"d.a.m.n! She left," Sadie said. "She offered me a wonky peace symbol, and then she was gone."
"Maybe she"ll be back?" Pam asked, but she was obviously relieved that her duties as translator were over.
"No. She"s gone. For good. The shimmering," Sadie said, trying to explain, "it means they"ve gone over. I guess she delivered her message."
"That Grant didn"t kill her?"
Sadie nodded and suddenly felt excruciatingly tired.
"Let"s just go," she said.
"But you helped her go over. That"s a good thing. Usually you"re on a natural high when you help a spirit."
"It all feels wrong," Sadie said. "I didn"t help her. Not really."
"Sure you did."
They didn"t speak again until they were back in Sadie"s car and pulling away from the curb.
"Do you believe what she said about her husband not being the killer?" Pam asked.
"I don"t know." Sadie pursed her lips. "Sometimes the dead aren"t much more reliable than the living. Maybe she just doesn"t want to believe the truth."
Trudy"s insistence kept playing in Sadie"s head, and she found she wasn"t quite ready to let sleeping dogs, or vanishing ghosts lie. After a restless night, she called Detective Petrovich and offered to buy him lunch.
"What"s this all about?" he asked warily.
"You"ve been sending me business for a few years now, Detective. I probably owe you a lunch or two," Sadie said.
"I don"t send you business," he replied evenly. "When asked about cleaning a victim"s place, I simply tell the families that they should check the Yellow Pages. It"s not my fault you"re the only company listed to handle sweeping entrails. Scour Power only takes on drug lab s.h.i.t."
"Okay, so it"s not a thank-you lunch. Think of it as two professionals enjoying a bite to eat," Sadie said smoothly.
Pause.
"Look, I realize you"ve probably already heard, but I"m still a married man."
"Heard what?"
"I"m separated. The wife kicked me out, but still, I just can"t...not that you"re not a knockout, Sadie, but I"m not dating yet."
Sadie smiled into the phone and kept her voice even.
"Sorry to hear about your separation, Dean, but this isn"t that kind of lunch." She paused, then added, "Not that any woman wouldn"t be lucky to take you out."
She finally managed to convince Detective Petrovich to join her for lunch at Romio"s.
Petrovich had his partner with him, a short, stubby man he introduced as Detective Sid Alden. Detective Alden was the polar opposite of Petrovich, who was tall, lanky, and good-looking in a hard-edged way.
"So you"re the twisted gal they call Ms. Blood "n" Guts, huh?" Alden asked.
"I do bio-recovery, yes." Sadie offered him a tight smile.
"I got the perfect joke for you, then," he began. "Why do all suicides have blue eyes?"
Sadie felt her stomach clench in preparation for his answer.
"They"ve got blue eyes "cause one blew this way and the other blew that way." Alden bellowed and slapped his knee loudly. He failed to notice that n.o.body joined him. "I"ll pick you up in half an hour, partner," he said to Petrovich with a wink. "Be good, kids."
When he was gone, Petrovich offered an apology on his partner"s behalf.
"He doesn"t know about, well, you know...your brother and all," Petrovich said by way of explanation. "He wouldn"t have any idea how inappropriate that was."
"It"s all right," Sadie said.
Petrovich had worked Brian"s case, and because of that Sadie felt that an undercurrent of trust ran between them.
They made small talk until Petrovich was halfway done with adding calzone stains to the others on his tie. She ate a slice of her sausage, mushroom, and onion mini pizza before she broached the topic of the Toth house.
"It was an ugly scene, but, as you know, not our ugliest," Petrovich said, washing the calzone down with a Diet c.o.ke. "Remember the time we had to call you in to mop up the guy who died in his hot tub?"
"How could I forget? After cooking in the tub for a week, the guy was black soup," Sadie said around a mouthful of her pizza. "Back to the Toth house-was there anything that made you think it wasn"t a murder-suicide?"
"Nope. We did our due diligence. It was by the book. Why?"
"Sylvia Toth, the mother-she just seems to be having a hard time accepting it."
And so does her dead daughter-in-law.
"Parents of the perp always have a hard time." He wiped his upper lip with a napkin. "The knife used to kill the wife was cleaned, but it still had trace on it. The rifle he used was still in his hands. There was no forced entry."
"And there was gunshot residue?" Sadie asked.
Petrovich"s jaw hardened. "Why do I get the feeling you"re questioning my ability to do my job?"
"You"re a great detective, Dean. The best. I"m just a little curious, that"s all."
"Well, GSR can be unreliable after a body has sat there a few days like that, but, yeah, GSR on the hand and powder burns at the temple."
"Sounds right, then."
"Sure, it"s right," Petrovich said, sitting up a little straighter. "All the evidence pointed to this being a crime of pa.s.sion. Nothing premeditated here. The husband lost it."
He stuffed the rest of his calzone into his mouth, and Sadie could see he was working his mind as he chewed.
After swallowing, he continued. "The gun and ammo were both processed and found to have his prints, and the spatter pattern was accurate for his sitting on that couch and saying good-bye cruel world."
"You did your job and then some," Sadie said, offering the flattery she knew would get her more than if her questions sounded like criticism.
"d.a.m.n straight," he agreed. "The only thing that was a little unexpected was the fact that the husband"s b.l.o.o.d.y yellow running shirt and pants were stuffed in the laundry hamper."
Sadie was about to sip her c.o.ke but put it down.
"You mean Grant killed Trudy and then changed his clothes?"
"And took a shower. There was blood in the drain."
"Huh." Sadie picked up the can again and drank her soda while she rolled that around in her head.
"I said it was unexpected, but it"s nothing that sent up red flags or anything," Petrovich said. "The guy killed his wife in a rage. Then maybe he thought he could cover it up, so he showers, but then, in the end, he can"t live with what he"s done, so he goes back downstairs and puts a gun to his head."
Sadie nodded. "Sure."
"I even had a guy once who showered, put on clean clothes, went off to work, and stayed at his office all day after he"d slaughtered his entire family in the morning. Even took his boss out for a nice lunch. When he got home that night he took an overdose of sleeping pills."
"Wow." Sadie shook her head in astonishment.
"And in the Toth case, you put all that evidence together with the fact that Seattle PD had been there for a domestic squabble a week before, and you got yourself a pretty typical murder-suicide."
Sadie"s eyebrows rose in question. "Grant smacked her around?"
"No evidence of that, but the neighbors called it in because they"d heard him screaming at her and throwing things for hours. When our boys showed up, they were patching things up and everything seemed hunky-dory. As a matter of fact, they were in the middle of makeup s.e.x right there on the same sofa the guy killed himself on a week later."
Sadie was quiet.
He pointed to the remains of her pizza. "You gonna eat the rest of that?"
"Knock yourself out," Sadie replied.
They made casual conversation for the rest of their lunch until both of them had to return to work. Sadie took some bills from her wallet and thanked him for his time.
When she arrived at the Toth house, Zack was already there.
"I thought you"d be here first thing this morning," he said with a spark of annoyance.
Sadie bit her tongue and didn"t remind him that she was the boss and he the employee.
"I took Petrovich to lunch."
Zack raised his eyebrows in question. "And?"
"And nothing. He did his job." She shared what the detective had told her about the evidence.
"He"s crossing the line sharing that information with you," Zack said. "But maybe now you"ll stop thinking something else happened."
"Trudy doesn"t believe it."
He opened his mouth to say something but then just shook his head and changed the subject.
"You should"ve been here earlier. You missed the carpet guy that the restoration company sent."
"d.a.m.n!" Sadie picked up the business card that had been thrust through the front door mail slot. She had begun to dial the number on her cell when it rang in her hand.
"Scene-2-Clean," she answered.
"h.e.l.lo, my name"s Jackie. I saw your ad in the Yellow Pages."
"Are you in need of our services, Jackie?" Sadie asked softly.
"No. I"m in need of a job."
"We"re not Molly Maid. You know that, right?"
"Sure."
"Did you check out our Web site listed in the ad?"
"Yes, I did."
"So you know we do mainly bio-recovery and deal with property that has been contaminated because of a traumatic or unattended death."
"Yes, and I"m already trained in crime-scene cleanup through the certification course in Dallas."
"You"ve done this work before?"
"I"ve been working in the biz for close to two years now in Texas, but I"m moving back to Seattle. I"ve already found an apartment, and now I"m looking for work. According to the Yellow Pages it"s either you or Scour Power. I can handle the meth lab cleans too, but I"d rather not."
Hmm. Promising.
"We should talk in person," Sadie said, barely able to contain her excitement. They arranged to meet at a Starbucks within an hour.
"Sounds like she"s got potential," Zack piped up.
"Yeah," Sadie said, nodding thoughtfully. "She"s fully trained, working in the business in Texas, and looking to relocate."
"We could use another pair of hands. Maybe then we could expand to take some of the jobs outside of the city."
"Exactly. I was hoping to do that just before you started, but my last employee walked out on me at that hot-tub job. I could be wrong, but I"ve got the feeling she isn"t coming back."
He laughed.
"I haven"t renewed my ad in the Times for the last couple of weeks because it just wasn"t generating any serious calls." She tucked her cell phone back in her purse and looked up. "But she found us. You know, even if she seems perfect, I"d like you to meet with her before she starts."
"That"s not necessary."
"You"d have to work with her too, and besides, it won"t hurt for her to see that Scene-2-Clean has a normal person balancing out my craziness. Not that I"d spring my odd talents on her. At least not right away."
"Oh, you mean you"re not going to let her walk in on you talking to yourself a dozen times before you tell her what"s going on?" he asked sarcastically.