The Axeman's Jazz (Skip Langdon Mystery Series #2) (The Skip Langdon Series) (33 page)

Skip grabbed on to the last part, hoping to distract her. “I know; I should have worn my uniform.” She flashed as much of a smile as she could muster. “I just thought you could help me with the names of people who aren’t on the phone list.”

“But if they aren’t on the list, that means they don’t want to be called.”

“This is a murder case.”

“Wait a minute.” She finally seemed to get it. “You suspect someone in the group.”

Skip shook her head. “We don’t have a suspect yet. We just want to talk to everybody who was there. Ask them if they know anything.”
Do I have to spell it out for you?

She was caught between her innate cop’s need not to tell one fact more than she had to and her need to be polite enough to get Di to help her. She couldn’t come back tomorrow. Di was going to hate her before she left.

Di looked at the phone list. “I know all these people. The new black man is named Jim—he came to my party with the musician. The man who delivered my flowers was there too—Adam. The cute one. That’s two more.”

“How about the short guy in the corner?”

“The one with the glasses? Oh, the other one. With the chipped tooth. I think his name’s Chuck.”

“You wouldn’t know his last name, would you?”

Di shook her head.

Tediously, laboriously, Skip brought up every face she could remember, and most of them Di was able to connect with a name on the phone list. The others she knew only by first names.

But this is only a first shot, Skip thought. We’ll get them. Eventually, we’ll get them all. If it matters.

She had a feeling the Axeman was someone she already knew.

“You’ve been a big help, Di. Now I wonder if we could talk about your criminal record.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’re Jacqueline Breaux, aren’t you?”

She looked alarmed. “How do you know that?”

“I know that, and I know you have a criminal record.”

Tears came, but Di was quiet. She seemed to have spent her passion a moment ago. “I thought that was in the past,” she said at last. “Excuse me a moment.”

She found a box of tissues, plucked one, and sniffled. “You think I abused my own kids and now I’ve killed a child?”

“You choked a child, Di.”

“I didn’t!”

“You pleaded guilty to it.”

“Could I ask you something? How do you think I live?” Her voice was alive with indignation, challenge. She was no longer the victim, but her own champion, full of self-righteous fury.

Oh, boy, thought Skip. She said, “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I have no visible means of support. I was convicted of abusing my child. Do you really think that eighteen years later I’m still getting alimony from the husband who had every reason to divorce me? Don’t you wonder how I can afford this apartment? Living like this? Do you think I knock over gas stations, or what?”

“Well? What?”

“I’m being paid off, that’s what. If you don’t believe me, look up the court records of our divorce. They’ll show you something you won’t believe. I got custody of the kids. Me. The supposed abuser. My husband didn’t contest it. You know why? Because that was part of the deal too.”

She picked up a candle and began to play with it. Skip had the feeling she was an ex-smoker, would have smoked a cigarette a decade or so ago. “I knew he was rough with the kids. I just didn’t know how rough. Remember my share? I had a rough childhood too. I didn’t know what was normal. I just didn’t know.” She blew the candle out, lit it again. “I did know he choked Bennett. I caught him, and I stopped it, but I didn’t know it had gone so far. It was just one of the things he did that I didn’t like. I was always stopping him and he was always telling me I was spoiling the kids, I was too soft on them, they were already ‘rotten as mud.’ That was his phrase, ‘rotten as mud.’ That’s what he said about a couple of little kids who’d been beaten. Beaten and other things. I never saw the marks on Bennett. Not till the police got there. A neighbor noticed and called them.”

Her voice was strong, getting stronger. “Do you know who I was married to? Walt Hindman. Do you know him?” She scanned Skip’s face for a reaction.

“Everybody knows the Hindmans.”

“Walt Hindman wasn’t about to get hauled into court for child abuse. So it was all nicely hushed up. I pleaded guilty and it was the best deal I ever made. He got out of my life and out of my kids’—and in addition to everything else paid all our shrink bills for the next ten years. I got generous child support and an annuity for the rest of my life. And he put both the kids through college.” For a moment her face grew soft. “He didn’t mean to be a bad father.” She caught herself. “Listen to me, making excuses for him. He was an animal, I know that now. I just thought that was pretty much the way everyone was. And I wasn’t innocent, I know that too. I let him get away with it. But I faced that and I’m stronger for it.” She sounded it. Or she was a very good liar.

Skip said, “Do you have anything on paper?”

“Lots of stuff. But nothing admitting he did anything.” She turned up her palms, smiled her most ethereal smile. “All you’ve got is my word for that.”

IT WAS NEARLY three when she banged on Alex’s door. Lamar answered, wearing a pair of pajamas that were probably as old as she was. He looked wizened and sad in them. “Hey, Lamar. Remember me?”

“Step in the light there. I think I do, I just can’t call your name.”

“Margaret. But you can call me Skip this time.”

“Well, I know I’ve met you somewhere.”

“Is Alex home?”

“Elec? You want to see Elec?”

“Dad, what the hell’s going on?” Alex had walked into the living room.

“Alex, it’s Skip. I’m a police officer.” Remembering he knew that, she said, “I mean I’m here on police business.”

“Po-lice!” said Lamar. “Now I recognize you. You’re the questionnaire lady.”

“Dad, you know this woman?” Alex had on a pair of undershorts and one of the nastier scowls Skip ever hoped to see.

“Shore. This is that good-lookin’ one I was tellin’ you about. The one with the nice big bottom.”

“What the fuck is going on?”

Skip held up her badge. “Could I come in, please?”

Lamar let her in while Alex went to find a pair of pants. “Lamar, I’m real sorry I woke you up. Why don’t you go on back to bed?”

“Well, I’m up now. What’s Elec done?”

“Were you awake when he came home?”

He thought a minute. “Nope. Didn’t even know he was home.”

“What time did you go to bed?”

“Oh, ’bout nine or ten.”

Alex stomped back in. “Dad, for Christ’s sake, go back to bed.”

“I’m not doin’ it.”

“Sit over there, then. And be real quiet.” He pointed to a Naugahyde recliner, probably hoping his dad would fall asleep in it.

Skip wasn’t crazy about having an audience, but she decided not to argue. “Alex, where’d you go after we talked tonight?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“A girl got murdered tonight.”

“What girl? What does this have to do with me?” His voice went up on the last word; it sounded slightly whiny.

“I need you to answer a few questions, please.”

“Well, I need you to leave my house, please.”

Damn these sophisticated witnesses.

He could make her leave and apparently he knew it.

“Alex, this is serious.”

“I don’t care. It’s your problem. I don’t have to cooperate with you and I’m not going to if you don’t tell me what’s going on.”

Angrily, Skip fumbled in her purse for the picture of Linda Lee she had brought. “Did you know this girl?”

“This girl!” He looked at the picture and then back at Skip, upset for once, knocked off his pins. “What about this girl?”

“You knew her, didn’t you?”

“This girl wasn’t murdered tonight. What the hell’s going on here?”

“Answer the question, Alex.”

“This is the one who got the axe. I thought that was her. I saw her picture and I thought it was the same girl. But then I thought it couldn’t be. Her hairdo was different or something. She came to our group once. The teddy-bear group. I asked her to go for a motorcycle ride. That’s really her, isn’t it? I never knew her name.”

“She didn’t mention it on the motorcycle?”

“She didn’t go.”

“How many times did you see her?”

“Skip, what the hell is this all about? It’s three
A.M.
and this happened two weeks ago.”

“I told you.”

He put it together instantly; Di never had gotten it. “Another Axeman murder! Who?”

“A girl named Jerilyn Jordan. A high school student.”

He showed no emotion. “I never heard of her.”

“What time did you get home tonight?”

“Why me, dammit? I don’t know the girl.”

She saw that he would just badger her until she told him. “She was Abe Morrison’s baby-sitter.”

“Abe Morrison? Oh, Abe from the group. Did he do it?”

She didn’t answer, but his mind kept working. “Hold it a second. Wait a minute. That’s two from the group. More or less from the group, connected with it. You think the Axeman’s from the group, don’t you?” He sounded excited.

“Alex, it’s late. Could you just answer the questions, please?”

“Oh, man, wait till I tell my agent.” His voice was positively gleeful. “This is great. This sheds a whole new light on things.”

“Are you going to cooperate with the police or not?”

He put on a good-boy look. “I arrived home about ten-thirty. I watched television till eleven-thirty or twelve and then I went to bed. I was awakened from a good night’s sleep by a police officer at approximately two fifty-two a.m.”

Lamar said, “That’s a bald-faced lie.”

“What’s a bald-faced lie?”

“You went out again. I heard you on your little scooter.”

Alex turned back to Skip. “That’s right, I did. I went out to get some beer about fifteen minutes after I got home. Say about ten forty-five.”

“And you came right back?”

“Yes.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Dad, who’s telling this story?”

“I never heard you come back.”

“Well, I had to have come back sometime or I wouldn’t be here now.”

“Well, I didn’t hear you.”

“I can’t help what you heard or didn’t hear in that drunken haze of yours. I went out to get some beer and I came right back.”

“I was still awake at eleven-thirty because I was watching television. You weren’t home then.”

“Dad, you weren’t even awake when I got home the first time.”

“I know, but you woke me up with that dadgum scooter of yours and I couldn’t get back to sleep.”

“Listen to him,” said Alex. “Will you listen to him? You know what it’s like to live with a seventy-five-year-old six-year-old?”

Rummaging quickly, Skip produced a picture of Tom Mabus. “Have you ever seen this man?”

“He’s the other victim, isn’t he? I only saw the woman.”

“Often?”

“No. Just the once. A couple of weeks ago, maybe three.”

“Try to remember.”

“Well, it wasn’t last week. You were there. The week before that. That’s when it was. Three meetings ago.”

The night she died? Either that or the night before. Skip’s stomach felt slightly queasy. “Do you remember what she was wearing?”

He shrugged. “No. Pants maybe. Yeah. Not shorts or a dress. Because I noticed she could ride the motorcycle if she wanted to. One of those subliminal things.”

“Do you remember what color?”

“Are you taking a fashion survey, or what?”

She summoned a smile. “I guess not. Good night, boys.” She sincerely meant the last word.

Sonny met her in running shorts and T-shirt, apparently hastily pulled on, not stopping for undergarments. She could see the well-defined outline of his substantial equipment through the shorts. A puppy shot out the door when he opened it. But its legs were too short for the stairs—Skip caught it while Sonny blinked in the light.

“That’s Zeke,” he said.

He seemed so groggy she wondered if he’d taken a sleeping pill. When she got to the part about being a police officer, he said, “Missy! Something’s happened to Missy.”

“No, don’t worry. Missy’s fine. But we do have a problem and I need to ask you some questions.”

“A problem?”

Skip decided to ignore the question. Sonny was so absurdly Southern-polite he wouldn’t be so crude as to press her. “May I sit down?”

His apartment was a typical student’s. Not much furniture and what there was was covered with debris. But top-of-the-line stereo equipment, hundreds of dollars’ worth of compact discs. Some workout equipment, one painting that had be to a Rob Gerard.

“Sonny, I need to ask what you did tonight after you left PJ’s.”

“I took Missy home. And then I came home and tried to study. But I couldn’t. I was just too tired. I fell asleep with the lights on.”

“Did you call anyone? Or did anyone call you?”

“No. I was dead to the world. I woke up sometime and pulled my clothes off. That’s all I remember.” He patted Zeke and lifted him up to his lap. He was a golden puppy, a lab or a retriever, with the requisite cute floppy ears and nippy little teeth.

“Such a sweet puppy.”

“I just got him. I think that’s why I talked about my grandfather tonight. My first dog died right after my grandfather did.”

“How sad, both things at once.”

Sonny forced a smile. “But I have Zeke now.”

“How did your other dog die?”
Did you strangle him, by any chance?

He shrugged. “I’m not sure. I was so little…”

The shrug had been too nervous, the answer a little too quick. Skip sensed bravado rather than truth. She pulled out her photo of Tom Mabus. “Do you recognize this man?”

“No.” But he suddenly looked very frightened.

“What’s wrong?”

“I know who he is. He’s one of the Axeman victims.”

“Why would that scare you?”

“The other one. I think I might have known her. I mean I think I talked to her.” It was a kind of croak. “I’ve got to get some water.”

He left and came back wiping his mouth. Skip had laid Linda Lee’s picture on his scratched-up Fifties coffee table. “This one?”