Casey Mayes - A Killer Column

“What? Did you find something in the bedroom?”

“Come with me,” I said as I led her into the other room.

She looked around, and then said, “It’s at least as messy as the living room.”

“True, but that’s not why we’re here. Look in the closet.”

She did as I asked, glanced in, and then asked, “Does this mean Cary was lying to us? Had she been staying here all along?”

“Pull out one of the dresses and look at it.”

Jenny did, and an instant later after examining a cute little black dress, she said, “There’s no way Cary Duncan could have squeezed into this, not on her best day.”

I nodded. “Someone else was staying here with Duncan, and if I had to bet, I’d say it was Mindi Mills.”

Jenny looked stricken. “She’s going to know what her husband was up to. How awful.”

“I’d say when she starts unpacking and sees these clothes, she’s going to have a pretty good idea that they belong to someone else, and unless Derrick was a cross-dresser who could squeeze himself into something this small, there was a pretty good chance her husband was seeing someone on the side.”

“We can’t tell her,” Jenny said. “It’s just not right.”

“We offered to clean the place up and deliver the clothes to her at the Brunswick,” I reminded her.

“Yes, Derrick’s things. We didn’t say a word about his mistress’s clothes.”

I looked at Jenny a second before I spoke. “Jen, how on earth are you so sensitive about this type of stuff and still working as a lawyer?”

“They made a special exception for me, and remember, we don’t do domestic cases,” she said as she started collecting the smaller clothes.

“What are you going to do with them?”

“I can’t just throw them away,” she said.

I took a plastic bag from the top shelf, one reserved for dry-cleaning, and began folding the dresses so they’d fit.

“They’ll wrinkle that way,” Jenny said.

“Do you have any better ideas? We could always do what I suggested and mix them in with Derrick’s clothes.”

“No, that’s fine,” she said. We added shoes and some things from the drawers that clearly belonged to the mystery woman.

“Jenny, we don’t know for a fact that these belong to Mindi,” I said.

“Do you honestly think that he had TWO mistresses on the side?”

“I would guess that it was highly unlikely, but I suppose it’s a possibility. There’s one good way to find out, though.”

“How do you propose we do that?”

“It’s simple,” I said as I tied a knot in the top of the bag to secure it. “We ask Mindi ourselves.”

“I’m not about to disagree with your logic,” she said, “but I can’t wait to hear how you’re going to bring it up.”

“I’ll think of something,” I said. “In the meantime, let’s get the two suitcases down from the top shelf and start packing up Derrick’s things.”

“It should make it easier to search the place that way,” she agreed.

As I pulled the suitcases down, I instantly realized that they were heavier than I’d expected them to be.

There was something inside each one of them, but I didn’t have a clue what it could be.

“These things weigh a ton,” I said as I threw them onto the bed. “What did he keep in them, rocks?”

“Maybe they’re stuffed with bars of gold,” Jenny said.

“Derrick wasn’t a pirate. Well, not the kind you mean, anyway.”

Nothing could have surprised me more when I opened the first one and saw what was really hidden inside.

“ WHAT IS IT?” JENNY ASKED AS SHE TRIED TO LOOK past me into the opened suitcase.

I pulled out a telephone book, and then another, and another, and another still. “It’s full of phone books.”

She opened the other suitcase and found the same thing. “There are more phone books in here.”

“Where are they from? Are they all for Raleigh?” I asked as I looked at the books in front of me. Mine were all from the Triangle of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill.

“All from this area,” she said as she lifted one telephone book up and fanned the pages. Nothing fluttered out, though I’d been hoping it might have been jammed with hundred dollar bills, or clues, or something other than what we got.

I checked a couple of the ones from the suitcase I had, but there wasn’t anything there, either. “How odd. Why would he do something like that? It’s got to mean something, unless he’s just into stealing telephone directories wherever he stays.”

Jenny frowned, and then said, “I’ve got an idea, but it’s kind of far-fetched.”

“If it helps explain this, I’m willing to listen.”

“What if there was something in these bags, something pretty heavy. If someone took what was stored there, they might want to leave behind something of similar weight to fool Derrick into thinking all was right with the world.”

I shrugged. “I suppose it’s possible, but if he was checking his luggage anyway, why wouldn’t he just open the suitcase up to see for himself?”

“You’ve got a point. I just don’t get it.”

“Neither do I, but there might be something here that we’re missing. Let’s find a box or something stout to put these in, and we’ll put Derrick’s clothes back into his suitcases after we search them.”

“I found a heavy box in the other room we can use,” Jenny said.

“Then grab it and let’s get busy.”

BY THE TIME WE HAD DERRICK’S CLOTHES PACKED INTO his suitcases, the suite was actually beginning to look fairly decent, though the trash cans were all full. In all the time we’d been working, we’d found the keys, the telephone books, and a stack of papers that on first glance didn’t make a great deal of sense.

What we didn’t find was Derrick’s planner.

That was the oddest thing of all. I knew from personal experience that he never went anywhere without it. Could it be holding the key to what had happened to him?

We wouldn’t know until we found it.

A thought occurred to me as we made a final sweep around the rooms before releasing the suite back to Benjamin.

Could the police have Derrick’s planner themselves?

I wanted to call Zach so he could check for me, but we were having communication problems at the moment. I couldn’t call Detective Murphy either, but for very different reasons. I had a feeling that if he knew what Jenny and I were up to, he wouldn’t approve.

It was just one more question I was going to have to file away.

For now, there wasn’t much I could do about it.

DID YOU FIND ANYTHING ELSE?” I ASKED JENNY AS I walked out of the bedroom with the suitcases. She’d taken the clothes we presumed belonged to Mindi Mills, and I deposited the suitcases beside the bag near the door.

“Nothing,” she said. “I’m afraid I’m not much of a detective.”

“I think you’re doing a great job. You found the keys, didn’t you? That’s more than I can say.”

“I’m sure you would have found them if you’d looked at Derrick’s shoes first instead of me,” she said, but I could tell she looked a little pleased by my praise.

“Don’t bet on it. I just wish I knew what they unlocked.”

“We could always ask Cary,” she said.

“Maybe if we get desperate, but for right now, let’s just keep it between the two of us.”

Jenny looked at me with a slight bit of concern in her eyes. “Do you mean we should keep the fact that we found them from Zach, too?”

“Of course not. If I talk to him again, I’ll be sure to mention it.”