A Line To Murder (A Puget Sound Mystery) (3 page)

Kids who might have known Isca through playing with Dominic speculated on her death. They gave the distinct impression Isca had men going in and out of her house regularly, or lurking about at all hours of the day or night. When I heard snatches of lurid descriptions of depraved-looking individuals in topcoats, even in August, I didn’t envy the detectives having to separate fact from fiction.

Before I left, Officer Wade advised me not to talk to Andy and to go to the police station to answer more questions and give a statement. In hopes of cheering up Jose, once I’d started the engine, I turned the car radio to a light classical station. Poor thing. He huddled on his perch in apparent birdy trauma.

Because it was still warm in the car and because Jose had been left alone for so long, I took him, cage and all, into the station, oblivious to stares. I filled his water cup from a drinking fountain, and he perked up after a long drink. We were put in a small room with a middle-aged man and a recorder. I told the officer all I could remember about Isca’s job, her boyfriends and her nine hundred phone line. I told him about the vicar and the message on my answering machine. “It’s still there. I don’t get that many phone calls, and I never got around to deleting it.

“I’ll send someone to pick up the tape.”

I couldn’t tell if he felt it was important or not.

He asked about Andy, the divorce, his and Isca’s relationship, about Dominic and whether there were problems over the custody arrangements. If he was surprised Dominic lived with his father rather than his mother, he didn’t say. I remembered Andy’s remark about the bedroom and I told him how Andy hadn’t wanted to come with me. He asked if I knew Andy well and I replied only casually. The process was efficient and routine, but the officer was kind. His brown eyes were compassionate, and he brought me coffee when I started to cry. He gave me time to control my voice when it shook, asking questions about the care of domestic parrots, of which I knew next to nothing. He let me talk at my own rate and shook my hand warmly when I rose to leave. “I don’t think you have to be overly concerned about your safety but it’s always smart to be cautious. It’s the world, these days, best to be a little wary, even with friends and definitely with those you don’t know well.”

His words fit Andy to a T.

Chapter 3

I left the police station under a sky full of stars and drove in light traffic, reaching my apartment in less than fifteen minutes. Looking for a place to park brought home the distinct disadvantages of my building:  its location next to Hilltop, a high crime neighborhood, and the lousy parking situation. Life was a tradeoff. I loved living across the street from Wright Park and enjoyed the multi-ethnic neighborhood. Lousy parking was the price I paid.

Most of the local apartment dwellers were already home. The only free parking spot was a miniscule one on the park-side of the road. My thoughts about parallel parking facing the wrong direction were best left unspoken.

To avoid having to get out near a large cluster of laurel bushes, I climbed over the gearshift and made an ungraceful exit on the empty street. Shadows came and went as people turned lights on and off and a slight wind lifted branches. Did someone just move in the park? I froze. My heart started beating like a frightened bird’s wings. Twenty-odd years earlier Richard Speck killed eight nurses in their Chicago dormitory. He’d worn all black and carried a switchblade. The laurels provided a perfect hiding place. The shadow-figure disappeared, replaced by two small yellow-glowing orbs low to the ground.
I hope that’s a cat.
Then the Western Screech Owl that lived in the park let out a yell and swooped out of the trees and I dropped my keys. Swearing and sweating, I groped around until I found them and then reached for the parrot’s cage.

“Come on, Jose. It’s beddy-bye time for us. Squawk if you see a bad guy.”

I hefted his cage and looked at my apartment window. I’d neglected to leave the timer light on. I climbed the stairs to my apartment and opened the door. The room had a closed-up smell. Lampposts created eerie shadows on the old oak walls. I put the birdcage down, turned on a light and snapped the dead bolt lock in place. When Jose made a sudden sound, I jumped, hitting my toe on the wainscoting. The evening’s events had shattered my head-in-the-sand existence and, at the moment, I was extremely vulnerable to roaming sociopaths. Maybe I should have checked the closets first.

“Your house is a mess, Jose.” I picked up his cage and limped toward a table. “Let’s find a place for it and turn on Johnny Carson. With luck, he’ll have a comedian or a musician on tonight.”

I flooded the living-dining room with light, lit a scented candle and opened the balcony’s French doors. Lights made the darkness darker. As soon as the cool night air had flooded the room, booting out the stale odors, I shut the door and locked it. One at a time, I took the various removable pieces out of Jose’s cage and cleaned dried droppings and bird spit off everything. Then I filled his dishes. When he continued to droop on his perch, I checked the refrigerator. I gave him some fresh produce.

“Shall I call the boss now or set the alarm?” Jose picked up a grape and was too busy to answer. Darn it. Talking and keeping busy would postpone thinking.

Johnny’s guest was a country singer with glittery clothes and a mournful song. Jose didn’t seem to care; he was hungry. I cared. I’d just read a survey claiming listening to country music caused more suicides than listening to other types of music. I changed the station to a late night infomercial.

Jose looked happier. He stopped eating and stood head tipped, listening to a man named Rick Hunt hock Flowbee, an electrically
powered vacuum cleaner attachment for cutting hair. Rick murmured in the background while I took a long bath in a tub of warm water and lavender bath salts and gave into the thoughts jockeying for consideration.

Surely the medical examiners were done by now. Had Isca been removed in a body bag? Did her neighbors stand and watch? Would they take her to a mortuary or the morgue? The idea of a morgue made me shiver, even in the warm water. They’d put her in one of those vault-things in a wall, in a cold, temperature-controlled room with a tag on her toe. That’s when overwhelming grief struck me and salty tears flowed into the water.

* * *

The following morning the alarm went off at seven and I called the boss. In a few brief words, I told her what had happened. “I want to rest a little and then go see Isca’s folks.”

The firm didn’t believe in emergency days off and had a weird policy about taking an emergency day, even if you would take it as a vacation day. They almost never allowed them. For some peculiar reason, management preferred us to call in sick even if it was a lie. I ached to get nasty if necessary. I needed to be angry at someone. She didn’t give me a chance.

“Please tell them how sorry I am and let me know about the funeral. We’ll want to send flowers.”

Jose had diarrhea, which I hoped was from nerves. He seemed perky enough, though, and scolded me as I cleaned the cage again and gave him more food. Then I watched
Good Morning, America,
and did all my ironing and mending. By midmorning, the chores were done; Jose was responding to the birds at my patio birdfeeder and I had no more excuses. I toasted some raisin bread and ate it with orange juice. Then I changed into dark pants and a gray T-shirt and jacket, turned the radio on and left shortly after eleven.

The air smelled like fresh-cut grass. I started toward my car and stopped abruptly. Some dickweed had sprayed the word, “Enabler” on it.
What the heck?

I stood staring and a jogger came by. “If that’s shaving cream, better get it off right away. It can ruin your paint job.” He waved and ran on.

I got a rag out of the trunk and wiped the car off, wondering what I was supposed to have enabled.

Isca’s family lived in Buckley, a former coal mining town in the foothills of Mount Rainier. A ninety-minute drive. I tried to put the thought of someone targeting my car out of my mind and enjoy the drive. The sun was strong for spring, and the commuters were already at work. I left Tacoma, took River Road through Puyallup and connected onto Highway 410 near the pioneer town of Sumner. Almost immediately, the road climbed Ehli Hill, the site of Pierce County’s only Ku Klux Klan activity. I passed a winery that had been on the hill overlooking the Puyallup Valley since before wine became trendy and then by a pond where my family and friends fished when I was young. Sadly, developers had cleared away all the trees and ferns and trailers now crowded its banks. With the window half open, the car was pleasantly warm and the scents of growing things permeated the air. It should have been a pleasant drive.

Buckley and its neighbors, Burnett, Carbonado and Wilkeson were all nineteenth century communities whose fortunes declined when the old growth timber dwindled and the coal mines and sandstone quarries closed. With the pride of a dowager queen, they each strived to preserve their heritage. Many of the vintage homes were well maintained and had spacious gardens. Horses, cattle and goats shared pastures with geese and the occasional llama. I liked all four of the towns.

The Haineses’ place was a two-story clapboard house with bay windows and a wraparound porch set in the middle of a an acre of grass and gardens. Exposure to the elements faded its gray paint and roughed up the shutters some, but it fit comfortably in the neighborhood of similar homes, all built by Isca’s father who went into construction after World War II.

A number of cars crowded the street, but Andy’s wasn’t one of them.
What a creep
. I parked a country block away, got out of my car and double checked the doors were all locked. Another person was headed for the Haineses’ and I fell in behind her.

Isca’s brother, Parker, opened the door. He lived in Portland and I’d only met him a few times. Parker had his sister’s blue eyes and rosy complexion, but that day he looked haggard and pale. He was eighteen months younger than Isca and the two had been close.

“Hey, Mercedes.” He gave me a brief, tight squeeze and turned away, his eyes were red and puffy. In the living room, Mrs. Haines sat on a couch, flanked by her husband and an elderly woman. The other seats were occupied. People milled about, and kids played outside. I went to the Haineses and leaned down to kiss each of them in turn.

“Mercedes, how good of you to come.” Mrs. Haines wiped her cheeks with a soggy tissue. “It must have been dreadful for you.”

Choked, I could only nod.

“Strangled and beaten, they said.” Her wet fingers mangled the tissue, and Mr. Haines put a large white hanky in her hand.

“Who’d do that to Isca? Who? Why? She was a good girl. She wasn’t like any of those awful people you see on TV. Just a regular person. Good to Dad and me. I don’t understand it.”

“Now, Mother, don’t.” Mr. Haines patted her shoulder and stepped away to make room for Parker.

A towheaded little boy in shorts and a Portland Trail Blazers shirt ran in and hugged Mrs. Haines.

“Do you have a minute?” Parker asked me.

I nodded and he gestured toward the kitchen.

The room was empty. We sat at the table and Parker exhaled a deep breath. “Finding Isca like that must have been terrible for you.”

“I don’t know what I would have done if Andy hadn’t been with me.”

“Why was he?”

“I asked him.”

“And he was okay with that?”

“Not really. I guilted him with my cowardness.”

“It’s not like Andy to be chivalrous.”

“Well, he was there. That’s all I cared about.”

A number of casserole dishes and plates of cookies filled the counters. Their smells clashed in the airless kitchen. While I tried to decide if it would be rude to open a window, Parker looked at his hands and then at me. “What do you know about this nine hundred business of Isca’s?”

“What do
you
know?”

“That it was a huge bone of contention in the family.”

“Well, I wasn’t enabling her, that’s for sure.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing. Never mind. How did everyone find out?”

“I haven’t a clue.”

It was my turn to stall. On the other side of the pocket door separating the kitchen from the dining room footsteps stopped. I lowered my voice. “Well, she wanted to work out of her home and make some extra money.”

I didn’t expect him to laugh, but he did. “She always did have a way with words.” He shook his head. “Do you think it’s what got her killed?”

“I don’t know.”

I might have told him about Isca’s phone message but his son ran in the room.

“Hey, Champ.” Parker swung the boy up and I stood saying it was time for me to start back to town. We returned to the living room just as someone knocked on the door. Before anyone could get it, the door opened and Andy and Dominic came in.

“Gramma!” Dominic ran to the couch and threw himself at Mrs. Haines. She caught him in a hug, pressing her cheek to the boy’s glossy head.

Andy looked ill at ease as he came forward. “Betty.” He leaned to kiss her cheek.

I took the moment to move toward a window
.
People in pain tore me apart, like fragile old lace.