“No, none. He left work for a while between shifts, and then returned after a short time. You should remember, he was right behind you on the way out the door.”
“Yeah, he seemed preoccupied, and didn’t say much when he headed outside. Did he ride his bike, or get a ride?”
“I think I remember him asking someone for a ride. When I saw him again, he came through the door and went right to work. I stayed over a few hours, trying to get caught up on some back work,” he said, explaining why he had been on the job late the evening before.
“Any idea what he was working on?”
“Maude, I wish I knew. All I saw was his notebook in his hand. I figured he was transcribing, so I didn’t bother him. Now I wish I had.”
“What I wouldn’t give for that little book right now,” she lamented. “There’s no paperwork indicating what he did last night. Did he talk to anyone on shift before you left?”
“I don’t know,” Bob said. “I know he was on the phone for a while.”
“The house phone?” she asked.
“Yeah, he took a call about 7:00 P.M. After that, I left, and went home,” Bob said.
Maude called the dispatch office to ask about phone calls the evening before. Geraldine Adams, the employee who answered, had relieved Betty Sinclare for lunch break. She had been with the department for a while. She was a tall black woman with an attitude, and Maude liked her the minute she met her six months earlier.
“Gerry, you working tens?”
“Nah, twelves. Nine to nine. What you want, Maude? I know you didn’t call me to find out my work schedule?”
“Right,”’ she said chuckling. “Wondering if you remember a phone call about 7:00 to 7:30 last night? Someone calling for Joe.”
“Sure do. I took the call. It was a man. He asked for Detective Allen, as though he knew him, but not well. You know,” she said apologetically, “when someone calls like that we don’t usually ask what they want. Maybe we should though,” she added to herself.
“Don’t blame yourself, Gerry, if Joe was in jeopardy from a phone call, he could have told someone. Could have been a friend calling.”
“I wish I knew more to tell you,” the woman replied.
“Calhoun, you ready to take another ride to Joe’s neighborhood, talk to some more neighbors? Maybe they’re awake. We’ll go a little ways down from the apartment. Maybe someone found his bike. I figure he rode it to work, and intended riding home, or hitching a ride if the weather got bad. Anyway, the office is too quiet, and I need to be busy, even though I feel we’re going in circles. Let’s go.”
She hadn’t given him an option, but Calhoun didn’t mind, it was fine with him that Maude called the shots. He felt lucky to be there in the first place. There were a dozen police officers who wanted a cherished detective slot--especially one in homicide. After the promotional tests, Captain Patterson had promised Calhoun a place in the section as soon as someone retired. In the meantime, he was learning, and it wouldn’t go to waste.
“When we get there, take your notebook, and go knock on street-side doors. They’re mostly residential, single family beyond the complex where Joe lives. Ask the right questions--maybe someone will accidentally say something important.”
“On my way,” Calhoun said, setting out as soon as his feet hit the sidewalk.
Maude watched him for a minute, interested to know his methods. Meanwhile, she took the path that Joe would have taken on his bicycle, believing that something had gone wrong early in the evening, and he had been caught up in it before the night was over.
The first house she visited was vacant, with a real estate sign in front, and Maude noticed cobwebs on the front door as if it had been a long while since the house had been shown by a realtor. Can’t sell it if you don’t show it, she thought.
Her next stop was at an imitation brown stone, complete with two stories and large, wooden doors. The plastic siding had begun to deteriorate, and white spots of erosion along the seams were glaring in the bright spring sunlight. A quick knock on the door produced a hollow sound, indicating the material was sub-standard for an exterior opening.
Finally a man answered Maude’s knock and asked her business.
“Maude Rogers,” she said firmly, looking him in the eye. “I’m a homicide detective with the Madison Police Department. I need to ask you a few questions. May I come in?”
The man frowned, and stepped onto the porch. “No, I have my house dark for processing film. I’m a photographer. But go ahead. Ask me what you want to know. Just hurry please. My film is readied in my darkroom.”
“Oh, sorry to disturb you, Mr...?”
“Bradley. Thomas Bradley. Perhaps you’ve heard of me.”
“Uh, no, I haven’t Mr. Bradley. I’m not much into the arts. I am, however, canvassing the neighbors along the street where one of our detectives rides his bike almost daily, and I wonder if you’ve ever seen him.”
“You mean today?”
“Yes, and yesterday morning, late evening, and night. Did you see him? This picture of him is fairly recent,” she said, showing him a snap shot of Joe she had taken in the office a year before.
“Does he wear a uniform?”
“No, Mr. Bradley, he’s a detective, and wears plain clothes. Sometimes when he’s on his bike he wears shorts and a helmet.” Maude said. “Did you see him yesterday?”
“Um, no, he doesn’t look familiar. No, never saw him before,” Bradley assured her.
“Mr. Bradley, this officer has been riding his bicycle to work for the last year, sometimes twice and three times a day down this sidewalk, and you’re sure you’ve never seen him?”
“That’s right. I’m sure. Don’t remember him.”
“What about Mrs. Bradley. Is she available? “
“Uh, no. She’s out of town at her mother’s place on the beach. A writer. She likes to get away. But I’ll tell her you asked about your fellow officer.”
“You do that, Mr. Bradley. But I’ll need the address where she’s staying.”
“Sure,” Bradley said, “But it’s remote. You’ll have to use Google maps to find her.”
“Thank you. I will do my best,” Maude remarked. Although upset by Bradley’s elusive answers, she was determined to keep her cool. “So what is that address?”
“All I have is a post office box,”’ Bradley said.
“What about a phone?” she asked. “Does she have one?”
“No, no phones. Serena likes privacy and solitude. I have to wait for her calls when she goes into town.”
“Fine, Mr. Bradley. Give me the address,” she said one last time.
“Alright, it’s P.O. Box 12, Aurora Beach, Brownsville, Texas. 80213.”
Maude replaced her notebook in the pocket of her blazer, and glanced back as she walked away. She noticed Bradley’s window shades were pulled in front, and on the side. The garage set-up was like her own, an afterthought of the owners. A long driveway on the south side of the house led to a building with closed, overhead doors, and Maude would have liked to look inside. With the location of the house and drive, she wondered how Bradley could have missed seeing Joe some of the times he pedaled by on his way to and from work.
“He couldn’t have,” she decided. After a while, Joe would have become a familiar sight to those who lived there.
Chapter 5.
Calhoun had a few things to report when they got together later, but only one was worth considering. The man in the house adjacent to the northwest side of the apartments remembered seeing a black van the night before. It had pulled up on the street, and its occupants unloaded their cleaning equipment noisily before entering the apartment building. The resident didn’t know what apartment was cleaned by the van’s crew, but he remembered seeing a red-haired woman driving, and unloading the van.
“Real pretty,” he told Calhoun. “A woman who would get your attention, even if she wore a housedress and slippers.”
“What time was that?” M
aude asked.
“About 2:00 A.M. the man said.”
“He sure?” Maude asked.
“Yeah, pretty sure. Said he had been at the hospital with a sick friend and came home about that time.
The third cigarette of the day was usually Maude’s lifeline, allowing enough nicotine in her bloodstream to revive her for several hours. “I don’t know why I don’t totally quit,” she admitted to Calhoun as she reached for her butane lighter. “I think it’s more the idea of smoking I don’t want to give up.”
“What do we do next Maude?” Calhoun asked, “Keep asking at doors? Maybe you should switch to that nicotine gum.”
“Gum? No, too many fillings in my choppers,” she said, glancing at her teeth in the car’s side mirror. She took a few puffs, and stomped out the butt before putting it in the cellophane wrapper of her almost-empty pack.
“I think we owe it to Joe to keep it up,” she said, returning to Calhoun’s question. “There are two more houses, about a block and a half down the street. I want to ask there. Come, you can go with me. A young fellow like you probably needs a lot of exercise. You’ll forgive me if I complain, but by knees hurt like blazes.”
“Oh, sorry, ma’am. Want me to carry you?”
Maude gave him a strange look. “You asking to carry me like I’m someone with a broke back? Did I say I couldn’t walk? How would it look with my long, skinny legs almost to the street if you were to carry me? “
“I was making a joke, Maude.” Calhoun’s face was beet red, and he stammered terribly.
Maude laughed and slammed him on the back, “Got you, Calhoun. Of course I knew you were joking. Besides, you’d never get me off the ground if you tried to lift me. I’m heavier than I look.” She looked his way again. “Sorry, I’m a horse’s patooty,” she said sincerely.
Calhoun laughed hollowly. His attempt at humor had failed him, and he wished for a hole in the ground deep enough to cover his own long legs.
The next house offered very little for the detective, and the detective wannabe. A woman and her husband had just moved in, and knew no one in the neighborhood, but swore they would keep their eyes open for any sign of the man on the bicycle.
“We came up with a lot of nothing,” Maude grumbled.
“Okay. Can we grab something to eat before we go back to the office? I know it’s way past lunch, but I’m hungry.”
“Sure,” she said, looking at her watch. “ It’s already two o’clock. Didn’t mean to starve you; I could use a bite myself since I missed breakfast.” Just as they turned to go, Maude’s cell rang, and it was Mrs. Trulove reporting that her husband had returned that morning, after the detectives left. “You can come and talk to him if you want,” she said.
“Be right there,” Maude replied. She turned to Calhoun and pointed toward the apartments. “At last, one thing going our way. Eating has to be put off for a bit longer, Calhoun.”
Kenneth Trulove had come home early after his wife called him. He was currently tied up under the sink. “Dishwasher leaks,” his wife said. “He’s been promising to fix it for a month. Today, after you folks left, there was enough water on the floor to float a boat. Had to call him with the bad news. That’s what got him back.”
“We won’t take much of his time,” Maude said, eyeing the man’s feet and legs sticking out of the sink cabinet. “He can get right back to the job. I find such work interesting, because I’m a homeowner too,” she said, peeking under the cabinet where the man was struggling with a pipe. “Maybe I could learn to fix my own plumbing,” she mused. “Of course, you need good knees to get down on all fours. That might put the quietus to my repairs.”
“Excuse me detective, but are you talking to me?” Eleanor Trulove asked. She stood nearby-- apron in hand, unsure what to do next.
“Oh, sorry, just wool-gathering. Mr. Trulove, can you come out from there for a few minutes?” she asked.
“What? Who’s talking?” The voice came from deep in the cabinet where the homeowner struggled with a wayward drain pipe.
“Maude Rogers, homicide detective, and this is Calhoun Monroe working with me today. I wonder if you could give me a little of your time?” She asked, leaning into the opening where the business end of Kenneth Trulove was engrossed in his job.
“Lodgers? No we don’t take in lodgers, no room. Besides, the whole danged place is like the dishwasher—worn out, falling apart. Don’t know why we pay rent, and have to fix our own stuff.”
Mr. Trulove must have a hearing problem, Maude thought. She tapped him on the back, near the low waistline of his khakis, careful not to touch the visible crack between his cheeks. Raising her voice, she tried again, “Come out, sir, we’re the police and we have a few questions for you.”
“Why didn’t you say so?” Trulove replied, scooting back on all fours. He raised his head and stared at Maude and Calhoun, his eyes bloodshot from being upside down. “What can I do for you?” he asked.
“When you left the house for work this morning, did you see anyone else outside, parked on the street?”
Trulove coughed and nodded. “Sure did, nice-looking woman and her helper. I was on my way to the shower when I heard the banging noises outside. The window was dark, so I looked out, and that’s when I saw them under the street light. Looked like they had jumpsuits on, you know, like cleaning folks wear.”
“Did you get a good look at them? Maybe see them up close?”
“Well, I think I saw enough I would know her if I saw her again,” Trulove replied. “She was a looker,” he added. He looked sideways to see Eleanor glaring at him. “Well, she was,” he said defiantly.
Recognizing the makings of a domestic quarrel close at hand, Maude hurried on to the next question before more words about the attractiveness of the cleaning woman could be said.
“Ever see either of them before?” she asked.
“Don’t believe so,” the man answered. “I’d remember her,” he added in a more subdued tone.
“Would you describe her, sir?” Calhoun asked with his pen poised to write the details.
“Tallish, long, red hair, shapely. Couldn’t see her eyes, but it appeared she was pretty in the face.”
“How could you tell the color of her hair, Mr. Trulove?” Maude asked.
“She got in the van and the window was down on the curb side. In the dash light I could see her hair. My ears are bad, but my eyes work good. Seemed she was on the phone, talking to someone and smoking. Then she got out of the van, went out of sight. I guess she followed the man back to the cleaning job.”
“Did she see you?” Calhoun asked.
“Doubt it,” he said. “No light on in the house. They didn’t seem to be looking toward the windows.”
“How about the man? What did he look like?”
“Couldn’t tell much about him, but he was about her height. That’s all I could see. He left before she did. I told you that.”
“Thank you, Mr. Trulove,” Maude said as she moved to go. “Is it hard to fix a dishwasher?”
“Not too bad,” he replied, groaning as he went back to the floor. “Hard on the knees and back. Save a plumber’s fee, but if it leaks, and you don’t catch it, you’ll do more damage than a truck full of plumbers would have cost.”
“I see,” she said, thinking of her last plumber’s bill. “Could save a lot of money though. I used to have a fellow in my rent house. He could do most any kind of repairs. Loved that man, but he moved on.”
“Sorry for your loss. You were close to him?” Calhoun asked.
“Oh, he didn’t die,” she said. “He just moved on. Somewhere in Louisiana, where his kids lived.”
“My mistake,” the young man replied, hoping they could get back on the street quickly before he made a real faux pas that might cost him his dignity.
“Good bye, Eleanor, Kenneth,” Maude said loudly. “We may see you again if we need an ID of one or both the persons you saw.”
Chapter 6.
“Did
we learn anything from that interview?” Calhoun asked.
“What do you think?” Maude replied.
“Not much, except the old man was eying the woman. Probably something he does most every time one gets out of a car.”
“Uh huh,” she said. “But the woman he saw had certain characteristics. She’s the driver, probably owns the car, because she smokes in it. Maybe the person in charge. Good-looking woman, longish hair. Probably young, no more than thirty, forty. Most older women wouldn’t wear their hair down. Tall, as tall as the man, and sure of herself, of getting her way. Notice, she wasn’t concerned others might see her. She is accustomed to work, so she’s not from a wealthy background. Recall, Calhoun, they cleaned the apartment. She would have participated. All in all, a determined young woman.”
“And the man?” Calhoun asked, fascinated by what she had just said.
“He’s the opposite of all she is. Probably older, maybe has some money, or is coming in to money. Usually passive, willing for his woman to manage his life.”
“But what do they have to do with the detective?” Calhoun asked, puzzled by Maude’s picture of the couple.
“I have no idea,” she said. “But I intend for us to find out. Now how about that late lunch? Tacos okay with you?”
“My favorite,” Calhoun replied. “I could eat a barrel of them with a side of cold root beer.”
“Me too,” she said, rubbing her stomach, “but no root beer. Gives me gas.”
After a late lunch-early dinner-at Maude’s favorite eatery, they returned to the office to put it all together, hoping to reach a conclusion, and find Joe before the day was over. She was accustomed to the hours, but Calhoun yawned around 6:00 P.M., and she gave him a sympathetic look.
“If you want to go home, go,” she said firmly. “Joe is my partner, and it’s up to me to find him. You don’t need to go along.”
She nodded at the two detectives that came in for the night shift. “They can go with me,” she added.
The Maude Rogers Murder Collection Page 79