommy, something’s bothering you. Can I kiss it and make it better?”

  I smiled. “Yes, Em, you can kiss it right here,” and I pointed to my right temple. “It’s a thought in my brain that I don’t like, and a kiss will make it disappear.”

  “Okay,” Em said, standing on tiptoe as I bent down. She planted a big smack on my forehead.

  “Thanks, Em. I know it will be a good day now.”

  As I drove away from the pre-school, I wished I believed that.

  When I walked into the office, Keisha took one look at me and turned back to her desk. But when I muttered, “Morning,” she turned and asked, “You want a doughnut? Might do you good.”

  I considered. “No, I want a Starbucks latte and a Danish.”

  “You got it,” Keisha said, picking up her purse. “You look like you need it.”

  I nodded. “Take some money out of petty cash.”

  At my desk, I tried to marshal my thoughts. I made a “to do” list, topped with replacing the door. Replaci
ng the door. Of course, I had to find Anthony. One glance at my watch, and I knew that if he had a job today, he’d be long gone. I dialed his home, not expecting an answer.

  To my surprise, Theresa answered.

  “Theresa? What are you doing home? Why aren’t you in school?” Then I recovered a bit of common sense. “This is Kelly.”

  “Yes, ma’am, Miss Kelly. I recognize your voice. I wasn’t feeling well today, and Dad said I could stay home.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, relieved at the simple explanation. “Has your dad left?”

  “Yes, ma’am. He went on a job for a friend, about eight this morning.”

  “Do you know where the job is?”

  “Yes, ma’am. He always tells me in case we need him. This is another house in Fairmount—1916 Sixth Avenue.”

  “Thanks, Theresa. I’ll find him.”

  Action, I decided, was better than waiting around. I went to Sixth Avenue. The house was one of the wood ones so common in the area. Right now, windows boarded, front porch sagging, it looked pretty hopeless. I wouldn’t have bought it, and I wondered about Anthony’s friend.

  “Anthony?” I stood outside and called. After three shouts, Anthony appeared around the side of the house.

  “Miss Kelly, what you doing here?”

  “I need a new front door, Anthony. Someone shot mine up last night.”

  “Mother of God!” His hand flew to his head and started raking his hair, though I doubted he realized he was doing that. “Shot?”

  I nodded. “What do I need to do to get a new one?”

  “I’ll go now and measure and then you go pick out the door. You know where you want to go?”

  “Yeah. Old Home Supply on College. I want one that fits the house.” Old Home Supply was a wonderful store where you picked your way through everything to find the treasures. Want some old French doors? They have them to fit hundreds of openings. Old sinks, faucets, chandeliers, glass doorknobs—all of it in a jumble that leaves you bewildered unless you have patience. I once walked by an antique metal couch in front of the store that had a Texas star in the middle of the back and a running horse on either side. I chewed on the thought all afternoon and then called back and asked them to deliver it. It was wonderful on the patio, though I did add a cushion. Old Home Supply was where you found almost whatever you needed for an old house.