Obsessions Can Be Murder: The Tenth Charlie Parker Mystery

by Connie Shelton

  In the distance, I heard a vehicle start, but it could have been anyone. I debated calling the sheriff’s office but decided to wait and mention it some other time. I’d already racked up a couple of favors from Michaela and didn’t want her to start ignoring me because I came across as some female scaredy-cat.

  I went back to bed and found myself listening for sounds until four o’clock. The Beretta didn’t make a very comfortable bed partner but I wasn’t about to let it out of my reach. As gray light began to appear at the window’s edge, sometime around five, I drifted off to sleep. When I awoke at eight, the events during the night seemed almost unreal and I half wondered whether I’d imagined them. Not a reassuring thought, since I’d lost a whole night’s sleep for nothing, if that were the case.

  I dragged myself to the shower then dressed in fresh jeans and a clean cotton sweater, determined to start this day with a purpose. I had people to see and things to do. And I wanted to get finished here within a few days so Drake and I might spend next weekend together. As I bent forward to dry my hair I read back over the notes I’d made last night, then stuck the little notepad back into my purse.

  Breakfast first. The early crowd at Jo’s should be gone and who knew, maybe I’d pick up some tidbit about whether the sheriff had actually nabbed Frank and Earleen last night for attempting to drive home intoxicated. I debated carrying the Beretta with me—it really weighed down my purse—and decided I should. I have a permit for it and shouldn’t be afraid to protect myself. I swung the strap of the purse over my shoulder and headed toward Jo’s.

  She’d already figured out that my usual routine was to finish one whole cup of coffee before ordering, another while they prepared my food, and to linger over the meal with a third. The minute I took a seat the first cup appeared.

  “Hear about the excitement last night?” she said as she poured.

  I could immediately think of two possibilities but decided it was wiser not to vocalize them. I let her go on.

  “The burglary out at the Handy Mart?”

  I guess I looked totally blank.

  “Two guys came in awhile after closing, like midnight. Took off with the cash, which stupid Debbie Gibbons didn’t put in the safe. Said nothing ever happens, so she just left it in the drawer. Got away with a bunch of music CDs too, and a carton of Twinkies that were right beside the register. Set off the silent alarm, which everybody in this town knows about, and by the time Michaela’s deputy got there they were gone. They’re calling them the Twinkie Bandits, you know, cause of the Twinkies.”

  “Cute.”

  “So, anyway, this deputy that was supposed to be keeping an eye out for the drunks leaving the Owl, he’s not at his post and Frank Quinn managed to have a fender bender on the way home. Guess him and Earleen’d been drinking all afternoon and all night, so it’s amazing they only hit a lamp post. They got citations and would’ve had to sleep it off in County but there was nobody available to drive ‘em over there so Michaela let ‘em go home but she took away Frank’s keys.”

  She wrote down my order, a cheese omelet, and another customer caught her attention. “Makes me glad I don’t serve booze,” she said as she walked away.

  So Frank and Earleen weren’t being watched as they left the bar, and it must have been sometime around midnight. I thought again of the figure I’d seen running from my cabin, but wouldn’t bet on it being Frank. I wouldn’t imagine he could be that steady on his feet after the amount of alcohol he must have consumed. And besides, the timing didn’t quite fit.

  Jo was busy with a late mini-rush when I got ready to leave so I left money on the counter and skipped the third cup of coffee. It’s way more than I ever drink at home anyway, a good time to start cutting back. I walked back to the Horseshoe with a fresh eye toward finding out if the guy who’d run away from my door last night had evil intentions. With everything else going on in town, certainly no law enforcement person had been around to notice.

  There’d been no rain in more than a week, so a nicely defined footprint in the mud was more than I could hope for. Lots of blurred ones showed up in the dust near the road, the pathway that I usually took, myself, when I walked to and from Jo’s. The driveways and parking areas inside the Horseshoe common area were neatly graveled and the grass at the center was getting a little longish. No prints there.

  The dusty surface of my tiny porch looked disturbed I noticed as I approached it, but if a print showed up it would probably be mine or the maid’s. I climbed the two steps and rummaged for my key. That’s when a glint of something shiny caught my attention. Lying in the grass at the base of the steps, the object only caught the light at a certain angle. The gleaming silver part was a blade. And the handle—I’d seen it before. The Harley-Davidson logo stood out distinctively.

  I ducked back down the steps and reached for it, holding back at the last second. Maybe the crime scene people should photograph it in place. What crime scene people? Charlie, you watch too much TV. In this town I’d be lucky to get an officer who would actually come to the cabin and take a statement. Still, I didn’t want to mess up any remote possibility to get Rocko Rodman hauled away.

  I pulled my cell phone from my purse and dialed the sheriff’s office. Michaela was out on calls, I learned, but the dispatcher would send her over here. The woman wasn’t sure how soon it would be, as the sheriff was working a big burglary case this morning. The hint of pride in her voice let me know that the Handy Mart robbery was a pretty big deal for this town. I stared down at the knife again.

  The idea that Rocko Rodman had stood outside my door with this weapon unsheathed last night, that he’d actually tried the doorknob, sent a chill over my arms. I lost any uneasiness I’d felt over pulling my Beretta. This guy was evil.

  I unlocked my cabin door and went inside for a jacket. Suddenly the May morning held little warmth. I felt antsy. I couldn’t just sit on the step, staring at the knife, until Michaela came. But I couldn’t let it out of my sight either. My leg twitched with impatience and I finally decided to walk off some of the excess energy. I stashed my purse out of sight and closed the cabin, then strode down the steps and followed the driveway. As long as I kept the cabin in sight, no one could come along and remove the evidence.

  The ten cabins ringed the horseshoe-shaped common, quiet this morning in their setting of tall pines. All had been occupied last night, but nearly everyone had already checked out this morning. Number four’s occupants were just now hauling their bags to their car, preparing to leave, and number six’s people looked like they planned to stay. I noted that the maid had only reached number two so far, so she wouldn’t get around to my place for another hour or more.

  I fast-walked the gravel oval twice and felt calmer for it. One more time, and maybe I’d hear something from the sheriff by then. I’d reached the gap between cabins two and three when it occurred to me that this was the spot where my visitor had fled. I paused, still watching for Michaela’s cruiser at any minute, and sized up the scene.

  The grass was beaten down between the cabins, but this was far more traffic than one man, running through one time, would have caused. Prints would probably be impossible to get. Number three had a small window facing the gap, and I guessed it corresponded to the bathroom of that unit, since mine had the same style window there. Unless someone inside had made a midnight bathroom run at that moment and . . . No, there’s no way they would have seen anything through the frosted glass.

  I walked through the gap and noticed that the rear of the cabins would have provided a pretty good spot to park a vehicle out of sight. The huge pines grew tightly together and beyond them was the service road the gas company truck probably used to access a monstrous propane tank at the back of the property. I glanced back at my cabin. If a vehicle were left here, the man running away could have hopped in and driven away. I’d heard something start up in the night; could have come from this spot. I’d show it to Michaela when she arrived.

  I turned back to my ca
bin, deciding I might just have to sit on the porch after all, when the sun sparkled off something at my feet. A Twinkie wrapper.

  A vehicle sound caught my attention and I looked up to see the brown and gold cruiser pulling up to my cabin, across the common.

  “Michaela,” I shouted when she emerged. I waved her over. “Looks pretty new, don’t you think?”

  She picked up the wrapper with the tips of her nails and turned it around to look at it from all angles. “Couldn’t have been out here more than a day. No dust on it at all.”

  “Could go with last night’s robbery,” I said as she carried it back to her cruiser and located a paper bag to put the wrapper in.

  “I’m wondering if this also goes with last night’s robbery, now,” I told her as I pointed out the Harley-Davidson knife.

  She hunkered down and stared at it without touching it. “It’s Rocko’s. I’d bet on that anyway. It’s been among his possessions every time I’ve hauled him in.”

  I told her about the midnight intruder on my porch and how he’d tried the door. I left out the part about how I’d intended to blow him away if he’d actually opened it.

  “He ran off between the two cabins where we just got the wrapper,” I said. “Don’t you think it’s entirely possible that he and Billy knocked off the Handy Mart, then Billy waited at his truck and had a little snack while Rocko decided to pay me a visit?”

  “I’d say it’s possible. But what’s Rocko’s motive? Why’d he come after you?”

  “For starters, I’d guess that he’s not too happy that I turned him in for the hit and run on Amanda Zellinger. He did a few days in jail for that.”

  “If Rocko Rodman went after everyone who’d ever had a hand in his going to jail, half the town’d be dead.”

  I repressed the smart remark I’d been about to utter.

  She proceeded to stick the knife in an evidence bag and made some notes about my story.

  “What’s it going to take to put the Rodman brothers away permanently?” I asked. “What happened to ‘three strikes you’re out’?” I felt my face going red as I heated up.

  “Look, it’s not up to me. I arrest ‘em, send ‘em up to Segundo. Judge up there just happens to be one of the most liberal in the state and she seems to think they can be rehabilitated. There’s an abysmal recidivism rate up here and it’s beyond me how the lady keeps getting re-elected, but she does. Talk to the voters.”

  I fumed but realized the futility of it.

  When Michaela drove away I stood there, watching the cruiser make a left turn onto Main Street. I knew she’d do her duty once more, arrest the Rodman brothers and send them up for prosecution. And for a small town, grandmotherly sheriff that was about all she could do. I gritted my teeth, almost wishing Rocko had gotten into my cabin with his knife in hand. He wouldn’t be going back to the kindly judge in Segundo today, that’s for sure.

  Inside my little room, I flopped into the overstuffed chair for a couple of minutes but got bored with that almost immediately. Drop the Rodman issues, Charlie. Get back to Amanda’s situation. I pulled out my notes from the previous day and read over them.

  The question had come up about Earleen’s whereabouts right after the fire. Where had she stayed once her own home was gone, before she moved in with Frank Quinn? Amanda might remember.

  If Earleen had been involved with Frank during her marriage to David, would it make sense that she was insanely jealous enough of Bettina to target her? I kept coming back to that unanswered question: who was the real target? David, Earleen, or Bettina? And depending on the answer to that, who had motive enough?

  Jealousy loomed as one likely reason, and I could apply it in equal measure to several people, but the crime itself didn’t seem to fit. If Earleen were jealous of Bettina, she could have just managed to run the poor girl out of town. She surely wouldn’t destroy her own home for that reason. David’s jealousy over an affair between his wife and Frank Quinn might have spurred the desire to blow up something, but then who killed David? Rocko was hot-headed enough to do just about anything, but I saw him as more the catch-em-in-a-dark-alley type. Having the finesse to break into the house undetected, rig the gas to explode, and wait for David to come home—nah. He’d simply have waited for David and bashed him over the head. And that might be exactly what happened.

  The other big motivator in all this seemed to be money. David, particularly, had been obsessed with it. Moving it around, borrowing here, stashing it there. Doing his best to hide it from Earleen. And it was certainly a motivator for her, the reason she’d married him in the first place. Jake and Amanda were strapped. Frank Quinn had known better times and had quite likely hooked up with Earleen in some hope of regaining them.

  Combine both motives—money and jealousy—and I could be looking at just about anything. I closed the notebook and shoved it back into my purse. I felt time running out. Amanda would be going back to work soon, getting on with real life. She’d buried her father and would need to put the past behind her. The sheriff’s department and state police would keep working the murder case, but others would come along and this one would slip to the bottom of the stack, then the cold case file, and eventually the archives. If I didn’t come across any new evidence within a week, I might as well pack up and go home.

  My cell phone rang as I was starting the Jeep, planning to drive to Amanda’s.

  “Just to let you know,” said Michaela. “We’ve been questioning the Rodman boys and it looks like your hunch was right. They’d planned to teach you a little lesson about turning them in for the hit-and-run. Rocko’s been ranting for an hour—right up to the minute we put him into a squad car headed for County. He won’t get out for at least a week, but no guarantees what that judge’ll do. You ought to watch your back.”

  “And Billy?”

  “He’s on his way out too. Not quite as hot tempered as Rocko, but he’s no angel, either. We’ve got him for the Handy Mart.”

  I clicked off the call with an uneasy knot in my gut. I pulled in at the Horseshoe office and asked Selena if I could be put in a different cabin. There weren’t many choices of motels in this town, but I’d do what I could, including parking my car by the office instead of at my own front door.

  By the time I got to Amanda’s I’d calmed down quite a bit, but she noticed. I got into a short explanation of the night’s events and the fact that the Rodmans were again on their way to jail.

  “Sheriff Michaela told me they blame me for turning them in on your accident. They claim they’d just had a little too much to drink and it was nothing personal toward you. They think they did enough time for it.”

  She paused with a dripping mug that she’d been about to put into the dishwasher, in mid-air. “That ridiculous! Those two have caused problems in this town for years.”

  “Don’t even get me started. I had this discussion with the sheriff already. She says we need to convince the voters not to re-elect that district judge.” I felt my blood pressure rising again and quelled the urge to rant on.

  Amanda jammed the last few pieces into the dishwasher, slopped powdered soap across the door, closed it and dialed in the setting she wanted. As it began to hum she dried her hands and tapped the button on the intercom. “Ready, Jake,” she said.

  “We’re heading into town,” she said. “I need to stop at the bank and Jake needs something from the hardware store. Want to ride along?”

  I’d wanted to ask a few questions, and maybe it would be helpful to have both of them captive at once.

  “I hope my auto insurance comes through soon. This business of having only one car is getting a little cumbersome and it’s going to get worse next week when I go back to work. Jake may have to drive me there and pick me up. With the erratic schedule I have, meetings and in-service days, he’s not going to be happy about that.”

  “I thought you had the whole month off,” I said as I trailed along. She buzzed through the house, switching off lights and gathering purse and
papers.

  “No point in sitting here and thinking about everything. I’m getting calls again from that mortgage company on the two million dollar loan.” Her voice got tight.

  “Dad’s life insurance did come through quickly, though. I was surprised.” She held up an envelope. “I’d like to tap into it for a new car but between Jake’s work and the debts I don’t know.”

  Jake met us at the Mazda and he took the wheel. I buckled into the back and held on as he whipped out onto the road. Seemed as though his youthful appearance translated to youthful habits, too. We made it into town in record time and I didn’t get a chance to pose my question about Earleen because the two of them chatted about their errands during the short ride. Jake stopped at the bank first and Amanda went in.

  “How’s the work coming along?” I asked, more as a way to make conversation than anything.

  “Really well,” he said. “I’m shipping the final design work to my manufacturer right now, in fact.” He held up a tube mailer that I hadn’t noticed earlier.

  “What’s your time-frame after that?”

  “Few weeks to see the final prototype. We’ve made two already, done modifications. Hoping this will be the magic one. We’ll use it to make the final presentation to the east coast group, and with their blessing we hope to go into production.”

  “That’s great. And the implant you did on yourself? That’s working as it should, I guess?”

  He started to answer but cut it off when Amanda opened her door. I wondered if these two really communicated much at all.

  “No immediate visit to the car dealership,” she said. “They say there’ll be a week’s hold on the funds, because of the amount.”