A Line To Murder (A Puget Sound Mystery) (28 page)

I added milk and cocoa to the paste and stirred steadily. The methodical action gave me time to organize my thoughts. “He’s crippled, with one leg a lot shorter than the other, and he has a broken arm. He’s tiny like a skinny Truman Capote.”

“So, where does that leave him as a suspect?”

“In my book, he isn’t anymore.” We were silent for a moment. The cocoa started to boil and I poured it into mugs. Dave sprayed on Reddi-wip and sprinkled the cream with cinnamon. We headed for the living room.

“That leaves Andy as the only possibility.” I curled up in a chair.

“I don’t buy it.” Dave blew on the cocoa.

“Why not?”

“He lacks the kind of passion it takes to pull off that kind of crime.”

“He does not. He has quite a lot of passion.”

“I don’t mean sexual passion. I mean the primitive animalistic compulsions that drive some killers.”

“Primitive animalistic compulsions? What do you read, anyway?
Police Gazette
?”

“Premeditated murder is beyond most of us, thank God.”

“How do you know it was premeditated?”

“The phone cord. The killer must have taken it with him to Isca’s house.”

“Couldn’t he have just ripped it out of her wall?” Then I remembered both the phones were intact and one had actually rung.

“It’s not as easy as the movies make you think.”

“Andy did say it looked like a ritualized killing—the way the body was posed, I mean.”

“Makes sense.”

The rain blew against the side of the building with manic fury. Good thing I hadn’t had time to buy those petunias. I sipped my warm cocoa and began to unwind.

Dave looked thoughtful. “You know, you may never find out who killed Isca. She had a whole other life you probably never knew about. I used to see her out sometimes.”

“You never told me.”

“Isca would have mentioned it if she wanted you to know.”

“Where did you see her?”

“Oh, bi-bars, leather bars, sometimes biker hangouts. It was always late at night and she was always very involved with someone.”

“Did she see you? Did she know you saw her?”

“Sure.”

“Well.” I didn’t know what to say.

“It isn’t the
Cosby Show
world you think it is. Night life can be pretty, ummm, intense. There’s an unwritten rule that no one talks about what goes on. It’s no one’s business and talk invites trouble.”

“I suppose she kept her bustier in a Greyhound locker someplace so Dominic wouldn’t find it.”

Dave grinned and set his mug on the coffee table. “Right. Along with her garter belts and black-seamed stockings.”

“For a gay guy, you’re awfully aware of women’s underwear, it seems to me.”

“She was lonely. I’m not sure I’ve ever known a woman as sad and lonely as she was. She was sad about the divorce, about her job. She loved her son, but he wasn’t enough.”

“I wish I’d have known.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered. Even Isca didn’t know what she was looking for.”

“Are you saying, then, someone she met at one of those places could have killed her?”

“Could have, and then left town.” Dave yawned and stretched. “I’m bushed, and I think your cat wants in.”

“Oh, poor kitty.” I jumped up. A plaintive cry came from the deck. Startled, Jose gave a squawk and flapped his wings. A few feathers scattered.
Time to clean the cage again, and maybe time to return him to Dominic.

When I opened the door, the wind slammed against the glass. Porch Cat bolted inside. As I closed and locked the door, the light shined on something lying on the balcony. It took a minute to register. A doll with black phone cord tied in a bow around its neck. I slammed the door shut.

Behind me, Porch Cat crunched kibble and Dave had started to leave. I didn’t realize I’d make a sound until he turned around, joined me and looked at the balcony. He framed his face with his hands on the balcony door.

“I don’t suppose the cat left that there.”

“I doubt it. I can hardly ever get him interested in anything but sleep and food.”

I shivered and Dave wrapped his arms around me. “You saw someone hanging around outside earlier?” His breathing was steady. “We’d better call the police.”

“No.”

“Huh?”

“It’s late. I’m tired, and I can’t cope with another visit from the police.”

“Not even if Kyle Hamilton gets the call?”

“Three times in a row? I should be so lucky. I’ll call from the office tomorrow and they can poke around while I’m at work.”
I guess it’s time to tell them about the money clip I found in Isca’s garden that Andy swiped.

Dave loosened his grip and stepped back. “Well, maybe you should sleep at my place.”

“If I can’t sleep with you, I’ll sleep with the cat.”

“Bitch.”

“Don’t think you’re going to retrieve your reputation around here at the cost of mine.”

“I’ll check the place out then. Do you know where your pepper spray is?”

“I think so.” I followed him into my bedroom. He checked the fire escape and made sure the door and window were locked.

“You know,” I sat on the bed and watched him. “Between you and the various police visits, it seems I’ve had more men and less action here in the last month than in the last ten years.”

Chapter 25

  After Dave left I weighed the options and chose a bath over a shower. As the water flowed into my claw-foot tub, whether to add bubble bath or not was more decision than I could cope with. I’d once read Janet Leigh never took another shower after she made
Psycho.
Probably no one but me remembered that in the movie
Pillow Talk
, Doris Day always took a two-minute hot-and-cold shower before she began arguing with Rock Hudson over their party phone line. Well, Doris had a housekeeper, and I’d rather hear every creaking floorboard than to have all noise blocked by water pounding out of a shower. I poured bath oils into the tub and sank slowly into the hot water. Did anyone even know what a party line was anymore? Well, maybe, thanks to Trivial Pursuit.

Porch Cat kept came in to keep me company. He gave the doorstop a swipe. The rubber tip went flying. The fun was over. He jumped onto the toilet seat and sat
sphinx like, eyes closed. When the water cooled, I got out, wrapped my head in a towel and carried him into the bedroom. What would Kyle think of the oversized T-shirts I slept in? Mutual fund wholesalers handed them out as promotional gimmicks when they visited the office.
Probably, not much.
However, once in the old mahogany bed that had been my grandfather’s, I forgot about Kyle. I leaned against the headboard and tried to think things through.

“Well, cat, it looks like the Vicar is out of the running as a suspect.”

He purred in agreement.

“I suppose I’d better tell the police how to get
a hold of him when I call about the phone cord.”
Yes, officer. I did, in fact, meet the man known to Isca as the Vicar, and while we talked, the real murderer skulked around my apartment and left a calling card.

“You know what, though? I still can’t believe Andy killed his ex-wife.” My reasoning was tangled up in his love for and responsibility to Dominic. The problem was, every time something happened—the dead crow, the shaving cream on my car, the light in the road mirror—he was in the vicinity. Umma Grace’s story about his creepy commune upbringing showed he was no stranger to death.

Porch Cat turned on his back so I could rub his tummy. He’d grown to trust me in such a short time; about the same length of time it had taken me to trust Andy
.

Not my fault. My hormones made me
.

I remembered the night I was followed. It could have been anyone taking advantage of a spur-of-the-moment opportunity. I had certainly created one in a questionable neighborhood. There was also the light that had been flashed in my window. It could have been one of those lights hunters use to spot deer at night. Quite a few stores carried them. The phone call where someone breathed was probably just random dialing by some kid fooling around. I’d gotten heavy breathers before. Sometimes I talked to them. I grinned remembering one fellow. “Can we talk dirty, Jamie?”

“Well, I’m not Jamie, but go ahead.” We had a five-minute conversation. He was intrigued, and I knew way more about Jamie’s preferences than I cared to.
Good God! I helped some poor dude have phone sex.

There were the multiple hang-ups I’d gotten that one night, not to mention the doll and phone cord on my balcony. Practically everything came back to the telephone or something to do with talking, like the dead crow’s clipped beak.

What in the world was Isca doing in a biker bar, anyway? That was a dumb question. She might have been lonely, as Dave said, but I knew she also thrived on an adrenaline rush. She was like Dave in that respect. Dave. I stopped massaging the cat and he wiggled as if to remind me of his presence. If Dave had seen Isca, then Isca had seen Dave. I remembered his hands on my shoulders. It had always interested me Dave’s hand contact was the opposite of effeminate. Or was the idea of the limp-wristed homosexual clichéd? Over the years, Dave had had a number of different jobs, some of them blue-collar. Nor had he always embraced the gay lifestyle.
Embraced. Good choice of word.

“What do you think, kitty? Do you think embraced is a good word?” I picked him up and rubbed my face over his warm ears. “But then, you don’t like Dave, do you? He doesn’t like you either.”

Cat-like, he decided he’d had enough cuddling and wiggled out of my hands. At a safe distance, he turned to the all-important and seemingly endless task of grooming.
Someday I’ll get a book on cats and find out what’s with all the licking.

My eyelids drooped. Rain tapped on the windowpane like fingernails. A tree limb snapped off. I listened to the tempest and tried to remember if Wordsworth had written about a storm. After Jack died, I went back to college and was exposed to a lot of different literature, some of which I liked. I liked Wordsworth and Wordsworth loved nature. Half asleep, I couldn’t remember any blank verse to breezes or sonnets to storms. Instead, my thoughts returned to Dave. Was it possible Isca had seen something involving him she shouldn’t have? Was she blackmailing him? Although he never pretended to be other than what he was, Dave’s current position as a trust officer in one of Tacoma’s oldest banks required a certain amount of discretion. Singly or with Francisco, Dave usually cruised Seattle’s gay scene rather than the one in Tacoma.

Drugs? Dave hated them and rarely associated with users.

Bikers? Since I liked the sight of a good butt on the seat of a bike, I was sure both Dave and Isca did too. He’d told me about harnesses, leather G-strings, Harleys anchored to the bar’s wooden floor so a person could sit and make eye contact within the fantasy world of whips, handcuffs and rawhide chaps. Billy Ray Cyrus crooning to a dimly lit room full of pumped-up young bodies and sad-eyed older men.

Frustrated and feeling trapped in a place where everyone was a suspect, I yanked the bath towel off my head and threw it across the room. My speculations were futile, and they made me angry. I anchored five rollers on the top of my head, set the alarm and snapped off the light.
To hell with everything.

In spite of all that had happened, I slept well. By morning, the storm had blown itself out and squirrels scrambled hyperactively up and down the sidewalk and street. I looked like a before-ad for eyelid surgery. On the off chance it would be Kyle who responded to my call to the police, I decided to wear a Kelly green dress and purple cloisonné earrings. Bright colors and a mini-skirt were the order of the day.

I hung up my coat at six forty-five, made a pot of coffee and called the police from my desk fifteen minutes later. A woman promised to send someone out to take a report. Then, heavily involved in last minute instructions from Mr. Johnston, I put the previous evening out of my mind.

Our receptionist, a woman who was a lot like Carol on the old
Bob Newhart Show,
managed somehow not to let me know a police officer had arrived. The first thing I knew, I looked up and Kyle was making his way toward my desk.

God! I love a uniform.
“Hello, Kyle, we meet again. Have a seat. Coffee?”

“Sure.”

I went to the employee’s lounge and filled a mug. There was a half-filled tin of Dak cookies on the counter, so I put some on a napkin. Kyle had the quirky good looks of the perennial B-movie sidekick. As I walked back to my desk, Missy stood and, with her back towards Kyle, bent over to file something in the lower drawer of a cabinet.

He took the mug I held out, nodded his head toward her and winked. When Missy straightened, she smoothed her skirt down her thighs and maneuvered me into making an introduction. She looked at him. “My goodness, did I hear you had a prowler?”

Her intent wasn’t lost on him. “Mercedes. I think she’s talking to you.”