Balloons Can Be Murder: The Ninth Charlie Parker Mystery

by Connie Shelton

  “Let’s just say I found more a productive use for my time. I went to Clovis.”

  “Ah.” The look that flickered across his face certainly wasn’t fear. Regret, maybe? Sadness?

  “I hear you were there yourself within the last couple of weeks.”

  He nodded, shoving his hands into the pockets of his slacks. “Memories. When you’re away . . . well, you know where I was all those years. When you’re in a place like that you think about home a lot. When you go back, it’s never the same. I’d actually thought I might kill a guy when I got there. But everything had changed.”

  His tone was so mild, his voice so soft that his words really didn’t register immediately. I’d been gazing toward the mountains and by the time my focus snapped back to his face all I saw was a guy of about sixty who didn’t remotely look like a killer.

  “So, what did you learn in Clovis?” he asked.

  I managed a little mental leap back to the previous day, wondering how much of it to discuss with him. Hell, I decided, just go for it.

  “I learned that your wife’s suicide probably wasn’t. That seems awfully coincidental, doesn’t it? Didn’t the police question you about it at the time?”

  He shifted his weight. “Sure they did. It was easy enough. I was already in jail. They asked me if Linda had been depressed, if there were ‘extenuating circumstances’ within the family.” He shook his head and let out a laugh that came out as a bark. “What did they think? The woman believes her daughter has been molested, believes that her own husband did it, and sees her future with the country club set going down the toilet. Yeah, I’d say she was depressed.”

  “The medical examiner didn’t find evidence of pills in her stomach.”

  “I heard that. I spent a lot of years thinking about that. Eventually, I figured it out. You would too, sooner or later. But I can save you a whole bunch of time. Want to take a ride with me?”

  The request came so completely out of left field that I almost grabbed my purse and followed him. Reason prevailed. “Where to?”

  “I want you to meet someone.”

  My puzzled expression told him that I hadn’t a clue.

  “Dean Patterson. I think you know who he is.”

  Dottie had told me that she thought her ex might be in Albuquerque.

  “You’ve stayed friends with Dean Patterson?” I asked.

  He shot me a condescending look. “Dean and I were never friends. Let’s just say that I’ve finally begun to know him in the last few weeks.”

  With that cryptic message, he started to turn.

  “Where would we be going?” I called out.

  “Up on Montgomery. Ten, fifteen minutes away. I think you’d find it to be a revelation.”

  Getting into the car with him would be a really stupid move, I knew. “I’ll follow you,” I said.

  “That’s fine. You’re good at it.” He grinned widely this time and walked toward his car.

  I turned my ignition and waited for his car to begin moving. Despite all I knew about him, I felt way too trusting of Bill Fairfield. Why? Was his political charm still alive and well? Was he simply getting back into his old mode where a smile and firm handshake got him anything he wanted? I reminded myself of his transgressions, repeating them like a mantra, as I followed him toward the unknown.

  Chapter 19

  We followed nearly the same route he’d taken the last time, but turned east this time on Montgomery. I stayed close and switched on my right turn signal when he did. Off a small side street, a left turn into a quiet cul de sac, and we came to a modern one-story building, stuccoed pale peach, surrounded by a fairly large parking lot full of cars. The sign near the entry sported large elaborate letters that said La Solana. I drew a blank.

  Bill parked in the first open space he came to and I found one farther down the same row. We met near the entrance.

  “What is this place?” I asked.

  “A nursing home.” He turned and activated the automatic door. It slid open with a faint whoosh and he stepped inside. I rushed to catch up.

  Through an airlock, a second automatic door had already opened and I stepped through. A huge reception desk dominated the large lobby and I noticed hallways branching off from it. The main thing that caught my attention were the wheelchairs, probably ten or more, occupied by fragile, elderly people. A few of them looked up at us, hope in their eyes. Others stared at the walls or bobbed their heads as they chatted with unseen friends.

  “Charlie?”

  I snapped to attention and noticed that Bill was already standing at the opening to one of the branching corridors. I sidestepped around a tiny woman with a walker and joined him. The moment I caught up he began walking again.

  “Dean Patterson works here?” I asked, surprised.

  “Doesn’t work, resides.”

  “What?” I tugged at his jacket sleeve to slow him down. “Wait a minute. Fill me in.”

  We paused at an alcove containing a single chair and end table with a telephone on it.

  “I have to admit I’m confused,” I said. “He lives here? He’s not that old.” I envisioned the mayoral candidate from the newspaper photos—tall, dark haired, beaming with confidence.

  “He’s got cancer. Terminal. A few months at best.” Bill shrugged.

  “But . . . family?”

  “He’s got no one. Dottie divorced him years ago and the son is busy with some high power career in the Silicon Valley. I asked around in Clovis and found out where he was.” He rubbed at a spot near his sideburn. “He’s . . . well, you’ll see. I think you’ll find this interesting.”

  Leaving me with my mouth gaping, he stepped out of the alcove and continued down the long hall. I trotted along to keep up with his six-footer’s stride. At the last door on the right, he paused. Tapping quietly on the frame, he called out to Patterson.

  I stepped up in time to see a skinny old man tie the belt on his robe and lower himself into a waiting wheelchair. The two men exchanged greetings while I worked to recover my wits. The man in the chair was completely bald and so thin that I could have easily circled my fingers around his forearm. His sticklike legs were clad in flannel pajamas and he huddled into his velour robe for extra warmth. He’d shrunk so much in height that his shoulders barely cleared the edge of the chair’s vinyl back. I would have never recognized him as Dean Patterson.

  Bill lightly touched my shoulder as he spoke. “Dean, I want you to meet someone. Charlie’s a, uh, a friend of Rachael’s.”

  A flicker of uncertainty crossed Patterson’s face as he nodded toward me.

  “Can we find a spot to talk?” Bill asked.

  “The dining room’s usually got some coffee made,” Dean said. His voice came out thin and wavery, but the spark in his eyes showed that he was very much with it.

  I stepped aside as Bill took over and wheeled the chair into the hall. We passed through the lobby and started up one of the other halls. The dining room was the second door on the left. Tables with four chairs each dotted the room and I noticed a long counter at one end with coffee urns, iced tea and soda dispensers. I offered to get drinks while Bill parked Dean’s chair. As I went through the motions, I worked to clear my mind of the scatter of thoughts that rocketed through it. I had no idea where this was going.

  “Dean and I have visited a couple of times since I’ve been back in town,” Bill said as he sugared and stirred his coffee. He paused. “Hell, I don’t know how to do this. Dean tires quickly, and I know Charlie’s in a hurry. So let’s just get to the point. Dean, would you tell Charlie the same story you told me the other day? About you and Linda.”

  Suddenly, things were beginning to make sense. My mind flashed back to the photos I’d taken from the newspaper in Clovis.

  “I never thought I’d tell this to anyone,” Dean began in his shaky voice. “Much less tell it twice in a week.” His bony fingers worked at the padding on the arm of his chair. I chafed with impatience.

  “You and L
inda Fairfield had an affair years ago. Is that it?”

  Both men stared at me.

  “I’m not the completely incompetent investigator you thought,” I aimed toward Bill. And to Dean: “Linda was obviously crazy about you at one point. But what happened?”

  He fidgeted a bit more but noticed that my patience was wearing thin. “Oh, all right. We planned to get Bill out of the picture, then wait a discreet amount of time and be together. Dottie had already left me once. That little tidbit never made the papers, did it?”

  I shook my head in acknowledgement.

  “We came up with the plan to frame Bill for a crime so heinous that people in Clovis would never forgive him. What would work? Even in those little, sanctimonious Bible belt towns, they’ll overlook the town drunk, the blatant extramarital affair, oftentimes even murder. But they’d never forgive a man who molested his own daughter. Especially if she were the one to have him arrested and she tearfully testified in court.”

  I felt like I’d stepped onto the set of The Twilight Zone. “What . . .”

  He waved me aside. “Let me finish.” He sipped from the soft drink I’d brought him. “We staged the molestation. Whenever we knew Bill would be working late or be out of town, I’d slip over, put on some of his cologne and tiptoe in to give the kid a feel-up.”

  He noticed my look of horror.

  “Now, wait a minute. I never raped her. Never even took her clothes off. Not that I didn’t get some ideas.”

  Bill stiffened in his chair and I felt like reaching out to strangle Dean, terminal illness or not. He merely stared us down. Finally, he continued with the story.

  “Linda was supposed to plant the idea that Bill did it, make subtle remarks to the girl, that kind of thing.”

  “Supposed to?” I asked.

  “She chickened out. After—mind you—after I’d already done . . . well, done those things. We started to argue more often. Pretty soon, having a mistress was worse than having a nagging wife.”

  “And what was going on with you all this time?” I asked Bill.

  He stared at his coffee cup. “I didn’t know what to think. I was getting these silent glares from Rachael, Linda was drunk half the time, the campaign was in full swing. It was all I could do to show up when and where I was supposed to and make my speeches.”

  “Rachael finally put a stop to all of it. She talked to her counselor at school and the counselor called the police,” Dean said. “I remember the morning Bill was arrested. I’d heard the news and stopped by their house to ‘console’ Linda. Actually, I thought she’d finally taken charge of her daughter and forced her to call the police. When I got there, Linda was in a state. Ten o’clock in the morning and she’d already had at least a couple of drinks. She was raving about what a mistake she’d made. Now she’d lost her chance at being first lady and all her friends at the club would hate her. I calmed her down and left for a meeting.

  “The next couple of weeks were sheer hell. With Bill out of the campaign, it looked like I would win easily and Dottie issued an ultimatum. We’d stay together, no arguments about it. There would be no scandal or she’d take me for everything I had. Ironically, she pointed to Rachael as the prime example of how a female could ruin a man’s career with one well-placed phone call.”

  Bill got up to refill his coffee mug and I toyed with my soda glass, making patterns of wet rings on the table.

  “The week before the election, Linda issued her own ultimatum. She demanded that I leave Dottie for her or she’d make the whole story public, about who really molested her daughter. Man, I was sweating it. I didn’t think anyone would believe her, but I couldn’t bet my whole career on that. We were in her bedroom that night. Rachael had gone to some school function and I knew I had to leave soon. Linda just kept taunting me. She’d kept it up since I’d arrived.

  “I went into the bathroom and spotted her prescription sleeping pills, nearly a whole bottle. I started back into the bedroom. Was going to give her lecture about mixing booze and pills—she was a suicide waiting to happen. Then it hit me that it could happen now, before she talked. I sent her to the kitchen to make me a sandwich and I broke the capsules open into her drink. Left the open bottle on her nightstand, wiped my prints off everything. When she came back with the sandwich I revved up the fight again and walked out. I knew she’d finish off the drink right away. And she did.”

  He rattled the ice cubes in his soda glass, finding it empty. “I’d like to lie down awhile,” he said.

  Bill took the handles of the chair and wheeled his former rival out the door. I drew in a deep breath and tried to assimilate the new information. What a complicated mess. I cleared our table and meandered toward the door, trying to formulate what I’d tell Rachael about all this.

  “Charlie.” Bill’s soft voice caught my attention just before I reached the exit. “Now you see why I didn’t need to kill him when I got to Clovis.”

  “Why do I have the feeling you wouldn’t have anyway?”

  “I’d like to reestablish contact with Rachael, somehow. Grayson’s been trying to pave the way but she’s very resentful of me. Rightly so. I was hard on her as a kid. Always wanted her to have that same level of ambition I had back then, the same drive that Grayson always showed. None of that helped, on top of the horrible things Linda and Dean made her believe.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  My dashboard clock told me it was nearly four. It would be a mad dash to get downtown to our office, process the paychecks, go home and change clothes to get to the barbecue by six. Knowing Bill wasn’t responsible for the threat notes alleviated one worry but opened up a bunch of others. Who was sending them? Now I felt like we had to be extra diligent.

  I hit the auto-dial on my cell for Ron’s number. He sounded harried.

  “I haven’t made it to the office yet,” he said, “but I’ll be there soon.”

  “I found out for certain that Bill isn’t sending the threat notes. It’s complicated and there’s lots more but I’ll tell you about it when we catch up with each other.”

  We ended the call as I pulled into the heavy traffic on Montgomery and made my way toward I-25. By the time I reached our quiet office neighborhood, I’d dodged three near accidents and was thoroughly fed up with society in general. I pulled into the parking area behind the office and headed inside.

  “Where’s Ron?” I asked.

  “Don’t know,” Sally told me, looking up from her word processor. “He hasn’t called in recently.”

  “I talked to him thirty minutes ago and he was planning to come in. See if you can track him down on his cell and make sure everything’s okay. I better get started on the paychecks.”

  She gave me a grateful smile as she picked up her phone. I headed upstairs and switched on my computer. Five minutes later Sally buzzed me on the intercom.

  “He’s at Rachael’s,” she said. “Said he’ll take her to the barbeque.”

  I shook my head in amazement. Was I going nuts, or was he? He’d clearly said . . .

  “Oh.” Sally paused. “He also said he’d leave Rusty at Rachael’s tonight, if that’s okay with you.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” I pictured Rachael’s expensive leather sofas, her impeccable furnishings. Rusty’s not a purposely destructive dog at all, he’s just big. Things sometimes get wagged off coffee tables. If someone tried to break in claw marks might end up on the front door. Oh well. At that point claw marks would probably be the least of Rachael’s problems. I turned to my work and put everything else out of my mind for the next half-hour. Once I’d seen Sally out the door and locked up everything else, I opted for the luxury of going home for a shower and change of clothes before heading back out to the balloon field. Not until I stood under the hot spray, taking extra time to enjoy my solitude did the idea hit me. I thought I knew where we should be looking.

  I dried quickly, pulled on clean jeans and a turtleneck and grabbed my leather jacket and purse, checking to be sure th
e Beretta was inside. The phone rang just as I reached for the doorknob. I dashed to the kitchen and picked it up distractedly. Drake.

  “We’re almost finished here,” he said. “Another day, probably, at most.”

  I told him about the barbeque and that I was on my way out the door, and his cheery mood dropped a notch. “It’d be nice if we were doing some of this stuff together,” he said.

  “I know. I’d like that, too.” I almost blurted my suspicions about the pregnancy, but this didn’t seem like the best way to do it.

  “Well, you sound busy and happy. Guess I better let you go.”

  “No rush. It’ll start without me.” I filled him in on the reason for my cheerful mood, that we’d ruled out Bill Fairfield and wouldn’t have to continue our surveillance of him. We exchanged I-love-yous and clicked off.

  It was only slightly after six when I reached Balloon Fiesta Park. I found the big tent with the party by following the lights and noise. For a crowd that often starts on their beer in the early morning, they’re amazingly hearty in the evening. The upside, I figured, was that they all had to be up again by four a.m. so this shindig couldn’t possibly go very late tonight.

  Ron stood by the bar, nursing his first beer of the evening. He’s not a big drinker any time and rarely at all when working. I could tell by the expression on his face, though, that he was bored and ready for this gig to be over.

  Well, poor baby. He’d spent the afternoon with an attractive woman and escorted her to a party. I approached and ordered a glass of merlot. From the first sip it didn’t taste good to me. Oh, god, maybe I really was . . . Rather than bringing Ron’s attention to it, I opted to carry the wine glass around with me instead of immediately ordering something else.

  He tipped his Stetson back and scratched at the skimpy hair above the hatband. “Food’s over there,” he said, indicating two long buffet tables at one end of the tent. Suddenly I felt a curious lightheadedness; I had to get something to eat. “Rachael’s got a place in line, talking to the knockout blond,” Ron said.