Deadly Gamble: The First Charlie Parker Mystery (20 page)

She'd calmed down quite a bit now. Tissues
lay in damp little wads all over the table.

"What now?" she finally asked.

"Well, I think we better call Kent Taylor and
let him know where you are."

A panicked look crossed her face, but I
assured her that they'd find her anyway.

"They've already been to your house looking
for you, so Brad knows. I think they were even going to put out an
APB on you. You'd probably be stopped by a patrol car before you
got across town. It's better if we call them first."

"I suppose so," she finally agreed.

"You just tell them what you told me. At
least the part about the bed and breakfast. Give them the name of
the place and where it is. They'll probably want to talk to the
people who run it. You can tell as much or as little about Brad as
you want to."

She nodded.

"Look, I can call Taylor if you want me to.
You want to wash your face and freshen up a little?" We walked
upstairs together. I pointed her toward the bathroom and kept an
eye on the door while I made the call.

Kent Taylor actually sounded happy to hear
from me, once I'd told him who was at this moment in our bathroom.
He said he'd be right over.

He showed up with a uniformed officer and a
search warrant for Stacy's car and personal possessions. The other
officer searched the car while Taylor questioned Stacy. I listened
to her story again and it gelled with the first version. I felt
fairly sure she was telling the truth. She left out the part about
Brad's jealous rage and about the reason she'd wanted to get away
in the first place.

It was eight o'clock before they all finally
left my office. Rusty and I stopped at a fast food place where we
both indulged in cheeseburgers and fries.

At home, I came across the bunch of papers
I'd stolen from Gary Detweiller's nightstand. They were wadded and
disorganized, and I just didn't have the stamina right now to go
through them. I put them on the desk in my home office, held down
with a glass paperweight. I showered and fell into bed almost
immediately. I was bone-tired but my sleep was unsettled. I had
indigestion all night from the greasy burger. I blamed the food,
although the stressful day probably hadn't helped a bit.

Chapter 18

After falling asleep around four a.m., I
didn't rouse again until after nine. Somewhere in the back of my
memory, I thought I'd had a productive day planned but now I
couldn't seem to focus. I showered and dressed in jeans and
sweater. I really should go in to the office; there was
correspondence waiting, I remembered. But Stacy's plight seemed to
loom large. I couldn't help but wonder what had happened when she
went home last night,
if
she went home. I speculated as to
whether I should call.

Rusty and I went through our morning
breakfast routine then left for the office. We arrived to find Ron
pouring coffee into his mug with one hand, gripping his lower back
with the other.

"So, how was bowling last night?" I
teased.

He shot me a look through pinched
eyebrows.

"I thought you were there to surveil not to
participate."

"Well, you know. It looks kinda suspicious to
sit around a bowling alley all evening and never pick up a ball,"
he explained.

"And Joey just happened to talk you into
throwing a few."

"Yeah, well. . ."

"I'm not gonna ask who won. Obviously, your
back didn't."

He ignored that and took his coffee to his
own office. I stopped by Sally's desk on my way upstairs. She
handed me one pink slip. Sarah Johnson. Sarah Johnson. . . Oh, yes,
the one who worked with Jean Detweiller. Now what would she have to
tell me?

As it turned out, I had to ponder the
question awhile longer. There was no answer at the number she'd
given. Assuming she still worked the late shift, maybe I could
catch her as she arrived at work this afternoon. This left me
without much choice but to go ahead and answer the letters that had
stacked up on my desk.

By two o'clock I had that nasty little chore
taken care of, Sally had left for the day, and Ron was again glued
to his telephone. I slipped a note in front of him, letting him
know I was switching on the answering machine and leaving. I'd been
wondering how Josh was doing, and since the Detweiller house and
Sarah's work were so close together, I might as well make one trip
of it.

The boxy little house looked all closed up,
with no cars in the driveway when I pulled up to the curb. I
knocked on the front door anyway. No response. No big surprise. As
I stepped off the porch, I saw a lady in the next yard holding the
garden hose sprayer over a flower bed. She raised her hand in a
little wave.

"Hi," I said, cutting across the Detweiller
drive to approach her.

"Nobody's home there," she said. She leaned a
bit closer to me. "The man and his wife were both
murdered
."

She didn't say "died" or even "killed." This
one liked to get the sensational tidbits right into the
conversation. I looked closely at her for the first time. She was
in her late fifties, with short gray hair mostly hidden by a
wide-brimmed gardening hat of turquoise fabric with pink dots the
size of quarters all over it. Her pink garden gloves were nicely
color coordinated, although the green slacks and pullover she wore
clashed badly with the hat.

"I was hoping to find Josh at home," I told
her. "Maybe he's back in school today."

"Oh, I don't think so," she said. "That blond
girl was here earlier. I think her name's Casey. They had that
music blasting me practically out of my house all morning. Then,
about an hour ago they left together."

This woman must do a lot of yard work. She
really was up on her neighbor's movements.

"I heard that Mr. Detweiller was killed right
here in the driveway," I said. "You probably heard the shot."

"Well, I'm sure I would have, but Wednesday's
Buzz and my bowling night. We never get home until after ten. That
night, whooee, I mean to tell you, that was some commotion. Those
cop cars and ambulance and all, they didn't leave till around
midnight. Well, it was ten after, I'd say."

Pegged to the minute, I'm sure.

"What about the other neighbors? Were any of
them home?"

"You some kinda investigator?" She narrowed
her eyes briefly, scrutinizing me. Just as quickly, she brushed it
off. "Well, anyway, I don't know about them others. You know, the
people in this neighborhood, they don't look out for each other the
way we always used to. I mean, I could be mugged on my own front
porch and nobody'd come check on me for a week. Well, just look
what happened here." She gestured toward the Detweiller driveway to
prove her point.

I nodded, not wanting to slow her down.

"You know what it is? Stereo. That's right.
You know they have stereo sound in TV sets now? Yeah. And people
play them darn things so loud, why a bomb could go off in their own
living room and they'd never hear it." She swung the hose sprayer
toward an evergreen at the other side of her own driveway and I had
to trot around to keep facing her. "Nope," she said, "I'm not a bit
surprised no one heard that man get killed."

We edged our way through her front yard, each
shrub getting a minute or two under the shower.

"Now me, if I'da been home, you can bet help
woulda come that much faster. I'da heard that shot." She leveled a
knowing look at me. I believed her.

"Well, I guess I'll try to catch Josh later,"
I said, somewhere between the lilacs and the roses.

"That poor boy." She pulled her upper lip
down between her teeth, sharing his pain vicariously.

"I'm sure he'll have a tough time of it," I
said.

"He's already had a tough time of it. They
was always chewing on him for something."

"He'll probably go live with his aunt, I
hear."

"I don't know if I've ever met the aunt," she
said. "Well, she can't treat him a whole lot worse than the
parents. And they kept such weird hours. You know, that mother was
out all night. Every night." She tsked over this, like working a
night job should have been on the list of mortal sins.

We'd just about made the rounds of the whole
front yard by this time, and I didn't think I could handle the back
as well, so I found an opening and took it. It seemed unusually
peaceful in the car.

It was a little early for Sarah Johnson's
work shift, and I remembered I hadn't eaten lunch. Maybe I'd go
early and visit with Archie while I forced myself to eat another
piece of that homemade pie.

Blueberry was on the menu today, a flavor I
can never resist. Archie served it up with his usual graciousness.
His whites today had the grease stains in different places, so I
could assume that he did change clothes occasionally.

"So. Anything new with your investigation?"
he asked.

"Not a lot," I admitted. "Jean's death kind
of threw a kink in things, didn't it?"

"'Cause you were thinkin' she done it,
right?"

I took a big forkful of pie, not wanting to
admit he was right.

"Hey, I mighta thought so, too," he chuckled,
"if I hadn't of known Jean so well. She had a temper. Man, that
woman could really let you have it. Well, I mean she never let
me
have the temper, but I've seen her tie into these girls
here sometimes."

He glanced up the counter, making sure the
other customers weren't listening.

"One night, ol' Gary come by. He was raggin'
on her about something, and pow! She let him have it. No way did
she take any stuff off that husband of hers."

"But you still didn't think she killed
him?"

"Naw. No way. Jean had a quick temper. You
pissed her off, she let fly. Whew! The language got pretty hot
sometimes. But then it was done. Just that quick. Jean never held
nothin' inside. Five minutes later she'd have her arm around you,
makin' up. I don't think she had it in her to plan something out,
wait around, and strike. Not Jean."

He resumed filling the salt shakers while I
finished off the pie. It was a quarter to four, and I decided to
wait out in the parking lot for Sarah. Whatever she had to say, she
might not want to say it in front of Archie. I put some money
beside my empty plate and waved at him down at the other end of the
counter.

Sarah's old pickup truck zipped into the lot
at one minute to four. Luckily, this time I was safely in my own
vehicle, not crossing the lot.

"Hi, Sarah." I approached quickly, wanting to
catch her before she went inside. "I got your message, but no one
answered your phone."

She seemed breathless and rushed. "Oh, yeah,"
she answered vaguely.

"Look, if you don't have time now, we can
talk later. Want me to call you tomorrow?"

She searched mentally to remember why she'd
called. "Yeah, that would be better," she said. "Oh, wait, now I
know. I just wanted to ask if the police have released Jean's car
yet. I loaned her a paperback book, and she'd told me it was out in
the car. Then we got busy and I forgot about it. It's no big thing
but I would like to get it back sometime."

I hadn't realized that the police had
impounded the car. But then, it wasn't at the house, so I guess it
made sense.

"Why would they take her car?" I asked.

Sarah was fast-walking toward the back
entrance of the diner. I trotted to keep pace.

She stopped and looked puzzled. "Oh, didn't I
tell you? The night she was killed, she and I got off work at the
same time. We walked out together. There were no other cars in the
lot and no one standing around. I was in a hurry so I jumped in my
truck and took off." She looked at me with eyes so full of guilt it
made me want to cry. "Usually we look out for each other. Make sure
both our cars start, you know, just being careful. But that night,
I left. And there must have been someone waiting for her in her
car."

A chill ran up from the base of my spine to
my neck and down both arms.

Chapter 19

"Why didn't you tell me Jean was killed in
the car?" I wasn't actually yelling, but I could feel my vocal
chords stretching to reach their current level.

"Now wait just a minute," Kent Taylor
responded. "You're not a police officer, not even a licensed
private investigator. You just don't have the right to certain
information."

"Okay. I know that." Feeling somewhat
deflated, I realized I better tread lightly. "It's just that you've
arrested Stacy for this and I'm trying to help her."

"I know, Charlie, but did it ever occur to
you that maybe you can't help her? Maybe she's guilty? You can't
fix the world, Charlie, much as you'd like to. I'm being pretty
tolerant with you as it is."

He was right, of course. But it didn't make
me ready to give up.

"Can you tell me whether you found any
evidence in the car?"

"No, I can't." Meaning he wouldn't.

"Have you found the murder weapon?"

He shuffled a little as he admitted they
hadn't.

"Then you can't definitely prove Stacy did
it, can you?"

"You're on thin ice here, Charlie. Better
just drop it."

I was, and I did. Besides, it was getting
late and I'd about had it after the previous sleepless night. I
picked up Rusty from the now-deserted office, went home, microwaved
a frozen dinner, and watched the news on TV. That was even more
depressing than what I was facing in real life, so I popped a video
tape of
Casablanca
into the VCR. Two hours later I was
weeping but happy. I went to bed.

I awoke the next morning with the oddest
feeling that I was forgetting something vitally important. I looked
at the calendar, convinced that I'd missed a tax deadline or
dentist appointment but that wasn't it. I poured cereal in a bowl,
added milk and couldn't get the nagging feeling out of my mind.
Halfway to the office I remembered Gary's papers on my desk at
home. I couldn't believe I'd let an entire day pass without
checking them out. At the very next intersection, I made a left,
then another, circling the block. Ten minutes later, I was on the
phone telling Sally that I'd be working from home this morning.