“So you never saw the two teenagers leave the house?”
He thought for a moment. “Not actually leave the house, no, I didn’t. But I saw them outside. I’m not sure when. It’s all mixed up after I called the cops. I had to wait around and give a statement. Didn’t get out of there till after four. There were a lot of people around. But sometime after the cops got there, I saw that girl and the guy. Hard to miss him, with that red hair. They were on the cross street, getting into an old car.”
Henry said the car was a Plymouth Barracuda, blue decorated with rust stains. I thanked him and drove over to the neighborhood where the Terrells had lived. I didn’t see the Plymouth in the vicinity, but the Beetle was parked in the driveway of the Brandons’ house. I parked near the corner and waited. It was summer now. The two Brandon daughters were out of school. Half an hour passed. Finally the girl with short hair came out the front door, got into the Beetle, and fired up the engine. She backed out of the drive. I started my car and followed her.
She drove to South Shore Center and parked near the department store located at one end. I intercepted her as she got out of her car. “Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”
She looked me over. “I remember you. The private eye who came to talk with my parents about Mr. and Mrs. Terrell.”
“I didn’t get your name that day. Or your sister’s.”
“It’s Sasha. My sister’s name is Missy.” She pointed to her right. “There’s a Starbucks over there.”
Sasha led the way to the espresso emporium. I ordered a latte for myself, a triple mocha with extra whipped cream for Sasha, and threw in a couple of biscotti for good measure. Once we were seated, I laid my cards on the table.
“The day the Terrells died, someone saw a girl with long brown hair at your house. Would that be Missy?”
Sasha sighed. “It would.”
“She was with a guy. Lanky build, red hair, tattoos on his arms, and pierced ears. Ring any bells?”
She made a face. “Cody. He’s way older than Missy, eighteen or nineteen. Mom would burst a blood vessel if she knew.”
“Missy and Cody were seen going into your house around noon, before the bodies were found. And again after the bodies were found. It was a weekday. You and your sister should have been in school, unless Missy came home for lunch. All afternoon would have been a long lunch.”
“She cut,” Sasha said. “One of my friends told me about it later that day. She said Missy split after her third class, when Cody showed up.”
“What do you figure they were doing at the house that afternoon?”
“Each other. Having sex.” Sasha poked her biscotti through the thick layer of whipped cream to the coffee below. Then she drew it out and bit off the end with great relish.
“What makes you think that?”
“When I got home from school, I went looking for Missy, to bawl her out for cutting classes. She’d pulled all the sheets off her bed and washed them. They were piled on her bed, still warm from the dryer.”
“How do you get from there to Missy and Cody having sex?”
“Like Miss La-Di-Da would be doing laundry for the hell of it? Right. Only one reason she’d be washing sheets in the middle of the afternoon on a school day. She and Cody were screwing their brains out up in her bedroom.”
I gave Sasha points for deductive reasoning. I’d come to the same conclusion without the sheets. “I’d like to talk with Missy and Cody.”
“You think they saw something?”
“Maybe. Any idea where I can find them?”
“Not exactly, but they’re together right now. She thinks I don’t know because he parks his car on the side street and she tells Mom she’s meeting her girlfriends. Puhleez!” She rolled her eyes. “If you stake out our place, he’ll bring her home eventually. If Missy won’t cooperate, tell her I know — and I’ll tell.”
I left Sasha to her shopping and went back to the neighborhood, parking on the side street where Cody usually met Missy Brandon. Finally I saw the rusty blue Plymouth pull up to the curb. Two people got out of the car, a teenaged girl with long brown hair and a tall young man with a carrot-top and tattoos snaking up both arms. They locked lips and bodies, not coming up for air until I walked up and called them by name.
“Who the hell are you?” Cody growled.
“I’m the private investigator who was at Missy’s house a couple of days ago, asking questions about her neighbors and the day they died. Now I want to talk with both of you.”
“Why?” she asked, wide-eyed. “We don’t know anything. I was in school when that happened.”
“No, you weren’t. The gardener working at the Krimmlakers’ house saw you and Cody go into the house. He also saw you and Cody getting into Cody’s car later that afternoon, after the police had arrived. So you were both there. Sasha knows. She suggests you cooperate with me.”
Missy looked panicky when I mentioned Sasha. “We didn’t see anything. We were making out.”
“I have a pretty good idea what you were doing,” I told them. “So does Sasha. Take me through it step by step.” They looked scandalized, which was refreshing, in a way. “I don’t mean your grand passion. You may have seen something without realizing it could be important. Tell me what you heard and saw as you were walking up the street toward your house.”
They exchanged glances. “We parked here so Cody’s car wouldn’t be in front of my house,” Missy said.
“That gardening truck was in the driveway of the other house,” Cody said. “Didn’t see anybody in the yard. He must have been in the cab.”
“What did you do once you got into Missy’s house?”
“We went up to the bedroom.” He glared at me. “You want to know how many times we did it?”
“Spare me. I just want to know if you looked out the window any-time during the next few hours.”
“Yeah, a couple of times.”
“Did you see anyone?”
He thought about it. “The gardener.”
“Besides him.”
“UPS guy left a package at a house down by the corner.” He rubbed his nose. “There was a guy in a boat on the lagoon.”
That caught my interest. “What was he doing?”
“Rowing,” Cody said. “He rowed across to a house on the other side, pulled up to a dock, and got out.”
“That house directly across the lagoon?” Missy frowned. “I saw a guy there, too. But he wasn’t rowing a boat. He was at the side of the house, where the trash cans were. I thought he was a garbage-man. He was wearing coveralls.”
Cody shook his head. “I saw the coveralls, but why would a garbageman be in a rowboat?”
Good question. Maybe he wasn’t a garbageman. “What did he look like? What color were the coveralls?”
“Light blue, or maybe green,” Cody said. “I only saw him from the back. He had a ball cap on his head. Couldn’t tell what color his hair was.”
“I saw him from the front,” Missy said. “It was an Oakland A’s cap, green and yellow. I figured he was a garbageman because he had stains all over the front of the coveralls. You know how yucky those guys get.”
“He could have been a mechanic,” Cody said. “Mechanics wear coveralls when they’re working on cars. They get grease and oil stains all over themselves.” He stopped, as though something had suddenly occurred to him. “Those stains. Like maybe that was blood? Man, are you telling me that guy was a killer?”
“Like you said, why would a garbageman — or a mechanic — be rowing a boat across the lagoon? You two are going to have to talk to the police.”