Deadly Gamble: The First Charlie Parker Mystery (4 page)

"Why didn't you just boot him out?"

"I guess for Josh's sake. Gary didn't give a
lot, but having him around did help keep Josh under control. Do you
know what a single mother has to cope with these days? Especially
with a teenage boy?"

"I saw two cars out there. Is Josh home?"

"He's asleep. Stayed home from school today.
He's taken this pretty hard, and I don't think he slept at all last
night."

She had tidied up the room quite a bit while
we talked, but I imagined her son would return it to its previous
condition by the time she got home. I noticed that she avoided
touching her husband's coat, which still lay across the back of the
recliner. She glanced at her watch again, giving me my cue.

I drove away wondering what, exactly, I had
learned. The thick gray clouds still blanketed the city, blending
with the streets, sidewalks, and barren trees. The effect was like
driving through a scene on black and white television where only
the cars and billboards have been colorized. The sleet-like
granules had disappeared. It would be rare to have any lasting
snowfall in town this late in the season. Afternoon traffic was
beginning to pick up, and it took me almost thirty minutes to get
to the office.

Rusty was waiting at the back door anxiously.
Sally had left hours ago, and with no one else there he had
probably begun to wonder if he was abandoned. His thick tail
whapped against the doorframe as I unlocked it. He took about ten
seconds to sniff my hands and give me a couple of doggy kisses
before racing to the back yard to avail himself of the
facilities.

I checked the answering machine and Sally's
desk. No messages. My desk was similarly clear, so I closed the
shades, double checked the locks and left, guilt-free.

The stolen notes from Gary Detweiller's
wallet were burning a hole in my pocket and I could hardly wait to
get a look at them. Fortunately, the traffic accommodated me. It
was considerably lighter this side of town. Unfortunately, my next
door neighbor was not quite that accommodating. She met me in my
driveway.

Elsa Higgins is eighty-six years old,
practically a grandmother to me. In fact, I call her Gram because
Mrs. Higgins seems too formal and calling an older woman by her
first name was unthinkable in my mother's eyes. So, from my
earliest memories, Elsa has been Gram to me. She's feisty and
opinionated and I want to be just like her when I grow up. We've
been neighbors all my life. She lives alone in the same house she's
occupied for more than forty years, where she does all the cooking,
cleaning and gardening. She took me in when my parents died,
letting me live with her for probably the two most difficult years
in anyone's life, age sixteen to eighteen. That's when I decided I
was grown up enough to take care of myself, so I moved back into my
own house. I grew up here and my parents left the house to me, so I
found no reason to go elsewhere. I still haven't.

The neighborhood is one of the older ones in
town, the Albuquerque Country Club area. It's situated near Old
Town, the site of the original Albuquerque, now an official
historic district complete with adobe buildings, a town square and
tourist trap prices. Our residential area is just far enough away
to avoid the traffic and tourists. The homes are not elaborate by
today's standards, but they have a certain charm, including tall
old trees and neatly clipped lawns. My place is typical, a
three-bedroom ranch style white brick with hardwood floors. I have
it furnished with oriental rugs and antiques. The back yard has
fifty-foot tall sycamores and my mother's peace roses. No, I
wouldn't trade it for a trendy little townhouse in Tanoan.

I pulled the Jeep to a quick stop in the
driveway, and Rusty and I both hopped out.

"Gram, you better get inside before you
freeze!" She was wearing polyester slacks and blouse, with only a
thin cardigan over it.

"Oh, I'm okay, Charlie. I only stepped
outside when I saw your car coming up the street." She shivered
anyway, though, so I put my arm around her small shoulders and
guided her to the door. Inside, the heat was a welcome relief.

"Is anything wrong?" I asked. Meeting me at
the car in freezing weather was not exactly Elsa's style.

"Paul's coming," she breathed.

"Paul, my brother? When did this happen?"

"He called me this afternoon. Said he
couldn't reach either you or Ron, and wanted to be sure you'd be
home this weekend."

"
This
weekend? Oh, boy."

"Why? Will you be gone?"

"Oh, no, I'll be here." The enthusiasm in my
voice was about zero point one on the Richter scale. "I wonder why
he called you. I was at the office most of the day."

She shrugged. She stands all of five foot
two, which puts her shoulders about chest-high to me.
Second-guessing Paul is futile. He's not irresponsible, understand,
just unpredictable. Of the three of us, he
appears
to be the
most solid. Married to his original spouse, two kids, churchgoers
all, a respectable job with a computer firm. We don't have a lot in
common.

Ron and I, on the other hand, tend to barrel
through life, seeking our own way. Although Ron did the marriage
bit once, and I never have, he and I have more of a kindred feeling
than either of us share with Paul. Like this making of weekend
plans on a Thursday, then going into a panic when he couldn't reach
anyone. No doubt he'd left messages on both Ron's and my home
answering machines, but did he think to call the office where we'd
likely be during the day?

I turned to Elsa again. "Would you like a cup
of tea?" I asked, deciding I could look at Gary Detweiller's papers
later.

"Yes, that would be nice," she answered.

She followed me into the kitchen, where I put
water on to boil and looked for cups. My mother's collection of
delicate china teacups sits unused most of the time, so I chose a
couple of especially pretty ones, delicately flowered. There was
half a Sara Lee pound cake in the fridge, so I sliced it and got
out raspberry jam. We might as well make a real tea out of it. Elsa
doesn't get out much.

"Will Paul's family stay here when they
visit?" she asked, eyeing the pound cake slices even though the
water wasn't hot yet.

"I guess so. Ron's apartment has only one
bedroom. Usually Paul and Lorraine stay in my guest room, and we
make up pallets on the floor in my office for the kids."

The image of letting two permissively raised
kids spend time in my home office made me think of all the stuff
I'd have to hide first. Annie and Joe aren't purposely destructive,
just presumptuous. At home they have access to everything on the
premises without asking. I'm not that gracious with my things.

The water boiled and I went through the
ritual of preheating the teapot, steeping the bags precisely five
minutes, and pouring. I never do this just for myself, but I
enjoyed giving Elsa the extra attention. The stolen papers could
wait. I might not have Gram around that much longer. We each helped
ourselves to two slices of cake, and since there was an extra, I
coaxed her to take the last one. Thirty minutes later, I watched
her safely across the narrow expanse of yard that separates her
house from mine.

After checking the mail (two bills, eight
pieces of junk) and the answering machine (one message from
you-know-who), I finally sat down at the kitchen table with Gary
Detweiller's neat little notebook pages. They were in some kind of
code.

Chapter 4

Neat rows of letters and numbers covered the
pages, written in bold black strokes. Entries like 3B5T-94-157,
3C4P-96-782, and 8T9Z-19-853 filled line after line. I poured
another cup of tea and stared at the numbers as if some magical
pattern might appear. There was a pattern all right, but I sure
couldn't see the magic in it.

I tried to make them into dates and times.
The 94 and 96 might be dates, but 19? 157 might be a time, but 782?
On a yellow notepad, I rewrote them in other sequences, but didn't
come up with anything that way, either. The letters could clearly
be initials, but finding BT, CP, and TZ in the phone directory
would obviously be futile.

The ringing telephone interrupted me just
about the time I was getting frustrated anyway.

"Charlie, I'm so glad I finally reached you!"
Paul sounded like he was about to impart some tragic news.

"Gram told me you're coming to town this
weekend. Is there some emergency?"

"No." He sounded puzzled. "Just wanted to let
you know we're coming."

"Driving or flying?"

"Driving." That was okay with me. Flying
meant I'd have to pick them up at the airport. Of course, driving
meant they'd pull in late at night, so I'd either have to wait up
or leave them a key.

"Just you, or everyone?"

"All of us."

"Great." Great.

"Well, I'll see you when?"

"Probably late Friday night."

"Good, I'll see you then." He hung up.

Most of Paul's conversations go this way.
With Ron, I seem to always have things to say. Maybe it's because
we work together, I'm not sure. We've always been close, though.
Ron is the oldest; as a kid he was my protector. Paul's in the
middle. Maybe there's something to that middle child thing. I
should read up on it sometime. One nice thing about Paul's
visits—he and Lorraine have plenty of old friends in town to see
besides me.

It was beginning to get dark outside, so I
turned on a few lamps and closed the drapes. I re-read the
newspaper article on the murder. The shots had been heard by a
neighbor around nine, and the police arrived at the scene about
nine-twenty. I studied the fuzzy picture of Detweiller, which,
judging by the hairstyle and clothing, had to be at least ten years
old. Longish dark hair and heavy sideburns past the earlobes framed
a boyish face. The lopsided smile exuded sex. Dark hair sprouted
from the open collar of his shirt. Even in the blurred photo a
cocky attitude came through. I honestly thought Stacy had better
taste.

Still full from tea, I decided not to bother
with dinner. I spent another hour staring at Gary's numbers, but
gave it up in favor of a movie on TV. It's an escape technique, I
know, but I still wasn't ready to examine my own feelings about
Stacy, Brad and this whole situation.

My bedside clock said it was three-oh-eight
when I woke from an apparently sound sleep with the answer. The
codes were names and phone numbers. And it wasn't even that tricky.
I pulled on a robe and went to the kitchen. Florescent light is
nearly unbearable at three a.m. but I couldn't wait. I ripped the
top sheet off the yellow pad to expose a clean page. I wrote down
each of the numbers in reverse sequence and moved the letters to
the end. Sure enough, they were all Albuquerque prefixes. The
dashes had apparently been placed to confuse the casual looker. I
would bet money that I'd find each of these numbers when I checked
them tomorrow in our criss-cross directory at the office.

Rusty had followed me into the kitchen,
worried that I might be indulging in a late-night snack without
him. When no food appeared, he satisfied himself by drinking about
a quart of water from his bowl, then dribbling half of it across
the floor. I wiped up the spots, then we both headed back to bed. I
slept like a dead person until seven.

By ten o'clock, I'd looked up all the phone
numbers on the code sheets. As I'd suspected, the two-letter
combination with each matched a name. I was feeling like quite the
investigator. All I had to do now was figure out whether this had
any relevance at all to Detweiller's death.

I thought of the racing form I'd seen at the
house. Stupid of me not to steal that, too, as long as I was now
heavy into thievery. Detweiller obviously liked to play the horses,
and the fact that he carried a list of names and phone numbers
around in code made me think he might be doing a little bookmaking.
I'd written down complete names and addresses to go with the phone
numbers on the coded list. There was quite a variety here. Some of
the addresses were in very affluent parts of town. One of them
might even be a neighbor of Stacy's. I'd have to check that out.
Maybe Gary's chance meeting with her at the country club hadn't
been pure chance after all.

"What's up?" Sally stood in my doorway,
laughing at how she'd just about startled me out of my chair.

"I'm working on a case. For Stacy North."

"A case? Isn't that Ron's department?" Then
my words really registered. "For Stacy North! As in Brad North? As
in heartbreak of the century?"

"Don't over-dramatize. That was ten years
ago, my heart wasn't broken, just mildly cracked, and from what I'm
learning now, I think I have a lot to thank Stacy for."

"You're
kidding
."

"Unh-unh." I began to realize that this
conversation wasn't exactly discreet, so I busied myself shuffling
the papers around, covering up any vital evidence in the
process.

"Look, what I really stopped in for was to
see if you'd like to go backpacking with Ross and me this weekend.
We're going down to the Gila." She tried to make it sound like
Disneyland.

"Gee, I uh.. I can't. Paul and Lorraine and
the kids are coming." I hoped I sounded properly regretful.
Truthfully, I'd rather have a root canal.

"Well, maybe some other time." She breezed
away, feelings apparently intact.

A pile of correspondence waited to be
answered, but I couldn't get my mind off Detweiller. Who wanted him
dead? At this point I didn't have enough information to hazard a
guess. I thought about interviewing all the people on my list.
There must have been forty names, an awesome task assuming that any
of them would even talk to me. I tried to think of a logical place
to begin.

Motive, means, opportunity. The three key
words in finding a criminal. What I needed at this point were more
facts. I called Stacy at home, suggesting lunch. She recommended
the club, and I said I'd come by her house to pick her up. She gave
me directions. I wasn't sure what had prompted my offer to come to
her house. I'd never had the least curiosity about her life with
Brad but now I wondered. Maybe I'd gain some insight into the
friend I hadn't seen in so long.