Deadly Gamble: The First Charlie Parker Mystery (23 page)

"At least tell me Willie's last name," I
insisted.

"I, umm, I don't know it." He stared at his
toes while mumbling the words.

"You don't know Willie. You don't know who he
works for. Yet you gave him permission to chase me down, to scare
the hell out of me!" I spat the words at him. "You are something
else, Burke. I just wish I could find a way to pin Gary's murder on
you." I spun and stalked toward my car, leaving him standing in the
driveway.

Sitting in my car, I gripped the wheel with
both hands. My heart was thumping audibly and my face felt
curiously flushed. I breathed deeply while I watched Burke start
his own car, race the engine, and zip out of the driveway. I seldom
lose my temper. When I do, I hate the physical effects. I reached
for my Styrofoam cup of coffee. The lid was still tightly in place
and the coffee was reasonably warm. The long drag I took soothed my
insides.

What next? I was only a couple of blocks from
the Detweiller house. Maybe I could catch Josh before he left for
school, assuming he was still going to school these days.

Chapter 21

The sun had finally cleared Sandia Crest,
throwing long shadows across the yards. Josh's house faced west,
its front yard completely in shadow this early. His primer gray car
was alone in the driveway. I pulled in behind it.

The place was quiet. No rock music blasted
forth, no sign of activity. I opened the rickety screen and knocked
on the door. No response. Once again, a bit firmer. This time Josh
answered. He wore only a pair of boxer shorts, dark blue and green
tartan plaid. His dark hair was sleep-mussed and his angular face
showed a dark shadow at the jaw. His smooth well-muscled body had a
disquieting effect on me.

"Sorry, I thought you'd be leaving for school
about now," I said.

He said something but since he was rubbing
both hands over his sleepy face at the same time the words only
mumbled out. He turned away, leaving the front door standing wide
open, which I took to mean "Come on in." I stepped into the dim
living room.

Jean's housekeeping skills might not have
been much, but the absence of a woman was becoming obvious here.
The vinyl recliner was piled high with clothes, worn and discarded
at random. Plates with dried on food and cutlery stuck to the
surfaces waited in odd places around the room—on the sofa, the end
tables, the TV set. A heap of school books sat at one end of the
sofa, with a pillow and two coats thrown on top. Obviously, the
books had not been used in days.

Josh emerged from his room, zipping on a pair
of jeans. He hadn't got around to finding a shirt yet. He combed
his hair by running all ten fingers through it, front to back in
one swipe.

"Can I get you some breakfast?" I asked.

"Uh, sure, if there's anything in the house."
He glanced around like a bowl of cereal might show up just about
anywhere.

I shed my jacket and purse behind the
recliner and gathered up the crusty remains of previous meals on my
way to the kitchen. Obviously, Josh had not spent lots of time in
here. The kitchen was far neater than the living room. The plate
I'd used on my last visit here was still in the sink, soaking with
the same water I'd run there. The trash can overflowed with sacks
and wrappers from fast food places.

"You got any cereal, milk, stuff like that?"
I called toward the other room.

He appeared in the doorway, shrugging.

"Well, let's look." The date on the milk
carton had expired two days ago but it smelled passable. I found a
box of Froot Loops and a clean bowl. Clearing a spot at the kitchen
table, I set the cereal down for him. He grinned as I poured the
milk for him.

"So, what's going on?" I asked.

"Not much," he mumbled with red and yellow
loops poking out between his lips.

"You talked to your aunt?"

He nodded. Despite my attempt to sit with him
and carry on conversation, I couldn't look at the dirty dishes
while doing nothing. He didn't strike me as the type who would be
touchy about someone else stepping in and cleaning up. I set the
stopper, squirted dish soap into the sink and started the hot water
spraying over the dishes. Josh crunched down the cereal quickly and
refilled the bowl.

"So, are you going to be moving in with her?"
I asked as I poked around under the sink, looking for trash
bags.

"She wants me to come Saturday." His eyes
narrowed belligerently. "I ain't going, man."

"What did you find out about school?"

"She's checking on that. Says she thinks I
can probably stay at Highland."

I dumped the contents of the trash can into a
plastic bag and tied the top in a knot. "Have you been
attending?"

"Some."

"At the risk of sounding like a social
worker, Josh, you can't afford to let your work fall behind. You've
always been a good student, haven't you?"

"I guess." He shrugged again and turned back
to his cereal.

I cruised through the house, finding several
more dishes and a few glasses tucked away in odd spots. I returned
them to the kitchen, adding them to the sudsy water in the sink.
The dish sponge had dried to a disk about the thickness of
cardboard but it sprang to life again when it hit the hot water. I
began the routine of washing, rinsing and stacking.

Josh tipped his bowl up to his mouth and
drank the milk from it. He started to leave the kitchen but
remembered to pick up the dishes he'd just used and slip them into
the sink for me.

"Look," he said, "you don't have to do that.
I was going to clean up today."

"It's okay. It'll go faster if I pitch
in."

He gave me one of those lopsided Elvis
grins.

"Why don't you take that trash out, then
maybe get another bag and gather up all those old newspapers and
stuff in the other room," I suggested after he'd stood uncertainly
in the doorway for several minutes.

He grinned again and went willingly to the
tasks. He might look grownup, but there was still a kid inside. I
finished the dishes, wiped the counter and table, and tidied up the
rest of the kitchen. When I went into the living room, Josh was
stuffing newspapers and junk mail, one piece at a time, into a
trash bag.

"Make sure you check that mail before you
toss it," I reminded. "There might be bills and important things in
there."

He looked up at me, like he'd never
considered the possibility. I circled the room, gathering castoff
clothing in my arms.

"Do you have a washer and dryer?" I
asked.

"I think Mom just went to the Laundromat," he
said, as if he weren't quite certain.

"Okay, where's the clothes basket?" At his
blank look, I told him I'd find it myself.

No sign of a basket in the bathroom, but
while in there I couldn't resist wiping off the sink and
straightening the shampoo bottles in the tub. I wasn't going to
scrub toilets for this kid but I do have this tidy streak that
can't abide clutter. I put away the toothpaste tube and his
toothbrush almost without thinking.

I located the laundry basket on the floor of
Jean's closet. Two bras and panties lay in the bottom of it. I took
them out, thinking to spare Josh the vivid reminders. I carried the
empty basket back to the living room and dumped the heap of dirties
into it. The place was beginning to look almost habitable.

"You'll have quite a job here, moving all
this stuff," I commented. "Does your aunt have room for all of
it?"

"I don't know," he said shortly. "Guess it'll
have to go in storage. The furniture came with the house. But
there's all my stuff."

"You want some help packing? I could come by
this afternoon," I suggested. "Help you pack boxes. It would be
less work for your aunt when she comes."

"Yeah. Whatever." He probably had not
considered the work involved in moving. He was still acting like
the move wouldn't happen.

I glanced at my watch. It was almost
nine.

"Look, Josh, I really think you ought to be
in school. Here, take this laundry basket with you. You can stop at
the Laundromat after school and do these."

He didn't look thrilled, but he didn't argue.
We walked out together, he with his arms loaded with books, me
carrying the laundry. I set the basket on the front passenger seat
of his car so he couldn't ignore it.

Rusty had sacked out on the back seat of the
Jeep and he barely raised his head to acknowledge that I'd
returned. I backed out of the driveway so Josh could leave, but I
hung back slightly to make sure he did.

As I drove across town toward the office, I
thought back to Larry Burke's odd admission this morning. Why would
Willie, his friend from Penguin's, want to frighten me off this
case? I felt certain that Willie had also been responsible for my
slashed tire the first time I'd been there. But, why? Larry had
mentioned that Willie worked for a man Larry had seen a few times
around the club. Did he mean Tanoan Country Club? I thought of
Charles Tompkins. He was the only Tanoan person I could think of
who'd been deeply involved with Detweiller. Other than Stacy.

I spent the rest of the day at the office,
tending to small undone tasks, mostly brooding over the deadlock I
felt about the case. Ron was out for the day, leaving me no one to
bounce ideas off. For some reason, I felt a certain sense of dread,
like something was about to happen but I couldn't figure out
what.

At five o'clock I dialed Josh Detweiller's
number. He answered on the second ring.

"Hey, Josh. It's Charlie. You ready for some
help with the packing?"

"Sure." I ignored the sullen tone. Who could
blame him? His whole life was changing rapidly.

"I'll bring dinner," I offered. "McDonald's
or Burger King?"

He wanted a Whopper with cheese, leave off
the "salad," as he called all the trimmings, large fries, large Dr.
Pepper. I felt like an employee by the time I finished taking his
order.

It was getting dark when I arrived at Josh's.
I had taken Rusty home and fed him. Figuring it might be late by
the time I got back home, I left lights on for myself. I stopped
for the burgers and pulled into Josh's driveway soon after.

We put first things first, heading for the
kitchen table to eat. Josh was uncommunicative through dinner,
shoving the burger and fries into his mouth almost non-stop. I
couldn't think of a lot to say, either. He finished his dinner
first and went into his room. I threw away the wrappers from the
food, then went out to the Jeep to get the packing boxes I'd
rounded up earlier.

Josh's room looked like what I imagined every
teenager's room must look like. Clothing was strewn on nearly every
surface. Clean or dirty, I couldn't tell. The basket of laundry
from this morning was in the living room, presumably clean although
everything had been mashed down into permanent wrinkles. I assumed
the articles I saw here were dirty—I just couldn't figure out how a
person could manage so much in one short day. The walls had been
painted black (the landlord would love this) and the windows were
covered in heavy blackout shades. A blue neon fixture, twisted into
words of some unknown language, cast extremely dim light in one
corner. Another, red neon this time, gave the rest of the room a
purple cast and made our faces look sickly. Black sheets on the bed
were twisted into knotted heaps. This is probably an admission of
age, but I have to confess that I don't remember being this messy
myself. Given my present penchant for obsessive neatness, I'm
sure
my room never looked this way.

"Is there another light in here?" I asked,
flipping the wall switch futilely.

"Nah, I took the bulbs out of that one," he
said, lifting his chin upward to indicate the empty ceiling
fixture. "Couldn't stand my mom blasting me with bright light every
time she walked in the room."

"Can you see well enough to work in here?"
Even as I said it, I heard echoes of my own mother's voice
reminding me to turn on more light. "Never mind. I'll start packing
things in the other bedroom if you want to work on this."

He halfheartedly dropped a wadded up t-shirt
into one of the packing boxes. I walked into Gary and Jean's former
bedroom, unsure where to start. It felt like a severe invasion of
privacy to paw through their belongings. Especially since I'd
already done it once when searching for Gary's papers. I ended up
leaving the dresser drawers intact, thinking the aunt could decide
what to do with their clothing. I cleared the surfaces of the
furniture, packing clock radio, books, and small personal items.
Everything barely filled one box. I stripped and folded the
bedding, placing it in a neat stack at the foot of the bed. I'd
been at this for probably an hour and decided I should check on
Josh's progress.

Noise from the living room sent me in that
direction, only to find Josh on the couch with the TV on and an
open beer in hand.

"Finished already?" I really tried not to
sound sarcastic.

He ignored me until I ahummed.

"I said I ain't goin'" he reminded me.

"Would you rather I work on the kitchen or
your room?" I asked.

His eyes went back to the television and he
took a long pull on the beer. The thought went through my mind that
this probably wasn't his first of the evening. The personality
change from the good-natured young man I'd poured cereal for this
morning was just too marked.

The kitchen cupboards were a simple matter.
The Detweiller's hadn't owned much. If they once had fancy china
and wedding silver, it wasn't here now. A four-place-setting set of
cheap stoneware and a few assorted cups and bowls, many of which
looked like former housing for whipped cream and butter, were the
main vessels. I set each item in a box, placing newspaper between,
but leaving the boxes open so Josh or his aunt could find whatever
they needed. I opened the refrigerator and quickly made up my mind
that some things are beyond my charitable kindness. The aunt could
handle this.