All Lost Things

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Chapter 13

I must have fallen asleep on the ground because the next thing I knew someone was gently shaking me awake. I sat up with a start to find Adam bending over me.

"Too much partying?" he asked jokingly.

"How long was I asleep?" I asked.

"I don't know. Steve and I just got back and we found you passed out on the ground."

"I wasn't passed out, I just dozed off. Where'd Steve now?"

"Your mom and he went inside to start cleaning up."

"Did you guys have a good talk?"

"Well aren't you full of questions. You wouldn't be fishing for information, now would you?"

"Yes."

He laughed. "Yes, we had a good talk."

"So things are ok now?"

Adam gave up on trying to get me up and sat down next to me. "Yeah, I think things are ok now," he said. "We had a lot of things to talk about. Most of it was things that should have been said a long time ago. Some of it was just a matter of misunderstandings or pent up feelings that we've been avoiding. Communication is so important, Killian. I hope you can learn that now; it'll make things easier for you down the road. If you can't talk to each other you don't have much hope."

"Are we moving?" I asked trying not to think about Asher.

"I think so, yes. We decided that we want to stay to together and make this work, and that means moving. That's still a ways off, though."

"So you're going to sell this house?"

"No, I'm not ready to let go of the beach house just yet. Maybe I just don't want to let go of that part of my independence just yet. We're going to rent it out for now. We'll probably need the extra income anyway. It would be unrealistic to expect the bed and breakfast to take off right away. Who knows, I'm not wishing the business to fail but if it does we might need this place to fall back on."

"What about your business?"

Adam shoved me playfully. "How long do you think we were out there? We don't have all the details worked out yet. You've really been worrying about all this haven't you?"

"I guess so."

"Well, stop. We're going to be fine. I'm sorry you got caught in the middle the other night at dinner. That wasn't fair to you, we were...I was being very selfish."

"It's ok."

"No, it's not ok. And to answer your question, we'll probably compromise. I'll probably keep my business but help out Steve with the B&B when and where I can."

We were quiet for a minute then I said, "So we're moving in with Amalie, huh?"

"Who? Oh, Steve's ghost. I'm still a little skeptical about that."

"That's because you haven't heard her walking around and slamming doors."

He ruffled my hair. "Don't you think of you'd given up the afterlife to hang around you'd have better things to do then slam doors and stomp around?"

"Maybe she has unfinished business."

"Well, for Pete's sake, let's help her finish it!" He laughed and stood up. He reached down for my hand and pulled me to my feet. "Come on; let's get inside before these damn mosquitoes eat me alive. Then I'll be haunting you because you made me stay out here so long."

I followed him inside where Mom and Steve stood side by side at the sink, Mom washing the dishes and Steve drying. It was very domestic, but a little odd all things considered.

"How long are you staying?" I asked Mom.

"For a few days at least. I want to spend a lot of time lounging about the beach and doing absolutely nothing. This is my vacation."

"So I was just an excuse to get away?" I asked with a grin.

"Pretty much," she shot back. Laughing, I left Adam to help with the clean-up and started for bed. Kane was sprawled across the couch watching a movie on TV. I stopped long enough to say, "I'm glad you came back for my birthday, Kane."

"Yeah, me too," he said, "Besides, it was boring at my mom's."

I turned the TV off my way out.

I got early the next morning so that I could have a little quality time with my new Mustang. It drove like a charm, smooth and easy to handle. I was in heaven. I was enjoying it so much I lost track of time and was almost late for work. I reluctantly parked the car and forced myself to climb out. I gave the hood an affectionate pat before turning to go inside.

"Have you named her yet?" someone suddenly asked me, causing me to jump.

"Novak!" I gasped. "I didn't see you there."

He took a sip from the steaming oversized coffee mug in his hand. "Didn't mean to startle you. Have you named her yet?"

"Her who? The car?"

"That's who I was referring to, yes."

"It's a car, Novak, not a puppy."

"Every car needs a name. I've had Bessie for longer than you've been on this earth. She's like family. She's seen me through some tight spots."

"You really need to get a woman."

"Bessie gets better mileage."

"Has one ever told you you're a strange man, Novak?"

"All the time, kid, all the time."

We walked into the office where Novak had a stack of paperwork waiting for me that was tall enough to block light behind me desk.

"Take care of that and when you get finished come on into my office and we'll take stock on our progress on your case," he told me. "Oh, and Killian? I really enjoyed meeting your family last night. You can learn a lot about someone by observing them with those they are closest to."

"What did you learn about me?"

"Ah, that I can't tell you."

"Why not?"

"Because you have to figure these things out for yourself."

"Gee thanks," I grumbled.

"I did realize how much I miss my family, though. I'm going to go into here and call my daughter. Hold my calls until I tell you otherwise."

He went into his office and shut the door as I dove into the pile of work awaiting me. It was after noon before I reached the bottom of the heap. I ran out and grabbed a sandwich and, after eating it, I knocked on Novak's door.

"Come in," he called.

I let myself in and took one of the big brown leather armchairs that faced his desk. The office itself reflected Novak's personality. It was a comfortable place, laid back and non-demanding. It was decorated in what could only be described and Early American Yard Sale. Its furnishings were an eclectic mix of old elegance and modern efficiency, but somehow it all worked.

His desk was an enormous expanse in scarred golden oak, solid and sturdy. It must have come with the office. I couldn't imagine that it had ever been anywhere else it was so huge; it would have been a bitch to move.

One wall was completely taken up by mix-matched bookcases of varying heights, colors and wood types. They were filled to overflowing with books of all types: legal books, phone books for every phone book in the tri-state area, atlases and a set of encyclopedias that were quite possibly older than me. One bookshelf was reserved for Novak's guilty secret, his collection of hardcover detective novels. There were books by Sue Grafton, Tony Hillerman, Agatha Christie, Elizabeth Peters, Patricia Cornwell, Faye Kellerman, Marcia Muller, Sharyn McCrumb, and more. Many of them had been signed by the author.

Behind his desk was an intimidating wall of battleship-gray metal filing cabinets, each meticulously labeled and locked. The other wall was claimed by a strangely hump-backed sofa-sleeper that sat hunched under the room's only window. Novak supposedly kept it there for the rare occasion when he pulled an all-nighter. I always had the uneasy feeling that the sofa bed was lurking there, off to one side, just waiting for me to let my guard down before pouncing on me and devouring me whole. Hey, I have an overactive imagination, ok?

Today he was sitting in his black swivel executive chair, leaned back as far as he could go without flipping over with his feet on the desktop.

"So, where are we, kid?" he asked.

"In your office, sir," I answered flippantly. He shot me a look that would peel paint off a Chevy so I hurriedly added, "You mean on the case?"

"Yes, I meant the case."

"Well, I guess we're nowhere."

His eyebrows shot up in tandem and I couldn't help but feel like I had failed some test. "Nowhere?" he said. "That's an awful lonely place to be. I would rather think we're somewhere. What do we know now that we didn't know when we started?"

"Well, we can be fairly sure that Phil Zaranski didn't kill Ira Cohen. He has an alibi that checks out."

Novak opened a desk drawer and pulled out a stack of index cards. He jotted something down one and pushed it aside. "Ok, what else do we know about Ira and Zaranski?"

"What difference does that make if we know Zaranski didn't do it?"

Novak looked up at me and once again I felt like a particularly slow student. "First rule of the detection business; don't ever take anything for granted, no matter how insignificant it may seem at the time. Don't throw any fact away as useless until you have the whole picture. Something that seems of no consequence can have a great impact on something else later down the road or take on a different meaning in the light of new information. Now, what do we know about Ira Cohen and Phillip Zaranski?"

Properly chastised, I picked up where I had left off. "We know Zaranski was secretly taping couples in their motel room in, um, compromising positions."

"Positions that likely included missionary, doggie style and 69," he quipped.

I tried not blush as I continued, "We know that Ira found this out and was blackmailing Zaranski. Zaranski probably hated him enough to kill him."

"But he has that pesky alibi. What about the tapes?"

"What about them?"

"Did Ira know about them, and if so did he look at them?"

"I don't know. What difference could that make?"

"It could make a big difference. If Ira was a blackmailer, and he knew some of the people on the tapes..."

A light bulb went on over my head and I finished his thought, "then Ira could have been blackmailing them as well."

"And they would have a motive for murder. A blackmailer seldom stops at one victim. It's a definite possibility. The question is, did he find the tapes and view them, and if so, was he brazen enough, or stupid enough, to actually try blackmailing someone else?"

"Well, we know he wasn't exactly a model citizen. He abused his son and blackmailed his boss. I wouldn't put it past him."

"Nor would I. Who else is there?"

"Nadine Tingle."

"Ah, yes, the charming Ms. Tingle. What do we know about her?"

I frowned, "Not much. Just that she was involved with Ira in some way, but didn't apparently like him all that much."

"Or that's what she wants us to believe, anyway."

"You think she's lying to us?"

"I think there's much more to Nadine Tingle than meets the eye. I think it would be a mistake to underestimate her; she's a lot sharper than you might first think. We know about as much about her and her relationship with Ira now as we knew going in, which is just the way she wanted it."

"What about Becky Haynes, the neighbor?"

"She's another one who hasn't been completely up-front with us. She's trying to protect Caleb, from what I'm not sure. There were no toys in the yard, no signs of children. It could be that Becky Haynes thinks of Caleb as a son, maybe the child she can't have."

I stared at him in awe. "You got all that from a five-minute conversation?"

"Observation, kid. That's what this business is all about. You have to keep your eyes and ears open at all times. You have good instincts and a mind like a steel trap, but unless you learn how to harness them and put them to use they won't amount to a hill of beans. Just like any talent, you have to learn how to use it to its fullest potential. What about Caleb?"

It took me a second to shift gears and catch up with him. "Caleb. He says he ran away from the group home because he thought he was going to be returned to his father. He won't say where he was between leaving the group home and getting picked up by the police on the boardwalk. Not even how he got there."

"That could be significant or it could be nothing. Fifteen year olds have a different value system when it comes to what is important. He could be refusing to say because he chopped his father up with an ax or simply because he protecting a girlfriend somewhere."

"Boyfriend," I corrected automatically.

"Boyfriend?" he repeated. His eyebrows had scaled to new heights and I realized I had neglected to tell him that Caleb was gay.

"Did I forget to mention that?" I asked sheepishly.

"Yes, as a matter of fact you did. Do you know of any particular boyfriend?"

"No," I said, forcing thoughts of Asher out of my mind. I seemed to be spending a lot of time lately trying not to think about him.

"But you know that he is definitely gay?"

"Yes."

"I see." He thought for a moment, rubbing his chin, then he gathered up all the cards the he had written on while we had been talking. There was quite a stack now. He pushed everything on his desk to one end and beckoned me closer with a crooked finger. I moved to his side as he began to lay the cards out as if he were playing some game that only he knew the rules to.

A pattern began to form. It started at the top with a single card. It had Ira Cohen's name written in neat, careful printing at the top. Under his name was written all the relevant facts that we knew about him at this point. Under that, branching out, were cards bearing the names Caleb Cohen, Nadine Tingle, Phillip Zaranski, Becky Haynes and one blank card. Under certain names were cards with a single question written on it. Under Caleb's name there were two questions. One read, "Where was he between the time he left and the time the police picked him up?" The other said, "Did he have a boyfriend and if so who was it?" Under Zaranski's was a card that said, "Who else was Ira blackmailing?" Under Becky's was, "Why is she protecting Caleb, and from what?"

"What's the blank one mean?" I asked.

"Mrs. Fields, the other neighbor. You can see what I'm doing hear, right? It's like a fill-in-the-blank puzzle."

"Right. These are the questions that we need to answer."

"Some of the questions. There will be more before we're finished, you can count on that. Most of the time, answering one question only raises a dozen more."

"Do they ever all get answered?"

"Only in the books, kid," he said with a gesture towards his bookshelf, "but we do the best we can. Right now, these are the questions that we're most concerned with."

"What about Nadine? You didn't put any questions under her name."

"That's because we don't know enough about her to even know what to ask. Not just yet anyway. Ok, so which one do you want to start with?"

I looked over the cards. "The neighbors would probably be the easiest to tackle. Might as well get them out of the way."

"Great," he said. He picked up the neighbor's cards and stuck them on a bulletin board that was hanging on the back of his office door, for just that purpose I supposed. "You drive on out there and see if you can't get someone to talk to you. Meanwhile I'll give Sgt. Kaplan a call and make sure he picked up on the connection same as we did. He's a good cop so I'm sure he did. I don't want to seem like I'm trying to do his job, but I do want to make sure we're all on the same page."

"Whoa, wait a minute," I said, trying to keep up, "You want me to go talk to the neighbors by myself?"

"All by your lonesome."

"But just a little while ago you were telling me how unobservant I was."

"This is how you learn."

"What about learning by observing? What if I miss something important?"

"Then you learn the hard way."

I opened and closed my mouth a few times, but it was obvious who had won the case. I was clearly out of arguments. With a beleaguered sigh I turned and started for the door.

"Oh, and Killian," he called just as my hand turned the doorknob, "Don't miss anything."

I pulled my car into the driveway of the burned out house and turned the engine off. I felt a little twinge as the gentle purr died away. I thought again about what Novak had said about naming my car, and for the first time I began to understand.

"How does one go about naming a car," I wondered as I climbed out. I looked across the fallow farm land at Mrs. Fields' house. I briefly wondered why the field hadn't been cultivated; it was well past the time for planting. Then I looked the house over. It wasn't exactly a welcoming house. It badly needed a paint job and didn't look all that weather proof. I could have sworn I saw a curtain flutter at one of the windows, but as I stared nothing else so much as moved a fraction of an inch. I decided that it had just been my imagination working overtime again. Still, I was hesitant to approach the forbidding abode.

I turned and looked the other way but I couldn't see the Haynes' house for the line of trees that created the windbreak. On a sudden whim I decided to go explore the barn before I took on real people. Build up my powers of observation, I told myself.

I pushed gently pushed against the barn door but it didn't budge and inch. I braced my shoulder against it and shoved with my whole weight. It swung open with an unhappy groan of protest and I stumbled in amid a shower of dirt, cobwebs and rotten wood. I used my highly-refined powers of detection to deduce that this door hadn't been used in quite some time. I was probably wasting my time, but I was here so I might as well take a look around.

The interior of the building was dim compared to the bright outdoors. Sunlight shafted through the windows that weren't grown over, doing what it could to dispel the gloom but failing miserably. Dust motes danced thickly through the beams making me feel like I needed an oxygen mask just to breathe. A row of stalls ran down one wall. An elderly tractor took up most of the remaining space. Rusted and forgotten, it gave me the impression that it was sad to have been so rejected. Several old, wooden-handled tools stood propped against one wall, the kind no farm should be without: a shovel, a pitchfork, a rake, and something that looked like it would have been right at home slung over the shoulder of the Grim Reaper. A moldering pile of straw took up one corner and the very sight of it set my nose to twitching.

Several sneezes later, a quick walk down the length of the barn told me that the stalls held nothing but more cobwebs. I was turning to leave when I remembered that the barn had a second floor. I hadn't seen any means of reaching the upper story so I searched again. It took me a minute to find a rickety looking ladder nailed to one wall in a corner. It led up through a hole in the ceiling.

I spent the next few seconds debating the wisdom of climbing the unsteady looking structure but finally decided that the possible benefits outweighed the risks. I started up the ladder to find that it was a lot sturdier than it looked. In fact, it seemed to me that someone had been maintaining it. If I wasn't mistaken a couple of the rungs had been replaced, their nails shiny and new. I soon found out why.

Someone had set up house in the loft of the barn. A small glass oil lamp, half full of fuel, sat on a milk crate next to makeshift bed that was really little more than an old mildewed feather mattress covered by a sleeping bag. A couple cans of baked beans sat nearby and there were several empty bags of Doritos. I had found Caleb's hideaway. Either that or a hobo had taken up residence in the Cohen's barn.

I poked around a bit, I didn't really want to touch the grungy looking bedding but I decided that if I was going to be a detective I couldn't be that fussy. I lifted the sleeping bag and shook it out, nothing. I pulled the mattress back and found a few surprising discoveries; a well-worn copy of a gay porn magazine, a bottle of lube and...a couple condoms. The magazine and the lube weren't so surprising; they could have been for Caleb's personal amusement. The condoms, however, were a different story. Unless, of course, they were just a teenage boy's hopeful fantasy.

I scanned the surrounding area but didn't see much else. Then something caught my eye in the deep shadows under the eaves. I crawled back until I could see that it was what I had thought it was: a used condom. I left it where it was. Evidence or not, I wasn't about to touch someone else's used condom.

I looked around some more but didn't see anything else. As I climbed back down I found myself sorting out what I had discovered into Novak style card-sized factoids. Caleb kept a secret retreat in the barn, probably for when things go too intense in the house. It seemed very likely that he entertained someone there on occasion. The new question was who?

Maybe the neighbors would have the answer to that question. I decided to start with the Haynes's since I had already met Becky. I was about to walk around by the road when I noticed a very slight path worn into the grass that led through an even slighter gap in the trees that separated the two yards. I pushed through the branches to find myself in the Haynes' backyard. A man working on a riding mower a few feet away looked up in surprise.

"Can I help you?" he asked in a somewhat challenging voice. I guess he didn't have too many visitors pop through his shrubbery. He was a short, stocky man, clean shaven and short hair parted on one side. He looked like he might have been a football player in high school.

"Are you Mr. Haynes?" I asked him.

"Yes, and you are?"

"My name is Killian Kendall," I said. I proudly pulled out one of my brand new business cards and offered it to him.

He wiped a greasy hand on his jeans and took the proffered card.

"I was wondering if I could talk to you for a few minutes."

"Is this about Ira's murder?"

"Yes, sir, it is."

"Are you the same people that talked to my wife a few days ago?"

"Yes, actually I was wondering if she had thought of anything else that might be helpful."

"Talking about it upset her the other day. She's lying down right now. She gets migraines sometimes; they've been worse since this whole mess started."

"I'm very sorry; we didn't mean to upset her. Do you think you add anything to what she told us?"

"She told you about Nadine, right? Boy if she isn't a piece of work."

"Yes, we went and talked to her after your wife told us how to find her."

"Did Becky tell you how they used to fight?"

"Nadine and Ira?"

"Yeah, and I mean fight, not just raised voices. They'd be screaming and yelling, cursing at the top of their lungs, throwing and breaking things, once she smashed his windshield with a baseball bat. Becky and I aren't the type to get involved in something like that, we keep to ourselves, but I think old Mrs. Fields called the sheriff a few times."

"Were they physically violent with each other?"

"I never saw either of them hit the other, but I wouldn't be surprised. God knows he hit Caleb enough."

"You and your wife looked after Caleb?"

"As much as we could, I wish we could have done more. He's a good kid. If he did this, what they're saying he did, he was driven to it by that no good dad of his."

"Do you have children?" I asked suddenly.

His face changed, his eyes dimmed as if a switch had been thrown. I knew I had overstepped my bounds. "No, we don't," he said sharply. It was obvious from his tone of voice that the conversation was now over, or at least this line of questioning. I would have switched tactics if I'd had any other tactics to switch to. As it was I couldn't even think of any more questions.

"Oh, well...um...I'd better go," I finished lamely.

He nodded his agreement and I started back into the bushes when I remembered the condoms in the barn.

"Mr. Haynes, one more question. Did you ever see anyone else at the Cohen's, someone around Caleb's age, maybe? A friend?"

"Caleb doesn't have any friends. He's a loner."

"Are you sure?"

"How can I be sure? It's not like I followed him around. I can't even see his house from ours. He never mentioned any friends; that's all I can tell you."

He watched me until I was safely back on the other side of the hedgerow. I looked across the empty stretch of land between the burned out home of the Cohen's and Mrs. Fields' house. She had an unobstructed view of the Cohen's yard, and more importantly, the barn. But then again, Caleb had said she was half blind.

I trudged across the yard anyway, figuring my assignment wouldn't be complete unless I at least tried knocking.

Once again, no one came to the door but I had an eerie feeling that someone was there, inside, watching me from behind the curtained windows. I resisted the urge to run screaming back to my car like a little girl. I was a professional investigator now, and somehow that didn't seem like professional behavior. Instead I slipped one of my cards into the doorjamb and walked calmly away. I felt as if eyes were boring into my back with every step but I forced myself to maintain a steady pace and not turn around. Nevertheless, I was inordinately relieved to reach the relative safety of my Mustang.

"Ok, I'm back. Nothing happened. No one's home. I'm just being silly," I told the car as I slid behind the wheel. Great, now I was talking to it. A name couldn't be far away now.