Identity Crisis (Sam McRae Mystery #1)

Chapter 29

I called Duvall when I got home and left another message.

I had a message from Detective Derry, thanking me for the information about Ash. Unfortunately, he said, taking a trip by airplane was not grounds for arrest or even a search warrant in Maryland. Of course it wasn't. Just like working at a strip club with two guys who negligently disfigured you almost twenty years ago wasn't grounds either. Or living three blocks from one of them.

If it was a coincidence, it was a big one. Other things were making sense now, too. Rhonda could have set up the accounts. She could have taken the money. She had access to the information she needed.

I went online and looked up Skip Himmelfarb's phone number. He picked up on the second ring.

"Hey, Skip, it's Sam McRae," I said.

"Hi," he said, the surprise apparent in his voice.

"Look, I hope you don't mind my calling you at home, but I have a question about Rhonda."

"Oh?"

"Do you know how long she's worked at Aces High?"

"Hmm. I think she started a couple of months after me. Why?"

"Was this before or after Tom began there?"

"I'm not sure."

"Try to remember."

"I'm a bit vague on this, but I think it might have been after," he said.

"I have a kind of delicate question to ask. Has she ever talked about why her face is scarred?"

He hesitated. "Why do you ask?"

I felt embarrassed for bringing it up, but it seemed necessary. "I'm just curious."

"I think she said she was burned in a fire."

"I see. Did she mention when it happened and how? Was it in high school?"

"I don't know. What does this have to do with Tom's murder?"

"Nothing necessarily," I said. I wasn't going to speculate to Skip about my theories. "I appreciate the information. Thanks."

φ φ φ

Aces High was closed, cordoned off. The lot was empty. I turned around and headed toward Laurel.

Rhonda lived in the same apartment complex as Bruce. I checked the mailboxes for the unit number. It was down one flight.

I knocked on the door twice, but there was no answer, so I returned to the car.

Rhonda could have been at a day job. I checked my watch. It was around four o'clock. I hadn't had a thing to eat since breakfast and my stomach was growling. It could take Rhonda hours to come home. For all I knew, she might not return for a month. For all I knew, she might never come back.

I drove to the nearest Burger King in a strip shopping center with a CVS drugstore and a Giant grocery. After doing the drive-through, I tried to reach Reed Duvall on my cell, but my last bar winked out in mid-dial. In all the excitement, I'd forgotten to recharge the stupid thing. I found a pay phone, and called Duvall the old-fashioned way. Got the message machine again. He must have been working on something hot.

"Hey," I said, after the beep. "Where've you been all day? I went by Rhonda Jacobi's. She's not there. I might hang around her place a bit, see if she shows up. Call you when I get home."

I didn't know what else to do. Before going back to Rhonda's, I went into CVS and bought a paperback. This could take a while.

I backed into a space with a good view of her building. After knocking on her door again, I returned to the car, cracked my new book, and started to read.

They say surveillance is boring. They're right. Rhonda still wasn't there by five. People came home from work. I kept reading. Rhonda wasn't home by six either. People went out to dinner. Another hour crawled by. Still no sign of her.

I was glad to have the book, a mystery by someone named Walter Mosley. I don't read mysteries, but this one was pretty good. I read it fast. More people came and went. At eight, nothing had changed.

I read until the sun set, then I turned on the radio, keeping it low. The wind died and the car stayed hot. I was soaked in sweat, my shirt plastered to my back and the undersides of my thighs sliding on the Naugahyde seat. The smell of honeysuckle drifted through the window. An unseen horde of cicadas raised their cyclical buzz into the night sky, sounding like someone pedaling an old bicycle, faster and faster, until the tune reached a crescendo and died. The cicadas took a breather and launched into another rendition. I stopped counting the number of times they did this after six.

Lightning flashed, strobe-like, revealing the marbled pattern of cloud outlines. An angry rumble followed several seconds later. Everything else was still.

I'll give it another half hour, I thought.

About fifteen minutes later, she came home.

Headlight beams swept across the lot, then a small car pulled up near the building. Rhonda Jacobi got out and hurried inside. I switched off the radio and waited.

Within minutes, Rhonda came out, carrying a box. She shoved the box into the car and dashed back in the building. A few more minutes and she returned with another box. Into the car it went. I watched her do this a few more times. Sometimes it was boxes, sometimes a miscellaneous item or two—a broom, a mop, a torchiere lamp. Then she came out with a suitcase. She opened the trunk and heaved it in, then disappeared again. I didn't need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure it out.

It's now or never, I thought. When Rhonda reappeared with more bags, I left the car and walked toward her.