Riley Thorn and the Corpse in the Closet by Lucy Score

7

1:06 p.m., Thursday, August 13

Larry Rupley’s townhouse was two short blocks from the Bogdanovich mansion they called home. It was a bland, beige unit in the middle of two other identically bland, beige units. Nick swung Riley’s Jeep into a parking spot in the lot and accepted the folder she passed him.

Burt the dog shoved his wrecking ball head between the seats and scowled through the windshield at the row of buildings as if to say, “This isn’t lunch.”

“Lunch is next, buddy,” Nick promised the dog, ruffling his ears.

He shot Riley a glance. She’d been quiet since she’d returned unharmed—good news for Weber’s face—from the interview with the dead woman’s husband.

“You sure you’re up for this? A homicide in the morning and a missing person in the afternoon seems like a lot for someone used to proofreading portable toilet schematics.”

She looked at him and raised an eyebrow over her sunglasses. “Pellet stoves, smartass. And restroom partitions.”

He grinned and gave her knee an affectionate squeeze. Being called a smartass meant she wasn’t holding any grudges from their argument that morning. Either him telling her what to do wasn’t that bad of an infraction or she was used to much worse shit from her turd of an ex-husband. As long as it meant she wasn’t harboring a grudge against him, he was happy.

“Living the dream, baby,” he said. “Let’s go find ourselves a missing Larry.”

They got out of the Jeep. Burt trotted along behind them, pausing to lift his leg on a fire hydrant. Three concrete steps led to Larry’s front door.

“This place looks like where divorced men go to learn to fend for themselves,” Riley noted as she pulled on the latex gloves he handed her. She’d changed out of summer civilian consultant casual into what Nick liked to think of as hot girl casual. Cute cut-offs, sandals, and a blue tank with a scoop neck that showed just enough cleavage to catch his eye every time he looked at her. She’d pulled her hair back from her face in a cute ponytail after complaining about humidity helmet. Why women ever thought big hair was a bad thing, he’d never understand.

He raised his fist and knocked.

“Wouldn’t it be weird if he answered the door?” she mused, looking around at the other identical empty stoops and boring tan front doors.

Burt nosed his way between them and cocked his head.

Nick tried the doorbell next, and when no one answered, he produced the key Shelley had given him. “Let’s hope he’s not in the middle of an orgy,” he said, opening the door. “After you.”

“After that image?” Riley shook her head.

He stepped inside over a small pile of mail located directly under the mail slot in the door.

Sparsely furnished was being kind. There was a sagging couch on one off-white wall. It faced a new TV with about two dozen cords running to and from it. The coffee table looked like a trash day sidewalk find. It had two gaming controllers on it and a wallet.

“Mr. Rupley? Are you home?” he called. “Larry?”

Burt echoed with a questioning bark and went snuffling into the kitchen. There was no response.

“Feels empty,” Riley said.

“Let’s start digging.”

Burt pawed at the carpet in the dining area.

“Not literally, buddy,” Nick warned him. The dog looked embarrassed.

“So what exactly are we looking for?” Riley asked, sounding eager as she opened the coat closet. “Is there a PI checklist for tossing a stranger’s place?”

“We’re looking for a couple of things. Clues as to how Rupley lives, how he spends his time, and who he’s spending it with. Then we’re looking for anything out of the ordinary. What prescriptions is he on? Does he have a pot or a porn stash? What’s he hiding, and how good is he at hiding it?”

She nodded thoughtfully.

Speaking of hiding things. “Can I borrow your phone to take pictures?” he asked. “I left mine in the Jeep.”

“Sure.” She handed it over and opened the coat closet to peer inside. Nick kept his attention on her as he deftly changed a few settings before opening the camera. He wasn’t going to feel guilty about it. Not when he was doing it for her own good, he decided.

Nefarious overprotective boyfriend task complete, he flipped the wallet open and found Larry’s driver’s license, a few credit cards, $42 in cash, and a grocery store club card. No condoms. No slivers of paper with mysterious phone numbers or addresses. He pulled everything out and took a picture of the contents lined up on the coffee table.

There was no art, no framed photos, no plants in the living space. Dirty socks and two pairs of khakis were balled up in a pile next to the front door. Larry Rupley appeared to be a door pants dropper just like Nick’s uncle Ricardo. Unlike Uncle Rico, Larry didn’t have an Aunt Fotoula picking up his laundry.

The combined kitchen and dining space was too small for any real function other than warming up frozen burritos for one. The appliances were “apartment-sized” and over a decade old. There was a small folding table with a padded top in the middle of the room. There were no chairs, but it held a small mound of unopened packages and envelopes. Larry was apparently the kind of guy who was used to his wife keeping up with the house and the mail.

Nick riffled through the mail, finding mostly junk and Amazon packages.

It looked as though Larry took his meals either on the couch or standing up in the kitchen.

Beyond the table was a sliding glass door that opened out onto a deck so small it could only house a grill. And not a big manly grill but one of the portable charcoal kinds. Off the deck was what Nick guessed was considered a back “yard.” It was fenced in for privacy, but given the fact that it was eight feet by eight feet, it felt more like an outdoor prison cell.

Larry had done nothing with his eight feet of backyard.

“Anything interesting?” he asked Riley when he came back in. She’d been combing through the kitchen trash.

She shook her head, nose wrinkled. “Old K-cups and moldy takeout leftovers. No address to a secret cabin in the woods where he meets his cult buddies for a full moon ritual.”

Burt found two bowls on the floor and wolfed down the kibble before slurping up the water.

“Guy’s got a cat,” Nick observed, nudging the pantry door open wider to find a bag of cat food sitting on top of a litter box.

“Here kitty kitty,” Riley called. Burt’s ears perked up, but no feline appeared.

“Looks like he was on the TV dinner and beer diet.” She held up a frozen entree. “Guy goes from a wife and four kids to living alone and eating Dr. Diet Salisbury Steak.”

“No pictures. No effort to make ‘Dad’s place’ homey for the kids. Pants dropped at the door. Maybe he liked it better this way?” Nick guessed.

He returned to the living room and peered inside the coat closet. There was a sweatshirt and three coats hanging up. Beneath them were two pairs of loafers and an empty space.

“See anything suspicious, yet?”

He shook his head. “No packing lists or plane tickets. No suspicious pools of blood. No ransom notes. Let’s check upstairs.”

Burt bounded up the carpeted stairs in front of them.

“I swear he understands English,” she said, following the dog up to the second floor.

Upstairs they found two bedrooms of equal size and a small bathroom. One bedroom had two sets of bunkbeds crammed against the walls. There were no sheets on the mattresses.

Larry’s bedroom had a full-sized bed with no headboard, one pillow, and bedding that looked as though he’d picked it up from a discount bin. The closet held no secrets and very few clothes. A few t-shirts, a pair of jeans, and a couple pairs of athletic shorts and tank tops crumpled on the floor. There was a phone charger plugged into the wall under the window, the smallest flat screen Nick had ever seen perched on the rickety, nearly empty dresser, and a bottle of lotion on the floor next to the bed.

Larry Rupley’s life was depressing as fuck.

He followed Riley into the bathroom.

“Hmm,” she said, looking at the pile of dirty underwear on the linoleum floor.

“Bring back memories?” he asked. Her former neighbor Dickie had a history of dropping his underwear in the shared bathroom. At least, he had before he’d gotten himself murdered.

“I’m betting Larry doesn’t have a pair of salad tongs and a disgruntled woman to pick them up,” she joked.

Nick eyed the empty roll of toilet paper on the floor and opened the linen closet. No wife to buy Larry toilet paper or more than one towel. He wondered how much effort Larry would have had to make to avoid the divorce. And how much of a lazy son of bitch the guy had to be to not be willing to make it.

“This place is depressing me,” Riley said with a sigh as she popped open the medicine cabinet. “And apparently Larry.” She tossed a bottle of prescription pills at him. Anti-depressants. He emptied it on the off-white vanity top and counted the pills, checking the refill date on the bottle.

“Here’s one for cholesterol,” she said, handing him another.

He did the same with the second bottle.

“If he’s good about taking his pills, he’s about five days behind on both. They were both filled on the same day.”

“Five days fits the timeline of when Shelley said he stopped responding to the kids’ texts and calls.”

Nick snapped pictures of the pills, the bathroom, and the rest of the upstairs, and then they returned to the first floor. Burt was lounging on the couch.

His long tail whipped against the cushion when he saw them.

“So, what are we seeing or not seeing?” Nick prompted.

“He left his wallet and car keys,” Riley said. “But I don’t see a phone or a house key. So it looks like he was only planning on being gone for a short time. Or maybe that’s how he wanted it to look.”

“Shelley said he owed her child support, and there’s a couple of past due notices in that stack of mail. Maybe Larry got too far behind and decided to skip out on everything. People of the deadbeat variety do it all the time.”

She frowned. “Yeah, but he’s got two race bibs on the fridge for 5ks, and there was a space in the coat closet between his work shoes. It kind of looks like he went for a run and never came back.”

“But then there’s the cat,” he pointed out.

“What about it?”

“We didn’t see one.”

“Cats hide. It could be lurking in the shadows, plotting Burt’s untimely demise,” she said.

“There was food in the bowl. What cat goes five days without eating all its food?”

“So maybe someone’s feeding it?”

“And maybe that someone knows where Larry went,” he said.

She eyed him with what looked like a combination of respect and lust. “Impressive.”

“Yeah. I get that a lot,” he said, rubbing his knuckles on his shirt. “Let’s refill the cat dishes and go knock on some doors.”

She headed toward the kitchen then stopped. “Anti-depressants. A depressing house. Being away from his family. You don’t think he did something…”

“Like jump off a bridge?” He shrugged. “Coulda been a heart attack. Coulda been a mugging. A hit and run. An overdose. Or maybe he met a hot girl at a bar and crashed at her place for a few days.”

“What does it say about his life when the only explanations for his disappearance are that he died, had a secret drug problem, or he shacked up with a hot girl,” she said dryly.

“Maybe our pal Larry here staged his own disappearance and moved to a nice tropical island. You never know.”

Riley’s nose twitched.

“What?” he asked.

“Huh?” she asked, blinking at him.

“Your nose twitched. What are you seeing?”

She shrugged. “It’s more like a feeling. Like it feels like he had every intention of coming back. But I’m not getting anything clear. I think I burned up my psychic quota in the dead lady’s closet.”

Nick reached for her and gave her shoulders a rub. “Did you see anything when you were with Weber?”

“I had a vision in the victim’s closet. Not the murder or anything. But kind of a glimpse into her life. I didn’t barf, but I still kind of scared Kellen when I went all weak in the knees.”

He didn’t care for the idea of his girlfriend going weak in the knees around another guy.

“I think I have to build up my psychic endurance or something. I’m out of shape.”

“Don’t let your grandmother hear you say that tonight,” he warned. “She seems like the kind of lady who’ll force you into psychic boot camp in a sweat lodge in Thailand.”

Riley grimaced. “I think that’s why she’s here.”

“I’ll keep the scary lady away from you,” he promised, dropping a kiss on the top of her head. “Come on, Thorn. Let’s see what the neighbors have to say.”

No one answered the door on either side of Larry’s place. But the third door opened to a short, muscle-bound guy with a mid-life crisis earring and a fresh tattoo on his overinflated bicep. He was short enough for it to be a problem with medium-height women. He either had a nice tan or some Italian or Latino genes and smelled like he’d invested in a body spray company. Nick hazarded a guess that the shiny sports car in the lot belonged to this guy.

“You selling something?” the guy asked hopefully. His gaze landed on Riley and lit up. Pretty girl radar. “You can come in or whatever.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I’m Riley, and this is Nick.”

“Come in! Come in! I’m Roy. Holy crap. Is that a lion?”

Burt regally trotted past Roy.

“We think he’s a dog, but he thinks he’s a person,” Riley explained.

Roy laughed like it was the funniest joke he’d ever heard, and Nick could smell the desperation wafting under the cloud of body spray.

“We’re looking for your neighbor, Larry. He lives two doors down.”

Roy’s living room had been converted into a home gym. There were dumb bells lined up neatly on the carpet, a weight bench doubled as a coffee table. A white board with exercises and reps hung on the wall next to the front window.

“You work out,” Riley said, stating the obvious.

Roy lit up like the Rockefeller Christmas tree. “Yeah,” he said, his head bobbing. “I started getting into lifting. No big deal. My wife—er, ex-wife—said I was getting kind of soft. Well, joke’s on her now.” His head continued bobbing long after the sentence was complete. “Do you guys want something to drink? I was just about to make a protein shake,” he said, jerking his thumb toward a kitchen virtually identical to Larry’s.

Nick wondered how often residents got drunk and accidentally ended up in someone else’s townhouse.

“I’m good, but thanks for offering,” Riley said with a sweet smile.

Roy ate it up. “Have a seat. I’ve got some prosciutto and cheese in the fridge. It was gonna be my lunch, but I can share.”

“We’re good, buddy. Thanks,” Nick insisted. “About Larry Rupley. Do you know him?”

Roy was back to bobbing his head. “Sure. Yeah. Sure. Big dude. Runs. I’ve been trying to talk him into lifting with me. I’m getting up there with my maxes. Need a spotter.” Head bob.

“Do you know where he is?” Riley asked.

“Who? Larry?”

Nick blew out an exasperated breath. “Yeah, Larry. Do you know where he is? No one’s been able to get a hold of him for a couple of days.”

Head bob. “Yeah. No. Did you try his work?”

“That’s our next stop if you can’t help us.”

“I can help! I can totally help,” Roy insisted, looking panicked at the thought of being left alone with his muscle-y loneliness again.

“When’s the last time you saw Larry?” Riley asked.

“Um. Okay. Let me think,” he said. The veins on his neck were standing out, and Nick worried that thinking might put too much strain on the guy’s nervous system. “Uh. So like last Saturday a bunch of us—the ones that didn’t have their kids for the weekend—got together in the parking lot for a kind of tailgate. We grilled up some burgers. Drank some beers. Did some push-ups.”

He flexed and looked expectantly at Riley like he was about to offer her tickets to the gun show.

She smiled encouragingly. “That sounds like fun.”

Nick thought her lie sounded very convincing.

“Yeah. It’s cool. Most of us here, we’ve got a lot in common. With divorce and shit. Uh, sorry. Stuff.”

“Was Larry at the tailgate on Saturday?” Nick asked, trying to steer Roy back on course.

“Oh, yeah. Of course. I mean, he wasn’t doing push-ups. But he was definitely there.”

“How did he seem?” Riley asked.

“Seem?” Roy apparently had never heard the word.

“Did he seem like he was happy it was the weekend? Was he upset or stressed out about anything?”

“Oh.” Head bob. “Yeah. No. I don’t know. Men don’t, like, talk about our feelings and shit. Stuff. Sorry. Right, Mick?”

“Nick. So you’re not sure if he was in a good mood or a bad mood,” Nick clarified.

Roy frowned but continued to bob his head. “He seemed like he was in an okay mood. He said he didn’t want to eat too much because he was heading out for a run later.”

“Did you see him leave for the run?” Nick asked.

“Uh. No. Is Larry okay?” Roy asked, finally realizing it was weird to have strangers in his house asking questions about a man he hadn’t seen in almost a week.

“Do you know who’s been feeding Larry’s cat?” Riley asked.

“Mr. Pickles?”

Nick covered his laugh with a cough. “Uh, yeah, Mr. Pickles.”

“Larry feeds him.”

Riley’s smile was starting to show strain around the edges.

“You’ve been a big help,” Nick lied. “Here’s my card. If you think of anything else, give me a call.”

“Yeah. Sure.” Head bob. “Do you have a card?” Roy asked Riley.

“No. She doesn’t,” Nick snapped.

“Oh. Okay. So if I want to talk to you, I’ll just get a hold of Rick.”

“Nick,” Nick repeated.

“Oh. Okay. Right.”

They got back in the Jeep. Roy was still watching them and waving from his front door.

“And that’s why you talk about your feelings,” Riley said, waving back.

“Yeah, yeah. Come on, Thorn. I’ll take you to lunch.”