The Claudia Hershey Mysteries - Box Set: Three Claudia Hershey Mysteries

by Laura Belgrave

  Chapter 12

  Her name was Shayla Kincaid, but Claudia bet the girl couldn’t even spell it. Or wouldn’t care to. She was stick thin and pasty. Her light blue eyes watched Claudia disinterestedly. No matter the question or attempt at conversation, she hadn’t spoken a word since Claudia sat down at the foot of her bed.

  “She’s been like that since we brought her home from the hospital,” Elaine Kincaid whispered, as if her daughter were asleep. She hovered uncertainly at the bedroom door. “I haven’t been able to coax her out of her nightgown. Maybe that’s to be expected. The doctors said she’d probably be withdrawn.”

  Claudia motioned for Mrs. Kincaid to leave the room. When she was sure the woman had gone, she lifted the girl’s right arm and looked at the soft spot in the crook of her arm. Discoloration, old. Same with the left.

  The girl watched, but didn’t react. Claudia pursed her lips, studied the kid. Shayla had long, blond hair that needed a good washing. Tangles bunched at the ears. Then, saying nothing, she pulled Shayla’s cover down and pushed the girl’s nightgown up past her knees. She reached for the girl’s right leg. Shayla stiffened and pulled back. But just as suddenly she let go. The marks were behind both knees, too. One behind the left looked new.

  Fantastic. The kid had been out of the hospital less than a week. She was shooting up already. Somebody was fueling her, and with more than cocaine.

  Sixteen years old. A baby, really. Just a baby.

  Claudia covered the girl and leaned forward. She took Shayla’s hand. Dry as desert sand.

  “Talk to me, hon,” she said to the girl. “This can’t be what you want.”

  Shayla blinked, looked away.

  “You almost died, Shayla.” Claudia squeezed the girl’s hand. “You know what that is, to be dead? To not ever open your eyes again?”

  It was useless, of course. The girl was beyond caring. Claudia patted her hand, and let it go. She stood, walked around the room. Everything was white, clean-looking. The room was spacious. A couple dozen stuffed animals with marble eyes decorated the dresser, the bed, a bookcase. A shelf held a trophy for track. Almost two years ago. A lifetime.

  Claudia opened drawers, rooted through the closet. She examined each stuffed animal, looking for ripped seams that might signal a depository for drugs. She walked the room. No sign that carpeting had been pulled up. On her hands and knees, she peered beneath the bed. Rolled the girl one way, then the other, exploring between the mattress and bed springs.

  Nothing. She hadn’t expected to find anything here, and she didn’t.

  Discarded on the floor were some folders and books. Government. Calculus. English. Claudia bent down, picked them up. She flipped through a few pages in the calculus book. Paged through the folders. “Buddy” was written everywhere.

  Claudia knew Shayla was watching. She turned to the girl and held out a folder. “Who’s Buddy, Shayla?”

  Shayla closed her eyes.

  * * *

  Elaine Kincaid rubbed her hands together. She didn’t know who Buddy was, she said. Shayla had never mentioned him. No, she hadn’t noticed the name on the girl’s school books. Couldn’t remember ever really looking at the folders. There hadn’t been much reason to.

  “I don’t know, Detective Hershey. I’ve tried to give her everything.” Elaine shivered lightly. She was thin, but not emaciated like her daughter. “I’ve denied her nothing. I just don’t understand how she ever got involved with drugs.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I didn’t see it coming.” The woman began to weep.

  Claudia waited. They almost never knew how it began, the parents, and Claudia believed them. She’d seen drugs get into kids from good homes and bad. Black kids, white kids, poor, rich. Drug influence was not discriminating.

  “Mrs. Kincaid,” Claudia said gently. “Your daughter needs to be in a treatment center. “The hospital wasn’t enough. It only got her past the hump.” She exhaled. “Shayla’s on drugs right now. If she doesn’t get help—soon—she’ll be dead before the year is out.”

  “No! How can you . . . she’s been here since she got home. She, she—”

  Claudia shook her head. “Somehow, she’s been out, Mrs. Kincaid.” She told the girl’s mother what she’d seen. “Probably through a window. It happens all the time. What’s important is you need to get her in a treatment center. Today, if you can. Don’t wait for this problem to go away.”

  There were more tears. Claudia guided the woman to a chair in the living room. She sat beside her. “Can you give me any of your daughter’s girlfriend’s names? Who does she hang out with?”

  “Nobody, at least not now,” said Mrs. Kincaid. She sniffed. Her eyes were red and wet. “For awhile, she was friends with a girl named, uh, Tess. Tess Van Owen. But I don’t know—Shayla hasn’t mentioned her in maybe a month. Possibly more.”

  Claudia wrote the name down. She talked to the woman for another ten minutes and gave her the name of a treatment center in Flagg. She made Mrs. Kincaid promise to make the call. Told her she would check back the next day.

  As Claudia prepared to leave, Mrs. Kincaid grabbed her elbow. “Detective,” she said softly, “Shayla’s not a bad girl. She really isn’t.” Mrs. Kincaid shook her head. “She’s . . . she used to be an ‘A’ student. Athletic, too. Very, very good.”

  Claudia put her hand on top of the woman’s. “I don’t doubt that for a minute, Mrs. Kincaid. Not for a minute.”

  * * *

  When Claudia had been in high school, she’d once been abruptly called to the principal’s office without any explanation. It was the day she’d been spotted smoking in the john and also the day she learned she had outscored the rest of her class on college prep exams. So it could have been good news. It could have been bad. To Claudia on that day, it didn’t matter. The not knowing was enough to twist her stomach into a fist. By the time she got to the principal’s office, marching silently behind the man’s secretary, she felt like throwing up. Her voice wouldn’t work. Her legs trembled. She studied the principal’s shoes when he came out from behind his desk.

  Tess Van Owen was nothing like that. She had no idea why Principal Mitchell Hightower wanted to see her, but she’d been in and out of his office so many times for minor infractions that it was just a game. She didn’t look at Hightower’s shoes. She matched him eyeball for eyeball, her ruby lips curled in arrogance and feigned indifference. To Claudia, she paid no attention whatsoever.

  Hightower had told Claudia what to expect, and the man knew his students. Tess Van Owen was, he said, a spitfire. She was also one of the most brilliant students to ever walk the halls of Indian Run’s high school and she knew it.

  “Don’t expect her cooperation, Lieutenant Hershey,” Hightower cautioned. “Tess is academically exceptional. But she also hates authority and she goes as much out of her way to bend rules and cause trouble as she does to ace every exam ever put in front of her. She knows the Kincaid girl, yes.” Hightower shrugged. “Chances are excellent she also knows this Buddy character you’re trying to find. But she won’t help you.”

  Big surprise, thought Claudia. “Well, maybe I’ll get lucky,” she told Hightower. “Meanwhile, just follow my lead, all right?”

  Hightower welcomed Tess to his office, then gestured at Claudia. “This is Detective Lieutenant Claudia Hershey, Tess,” he said pleasantly. “She’s looking into some drug activity and thought you might be able to, uh, help.”

  Tess looked bored. She rested a hip against a bookcase, and turned an insolent eye toward Claudia. The girl wore huge loop earrings—two in each ear—and they rattled when she moved. Her hair was dark, and cropped short in an expensive style. She wore black body stockings under a short lime green skirt, and a black sweater that fell off one shoulder. Desert boots completed her outfit.

  Yup. One tough cookie.

  Claudia opened with a slight smile, then briefly explained the focus of her investigation. Tess didn’t bat an eye. She didn’t smile back. She drew a stick of
gum out of her pocket and put it in her mouth, tossing the wrapper on the bookcase.

  “Tess,” said Claudia carefully, “an investigation like this tends to go in a thousand directions. But I understand that you were friends with Shayla Kincaid—”

  “So what?” said Tess. The girl shrugged and studied her nails. They were long, and painted fluorescent green to match her skirt. “Lots of people know Shayla.”

  “Then lots of people also know Shayla almost died last weekend,” said Claudia.

  “She turned into a doper.”

  “And you don’t care about that?”

  “Not my problem.”

  Claudia moved closer to the girl and leaned against Hightower’s desk. “Well, you’re right about the first part,” Claudia said. “Shayla turned into a doper. You’re wrong about the second part. It is your problem because I’m making it your problem.”

  Tess looked at Hightower. “Do I have to put up with this shit?”

  Embarrassed, Hightower said, “Come on, Tess. That kind of talk doesn’t do anyone any good. And I should think you’d want to cooperate. Shayla was your friend—”

  “Was is the operative word,” Tess said sullenly.

  Claudia nudged the girl’s foot with her shoe. “Hey, listen up,” she said sharply. “I don’t really care how close you were to Shayla,” she said. “And I don’t have a lot of time to put up with your smart mouth. The point is, you knew Shayla and that means you probably knew the guy whose name is plastered all over her notebooks. Buddy.”

  Recognition flickered in Tess’ eye. But she shook her head lazily. Earrings jangled. “Never heard of him.”

  “I think you have,” said Claudia.

  “Well, BFD. Think what you want.”

  Tess turned to go, but Claudia blocked her way. “I’ll ask you one more time. Who’s Buddy, Tess?”

  Glaring, Tess answered, “I told you, I don’t know.”

  “You do know,” said Claudia, thumping a finger on Hightower’s desk. “And you’ll share it with me here, now, or I’ll haul your little butt over to the juvie center in Flagg and we can talk there. There is such a thing as obstructing a lawful investigation and that’s what it looks to me like you’re doing.”

  Hightower flinched and shifted his weight uncomfortably.

  Tess shot him a disdainful look and snorted. “I’m leaving,” she said. “This is total bullshit.” She turned a haughty eye to Claudia. “You can’t make me say anything.”

  Claudia almost let her go. She’d had it with kids this week. First Robin. Then that rag doll, Shayla. And now this girl. No adult waged war more effectively.

  But just when Tess Van Owen was nearly home free, she foolishly miscalculated both timing and proximity. The girl was turning through the door, sailing back to class, probably off to hold her friends spellbound with the story of what had just transpired. Her step was jaunty, her head held high in triumph. And then in careless afterthought her hand swept fast and low behind her back in an unmistakable middle finger salute.

  In two decisive strides Claudia closed the gap between them. She grabbed Tess by a shoulder and spun her around, then expertly turned her against Hightower’s desk. In a moment, the girl’s hands were snared behind her back. In less than thirty seconds her wrists wore handcuffs.

  Tess’ earrings clattered on the surface of Hightower’s desk. She yelped in surprise.

  “When you live on the edge, you run the danger of falling off,” Claudia said brusquely. She pulled Tess upright and faced her. “Let’s go.” She started to duck-walk the girl toward the door. The reaction she expected wasn’t long in coming.

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute!” Tess squeaked. She pushed against Claudia’s body, an ant trying to budge a grasshopper. “Buddy—he’s Robert Lindstrom—that’s his real name.”

  Claudia slowed, but her grip stayed firm on Tess. “I’m listening. What else?”

  “Well, I mean, I don’t know him, not really. I just, like, know who he is,” Tess said. The words rushed out. “Please, I was just fooling around, that’s all.”

  “Fooling around?” Claudia snapped. “Flipping the bird at a law enforcement officer is your idea of fooling around?”

  “I’m sorry, really. Let me go, please? My parents’ll kill me.”

  “One can only hope,” Claudia muttered. But she removed the handcuffs. Ha! The girl’s eyes were fixed on Claudia’s shoes!

  Claudia studied the girl coolly. “All right,” she said. “Let’s hear it—and no more of your so-called ‘fooling around.’ I want everything from A to Z.”

  Tess swallowed her gum. “Buddy used to hang around here,” she said. “I think he went to school over at Vo-Tech. But he dropped out. He started to show up here maybe a couple months ago. He’d just hang out.”

  The tremble in Tess’ hand was almost imperceptible when she reached for another stick of gum. Claudia noted it, and waited for the girl to go on.

  “Shayla got to know him in the parking lot. Buddy has this car, see, a big old bird. I don’t know what kind. I think Shayla liked that.” Tess looked uncertainly at Claudia’s face. “One time, Shayla introduced me to him, but I didn’t like him. I told her that and, I don’t know, the more she saw of him the more I, like, backed off from her.”

  “Go on,” Claudia urged.

  “Anyway, he worked at a McDonald’s for awhile. But he got fired. Then he worked at the fish camp part-time. Last I heard, he worked at some garage. I guess he’s, like, just making the rounds, you know?”

  There wasn’t a lot more to tell. Robert “Buddy” Lindstrom worked solo in drugs, at least as far as Tess could tell; she never saw him hanging out with other guys. She hadn’t seen him lurking around the school in a couple of weeks.

  “So you stopped hanging around with Shayla about the time Buddy cozied up to her, is that it?” Claudia asked.

  Tess nodded. “I don’t know. She just got weird.” Tess’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I couldn’t even talk to her.”

  Nothing surpassed teen-age hurts, Claudia thought. “You know, maybe it wouldn’t hurt if you tried again. Shayla’s going through some really hard times. She’s going to need a friend.”

  Her observation didn’t call for a response and Claudia didn’t get one. She glanced above Tess’ head at Hightower. The principal stood as rigid as a steel girder.

  “Mr. Hightower,” Claudia said calmly, “I think Tess can go back to class now.”

  Hightower waved Tess away. The girl moved toward the door.

  “One more thing,” Claudia called after her. When Tess turned back, Claudia raised a stern eyebrow. “You’re bright, but you don’t have a lick of common sense. Show that finger to the wrong person one day and you just might find it broken. Believe me, there are people out there even tougher than you.”

  Tess left a little less conspicuously than before.

  Hightower sat heavily. “I don’t think I could do your job, Lieutenant Hershey.” He popped a peppermint candy in his mouth.

  “I don’t think I could do yours either, Mr. Hightower.”

  On her way out Claudia thought again about her own long walk to the principal’s office. It was the cigarette, of course. And there’d been hell to pay when the principal ratted to her parents.

  Chapter 13

  The bowling ball was a fourteen-pounder, spackle green in color and threaded with minute scars from three years on a league in Cleveland. But disuse over ten months gave it a heavier feel and Claudia hoped she wouldn’t make a total fool of herself when she hurled it down the lane.

  The Seventh Annual Indian Run Mother-Daughter Tournament was apparently a crowd-pleaser. Good God. Saturday morning, nine o’clock, and every lane was filled. Every entrant arrived with a cheering section. The high-pitched warble of female voice pulsed like arteries shot with caffeine.

  Robin hadn’t wanted to come, of course. Bowling was dumb. Her mother was the enemy. But nearly an entire week of being involuntarily rooted to the house eventual
ly gave the tournament a diversionary appeal. It was better than nothing; Claudia was better than no one.

  Emory Carella bounded into view, his grin a full half-moon. “Hey, it’s the good lieutenant! I didn’t recognize you at first without a jacket flapping at your legs.”

  Claudia wore jeans and a peach sweatshirt. She shrugged. “I know. It’s so seldom lately that I’m not dressed for work that I almost feel like I’m undercover.”

  “Yeah. Nice to have a day off, huh?”

  “Half a day, anyway.” Claudia told Carella about Shayla Kincaid. “I got a couple of uniforms looking for this Buddy character. If they round him up I’m going to have to talk to him. Couple of things on the Overton case I want to check out, too.”

  “Can you believe it’s a week since the high priestess of the spiritual world was found dead?”

  Claudia was spared a response when an attendant at the desk began to bark rules for the tournament over a loudspeaker. There would be three games, scratch scores for the older division; handicap scores for the younger. Highest series in each division would win fifty dollars. Second highest, twenty-five. Third highest, bowling alley T-shirts. Five minutes to roll-off.

  “Pretty straightforward stuff,” Carella observed. He looked around. “Where’s your daughter?”

  “Still looking for the perfect ball, I guess,” said Claudia. She slipped into bowling shoes. They felt tight. “She refused to believe me when I told her she wouldn’t find a six-pound house ball.”

  Laughing, Carella wished Claudia luck and bid her farewell. “I have to check on my own little darlings,” he said. “We’re on lanes 23-24. Stop by afterward so I can show them off.”

  “You bet.”

  Claudia surreptitiously did a few deep-knee bends and stretching exercises. She couldn’t hear her joints pop over the din, but she felt them. The regimen of exercises she forced herself through daily had fallen by the wayside with the death of the medium. The aging process was unforgiving, she thought grimly.

  Robin skittered to the bowling circle just as the announcer declared a ten-minute practice session. “You’ll never guess who’s here,” she told Claudia breathlessly.