Stalker (9780307823557)

by Nixon, Joan Lowery

  “I guess it’s because I’m getting used to the way investigators work.”

  “Then you’ve finally made a start,” he said.

  “But I don’t get used to you!” Jennifer said.

  “Calm down. I’ll go over my notes with you. I was at the hospital this morning, then spent a while in Records, doing the nitty-gritty work.”

  “Hospital?” She interrupted him. “Oh—with Darryl.”

  “He’s going to be in intensive care for a while, but the doctor’s pretty sure Darryl will get over his beating.”

  “Did he tell you what happened to him?”

  “Not a word. Darryl is scared pretty badly. It’s my opinion whoever beat Darryl thought he’d killed him. We’ll let him keep that thought. We admitted Darryl to the hospital under an assumed name.”

  “You think Darryl is trying to protect someone?”

  “Do you know anyone he’d want to protect that much?”

  “Elton,” she said. “It could have been his brother, Elton.” And she told him about Elton’s conversation with her.

  “Anything’s possible.” He paused. “Maybe you should take Elton’s advice.”

  “No! I’m not afraid of Elton,” she said in a rush of words. “He talked to me out in public where he could be seen, with traffic going by. If he were going to harm me he wouldn’t do that, would he?”

  “I’m giving that some fast consideration.”

  “Please, Lucas. Remember, we’re working together. We’re partners in this. I can help you solve this murder if you let me.”

  “Your safety is my primary concern. The case comes second.”

  “I’ll be okay. Elton knows if anything happened to me he’d be suspect. Right?”

  She waited, finding it hard to breathe, until Lucas answered. “You might be right. Just promise to tell me if he contacts you again.”

  “I promise.” She changed the subject quickly before he had second thoughts. “Can’t you make Darryl tell you who did it?”

  “How? By giving him another beating?”

  “Don’t get sarcastic,” Jennifer said. “At least we know something. He told us that Stella wasn’t his mother, so I guess she wasn’t Elton’s mother either.”

  “Or Bobbie’s.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what I found out in Records today. Stella was not Bobbie Trax’s mother.”

  14

  Margie White with Newseye at Five. Today Estelle Trax was modestly and quietly buried at Rose Hill Memorial Park in Corpus Christi, with only a handful of friends in attendance. Although Lieutenant Darvy had informed the press that Bobbie Trax, arrested Tuesday for the murder of her mother, would not be allowed to be present at the funeral, at the last minute she was spirited from the county jail and brought, in the company of two police-women, to the cemetery. Without emotion, without displaying any signs of sorrow, Bobbie Trax was present to see the coffin containing her mother’s body lowered into its grave. Newseye has brought you these exclusive films, which will be repeated during our newscast at ten o’clock tonight.

  Both of them at the funeral. What a laugh. Especially the one who always makes me think of a wild-eyed cat with a dog on her tail. Thought she had to come, I guess.

  That girl was there, too. Jennifer Wilcox. You don’t know how close I’m watchin’ you, do you Jennifer Wilcox? If you did, girl, you’d run.

  Maybe she’s making me edgy. Or maybe it’s wondering about the stuff. It’s got to be somewhere in the house. If the police had found it, we’d know.

  Maybe I should go back and take a look.

  Maybe tonight. Or maybe tomorrow night when I think this thing through and figure where she might have hid it.

  Yeah. Maybe tomorrow.

  15

  “I don’t understand,” Jennifer said. “What makes you think that Mrs. Trax wasn’t Bobbie’s mother?”

  “Records,” Lucas said. “It’s down in black and white. Bobbie Jane Simney was born in Memorial Hospital to a Dorothy Simney, no father listed.”

  “Bobbie Jane Simney doesn’t even have the same name as Bobbie Trax! And why—?”

  “Do you want to listen and learn something?”

  “Okay. I’m sorry. It’s just that what you said scares me. If Mrs. Trax isn’t Bobbie’s mother—then it looks worse for Bobbie, doesn’t it?” Jennifer clamped her lips together and waited.

  “Don’t jump to unfounded conclusions,” Lucas said. “Right now we’re simply discussing facts. According to police records and old newspaper stories, when Bobbie was about two years old, her mother, Dorothy Simney, was killed in a knife fight in a bar. Dorothy’s sister, Mrs. Stella Krambo, and her husband, Arthur Krambo, were given custody of the child.”

  “If they adopted her, then her name ought to be Krambo.”

  “They didn’t adopt her. Soon afterward Stella and Arthur were divorced. By the time Bobbie was old enough to go to school, Stella had married Floyd Trax, and Bobbie was enrolled in school as Bobbie Trax. That marriage lasted only a few years, and Stella was divorced again.”

  “But Elton and Darryl lived with Stella, too. I wonder why, when none of the children were hers.”

  “I’m guessing, and it would take a lot of unnecessary research to find out. But I think we could say that since Stella’s ex-husband Arthur was in the navy, he was probably away on sea duty a lot. His first wife, the mother of his sons, died when they were very young. He could have sent an allotment to Stella to take care of the boys.”

  Jennifer let out a long sigh. “You found out so much just by hunting through old records.”

  “Still got the movie idea of what a private eye does? You’ll find out it’s mostly a lot of legwork, a lot of sitting in chairs going through old newspaper clippings and city and county and police records.”

  Jennifer thought of the threatening telephone call she had received and gave a sharp laugh. “Yeah, boring stuff,” she said.

  There was a pause. “Something wrong?”

  “No,” Jennifer said quickly. “I was just thinking. Do we find out where those husbands are? They could be suspects.”

  “Arthur lives in Arizona, mostly on disability pay from the navy. Floyd died a few years ago.”

  “That puts us back with a lot of questions and no answers. Could we look in Mrs. Trax’s handbag? Maybe that would give us some clues. She carried this large bag, and it always seemed to be stuffed.”

  “No handbag on the property list,” Lucas said. “If there had been a handbag, the police would have taken possession of it, and we would have no legal right to go through it.” He paused. “You know, a missing handbag was one of the reasons I decided to take this case. If Bobbie had taken money from Stella’s bag when she ran away, the bag would have been somewhere in the house. If she’d taken the bag itself, it would have been in that lean-to on the beach. But since a handbag seems to be nonexistent, I’ve felt from the beginning there was someone else involved.”

  “But I—” Jennifer stopped herself in time, her heart thumping in her ears. “That is,” she amended, “you’re saying that even if the police had the handbag, we couldn’t look through it.”

  “Right.”

  “So what do we do next?” Jennifer knew what she was going to do, but she wasn’t going to tell Lucas. If he was aware of what she knew—that there was a loose board in the floor of one of the kitchen cabinets where Mrs. Trax always hid her handbag—he’d be honor bound to tell the detective working on the case. Jennifer didn’t feel honor bound to anyone but Bobbie.

  “For the moment you don’t have to do anything,” Lucas was telling her. “Tomorrow I’ve got some more work to do in Records, and I’m going to try to talk to Bobbie.”

  “Could I go with you?”

  “Not this time. Not yet.”

  “She’s my friend. I want to see her.”

  “You hired me, Jennifer. Now let me call the shots.”

  “Okay,” Jennifer said. “Is it all right with you if I go to
see Mrs. Trax’s neighbor? That Mrs. Potter?”

  “I think it would be a good idea. I’ll be in touch.”

  “Good-bye, Lucas,” Jennifer said. Her fingers were trembling as she hung up the telephone. She would talk to Mrs. Potter, but first she was going to the Trax house to find that handbag.

  “I forgot to tell you—” Grannie spoke behind her, and Jennifer jumped. “Good heavens, girl! You’re spooked today. All I said was—”

  “I’m sorry, Grannie. I didn’t hear you come in the kitchen.”

  “Well, I was goin’ to tell you, if you don’t keep interruptin’, that Roy’s goin’ to pick up some fried chicken and stuff for our dinner, so you don’t have to fix nothin’.” She sighed. “Only he’s goin’ to be a mite late. Probably goin’ to have a drink with that woman before he heads for home.”

  “With Gloria,” Jennifer said automatically. “Grannie, it’s Friday. Dad needs to relax. Saturday is one of his busiest days at the nursery.”

  “I give him credit for bein’ a good, hard worker,” she said. “It’s just that I don’t know why he wants to waste his time on that woman.”

  Jennifer patted her grandmother’s shoulder. “I’m going out for a little while. I’ll be back pretty soon—probably before Dad gets home. Look—I’ll set the table right now, so everything will be ready, and you can watch your television programs.”

  “It’s late,” Grannie complained. “The news is over.” She brightened. “Say, they showed the funeral on TV. I looked for you, but they just showed Bobbie and the coffin and not you or the other people there.”

  Jennifer shuddered. “I won’t be long, Grannie.” She left before her grandmother could offer any more objections.

  It didn’t take long to get to Bobbie’s house. It was dark by the time she arrived, and she was glad. If that nosy Mrs. Aciddo saw her, she might get in trouble. She hadn’t brought a flashlight because she knew where Mrs. Trax kept one—in the left-hand drawer in the kitchen.

  She had come into the yard from the street behind Bobbie’s, a shortcut they had used often, crossing a vacant lot and ducking through the oleander hedge. The cloying sweetness of the thick clusters of oleander blossoms made it hard to breathe, and the branches plucked at her shirt. For a moment Jennifer paused, looking around the yard, straining to see if there was any movement at Mrs. Aciddo’s side windows, but they were dull with the darkness of an empty house.

  Jennifer ran across the backyard and crouched under the window with the broken lock. Again she waited and watched. Again there was nothing but silence.

  Slowly she got to her feet, pushed up the bottom section of the window, and hoisted herself to the sill. She was shaking as she climbed through the window and onto the sofa into a darkness so terrifying it was like a scream waiting to happen.

  It crept over her—a feeling that the hovering shapes that began to emerge from the blackness were living and breathing and waiting for her to move so they could pounce. Was that the sound of her own breathing she heard? Or was someone else here with her, close enough to touch?

  Jennifer wanted to panic, to run, to dive through the window, but she clutched the edge of the sofa cushion and waited until her eyes became adjusted to the darkness. Of course she was alone, she told herself. She had given in to panic, that’s all. She took a few steady, long breaths, willing herself to calm down, to do the job she had come here to do.

  Finally she was able to get to her feet and make her way past the massive armchair to the kitchen.

  The flashlight first. She opened the drawer, and her groping fingers immediately closed on the cold metal shaft of the flashlight. Quickly she turned it on, aiming it at the floor.

  Jennifer didn’t know if she felt better with or without the pencil-slim shaft of light. It seemed to make the shadows larger, the dark of the living room more ominous. She stooped and opened the last cabinet on the left, lifting up the board that covered the bottom.

  There lay the handbag.

  Jennifer pulled it out, replacing the board without a sound, as though trying to shield her actions from that listening house.

  She sat on the floor, the bag on her lap, and opened it. There was a small vinyl case that bulged tightly against the snap that held it shut. Jennifer opened it first. Inside were credit cards and carbons from credit card purchases. She was about to close it, puzzled why Mrs. Trax had so many cards and would save the carbons, when she noticed the name on one of the cards. It wasn’t Stella Trax. She thumbed through the other cards. They were made out in a variety of names. The carbons, too. Most of those came from a small jewelry store, although a few were from a drugstore. Jennifer was familiar with both the stores. They were in a shopping strip in the south part of Corpus Christi. It dawned on her that the credit cards had probably been stolen, but what would Mrs. Trax be doing with those carbons?

  In the zippered side pockets of the bag were a wad of tissues, a couple of lipsticks and a comb, a pair of dark glasses, some bankbooks and a checkbook held together with a rubber band, a candy bar, and a small note pad with a stub of a pencil attached. On the pad was a telephone number. Not a name, just a number. But Jennifer didn’t need the name to know whose phone number she was staring at.

  Lucas Maldonaldo’s.

  Why would Mrs. Trax have Lucas’s phone number in her handbag? She must know him. How? And why didn’t he say something about knowing Stella? Was he keeping something from her?

  Jennifer snapped the handbag shut and jumped to her feet, slamming the cabinet door. Lucas and his unbending, patronizing ways! Lucas, who thought she had so much to learn! She had learned that Lucas hadn’t been honest with her. She was going to face him with this and demand an answer!

  When she arrived at his house, Stella’s handbag tucked firmly under her arm, Jennifer didn’t just ring the bell, she pounded on the door. She could hear his quick, firm footsteps, and the door flew open. His eyes widened when he saw her.

  “You knew Stella Trax and you didn’t tell me!” she said.

  Lucas shook his head wearily and moved to one side. “Come on in,” he said. “Let’s find out what’s on your mind.”

  He lowered himself into what was obviously his favorite armchair from the way the faded lumps and bumps seemed to fit around him. “Sit down,” he said.

  “I don’t want to sit down.”

  “Sit down,” he repeated. “Then we’ll talk.”

  Jennifer perched on the edge of the sofa, facing him. She held out the handbag. “This belonged to Mrs. Trax.”

  “What are you doing with it?” He leaned forward.

  “I knew where she hid her handbag. One night, when I slept over at Bobbie’s, I got up to go to the bathroom, and I saw Mrs. Trax put her handbag in what must have been her special hiding place in the kitchen. Mrs. Trax didn’t see me, and I didn’t say anything, but I remembered.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I’ve never told anyone, not even Bobbie. I guess I was afraid to. She had told me that her mother kept the hiding place a secret from everyone, even her kids. Darryl was always after her for money, and I don’t think she trusted any of them.”

  Lucas rubbed his shoulder. “Taking that handbag was a stupid thing for you to do.”

  “Don’t you dare get mad at me when I’m so mad at you! I’m the one who has a right to be angry!”

  He leaned back in his chair. “Anger will only get in our way. Tell me what’s bothering you, and then I’ll read you out for taking something that doesn’t belong to you.”

  “I looked through this handbag without telling you, because you said it would be the property of the police, and if they had it we couldn’t see what was in it. I’ll show you what I found and you can be upset with me if you want to, but you’ll have some explaining to do to the police in any case.”

  “You haven’t made sense about what you want from me.”

  “I want an answer. Finally I’ve got a question that has to have an answer right away.” She pulled the
little note pad from Stella’s handbag and tossed it to him. “What was Mrs. Trax doing with your telephone number?”

  Lucas stared at it and looked up at Jennifer. “I have no idea.”

  “Are you going to tell me you didn’t know her?”

  “In a roundabout way I knew her,” he said. “I was the investigating officer on the case concerning her son Elton. I’m the one responsible for his being sent to prison on a robbery conviction.”

  “Oh,” Jennifer said. She leaned back against the puffy sofa, her anger disappearing as fast as hot air from a split balloon. “You didn’t tell me that. I didn’t know.”

  “It looks as though she wanted to talk to me about something,” he said.

  “But she didn’t?”

  “She didn’t.”

  Jennifer shook her head. “Then we don’t know why she had written your phone number on her note pad. And it doesn’t clear up my questions about the credit cards.”

  “What credit cards?”

  Jennifer got up and took him the handbag. She walked back to the sofa and plopped on it. “Inside that bag are a wad of credit cards with other people’s names on them.”

  Lucas opened the bag and methodically went through it. She could practically see a computer behind his eyes as he neatly catalogued every item he saw. While he studied the contents of the vinyl folder, Jennifer ran a finger across the coffee table.

  “You never dust, do you?” she said.

  He didn’t answer.

  “And you don’t put anything away. All those old magazines stacked on the floor, and two dirty coffee cups, and that bottle of aspirin.” She felt a little sorry for him, because obviously he’d been used to his wife doing all those things for him, but for some reason she also felt like needling him. “You ought to get someone to clean this place for you once in a while, if you’re not going to do it yourself.”

  He glanced at her for only a second, but his eyes were as vulnerable as a child’s. For an instant he was no longer a tough cop, but someone who was hurting badly.