Buried Secrets Can Be Murder: Charlie Parker Mysteries, Book #14 (The Charlie Parker Mysteries) (2 page)

Chapter 2

I trailed Ron upstairs to his office to get the details.

“Mel Flores was the man who called. It’s his sister, Rosa, who is missing. She packed a bag and took off from San Diego about a year ago and they’ve heard nothing from her. Now their sister, Ivana, is critically ill. Likely only has a few weeks to live.” He flopped down in the chair at his messy desk. “Their parents are gone, so the whole family consists of the three siblings. Ivana is asking about Rosa. Mel says it’s heartbreaking to watch. And he has no idea how to find her.”

“There has to be more to this. Of all the investigators in all the world, he happened to call us?”

“Apparently, Rosa left because of a man. Some guy that she called Chaco. Mel never knew his last name. Rosa’s only twenty, the man was in his thirties and Mel didn’t approve of that. When he forbade her seeing Chaco they ran off together. At least he assumes they did. She hasn’t contacted them.”

Where was he going with this?

“Mel said he’s been wracking his brain and he remembered that Chaco came from Albuquerque. It’s a sketchy connection but it’s all he had. He found us in the Yellow Pages.”

“Gosh, Ron . . . a year ago? They could have traveled the world in that amount of time.”

He didn’t look very hopeful. “I know it. I tried to tell him that I wasn’t too confident about this. I don’t know, Charlie. You should have heard the desperation in his voice.”

I could well imagine. Well, I really couldn’t imagine. We weren’t always the closest family but at least we touched base often enough that my two brothers and I always knew we could find each other. I blew out a breath.

“We can start working on it Monday, but you know Wednesday is Christmas. Offices won’t be open, records won’t be available.”

“We don’t have that long. He wants Rosa home by Christmas.”

What?
I stared at him. “You didn’t promise that, did you? Ron . . .”

He held up one hand. “I didn’t promise. I know better than that.”

“But you told him—”

“I told him we would do our very best. I’ll get on the phone first thing in the morning.”

It was all we could do.

* * *

I woke up at seven the next morning in a mild panic. We had planned to close the RJP offices this week, using the time for a complete refinish of the hardwood floors downstairs. Business was always slow during the holidays and it would be a chance to get the work done when Sally wouldn’t be there to breathe the dust and vapors. My plan was to supervise the crew and finish some final accounting entries for the year. And now Ron had dropped a new case into the mix.

The workers would arrive at nine and I still had furniture to move. I jabbed Drake in the ribs and he moaned his way out of a deep sleep. I threw on yesterday’s jeans and sweatshirt and dashed through my morning routine, pulling my hair into a ponytail while I swished with mouthwash.

Freckles, our seven-month-old pup, bounded out of her crate and trailed me to the kitchen; I let her out to the back yard, keeping an eye on her to be sure she didn’t head off through the break in the hedge to Elsa Higgins’s house. Although my lifelong neighbor and surrogate grandmother loved the new baby of our family, the vigor of the little shepherd mix puppy sometimes threatened to take the ninety-year-old woman off her feet. I always felt as if I had to keep an eye on both of them at once.

This morning, the dog’s desire for breakfast won out over her curiosity at getting through the hedge. She circled our yard in record time and zoomed toward me, hoping that her dish would be filled by the time she skidded across the kitchen floor. I gathered her close and ruffled her chilly brown and white fur for a moment before I let her at the food. Drake came into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes.

“It’s Saturday,” he complained.

“I know. I wish we’d been able to schedule the floor guys for next week, but they were already booked right up to Christmas Eve.” I rubbed my knuckles against the grizzly whiskers on his chin. “At least we’re getting it done early in the day.”

“And we have the Brewster’s party tonight,” he reminded as he bent over and nuzzled my neck.

I’d completely forgotten the hasty invitation for cocktails but I sure wasn’t going to pass up a chance to see inside the Talavera Mansion. I had no idea what I would wear to this shindig and there would be no chance to fit a shopping trip into this crazy day.

“We’d better go,” I said. “Those floor guys will be showing up soon.”

Freckles had wolfed down her breakfast, and I grabbed a package of muffins I’d bought a couple days ago, promising Drake there would be coffee at the office.

Outside, the air was crisp and cold although the New Mexico sky was a clear, deep blue. No forecast of snow—not even a cloud to make it feel like winter. Freckles led me toward my Jeep, having picked up the word ‘go’ in our conversation. She wouldn’t settle down until she was allowed into the backseat. We all piled in and headed east on Central.

A blue panel truck sat on the street outside the converted Victorian that houses RJP Investigations, and I could see a man standing at the front door, looking as if he’d just raised his hand to knock. He watched me pull into the driveway. Drake hopped out to speak with him, while I steered down the long drive to the back, leashed the dog and entered through the kitchen. Once I had the eager mutt settled in my upstairs office I joined Drake and the crew downstairs where they’d already begun moving furniture. The plan was to stash everything from the reception area and conference room in the kitchen and a storage room near it—stacked, piled, shuffled around in whatever way we could. I directed traffic for a couple of minutes but they seemed to have everything under control.

Upstairs, Freckles whined to join the action.

“Sorry, kid, that’s not happening.” I patted her fuzzy little head and stretched the collapsible baby gate across the stairway to let her have free run through the second floor. After five minutes or so she settled beside my chair.

Ron had left a sticky-note on my clean desk, advising that he was going to the city offices to see if he could get any information on a Saturday morning. Although I didn’t hold out much hope for his success, I was glad to see that he was working the Flores case quickly.

The phone machine contained two messages, the first from a man who identified himself as Chester Flowers from Seattle and said he wanted to chat with Ron about working together on a cold case that had once been in the headlines. That sounded enticing. The second was a tearful female who thought her husband was cheating. I hate those cases. I jotted the names and numbers for Ron and erased the messages. I could feel for the lady but since my standard answer would be, “So leave the jerk,” I’d learned to pass them along without comment to my brother. Let him follow the guy and snap the dirty pictures. I impaled the message slip onto the tip of his letter opener so he would realize it was a new note, not something that had languished on the messy desk for weeks.

Accompanied by the whir of machinery from below, I started up my computer and checked my email.

Ron arrived and peeked in once, told me he’d had no luck downtown. While I sorted invoices and entered customer payments, I heard him pecking away at computer keys, most likely as he checked certain online records such as news stories or the police blotter for possible leads on Rosa Flores or the elusive Chaco.

At some point Drake came in with sandwiches, which we ate at my desk and shared with Freckles. I think he took her outside on the leash at some point—I’d lost track of time locked in my fascinating little world of debits and credits.

Ron ate a sandwich and went back to his office, where I heard parts of a series of phone calls which all seemed to last only a few seconds. Poor guy, nothing worse than having to call every number in the book in hopes of finding your quarry.

When calls of “Ma’am? Ma’am?” drifted up the stairwell, I snapped to and realized the sun was already low in the sky.

“We’re finished down here,” the guy called out. “Don’t let anyone touch those floors for forty-eight hours. The polymer has to dry really well or you’ll get smudges and tracks.”

“Okay.”

“We’re letting ourselves out through the kitchen,” he said, and I heard the door close firmly.

My phone rang. Drake. “Sorry to abandon you,” he said, “but I’m on the way. Five minutes. Are you ready to leave? We’re supposed to be at the Brewster’s in thirty minutes.”

I stared around the room, a little disoriented. I thanked him and didn’t admit that I hadn’t realized he and Freckles weren’t there. How could anybody with even half a life get so wrapped up in tax codes and accounting entries?

I peered around the doorjamb into Ron’s office, where he was still on the phone. “No luck yet,” he said as he ended the call. He held up a photo that Mel Flores had faxed over. The pretty young woman in it had billows of brown hair and large dark eyes. I stared at her for a full minute, hoping we would find her in time.

* * *

For the second time in a few days I slipped into the outfit I’d worn to our office party. I don’t think I only imagined that the slacks fit a bit tighter. I briefly debated wearing the same thing to a second holiday party right away, but only two people were likely to have been at both events. Drake wouldn’t dare say anything, and the other was Jerry Brewster. I decided that, A) men don’t usually notice those things and B) they couldn’t care less. Women are the ones obsessive about clothing.

The Talavera Mansion, as it’s been known for about a hundred years, is a magnificent structure of stone and slate, towers and intricate stained glass windows. Originally built by a man who reputedly made his fortune in silver mines in the northern part of the state, the house had been occupied only a few years before he died and the estate became embroiled in a battle of the heirs. By the time they finished fighting it out in court, the four sons and widow were all penniless and the house had to be sold for past-due taxes. It stayed unoccupied until another self-made millionaire took it over, but his fortune was equally shaky and again the tax man came into possession. During the 1930s it became a care facility for all those people who were sent to the Southwest where the dry air would heal their various lung ailments, then it became a private residence again when the neighborhood association fought against its becoming a ward of the state and being turned into a tourist attraction. Supposedly, one family closed off most of it and lived in three rooms on the third floor, to save on the gas and electric bills while they kept up the brave pretense of a genteel lifestyle.

Enter the 1960s, when the Brewster family’s line of car dealerships began to take off, and Jerry Brewster’s father bought the then-empty old mansion. Rumor had it that he picked it up for a few thousand and a promise to restore it—at least the exterior—to its former glory. Or, if not exactly glory, at least keep it from becoming an eyesore. He did a lot better than that. During my childhood in this neighborhood, the grounds were trimmed and the house looked every bit the magnificent castle it was meant to be. I’d never been inside and actually didn’t know anyone who had.

While the mansion looks pretty impressive all year, during the holiday season it becomes truly glorious. The normal outdoor lighting, which casts the brown sandstone structure in a reddish-gold glow at night, is switched off and every tree and shrub on the entire four-acre property is tastefully covered in red Christmas lights. Traditional New Mexican luminarias—which all the homes in the neighborhood use—line every walkway, driveway, roofline and balcony. In earlier times these were made the old way, from paper bags with a couple inches of sand in the bottom and a votive candle that would burn all night. The paper ones are still used along the sidewalks, lit only on Christmas Eve, but those that actually touch the houses, especially on rooflines, are now electric. We give up ambiance for safety and convenience nowadays.

Drake noticed a cluster of cars near the triple garage and a few bordering the circular drive, so we joined the gang. Someone else pulled in behind us and we said polite little hellos to each other and walked up to the front door together.

Jerry Brewster answered the door himself and ushered us into a foyer of deeply carved mahogany paneling and slate flooring. An elaborately carved staircase with sturdy balusters rose to the left. Jerry draped our wraps over a coat rack in the elegant entry hall. He wore dark wool slacks with a sweater, and he seemed a little preoccupied. But he brightened his expression for the newcomers and waved vaguely toward the living room where Christmas music played softly. The couple who’d arrived with us headed that direction.

“Drake! Glad you could make it. Come in. Charlie, great to see you again.” He shook Drake’s hand. “Now where did Felina go? I want you to meet my wife.”

Felina must have heard her name. The model-slim woman came breezing into the foyer and latched onto Jerry’s arm. She was
très
élégant
in a floor-length casual hostess gown of some wispy fabric in emerald green. Her shoulder-length blond hair and her makeup were perfectly done. Beside Jerry’s burgundy sweater they looked like a classy set of Christmas ornaments.

“Darling, I think everyone’s here,” she said. “And I can’t seem to work that fancy wine opener. Can you come?”

 
“Drake is the pilot that I worked with on the new ad campaign,” Jerry told Felina as he introduced us. “And Charlie is a private investigator.”