Deadly Gamble: The First Charlie Parker Mystery

by Connie Shelton

  Picking through someone's wallet was better than interviewing any day. The first thing I did was to memorize Detweiller's driver's license and social security numbers. Ron had at least taught me that much about investigation. Then it was on to the good stuff. There was about thirty-five dollars cash and a condom in the money section. My, how responsible. A little sheaf of plastic windows held an insurance card, expired six months ago, a picture of a teenage boy, presumably Joshua, a coupon for a free sandwich at Subway, and some lined pages from a tiny spiral notebook, covered with angular black writing and folded in half. Somehow those leaped from the wallet to my coat pocket. In the hidden away-from-wife's-eyes section I found a small wad of four or five hundred dollar bills, neatly folded. It would have probably been better politics on Gary's part to keep the money in the money section and put the condom here. It didn't matter now, anyway.

  A noise in the hallway startled me. I dropped the wallet back into the pocket, patted it shut, leaped the six feet or so to stand beside the stereo, and picked up the first newspaper my hand came to. I was casually glancing over it when Jean Detweiller walked back into the room. My hands were hardly shaking at all.

  "There, that's better," she said. She wore a pink and gray waitress uniform, the kind from the fifties where the dress is one color and the cuffs, pocket, and collar are the other. A perky handkerchief, folded to a point, stuck out of the pocket on her left breast. She'd brushed out her hair and teased and coaxed it into some kind of modified bubble. She looked ready to report to the set of "Happy Days." She glanced at her wristwatch.

  "I've gotta be at work at four," she explained. "Now, who did you say you are?" She continued to bustle as she talked, apparently realizing what a trash heap the place was.

  "Charlie Parker." I avoided the real question, figuring it was better not to tell her that I was here at the request of her husband's latest fling. "I was sorry to hear about your husband's death. Were you home at the time?"

  "Nope. I work six nights a week, four to midnight, at Archie's Diner." She gathered the heap of clean laundry into her arms and headed back to the bedroom.

  "Archie wouldn't let you have a few days off? I mean, considering what's happened?" I raised my voice as she left my sight.

  "Oh, he would have. But what's the point?" She came back into the living room, eyeing the stack of mail and papers. "What good would it do me to sit around here for a few days?" Her voice was flat, resigned.

  She picked up the mail, flipping through part of it. Apparently it was all junk, because she carried it away, presumably to the kitchen, where I heard it thunk into a trash can. I glanced at the paper I'd picked up. It was a racing form from the track down near El Paso. Quite a few entries were circled.

  "Gary had been out of town, hadn't he?"

  "Yeah, I think so. I didn't keep tabs on the man," she said wearily. "I tried that in the early years, but it's just too, you know, too draining. Gary gambled, he drank, he cheated. Nothin' I said or did was gonna change that."

  "Why didn't you just boot him out?"

  "I guess for Josh's sake. Gary didn't give a lot, but having him around did help keep Josh under control. Do you know what a single mother has to cope with these days? Especially with a teenage boy?"

  "I saw two cars out there. Is Josh home?"

  "He's asleep. Stayed home from school today. He's taken this pretty hard, and I don't think he slept at all last night."

  She had tidied up the room quite a bit while we talked, but I imagined her son would return it to its previous condition by the time she got home. I noticed that she avoided touching her husband's coat, which still lay across the back of the recliner. She glanced at her watch again, giving me my cue.

  I drove away wondering what, exactly, I had learned. The thick gray clouds still blanketed the city, blending with the streets, sidewalks, and barren trees. The effect was like driving through a scene on black and white television where only the cars and billboards have been colorized. The sleet-like granules had disappeared. It would be rare to have any lasting snowfall in town this late in the season. Afternoon traffic was beginning to pick up, and it took me almost thirty minutes to get to the office.

  Rusty was waiting at the back door anxiously. Sally had left hours ago, and with no one else there he had probably begun to wonder if he was abandoned. His thick tail whapped against the doorframe as I unlocked it. He took about ten seconds to sniff my hands and give me a couple of doggy kisses before racing to the back yard to avail himself of the facilities.

  I checked the answering machine and Sally's desk. No messages. My desk was similarly clear, so I closed the shades, double checked the locks and left, guilt-free.

  The stolen notes from Gary Detweiller's wallet were burning a hole in my pocket and I could hardly wait to get a look at them. Fortunately, the traffic accommodated me. It was considerably lighter this side of town. Unfortunately, my next door neighbor was not quite that accommodating. She met me in my driveway.

  Elsa Higgins is eighty-six years old, practically a grandmother to me. In fact, I call her Gram because Mrs. Higgins seems too formal and calling an older woman by her first name was unthinkable in my mother's eyes. So, from my earliest memories, Elsa has been Gram to me. She's feisty and opinionated and I want to be just like her when I grow up. We've been neighbors all my life. She lives alone in the same house she's occupied for more than forty years, where she does all the cooking, cleaning and gardening. She took me in when my parents died, letting me live with her for probably the two most difficult years in anyone's life, age sixteen to eighteen. That's when I decided I was grown up enough to take care of myself, so I moved back into my own house. I grew up here and my parents left the house to me, so I found no reason to go elsewhere. I still haven't.

  The neighborhood is one of the older ones in town, the Albuquerque Country Club area. It's situated near Old Town, the site of the original Albuquerque, now an official historic district complete with adobe buildings, a town square and tourist trap prices. Our residential area is just far enough away to avoid the traffic and tourists. The homes are not elaborate by today's standards, but they have a certain charm, including tall old trees and neatly clipped lawns. My place is typical, a three-bedroom ranch style white brick with hardwood floors. I have it furnished with oriental rugs and antiques. The back yard has fifty-foot tall sycamores and my mother's peace roses. No, I wouldn't trade it for a trendy little townhouse in Tanoan.

  I pulled the Jeep to a quick stop in the driveway, and Rusty and I both hopped out.

  "Gram, you better get inside before you freeze!" She was wearing polyester slacks and blouse, with only a thin cardigan over it.

  "Oh, I'm okay, Charlie. I only stepped outside when I saw your car coming up the street." She shivered anyway, though, so I put my arm around her small shoulders and guided her to the door. Inside, the heat was a welcome relief.

  "Is anything wrong?" I asked. Meeting me at the car in freezing weather was not exactly Elsa's style.

  "Paul's coming," she breathed.

  "Paul, my brother? When did this happen?"

  "He called me this afternoon. Said he couldn't reach either you or Ron, and wanted to be sure you'd be home this weekend."

  "This weekend? Oh, boy."

  "Why? Will you be gone?"

  "Oh, no, I'll be here." The enthusiasm in my voice was about zero point one on the Richter scale. "I wonder why he called you. I was at the office most of the day."

  She shrugged. She stands all of five foot two, which puts her shoulders about chest-high to me. Second-guessing Paul is futile. He's not irresponsible, understand, just unpredictable. Of the three of us, he appears to be the most solid. Married to his original spouse, two kids, churchgoers all, a respectable job with a computer firm. We don't have a lot in common.

  Ron and I, on the other hand, tend to barrel through life, seeking our own way. Although Ron did the marriage bit once, and I never have, he and I have more of a kindred feeling than either of
us share with Paul. Like this making of weekend plans on a Thursday, then going into a panic when he couldn't reach anyone. No doubt he'd left messages on both Ron's and my home answering machines, but did he think to call the office where we'd likely be during the day?

  I turned to Elsa again. "Would you like a cup of tea?" I asked, deciding I could look at Gary Detweiller's papers later.

  "Yes, that would be nice," she answered.

  She followed me into the kitchen, where I put water on to boil and looked for cups. My mother's collection of delicate china teacups sits unused most of the time, so I chose a couple of especially pretty ones, delicately flowered. There was half a Sara Lee pound cake in the fridge, so I sliced it and got out raspberry jam. We might as well make a real tea out of it. Elsa doesn't get out much.

  "Will Paul's family stay here when they visit?" she asked, eyeing the pound cake slices even though the water wasn't hot yet.

  "I guess so. Ron's apartment has only one bedroom. Usually Paul and Lorraine stay in my guest room, and we make up pallets on the floor in my office for the kids."

  The image of letting two permissively raised kids spend time in my home office made me think of all the stuff I'd have to hide first. Annie and Joe aren't purposely destructive, just presumptuous. At home they have access to everything on the premises without asking. I'm not that gracious with my things.

  The water boiled and I went through the ritual of preheating the teapot, steeping the bags precisely five minutes, and pouring. I never do this just for myself, but I enjoyed giving Elsa the extra attention. The stolen papers could wait. I might not have Gram around that much longer. We each helped ourselves to two slices of cake, and since there was an extra, I coaxed her to take the last one. Thirty minutes later, I watched her safely across the narrow expanse of yard that separates her house from mine.

  After checking the mail (two bills, eight pieces of junk) and the answering machine (one message from you-know-who), I finally sat down at the kitchen table with Gary Detweiller's neat little notebook pages. They were in some kind of code.

  Chapter 4

  Neat rows of letters and numbers covered the pages, written in bold black strokes. Entries like 3B5T-94-157, 3C4P-96-782, and 8T9Z-19-853 filled line after line. I poured another cup of tea and stared at the numbers as if some magical pattern might appear. There was a pattern all right, but I sure couldn't see the magic in it.

  I tried to make them into dates and times. The 94 and 96 might be dates, but 19? 157 might be a time, but 782? On a yellow notepad, I rewrote them in other sequences, but didn't come up with anything that way, either. The letters could clearly be initials, but finding BT, CP, and TZ in the phone directory would obviously be futile.

  The ringing telephone interrupted me just about the time I was getting frustrated anyway.

  "Charlie, I'm so glad I finally reached you!" Paul sounded like he was about to impart some tragic news.

  "Gram told me you're coming to town this weekend. Is there some emergency?"

  "No." He sounded puzzled. "Just wanted to let you know we're coming."

  "Driving or flying?"

  "Driving." That was okay with me. Flying meant I'd have to pick them up at the airport. Of course, driving meant they'd pull in late at night, so I'd either have to wait up or leave them a key.

  "Just you, or everyone?"

  "All of us."

  "Great." Great.

  "Well, I'll see you when?"

  "Probably late Friday night."

  "Good, I'll see you then." He hung up.

  Most of Paul's conversations go this way. With Ron, I seem to always have things to say. Maybe it's because we work together, I'm not sure. We've always been close, though. Ron is the oldest; as a kid he was my protector. Paul's in the middle. Maybe there's something to that middle child thing. I should read up on it sometime. One nice thing about Paul's visits—he and Lorraine have plenty of old friends in town to see besides me.

  It was beginning to get dark outside, so I turned on a few lamps and closed the drapes. I re-read the newspaper article on the murder. The shots had been heard by a neighbor around nine, and the police arrived at the scene about nine-twenty. I studied the fuzzy picture of Detweiller, which, judging by the hairstyle and clothing, had to be at least ten years old. Longish dark hair and heavy sideburns past the earlobes framed a boyish face. The lopsided smile exuded sex. Dark hair sprouted from the open collar of his shirt. Even in the blurred photo a cocky attitude came through. I honestly thought Stacy had better taste.

  Still full from tea, I decided not to bother with dinner. I spent another hour staring at Gary's numbers, but gave it up in favor of a movie on TV. It's an escape technique, I know, but I still wasn't ready to examine my own feelings about Stacy, Brad and this whole situation.

  My bedside clock said it was three-oh-eight when I woke from an apparently sound sleep with the answer. The codes were names and phone numbers. And it wasn't even that tricky. I pulled on a robe and went to the kitchen. Florescent light is nearly unbearable at three a.m. but I couldn't wait. I ripped the top sheet off the yellow pad to expose a clean page. I wrote down each of the numbers in reverse sequence and moved the letters to the end. Sure enough, they were all Albuquerque prefixes. The dashes had apparently been placed to confuse the casual looker. I would bet money that I'd find each of these numbers when I checked them tomorrow in our criss-cross directory at the office.

  Rusty had followed me into the kitchen, worried that I might be indulging in a late-night snack without him. When no food appeared, he satisfied himself by drinking about a quart of water from his bowl, then dribbling half of it across the floor. I wiped up the spots, then we both headed back to bed. I slept like a dead person until seven.

  By ten o'clock, I'd looked up all the phone numbers on the code sheets. As I'd suspected, the two-letter combination with each matched a name. I was feeling like quite the investigator. All I had to do now was figure out whether this had any relevance at all to Detweiller's death.

  I thought of the racing form I'd seen at the house. Stupid of me not to steal that, too, as long as I was now heavy into thievery. Detweiller obviously liked to play the horses, and the fact that he carried a list of names and phone numbers around in code made me think he might be doing a little bookmaking. I'd written down complete names and addresses to go with the phone numbers on the coded list. There was quite a variety here. Some of the addresses were in very affluent parts of town. One of them might even be a neighbor of Stacy's. I'd have to check that out. Maybe Gary's chance meeting with her at the country club hadn't been pure chance after all.

  "What's up?" Sally stood in my doorway, laughing at how she'd just about startled me out of my chair.

  "I'm working on a case. For Stacy North."

  "A case? Isn't that Ron's department?" Then my words really registered. "For Stacy North! As in Brad North? As in heartbreak of the century?"

  "Don't over-dramatize. That was ten years ago, my heart wasn't broken, just mildly cracked, and from what I'm learning now, I think I have a lot to thank Stacy for."

  "You're kidding."

  "Unh-unh." I began to realize that this conversation wasn't exactly discreet, so I busied myself shuffling the papers around, covering up any vital evidence in the process.

  "Look, what I really stopped in for was to see if you'd like to go backpacking with Ross and me this weekend. We're going down to the Gila." She tried to make it sound like Disneyland.

  "Gee, I uh.. I can't. Paul and Lorraine and the kids are coming." I hoped I sounded properly regretful. Truthfully, I'd rather have a root canal.

  "Well, maybe some other time." She breezed away, feelings apparently intact.

  A pile of correspondence waited to be answered, but I couldn't get my mind off Detweiller. Who wanted him dead? At this point I didn't have enough information to hazard a guess. I thought about interviewing all the people on my list. There must have been forty names, an awesome task assuming that any of them would
even talk to me. I tried to think of a logical place to begin.

  Motive, means, opportunity. The three key words in finding a criminal. What I needed at this point were more facts. I called Stacy at home, suggesting lunch. She recommended the club, and I said I'd come by her house to pick her up. She gave me directions. I wasn't sure what had prompted my offer to come to her house. I'd never had the least curiosity about her life with Brad but now I wondered. Maybe I'd gain some insight into the friend I hadn't seen in so long.

  I organized my desk and watered all the plants in the office before leaving. Rusty stayed behind to keep Sally company. I dashed home to change clothes before starting the trek to the far northeast heights. I'd never been inside the Tanoan Country Club, and hoped that an emerald green dress with soft wool draped flatteringly across the bodice would be appropriate. The color set off my auburn hair nicely anyway. I chucked the down jacket for a calf length wool coat that I hadn't worn in ten years and hoped it wasn't too far out of style.

  The temperature was in the fifties, with a clear sky the color of a robin's egg. I was no sooner in the car than I decided the wool coat would have to go. I couldn't handle the bulk or the warmth. Outside, I could stand it but not in here.

  The Tanoan community is just about as far away as one can get from the side of town where I live—geographically and mentally. Surrounded by white walls the observer gets glimpses of what would probably be stately homes if they weren't packed so tightly together. From the outside the impression is lots of earthtone stucco, windows, balconies, and Spanish tile, jammed into a conglomeration that makes it difficult to know where one house begins and the other ends. Each of these architectural delights needs a minimum of two acres to show it off properly. Instead, they are crammed onto regular city lots. And to think they pay extra for this coziness.

  I turned left at the first break in the big white wall. A matching white guardhouse was planted into the middle of the drive, with hefty-looking black iron gates on either side. The gate leading in stood open, but a guard with folded arms waited, daring me to drive through without stopping. On the other side, the exit, fearsome tire spikes awaited any who might attempt gate running through the "outie." I wasn't sure I wanted in at all, certainly not badly enough to pay for four flat tires.