Killer Commute

  They’d been bobbling between the little screen and Charlie, but when the phone bleeped and then bleeped again, the Long Beach Police Department watched Charlie not move.

  “Aren’t you going to answer?” Mary Maggie said finally, her jaw returning to the ajar position the second she stopped saying it.

  “She can’t,” Mrs. Beesom said. “She’s not home.”

  “She’s on vacation,” Detective J. S. explained.

  “Oh.”

  “Charlie,” Richard Morse of Congdon & Morse answered Charlie’s message on the answering machine, “I know you aren’t home and I’m glad you didn’t answer, but I just wanted you to know Ferris signed at dinner tonight. I’m calling from the Celebrity Pit. Congratulations, babe, you got a sweet bonus coming on this one. Have a great vacation, toots.”

  “Toots?” Officer Mason held Charlie’s bloodied sweatshirt up to the light of the table lamp next to Betty’s chair.

  “That wouldn’t be Rudy Ferris?” Detective J. S. asked.

  But Officer Mary Maggie interrupted, “Mrs. Greene—”

  “Miss Greene.”

  “Whatever. Did you handle Mr. Fiedler’s body?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you explain the bloody smudges on the inside of the sleeves?” She cradled her arms.

  And Charlie and Mrs. Beesom chimed in unison, “Hairy.”

  “I want that cat,” Detective Amuller demanded. Just like he had for Charlie’s sweatshirt.

  * * *

  “Uh, this isn’t going to be as easy as the sweatshirt,” Charlie informed the Long Beach Police Department.

  “Those animals are darn near feral,” Betty Beesom agreed and reached for the key under the fern-plant pot to unlock the gate.

  “This gate always kept locked?” Detective Amuller took the key and opened it himself, careful not to touch the gate, or let them touch it, either.

  “We only use the alley for garbage pickup,” Charlie said. It was normally left to homeless drunks and cats, homeless or not. She had never seen it so full of people before. Neighbors she’d never met filled the alley on the other side of the gate, had to shuffle aside to let them out of the courtyard. They were quiet, too. Too quiet. The world had seemed so unrealistically silent since Jeremy Fieldler all but fell out of his Trailblazer. Maybe Charlie’s ears were plugged.

  But she heard Detective Amuller speak softly behind her. “Which of you ladies called in about finding Mr. Fiedler’s body?”

  Both Charlie and Mrs. Beesom whirled to stare at the detective. He and Officer Mary Maggie stood in a sea of faces with emergency-vehicle lights strobing off eyeglasses and foreheads.

  Charlie decided she must be in shock—seeing and not hearing things the way they really were. Jeremy had lived in the same fortress with her for over five years.

  “I don’t think we did, did we, Charlie?” Mrs. Beesom didn’t look too good either.

  “Somebody must have,” Charlie said. “You suddenly showed up. I remember thinking how fast you were. I’d just gone around the Trailblazer to find Betty passed out and she came to but passed out again when she saw Jeremy and you all showed up.”

  “Do you have any idea how long it was after you discovered Mr. Fiedler that we appeared?”

  “I really don’t. This is the strangest evening. Maybe one of these people called.”

  “J. S., we could be looking at shock here. Take it easy.” Officer Mary Maggie took a close look into Charlie’s eyes.

  J. S. seemed to have lost interest in the cat. He asked Charlie to introduce him to her neighbors.

  “I don’t know them.”

  “Not any of them?”

  “I spend my whole life working, commuting, raising a daughter, and sleeping.” And not nearly enough of the latter.

  “This is Wilma and Art Granger.” Betty offered up the couple standing beside her. “They live with the cat that scratched Charlie you was looking for.”

  Wilma and Art blinked behind their eyeglasses in the blinking light. They stood between Betty and Officer Mason. It was probably just a reflection of Charlie’s present state of mind, but they looked like four owls in a cage with the gate-bar shadows crossing their faces.

  “We came out to see what all the lights were about,” Wilma said. “Seemed like the alley was safe enough—all the commotion being over the wall there.” She was short and pudgy, her husband tall, stick thin, and stooped.

  “What do you know about Jeremy Fiedler?” Detective Amuller asked and Mary Maggie stared at the heavens, shaking her head.

  “Don’t know any Jeremy Fiedler.” Art Granger straightened to look the young officer eye-to-eye. “Know Betty here because she belongs to our church.”

  Betty didn’t know any of the others in the alley, but the Grangers knew another man who knew another couple who knew two women who identified one of their neighbors. Everyone seemed to live in houses or apartments that backed on the alley in some way. Nobody claimed to know Jeremy or to have called the police, either.

  But all kept their voices low—not, Charlie thought, out of respect for someone dead, nor out of fear or curiosity.

  More out of remoteness.

  The bystanders, the paramedics, the police, the crime-scene specialists, the homicide detectives—one and all remote from the crisis of Jeremy. Even Charlie and Betty. And that quiet. Something was wrong with that quiet.

  J. S. garnered as many nods, head-shaking nos, and shrugged don’t-knows as he did whispered answers. And others in the alley crowded around, leaned into the conversations to hear, and kept silent themselves so they could.

  Charlie could even hear the sea-laden breeze stir the fronds of Mrs. Beesom’s sentry palm into slithery whispers and rustling clacks.

  “The press,” Charlie said much too loud and everyone in the alley turned to stare. “There’s no press.”

  “Well, thank a kind Lord,” was Art Granger’s fervent reply to that and several amens supported him.

  “So many crimes reported in L.A. they can’t get to them all,” Mary Maggie said, and opened her face in a huge grin. “Kinda nice, huh?”

  That garnered more amens.

  But since there were no pesky journalists, a shrieking cat fight soon shattered the peaceful crime scene.

  CHAPTER 3

  JEREMY’S HOUSE, LIKE Betty’s, had its front door and two windows on the alley boarded up—stuccoed over on the outside and plastered over on the inside. The windows on the inside of both had been transformed into recessed, arched art niches. Betty’s were adorned with Jesus Christ on black velvet in one and a painting of the Last Supper in the other, both bought in a Tijuana street market for bargain prices.

  Jeremy’s niches sported expensive metal-sculptured nudes of women in various stages of sexual congress with each other.

  The upstairs windows fronting on the alley were heavily barred on the outside, as were all outside windows, up or down, in all four houses of the complex. These windows pulled inward so they could be washed. Jeremy’s always gleamed because he had a cleaning lady who actually did windows. Her name was Kate, but her heritage was definitely Latino. An older, no-nonsense woman, she refused to work for beans. Both Charlie and Maggie were on her waiting list for clients. She was the best, and Charlie figured Kate would be retired before Charlie made it to the top of the list. Interestingly enough, Kate Gonzales refused to clean for the very wealthy because they preferred cheap, illegal labor and would not pay her price.

  Maybe vast mansions didn’t show the grit and kitty litter like Charlie’s little nest.

  Detective Amuller studied the metal sculptures in the niches in Jeremy’s living room. “What kind of a guy was he?”

  “He wasn’t poor, I think—”

  “I mean sexually?”

  “Never bedded him.”

  “I mean did he like women or men or both or animals or—”

  “Since I’ve lived here, Jeremy has had a succession of younger women living with him for short perio
ds—teens, mostly.”

  “How old a man was he?”

  “Mid forties, early fifties, I’d guess. He worked out constantly, so his bod was hard to gauge. Hell, you got my DNA report on your little computer. You should be able to call up his life history.”

  “Not on record. In cyberspace he never existed. No Social Security number, no credit records, no tax records. Nothing,” Officer Mary Maggie said, stepping into the room from the kitchen. “He’s what’s known as one suspicious character.”

  Officer Mason had stayed to see Betty Beesom settled for the night. She had been doing a great counseling job with the frightened witness when Detective Amuller insisted Charlie come to Jeremy’s with him.

  Two uniforms and a lab type had gone over every inch of Jeremy’s condo for clues to his murder as well as his life. They were gone now, but Charlie was still to touch nothing.

  Officer Mary Maggie had insisted that you can’t catch a cat by chasing him. You had to ignore him until he came to you, curious about why you stopped chasing him and what you were going to do next. Charlie was skeptical—she’d never heard of anyone understanding cats. But sure enough, another uniformed officer followed Mary Maggie with a struggling cloth bag in each hand.

  Just to be sure, Detective J. S. had both cats combed and clipped and pricked for blood samples. They moaned that eerie warning as the technicians tortured them on an old Wall Street Journal across Jeremy’s kitchen table and at each other. When the torture was finished, Officer Mason handed Tuxedo to Charlie and sent Hairy home with a gofer cop.

  Tuxedo didn’t hiss or yrowal or moan or scratch at Charlie. He trembled and clung to her. Charlie was afraid to move. Tuxedo hated Charlie.

  “Well, you could comfort him with a little snuggle or something,” the female cop said with disgust. “He’s not as used to murder as you are.”

  * * *

  By the time Libby and Maggie Stutzman and “that man” drove into the compound within minutes of each other, Charlie was shaking worse than the cat. Officer Mary Maggie and the gofer cop were all that remained of the Long Beach PD. Jeremy was gone, the Trailblazer was gone. The blood was still on the pavement where Jeremy had dripped it.

  “Glad to see you’re human,” Mary Maggie said. “Some people go into shock and delay the normal reactions.” Besides a regular cop, she was a community outreach and liaison officer. Part of her job was to temper the impact of necessary police-work on victims, their families, and communities, and to train volunteers to do the same. Her ridiculous falsetto voice was comforting, and when her smile tightened up from sloppy, it was unexpectedly shy. “Want me to call your doctor?”

  “God, no.” Charlie’s only doctor at present was a gastrointestinal type who treated her incipient ulcer. “He only wants to talk to me when I throw up blood. How do you know so much about cats?”

  “I don’t really. Got two dogs myself. But I’ve seen chickens traumatized by murder.”

  “You’re kidding. Chickens?”

  “Honest. Tuxedo and Hairy, now—they witnessed something they can’t tell us about. Wonder what they’d say if they could.”

  Charlie took another look at Libby’s cat.

  * * *

  Both Libby and Tuxedo Greene slept with Charlie in her bed that night. Except when they went back to visit grandma in Boulder, Libby hadn’t done this since the monster-under-the-bed or in-the-closet phase. Then she was tiny and blond and cute and forceful. Now she was about three inches taller than Charlie, drop-dead gorgeous blond and forceful.

  “Mom, we’ve got to stay together for protection,” she’d said as she and her cat crawled into bed and fell protectively asleep while Charlie lay awake.

  Maggie Stutzman and her stockbroker boyfriend, Mel, as in Clayton Melbourne, had no more than entered the fortress than the press had arrived in the form of a news helicopter. It dropped low enough to froth the fronds of Betty Beesom’s sentry palm into a frenzy, suck dirt into the air from nowhere, and shatter the the peacefulness of the murder scene.

  “Nobody’s luck holds forever,” Officer Mason said with an exaggerated shrug. She shepherded them all into Maggie’s house, the closest door. Tuxedo hung over Libby’s shoulder, relaxed as a rag doll. All was well now that his pal was home.

  “Is Maggie short for Margaret?” Charlie’s best friend asked the cop when Charlie introduced the two Maggies.

  “For Mary,” Officer Mason said and took Maggie Stutzman aside to grill her on where she’d been all evening and what she knew about Jeremy Fiedler and who might want him dead.

  “I don’t know that much about him, I guess,” Charlie’d heard her friend answer, with a regret and sadness that belied her words. “But if it wasn’t for robbery or something, my guess is there ought to be some angry fathers out there. He dated only the nubile.”

  Charlie’s hearing was so acute, she often overheard conversations meant to be secret. It was both a blessing and a curse.

  “Any names you can give us?”

  “They just had first names, stock names like Stephanie and Michelle and Lisa.” Maggie’s name was more German but she looked Irish. Lush black hair, pale, perfect, almost translucent skin, and snapping blue eyes. Maggie was a lawyer whose bottom was growing out of proportion to the rest of her. She was one of the dearest, most trusted people Charlie had ever allowed into her life.

  Maggie was a total idiot to trust Mel-the-swell-stockbroker with her heart, body, or finances. And everybody could see it but Maggie. Even Jeremy, who lusted only after the nubile, could see that. Mrs. Beesom had dubbed Mel that man in protest, and that was his nickname around the compound.

  Even now, Mel, who was married to Mrs. Mel but on the brink of a divorce any second for at least the last six months, was watching lovely Libby instead of Maggie. Maggie glanced over at him and didn’t notice.

  Unlike Charlie, Maggie needed a man. Nobody needed this guy.

  When questioned, that man admitted to knowing Jeremy Fiedler only from a party Maggie had given on her patio one night to introduce Mel to the neighbors and a few friends from her legal life. He hadn’t stopped smoking the whole time and had impressed only Maggie. Nobody wanted to say anything to hurt her. So they hadn’t then. Still hadn’t.

  Charlie had finally just fallen asleep when screaming outside roused her yet again.

  CHAPTER 4

  CHARLIE AND MAGGIE sat on either end of Maggie’s couch in their sweats, bare feet tucked under the center cushion, and raised some serious coffee in a toast to poor Jeremy.

  It was a sort of a morning drunken spree without alcohol. Maggie had a cappuccino machine and had made them lethal lattes. Nobody but Libby and Tuxedo, still tucked up in Charlie’s bed, got any sleep last night. Well, maybe Jeremy’s spirit, somewhere.

  They sat bleary-eyed, baggy-eyed, preshowered, preshampooed, even pretoothpasted. It took a community to face murder in the morning, a community minus the press and the how-do-you-feels. The silly doves were cooing their haunting mourning-mornings in the chilly air out there. In here it was cozy, and blessed with the vigorous smell of the coffee bean, freshly ground.

  That man had left before Maggie, too, had heard the scream. Even Mrs. Beesom, asleep at the back of the compound, had heard it. No cat this time, but a man very literally frozen in shock on the front of the front gate. A reporter for the Los Angeles Times, he’d decided to skip the glass and razor wire on top of the wall and climb over the front gate.

  “I’ll sue you,” he yelled as the ambulance types came to take him away.

  “Two questions.” Charlie started the salvo. “One: Why, with all the murders in this combined city, would the Times be interested in the murder of Jeremy Fiedler?” Females between the ages of fifteen and twenty-two seemed to get murdered every five minutes. Of course, that was true everywhere. Maybe it wasn’t news any longer. “And two, who wired the gate?”

  “One, I don’t know. Two, Jeremy. I thought you knew. He wired the back gate, too. And all on his own nickel. It wa
s a good deal, Charlie, for all of us. Comes on only at night.”

  “But why, and when? And what if Libby came home some night and didn’t know, or one of her stupid boyfriends stopped by?”

  “Jeremy pointed out that the high wall was not sufficient—anybody could climb the gates. He wired everything, Charlie, even the wall and razor wire. And Libby knew. You were probably on one of your trips—I think it was when you were in Las Vegas, and your stories were so horrendous we all probably forget to mention it. Or maybe we did tell you and you forget it. You’re so overwhelmed at work and everything.”

  “So where’s the switch that turns it on and off? And can that reporter sue us?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you’re the lawyer.”

  “I’m not that kind of lawyer.” Until recently Maggie had specialized in workmen’s compensation suits—a sort of legal housekeeping that went nowhere and thus ended up in the hands of women. She’d burned out and was now with a firm that specialized in estate planning. “Maybe we could counter-sue for attempted trespass.”

  As if on cue there was another scream outside, really more of a shriek this time. Neither woman jumped to her feet and ran to see what it could be.

  “You know, Charlie, I’m beginning to regret your decision to vacation at home.”

  “We haven’t even had time to discuss poor Jeremy’s murder.”

  They carried their soup-bowl coffee cups and wandered out into the courtyard, disheveled and barefoot and beyond caring who saw them that way, too.

  This time it was a reporter for the Press-Telegram. He’d managed to escape the electricity and razor wire and broken glass embedded in the top surface of the fortress’s eight-foot wall by pole-vaulting into Mrs. Beesom’s sentry palm. And the shriek had been Betty Beesom’s.

  The sentry palm had a history in the compound predating Charlie and Libby Greene. It was the tallest tree inside the walls, although there was a far-taller palm in front of Charlie’s condo-house in the area between the curb and sidewalk. The sentry palm had been a gift to Betty from her church upon the death of her husband, and had special meaning. It was also a noted example of its type, and had been written up with its picture and hers in a garden section of the L.A. Times. A disintegrating copy of this newsworthy event still clung to the door of Betty’s refrigerator with the help of a magnetized hummingbird.