Trading Places Read online

  He took his eyes off the crowded highway long enough to risk a glance in the rearview mirror. Aggie was sound asleep against Gus’s broad back. The dog’s eyes were closed, too. He returned to his thoughts. There for a while he thought he was ready to trip down the aisle because he’d been convinced he’d met his soul mate. Stacey had said she was willing to sign the prenup he insisted on. What she objected to was his friendship with Aggie. And she hated Gus, which meant he wasn’t going to have a bunch of dogs running around his house. He’d cooled it right then and there because there was no way in hell he was going to give up his friendship with Aggie or Gus.

  He’d thought his heart was broken, but Aggie convinced him it was just bruised. Citing the vet who tended to Gus, she’d said, “As long as you can eat and poop, you’ll be all right.” She was right, of course, because he had survived. Stacey, the last he’d heard, was engaged to some disc jockey.

  Alex risked another look at his passenger. His heart fluttered at how wasted she looked. They’d been friends for longer than he could remember, even before it was fashionable to say you had friends of the opposite sex. Even after all these years he still couldn’t get over the fact that his friend packed a gun, wore a badge, and was an expert in martial arts and knew everything there was to know about automatic weapons. It was still a mystery to him how she’d managed to have a relationship with Tom Madsen with all she packed into a twenty-four-hour period.

  He’d never liked Tom Madsen. He’d tolerated him for Aggie’s sake just the way she had tolerated Stacey Olin. He wondered now the way he’d wondered hundreds of times during the past six months why he and Aggie had never hooked up as a couple. Once, he’d thought she had a crush on him. She’d pooh-poohed that idea right out of his head. He’d lusted after her, that was for sure, but she’d chopped him off at the knees from the git-go, saying she’d invested too much time and energy into making their friendship work to have him foul it up. If he’d had a tail, it would have been between his legs when he’d scurried away after that remark.

  It was a wonderful friendship. One he cherished and treasured.

  Alex slowed the Pathfinder and drove up the long driveway that led to his house. Gus reared up and looked out the window. A paw slapped down on his shoulder. Smart dog. He knew they weren’t home.

  “It’s just for today and tonight, Gus. Up and at ’em, Aggie! We are at my abode.”

  “Really. So soon? I can’t believe I fell asleep. I can’t wait to sleep in a real bed with nice sheets. You have some nice sheets, don’t you, Alex? Do you have some with flowers on them?”

  “Nah. I’m a guy. I have striped ones—360-thread count. My sister gave them to me. Will they do? They’re kind of soft, you know, slithery.”

  “Slithery, huh? Stripes will do just fine. Do you mind if I give Gus a bath in your tub? I want to wash away all that smell. I don’t want any reminders of the pound. I’d like to borrow some of your clothes. I know I’ll swim in them, but that’s okay. Did I thank you for everything, Alex?”

  “About five hundred times. C’mon, I’m going to cook for you. You’re going to eat it, too. I even bought you a bottle of super-duper vitamins this morning. While the sauce is cooking, I’m going to your place and rip off that damn crime scene tape and meet my cleaning lady there. Tomorrow when you go home, it will be like you never left.”

  She nodded. “I always liked this house. It’s an Alex house. I never met a guy who has as much junk as you do. You have to stop storing stuff for other people or else charge them rent. Sometimes you are so dumb, Alex. I wish you’d quit being such a soft touch. People take advantage of you.” She waved her arms to point out three mountain bikes, assorted cartons and boxes, picture frames, and other things she called junk.

  “You want me to be hard as nails like you, is that what you’re saying?”

  Aggie stopped in her tracks and looked up at him. “Is that how you think of me, Alex?” she asked softly.

  “Sometimes. Most of the time. A lot of the time. Yeah.”

  “Hard as nails goes with the job. I do know how to…purr.”

  He was standing on a slippery slope, and he knew it. “That’s great. You know where the bathroom is. Do your thing, and I’ll start the sauce. It has to cook all day. Stir it every so often. I’ll bring something for lunch when I get back from your place.”

  “Okay. Thanks for signing me out and bringing me here. I’ll make it up to you somehow.”

  Alex got a vicious pleasure out of ripping away the yellow crime scene tape. He wadded it into a ball before he tossed it on the front porch. He took a moment to look around. The porch looked drab and ugly, like no one ever walked or sat on it. He knew Aggie loved the porch. She’d fix it up as soon as she got back. Spring flowers were out now. The next time he came here it would probably look like a rainbow.

  The key fit easily into the lock. Before he turned the knob he looked down at his watch. Sophia, his twice-a-week cleaning lady, was due any minute. He walked into the dim interior, did a double take, then backed out to the porch. This was the right house. He’d been here hundreds of times. He liked it because it was small, cozy, and comfortable, the way Aggie could be when she wasn’t packing heat and her billy club.

  He sucked in his breath, reentered the house, where he fumbled for the light switch. Seeing the front room or as Aggie called it, the parlor, in the dim light was one thing but seeing it flooded with light was something else.

  He cursed then, using every obscenity he’d ever learned. The room, and probably the rest of the house, was a shambles. The furniture, the comfortable two-seater chair that Aggie liked to curl up in with Gus was nothing but a frame, the contents of the cushions spilled everywhere. The couch was in worse shape. The lamps were smashed, the pictures ripped and tattered. Even the rug in the middle of the floor was slashed and half-rolled-up.

  Shambles was too kind a word.

  “Who did this?” Sophia asked, coming up behind him and scaring the daylights out of him.

  Alex whirled around. “I don’t know. I just got here. I’m no cop, but even I can figure out someone was looking for something. That’s as far as I’ve gotten. I’m sure the rest of the house is just like this. Look, I can’t let Aggie come back here until we get this fixed. I’m going to leave you my cell phone. Call the trash people and have them come here now to cart off this stuff. Pay them whatever it takes.” He stuffed some bills in her hand. “This is a lot for you to handle, Sophia, so call a couple of your nieces and have them come to help you. I’ll pay you all double. Just get it all cleaned up. I’m going out to buy some new furniture. Take this credit card and go to the Lenox mall and buy some new sheets with flowers on them. Make sure they’re soft.”

  The cleaning lady nodded. “You better check the bedroom to see if the mattress has been cut up before you go shopping, Mr. Alex.”

  Alex sprinted up the steps. “Son of a bitch!” The bedroom and the guest room were just as bad as the living room and dining room. A murderous look on his face, he careened down the steps and out to the kitchen. Every dish appeared to be broken. Flour, sugar, coffee, and pasta crunched under his feet. The oven door was hanging on one hinge. The refrigerator door hung open, everything in the freezer smelled rotten. He looked at the back door to the house, which opened into the kitchen, and saw the dead bolts in place.

  As he bolted from the house, he called over his shoulder. “Send one of your nieces to the store to replenish the refrigerator. Buy some staples to get her through a few days. And, for God’s sake, don’t forget the dog food and hamburger meat for Gus.”

  Two hours later, he had the promise of the furniture salesman that delivery would be made by six o’clock. While the furniture wasn’t the same as what Aggie had had, it was brand new, comfortable, and soft. It was the best he could do.

  There was no way he was going to mention this to Aggie today. Tomorrow would be soon enough.

  He was almost to his own house when he realized the front door to Aggie’s
house had been locked. The kitchen door had a dead bolt at the top and one at the bottom, and were keyless. The bolts were for nighttime use. Whoever had entered the house had a key. Tom Madsen would have had a key. Tom Madsen was dead. Who got his personal effects? Or were they still at the police station?

  Aggie looked down at her empty plate. “I don’t remember the last time I ate that much. I think it’s your kitchen, Alex. I like all your green plants and this big bow window. I might get up early in the morning and sit here with the sun coming through. Do not even think about trying to shove that ice cream into me. Maybe later if I can stay up long enough to even want it. You make better spaghetti than I do.” She hitched up the oversize tee shirt that was sliding off her shoulders.

  Alex leaned back in his captain’s chair. “Do you have a game plan, Aggie? Or are you going to go home and vegetate?” His conscience pricked him. Tell her now.

  “I might veg out for a few days. I’ve done nothing but think these past two months. The four months prior to that I was in too much pain even to think.”

  Alex made his voice carefully neutral. “Do you want to talk about it, Aggie? Two heads are better than one. I’ve been known to come up with a good idea now and then. I think what I want to know right now is are you going to go back to work at the end of the ninety days? You don’t have to. You majored in criminal justice. The FBI would love someone like you.” This might be the time to tell her about the condition of her house.

  “I’m…working on something in my mind. It could be dangerous, and it could be risky. I don’t have to take the whole ninety days. As long as I show up for the shrink appointments, I’ll be in compliance with the department’s rules. I can do it over the phone, too. If I wanted to, I could go back to work next week. I don’t want to. I’m going to go to the farm and raise organic carrots. Gus will have a great time running around in all the open areas. He needs lots of exercise now.” At her friend’s look of disbelief, she grimaced. “What’s wrong with raising organic carrots? Nothing, that’s what.

  “Don’t you get it, Alex? They won’t be able to find me. You and Lizzie are the only ones who know about the farm. Hell, they don’t even know about Lizzie’s being my sister much less my twin. I didn’t exactly lie on my application, I just didn’t include that information. I didn’t want anyone to know my sister was a professional gambler. Among other things I’d rather not talk about. I was born and raised right here in Atlanta. The farm came to me and Lizzie from an uncle on my mother’s side of the family. It belonged to his wife, but they never had children. Lizzie and I were next in line to inherit. I never even told Tom. Before you can ask, I guess I didn’t trust him enough to tell him. Our relationship was over months before the…the accident. I call it an accident because I don’t know what else to call it.”

  Alex fiddled with his napkin. Organic carrots. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Aggie ran her fingers through her hair. She looked away. “Because I didn’t want to hear you say, I told you so. Two days…before…I put in for a transfer. If Tom knew, he didn’t let on. He really thought we would get back together at some point.”

  Alex looked down at the old brick he’d laid for his kitchen floor. He looked for flaws but couldn’t see any. Maybe he should have been a mason. He really didn’t mean to ask, but the words tumbled out. “What went wrong?”

  Aggie licked at her dry lips. “That blue wall. I didn’t like some of the guys Tom hung out with. He told me he thought three of them, Dutch Davis, Joe Sandors, and Will Fargo, the property clerk, were helping themselves to some of the confiscated drugs and selling them. He said they didn’t know he was on to them. That was the reason for the stakeout that night. The Big Three, as he called them, were going to peddle several kilos of cocaine to two buyers in that alley. A whole kilo would have been missed, so Fargo stole little bits at a time. Then when they had enough for a big score, they’d sell them. We’re talking big bucks here. I’m not sure in my own mind that Tom wasn’t in on it. I think Tom thought I was on to him and that was why I broke it off. He never said that. It’s just my opinion.

  “I can’t get it straight in my mind. Either it was a setup to take me out, or he was on the up and up and they took him out. I guess I was supposed to die, too. And, of course, Gus. I want to know what happened, but I’m realistic enough to know I might never find out.”

  Alex thought he probably should change the subject to organic carrots rather than the condition of her house. The only thing was, he knew squat about carrots other than they were on the sweet side and crunchy as well as good for the eyes. He knew even less about breaking and entering and cop stuff. He opted for another alternative altogether.

  “Where does your sister enter into this?”

  “I don’t know. I thought…maybe I dreamed it, but I was going to call her and ask her to take my place while I…”

  “Raise organic carrots.”

  “Yeah. See, even you got it. Keep it simple, I always say.” She yawned, then apologized.

  “You said your sister was squirrelly, a flaky kind of gal. I tend to think your department would frown on such shenanigans, and isn’t it against the law to impersonate a police officer? That’s what she would be doing, you know.”

  Aggie yawned again. “Everything you said is true. Look, I didn’t say I was going to go ahead with it. I said I was thinking about it. I could pull it off. Lizzie looks just like me. Maybe not right this minute, but in a couple of weeks, after I put some weight back on, no one will be able to tell the difference.

  “One time, when we were seniors in high school, Lizzie was juggling three or four different boyfriends and she got things a little mixed up. She liked these two guys and somehow or other made a date with each of them for the same night. She asked me to stand in for her on one of them that particular night. Then she said I had to date the other guy so we could decide which one to pick. Do you believe that? I did it because I always did what Lizzie wanted for some reason. Even back then she liked living on the edge. Anyway, I picked guy number two because he didn’t have arms like an octopus. Two weeks later she was on to some other guy and neither one of those guys had a clue they were going out with me.

  “We used to fool our mother, too. You’d think a mother would know her own kids. Ours didn’t. For a long time she made us wear bracelets with our names on them, but as we got older, she just gave up. It was fun, I do have to say that. Today, there isn’t anyone who can tell us apart. Unless they look at Lizzie’s butt. She has a tattoo there. They’ll probably assign me to a different precinct, where no one knows the old me.

  “In her…ah…line of work, Lizzie had to learn about firearms. She’s a crack shot. She’s almost as good as me in the martial arts arena. Again, in her line of work, those skills are necessities. Plus, she can bullshit her way out of any situation. The end will justify the means, Alex.”

  Alex tipped his chair backward and stared up at the ceiling. “Let me make sure I have this straight now. You and your squirrelly sister are going to trade places in the hopes that she can ferret out what went down that night. While she’s doing that, you are going to be at the farm you think no one knows about, raising organic carrots.”

  “I might try onions and peas, too. Yeah, that’s right. I don’t ever have to work again unless I want to. That takes a lot of the pressure off me. Lizzie and I inherited five hundred thousand dollars when our uncle died and left us the farm because with our parents gone, we were the only surviving relatives. We split it. It was his insurance money. Lizzie is a multimillionaire these days. She wanted to take my share and gamble with it, but I was afraid, so I only gave her seventy-five thousand. Guess what I have today in my bank account?”

  “A hundred and fifty?”

  “Think BIG, Alex.”

  “Double that?”

  “Really BIG, Alex. Lizzie is a high roller.”

  “A million dollars!”

  “Times five.”

  Alex’s eyes popped wide. “No
kidding!”

  Aggie’s head bobbed up and down. “It’s a good thing I’m smart, considering my present circumstances. I’m sure the department already ran a check on my finances. It’s all in Lizzie’s name in Vegas and the Caymans. And she pays the taxes on the earnings.”

  “I guess that means you trust her.”

  “Of course I trust her. She’s my twin. We’re close. Besides, she knows I’d kill her if she ever touched a penny of it. She knows how to do that offshore thing, too. I could probably start up a truck farm of some sort with my organic vegetables.”

  Alex groaned at her confidence. “Do you know anything about raising vegetables?”

  “Not one little thing. When I get home, I’m going on the Net. How hard can it be? You dig a hole, put a seed in it, cover it up, and wait for it to sprout. You water and then you harvest. Voilà, organic whatever.”

  Alex didn’t have the heart to tell her there had to be more to gardening than that. Then again, what do I know? I’m just a stupid engineer. “I’m going with you, Aggie. I just decided. I wouldn’t miss the first batch of carrots for anything.”