Take a Number

by Janet Dawson

  According to the preliminary information Bill Stanley had obtained from the Oakland police, Mrs. Parmenter’s call came in at 11:14 P.M. A patrol car arrived at the Howe street address at 11:27 P.M. The patrolmen had buzzed Mrs. Parmenter’s apartment and she let them in. When they reached the third floor, they found Sam Raynor’s body in the hallway in front of the stairwell door. Then Wendy’s cries led them through the open door of apartment 303, to Ruth, lying on the floor in her own living room. I had to find out what had happened in that critical thirteen minutes between Mrs. Parmenter’s call and the arrival of the police.

  “You told the police you saw Ruth Raynor drop something down the trash chute,” I said. “When?”

  “Right after I called the police. I heard a door open and I wanted to see if anyone else had heard the shot. That’s when I saw her. She had something in her hand and she dropped it down the trash chute, then turned around and went right back into her apartment, before I could say anything to her.”

  “You can’t see the trash chute from your door,” I pointed out.

  “I know that, young lady.” Mrs. Parmenter sounded huffy. “But she had something in her right hand. She walked straight out of her apartment, in the direction of the trash chute, and straight back. It was just a matter of a few seconds. The door of the trash chute has a spring so that it closes automatically. It makes an audible thump when it swings shut. That’s what I heard. So I knew she’d dropped something down the trash chute.” She looked at me triumphantly, as though she’d just played her ace.

  I didn’t choose to debate with her. “What did you do after that?”

  “I went to the bathroom,” Mrs. Parmenter said, coloring slightly. “When I came out, the teakettle was whistling. I made myself a cup of tea, though my hand was shaking so much I thought I’d drop it. Then my intercom buzzed and it was the police. Things got very hectic after that.”

  “May I see your bathroom?” I asked.

  My hostess looked surprised at this request, but she nodded. I located the bathroom and flipped on the light switch. The fixtures were beige, a round sink with a cabinet underneath, a toilet, lid down, and another ginger jar on the tank, which had a fluffy apricot cover that matched the rugs on the floor and the towels hanging on the wall rack. A clouded glass shower door was partly open, revealing Mrs.Parmenter’s hand wash drying on a plastic hanger suspended from the shower head.

  What interested me most, however, was the whirring sound of the ventilator fan, high on the wall above the toilet. It was noisy and it switched on and off automatically when I flipped the bathroom light switch. When Mrs. Parmenter stepped out of the bathroom that night, her teakettle was whistling. Presumably it had reached the boiling point while she was in the bathroom. Could the combination of ventilator fan and shrilling teakettle have masked the sound of another gunshot?

  When I returned to the living room I stood in front of the TV set and ran my hand over the VCR perched on top. It looked a lot like mine, and I wondered if it behaved the same way. “When you first got up, right before you heard the voices in the hall, did you stop the videotape?” I asked, pointing at the VCR remote on the coffee table, “or did you hit the pause button on the remote?”

  “The pause button.” She narrowed her eyes. Mrs. Parmenter might be a nosy old biddy, but she was also a sharp old biddy, and she knew which direction I was headed, particularly after I’d flipped that switch in the bathroom a couple of times. “When I do that, the VCR buzzes. If I don’t press the pause button again in a few minutes, the VCR shuts itself off and goes to whatever’s playing on the TV set. Yes, by the time I heard the gun, the TV was on. But that shot didn’t come from the TV. It came from outside my apartment. I may be old but I’ve still got pretty good eyes and ears, young lady. I know what I saw, and I know what I heard.”

  It wasn’t what she saw and heard that concerned me. It was what she didn’t hear. There had been at least two shots fired from Ruth’s gun, one inside apartment 303 and one in the corridor, the one that killed Sam Raynor. The timing was off. If Ruth had in fact killed Sam, then ditched the gun down the trash chute, Mrs. Parmenter must have heard the shot fired in the hall near the stairwell. Why hadn’t she heard the one fired in the apartment? And if both shots had been fired while she was in the bathroom, what was the sound that prompted her to call the police?

  If Ruth fired the shot that killed Sam, she was already in the hallway, just a few steps from the trash chute. Why not ditch the gun then? But Mrs. Parmenter said she’d seen Ruth exit and reenter the apartment. That didn’t make sense. Unless Ruth had gone back inside to wipe the gun clean of prints. I sighed. I didn’t have any answers, and I’d better find some quick if I intended to get Ruth out of jail.

  Brett had been listening to all of this with interest. Now I turned to him. “What about you?” I asked.

  “I didn’t see or hear diddly,” he said, shifting in the rocking chair. “I went to a party Saturday night and didn’t get home till past midnight. There were cops all over the place and I couldn’t get into the building. Had to sit in my car till nearly two in the morning. I can tell you right now, though, Martha’s real sharp. If she says that’s what happened, you can bet it did.”

  “Besides, dear,” Mrs. Parmenter said, “if Ruth didn’t shoot her husband, who did?”

  I wish I knew, I thought grimly. I tucked my notebook and pen back in my purse. “Thank you for talking with me. When I was here Friday afternoon, waiting for Mrs. Raynor to come home from work, I saw a homeless woman across the street, at that construction site. Have either of you ever seen her before?”

  “Rosie?” Brett said. “Somebody told me that’s what she’s called, because of that rose on her hat. Yeah, she hangs around here a lot. She roams around picking up cans and bottles, stashing them in that shopping cart. I guess she turns ’em in for the recycling money.”

  Mrs. Parmenter pursed her lips and shook her head, looking distressed. “Poor soul. She’s younger than I am. To live like that, on the streets.”

  “Does she stay in that lot every night?”

  “Not every night,” Brett said. “Sometimes I don’t see her for days, then she shows up again. You’re thinking she saw something Saturday night?”

  I answered him with another question. “Any idea where I could find her?”

  He shook his head. “I only notice her when she’s there. Guess you could ask around the neighborhood.”

  “I will. If you see her, would you give me a call?” I gave Brett and Mrs. Parmenter each one of my business cards.

  Mrs. Parmenter was adamant about her version of the events on the night of the murder, I thought, exiting her apartment. I was certain she’d make a convincing witness in court. But there were a few ragged edges in the fabric of her story. Maybe I could widen those tears, enough to get Ruth Raynor through them.

  Twenty-one

  OUTSIDE MRS. PARMENTER’S FRONT DOOR I TURNED my head to the left, as she must have done Saturday night, when she said she looked out of her apartment and saw Ruth. All I could see was the door of 302, and just a sliver of Ruth’s door, 303. I walked to the front hallway and knocked on the door of 301. No answer. I positioned myself at Ruth’s front door. The space around me was rectangular, roughly eight by ten feet, and I noted locations as though they were hands on a clock. The hallway leading to the rear of the building was directly to my left, at nine o’clock. At ten o’clock was a short bare wall, the other side of Mrs. Parmenter’s dining area. The laundry room was at eleven o’clock, running along Mrs. Parmenter’s living room wall. On my immediate right, at three o’clock, was the door to 302, the empty unit. That would put the elevator and Lena Copeland’s apartment, 301, at one and two o’clock respectively.

  At twelve o’clock, directly in front of me, I had a clear, unobstructed view of the hall that led to the trash chute and the stairwell door. I walked slowly down the hallway. The wall to my left was about twelve feet long. The right-hand wall, housing the elevator shaft, wa
s shorter, perhaps eight feet. The hall itself was narrow, not quite three feet wide, and just being there made me feel claustrophobic. Shooting Sam Raynor in the back must have been like shooting fish in a barrel.

  The crime scene tape had been removed from this area too. Someone, probably the manager, had tried to scrub out the blood that stained the beige carpet midway down the hall, but blood is hard to remove. No doubt this section of carpet would have to be replaced. I raised my eyes from the rusty brown splotch to the trash chute door, an eighteeninch square, hinged at the bottom. The chrome handle at the top, about four feet off the floor, still showed the residue of fingerprint powder. The chute itself was directly opposite the metal fire door that led to the stairs.

  Piece of cake, I told myself. So easy to do, in just a matter of seconds. Shoot Sam Raynor in the back, step over the body, drop the weapon down the trash chute to the left, and exit to the right, down the stairs to the lobby. You couldn’t see anything, unless you were standing at the head of this hallway, or right in front of Ruth’s apartment.

  I turned and walked back up the hallway, pausing to check out the laundry room. A long table, about waist high, and two coin-operated washing machines stood on the left, the wall shared with Mrs. Parmenter’s living room. Opposite them were two dryers and a large plastic trash can. One of the washing machines quivered and whirred as it went through a spin cycle, accompanied by a steady thump sound as clothes went round and round in a dryer. Between them, the two appliances made a lot of noise. Enough to muffle a gunshot?

  I returned to Ruth’s door, my arms crossed, looking toward the murder scene as I listened to the sounds around me, filtering out some, identifying others. Someone on the floor below was playing rock music too loud. I heard several metallic growls, then a hum as the elevator moved in its shaft, the light on the indicator above the door telling me that the car had dropped from the second floor to the ground level. Once the elevator stopped, traffic noise seeped into the building. I heard the nearby squeal of brakes, an impatient car horn, the wail of a siren in the distance.

  Saturday night in Oakland can be noisy, especially in this neighborhood, bordered by well-traveled arteries like Piedmont Avenue, MacArthur Boulevard, and Broadway. There must have been plenty of background noise the night Sam Raynor was killed, including Mrs. Parmenter’s television set. The elderly tenant had to be mistaken about the timing of the shot she said she heard, as well as Ruth’s supposed trip to the trash chute to dump the murder weapon. If I believed Ruth when she denied killing Sam—and mostly I did.

  Ruth’s story was that she had taken a bag of garbage to the chute right before Sam got off the elevator. Given the location of Mrs. Parmenter’s front door, and her own statement that she’d simply poked her head out the door rather than stepping into the hall, the elderly woman could not have seen Ruth at the trash chute. She’d only seen Ruth walk out her front door, with something in her hand, then return to her apartment. According to Ruth that was before the gun went off. But Mrs. Parmenter said after.

  If Ruth shot Sam, she could have wiped the gun on her clothes, then dropped it down the chute. There was no logical reason for her to go back to the apartment, then dump the gun. So Mrs. Parmenter must have seen her earlier, when she’d dumped the garbage. But that was when Sam got off the elevator, surprising Ruth in the hall. Why hadn’t Mrs. Parmenter seen Sam? She also said Ruth had been arguing with a man outside her apartment, before Ruth made her trip to the trash chute. If the man Mrs. Parmenter had seen wasn’t Sam, who was it? Kevin Franklin, who’d driven his sister and niece home that night? Another question to ask Kevin.

  I shook my head. Someone was confused—or lying— about the sequence of events late Saturday night. Was it Mrs. Parmenter, or Ruth Franklin Raynor?

  I worked my way through all three floors of the building, knocking on doors and talking to those tenants I could find at home. It was a useless exercise. Of those who had been home, only one had heard anything resembling a gunshot, and she thought it was a backfire from a car out on the street. The tenants I spoke with were uneasy, appalled that murder had soiled their building, their refuge from the world. Not safe anywhere, even at home—I heard the words over and over again. Even though these people lived behind the locked doors in a supposedly secure building, they didn’t feel safe, in their homes, on the street, in their neighborhood.

  I retraced my steps to that short hallway on the third floor, staring at the murder scene, wishing for enlightenment. The elevator dinged and I heard the door open. As I rounded the corner, I saw a woman in a bright red dress standing at the door of apartment 301. Lena Copeland had come home from work.

  She was facing away from me. Her long black hair had been braided into cornrows, the ends decorated with colorful beads that clicked whenever she moved her head. On her left hip she balanced a brown paper sack full of groceries. As a result, her dress was hiked up on the left side, revealing the lace hem of her slip, a wide strip of pale blue under wrinkled red linen. The thin strap of her leather handbag slipped off her right shoulder, catching on the white cuff at her elbow. She stuck a key into the dead-bolt lock above the doorknob, then I heard her swear under her breath. The lock stuck and she swore again, aiming a sharp kick at the bottom of the door with the pointed toe of her red leather pump. Judging from the number of scuff marks on the lower third of the door’s surface, she kicked the door frequently. The grocery sack slipped an inch or so down her outthrust hip and threatened to escape her grasp altogether.

  “You look like you could use some help,” I said, walking toward her.

  Her braids flew as she whipped her head swiftly to the right, the beads clicking and rattling together, brushing the red metal hoops in her ears. I saw a long nose, a wide mouth painted bright red, and a pair of suspicious brown eyes in a coffee-brown face. She looked about twenty-five, but weariness pulled her visage into tired lines, as though she’d already worked a forty-hour week and here it was only Monday. Her low voice was decidedly unfriendly.

  “I don’t need any help.”

  She set the grocery sack on the carpet at her feet and grabbed the doorknob with her left hand, pulling it toward her while she twisted the key with her right. The lock shifted with a click. She pulled the key out of the dead bolt and stuck it into the spring lock in the doorknob itself. The door opened a few inches and she kicked it wider, bending over to shove the grocery sack inside.

  “I’d like to ask you a few questions about Saturday night,” I said quickly, before she could escape into the refuge of her apartment.

  “I already talked to the cops,” she said harshly, ready to slam the door in my face. But the grocery sack was in the way. Swearing under her breath, she kicked off her shoes and used one foot and one hand to maneuver the grocery sack into her apartment. Then she straightened and reached for the door, long red fingernails like talons as she grasped the edge.

  “I’m not a cop. I’m a private investigator.” I put my left hand flat on the door she was trying to shut as my right reached into my handbag. “My name’s Jeri Howard. You’re Lena Copeland?”

  I held one of my business cards under her nose. She didn’t say anything, nor did she take the card from my hand, but she didn’t slam the door in my face either.

  “Who you working for? Her?” She jerked her chin in the direction of Ruth’s unit. The beads in her hair swayed and clicked.

  “Yes. I’ve been talking to some of the other tenants in the building, to see if anyone saw anything Saturday, the night of the shooting. No one seems to know how the victim got into the building, since the front door is always locked. Mrs. Parmenter in 304 suggested that you may have propped the door open.”

  Lena Copeland’s red-painted mouth twisted and her voice crackled with resentment. “That nosy old bitch. Minds everybody’s business but her own. I did not leave the front door open. I did once, a couple of months ago, just to move something in. That cracker manager acted like it was a federal crime. So now anything goes down in th
is building they all blame me.”

  “Hey, I don’t know how it happened,” I said with a placating shrug. “Nobody’ll cop to letting him in. Maybe the door was propped open. Maybe he slipped in while someone was coming in or out. Doesn’t really matter.” It did matter, though. If Sam Raynor came through the front door while someone else was in the building lobby, that person could tell me whether or not Raynor was alone. “Either way, he’s just as dead.”

  Lena Copeland crossed her arms over her red linen bodice and tilted her head to one side. “From what I hear, he had it coming.”

  “Some people seem to think so. Why do you?”

  “I talked to Ruth a time or two, in the laundry room. Enough to figure out her old man had been beating up on her. She had a restraining order on him, didn’t she? So he comes in here, tries to mess with her, slaps her around. I don’t blame her for blowing him away.”

  “Maybe she didn’t.” An expression flitted across Lena’s face, too brief for me to assess. “So you were home Saturday night?”

  Her response was a humph sound that might have been a yes and might have been a no.

  “You must have been, if you’ve talked to the police. If you were here, maybe you heard something, saw something that could be important. You’re close enough to Ruth’s apartment to hear most of what went on. Especially the gunshots.”

  Behind her a bird began to trill, coloring the silence with melody. Lena sighed and dropped her hands to her hips. “Come on in and let me shut this door. I’m not supposed to have so much as a goldfish in this apartment. If that cracker manager hears Sophie, he’ll be wanting to throw me out.”