Free Reluctant Detective by Finley Martin Page B

already had opened the door and one foot was on the ground. Sean shoved the suitcase, and it tumbled after him.
    Sean hit the gas pedal. There was a short screech of rubber and his car sped off.
    Carson’s house was only five buildings away. Even in that short distance, though, Carson felt very conspicuous. A sixteen-year-old toting a suitcase in the middle of the night. If there were eyes on the street, then he was sure that they were staring suspiciously at him. He kept alert for the sound of footsteps on the sidewalk, the rattle of a doorknob, or the creak of a floorboard. But it was late. Likely, no one was about.
    Carson lived with his parents. They rented a small wood-frame home built in the ’40s. Next to it was a small detached garage with a sagging roof and a twist in one wall. Carson tugged on the door handle, but it stuck. A hefty pull popped it open, and the switch inside the door lit a 25-watt bulb in a socket dangling from a rafter.
    It cast a dim light, but it was enough for Carson to see what lay inside the suitcase.
    Anne Brown felt a headache growing between her temples and a queasiness knotting her stomach. Her thoughts had run dry, and now they began repeating one another in a convulsive loop. All this was getting her nowhere, she thought.
    She started the car and drove off, dumbly following her headlight beams homeward along nearly empty city streets. Once home, she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep, but she had nowhere else to go and no other leads to pursue. It was a chance occurrence. Bad luck , she could hear herself telling the client over the telephone, but somehow she could not imagine an understanding, patient response. Nobody can shrug off a million-and-a-half dollars. Equally bewildering, she could not put a face to the voice which had called her on the phone so few hours ago and, when people can’t put a face on their fears, imagination paints what it will.
    He’s going to be pissed, she thought. Maybe even violent.
    Anne’s thoughts turned to her daughter, Jacqueline, home in bed, perhaps dreaming of her last school day of the year. Ambient light from a half-drawn shade drew out the soft textures of whites and rose from the furnishings of her room. Her head alone peeked above a hand-stitched quilt and the snug cotton sheets covering her small four-post bed. A vanity stood against a second wall. A CD player lay nearby, a jumble of disks and cases scattered across the floor. A computer table and a lightly filled bookcase took up the third wall near the door, and posters of rock bands and pop singers squeezed a collection of dolls and stuffed toys into corners of the room. In her mind Anne could see Jacqueline’s chest rise and fall, softly and easily and regularly, like gentle rollers sweeping across a windless Northumberland Strait, and suddenly she missed Jacqueline very much – too much to go home yet.
    Anne’s tires chirped as she hit the brakes, and they squealed noisily as she spun the wheel and swung her car into a U-turn. Anne’s car intersected the Perimeter Road north of the city and in less than five minutes she had turned into the industrial park where she was supposed to leave the suitcase full of cash. Then she reached the empty lot where the truck trailers were staged, drove her car between them, and turned off the headlights. She got out of the car and pretended to put something between the rear wheels of the middle trailer, just in case someone was spotting the drop-off. Then she got into her car and drove off.
    She took a circuitous route through the industrial park, looking for cars or trucks where no vehicles should be this time of night. There were none. Then two blocks away she pulled into the parking lot of a call centre. The call centre ran a night shift, and the lot was half-full. Anne snatched the camera from her car and crept slowly among the shadows between buildings. She hid herself in the darkness between the brick front of