Monday morning dawned with all the prospects of an ordinary new work week. I rose, showered, dressed, fed the dog, and brought in the paper. I poured cereal in a bowl, sliced strawberries on top, added milk and opened the paper.
And that's when I learned of Jean Detweiller's death.
Her picture stared up at me from the front page. An old picture but distinctly Jean nonetheless. I gaped at her thin face with the outdated hairstyle for a full minute before realizing that I could learn more by reading the story.
The phone rang, startling me out of my chair. It was Ron.
"Have you seen the morning paper?" he asked.
"I'm just now looking at it. I haven't had a chance to read the story yet."
"Well, I've had a call from Kent Taylor already. He'd like to talk to our client but it seems she's nowhere to be found."
"What?"
"Just that. She hasn't been home for two nights, and her husband says he doesn't know where she is."
I was having a hard time digesting all this. I told Ron I would read the article and talk to him later at the office.
The paper said Jean had been shot sometime around midnight Sunday night, as she left work at Archie's Diner. Her body was found beside her car in Archie's parking lot. No one had heard anything. The article mentioned the tragic shooting of the victim's husband less than two weeks earlier. The reporter speculated as to whether the two deaths might be connected but no conclusions were given.
My cereal had gone soggy. I picked out the berries and a few palatable flakes and flushed the rest down the disposal. Locking the back door, I called Rusty and gathered my briefcase and jacket. We were out the door five minutes later.
At the office, things were hopping. Ron and Kent Taylor were deep in conversation in Ron's office when I walked in.
"We've got an APB out on your client," Kent said without preamble.
"Why? What's going on?"
"She's still under arrest in the Gary Detweiller case," he reminded. "And now we want her for questioning in Jean's death."
"Surely, you don't think. . . I mean, Jean might have been a victim of random violence. That's not the best part of town. Violence is everywhere nowadays."
"We have every reason to think," he interrupted, "that there's a connection."
"They've compared the bullets," Ron said. "Both Jean and Gary were killed by a nine millimeter weapon."
"Of course we'll do ballistics tests to be sure if it was the same gun," Taylor added.
I digested this for a minute. "I thought you got a search warrant and checked the North home for weapons last week," I asked Taylor.
"We did. Didn't find the weapon, obviously. But that doesn't mean Stacy North doesn't own it. She could have it in her possession right now. And if she does. . . you can tell her this if she contacts you . . . if she's carrying a weapon, it's a violation of her bail conditions and we'll have her back in the can so fast she won't know what hit her."
It was the longest speech I'd ever heard Kent make. And it wasn't especially reassuring.
"Stacy came to see me Saturday morning," I told him.
"Why didn't you say so?"
"I was just about to." Now that I'd opened my mouth, I wasn't sure how much to tell. Stacy's marital problems weren't part of this, at least not directly.
"Well?" Kent and Ron were both watching me.
"Well, she didn't tell me she was going out to kill Jean Detweiller," I snapped. I made myself take a deep breath. "She was upset, but we didn't talk about the case at all. I gathered her problems were personal. Her husband is a difficult man to live with." Understatement.
"Was she angry, defiant, or what?"
"Not at all. Depressed was more like it. She spoke very little and was on the verge of tears the whole time. If Stacy North left with the idea of killing anyone, it was probably herself."
Even before the words left my mouth, I realized their import. "Oh, God, do you think. . . " I turned to Ron. "Do you think she might do something like that? What if I could have stopped her?" My mind was spinning.
Ron rose from his chair and came around the desk. He put a comforting arm around my shoulders.
"Let's all sit down and think this out," he suggested gently.
He led me across the hall to my own office and guided me to the sofa. "Sit here. I'm going to get you some tea."
Kent Taylor was oddly quiet as he took the side chair next to my desk. Ron came back a minute later with coffee for Taylor and tea for me. He sat beside me on the couch.
"Now, tell us about Saturday morning."
I related the gist of the visit, without going into a lot of detail. Stacy obviously didn't even want to talk to me about her marriage. It seemed invasive to bring two more people into it.
"So, you think she was depressed when she left?" Taylor asked.
"I don't know. I'm no psychologist. She was unhappy. Maybe she just decided to go somewhere and be alone awhile."
"Well, you better hope she hasn't left the city. And you better hope she comes back soon."
"Will she be arrested again?" I asked.
"We'll have to question her." He said this as though it would be obvious to a child.
I didn't bother with a response. The conversation was about finished by then and he left a few minutes later.
My desk was stacked with mail that I had not attended to last week. Somehow, though, I just couldn't put my mind to it now, either. I reread the morning's front page story.
Jean had been killed outside Archie's. As far as I knew, Stacy didn't know anything about Jean Detweiller—her workplace, her schedule. I suppose she could have found out, but it didn't ring true. Stacy had been much too enveloped in her own problems to focus on tracking and killing Jean.
Poor Josh. I thought of the troubled kid who'd now lost both his parents to violence. I had to talk to him. I picked up my jacket. Ron was on the phone, but I told Sally to tell him I'd be out for awhile.
Taking the scenic route up Central Avenue might not have been the quickest path to the Detweiller house. It did, however, lead me past Archie's Diner. I decided to stop there first.
It was past the breakfast hour and the parking lot was nearly empty. I saw Archie dragging a coil of green garden hose from a storage room at the back of the restaurant. He screwed the hose coupling onto a faucet mounted on the back wall of the building and attached a sprayer to the other end. He tried to walk toward the middle of the parking lot with it, but the knot of hose on the ground yanked back at him. A few choice words slipped out as he tried a whipping motion to get the thing untangled.
"Hi, Archie," I called out.
He squinted toward me, trying to place me.
"Charlie Parker," I reminded, "I was here the other day." I was standing one parking space away now.
"Oh, yeah . . .. You the one asking about Jean, weren't you? Well, I don't know how to tell ya this . . ."
"I already know." We stood silently for a minute, neither of us knowing quite what we should say.
"Um, I . . ."
He gestured toward the next parking slot, and it dawned on me what he was doing. A large brownish stain formed an irregular circle on the pavement. He aimed the sprayer at it before realizing that he hadn't turned on the water.
"Could you get that faucet for me?"
I trotted to the building, glad that the little errand postponed our conversation, even for a short while. The faucet handle was old and caked with dirt. I struggled with it, taking a little longer than necessary. The spritzing sound of water blasted behind me.
"Police said they were done here, so I guess it's up to me to clean this up," he commented when I walked back to him.
"I was really sorry to hear about Jean," I told him. It sounded trite. I'm terrible at these things.
"Yeah, me too," he said. He kept spraying, forming a red puddle that soon turned pink, then ran clear.
"How's Josh doing?" I asked.
He gave me a puzzled look.
"Her son."
"Oh, the boy. Well, gee, I sure don't know. Hadn't given him much thought." He guided the puddle of water out toward the street. "Funny, you know, she didn't talk a whole lot about the family here at work. Kinda like she came here to get away from them. She'd mention 'em sometimes, but not like some of these mothers do, where you hear about it every time the kid goes to the bathroom."
"She didn't say how Josh was handling his father's death then, I guess."
"Nope. Don't tell nobody I said this," he said, leaning toward me as if there were dozens of people standing around, "but I think Jean was so happy with her own freedom that she didn't take time to think about what her kid was doing."
His eyes met mine with a knowing look. I tried to look surprised at his words, but truthfully, I wasn't.
"I thought I'd stop by and visit Josh," I said. "Just to see how he's taking it."
"Good idea," Archie grinned. "Poor little guy could probably use a friend right now."
I wondered if he knew that Josh was sixteen, practically a man.
"Were you here when it happened?" I asked, taking a different tack.
"Nope. It was right when Jean got off work at midnight. I got me a night manager for that late shift." He chuckled in a humorless way. "I'm gettin' a mite old for that late night stuff. I can still get right up with the birds in the mornin' but when the late shift comes on, I usually go home."
"Didn't anybody hear the shot?"
"They say they didn't. Hell, in this neighborhood, it ain't that uncommon."
We did a little more chit-chat while Archie coiled up the hose. He invited me in for another piece of pie but I told him I'd have to make it another time. I drove away wondering how well he'd really known Jean.
The Detweiller driveway was full of cars. Josh's was nearest the garage door, blocked in by three others. Relatives or friends?
I tapped on the door, but the hum of voices inside was loud enough that no one heard. Finally I tried the knob myself and just went in.
Josh sat on the sofa, a pretty blond girl of about fourteen wrapped around one arm. He didn't seem to be paying a lot of attention to her. A middle-aged couple had pulled two kitchen chairs into the living room and sat facing Josh. After pausing to gape at me for a second, they resumed talking in hushed tones. The man wore a dark suit and tie and had a Bible in his hands. Josh shot me a "rescue me" kind of look, but I wasn't about to get into that. I sidestepped the little group, heading in the direction I assumed the kitchen would be.
It, too, had been commandeered by the church ladies. Two of them, in polyester pantsuits, had laid out a spread on the kitchen table that would feed twenty easily. They had a ham, two plates of fried chicken, potato salad, green beans, and various Jell-Os in several colors. Not to mention two sheet cakes baked in disposable metal pans. The two women smiled at me but I caught them looking at my empty hands. I ducked out the way I'd come.
No one was especially paying any attention to me, so I slunk across the hall into the master bedroom. The thought had come to me, driving across town this morning, that Jean's death could be tied to Gary's because of something she knew. Gary's business dealings were a little on the dim side, to say the least. What if Jean had found out something about somebody and they knew that she knew . . . I wondered if Gary kept any files or papers at home.
The bedroom drapes were pulled, making the room cool and gloomy. I pushed the door shut, guiding it with both hands, turning the knob so it wouldn't make any noise. Alone, I was like a kid in a toy store. What to touch first?
The room was neat by Jean's housekeeping standards. The bed was made. Maybe she was like me, hating to crawl back into an unmade bed; the sheets and blankets have to be smoothed out or it feels icky. The rest of the bedroom was more in keeping with her neatness criteria for the other rooms.
There was no file cabinet with a drawer labeled "Illegal Stuff" so I had to go into this blind. There were two night stands, a dresser, and a chest of drawers. It was anybody's guess. I picked the nightstands first. The first one held an assortment of feminine articles, including a romance novel, three sheets of pink stationery with frayed edges, an emery board, and a diaphragm. I pawed through the contents clear to the back, and only came away with a dusting of powder from some long ago broken compact. Wiping my fingers on my jeans, I went for the second stand.
This must have been Gary's. Two copies of Playboy and a nail clipper. Below the drawer there was an open space, ostensibly for books or perhaps an object d' art. In this case it was crammed with papers. Quite a few were old racing forms and newspapers, shoved into the space with no apparent method of organization. Others were sheets from yellow pads, spiral notebooks, or whatever was probably handy at the time. I recognized Gary's heavy slanted writing on most of them. I began to flatten them out to see if there was any theme to the whole mess.
Just then, I sensed movement from the other room.
"Now, son, I want you to know that you can call on Mrs. Luthy and me just any time you need to. We're here in the Lord with you, in your time of sorrow." The preacher was making his closing statement. Their voices were just the other side of the wall from me. Apparently they were standing at the front door.
"That's right, son," a female voice joined in. "And we'll look for you in Sunday School this week."
I jammed the handwritten papers into my bag and zipped it shut. The racing forms and newspapers went back into the night stand. Judging by the layer of dust on everything, I doubted that Jean had gone through this stuff but there could be a clue here somewhere. Right now I had to get that door open before anyone figured out where I'd gone. I reached for the knob.
Another voice piped up, no more than a foot from my face. "Yes, Josh, we'll see you Sunday." I held my breath, knowing they could probably hear the sweat trickling down my sides right about now.
"We've set lunch out for you, now. You and your friend be sure to eat something." The voices were receding in the direction of the front door.
I turned the doorknob slowly with my right hand, holding my left hand up to the crack as it gradually opened. Like that would keep them from seeing me. Eye to the opening, I held my breath. I could see no one, so I slid the door open and myself out. In a quick switch of directions, I tried to make it look like I was just coming from the bathroom across the hall. One of the food ladies gave me a funny look but didn't say anything.
The three women had their purse straps over their arms, neat cardigans buttoned up tight. Josh stood at the front door, seeing them out. The blonde had kept her seat on the couch. I hung back, letting them finish trying to save Josh's soul. He closed the front door behind them with a sigh.
"Hey, Charlie," he said.
"Hey, Josh." He came toward me, unsure, and we gave each other a brief hug. I told him I was sorry about all this; he murmured something that sounded good. We were both glad to have that part over with.
"You hungry?" I asked. We went into the kitchen.
"Sort of." He eyed the spread on the kitchen table. "I kinda wish they'd brought some Quarter Pounders." We laughed.
"Well, this is here already. Want me to fix you a plate?" I offered.
"Naw, I'll get something later."
The girl was on her feet now, giving me the evil eye, like I had romantic intentions toward her man. Please. I'm old enough to be his . . . his much older sister.
"I'll at least stick the potato salad in the fridge so it doesn't go bad," I said. "If you don't eat soon, you better put the rest of it away, too."
"Okay." The two of them went back to the other room.
"You doing all right?" I asked when I returned to the living room.
He shrugged. "Okay, I guess."
"At the risk of sounding like everyone else, I'd say you can call me if you need anything. But maybe I shouldn't. Just know that you can." I pulled a card from my jacket pocket and laid it on top of the TV set. He smiled but didn't acknowledge the card.
"So, what will you do no
w?" I asked.
"Whatta you mean? Same as ever, I guess."
"Look, not to put a real damper on things, but I doubt if the welfare people, or whoever has a say in these things, are gonna let you just live alone. You're still under age."
"Hey, I can take care of myself just fine," he protested.
"I'm sure you can. But I know how this is. My parents both died when I was sixteen, too."
He looked straight at me. "No shit!"
"No shit. Killed in a plane crash coming home from Denver. It was just a quick weekend trip. I'd stayed over with a girlfriend." Stacy. "I thought I'd just go home and run the place by myself, but I didn't have the say-so in it."
"So, what'd you do?"
"Well, I was real lucky to have a neighbor who's like a grandmother to me. She took me in until I was out of school. Luckily, my folks left the house to me, so I moved back into it when I was in college."
Josh was quiet for a couple of minutes. "Well, I sure as shit can't stay here," he said finally. "Not unless I can come up with a month's rent by the first."
The girl had wound both her arms around one of his and stared up into his face now, like she'd love to kiss it and make it all better. He seemed oblivious to her.
"I've got an aunt," he said glumly. "Here in town. She lives up in the northeast heights. I guess I'd have to go to Eldorado." He mentioned the name of the other high school like it was in Iran or somewhere equally friendly.
"It might not be so bad," I said, trying to make it sound better than it really was. Having to transfer to a new school near the end of one's junior year had to be pretty disheartening. "Or wait, what about seeing if they'd let you stay at Highland? I think they do that now. If you've got your own car, which you do, I'll bet it can be arranged."
He cheered up a little at that and decided maybe he was hungry after all. We went into the kitchen and found clean plates. He stacked on four pieces of fried chicken and close to a pint of the potato salad. We carried our plates back to the living room. They took the couch and I perched on the edge of the vinyl recliner.
"Josh, I want to help find out what happened," I said between bites off a chicken leg.
He shrugged, chewing. "Gangs, probably," he mumbled with his mouth full.
"Are you sure? Don't you think this seems awfully coincidental, both your parents so close together? Think. Did your dad have enemies? What about your mom?"
"Maybe some of those guys my dad hung around with," he suggested.
I glanced over at the girl, who had still not said a word in my presence. Josh had not bothered to introduce us. I had no idea what her name was. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea discussing all this in front of her.
"Well, I'll do some checking on it," I said, getting up to take my plate to the kitchen. I put it in the sink and ran water over the sticky places.
Josh sat on the sofa with his plate on the coffee table in front of him. Still packing away the chicken.
"Look, I've gotta go now," I said. "Stay in touch. Let me know when you're moving."
I retrieved my jacket from the back of the vinyl recliner and my purse from the floor behind it.
"I'll talk to you later, Josh." He waved, still chewing.
Chapter 17