Buried Secrets Can Be Murder: Charlie Parker Mysteries, Book #14 (The Charlie Parker Mysteries) (7 page)

“Here’s the chocolate,” I announced with a little perk in my voice.

Katie didn’t move so I carried her mug over and nudged her arm. She didn’t look at me. I set the cup on a nearby table.

“It’s the worst. The holidays.” Damp tracks started down her cheeks again. “I miss her so much.”

So that’s what it was about. Her mother.

“I know.” I held my own mug with both hands, pulling warmth from it.

“
No one
knows,” said Katie.

“My mother died too. And my dad. I think I do know.”

For the first time her gaze slid toward me.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. I was fifteen. They went down in a plane crash.”

“Wow. How do you handle it?”

“It gets a little better with time. I was fortunate to have a grandmotherly woman who took me in.”

“At least I have my dad.”

“You’re lucky with that,” I said. “I—” All at once I couldn’t say another word. The Christmas tree, sitting right where Mother always put it, faded to a blur of lights. My throat constricted. I felt something drip from my chin.

Katie’s arms came around my waist and I felt her shoulders shake. Now I was the one sniffling like crazy. We stood there for a few moments, or maybe it was an hour. Finally, I set my cup on a side table and held her at arm’s length.

“Hey. It’s good to meet somebody who understands this,” I said.

She nodded and the sheaf of pink hair draped across her face.

I wiped it aside with my finger and tucked it behind her ear. “Anytime you want to talk. I mean it.”

She nodded again.

“Now drink your cocoa before it gets cold.”

We picked up the mugs and sat on the sofa, each quiet with our own thoughts for awhile.

“My dad isn’t the same,” she finally said. “Since Felina came along.”

Surely she was right. Beautiful young wife, another child, a man still in his prime, trying to forget the pain. Somehow he’d minimized the connection to his daughter and she was hurting for it. I decided I should talk with him when I drove her home.

Chapter 7

As it turned out I didn’t get the chance to speak to Jerry Brewster. When I pulled up to the mansion Katie jumped out of my car, said a quick thanks, and dashed inside. Her mood had lightened considerably and I’d seen past the all-black attire and pierced eyebrows as she played on the floor with Freckles. Maybe the old-fashioned remedy, a good cry, had done both of us some good.

I was debating whether to follow her to the door and see if I could corner Jerry long enough for a little heart-to-heart when my phone rang down inside my pocket. Ron.

“I am not a happy camper,” he said. “We’re stuck here in Dallas. They’re calling it the winter storm of the decade, and the last plane they allowed to take off was the one right before Rosa’s.”

The low pressure system over Colorado had apparently circled southeast, catching northern New Mexico in its edges, sending the heavy center of the storm into Texas.

“Soonest they can even
think
about getting planes off the ground here is sometime tomorrow,” Ron was saying. “But it could even go longer than that. There are thousands of people in the terminals and I gather only a lucky few were able to get cabs to take them to hotels. The roads are a mess.”

“Oh great. How’s Rosa taking all this?”

“She’s nearly frantic. Feeling guilty as hell because she didn’t stay in better touch with her sister. She did
not
take that news well at all. I thought we were going to have a security issue when she found out that her plane wasn’t leaving after all. She wanted to dash out the door and try for a bus or rental car to get back to California. It was a job to convince her that waiting for the planes would still be the quickest way. A couple of airport officials had to help me calm her down. A female guard just took her into the ladies room to fix her makeup and get herself together.”

“What was her story? Why didn’t she contact her family in the past year?”

He sighed. “I get the feeling she really butted heads with her brother and then it became a matter of pride that she was not going to back down before Mel did. She broke up with that Chaco guy almost right after they left San Diego together, but she was too embarrassed to tell Ivana. She got her job with that kids’ clothing store in Albuquerque and has actually been pretty happy there. I got the idea that she wanted to get a little money saved so she could visit California with her head held high, show Mel that she hadn’t completely messed up her life by leaving.”

I had pulled out of the Brewsters’ driveway and was driving toward my house. “So, what now?” I asked.

“I guess we’re staying the night in the airport. Not much choice. I’ll get Rosa to call her sister—hopefully, that won’t upset her even further. Mainly, I guess I’ll have to keep an eye on her to make sure she doesn’t do something crazy.”

I wished him luck and we disconnected before it crossed my mind that I should have asked whether he’d heard from Chester Flowers.

Already, little sleety things were flurrying through the air. A white Christmas happened so rarely here that I would have loved one—but only with all my family safely tucked in at home. It was the last thing I wanted with Drake away on a job and now Ron having to sleep in an airport.

I called Drake as soon as I got into the house. His situation was the same—weather too bleak to drop bales of hay to cattle, much less try to fly cross-country to get back home. I put Katie’s and my cocoa mugs into the dishwasher and went to bed early.

Christmas Eve morning dawned gray and frigid but so far we had no snow on the ground. I switched on The Weather Channel while I loaded the coffee maker. The forecast only served to confirm what I already knew—heavy snow in Colorado and the storm system was moving eastward at a slow pace. A good part of the southwest would be under its influence for awhile, possibly days.

I called Victoria to see if she’d heard from Ron. The news was mostly what I already knew, with the additional information that he’d had an extremely uncomfortable night attempting to sleep in one of those molded plastic seats in the airport terminal and was pretty sure he was catching a cold from some little kid who had sneezed on him.

“Looks like it’s not going to be the holiday any of us had envisioned,” I told her.

A sigh came from the other end of the line. “Well, let’s see if we can make the best of it,” she said. “Elsa was going to have everyone over for dinner tonight. We girls should just bundle in at one of our houses and make it a girl’s Christmas Eve. What do you think?”

I pushed past my earlier
Grinchy
mood and agreed with her. “My place, four o’clock? If you wait until dark you’ll never get into the neighborhood because of the light show tours. Bring your jammies and plan to stay for the duration.”

“Oh, excellent plan! I’ll bring fudge and cookies. I’ve been baking for a week and without Ron here, the kids will stay at their mother’s place, so we might as well break into the good stuff for ourselves.”

She almost made it sound more fun than the original plan, especially once I tamped down the nagging little voice that tried to tell me how many calories were involved. What the heck. I called Elsa, who jumped right on board with the pajama party. Her posole was simmering already, she said. I told her to call me when it was ready and not to attempt to carry the heavy pot over by herself.

“We can do the big turkey dinner as soon as the boys get home,” she said. “No reason it has to be on any certain day. And I baked two pecan pies. One of them can be for tonight.”

With overnight guests now in the picture I bustled around, checking the twin beds in the guest room and hanging fresh towels in the bathroom. This might turn out all right after all. I’d just located two butane lighters and checked them so I would be ready for the dusk lighting of the luminarias when there was a tapping at my front door.

Freckles went into full guard-dog mode, sounding as if she wanted to rip the head off of whoever would dare come around. I peered out the peephole and saw a flash of pink.

“Katie! Hi, come on in.”

Once again dressed all in black she slipped in with a waft of cold air. She wore the same sweater she’d had on last night, which couldn’t possibly be warm enough with the temperatures hovering in the low thirties.

“You’re out early,” I commented. “Want some more of that cocoa?”

She gave a nod and followed me to the kitchen. I watched her rub Freckles under the chin for a minute, wondering why she’d come. I could truly sympathize with the girl’s home situation but wasn’t sure I wanted a new best friend who might make a habit of dropping in daily.

I tore into a packet of the hot chocolate mix for her and poured another cup of coffee for myself, making small talk by asking if she was getting excited about Christmas. She shrugged halfheartedly.

“Is it what we were talking about last night?” I asked. Maybe I should have made more effort to talk to Jerry about his daughter’s feelings.

“Adam’s not feeling good today,” she said. “My dad took the morning off work so he and Felina could take him to the doctor.”

“How about you? Doing okay?” I poured hot water into the mix in her mug, gave it a stir and handed it to her.

She sank into one of the kitchen chairs. “I’m kind of worried about him too. But they didn’t, like, ask if I wanted to go along. He’s always getting sick. I don’t like it.”

I sipped at my coffee, privately glad that I didn’t have kids to worry about. Except that this one kept showing up in my life, and wasn’t I already concerned about her? I studied Katie’s face while she drew circles on the table with her finger. Was she really that troubled over her brother’s health, or was it more a case of jealousy over her father’s attention?

“Could I tell you something, Charlie?” The circling motions stopped.

“Sure.”

“I think Felina, you know, does things to Adam sometimes.”

“What kinds of things?” I asked cautiously.

“I don’t know . . . just . . . things.”

“Like the day he broke his arm? Did she have something to do with that?”

Katie shrugged again and her mouth went into a little twist. “I didn’t see anything, if that’s what you mean.”

I waited.

“When he was little, like still drinking from a bottle, he would puke a lot. Drink his bottle and then throw up.”

“Well, I’ve heard that babies do that some.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“Anything else? Things you saw Felina do?”

She went back to making the circles. “I don’t know.”

Conversations with teens could be so productive. I began to wonder if she really had anything to tell me or if she was stalling, wanting to spend time here rather than at home. I was thinking of ways to hint that I had other things to do when I caught sight of a white head coming toward my back door.

Elsa tapped at the glass, sending the dog into another barking frenzy, which caused Katie to slosh her hot chocolate over a placemat. I gave the dog a pat, the kid an it’s-okay smile, and opened the door for my neighbor.

“Here’s the cornbread,” Elsa said, “for tonight.”

She stopped short when she caught sight of the girl in black at the table. She comes from a generation where no real creature has pink hair or rings through its eyebrows.

“Oh, this is Katie Brewster,” I said. “Katie, this is my neighbor Mrs. Higgins.”

The two of them sized each other up, but Elsa soon broke the ice by asking where Katie got her hair done. I took the pan of cornbread while Katie described how she did the hair color herself and laughed over the way she’d shocked her stepmother by making her pink-haired debut at the dinner table one night. Elsa chuckled right along with her. She gave me a wink and let herself out the back door.

I watched her cross the swath of lawn between our houses and go through the break in the hedge. I turned to Katie, wondering if she would pick up the conversation where she’d left it but she was happily slurping at her cocoa. My mind wandered over the list of errands I’d planned this morning, things I wasn’t getting done because of my unexpected company. Options went back and forth in my head; I could take Katie with me but didn’t really want to do that without her parents’ knowledge, I could drop her off at home but wasn’t sure she should be there alone.

“Is Adam’s nanny home now?” I asked.

“I don’t think so. Dad gave her a few days off to have Christmas with her sister. It’s okay, Charlie. I can be there by myself.”

I fidgeted for a few more minutes, wiping down the countertops and rechecking my shopping list against the contents of the fridge. Katie finished her cocoa and left the cup on the table while she tussled with Freckles.

“I guess I better go,” Katie said.

Relieved that she’d made the first move I offered to drive her home again. She insisted she could walk back but once we stepped out into the frigid air she changed her mind. I wove the maze of neighboring streets to avoid the city workers who were already setting out barriers in anticipation of the luminaria tour this evening. No cars were visible near the garages at the mansion and I insisted on walking Katie inside to see if anyone was home. They weren’t. I gave her my cell number and told her to call me if she got worried or anything. Secretly hoped she wouldn’t; surely she would first call her father.

Free of my little charge I consulted my scrawled shopping list and headed for the market. Cranberries (how could I have forgotten those?), stuffing mix (in case no one made the from-scratch kind), and whipped cream (everyone always thought someone else remembered that). I plunked items in my cart and stood behind three other people in the shortest line at the registers.
The Scoop
, one of those cheesy tabloids caught my eye with
They Got Away With It
in two-inch letters. Below the screaming red headline was a photo of O.J. Simpson and a couple of other, smaller pictures of faces not so readily identifiable. A secondary story promised details on some alien abduction. The woman ahead of me had a cart heaping to the brim so I picked up the newspaper and flipped it open.

Where Are They Now? Famous Criminals and What Happened to Them
headed the two-page center spread. They hadn’t even bothered to use a different picture of O.J. for the inside page. I skimmed that—everyone knew his story. Below that headliner, smaller versions of six mug shots with a short paragraph about each. There was the drunk driver who’d run a school bus off the road but the jury found some kind of reasonable doubt about his guilt. A teen who’d shot up his school had been sentenced to community service and, according to the article, was back living at home with mom and dad at the age of twenty-seven—unemployed and continuously enabled. A couple of the stories seemed vaguely familiar as I skimmed them.

A man with a loaded cart tapped my shoulder. “Move up,” he said in a very non-merry tone.

I came out of my trance to see that the woman ahead was nearly done so I loaded my few items onto the conveyor, tossing the tabloid on top at the last minute. I pulled out money and wished the checker Merry Christmas.