Thursday started off normally enough. I awakened about seven, fed Rusty, my rust-colored Labrador-sized mutt, and ate a bowl of granola with yogurt while Rusty crunched down a bowl of some yummy doggy nuggets. By eight o'clock, we were traveling from home in the old country club area to our office near downtown. The office, which I share with my older brother, Ron, is in an old Victorian with gray and white exterior. A driveway runs down the west edge of the property, leading to a detached garage out back and generous parking for the three of us who work there. Besides Ron and myself, we employ a part-time receptionist, Sally Bertrand.
Ron and I started the agency three years ago at a turning point in both our lives. Ron had gone through a rough divorce, and found that his security guard salary wasn't quite making the child support payments on three kids. Bernadette had wiped out their bank account, taking the boys and everything else of value. For Ron, starting out again in a one-bedroom apartment with old cast-off furniture was a blow. He needed a purpose and a better income.
In my case, I'd finished college with an accounting degree, taken the CPA exam, and gone to work in one of the city's largest accounting firms. Two years of corporate politics, water-cooler gossip, and general backstabbing had made me more than ready for freedom. Ron and I put our skills together, along with some of my inheritance money, and started RJP Investigations. Ron's good at his work. He has connections in the police department, and the patience for surveillance work, much more necessary attributes in the PI business than a trench coat, a smoky office, or a babe on the arm.
Sally and I keep the wheels running smoothly here. She comes in from nine to one, answering phones and typing letters. I consider Sally a friend as well as an employee, although our styles outside the office are totally different. She's an outdoor type who spends her weekends with her husband, Ross, trekking from one remote mountain top to another. Their idea of fun consists of stuffing the barest necessities of life into forty-pound backpacks and toting this burdensome load off to someplace with neither toilets nor fast food restaurants. My idea of roughing it, on the other hand, is black and white TV in a motor home.
At work we mesh well, though. Having Sally around frees up my mind for working with numbers, something I don't do well with three phone lines ringing and the front door to attend. I handle the billing, the bill paying, the taxes, and most importantly, the paychecks. Once in awhile, I get called upon to help Ron with some detail of an investigation, usually an errand to the county courthouse to look up a copy of someone's marriage license. Exciting stuff.
My Jeep was the first car in the parking area today. Sally would be here in another half-hour or so. Ron was still out of town—gone until Monday. Rusty bounded out the minute I opened the car door and proceeded to sniff the perimeter of the yard for possible overnight intruders. Since the neighborhood is still partly residential, an occasional cat wanders across our property. It's Rusty's job to assess this situation. I unlocked the back door and stepped into the kitchen. We haven't changed the layout of the old house. The original parlor is now our reception area, the dining room a conference area. Upstairs, two bedrooms facing the street became Ron's and my offices, while a third bedroom is now a storage room. The only bathroom is also up there, and has to serve both boys and girls. How did these Victorian families manage?
I set my briefcase on the kitchen table, leaving the door open for Rusty while I made coffee. I hoped Sally would bring doughnuts. We leave that part informal. Whoever has a craving that day will usually show up with treats. Rusty trotted in, his nails clicking on the hardwood floor. I closed the door behind him and we headed toward the front, leaving the coffee to hiss and sputter to completion. The answering machine on Sally's desk showed no messages. I unlocked the front door and proceeded upstairs with my rust-colored shadow close behind.
My office is my second home. As such, I like it comfortable. I've chosen good wood furniture, hanging ferns in the bay window, and soft pastels for the upholstery and art.
I had no sooner parked my butt in the chair than I heard the front door. We have a ding-dong type bell rigged to ring upstairs for those times when Sally isn't on duty. Like now. I pulled myself back up, trying to remember if we had any appointments on the book. I didn't think so. It's usually pretty quiet when Ron isn't here. Maybe a salesperson or a delivery. Given a choice, I would opt for the latter.
Stacy North waited in the foyer. Today she wore no makeup and her designer jogging suit looked slept in. Her feathery blond hair hung limp. Her lips looked thin without lipstick, her face grayish. I motioned her upstairs, watching her feet drag upward at each step. I offered coffee. She nodded. I trotted back down the stairs and came back with two mugs. The social formalities accomplished, I looked at her inquisitively. She handed over the morning paper tentatively before taking a seat on the sofa. The paper was folded so that page A-4 faced me. A captioned photo told me I was staring into the face of Gary Detweiller. The headline told me he'd been killed in a shooting. I read the rest of the article while Stacy perched on the edge of the couch. She was motionless except to raise the coffee mug to her lips occasionally.
Detweiller had been sitting in his car in his own driveway when an unknown assailant shot him at almost point-blank range, the article said. I pictured the heavily overgrown shrubs that bordered the drive. The victim was survived by his wife, Jean, and son, Joshua. No leads had yet been found in the case. I laid the paper on my desk and looked up at Stacy.
"This is the guy of our former discussion?"
She nodded tiredly.
"And?"
No response.
"Stacy, I assume you didn't just come by to share this with me," I said, holding the newspaper up. "What do you want?" I had a feeling I knew the answer, and I wasn't going to like it.
"I need help again, Charlie." Her voice came out thickly.
"Stacy, I told you, I'm not an investigator. Besides, aren't the police handling this?"
Her blue eyes widened slightly. "That's what I'm worried about." She reached for her bag. "Do you mind if I smoke?"
"I'd rather you didn't." It probably came out sounding harsh, but dammit, I have to live in this office after she leaves. "Stacy, you were never a smoker."
A trembling hand covered her mouth. "I know, Charlie. I only do it now and then."
"Stacy, what's really the problem here? Are you worried that the police will dig up your connection with Detweiller?"
"Of course I am!" She stood up and paced to the opposite end of the room. "Charlie, do you have any idea what Brad will do if he finds out about this?"
Truthfully, I didn't. But I also wondered aloud why she hadn't worried about this before getting seduced into the situation.
"I don't know," she said, her voice hopeless. She dumped herself back onto my couch, and rubbed at her temples with both index fingers. "It was stupid. I can see that now. I guess I just fell for the ... uh ... positive attention."
"I'm not sure what to tell you." I wanted to tell her about paying the consequences for our actions, but somehow I got the feeling she already knew about that.
She stared at a spot somewhere near the corner of my desk, and her face became even more pale. A long minute passed.
"Stacy, what do you want from me?"
"I'm not sure, Charlie. I guess I'm grasping at ways to keep my name out of this."
"Have you talked to a lawyer? Sounds like this is more a matter of needing legal advice than investigative work."
"I wouldn't know who to turn to. Our family lawyer intimidates me. He's so chummy with Brad I don't think I could trust him. I guess I was hoping that you could find out who really killed Gary before the police come asking questions of me."
The messes people get themselves into never cease to amaze me.
"Stacy, I'll tell you straight out. This is out of my league. If you can wait until Monday, I can set an appointment for you to meet with Ron."
Her eyes glistened moistly and a red rim formed around her upper lip. The ha
nds shook as she reached for her purse. "That's four days away," she whispered. "I hope it's not too late." She walked toward the door.
"Stacy, wait." I knew this was foolish, even as I said the words.
She returned to the couch, perching expectantly on the edge.
"Tell me everything you can about Gary Detweiller," I said.
She stared blankly at me for a good half minute.
"Does he belong to the country club? What does he do for fun? Sports? Clubs? Hangouts?"
"I really don't know." Her palms fluttered upward. "I met him at Tanoan. He never talked about himself."
A man who never talked about himself? Please.
"Stacy, think about it. He must have said something. Surely you didn't hop into bed with someone who never said a word."
"Well, of course he talked. But mostly he talked about me." Her eyes turned dreamy. "He told me how beautiful I was, how sexy. Stuff I haven't heard in a long time." Her once-vivacious voice broke a little.
I let the silence stretch out a bit, hoping she'd come up with something more.
"I went to his house once," she remembered.
"That might be a start. Tell me about it."
"It was a depressing place. Of course, this was after he'd wooed me with a nice lunch out one day and he'd gotten a room at the Marriott that afternoon. I guess I wasn't thinking too straight."
"Then he invited you to his house?"
"Oh, no. I just showed up. I'd seen the address on a business card he gave to some guy in the Marriott bar. I remembered the street, so about a week later I looked it up and drove over there." She looked up at me briefly. "It had been a bad day."
"Tell me more about the house. He was home, I assume."
"Yes, he was home. Although not exactly thrilled to see me. He was jittery the whole time I was there, which was maybe ten minutes. I didn't realize at the time that he had a wife, one more thing he failed to mention. He couldn't wait to steer me out of there. We went to The Wine Cellar for a drink, even though it was only three in the afternoon."
"Okay, you were inside the house, right? Try to remember everything you saw."
"The place was a dump, actually. I mean, not just that it was small, but it was dirty. It smelled, and there was clutter everywhere."
"I'm trying to get a feel for the guy's lifestyle, what he did with his spare time."
"Well, he didn't clean house, that's for sure."
"Did you see any magazines laying around, any sports tickets, anything like that?"
Her eyes gazed upward, as she recreated the picture in her mind. "Newspapers," she said finally. "There were newspapers scattered everywhere. I just can't think of anything else."
It wasn't much of a start and I finally let her go, realizing that I wasn't getting much out of her. She seemed relieved, having dumped the burden of her secret in my lap. There was still a certain wariness, though. For a minute there, I wondered if she could have had something to do with Detweiller's death and was using me to find a way to cover for her.
I filed my paid bills while I tried to think what to do next. I could try to dig up some background information on Gary Detweiller so I'd have something for Ron to work on when he got back to town. I walked across the hall to Ron's office and located his Rolodex behind a tall stack of file folders. Ron isn't exactly negligent in his office duties, he just has a different system. Very different. His contact at APD is Kent Taylor in Homicide. I looked in the Rolodex under A, then under T, then under K. C for contacts didn't yield anything, either. Finally I found Taylor under P, for police. Naturally. Where else?
I phoned Taylor and got him to agree to see me at two. I didn't say why. This was an active police investigation and I knew he'd cut me off immediately if he knew I was snooping. Besides, I have much more winning ways in person than over the phone.
Sally Bertrand was at her desk when I went downstairs again for a coffee refill. She wore a pair of gray wool slacks and a blue and gray sweater. That's about as dressy as she ever gets. Usually it's jeans and plaid flannel. We run a casual operation here since Ron and I are both firm believers in jeans ourselves. Sally's shaggy blond hair was recently trimmed but not by much. I think she does it herself, probably without benefit of a mirror. She smiled at me with her wide grin, reminding me of an extra large six-year-old. She has square straight teeth, honest blue eyes, and a sprinkling of freckles across her un-madeup face.
"Who was the lady?" she asked.
"Old school friend," I answered. "You haven't seen her before because we haven't exactly been friends for about the last ten years."
"Oh." She didn't ask, and I didn't explain.
I refilled my coffee mug and carried one up front for Sally, too. She hadn't brought doughnuts, but I decided my waistline was better for it. I've been lucky all my life to never have a weight problem, but I could see that subtly changing now that I'd reached thirty. Given the facts that I love to eat and hate to exercise, something was going to have to give. When it began to give too much, I'd have to face a lifestyle change. Why don't our bodies just stay twenty-five forever?
Back in my own office, I finished up a few odds and ends. Rusty waited patiently, stretched out on a small Oriental rug near the bay window. He hadn't budged during Stacy's visit, probably thinking he'd rack up some good behavior points that way. I know the mutt. He was probably hoping for a trip to McDonalds at lunchtime. No such luck.
I worked until one, then made him stay behind when I left for my appointment with Kent Taylor. APD's headquarters is downtown, only a few blocks from our office. Getting there takes maybe ten minutes, finding a parking place, another twenty. Even so, I'd allowed myself enough time to stop along the way and indulge in a fast hamburger and Coke. In a burst of health consciousness, I skipped the fries.
Kent Taylor's office is accessed through a rabbit-warren of cubbyhole-sized spaces separated by carpet-covered dividers. Each housed a desk, chair, and wastebasket. I'd been here once before with Ron, but doubted I could find my way through the maze again. I didn't need to. I asked for Taylor at the front desk, and he came up.
Kent is a forty-ish man, dark hair thinning on top, a thick roll of extra weight around the middle. The well-fed, cared-for look of a married man with a stay-at-home wife. His pale blue shirt was neatly pressed, no spots on his tie, slacks had probably been picked up from the cleaners yesterday afternoon. I followed him back through the labyrinth to his office.
A glass wall separated his eight-by-ten space from the main room. I hadn't given much thought as to how I was going to approach him, and suddenly felt a little nervous.
"How's Ron these days?" he asked, giving me a little time to work into my story.
"Fine. He's at a firearms show right now."
"The big one in Dallas?"
I nodded. I'm uneasy about guns. Ron knows better than to push the subject with me. The gun control issue is one on which we have an ongoing debate.
The conversation with Kent was dwindling fast. If I didn't jump right in with my real question, I was going to be escorted out the door with a "nice to see you."
"What can I do for you, Charlie?" he asked.
My stomach fluttered a little. "It's about the Gary Detweiller murder. I saw the article in this morning's paper."
"Yes?"
"Well, a friend of mine knew him. He's wondering if you have any leads in the case." I don't lie easily, and I half expected Taylor to tell me so. Surely he could see the little words "Liar, Liar" popping out on my forehead.
"We have a few leads," he said. He leaned back in his chair, his fingers drumming on the arm of it. "You know how it goes, an apparently senseless killing, guy has no known enemies. But there's always a motive. Always more to the picture than the eye first sees." He fixed a direct look at me. "Why? What do you know about it?"
"Nothing, Kent. Really. I just had this friend who was concerned. Thought I'd see what I could find out."
The look of skepticism on his fac
e stung. "Charlie, don't get involved with this. If you have a client, let Ron handle it. If your client is directly involved in this case, you better let me know all about it."
I stood up. "No, this person isn't involved with any murder," I said staunchly. I hoped it was true.
Walking the four blocks back to my Jeep, I kicked myself in the butt all the way. That had been a foolish move. All I'd accomplished was to make Kent Taylor suspicious of me. I hadn't found out a single fact about the case. And I'd come off as a meek little twit, trying to stick her nose in where it didn't belong. I felt like calling Stacy and telling her to count me out. After all, I didn't owe her a thing. She and Brad North could rot, for all I cared.
Then I remembered the look on her face, the fear that had been palpable in my office this morning. Back in our high school and college days together, Stacy and I had been close. The best of friends. We'd slept over at each other's houses almost every weekend, setting each other's hair, listening to Three Dog Night albums, giggling over boys. She'd been the only person I'd told when I lost my virginity. I'd been staying at her house the weekend my parents had flown to Denver, the weekend they never returned. Stacy's parents had been the ones to break the news of the plane crash to us. They'd held me close and taken me into their home for those first confusing weeks until my life took on some order again. The friendship with Stacy was probably what kept me from going off the deep end.
I'd been angry with her for ten years now. Losing one's fiancé to one's best friend is, if nothing else, humiliating. It was interesting, though, that in her time of need Stacy had turned to me. I wanted some time to sort this all out, but didn't have that luxury. Stacy's fear was immediate. The least I could do was try to find a few answers for her.
The past would have to be shoved into a back compartment somewhere until I could work on it. For now, I had to decide on a course of action and follow it—a more prudent course than I'd taken so far. This much intense thought called for a hot fudge sundae.
Chapter 3