Page 38 of Luck of the Devil

He nodded and drained his cup.

I was dreading this. Not only the smell but going through her things. It felt like an invasion of her privacy, even if the sheriff’s department had done it before us.

We headed out the back door and walked over to the detached garage at the end of the driveway. My mother had never kept it locked, so it lifted easily, revealing the clear plastic bag containing a black, carry-on sized suitcase in the middle of the concrete floor. Her handbag was also in the bag. The smell of mildew was already strong, and we hadn’t even opened it yet.

Malcolm approached the plastic bag first and began to work on the loose knot at the top. Once he had it open, the smell nearly knocked me over. I buried my nose in the crook of my arm.

“That’s even worse than I expected,” I said, my voice muffled by the sleeve of my sweatshirt. But burying my nose into my own rank shirt reminded me that I wasn’t smelling like a rose myself.

“No denying it’s ripe,” he said, tugging down the side of the bag. “Got any gloves?”

“Not latex or nitrile.”

He lifted his gaze to me, flashing a smile. “What kind of PI are you?”

“I just got my license,” I said half-defensively. “I’ve barely gotten started.”

He walked over to my father’s work bench and began rifling around until he found a pair of grimy work gloves. I expected him to complain, but he just shoved his hand in the first glove and tugged it up to his wrist, then started tugging on the other. “I’ll open the suitcase and spread it open, then we’ll go through it, item by item.”

“I have a pair of winter gloves upstairs. I’ll get them so I can help.”

“I think it will work better if I go through it, and you point out if anything’s off.”

I gave a short nod, my stomach starting to protest at the stench. It would be faster if I got my own set of gloves, but he was right—I really needed to look at everything since I was more likely to spot if something was off.

He pulled out her purse first and set it on the concrete, water still dripping from the bottom.

The image of my mother and her purse sinking into the river filled my head, sending a wave of panic through me. I drew in a sharp breath, then instantly regretted it as my nose filled with more of the putrid stench.

He glanced up at me as I coughed, repressing a gag. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said testily, pissed at myself for showing a reaction like a damn amateur. Sure, I hadn’t examined submerged purses and suitcases before, but I’d seen a lengthy list of equally disgusting things. “Keep going.”

He pulled out her wallet, then opened it, revealing her driver’s license, a credit and debit card, and sixty-four dollars and fifty-three cents in cash.

“No receipts,” he said. “A lot of people keep a receipt or two in their wallet. Like a recent gas purchase.”

I wasn’t sure if he knew that for a fact or was just guessing. “Not my mother. Her wallet was always neat and tidy.”

“No paper with the burner phone number.”

I couldn’t stop my frown. “Yeah, not that we’d necessarily be able to read it anyway. The ink may have bled.”

“True,” he said, setting the wallet aside. “But we still don’t know how she remembered the number, so even a blank piece of paper would have been worth our consideration.”

He was right. I wasn’t sure why I was being contrary, but I also wasn’t going to apologize.

Next, he removed a compact with powder and a puff, two tubes of lipstick, her key fob for her car, and her slim planner. I hadn’t considered her planner, which I could only attribute to my brain working on half its cylinders.

“There might be clues in here about what she was up to before her death,” Malcolm said.

My stomach knotted. Was it too much to hope she’d recorded where she was going or who she’d met with to get the burner? Could it be that easy?

Malcolm stood and walked over to me, carefully opening the cover. The printed ink was still slightly intact and readable, so I was hoping whatever she’d written was legible.

He started flipping pages, and once he hit January, my hopes were dashed. While I could see that something had been written on certain days, the words were mostly unreadable smears.

“We’re looking for March,” Malcolm said. “The interior pages might be more legible.”