Chapter 9
Morning stood in the middle of her studio, her cell phone in her pocket, her face buried in her hands. To the empty room she said, “How am I supposed to paint in an environment like this?”
She needed peace and quiet. She needed the house to be silent. She needed to be in the right mood. If she painted in the wrong mood, it showed in her work. And it showed in an ugly way.
She walked gingerly to the French doors, testing her ankle, and stepped onto her small balcony. She tried to remember what the man had looked like as he ran away from the house. At the time, she figured somebody had walked around to the back of her house, maybe checking it out, then heard something and got scared. Obviously she didn’t operate in the world Geir and Jager did. And it was distressing to think that, because of them, this scary element was coming into her world.
Though it had taken her weeks, if not months—okay, potentially years—she’d slowly cocooned into this home being her safe zone. After years of not feeling safe, after years of watching people come and go—her mother’s friends, other drug addicts, alcoholics, and all the other things that went along with people who were involved in that industry—she’d needed a safe zone.
She’d taken to life with her father almost with a frenzied gratitude. And, when she’d realized she was finally safe, that this was a place where she could stay forever, she’d taken that to heart and had put down roots, building herself almost a cage instead of enjoying the freedom this life gives her. She shook her head. “Well, how absolutely stupid is that?”
But it was true because this was where she had nested the whole time. And from here she’d blossomed. In more ways than one, considering her name. But, as she’d learned to relax and had decided that no more strangers were coming into her house without her knowing about it, she realized just how much she’d taken to her life here. When she had broached the idea of turning it into a bed-and-breakfast, her father had looked at her in surprise, and she’d been smiling and happy, not even concerned about her childhood history.
Which showed how much growth she had gone through back then. But more recently, when the situation had been reversed, when her father had broached her about selling his half of the house, she had looked at him in utter surprise. And her childhood history had surfaced from the locked away place deep in her brain.
But now, as she considered the additional fear that came to mind with Geir’s questions, she realized maybe it wasn’t as much about her inner growth as much as it was that she’d taken all that history and had stomped it into a deep dark corner of her mind and had slammed the door shut on it all.
But she hadn’t dealt with it. Because the minute something uncertain went on, it brought up that old fear again. Fear that her safety zone was being taken away. And that she couldn’t tolerate.
Nancy had talked about how she might be moving, and, at the time, she’d spoken about Morning moving on too. You could sell the house. It would fetch decent money. With your half, you could buy another house. Maybe have another bed-and-breakfast with no mortgage, particularly if you moved out of this very popular high-priced real estate area. But it had been a mere suggestion—not one Morning had seriously considered.
And she knew that, as soon as she did consider it seriously, that sense of safety inside her would feel ripped apart because it already was now. And yet seeing the man run across her backyard hadn’t done it to her. Seeing the stuffed mouse on the bed in her father’s room hadn’t done it to her. Not even getting almost run down last night outside on her yard.
Not until Geir had asked her questions. … Only then was her safe world shaken, making her realize just how much of a fake bubble of happiness she’d been living in and how that bubble was so very necessary for her own peace of mind.
She was naturally optimistic—a fun, outgoing, breezy kind of person. But what was she supposed to do when it came to this nightmare the men were involved in? And she didn’t even know all the details.
She leaned against the balcony railing and stared down, seeing the windows to her father’s sitting room below her. His set of French doors were there as well, underneath her own. But he had a patio where she had the balcony. It would be much harder for an intruder to get up on the second floor, and yet it would be easy enough to get in the glass doors if they weren’t locked. She reached up a shaky hand to her cheek and wondered, “Is that how the mouse got here?” Something was so very unsettling about an incongruent item like that in a space where it had no business being, to know that somehow it got there and not by her own hand. She’d been totally happy thinking that maybe a child had placed it there, until she remembered she hadn’t had children staying at the house in a long time. And she knew, for a fact, that she’d been in her father’s room about a week ago.
She turned and walked back inside her studio, wandering around, checking out her paintings. She stopped in front of the five nice pretty pictures and frowned. “You really are terrible, aren’t you?”
She gingerly squatted in front of them, favoring her good ankle, her mind caught on the almost postcard look to them. She stood and wandered a little bit farther, where the new finished painting sat. She studied it for a long moment and smiled. “This is special.” The second one sat on the floor beside the first, but the second painting was only half done.
She wandered around to the easel and stared at the angry red painting, the supposed throwaway canvas. It was an abstract with a weird luminescent glow of yellow through it. She stepped back from the painting, feeling it tug deep inside her. She shook her head. “Well, you’re not what I expected.” She studied it a moment longer. “Maybe that is a good thing.”
She took the red painting onto the rear balcony into the natural light, and she propped it against the railing. Then she backed up against the house so she could see it in the sunlight but from a slight distance. The balcony was only three feet deep and eight feet long, so she didn’t have a whole lot of room. But still it gave her an idea about how it would appear to somebody else looking at it. There was a magnetic pull about it. She’d certainly painted it with passion, and it was almost as if that same passion sucked her into the canvas now.
She shook her head. “You’re just getting fanciful.” She brought it back inside and set it down beside the newly finished ones, picked up the almost-finished one and placed it on the easel. She grabbed her smock. If she didn’t muck up this painting, this one could be number two.
With her head bent, she returned to work, delicately picking up the last bits of trim needed for the buildings before gathering the foggy colors moving over the cityscape in waves. Then she went about highlighting the accented yellow and orange from the sunrise that crept through the center. Something was very disturbing about the image—but in a good way. She had to admit she was happy with that. She left the painting on the easel as she turned for a rag, cleaned up her brushes, and then, realizing what time it was, headed back downstairs. She took her time, not wanting to move too fast and reinjure her ankle.
She hadn’t gone to her studio until the breakfast hours for her guests were done. But she wondered about them, as she hadn’t seen the other guests. She often had people who didn’t want breakfast. Either the breakfast was so far off their own diet that they had to abstain or they were heading to town to enjoy what else could be offered. And Morning certainly appreciated both cases. It was almost lunchtime now. She shook her head. “Where did the morning go?”
Just then her phone rang. She smiled when she saw it was Nancy. Morning put her cell phone on the kitchen counter, pushing the Speaker icon. She picked up a knife, grabbing a purple onion off the island, already creating a salad. “Nancy, what’s up?”
“Just checking to make sure you were okay after last night.”
“I’m fine. The ankle is still wrapped, but it’s not bad.”
“Are you sure you should be on it?”
“It’s fine,” Morning said quietly. “What about you? Did you sleep?”
“Well, I was quite prepared to let Jager have a closer look at me, to make sure everything was all right, but he didn’t seem interested.” Nancy’s voice was wreathed in regret.
Morning chuckled. “He’s not the kind of guy you play around with lightly.”
“Are you kidding? He looks like the kind of guy who’s a moth to a flame. You’ll either fly high and enjoy the heat or you’ll burn to a crisp. I just thought, maybe for once, I could be a moth to the flame and find out what real passion is like.”
Morning stared out the window. “You’ve had lots of passion in your life.”
“Yeah. But something tells me, with those two men, it’d be completely different. There’s such a sexy power about them,” Nancy gushed. “I’m sure you can feel it too.”
With a wince Morning refused to answer. “What are you doing today?”
“Oh, famous brush-off,” Nancy answered. “That means you are very interested.”
“Whatever. I’m chopping up vegetables, creating a salad, because I need food. I’ve been working in the studio all morning.”
“I’m not doing anything. How about you make salad for two, and I’ll bring over some chocolate cake.”
“How can I refuse such an offer?” Morning asked with a laugh. “Get your ass over here. I’ll put on coffee too.”
At that, she hit the Off button on her phone and doubled the portions of her salad. She had originally planned on a big meatless Caesar, but then she went rummaging in the fridge and found a cold cooked chicken breast. Easy enough to slice and add that to the top. She was sprinkling the parmesan on the salad when Nancy walked in.
“The place is empty, huh?”
“Yeah,” Morning said. “I haven’t seen anybody but Geir and Jager this morning.”
“How are they?”
“They look fine. They look normal.” Morning smiled. “I don’t think they were busy having one-night stands with anyone,” she said drily.
“You wouldn’t know that though, would you?”
“I would hope not,” she said with a shudder. She wondered exactly what kind of woman Geir was after. Did he have a particular taste? She wondered if she would ever have passion like Nancy described. The one thing Morning wasn’t good at was girl talk. She could do the manicure stuff and the clothing stuff; she could gush about boys when she was growing up, but she hadn’t been able to do the same with the subject of sex. To her it was private. Something she enjoyed but kept as an intimate relationship with her partners.
Nancy, on the other hand, liked most men, except she wanted them to stick around longer than for just sex. Yet she kept returning to the same bad choices.
“Did you hear from any of your job applications?” Morning asked, trying to keep the subject on neutral territory. Nancy was a little too interested in her guests. It was nice that she had directed her attention at Jager because, for some reason, Morning had already notched out Geir as her own. But he didn’t belong to anybody, and he never would. Something was untamed about him. He might have been badly hurt in an accident, but he was very much a predator.
She rolled that term around on her tongue, wondering if it fit, and then nodded. It didn’t matter whether she thought about a lion or a silverback gorilla or Geir, something was very territorial about him, them. She’d never seen him in action, but she imagined he wouldn’t tolerate anybody crossing the line. Including his partner.
“No, I didn’t hear anything yet,” Nancy said, sitting down on a bar stool at the island. “It’s frustrating. We do all these résumés in the hope somebody will stop and take a look. But how many actually do? The whole job-hunt system is so different now.”
“Right. Didn’t you have to do an online interview with your last job application?”
“I did. And that was weird. It was a video conference, and I couldn’t get the video part to work from my end. Technology is perfect when it works, but it sucks when it doesn’t.” Nancy looked at the salad. “Do you have any bread to go with that?”
Morning chuckled. “Are you hungry today or something?”
“Or something,” she said agreeably.
Morning obliged by bringing over the loaf of bread, at least the center portion left from the men’s breakfast yesterday morning. She cut a couple slices and brought out the tub of butter. Nancy transferred the chicken to her bread and dug into the salad. “Why did I put your chicken on the salad if you were just going to take it off?”
Nancy shrugged. “Yeah, why did you? Makes no sense to me.”
Wrangling gently, as friends do, and they certainly did for much of the last five years, they ate together with their discussion on everything from jobs to men to shoes and then back to the gallery offer.
“How many paintings will you have ready?”
Irritated at being asked the same question she’d been trying to avoid this whole time, Morning shrugged. “I don’t know. I have two and a half right now, but one is weird.” She tilted her head and thought about it. “I may have three. Two are similar, but then yesterday I got upset, and I painted out all my anger and frustration, and now I’m not exactly sure if it’s good or if it’s bad.”
“After dessert I want to see them,” Nancy announced.
Morning eyed her friend over her coffee cup with resigned amusement. “I’m not sure I’m ready to let you see them.”
Nancy stopped chewing and looked at Morning in surprise. “Why not? I love your work.”
“Well, that’s the problem. You love the old work. This is very different. And I don’t know that anybody’ll love this.”
“I definitely want to see them now.” Nancy reached over, cut herself a piece of the chocolate cake she’d brought with her and picked it up with her hand. She ate it as she sat at the island. “Hurry up. I want a first viewing of your paintings.”
Morning rolled her eyes; then she remembered what the men were up to. “What do you know about Mr. Henderson?”
“Changing the topic to that odd teacher who’s been around since way too long won’t get you out of showing me the paintings.”
“Is he decent?” Morning asked, her voice low.
Nancy shrugged. “I think so. He’s friendly, popular. But to me, he’s strange. Not very happy.”
“Why? Because he’s so old?” Morning looked at her friend in surprise.
Nancy shook her head. “I don’t mind the age. And, of course, happiness is a right, no matter what the age. There’s just something icky about the way he looks at people.”
“Please explain,” Morning said. “I don’t know that I’ve ever met him.” At least that wasn’t a direct lie because she had only known of Poppy way back when.
“Just creepy. The kids love him though, and I presume that’s why the school keeps him around.”
“Was there ever any talk about getting rid of him?”
Nancy shook her head. “No, not likely, but I’m not really in the know,” she said apologetically. “Remember? I’m just a temp there—and a new one. Hence another taking my place who was the normal fill in substitute. Yet also, because of that, people do often speak as if I’m part of the woodwork and aren’t careful about what they’re saying.”
“What did you hear?” Morning leaned closer, eager for any titbits.
Only Nancy shrugged. “Nothing really. Just that he was too friendly with the kids. A couple of the teachers were concerned.”
“Right. The trouble with that is, nobody does anything because it’s not quite bad enough, and nobody wants to cause trouble for themselves or for the teacher,” Morning said in frustration. “And then ten, twenty, even thirty years later, we find out these teachers had long strings of abuses, and nobody spoke up to defend the children.”
Nancy laughed. “There’s your imagination going crazy again. I don’t think he’s done anything like that.”
Morning kept her thoughts to herself. She stood, cleaned away the dishes, refused to have a piece of cake at the moment but refilled both coffee cups. She turned to her friend. “Against my better judgment, let’s go up and take a look at the canvases.”
The two men once again did a full recon in the neighborhood with Poppy’s second house. They kept an eye out, checking the demographics. In this case, the home appeared to be half of a duplex. Not a house owned singularly by one person. Duplexes were not common in this area. It was also an odd choice for a pedophile because, if he had children in here, somebody could hear through the walls. On the other hand, both halves of the duplex appeared to be empty. “If we think it’s important we could look into who the owner of the second half is,” Jager said. “Both sides appear empty. And would be a better bet to enter through.”
“Already on it.” Geir’s fingers moved rapidly on his phone’s keypad. “It’s coming up as Vitus Chan. He purchased it a year ago.”
“So maybe it’s an investment property or is planning to move in soon?”
They walked up to the front door on the neighbor’s side and knocked. Nobody answered. They walked around to the back of the house but couldn’t see any signs of recent habitation. No vehicles were parked in front or back, and, though a fence divided the respective yards to the two halves, both appeared to be empty. It was supposed to be a rancher, they thought. But it was surprising that it ended up being a duplex.
“This is a weird setup.”
“It is.”
Standing at the back door to the other side of the duplex, they couldn’t see any of the neighbors because of the trees and a wooden privacy fence. Plus the door was designed as a wind protector that blocked their view even more.
Making a quick decision, Geir knocked on the back door and heard no answer. He tested the door, but it was locked. He pulled his tool kit from his back pocket and had the door open in seconds. He stepped inside, calling out, “Hello, anyone home?”
There was only silence. The two men walked through the small space; this side of the duplex appeared to be no more than one thousand square feet. Probably the same for Poppy’s side of the duplex.
“This is kind of a waste. You’d think, for this neighborhood, it would be better developed.”
“Depends who built it and when. It could have been a long time ago.”
Geir nodded. “Hopefully we can get some details on that soon enough.” As they walked through, he shrugged. “No furniture, no food. It’s definitely an empty space.”
It looked like it hadn’t been used in a long time. Frowning, they stopped and studied the wall that separated them from the other half of the duplex.
“Too bad there isn’t a connecting door.”
“No, there may not be a connecting door, but I wonder if we can get up in the attic? I know the house itself has been divided into two residences, but it was likely a single dwelling at one time.”
Geir looked at Jager in surprise, heading into the master bedroom, opening the closet. “Most of the time their attic access is through a closet.”
“Sure, but this is California, and anything goes in a place like this. So many places have been dropped and rebuilt. Others converted as was convenient.”
“I guess that’s what I mean about it’s odd that this place is empty. I wonder why such a small house? It’s prime real estate, and a larger house would have definitely made more sense in terms of resale value.”
“It is what it is.”
Geir pointed up to a small trapdoor at the far end of the master bedroom closet, a closet that wasn’t even big enough in his mind for a house this size.
Jager was taller than Geir by a couple inches. Jager managed to pop the trapdoor and slide it off to the side. Geir held his hands cupped as he bent slightly. Jager put a foot in them, and Geir boosted Jager up so he could take a look into the attic space.
“Does it connect?” Geir asked.
“I’ll be back in a minute. I’ll let you know.” Jager went through the trapdoor, his feet the last to disappear into the darkness above. There was no chair or anything for Geir to pull himself up on. He could jump and get in, but there was no point if Jager didn’t find a way across to Poppy’s half of the duplex.
Shortly thereafter Jager’s face popped into the hole, and, with a big smile, he said, “There’s a trapdoor on Poppy’s side of the building.”
Geir swung his arms up and jumped, pulling himself up with difficulty into the attic. He sat there straddling the opening for a moment and said, “Sure do miss my foot sometimes.”
“You mean, your human foot.” Jager smiled.
“I mean, mine,” Geir said for clarification. “It’s one thing to have prosthetics to get around, but it’s another thing to have them when you’re doing this kind of work.”
Jager was already halfway across the attic, walking carefully on the timbers so he didn’t fall through the ceiling. The space was small, and he was crouched down low, trying to get to the other side.
Fiberglass was in between the framework, so falling through the ceiling or into the insulation would just end up hurting Geir or getting him itchy. He shrugged. Choosing to travel on his hands and knees, he joined Jager on the far side. And, indeed, there was a trapdoor, exactly the same as they’d come through.
Jager soundlessly lifted it up, placing it on top of the struts. He leaned forward and peered in. Coming back up again, he said, “It goes into the master bedroom, same as the other side. Stay here. I’ll be back in five.”
Jager lowered himself into the closet, landing so softly that Geir had a hard time hearing Jager’s movements. Geir edged over to the hole. He waited for a few minutes, studying the closet and the clothes here: hanging suits, shoes, all male apparel stacked in the closet. Nothing that he could see as being female. The shelves held a few items and boxes. One of them looked to be a banker’s box. The lid was off, and Geir could see envelopes inside. He was desperate to take a closer look.
Jager suddenly appeared below. “The place is empty.”
After Jager stepped out, Geir nodded and slid into the closet. As he stood here, he grabbed the banker’s box, put it on the floor and turned on the light in the closet, taking a closer look. “Holy shit,” he whispered under his breath.
But Jager was already gone.
Geir did a full sweep of the closet to see if anything else here should be double-checked. Then he focused again on the box. In it was paperwork, but, more than that, there were photographs. Mouse had definitely been here and had spent a lot of time here, as proven by a lot of Mouse’s childhood memories, growing-up memories, stored away in this box. Had Poppy kept them for Mouse? Or were they mementoes that Poppy had wanted to keep when Mouse was intent on throwing them out?
Geir shook his head. “Aah, Mouse, you spent time here. Lots of it. Or stored your memories here at least. Or rather Poppy did.” Mouse had never mentioned having a place like this to go to. If anything, while on leave, he was always talking about going to some third-world country for vacations.
Had he ever gone to Libya, Somalia, Sudan? Or had he just come back to California? Nobody would have been the wiser. How long had Mouse expected to maintain that lie? But then to have even gotten as far as he had in life with such a background, obviously he was one hell of a liar. It completely amazed Geir just how different the Mouse they knew was from the person they were finding here. And Geir wondered about a man who lived with such hollow beginnings and such emptiness inside that he needed to create another persona in order to survive. Or was this deception something Mouse enjoyed?
Geir looked around for other paperwork but didn’t find any. He squatted beside the box, carefully lifted out envelope after envelope. He emptied one to see pictures, and he winced. They were all images of men in sexual positions. And, in every one of them, Mouse stared back at him.
“Oh, Mouse, I’m so sorry you didn’t feel like you could tell us.”
They’d all known he was gay. They’d all protected and closed ranks around him because he was one of them. But to have had such a childhood and to have not been able to share that with them? Maybe he would have given more time, or maybe he wouldn’t have trusted them to that extent.
Geir realized then that most of the men in the photos were the same one or two men. And one of them was older. Geir stared at the photo and thought it could be the teacher from the current online photo.
He flipped over the photograph and found the name Poppy and the year written on the back. Geir studied it for a long time, realizing this had to be the same man who had groomed Mouse since he was young. Mouse appeared to be at least twenty-five in this set of photographs, though Geir could be off by a couple years. Although Minx had stated that Mouse would be thirty now. They didn’t even know for sure if Mouse was the age he had claimed to be while in the navy. His driver’s license found at Poppy’s first house, issued five years ago, gave his DOB, but was it his actual date of birth or a fake ID?
As he squatted here, Geir sent Levi a question, asking to confirm Mouse’s DOB and if there was a record of Mouse changing his name while in the military. It might be a question better put to Mason instead.
Geir pulled up another envelope from the very bottom and found a birth certificate. It was, believe it or not, for Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse O’Connor. Geir stared at it. So Minx out of Texas had been right. Mouse would have been thirty this year, and his legal name was Mickey Mouse. God, what kind of parent would do that to a child? Geir took a photograph of the name and then the document itself.
Next he found a picture of Minx. He took a photograph of that, realizing, at one point, Mouse had thought of his childhood friend. Geir came across other documents he didn’t recognize, but he photographed everything he found and returned it all to the box, then reshelved it. With another glance around, he saw nothing of value.
Until he found a photograph in an envelope under some T-shirts on another shelf.
Jager came back at that time. “I didn’t see anything else of interest.”
Geir nodded. “I found lots, and it’s all in that box. Mouse was legally Mickey Mouse O’Connor, just like Minx said. So this Mouse is her Mouse.” He held up the photograph of a young man. “But take a close look. Who does he remind you of?”
Jager took one look and whistled. “That’s our Mouse.”