by Marja McGraw
Prudy’s Back!
A Sandi Webster Mystery
by
Marja McGraw
Prudy’s Back!, A Sandi Webster Mystery, Copyright 2009, 2013 Marja McGraw
All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, in writing from the author, except in the case of brief quotations used in critical articles and reviews. For information, email address: [email protected].
First Edition, 2009
Second Edition, 2013
Cover Design by Marja McGraw
Editing by Marja McGraw
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual person living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Dedication
For Jill, who fills my life with expectation.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Dorothy Bodoin and H. Susan Shaw who are always there to encourage me and read my material while it’s still raw. Thank you to the Laughlin Branch of the Las Vegas-Clark County Library and all of the friends and employees there for their encouragement, and the fine selection of books that I used for research. And thank you to Al, my husband, for his continued support and patience.
One
I was going to tell her No. No is an easy word. No. No. No. My lips moved as I mouthed the word over and over again.
“Sandi? Are you still there? Will you do it?”
“Okay.” No. I meant to say no! How had okay slipped out of my mouth? “Maybe,” I added in a rush, running my hand through my long dark brown hair in exasperation.
My name is Sandi Webster and I’m a thirty-two year old private investigator working out of Los Angeles.
My mother, Livvie Brewster, lives in Bullhead City, Arizona, with her relatively new husband, Frank. So proximity isn’t an issue. I could have said no and hung up. Right. Like I’d hang up on my mother and get away with it.
“I knew I could count on you, sweetie.”
“Tell me more, Mother. You have a friend who needs my help, but you say it’s not an emergency? And yet you want me to drive to Arizona right away?”
“Prudy Lewis is my neighbor. She worked as a private investigator back in the forties and fifties.”
“A female P.I.? That was unusual for those days.” I’d never heard of a woman doing investigations back then, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. “How old is this woman?”
“I’d guess she’s in her mid-eighties.”
“And she was really a private investigator?”
“Well, Prudy’s husband enlisted during World War II, and he was the private investigator. Prudy tried to clear up a few of his cases while he was gone, including the murder she wants you to solve. She couldn’t figure it out and the killer was never caught.”
My mother made the idea of me solving the old case sound easy, in typical Livvie style. “Did Prudy’s husband pick it back up when he returned?” I asked.
Mother was quiet for a moment. “He never returned. He was listed as Missing in Action after a year in the Pacific Theatre. And Prudy didn’t remarry. She was nuts about Brian. That was her husband, Brian Lewis. She raised her son, Brian, Jr., by herself and ended up accepting new cases to help out financially.”
“So why does she want the case solved after all these years?” It didn’t make much sense to me.
“Brian and Prudy knew the people who were involved and they had a personal stake in things. It’s always troubled her that she couldn’t find the killer. It might sound a little strange, but in a way I think she wants to solve the case for her husband, to finalize something he’d started. I told her about how you worked on that hundred-year-old murder for me.”
I sighed, trying not to think about that case. “If she’s in her mid-eighties, I have to ask. Are any of the people who were involved still alive? That was a long time ago.”
“I believe that at least some of them are. Prudy was in her late twenties at the time. Most of the people involved ranged in age from teenagers to early twenties. They all lived in the same neighborhood. And the murder took place in Southern California, so you should have everything you need right at your fingertips.”
“How does she know that someone in the neighborhood committed the crime?”
“You’ll have to ask Prudy about that.” My mother sounded smug, not a good sound.
She was playing a game, trying to entice me by not giving me all of the information. It was an old ploy of hers and it wasn’t working this time. “Mom, that was well over fifty years ago. People move, people die, and people change. I don’t have anything at my fingertips. What are you thinking?”
“Well, Sandra, why don’t you and Pete drive over here and meet Prudy? Talk to her before you make up your mind.” There was the dreaded use of my given name. She only called me Sandra when she was irked with me.
I sighed and rubbed the back of my neck, wishing my sudden headache would go away. “Can you tell me anything, anything at all, about the crime? At least give me something to go on. Please?”
She sighed back at me, managing to make hers deeper than mine. “I’ll tell you what little I know, but you really need to talk to Prudy.”
“First things first. Exactly when did the murder occur?”
“Just a sec while I find my notes. I wrote down some of what she told me.” She set the phone down and disappeared for a couple of seconds. I heard noises like paper rustling when she picked up the receiver “It happened in 1943. Brian worked on the case for a few months, but Prudy took over after he left for the war. The police had given up on it, but Prudy’s husband hadn’t.”
“Who was murdered?” That should have been my first question.
“Their neighborhood was typical of the time, except there were a few old houses mixed in with the newer ones. There was an old two-story house in the middle of the block that was owned by a recluse. That’s who was killed, and due to the circumstances, several kids on the block were suspects. Um, he was beaten to death, Sandi, and Prudy and her husband had become friends with the old man. From what Prudy says, it was brutal. Brian really wanted to solve that murder.”
“Tell me more.” Now my mother was trying to play on my sympathies, but I ignored her, needing information.
“That’s all I can tell you. You and Pete will simply have to drive over here and talk to Prudy.”
Simply? “Mother, I have cases here that need my attention. I can’t just drop everything while I drive to Arizona.”
“It’s not that long of a drive, Sandra. You and Pete could be here by eleven in the morning and home by late evening. Do you have any really pressing cases right now? Couldn’t Stanley take care of some of your work while you’re gone? You and Pete could stay here for a few days and visit, too. I haven’t seen you in quite a while.” Ah, now the guilt trip.
Peter Goldberg is my partner both in business and my personal life. Don’t let the name fool you, he’s one hundred percent Italian, but that’s another story.
Stanley is our former client, friend, and now employee. He’s a great researcher, but I wasn’t too sure about having him cover our cases for us. He was new to the business and a fast learner, but his past experience had involved writing verses for greeting cards. The stretch from writing verses to handling cases was way too long.
“Mother – ”
“I’m going to fax you a picture of Prudy. If that doesn’t interest you, nothing will.”
“What about Bubba?” I asked. Now I was grasping at straws, looking for excuses to stay home. Bubba was my huge half wolf/half Golden Retriever dog.
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�Leave him with your neighbor, Dolly. She adores that mangy mutt.” Mom wasn’t a big dog fan, meaning she didn’t care all that much for huge canines. Her preference would be a small ankle-biter. She just hadn’t had the opportunity to get to know Bubba yet.
So I wondered why on earth a picture of an old woman would prompt me to take on a case. My mother had some odd ideas sometimes. A photo of a poor little old lady wouldn’t sway me one way or the other – probably.
“Yeah, send the picture, not that it will do any good.”
She chuckled. “You might be in for a surprise. Anyway, call me back and let me know if you and Pete are coming over or not. Oh, and Frank thinks you’ll be interested in Prudy, too.”
“Frank’s involved in this?” My mother and Frank had pushed their way into a stalking case I was involved in during the time I worked on the hundred-year-old murder, and I believed it had gone to their heads. My mother was suddenly looking under bushes for mysteries with Frank, apparently, standing right behind her, encouraging her. And she had a yard full of hibiscus bushes.
“Frank thinks you should meet her. He feels this might be a cold case that you can sink your teeth into.”
“Cold case? You’ve been watching too much TV again.”
“Well, that’s what it is. Like it or not, that’s what they call old, unsolved cases.”
“You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?” I didn’t want to bring her down, but I didn’t want her to expect me to drop everything and drive to Arizona either. “I’ll look at the picture, and I’ll talk to Pete.”
“That’s all I’m asking, dear.” Mom was pushing it, but she can be so subtle that sometimes you don’t realize you’re being maneuvered. Fortunately, I’d caught on a long time ago.
We hung up. About fifteen minutes later her fax came through, in all its glory.
Pete was out of the office or he would have heard me laughing. It wasn’t a photo of Prudy as an old woman, but of Prudy as a young woman. She appeared to be rather tall and slim. I couldn’t tell for sure from the black and white fax, but I thought she might be a curly-haired redhead. Definitely curly hair, and it looked like she might have lots of freckles.
But that wasn’t what made me laugh. Prudy wore a housedress, cowgirl boots and a full-length fur coat. She was holding a very long, black holder with a smoking cigarette in it. I looked closer and saw she had a gun pulled partway out of her pocket.
The woman appeared to be holding back a laugh while trying to scowl and look menacing. Obviously the woman had a sense of humor. My kinda gal!
Two
About an hour later, Pete and Stanley returned to the office. Pete had taken Stanley with him on surveillance to watch a guy who’d filed a personal injury claim for an insurance case we were working on. Stanley was learning quickly.
“Hi, guys.” I tried to sound sweet and innocent, all the while knowing I was going to try to talk Pete into taking a trip to Arizona. The photo had done its job and I was intrigued. At the very least, I wanted to meet Prudy Lewis and hear her story.
I stood up and walked over to the coffee pot. “Anyone want a drink? I’m pouring.”
“Sure.” Pete grabbed his mug off of the desk and handed it to me.
“Stan?” I asked.
“Not right now, but thank you.”
I poured Pete’s coffee and turned back to Stanley, who preferred to be called Stan. He was Stanley to me, and always would be, but I tried to comply with his wish.
Something didn’t seem quite right. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Then it struck me. Stanley’s eye was twitching. His eye always twitched when he was nervous. His hands seemed to be shaking a little, and his hair was mussed.
“What happened?” I asked, turning to Pete.
“Why would you think something happened?” All five foot eleven of him was the picture of innocence, except his dark brown eyes, which belied his tone of voice. He wouldn’t meet my gaze. His dark brown hair was a little mussed, too, which is something I hadn’t noticed at first. If ever I saw a guilty expression on a face, now was the time. Then I noticed grass stains on his knees.
“The tic in Stan’s eye is going crazy and your knees are green. So what happened?”
“Nothing much,” Stanley said. “Just a little accident. That’s all.”
Stanley was a relatively mild man, never looking for trouble but it seemed to find him anyway. He wore heavily framed glasses and the thick lenses made his hazel eyes appear enormous, and it accentuated the twitch. When he said there’d been “just a little accident,” the tick had picked up speed. I knew something was up.
“Okay, let me ask again. What happened?”
“Now, Sandi, don’t get excited.” Stanley seemed to be calming down in the process of trying to calm me down.
But I still hadn’t received an answer. “Well? Is anyone going to tell me what’s going on?” So much for my innocent act. It was gone, like the wind.
“Okay, here’s the deal.” Pete stood next to me and put his arm around my shoulders. It didn’t do anything to help my growing tension. “We were watching the guy who’d filed a claim with his insurance company about slipping on some beans at the grocery store. You know, that new case. Remember? The insured said he’d injured his back because some beans had fallen on the floor in the vegetable department and he slipped on them? Only a witness said she’d seen him place the beans on the floor and then fall on purpose?”
“I remember. Get on with it.”
“Well, uh, honey, here’s what happened.”
“I’m not going to like this one, am I?” I didn’t like the way he was honeying me.
“Well, not exactly. We’d been watching his house for quite awhile, and we were bored. The guy hadn’t been out of the house once, and we could see through the window that all he was doing was watching television. Show after show after show. So Stanley decided to try to get him to come outside so we could see how he handled himself.”
“Stan decided? Weren’t you the one in charge?”
“Well, now, sweetie, I agreed to it.”
Something bad was coming. I could feel it.
“Okay, so Stan ran up the walk and yelled the guy’s name. He came to the door and saw Stan, who just stood and stared at him. The, uh, gentleman walked out the door to see what was going on and Stan ran back to the car.
“Now here’s the funny part,” Pete continued, chuckling nervously. “The sprinklers were on, and when the guy started to chase Stanley, he slipped on the wet grass and threw his back out.”
“What? Why would he chase Stan just for calling his name, for crying out loud? And there isn’t any funny part. What’s the matter with you two?”
Stanley apparently decided it was time to fess up. Thin and small-boned, he was slightly bent over and it seemed like he was bending a bit more than usual. “Well, actually, there’s more to it. I didn’t just yell his name. I made a, uh, disparaging remark, thinking he’d come after me and we’d have proof that his back wasn’t truly injured. It worked. Now we know he was fine, at least until he slipped on the wet grass.”
“Do you two realize he could sue the firm? We could lose everything.” I felt my stomach lurch. “We’re having enough financial problems as it is.”
“Oh,” Stanley said quickly, “he won’t do that.” He ran his hand over his thinning brown hair, trying to straighten it.
“And what makes you think he won’t?” I was angry. These two overgrown children had jeopardized my investigative agency, not to mention my association with the insurance companies, all in the name of boredom.
“Because we talked to him.” Stanley actually sounded proud of himself. “Pete took a video of him running after me. We talked with him while we waited for the paramedics.”
“Paramedics?” I was seeing red, every detail making things worse.
“Now, Sandi, honey, it all worked out okay.” Pete was picking up the story, trying to get Stanley off the hook. He put his arm around my shoulders.
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“How do you figure?”
“Well, he won’t sue us and he’s dropping his insurance claim. In exchange, we won’t snitch that he was committing fraud.”
I pushed Pete’s arm off my shoulder and sank into my chair, picking up a notepad to fan myself. Surprisingly, my headache had gone away, which gave me an advantage.
“When are you two going to grow up? How could you have done such a thing? Didn’t you, for even one minute, think about behaving like professionals?”
Pete grinned. “The thought did cross our minds, but unfortunately, it was too late.”
“And how do you explain your green knees?” I asked.
“When I ran over to help the guy, I slipped on the grass, too. It was actually funny, but I guess you had to be there.” He lowered his eyes, again apparently not wanting to make eye contact with my baby blues.
Hmmm. Maybe I could take advantage of Pete’s guilt – after I finished reading them the riot act. I ranted and raved for a few more minutes, reminding them that we’re all adults and professionals and should maintain some decorum, and I pointedly reminded Pete that he’s an ex-cop and should behave like one.
I was a little scary, even if I do say so myself. They both stood quietly and let me yell. I’d been prepared for that, but not for their attitude of humility. They didn’t try to defend themselves. I found myself winding down quicker than I’d planned.
It was time to end my rant. “I hope you two have learned a valuable lesson from this. You both know better, and nothing like this had better ever happen again.” I gulped, realizing how much I sounded like a parent talking to errant youngsters.
“No, ma’am. It won’t.” I heard Stanley add “whew” under his breath. For a man in his forties, he sometimes reminded me of a child.
“Okay, you’ve made your point. And we know we were out of line. It was just one of those things, and it won’t happen again. So lighten up. Time to let it go. We have learned from this, believe me.”