Buried Secrets Can Be Murder: Charlie Parker Mysteries, Book #14 (The Charlie Parker Mysteries) (21 page)

Hmm . . . At least it explained why the Honda’s front quarter panel was undamaged. So, if Roxanne Freizel’s car didn’t cause the accident someone else’s did. It just opened up the possibilities, once again, to the rest of the world. Scout Stiles had been driving a red car the other day. But I still hadn’t gotten a look at Dave’s car and wasn’t about to rule out anyone in that family.

I thanked Ron and handed him his ham-and-cheese on white bread. We each ate at our desks, Ron intent on getting through those background checks for Flagg as quickly as possible and me—I found my head whirling with the new information I’d picked up this morning. Information but not a lot of answers.

The telephone kept ringing with callbacks from Ron’s inquiries, which really didn’t help my state of mind. Each time I thought I was getting close to something, an interruption happened. I finally set the answering machine and told Ron he could deal with the calls he wanted to and ignore the rest. I packed up all the Donovan case information and decided I could get more done from my own kitchen table.

Chapter 22

I pulled into my driveway, a little dismayed to see that I had a visitor. Katie Brewster sat on our front porch, huddled against the wall with her arms wrapped around herself. I knew at a glance that she was crying.

She looked up at me with reddened eyes when I got out of the Jeep. Freckles jumped down and rushed to lick at Katie’s face. She sobbed as she ruffled the wriggly puppy’s fur.

“Katie? What’s wrong?” I knelt so she would have to look at my face.

She shook her head back and forth.

“Katie . . .” All kinds of disaster scenarios went through my head.

“Me and my dad had a fight.”

“Ah. You want something to drink? I was just about to make some tea.”

“He called me a liar.” She stood up and stomped her boots, as if there was snow on them.

I unlocked the door and she followed me inside. “You look kind of cold. How about some cocoa or apple cider?”

She trailed me into the kitchen as I put the kettle on. I heard a moist sniff so I handed her the tissue box.

“You want to talk about the fight?”

“I told him Felina keeps secrets from him. She had a nose job. Then he goes, ‘
hunh
-uh’ and I’m like ‘
yeah
.’ And then he gets all bent cause he asked where I found that out and I said I found proof in one of her vanity drawers when I went to borrow some eye shadow. He gets mad at me and says I can’t be going through Felina’s stuff. ‘Grownups have private things kids can’t get into.’ He means those disgusting thongs she wears. I’ve even found weirder stuff than that.”

Whoa, too much information. I turned to the kettle, which was about to whistle.

“Cocoa? Cider?” I offered.

“You said you were having tea. Do you make it the same way the queen does? Cause I saw this TV show about England and they make their tea pretty fancy.”

I had serious doubts about the queen preparing her own tea, but I offered to brew some in a pot and call it real English tea, and that idea seemed to interest her. Anything to keep her off the subject of her stepmother’s underwear. I rummaged for a teapot and tossed in two bags, hoping she wouldn’t point out that real English tea used loose leaves. I set out a pair of my mother’s china cups and saucers and Katie settled at the table, while I put the final Christmas cookies on a plate.

“I just wanted some eye shadow that was a more adult color than my old black kind,” she said, not yet finished with the earlier conversation. “I told my dad I’d, you know, buy my own once I get my paycheck.

“Plus, how insulting that he didn’t even take this seriously.” She pulled a couple of scraps from her pocket; one was a business card. “Look on the back. Isn’t that word,
rhinoplas
— whatever. Doesn’t that mean nose job?”

I poured the tea and sat down before picking up the card.

It was from a cosmetic surgeon in Scottsdale, Arizona. Written on the back was the word rhinoplasty and a dollar amount that would have fed a small African village for a year.

“That’s her writing,” Katie said. “Felina went to this doctor.”

“Well . . . it could mean that she just asked for the price.” The card looked a little beaten, as if it had been in the bottom of a makeup bag for awhile. “Maybe she consulted the doctor a long time ago and then forgot all about it.” No way was I going to mention the tidbit of gossip I’d heard at the food bank to a twelve-year-old who was likely to go running straight to her dad with ‘but Charlie said . . .’.

“So you don’t believe me either.” She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest.

“Sorry. I didn’t say that. I’m just offering an alternate suggestion. It’s called playing devil’s advocate. It’s not really an argument, it’s just when you come up with other possibilities for a situation.”

“Hm. Maybe.” She held out the other scrap of paper. “So what’s this, then? It’s some kind of secret, I’ll bet. I didn’t even show this one to my dad after he accused me of being a snoop.”

The folded square was an old newspaper clipping, even more battered than the business card. The article was a short squib about a mugging. The victim was not named and the undated piece only said that the police were looking into it. An odd thing for anyone to hold onto as a keepsake. I handed it back and Katie jammed it into her pocket.

“So, what should I do?” Katie asked after a few noisy slurps at the hot tea. “About my dad being mad at me.”

If a twelve-year-old girl didn’t already know how to wrap her father around her little finger, I wasn’t sure what information I could offer but she probably just wanted reassurance.

“All parents and kids have disagreements and parents are amazingly forgiving,” I said, remembering a couple of my own grosser breaches of conduct. “I’d bet that if you just told him you were sorry and promised not to get into Felina’s things anymore, that’s all it would take. He won’t stay mad at you for long.”

“You think?”

“I’m pretty sure.”

She gobbled down the last two cookies and looked a lot happier than when she’d arrived. I watched her walk down the block, then retrieved the files I’d brought home from the office. Clearing the tea things from the table I realized that Katie had left the surgeon’s business card behind. Why would a person keep a card like that, from a doctor far from home?

Personally, I agreed with Katie. Felina probably did have some ‘work’ done and wanted, for whatever reason, to keep that fact from Jerry. The conversation between the two women at the food bank only added further fuel to the fire of my curiosity. On a whim I picked up the telephone.

Okay, I know this is really none of my business, and if Jerry Brewster were my dad he’d be well within his rights to ground me for life . . . But I did it anyway.

A bubbly sounding receptionist answered the phone.

“Hello,” I said. “This is Felina Brewster. I was a patient of Doctor Carter’s a few years back. I need to have my medical records sent to me at my new address.”

“Brewster? Hold a moment and let me pull your file. I’ll need to verify some information with you.”

This could get sticky. But before I’d made the decision whether to brave my way through it or hang up like a chicken, she came back on the line.

“Ms. Brewster? I don’t find a record under your name.” She verified the spelling. “That’s what I looked for. Could you have used another last name when you came here?”

Eek. Felina probably had done exactly that. If she’d had surgery it was before she met Jerry Brewster, and I had no idea what her maiden name was.

“Um, no. Maybe there’s another Doctor Carter in the area and I’ve just gotten the wrong number.” I hung up before the woman could take the conversation any further.

I turned to the sink and washed the tea cups and teapot vigorously enough to cover my embarrassment over that stupid call. What had I hoped to accomplish anyway? Thinking I might find evidence to back up Katie’s side of the argument? Or, really, just wanting to verify the
dishy
gossip.
Really, Charlie, you never go for that stuff.
I left the card on the table so I would remember to give it back to Katie. She could figure out how to deal with it at home.

I was standing in front of an open cupboard, staring at the packaged foods and trying to figure out what to make for dinner, when Drake got home.

“Hey you,” I said. “Good day?”

“Pretty good. Got the hundred-hour inspection done, so I’m legal to fly again. How are you and Ron getting along at the office without Sally?”

I noticed that he glanced at the stack of files I still hadn’t touched since I got home.

“The phones were going nuts and all the calls were for Ron. I couldn’t get anything done.”

“What part of the case are you stuck on?”

He always asks things like that, even though he has his hands full with his own business and doesn’t get much into the details of the investigations.

“All of it,” I admitted. “I’ve got some leads on finding the vehicle that ran Chet Flowers off the road. Just haven’t had time to follow up on them. Macaroni and cheese okay for dinner?”

I reached for the box of that oh-so-easy dish that even kids can make. He pushed it back onto the shelf.

“I’ve got a better idea. I’ll quick-thaw some steaks, throw together a salad . . . You can take your files into the dining room and work where it’s quiet until I tell you dinner is ready.”

How did I ever get so lucky? This man is priceless.

I spread the files out over the dining table where I would have more space. From that monster-sized police file that Chet had originally given me, I set out to create a time sequence of the day the Donovan children vanished. With a blank sheet of paper at hand, I started reading through the interviews. After an hour I had something like this (all times are approximate except for the police call, for which there is an official record):

8:00 a.m. – Boyd Donovan leaves for work. Says it’s the last time he ever saw his children. (verified by Tali and by co-workers who say he arrived on time)

10:00 a.m. – Tali Donovan says she took the kids and went to do some shopping. (Two neighbors verify seeing the three leave the house, no one saw them come home)

12 noon – Tali says she came home, made lunch, put the kids down for naps. Her sister Scout says she phoned about noon and the kids were eating lunch. She heard Tali pause a couple of times to speak to them. (verified by Tali and Scout, phone records show a call at 11:37)

3:00 p.m. – Tali says the kids were playing in the back yard from about 2:00 onward. She was with them but went inside to take a phone call. (neighbor heard the children for a few minutes between 2:30 and 3:00 when she got up from her TV show)

3:10 p.m. – Tali comes back outside and the kids are missing but she sees a man running off through the woods. (no one can verify and searchers find no evidence of this)

4:15 p.m. – Boyd comes home for an early dinner with the family and Tali informs him the kids have been kidnapped. (Boyd and Tali agree on this)

4:29 p.m. – Boyd calls police. (a matter of official record)

Bite marks on the cap of my ballpoint pen attested to the fact that I’d been concentrating pretty intently when Drake called out that dinner was ready. How had I missed the fabulous smell of those steaks under the broiler? I carried my page of notes to the kitchen with me.

“Okay, help me spot the weaknesses in this story,” I told Drake, laying the paper down where we could both see it as we ate.

He pointed to the early entries. “No one saw them come home from shopping. Tali took the kids somewhere and abandoned them.”

“My first thought too. Except that Scout called around noon and Tali was talking to her kids.”

“
If
you believe the sister.”

“And I don’t, necessarily. But she did testify to it in court.”

He gave me a raised eyebrow that said,
People never lie on the witness stand? Get real.

“Okay, okay. I know. The two of them were super close and none of that family’s testimony may carry
any
weight.” I forked up a chunk of baked potato. “But even more convincing is the neighbor’s testimony that she heard the kids playing outside later in the afternoon. She wouldn’t lie on the stand for Tali. I got the feeling that woman would take no nonsense from no one. She was pretty rigid.”

“Tali says the kids went missing around three but didn’t notify the police or even call her own husband. She just waited for him to come home. That’s pretty weird.”

“It’s definitely weird. It’s what put her on trial. No one could believe what she did, but they couldn’t prove that she had time to take the kids away after three o’clock, dispose of them, and get home in time to be all cool and calm when Boyd got there. As it turns out, the spot where the kids were buried was nearly an hour away, depending on traffic.”

“So, there’s no way she could have made the round trip from their house to the grave and back—even if the grave was already dug and waiting—after the time the neighbor thought she heard them playing . . .”

My breath caught. “What did you say—?”

Oh my god, this was the answer. I dropped my fork and ran to the dining table, pushing papers aside as I looked for it.

The cassette tape.