by Joan Hess
My time was too limited for family counseling. “Where have you and Skyler been living since his birth?”
“We went to the shelter, but they started bullying me to contact social services. We stayed at my mother’s place for a couple of weeks. I was thinking it might be okay, but it didn’t work out. I didn’t want Skyler to live on the streets, so I wrote that note and left him on your porch. You aren’t mad, are you?”
“No,” I said, squeezing her distressingly limp hand, “I’m worried about you. Will you tell me what happened last night?”
“I went to the house about eleven-thirty. The Mercedes wasn’t there, so I thought they were at one of their fancy parties at the country club. I let myself in the back door and went upstairs to get some of my things. All of a sudden, I heard two gunshots. I crouched inside the closet for maybe five minutes, hiding behind some winter coats. When I didn’t hear anything else, I crept downstairs and saw my father sprawled on the rug in his office. His shirt was covered with blood.”
“Did you see a gun?”
“Yeah, it was by the doorway. I know I shouldn’t have touched it, but I heard a noise somewhere in the back of the house, maybe the kitchen or dining room, and I was too scared to think straight. I grabbed the gun and went out the front door. That’s when a car drove up. I just kept running.” She hesitated for a moment. “If I’m sent to prison, will you keep Skyler? He’s not much trouble.”
“Do you want me to help you, Daphne? I’m not a lawyer, but I can ask questions and try to get to the bottom of this so that you and Skyler can be together again.”
“It’s not like I’m going to college. My son doesn’t deserve to live under a bridge and scavenge through garbage cans for food. He should go to kindergarten. Maybe when he’s in elementary school, he can play soccer and take piano lessons. Even if I get out of this mess, I can’t provide any of that with a minimum-wage job.” Tears began to leak down her cheeks. “You keep him, Mrs. Malloy.”
“Why wouldn’t your father help you?”
Daphne stared at her feet. “When I told him I was pregnant, he told me to have an abortion so I wouldn’t hurt his precious reputation. He was on the board of directors at Disciples, a deacon at church, and president of some civic club. The governor wanted him to serve on some stupid state commission. The country club had just elected him chairman of the membership committee. I said some nasty things and walked out, but that was when Joey still had his apartment and job.”
“Joey would be the father of your child?”
“He was the only one. We were planning to get married. I knew he had a temper, but he’d never been violent before. I guess the stress was too much for him.”
“Violent?” I repeated weakly.
“He’s not like that. He had a basement apartment and a job at a garage, but then he got into this fight at a bar and was sentenced to six months in the county jail. His landlord made me move out. I was sleeping in a storage shed in the alley behind Thurber Street when Arnie rescued me, and you know the rest of it. Joey got out last week, but he can’t find a job. Up until a couple of days ago, we were sleeping in his car. It wasn’t too bad, but then Skyler got the diaper rash and it all started falling apart.”
“Why didn’t you stay at your mother’s house?”
“She has problems.” Her voice was flat, as if she’d said it many times before.
The cell door opened. “And so does Ms. Miranda,” Peter said as he joined us in the six-by-eight-foot concrete shrine to claustrophobia. “She’s here under false pretenses, unless she attended law school and passed the bar in the last week.”
“I never said I was Daphne’s attorney,” I said stiffly. “It is possible my remarks were misinterpreted. They often are.”
He grimaced as he looked at my admittedly atypical attire. “Why don’t you come with me and we’ll see if the community theater is conducting auditions?”
Daphne put her hand on my arm as I started to rise. “Don’t get my mother involved in this, please,” she whispered. “She’s barely making it now, and it won’t take much to send her flying out an attic window.”
I patted her shoulder, then joined Peter in the hallway. “A cup of coffee might be nice.”
“So would an explanation.”
“Regular or decaf?”
“Claire,” he said—or growled, depending on one’s interpretation of the guttural noises he was making under his breath as he escorted me to his office—”you can’t poke your nose into every case that comes along.”
I sat down in the chair opposite his desk. “Why would you assume I have a personal interest in this? Perhaps I was worried that Legal Aid had not yet arrived to help this young girl. She’s not much older than Caron. I’d like to think the maternal community has a responsibility to make sure that offspring are protected when the long arm of the law snatches them up. What sort of a case do you have?”
“Go sell books.”
“I intend to do so shortly,” I said. “Have you found the weapon?”
“I find it difficult to believe that this so-called maternal community of yours monitors the local news and assigns caseworkers. If there’s anything you should tell me, I wish you’d do it.”
“She was seen leaving the scene of the crime by Adrienne, according to the news last night. What was the perfect wife doing out so late?”
Peter ran his fingers through his hair. His left eyelid twitched, but I was fairly certain he wasn’t winking at me. “That is none of your concern—unless you want to tell me why you’re here.”
“Coffee, I thought.”
“Not here in my office, damn it! Here in the police station, pretending you had a legal right to speak to Daphne Arm-strong.”
“Oh,” I murmured, wishing I had a jolt of caffeine. He wasn’t buying‘Mom-Squad’ explanation, obviously. I couldn’t offer another one that did not include Skyler.
“Would you care to elaborate?”
“Why don’t I just leave?” I suggested. “I won’t make any further attempts to speak to Daphne without your consent.”
“She’ll be charged later today. Adrienne Armstrong and her sister saw Daphne run out of the house and down a path that leads to Oakland Heights. Another witness saw her drive away from the parking lot. Thus far, it’s circumstantial, but we’re hoping to find the weapon.”
“Paraffin test?”
“Inconclusive.”
“You didn’t mention a motive.”
Peter looked at me. “Nor did you. Is there a reason she would have killed her father?”
“How would I know?” I picked up die briefcase that might well have contained calcified egg salad sandwiches and memos regarding departmental meetings adjourned well over a decade ago. “Unless I am to be detained, I would like to leave now.”
He cut me off before I could reach his office door. “This cop-boyfriend/amateur-sleuth thing isn’t going to work indefinitely, Claire. You trot around getting people to spill their guts, and I always end up looking like a lamebrain.”
“Not always,” I said tactfully.
“We can talk about this in a more private setting, but I need to warn you that something’s going to have to change. One of us is going to have to retire.”
I wished more than anything that I could tell him the truth about Daphne and Skyler. He wasn’t angry, but he was decidedly frustrated, as well he should have been— and his remark about past situations had validity. I had done my best to stay out of the limelight, but the media had not always cooperated.
I entwined my fingers behind his neck. “I just can’t talk about this one. Give me a day or two, and then we’ll cuddle on the couch and have a bottle of passable wine. You can choose the movie.”
“Why are you involved in this?”
If only I could have trusted him not to call social services and have Skyler carted off. However, he operated by the book—and sometimes the book was not well written. Miss Parchester had espoused civil disobedience and taken a sta
nd. Surely I could, too, if for no more than another day or so.
“I’m not really involved,” I said.
“And I’m not really Tinkerbell, so there’s no reason to clap.”
“You do have such a way with words. I think it would be best for me to leave before either of us blurts out something worthy of regret at a later time. Daphne Armstrong told me nothing that you and KFAR don’t already know. She said she didn’t kill her father, but I’m sure you’ve heard that. She’s frightened and upset. Is she on a suicide watch?”
“Every fifteen minutes,” Peter said, his demeanor softening. “Is there anything else you should tell me?”
“I think not.”
“You issued a rain check yesterday. How about dinner tonight?”
It might have worked, but he had a habit of inviting himself upstairs and suggesting we engage in adult behavior. When Caron was home, we restricted ourselves to discreet junior high school groping. When she was sleeping over at Inez’s house, we widened our range to include my bedroom. Little did he know someone else would be in said room, albeit in a basket.
“Caron’s still upset.”
He gave me a perplexed look, as if he were a puppy that had been smacked with a rolled newspaper for the most minor of transgressions. “Did I say or do anything the other night? She seemed distressed when she opened the door, and she mumbled something that didn’t make much sense before she scurried down the hall to her bedroom. Has our relationship become a problem for her? Should I try to talk to her?”
“It has nothing to do with you—or with us, for that matter. She’s batding issues that involve her father. Give us a few days, okay?”
“Okay,” he said as he glanced at the hall, then pulled me behind the door and kissed me in a most unprofessional manner. “And you will mind your own business, won’t you?”
“I promise,” I said without adding that Daphne’s impending charge for murder was most certainly my business—and that I intended to get down to it before I found myself with a foundling, so to speak.
Ten minutes later, I parked in front of Secondhand Rose and went inside.
“Well?” Luanne said.
“She didn’t say much, but she swore she didn’t kill him,” I said as I sat down and repeated the brief conversation that had been so abruptly interrupted.‘1 don’t suppose I expected her to say anything else. The baby’s father is named Joey. He did time for assault but is back in town.”
“Now, there’s a clue. Should we open a bottle of champagne?”
“Give me a break, Luanne. All I know is that Daphne was seen leaving the house just before Anthony Armstrong’s body was discovered Her reason for being there didn’t ring true. Why didn’t she simply go by when she knew for sure that her father was away from the house? Adrienne wouldn’t have prevented her from taking a suitcase of clothes.” I began to pace between the rack of threadbare velvet gowns from the thirties and a dis-play case with beaded purses and felt hats adorned with very tired feathers. “And she grabbed the gun,” I added, picking up my pace. “Peter thinks it’s possible she might have fired it. Has the girl never watched a cop show on TV? Rule number one is don’t pick up the gun!”
Luanne cut me off before I floundered into the merchandise. “But she swore she didn’t do it, and her story makes some sense. First, an unauthorized entry, key or not. A gunshot, and her father on the rug, bleeding. She heard a noise and panicked.”
“I suspect her lawyer won’t get anything else out of her. All she wants is what’s best for Skyler, but she doesn’t believe she can provide it—or anything else. She might be able to if she inherits some money from her father’s estate.”
“If she didn’t kill him,” Luanne said dryly.
“Well, there’s that.”
“And that would require you to come up with someone else who happened to have been seen running out of the house at midnight. Any ideas?”
“No,” I admitted, “and she didn’t really explain why she went to the house. Her father threw her out when she announced she was pregnant and refused to have an abortion. I don’t know what part in this Adrienne played, but I doubt Daphne was invited for dinner on a regular basis.”
“And I doubt Adrienne is going to invite you for coffee and details.”
“I don’t even know where the house is, although I gather it’s near Oakland Heights. Did you notice any formidable iron gates?”
Luanne shook her head. “There were some driveways, but I couldn’t see the houses. Are you going to peddle paperbacks door-to-door until you find it?”
“I guess not,” I said. “Have you heard from Caron?”
“Oh, yes. We’ve moved on to Burping 101.”
I went to the Book Depot, made coffee, and spread the newspaper on the counter. Once again, it failed to engage me. My science fiction hippie showed up with a sack of week-old doughnuts, and we discussed alien transmutations until it was time for him to wander home and watch reruns of Dr. Who.
Daphne Armstrong was off-limits unless I scaled the exterior of the police station and whispered at her through the barred window. I had noted that Peter said Daphne had been seen driving away from the parking lot at Oakland Heights, but I had no idea how to pursue it. Joey, purportedly the father of her baby, had been turned loose on society and owned a car.
But what would happen if I tracked him down? Even if Daphne was charged with the murder of her father— which seemed likely—could I prevent Joey from taking Skyler? He was the biological father. I had no claim beyond the scribbled note.
I chewed on my lip for a long while, then found the telephone directory in a desk drawer and looked up an address for Sheila Armstrong. I hadn’t promised Daphne I wouldn’t speak to her mother, after all.
Sheila Armstrong lived in the same neighborhood as Miss Parchester. Here, houses were as much as a hundred years old, trimmed with gingerbread molding, rejuvenated with painfully authentic hues of paint and flower beds filled with fiercely dedicated perennials. Sheila’s house was shabbier than those on either side, the lawn in need of a trim, the shutters in need of alignment, the garden in need of a backhoe. Those who strolled in the evening, as many of the residents surely did, no doubt tut-tutted and averted their eyes as they passed by.
I had not a clue what I would say as I knocked on the door.
“Yes?” trilled a woman as she flung open the door. “Are you the terminator? You don’t look like a terminator, but of course the only one I’ve ever seen was in some silly movie!”
In that she was wearing only black cowboy boots, gossamer harem pants, and a red bra, I was taken aback, to put it mildly.
“Not the terminator,” I said at last.
“I meant to say‘exterminator.’ The termites are eating up the foundation and the flour beetles are making me crazy. Do come in.”
Any sane person would have bolted for the sidewalk. I went inside.
All the drapes in the living room were drawn, leaving an eerie glow that suggested visitation at a mortuary. The furniture was an eclectic combination of battered wicker chairs, lumpy upholstered sofas, and stools from a longdefunct ice-cream parlor. The redolence was sour but bearable.
“You’re Sheila Armstrong?” I said as I perched on what proved to be a precariously wobbly stool.
She draped herself across a chair, oblivious of her lack of clothing, and pushed a tangled mass of graystreaked hair out of her face. Even in the gloom, her skin was so pale that I doubted she ventured out of her house until after sunset. Her makeup had been applied with a zealous hand. “Perhaps, perhaps not. Are you a terminator or an exterminator? I simply cannot make plans for the rest of the day until you explain your motives.”
“I was hoping we could talk about Daphne.”
“Yes, Daphne.” She lit a cigarette and blew a stream of smoke that seemed to swirl in the sunlight coming through a gap in the drapes. “She was here when they came looking for her yesterday. I told her to hide under the bed or in the attic, but she j
ust sat and waited. She used to be high-spirited, but her father systematically broke her as one would a wild pony. She didn’t even protest when he forced her to attend that dreadful church school. If he had listened to me, none of this would have happened.”
“The murder—or the baby?”
“None of it,” she said emphatically. “Would you like some vodka?”
When I shook my head, she went into another room and returned with a glass filled to the brim with a colorless beverage that was not likely to be water. She took a drink, and then a long drag on her cigarette. “Just who are you?”
I told her my name and vaguely alluded to the bookstore. “Daphne came to my apartment several days ago because she needed help. She was worried about Skyler.”
“She should have been more worried about that boyfriend of hers. They should have kept him locked up for the rest of his life. After I met him, I warned her that he was disaster in the making. There she was, dating a boy nine years older who worked as a mechanic, when she could have been doing her schoolwork and thinking about college. That’s when Anthony sent her to that school, where they wear prissy uniforms and recite Bible verses every morning. A course in sex education would have been more pragmatic, wouldn’t it?”
I wasn’t sure what to make of her, dressed as she was in expectation of the arrival of an exterminator. The vodka was being consumed with practiced efficiency; the glass was already half empty (or half full, if she was an optimist). She hadn’t shown any concern for Skyler’s whereabouts or well-being. Or Daphne’s, for that matter.
“She lived with you for a time, didn’t she?” I asked.
‘That was several weeks ago. She seemed more like a feral cat than my little girl. I kept expecting her to hiss over table scraps. The infant screamed night and day. It was simply too stressful for me. Do you have children, Mrs. Malarky?” *