Deadly Gamble: The First Charlie Parker Mystery (2 page)

Chapter 2

Thursday started off normally enough. I
awakened about seven, fed Rusty, my rust-colored Labrador-sized
mutt, and ate a bowl of granola with yogurt while Rusty crunched
down a bowl of some yummy doggy nuggets. By eight o'clock, we were
traveling from home in the old country club area to our office near
downtown. The office, which I share with my older brother, Ron, is
in an old Victorian with gray and white exterior. A driveway runs
down the west edge of the property, leading to a detached garage
out back and generous parking for the three of us who work there.
Besides Ron and myself, we employ a part-time receptionist, Sally
Bertrand.

Ron and I started the agency three years ago
at a turning point in both our lives. Ron had gone through a rough
divorce, and found that his security guard salary wasn't quite
making the child support payments on three kids. Bernadette had
wiped out their bank account, taking the boys and everything else
of value. For Ron, starting out again in a one-bedroom apartment
with old cast-off furniture was a blow. He needed a purpose and a
better income.

In my case, I'd finished college with an
accounting degree, taken the CPA exam, and gone to work in one of
the city's largest accounting firms. Two years of corporate
politics, water-cooler gossip, and general backstabbing had made me
more than ready for freedom. Ron and I put our skills together,
along with some of my inheritance money, and started RJP
Investigations. Ron's good at his work. He has connections in the
police department, and the patience for surveillance work, much
more necessary attributes in the PI business than a trenchcoat, a
smoky office, or a babe on the arm.

Sally and I keep the wheels running smoothly
here. She comes in from nine to one, answering phones and typing
letters. I consider Sally a friend as well as an employee, although
our styles outside the office are totally different. She's an
outdoor type who spends her weekends with her husband, Ross,
trekking from one remote mountain top to another. Their idea of fun
consists of stuffing the barest necessities of life into
forty-pound backpacks and toting this burdensome load off to
someplace with neither toilets nor fast food restaurants. My idea
of roughing it, on the other hand, is black and white TV in a motor
home.

At work we mesh well, though. Having Sally
around frees up my mind for working with numbers, something I don't
do well with three phone lines ringing and the front door to
attend. I handle the billing, the bill paying, the taxes, and most
importantly, the paychecks. Once in awhile, I get called upon to
help Ron with some detail of an investigation, usually an errand to
the county courthouse to look up a copy of someone's marriage
license. Exciting stuff.

My Jeep was the first car in the parking area
today. Sally would be here in another half-hour or so. Ron was
still out of town—gone until Monday. Rusty bounded out the minute I
opened the car door and proceeded to sniff the perimeter of the
yard for possible overnight intruders. Since the neighborhood is
still partly residential, an occasional cat wanders across our
property. It's Rusty's job to assess this situation. I unlocked the
back door and stepped into the kitchen. We haven't changed the
layout of the old house. The original parlor is now our reception
area, the dining room a conference area. Upstairs, two bedrooms
facing the street became Ron's and my offices, while a third
bedroom is now a storage room. The only bathroom is also up there,
and has to serve both boys and girls. How
did
these
Victorian families manage?

I set my briefcase on the kitchen table,
leaving the door open for Rusty while I made coffee. I hoped Sally
would bring doughnuts. We leave that part informal. Whoever has a
craving that day will usually show up with treats. Rusty trotted
in, his nails clicking on the hardwood floor. I closed the door
behind him and we headed toward the front, leaving the coffee to
hiss and sputter to completion. The answering machine on Sally's
desk showed no messages. I unlocked the front door and proceeded
upstairs with my rust-colored shadow close behind.

My office is my second home. As such, I like
it comfortable. I've chosen good wood furniture, hanging ferns in
the bay window, and soft pastels for the upholstery and art.

I had no sooner parked my butt in the chair
than I heard the front door. We have a ding-dong type bell rigged
to ring upstairs for those times when Sally isn't on duty. Like
now. I pulled myself back up, trying to remember if we had any
appointments on the book. I didn't think so. It's usually pretty
quiet when Ron isn't here. Maybe a salesperson or a delivery. Given
a choice, I would opt for the latter.

Stacy North waited in the foyer. Today she
wore no makeup and her designer jogging suit looked slept in. Her
feathery blond hair hung limp. Her lips looked thin without
lipstick, her face grayish. I motioned her upstairs, watching her
feet drag upward at each step. I offered coffee. She nodded. I
trotted back down the stairs and came back with two mugs. The
social formalities accomplished, I looked at her inquisitively. She
handed over the morning paper tentatively before taking a seat on
the sofa. The paper was folded so that page A-4 faced me. A
captioned photo told me I was staring into the face of Gary
Detweiller. The headline told me he'd been killed in a shooting. I
read the rest of the article while Stacy perched on the edge of the
couch. She was motionless except to raise the coffee mug to her
lips occasionally.

Detweiller had been sitting in his car in his
own driveway when an unknown assailant shot him at almost
point-blank range, the article said. I pictured the heavily
overgrown shrubs that bordered the drive. The victim was survived
by his wife, Jean, and son, Joshua. No leads had yet been found in
the case. I laid the paper on my desk and looked up at Stacy.

"This is the guy of our former
discussion?"

She nodded tiredly.

"And?"

No response.

"Stacy, I assume you didn't just come by to
share this with me," I said, holding the newspaper up. "What do you
want?" I had a feeling I knew the answer, and I wasn't going to
like it.

"I need help again, Charlie." Her voice came
out thickly.

"Stacy, I told you, I'm not an investigator.
Besides, aren't the police handling this?"

Her blue eyes widened slightly. "That's what
I'm worried about." She reached for her bag. "Do you mind if I
smoke?"

"I'd rather you didn't." It probably came out
sounding harsh, but dammit, I have to live in this office after she
leaves. "Stacy, you were never a smoker."

A trembling hand covered her mouth. "I know,
Charlie. I only do it now and then."

"Stacy, what's really the problem here? Are
you worried that the police will dig up your connection with
Detweiller?"

"Of course I am!" She stood up and paced to
the opposite end of the room. "Charlie, do you have any idea what
Brad will do if he finds out about this?"

Truthfully, I didn't. But I also wondered
aloud why she hadn't worried about this before getting seduced into
the situation.

"I don't know," she said, her voice hopeless.
She dumped herself back onto my couch, and rubbed at her temples
with both index fingers. "It was stupid. I can see that now. I
guess I just fell for the ... uh ... positive attention."

"I'm not sure what to tell you." I wanted to
tell her about paying the consequences for our actions, but somehow
I got the feeling she already knew about that.

She stared at a spot somewhere near the
corner of my desk, and her face became even more pale. A long
minute passed.

"Stacy, what do you want from me?"

"I'm not sure, Charlie. I guess I'm grasping
at ways to keep my name out of this."

"Have you talked to a lawyer? Sounds like
this is more a matter of needing legal advice than investigative
work."

"I wouldn't know who to turn to. Our family
lawyer intimidates me. He's so chummy with Brad I don't think I
could trust him. I guess I was hoping that you could find out who
really killed Gary before the police come asking questions of
me."

The messes people get themselves into never
cease to amaze me.

"Stacy, I'll tell you straight out. This is
out of my league. If you can wait until Monday, I can set an
appointment for you to meet with Ron."

Her eyes glistened moistly and a red rim
formed around her upper lip. The hands shook as she reached for her
purse. "That's four days away," she whispered. "I hope it's not too
late." She walked toward the door.

"Stacy, wait." I knew this was foolish, even
as I said the words.

She returned to the couch, perching
expectantly on the edge.

"Tell me everything you can about Gary
Detweiller," I said.

She stared blankly at me for a good half
minute.

"Does he belong to the country club? What
does he do for fun? Sports? Clubs? Hangouts?"

"I really don't know." Her palms fluttered
upward. "I met him at Tanoan. He never talked about himself."

A man who
never
talked about himself?
Please.

"Stacy, think about it. He must have said
something. Surely you didn't hop into bed with someone who never
said a word."

"Well, of course he talked. But mostly he
talked about me." Her eyes turned dreamy. "He told me how beautiful
I was, how sexy. Stuff I haven't heard in a long time." Her
once-vivacious voice broke a little.

I let the silence stretch out a bit, hoping
she'd come up with something more.

"I went to his house once," she
remembered.

"That might be a start. Tell me about
it."

"It was a depressing place. Of course, this
was after he'd wooed me with a nice lunch out one day and he'd
gotten a room at the Marriott that afternoon. I guess I wasn't
thinking too straight."

"Then he invited you to his house?"

"Oh, no. I just showed up. I'd seen the
address on a business card he gave to some guy in the Marriott bar.
I remembered the street, so about a week later I looked it up and
drove over there." She looked up at me briefly. "It had been a bad
day."

"Tell me more about the house. He was home, I
assume."

"Yes, he was home. Although not exactly
thrilled to see me. He was jittery the whole time I was there,
which was maybe ten minutes. I didn't realize at the time that he
had a wife, one more thing he failed to mention. He couldn't wait
to steer me out of there. We went to The Wine Cellar for a drink,
even though it was only three in the afternoon."

"Okay, you were inside the house, right? Try
to remember everything you saw."

"The place was a dump, actually. I mean, not
just that it was small, but it was dirty. It smelled, and there was
clutter everywhere."

"I'm trying to get a feel for the guy's
lifestyle, what he did with his spare time."

"Well, he didn't clean house, that's for
sure."

"Did you see any magazines laying around, any
sports tickets, anything like that?"

Her eyes gazed upward, as she recreated the
picture in her mind. "Newspapers," she said finally. "There were
newspapers scattered everywhere. I just can't think of anything
else."

It wasn't much of a start and I finally let
her go, realizing that I wasn't getting much out of her. She seemed
relieved, having dumped the burden of her secret in my lap. There
was still a certain wariness, though. For a minute there, I
wondered if she could have had something to do with Detweiller's
death and was using me to find a way to cover for her.

I filed my paid bills while I tried to think
what to do next. I could try to dig up some background information
on Gary Detweiller so I'd have something for Ron to work on when he
got back to town. I walked across the hall to Ron's office and
located his Rolodex behind a tall stack of file folders. Ron isn't
exactly negligent in his office duties, he just has a different
system. Very different. His contact at APD is Kent Taylor in
Homicide. I looked in the Rolodex under A, then under T, then under
K. C for contacts didn't yield anything, either. Finally I found
Taylor under P, for police. Naturally. Where else?

I phoned Taylor and got him to agree to see
me at two. I didn't say why. This was an active police
investigation and I knew he'd cut me off immediately if he knew I
was snooping. Besides, I have much more winning ways in person than
over the phone.

Sally Bertrand was at her desk when I went
downstairs again for a coffee refill. She wore a pair of gray wool
slacks and a blue and gray sweater. That's about as dressy as she
ever gets. Usually it's jeans and plaid flannel. We run a casual
operation here since Ron and I are both firm believers in jeans
ourselves. Sally's shaggy blond hair was recently trimmed but not
by much. I think she does it herself, probably without benefit of a
mirror. She smiled at me with her wide grin, reminding me of an
extra large six-year-old. She has square straight teeth, honest
blue eyes, and a sprinkling of freckles across her un-madeup
face.

"Who was the lady?" she asked.

"Old school friend," I answered. "You haven't
seen her before because we haven't exactly been friends for about
the last ten years."

"Oh." She didn't ask, and I didn't
explain.

I refilled my coffee mug and carried one up
front for Sally, too. She hadn't brought doughnuts, but I decided
my waistline was better for it. I've been lucky all my life to
never have a weight problem, but I could see that subtly changing
now that I'd reached thirty. Given the facts that I love to eat and
hate to exercise, something was going to have to give. When it
began to give too much, I'd have to face a lifestyle change. Why
don't our bodies just stay twenty-five forever?