Rebecca Schwartz 05 - Other People's Skeletons

that person was the one who left them in his car. Then he later phoned to say they belonged to you and gave that person— henceforth known as the murderer— your name and address to mail them back. If she happened to be a woman scorned— especially recently scorned— she might have hatched a plan then and there. All she had to do was watch you and steal your car. Maybe she didn’t mean to implicate you at all. Maybe she meant to sit in front of McKendrick’s house until he came home, cream him, and then abandon the car wherever— no! She always meant to take it back to where you’d left it, because she had to park her own car there to save the space. So she must have known he’d be coming home when he was— but that would be easy enough. He was pals with most of his old girlfriends. She could just have asked him.”
    “What’s the other thing he might have done?”
    “Well, he might have left the keys in his glove box, and somebody who rode in his car picked them up for some reason— maybe just playing around— ‘Hey, Jase, can I have the key to your heart?’— who knows? And then later he phoned to say they were Chris’s.”
    “Awfully damn responsible of him.”
    “Well, he was a complicated man.”
    “Right,” said Kruzick. “He breaks a woman’s heart and then to compensate, he has to take care of the little things like this, even gets obsessive about it. Maybe a little crazy.”
    I confess I turned and stared, openmouthed, never having imagined him capable of such insight.
    “What?” He shrugged. “It’s what I’d do.”
    Chris ignored us both, her mind on something else. “She said he had a brother.”
    “Who?”
    “Jason. Did you know that?”
    “Only the sister came to the wake.”
    “I know, that’s why it’s odd. She said, ‘I wish he was gay like his brother.’ That was before I told her he was dead. Apparently, she thought he was a menace. But then she was desperately in love again once she found out he was permanently unavailable.”
    “Ah, the human condition— don’t you love it?” Kruzick got up to answer a ringing phone. “Rebecca, it’s a Dr. Suzawa.”
    The surgeon, which meant bad news. The pathologist had called to tell him the worst. I knew this because he’d said I was to call to get the results. There was only one reason he’d call me.
    “Hi there, how’re you doing?”
    “Fine, thanks.” My throat was closing, but I got the words out. How could a man on such a mission ask a question like that? Surely Miss Manners would throw up her hands in horror.
    “Well, I just thought you’d want to know. The biopsy was negative.”
    “But … you told me to call you.”
    “I always like to deliver good news.”
    A saint. A saint and an MD— not a natural combination.
    “Wheeeeee! Drinks on the house!” I raced through the office like a madwoman. “In fact, let’s all go out to dinner tonight. My treat. No, forget that— we can talk about the case and charge it to the office. Alan, get Mickey. And I’ll ask Rob too. Yes, by all means.”
    Chris said, “Rebecca, you’re babbling.”
    And Kruzick said, one hand on the phone, “What shall I tell Madame is the great occasion?”
    “My biopsy was negative!”
    His brow wrinkled. “What biopsy?”
    But Chris came out to the reception area, shouting, “Hot damn!” and began to polka me around the office. And for three days after that Kruzick was on his best behavior, having gotten a taste of what it’s like to share an office with lunatics.
    Having hardly worked in a week, I figured now wasn’t the time to start. I took the rest of the day off, dropping first by the Hall of Justice to give Martinez and Curry the glad tidings.
    That is, I intended to take the rest of the day off. They kept me there, going over and over the story, calling Chris in, calling Roxanne in Virginia, carrying on as if we had nothing better to do than help them beat a dead horse.
    That night at dinner Rob didn’t seem half as thrilled about our hot new evidence as we were. There’s not a doubt in my mind he wanted Chris cleared, but it didn’t do much for his story.
    But I was happy and Chris was happy— we both had plenty to celebrate. Mickey and Alan were ecstatic— they were getting a free meal at the Bravo Caffé. We all wanted Rob to be happy. So I made sure his wineglass was always full, and I gave him lots of attention and smiles. To be perfectly honest, I flirted with him, a somewhat dishonest proposition