“What did David say to you, right before he left?” I asked.
“Pretty much what I just told you. He had a meeting with some guys in Denver. I was under the impression he’d be coming back with a big check—over a half million—with more to follow.” He shrugged. “We never saw him again.”
I thanked him for showing me around and promised not to breathe a word about his invention—not that I would know how to effectively leak a big, scientific story anyway. Back in my Jeep, I picked up the phone directory for Watson’s Lake and looked up Earleen Simmons’s number. But when I tried using my cell phone I got a No Service signal. Too close to the mountainside, I decided. I’d try again when I got down to the highway.
I found myself wondering, as I drove the meandering dirt roads, about the dynamics of the list of suspects I’d begun to build. Who, other than David, had reason to set fire to the house?
Chapter 5
Rather than phoning ahead with a warning, I looked up Earleen’s address, which was listed under Frank Quinn’s name, and with my little trusty map found my way to an A-frame house two blocks east of the elementary school on one of the town’s narrow side streets. An elm tree in the front yard was making a valiant attempt to leaf out and some hardy mountain grass, thick with blooming dandelions, gave a layer of color to the otherwise drab surroundings. The house itself hadn’t been painted in years and leaves from the previous autumn had gathered in sodden clumps at the corners of the raised porch. Not finding a doorbell, I rapped at the cheap wooden door.
Voices from a television set blared, followed by chirpy music, and I knocked harder the second time. The sound instantly went mute and a few seconds later the doorknob rattled. Earleen opened the door and stood squarely in the opening, facing me with the same degree of friendliness she probably reserved for insurance salesmen and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Her blond hair was piled on top of her head in a froth of curls and the smoke from her cigarette caused her to squint through her right eye.
“I’m Charlie Parker, RJP Investigations. Could we talk for a minute?” Although she flashed me a look of curt impatience, she stepped aside and I followed her Lycra-clad behind into the living room.
“You the dick Amanda hired?” she asked, surveying me cynically.
“I haven’t heard that term outside old movies, but I guess the rest of the statement is correct.”
“Who was that?” a male voice shouted from another room.
“Nobody, Frank,” she hollered back.
Well, that stung. She plopped herself onto a flowered sofa and set the cigarette on the edge of an ashtray, picking up a glass of golden liquid. “Something to drink?” she asked.
I declined and took a chair that I could tell immediately was going to force me to either perch primly on the edge or sprawl back helplessly into its well-sprung cushions. I opted for the prim perch. A glance around the room told me that Earleen had taken a big cut in lifestyle when David left. From everyone else’s descriptions of the huge house by the lake, it had been quite elegantly furnished by a professional decorator. If a decorator had done this place, he or she had come from the thrift shop school of design.
She took a long drag on the cigarette and blew a long, showy plume of smoke toward the ceiling.
“Think you’re going to convince the insurance company to give Amanda the money?”
Wait a minute, I’m supposed to ask the questions. “She just wants me to find David. I’m trying to retrace his steps and find out where he went.”
“Yeah, well, good luck. I know he planned to drive up to Denver. I went to Santa Fe that day, shopping. Ended up staying over, had a nice dinner and a couple of drinks. It seemed better not to get out on the road.” She paused to stub out the cigarette. “Got home the next morning to find out that my home was gone, my husband disappeared. I was a wreck. They had to carry me away and give me sleeping pills. Have you ever had to stand and look at the burned out wreckage of your home?”
Actually, I had. But I put myself back in the role of questioner, not questionee. “So, you have no idea where David went or what time he left?”
“Like I said, he planned to drive to Denver. When the sheriff asked all these same questions, somebody told her that they’d seen him driving away around five o’clock. That’s all I know.” She lit another cigarette from a pack on the end table.
“Four years have gone by,” she continued. “I’ve gotten on with my life. Don’t get me wrong. I loved David. God, that man was my dream come true. But a woman’s got needs, you know? My dream man is gone, my dream house is gone. I just want them to hurry and settle this thing so I can rebuild and go forward.”
The answer to Earleen’s needs walked through the room just then and I got a better look at the man she’d been eating with at Burger Shak a couple of days ago. Frank Quinn wore a dingy pair of Levi’s and a tank style undershirt which hung loosely on his thin frame. Dark blue tattoos covered both arms and his shoulder-length hair looked as if it hadn’t been washed in a week. He shot an unfriendly stare toward me but continued toward the kitchen without a word. Rounding the counter that separated the two rooms, he pulled a beer from the refrigerator, popped the top on the can and took a long drink. With a belch he retraced his steps and disappeared again.
Earleen must have read my thoughts. “Hey, Frank’s a good man,” she said lowly, leaning forward. leanino0He’s just been tied up with a big project all morning and didn’t take the time to dress up.”
“I can see that.”
“Don’t you be judging me or my situation,” she said. “I’ve had more tough times than you can even imagine. David’s leaving me just broke my heart. If only he’d come back to me . . .”
She even worked up a tear for that last part.
“Look, I’m not judging. It must have been rough. I can’t even imagine.” And, truthfully, I couldn’t.
“Alls I want now,” she said, “is to get this thing settled. If David’s not coming back I should get the money for the house. If, heaven forbid, something’s happened to him, then there’s some life insurance too. I just want what’s coming to me.”
The words sounded about right, but the tone told me that she no more wanted David to come walking back into her life than a Popsicle wants a warm oven.
“So, what does the insurance company say about all this?”
“Nothing for the house unless somebody can prove David didn’t cause the explosion. How’m I supposed to prove that? I wasn’t even here.” She worked agitatedly at the ash on the cigarette. “They won’t declare him dead for seven years. I had ten thousand in a joint checking account, and let me tell you, that doesn’t go very far towards paying the bills for four years. So, I’ve basically got nothing.” This time the tear was genuine.
“It’s a bad situation,” I acknowledged. “So, you don’t mind if I keep asking around, see what I can find out?”
She gave a little wave that indicated assent and I pried myself up from the sagging chair.
“One other thing,” I said as I walked toward the front door. “I heard there was rumor of something going on between David and the housekeeper, Bettina Davis? Did you know anything about that?”
Her face hardened and all trace of the vulnerable tears vanished instantly. Her shoulders went back, her sizeable breasts upward. “I was plenty of woman for my husband,” she said in a voice of steel. “He had no reason to go looking anyplace else.”
I nodded and walked out. Her answer told me more than she probably intended.
It was a little early for dinner but my stomach was speaking to me so I decided to drop in at Jo’s for a piece of pie or something. Rusty happily waited in his familiar spot on the porch while I went inside.
The small diner was empty and Jo sat at one of the counter stools, indulging in a private moment and a cup of coffee. I felt guilty asking her to get up.
“No problem,” she said. “Lemon meringue’s good today. Want some?”
She cut a generous slice of the
pie and brought coffee to go with it.
“So, you’re the investigator Amanda Zellinger’s hired, huh.” It wasn’t really a question.
“This really is a small town.” I laughed as I slipped my fork through the cool lemon filling.
“Not much I don’t hear about, sooner or later.” She picked up her own mug again and stood across the counter from me while I ate.
“Um, this is really good,” I said after the first bite of the pie. “So, I hear the rumor is that David Simmons and Bettina Davis might have been having a little fling?”
“That one almost stayed secret,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. “David was pretty discreet. Bettina, now—” She rolled her eyes. “She’d targeted just about every halfway decent guy in town at some time or other.”
“Really?”
“Poor girl. I gotta be fair. She just wasn’t real bright. One of those girls in high school who wasn’t popular cause she wasn’t pretty, didn’t have money or nothing. Somewhere around her junior year she started putting out for the guys. Well, you know how long it took for the reputation to spread. In this town? About five minutes. Guess both she and the guys had a pretty good time of it for a couple of years. But they all graduated, moved on. Times have changed—a lot. But not that much. No guy, to this day, wants to marry the girl who’s screwed every one of his friends. Poor Bettina found out that her popularity was based on one thing only and it really came back to haunt her.”
“Hm, too bad.”
“Yeah, it really was. She was a sweet girl. Could have turned out a whole different way.”
“But she did have a boyfriend near the end, didn’t she? What was his name?”
“Oh, you mean Rocko Rodman? Ugh. Slime. I felt bad for her, dating this loser, rap sheet that went back to vandalism when he was about eight or so. He’d latched onto her because, in an average way, she was kind of attractive. Would have been more so if she’d left off half the goppy makeup, but that’s the way it was. Rocko has this sort of dangerous attraction for women, you know? The bad boy biker, the rebel without a cause type.”
She paused for a minute and topped off both our coffee mugs. I pressed the tines of my fork against the last of the piecrust crumbs and licked them off.
“They’d only been dating for a few months, I think. Long enough that he thought of her as ‘his woman’ and short enough that she hadn’t gotten sick of it and broken it off yet.”
“There was an argument between him and David, wasn’t there?”
“Guess so. I didn’t see it, but heard they actually threw a few punches over at the Owl—the bar.”
“Any chance Rocko took it further than that? Set up the explosion, maybe?”
She glanced at the door and I turned to see that a couple with two little kids were getting out of a car outside. Jo leaned in closer to me and lowered her voice. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised. I’ve thought that from day one.”
“Did the sheriff ever follow that line of questioning?”
“Michaela? No way. She didn’t want to hear anything negative about Bettina.”
My brows pulled together.
“Hello?—family. Bettina was her niece.”
Chapter 6
I left money on the counter and thanked Jo as she turned to wait on her new customers. Outside, Rusty greeted me with that enthusiasm that dogs always seem to work up, no matter how long or short a time you’ve been apart. I patted him briskly and led him to the Jeep, all the while wondering about the complex web of relationships that had managed to form in this little place.
Had David been the intended victim, after all? Or had Rocko gone back to his roots in vandalism to simply destroy his enemy’s most prized possession? Perhaps more sinister—because of the amount of planning involved—had Rocko rigged the house to explode, knowing that Bettina would be the first one to walk in the door the next morning?
Somehow, I couldn’t see a guy whose criminal career consisted of spraying graffiti, stealing cars and starting bar fights having the smarts or the reasoning power behind that latter scenario. He’d have had to know that David was leaving town, when he would leave, how to get into the house, past any alarm systems, and also the fact that Earleen was going to be away overnight—it all seemed a tad sophisticated for his level of criminality. On the other hand, I’d already seen firsthand how easily information passed around this tiny burg. It wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to know how to set up the Simmons household for a hit.
I drove to the motel and parked, giving Rusty a chance to run out behind the buildings while I tried to figure out where to go next with my questions. I had a hard time envisioning someone of David’s caliber, a man from a bigger city, a more sophisticated environment, wanting to take up with a girl who’d never kept her legs crossed. But stranger things had happened and I decided I needed to know more about the victim.
I called Rusty back and coaxed him into the car once more.
Sheriff Michaela sat at her desk once again when I walked into the town offices. Again, no receptionist in sight at the front desk, so I entered on my own.
“You’re back, huh,” said Michaela, looking up briefly from some reports she was signing.
“Yeah, it looks that way. The family still wants answers.”
She shot me a quick look. “They know just about all that we know,” she said.
“I don’t think it’s that, so much. Amanda just has this hope that her father will come back someday. She’s clinging to the hope that I can make that happen.”
“Well, good luck.” She signed one last form and closed a folder over the pages as I took the seat opposite her desk. “So, what can I do you for?”
“Bettina. I wonder if you have a photo of her.”
“Don’t see where that’s going to lead you to David Simmons,” she said stiffly.
“Not directly, no.” I felt my way carefully along the slippery slope of family ties. “She was the victim in this crime. Her, uh, boyfriend got into a fight with David. I guess I’m just curious about her. Wanting to put a face with the name, wanting to get some sense of knowing her as a person, not just a name on a form. I know she was your niece. This must have been very painful.”
Michaela softened a little. “Crime scene photos aren’t going to tell you much, and, frankly, I can’t stand to look at ‘em myself. Hold on a minute.”
She unlocked one of the file cabinets and pulled the bottom drawer open. From it she withdrew a surprisingly feminine purse made of quilted fabric in shades of pink and blue. The contrast with her brown uniform with its badge and weapon was striking. From the purse she pulled a light tan wallet and withdrew a plastic holder for photos. Flipping through them, she came to one and pulled it out.
“This was taken her senior year of high school. About four years before she died.” She looked at the photo fondly before handing it to me. “She looks so young here.”
I took the picture and studied it. The girl looked very average. Nice eyes, dark brown with thick lashes, a full mouth with the hint of an overbite that might tend to make her look gawky in reality although that didn’t come through strongly in the photo. Mousy brown hair framed her face in curls that looked as if they would be difficult to tame. I could see where Jo’s appraisal might be accurate—the insecure girl who never quite made it into the popular crowd. The vulnerability came through and I could also see where males would be attracted, either as protectors or as predators. There are both kinds out there.
“Thanks,” I told Michaela, handing the photo back to her. “She was very sweet looking.”
“She was. Sweet.” She shook her head slowly. “I know about her reputation with the boys. I tried to talk to her about it. That was difficult. She was so insecure and any little thing that came across as criticism . . .”
I nodded.
“I made sure she was on birth control. Which was more than her mother, my sister-in-law, would do. That woman lived in denial almost every minute of her life. Poor Bettina.” She
stared at a spot in space.
Yes, poor Bettina. Everyone seemed to refer to her that way.
“The more questions I ask, the more questions crop up,” I said, finally. “Everyone connected with David seems to be a possible suspect.”
She busied herself putting away her wallet and purse.
“Could we run over the alibis that everyone gave at the time?” I asked.
Michaela shrugged. “Don’t recall that anybody but David really had to provide one. Course, he couldn’t.”
I guess impatience flashed across my face because she shifted slightly in her chair, then got up. Pulling open one of the file drawers behind her, she reached in and took out a thick folder. She flopped it onto the desktop.
“Okay. Let’s review the statements we took.” She opened the folder and set aside a nine-by-twelve manila envelope. “Crime scene photos,” she said. A stack of newspaper pages followed, and she set them aside as well.
The pages of reports and interviews were fastened into the folder with a silver prong and bar clip at the top. I watched powerlessly as she slowly scanned the pages and flipped them, beginning at the back of the file.
“Got the initial call at 7:14 a.m. Fire department responded at 7:36, found the entire structure engulfed in flames.”
She heard my small hmmm.
“It’s a volunteer fire department. And the house was on the far side of the lake.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Arson investigation team from the county seat arrived at 10:07. Began a preliminary on the scene, although it was still pretty hot at that time. The woman of the house, Earleen Simmons, arrived at 10:31, immediately became hysterical, had to be forcefully removed to an ambulance where paramedics calmed her. I took her statement. She said she’d been in Santa Fe the previous day and overnight.”
Obsessions Can Be Murder: The Tenth Charlie Parker Mystery Page 4