Crowning the Slug Queen (A Callie Stone Mystery Book 1) (11 page)

"Why? Can't you just go and stop her?" she asked.

He grimaced. "Who, me? The policeman rumored to either have beaten up or slept around on his wife? She doesn't even let me in the house when I get to see the girls, but brings them out to my car. It's not like I can search her house. If you don't remember, on top of that, her dad is a fairly important lawyer in town, so if I go after his daughter for drug use, I'd better have proof. If I can get the dealer, I can get proof. I thought I had a line on him 2 months ago, but then he ups and disappears. Falls totally off the radar, so I had to start the investigation over in a sense."

Callie shook her head. "Scott, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything. You already knew all this was going on. I honestly don't mean to meddle."

He grabbed her hand from across the table. It was warm and dry where it rubbed against hers. "No, Callie, it's nothing you've done. Somehow what happened between Audrey and me led to this. She had started drinking before we split, but I figured it would go away with all the advantages of her new life. All the things I couldn't give her. I don't think she's beyond help if I can just get her supplier. Once I have proof, I can get her dad to help. Now I have a question for you."

She looked at him suspiciously. "What?"

"How exactly does this intuition of yours work?"

She shrugged. "I usually call it intuition because people seem to believe that better than the facts I use--sometimes when I need to get a decision made it's better to seem intuitive than to drag out all the proof in a long explanation. In my business I'm always looking for problems. Something out of pattern with the norm. If I see it once, I solve the problem and go on. If I see it twice, it's a trend and something that needs a more comprehensive solution. Otherwise you end up solving the same problem again and again."

He looked curious. "Can you give me an example?"

She thought for a second. "Well, say you have staff people running a registration desk. One person comes by and asks directions to a meeting room and they have to turn their attention away from their main job to help that person. A second person comes and asks the same question. What happens if you notice that and instead of answering each individual question, you make a sign pointing people to the correct room?"

"Your registration people get to work uninterrupted, yet people still get the info they need."

"Exactly," said Callie. I mean, all I'm doing is trying to separate out what's random from what is purposeful behavior. You just have to have enough experience to realize once is an accident, twice is a trend. The key is recognizing a pattern has been broken whether or not you know what the original pattern is. It could be the addition of something or the absence of something."

"So how does the mayor fit this pattern theory?"

"Again, if it was only one thing--the odd attendance at the pageant practice or the expensive shoes, I might just ignore it. But both things make me think her behavior is not normal or what I'd expect of the mayor. I could be wrong or it could be that I just haven't figured out what pattern she's breaking out of."

He was silent for a second. "And Audrey?"

"When I saw Molluska, she looked so thin she was almost ethereal. Then she seemed to be shaking during the performance which I put down to nerves at the time. I saw the same things in Audrey, plus bruises on her arms she was trying to hide. One of a thing is merely inconsistent, two is a pattern. Audrey and Molluska had the same symptoms so it seemed as if they fit the same pattern."

Scott pursed his lips. "I am scared to say that you are actually making some sort of sense. Maybe I'll spend some time looking into the mayor's shoe fetish."

Callie couldn't tell if he was joking with her or not. She asked a question that was based on intuition alone. "Who does Consuela work for?"

He let go of her hand and looked her in the eye again. "Why do you ask?"

She looked away. "It's part of your pattern. You're a police officer whose children are living with a drug user. You're not the kind of person who sits by and does nothing. You are a problem solver. You have foresight. It's what I'd do if my loved ones were in a place I couldn't get them out of."

"I hope it's not that obvious to everyone else," he said. "In my mind, she works for the girls. I may have known her before and encouraged her to apply for the job. She doesn't give me updates or anything, but let's just say she knows my number if any trouble occurs."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Callie left the police station in a thoughtful mood. What had led her to explain all that to Scott? He probably thought she was crazy with all her talk of broken patterns and intuition. It wasn't something she explained to all that many people. She remembered the warm feel of his hand on hers. She worried for his daughters and for Audrey.

It was mid-afternoon and Callie thought she had time to swing by Alex Herrman's apartment before heading back home. Guiltily, she thought of Scott's admonitions, but she wasn't really investigating, just trying to get a feel for the memorial piece she'd have to create for the pageant.

As she had thought from the address on Alex's application, the apartment was located on the West side of the university campus. The area was sprinkled with fraternity and sorority houses and a myriad of former single family homes that had been subdivided into low rent apartments for students.

Alex's apartment was one of a set of four small brown row houses with a large shared grassy area in the front. Callie saw that the door to Alex's had been sealed with crime scene tape and an official do not enter sign, but she hadn't wanted to go there anyway. She went to the apartment next door and knocked. The door was opened by a woman Callie judged to be in her mid-twenties, wearing tight gray shorts and a black tube top. Privately, Callie thought she looked about 30 lbs. too heavy for either, but maybe she was dressing for the warm weather. It didn't look as if the row house had air conditioning. The woman's bleached blonde hair was scraped back into a high pony tail and Callie could hear a baby crying in the background.

The woman looked at her suspiciously. "Can I help you?"

Callie nodded. "This is going to sound totally inappropriate, but I wondered if you knew the person who lived next door here, Alex Herrman?"

"What, are you a reporter?"

"No. My name is Callie. I worked with Alex for the slug queen competition. Did you know she was performing in the pageant?"

"As a slug queen? How could you miss it? She and that boyfriend of hers would come out of there wearing more sequins than Dolly Parton."

Callie nodded encouragingly. "Yes, that's it. Because she's passed away, we'd like to do a sort of tribute at the pageant. However, I don't know much about her and I was hoping you or someone else here could give me an idea what she was like as a person."

The baby in the background cried louder. "Nice to meet you, Callie. I'm Sarah. Hold on a minute, will you?" Sarah closed the door. In a minute she returned and opened the door with the baby in her arms. "Grab two of those chairs from the table and let's sit outside. It's god awful hot in here."

Callie went in and grabbed two chairs from the yellow Formica table and brought them out to the grassy area next to the cement landing in front of the door. "It is pretty nice weather out here, isn't it?" she asked conversationally.

"I just wish I had some air conditioning for night. It's nice enough right now, but if there's no breeze none of us can sleep. That's how we all got to know Alex. Everyone comes out to the lawn in the evening to escape the heat."

"What was she like?" asked Callie. "I know she wasn't from around here."

"Yeah. She came from some foreign place. Someplace odd, not like France or Germany. When she spoke her own language it was a real jaw breaker. But she'd just do that for fun. It's not like any of us could understand what she said."

"I believe she was from Estonia. So she was proud of where she came from?"

"Nah. All she wanted to be was an American. She lived here almost a year and was studying for the citizenship test from day one. That's why she moved here. I mean, the rent was cheap, but it was close to the library at the university, so she could study there."

"You said she had a boyfriend. What's he like?"

"He was a real strange one and not what you'd expect for Alex." She rocked the baby slower as it quieted down.

"How so?" asked Callie.

"Steve was shy and sort of plain. Alex was a real beauty. She could have had any one of these rich frat boys that live nearby. They were always stopping her on the sidewalk asking for her phone number. Instead, she goes with a guy in square glasses who's losing his hair. It didn't make much sense."

Callie shook her head. "Who knows when people are in love?"

"You got that right. I had love and I now have a baby and no boyfriend. Life's funny that way."

"Did Alex have a lot of other friends? People that hung out with her?"

"None that I saw. She pretty much stuck to Steve and the library for her social life. Although..." she paused.

"What?" said Callie.

"Well, this is more like gossip and not something you'd be wanting to put in any tribute, but once a week or so I'd hear her meeting someone real late at night. I could hear it 'cause I live next door and these walls are paper thin."

"She was seeing someone other than Steve?" asked Callie.

"No, it was fairly regular, but their meetings were too short to accomplish much, if you know what I mean," she said. "There were two guys. First, it was a short weaselly looking kid. He was the kind that if you saw him coming, you'd cross to the other side of the street. Just looked like trouble. Then, about two months ago, there was a new guy, much more of a looker, started coming by. A real Latin lover type with this gorgeous long black hair. I didn't want to ask her about them since it looked like she was trying to keep it quiet. It's sort of hard to hide anything around here though."

Callie didn't really believe in coincidence and wondered why Sheldon Normal might have started coming around right after he got out of prison. Maybe he hadn't gotten as far away from his former business as he said.

Callie changed the subject. She was here to get information on a memorial after all. "Did you ever hear her sing?'

Sarah smiled. "Sure did. Some evenings Steve would bring out a guitar and they'd do a few sing along songs with us. But she was so good the rest of us would stop singing and just listen. Sometimes she'd take the guitar and play songs from her home in that funny foreign language. She played the guitar better than Steve did."

"Maybe I can get him to play one of her songs at the pageant," said Callie thinking out loud. "Although I don't know if it would be a good tribute to someone who seemed to want to be an American so much."

"That she did. For some reason, she seemed fascinated by the city council. At first, I thought it was just part of her studying for the citizenship exam, but it got to be a real obsession. She knew who all the members were and some of their politics. I'm lucky if I can remember to vote."

"Why do you think it interested her?" asked Callie.

"After the mayor got reelected again, she said something about how easy it seemed to be to get into power here. She had a lot of stories of Estonia and how bad the government treated people. Of course, our mayor has been around years and we know it's not something that happens overnight, but for some reason Alex seemed to think she could be on the council once she was an American citizen. She kept talking about Arnold Schwarzenegger."

"That makes sense in a way," said Callie. "Foreign born, but elected to an American office."

"Yeah, but he had a bazillion dollars and a wife from the Kennedy family. I don't think Alex had that kind of leverage."

Callie wondered. She thought about the words she had heard backstage the night Alex was killed. Maybe Alex had thought she had leverage on someone and attempted to use it.

"Sarah, thank you so much for letting me know about Alex. I think I have enough to put something together for the pageant."

"Don't forget to talk to Steve. He'd be able to add something I know," said Sarah.

"I think he'll still be in the pageant and I'll ask him when I see him at practice tomorrow."

On her way home, Callie stopped by the store and got a bottle of wine. One of the Willamette Valley Pinot Noirs that Peter had turned his nose up at. She figured she might as well enjoy the wine as she had no legitimate excuse to avoid yet another of her mother's dinners.

But when she arrived at the house it was to find her mom and grandma out and dinner not even started yet. Callie looked in the refrigerator and realized that with the vegetables, goat cheese and eggs, she could throw together a decent quiche. Maybe not such a good pairing with a Pinot, but better than Coral's vegetarian stew.

Callie liked cooking, but didn't find much time for it in New York. On the few nights she wasn't working late or out on a business dinner, she and Peter had usually gotten take out or went to one of the myriad of small ethnic restaurants that dotted the New York City landscape. She realized that cooking was much like the work she did, make a plan, put it all together and bake until done.

Once the quiche was in the oven, Callie headed to her cottage. She turned on the computer and checked her email. Mara said the entire office not only missed Callie, but had now begun actively lobbying Bill to change his mind on letting her go. Callie didn't reply and turned off the computer. She wasn't ready to go back to New York. This vacation may have been accidental, but she was enjoying it thoroughly and wanted to take full advantage of it. Once she went back, who knew when she'd get to Oregon again? Besides, Mara hadn't said that Bill himself wanted her back, and unless that happened she wouldn't have a job in New York anyway. Callie changed into a North Face hoodie and grabbed her book and went back to check on her dinner.

Right as she was pulling the quiche out of the oven, Callie heard the door open. Grandma Minnie's voice came from the hallway. "What's that smell? Something smells good?" she asked as she came into the kitchen.

"Carline, that smells wonderful!" said Coral coming in behind Grandma Minnie. "You didn't need to make dinner. I could have thrown something together. But I'm glad you did."

"Mom, how come you always call me Carline?" asked Callie.

"Well, I named you. I get the prerogative of calling you that for the rest of your life."

"I might agree with you except that you are no longer called by what your mom named you. You choose your own name." said Callie.

"And if my mother was alive today, you'd better believe she'd still be calling me Esther. She was meaner than Grandma Minnie."

"Hey!" said Grandma Minnie. "I'm right here. Don't be talking about me like that."

They all laughed. Callie opened the wine as Coral got out the ingredients for a salad to go with the quiche.

As they sat down to eat, Grandma Minnie said, "You never mentioned that you were the one to actually find that dead slug queen, Callie."

"I didn't think it was anything I could talk about. Now that people are starting to hear the details, I guess it's ok to mention."

"Do you know what happened?" asked Grandma Minnie. "The scoop at the hair salon was that the guy died of a drug overdose."

Callie found it interesting that Alex's actual gender remained unknown. "From what little I know, that is technically true, but I believe the police suspect the overdose was engineered by someone else."

No one had anything to say to that.

After dinner was over and the dishes were washed and put away, Callie went over to the cottage and brought back her laptop.

"Here, I've got something to show you guys." She played the dancing cat video. "This is the reason I'm in Skinner. My boss wasn't happy I forgot to bring the CD, so you could say I'm between jobs right now."

"If he fired you for something as silly as that you probably didn't want to work for him anyway," said Grandma Minnie.

Coral nodded, for once in agreement with her mother-in-law. "Whatever the reason, I'm glad you came out to visit."

Callie spent the remainder of the evening watching a movie and chatting with her mom and grandma. She couldn't remember a better spent evening in a long time.