Deadly Gamble: The First Charlie Parker Mystery (21 page)

The wad of papers waited just where I'd left
them. In my haste in the Detweiller bedroom the other day, I hadn't
taken time to unfold or straighten them all. I'd picked out most of
the old newspapers and racing forms, leaving them behind, but these
notes were in their original state. It was an assortment of
notebook pages, cocktail napkins, and scribbled-on business cards.
I carried the whole mess to the kitchen table and made myself a cup
of tea for fortification.

Carefully, I unfolded and flattened each
sheet. At first, there was no way to categorize them. I simply laid
each new item out until the table top was covered. I had no idea
what to look for but I tried to keep an open mind. Blackmail
material, IOUs, dirty pictures—I'd take whatever I could get.
Unfortunately, there was nothing quite that obvious. Most of the
scraps appeared to contain bets. Little scribbled notes where
someone down at Penguin's had told Gary to place a bet for him. I
began stacking those in one pile.

I spread the business cards out like some
kind of solitaire game. Many of them were Gary's own cards,
Detweiller Enterprises, with notes written on the backs. Others
belonged to an interesting variety of people. Among them, Charles
Tompkins, the Tanoan resident in the cold white house who'd been
shafted to the tune of twenty thousand dollars. He'd brushed me off
when I'd spoken to him, but now I wondered. His name appeared
several times, along with some hefty sums of cash and names of race
horses. One caught my eye—Bet The Farm. An odd name for an animal.
As far as I could tell, Tompkins—Charlie T. as he was referred to
in the notes—had wagered fifty thousand on that one. He'd been
cavalier about losing twenty thousand, but if his total losses were
closer to a hundred, could even he afford that? A few other names
on the list were recognizable, including some of our city's
sleazier attorneys and politicians. I got the little spiral
notebook from my purse and wrote down a list of names, addresses
and phone numbers. I had no idea what I'd do with them, but it was
handier having them listed in one place than on fifty little bits
of paper. Having done that, I debated what to do next. I chewed my
pencil, although it's hard on the teeth and not particularly good
for the pencil, either.

The big dilemma I was having with all this
was in finding Jean's connection to it. It wasn't hard to find
dozens of people that might have been cheated or, cheated on, by
Gary. But how did Jean's death tie in? The only thing that made
sense was that somehow she'd known something about someone.
Thinking back to the day I'd visited their bedroom, I couldn't see
that the papers had been disturbed in weeks. I seriously doubted
that Jean had gone through them, learned something, confronted that
person, and gotten herself killed for it. So, if these papers
weren't her information source, what was?

Sitting here chewing a pencil and agonizing
over this wasn't solving anything. And it was driving me crazy. I
had to
do
something. It was nearly noon. I picked up the
phone and dialed Stacy's number. She answered on the second
ring.

"Stace, hi. Just thought I'd check in with
you."

"Hello, Charlie. I'm fine, thank you." Her
tone was stiff enough to starch shirts.

"Stacy? Is everything all right."

"Yes. Just wonderful, thanks." I'd swear the
words came out through clenched teeth.

"Is this a bad time?"

"It really is," she replied.

"Do you need help? Should I come over?"

"Not right now. I'll talk to you later." She
hung up before I could think of the next thing to say.

I slammed the receiver down, pulled my jacket
from the coat rack near the door, and had it halfway on before I
stopped to think. She said she didn't need help. In fact, what had
she really said? Granted, the conversation was stiff, the call
clearly not welcome, but there could be other reasons. Maybe I'd
caught them in the middle of great sex. Maybe they were having the
reconciliation of a lifetime.

I took a deep breath and shed my jacket. I
had to tell myself that Stacy's problems were not mine, thank
goodness. She had to work out whatever was going on at home. She'd
only hired me to find out who killed Gary Detweiller. So far, I was
doing a sorry job of that. I went back into the kitchen and
gathered Gary's papers into a bundle. I folded the whole wad and
stuffed them back into my purse. I should probably try to find a
way to put them back, although I couldn't imagine what Josh would
want with them. All his parent's belongings would probably be
thrown out when he moved. I wondered if he'd contacted his aunt
about moving in with her. On impulse, I dialed his number. The
phone rang twelve times but no answer.

I wanted to talk to Josh again, and to Stacy.
And then there was Larry Burke. I'd still like to know whether he'd
followed me Friday night or if it was someone he knew, or if it was
purely random. Both my visits to Penguin's had ended badly. Slashed
tire one time, terrorized by a dark truck the other. Seemed like
more than coincidence.

In the meantime, since I couldn't reach
anyone I wanted to talk to, I decided my only choice was to go to
the office and get some regular work done. Maybe I'd try Stacy
again later this afternoon.

As it turned out I didn't have to. I'd been
at the office a couple of hours, picking through the work on my
desk wishing that something in the stack looked appealing enough to
do. Sally had left at one, and I found myself wanting the phone to
ring, just so I wouldn't have to answer letters or worse yet, get
back to my tax returns. I wandered the halls like a lost waif,
making cups of tea, scrounging through the kitchen drawers for
snacks but only coming up with two vanilla sandwich cookies loosely
wrapped in torn cellophane. They were disgusting to look at and,
after I'd finished the second one, I decided they really didn't
have that much flavor.

By three o'clock I was beginning to feel
ridiculous. Why was I here, pretending to work, when my mind was
elsewhere? I felt itchy about the Detweiller murders. The answer
had to be here close by somewhere. I told myself that the police
were working on it, but that didn't make me any less anxious to be
out there myself. I left Rusty to help Ron with the phones and
started out to my car.

The weather had turned nasty again, our few
days of spring sunshine gone. A bitter wind drilled through my
jeans, making my legs feel like they were encased in ice tubing.
Clouds hung low, shrouding the Sandias in gray, obscuring their
jagged face. The air smelled moist and the ground was faintly damp
from a five-minute sprinkle that had passed through. I zipped up my
jacket and jogged toward the Jeep. Inside, the air felt heavy and
warm, a nice contrast to the cutting wind outside. I let the engine
idle while I thought about what to do next.

My thoughts kept flitting back to the papers
I'd looked at this morning, Gary's betting notes. And the name that
kept coming back to me was Charles Tompkins. The man had been
extremely nervous when I'd approached him the last time. Then he'd
brushed off his twenty thousand dollar loss like it was nothing.
From Gary's notes it appeared Tompkins had lost a great deal more
than twenty grand. The next thing I knew, my Jeep was on I-25,
heading north for the San Mateo exit.

The Tanoan guard didn't question me when I
said I was going to the Tompkins residence. I wove my way through
the winding streets. A tumbleweed that had somehow found its way
into the neighborhood rolled across the road in front of me. I felt
pretty sure that weeds weren't allowed here but I slowed down for
it anyway.

Charles Tompkins' house showed no signs of
life. I pulled up to the curb and stared at it for a couple of
minutes. All three garage doors were closed and all the windows
wore a blank look, hidden behind white sheer drapes. It wasn't even
four o'clock yet, I realized, a little early for the over-achievers
to be home from the office. I debated whether to wait around or try
again later. Curiosity got the better of me. Watching how the rich
folks conduct themselves might prove entertaining.

I cruised past Stacy's house. It, too, stood
like a large empty-faced mammoth. Brad's Mercedes waited in the
driveway though, so I decided not to stop for a chat. Whatever was
going on behind their closed doors right now wasn't something I
wanted to get involved in. Around the neighborhood, cars were
beginning to arrive—executives who allowed themselves to come home
early, teens out of school who drove better cars than mine. I
wondered what these kids would strive for in their lifetimes. They
already had so much, all handed to them by virtue of the fact that
they were born when and where they were. Would they grow up to want
even more, or would they languish into do-nothingness, never having
done anything for themselves. I pictured a lot of lost souls
here.

Back at Tompkins' place a car now stood in
the drive, almost a junker by these standards, a Ford Thunderbird
that must have been at least three years old. Charles Tompkins
himself was just stepping out of the car. He wore a dark business
suit and conservative tie. He balanced a briefcase and cellular
telephone while reaching for a plastic sheathed garment from the
cleaners and trying to lock the car door at the same time. I parked
by the curb and walked toward him. I'd reached the rear of the car
before he noticed me.

"Hi. Charlie Parker," I reminded him.

He gave me a puzzled look over the top of the
briefcase.

"I'm investigating the Gary Detweiller
case."

"Oh, yes." His tone was noncommittal, his
face closed and guarded.

"Could I talk to you again for a minute?"

I could tell he didn't want to talk, and he
especially didn't want to invite me inside. But the wind was
ferocious now, even stronger here near the foothills than it had
been in the valley. His cleaning bag was whipping around like an
unruly pet trying to get away. He hesitated a minute, then
ungraciously invited me in.

It was almost comical to watch him juggle his
many burdens while trying to open the front door and disarm the
alarm system. He positioned his body between me and the keypad so I
couldn't see what code numbers he punched in. Having a lot of
possessions certainly breeds paranoia.

"Excuse me a minute," he said. He disappeared
into a room off the den, leaving me standing in the white entry
hall.

The white and chrome living room waited,
silent and unoccupied. Undisturbed vacuum cleaner tracks made neat
white paths in a perfectly symmetrical pattern. On my right, a
formal dining room had the same freshly cleaned look. The almost
invisible table had chrome legs and a heavy glass top. In the exact
center stood a glossy black bowl filled with spiky black twigs.
Some decorator had probably charged him a fortune for the thing.
Beyond the table, an all-glass hutch held a set of shiny black
dishes. They stood out like large bullseyes in contrast to the
white walls, white carpet, and non-color of the rest of the house.
I wondered what it would feel like to pull out a slingshot and ping
them from their colorless perch.

"Now, what can I do for you?"

Tompkins' voice startled me, caught in the
act of mentally vandalizing his dining room. He had loosened the
knot in his tie and unbuttoned the top button of his gray-striped
white shirt. He had dumped all the excess baggage he'd carried in
with him. His fingers combed through his mass of curly blond hair,
trying to restore order to the mess the wind had made.

"I just wondered whether there was anything
more to your association with Gary Detweiller that you might not
have mentioned to me the other day."

Something flickered in his eyes, something so
fleeting that it was gone in a fraction of a second. A tiny pucker
showed on his upper lip but that, too, disappeared instantly.

"I don't believe I've thought of any other
information," he said.

"Not even the name of a race horse you lost
heavily on," I prodded. "A horse named Bet The Farm."

His thin lips pursed together noticeably this
time. "I'm not sure what business this is of yours," he said
tersely.

"Truthfully, it probably isn't any of my
business, except that you grossly underestimated your losses to
Detweiller. Except that a hundred thousand dollars might be a lot
stronger motive for murder than a mere twenty. And except that our
client is still on the hook for something she didn't do." I
stopped, realizing that I'd said a lot more than I intended, a lot
more than was probably smart.

Suddenly the house felt very lonely and very
quiet. I realized that, although these homes might be packed
together like sardines, the neighbors probably weren't home. I felt
a hollow sensation low in my stomach.

Tompkins' mouth twitched in a half-smile.

"How'd you find out about the other losses?"
he asked.

"Gary kept very thorough records," I told
him, keeping my voice flat.

"He did, hunh?" he said. He turned toward the
den, pulling off his tie as he went. I followed without speaking.
He chose a glass off the shelf above the bar and reached below for
ice cubes from an ice maker built into the cabinets.

"I should have known this would come down to
some kind of blackmail scheme." He filled the glass half full of
whiskey and took a long swallow before speaking again.

"Blackmail? Excuse me?"

"Just come out with it. What is it you
want?"

"I just want some answers. I don't personally
care whether you lost a million bucks to the guy. Your finances are
your own problem. I'm just trying to find out who killed Gary
Detweiller."

"Well, I sure as hell didn't." He downed the
rest of the drink and poured another.

"Where were you Wednesday night a week
ago?"