Deadly Gamble: The First Charlie Parker Mystery

by Connie Shelton

  It was easier said than done. She showed up on my doorstep just after noon.

  I'd spent the morning in the back yard. With its eastern exposure, the sun was nice and warm. I raked the winter's dead leaves from the flower beds, pruned the rose bushes back, and watered everything long and deep. The lawn wasn't nearly ready for its first mowing yet, but I'd soon need to contact the teenage boy who usually does it for me. I cut a large bunch of daffodils, enjoying their heady fragrance, then decided I was ready for a lunch break.

  The doorbell chimed just as I stepped into the kitchen. I laid the flowers in the sink and pulled a paper towel from the roll to wipe my hands. The thought went through my mind that it would either be someone selling magazines or a Girl Scout. I hoped for the latter—I'm a sucker for those cookies.

  Stacy jumped slightly, as though startled from a daydream, when I opened the door. She wore silky-looking pleated slacks in a soft taupe and a cream colored silk blouse with gold buttons. It had some kind of crest embroidered in gold on the breast pocket. Her leather shoes and purse were exactly the color of the slacks. I looked down at my own jeans, which now had round dirt patches on both knees. My t-shirt had taken a dousing from the hose along the lower edge, and was now clinging frigidly to my hip. I didn't want to imagine what my face must look like.

  "Hi, Charlie," she said. She turned slightly and glanced over the front yard, taking in the shrubs near the door and the ivy hanging thick around the porch. "Everything's so much bigger than I remembered. The yard, I mean."

  "Well, it's had ten extra years to get that way," I replied. It came out a little sharper than intended. "Look, come on in," I invited.

  She slipped past me, sleek and graceful as a cat. Stacy had always possessed a certain chic that I lacked. Maybe it was inevitable that we would turn out so differently; it wasn't just her money. In reality, I had money too. My parents, in addition to the house, had left me a decent inheritance. It waited patiently, growing in a trust fund for me until I turned twenty-five. Aside from the money I'd taken out to start RJP the rest was still there. I tend to forget about it. By the time I decide to retire, I'll be able to do it in style. Until then, well, I'm happy with my life as it is. Money obviously hasn't brought Stacy anything I'd want.

  "Come on back. I was in the kitchen." She led the way, pausing to run her fingers over the dining table and to notice the china cabinet.

  "You still have a lot of your mother's things, don't you?" she commented. Her voice was almost wistful.

  I offered her a cold drink or some lunch.

  "No, I can't stay. I'm supposed to be shopping. I'll have to get home soon."

  I had picked up the daffodils and was reaching into the cupboard for a vase. Even with my back turned I could hear a weariness in her voice. I glanced at her. The light in the kitchen was brighter, and I noticed for the first time how haggard her face had become. Under the perfectly done makeup, Stacy was close to cracking. I set the vase and flowers down and went to her.

  Putting my arms around her felt like hugging a bag of sticks. Her shoulders were so thin. She felt as insubstantial as a bird. Her fingers were icy against my back.

  "Come here, sit down." I led her to the table and pulled out a chair. "Now, like it or not, I'm making you a cup of tea." For lack of anything better to suggest, I fell back on Gram's belief that a cup of tea will fix anything.

  While we waited for the water to boil I sat across from her. "This has been rough, huh?"

  She nodded, tears threatening to overflow. I brought the tissue box and sat again.

  "Look, we're going to find out who really did it," I assured in the most positive voice I could muster. "It'll all be over soon. I promise."

  Stacy dabbed at her eyes, quickly, like she didn't want me to know she was really doing it. Her eyes were dull, resigned. She nodded in response to my promise but she knew finding the real killer would not make it all better.

  The kettle whistled and I fetched cups, spoons, sugar, and tea bags. The ritual kept me busy for a few minutes. Stacy remained silent. I laid everything out on the table. Busy-work to postpone what I really wanted to say. I sat again, watching her release a spoonful of sugar into her tea and stir it until I thought she might scrape the bottom out of the cup. I placed my hand over hers.

  "Stace. Come on. You can't hold this in forever. Those walls of yours have become thick and impenetrable. Someday you'll have to let someone inside."

  The eyes threatened to overflow again. She blinked and wasted some time with her tea, first blowing on the surface of it, then taking a careful little sip. I waited, averting my eyes to give her a tiny measure of privacy. The silence stretched on.

  "Stacy, is it Brad?" I finally asked. It was the question that had been on my mind all along. "Is he abusive?"

  She set her cup down and straightened in her chair. "Oh, no, Charlie. He's never hit me."

  "That's not what I asked. Abuse doesn't always mean hitting."

  The tea cup came back up and she got real busy again.

  "Okay, you don't have to tell me. Maybe this is awkward for you. But think about it. If he undermines your self esteem, if he belittles you, humiliates you in public—Stace, he has no right to do that. You can get help." I was getting a little out of my depth because I really didn't know what to suggest next, but at least I'd put the thought in her mind. She'd have to decide what to do with it.

  We drank our tea in silence for a couple of minutes. Stacy appeared thoughtful but it could have just been her way of blocking out my words. I had no clue from her.

  "Hey, I never asked what you came to see me about," I said, finally breaking the silence.

  "Oh, I don't know," she replied. "I guess it was nothing really."

  She stood up, ending the visit. Near the front door, she stopped to hug me again.

  "Thanks, you have helped," she said.

  I watched her get into her Mercedes and back it out of the driveway. I wasn't sure how I'd helped. Then again, you can only lead a person so far. Any real change has to come from within. I tried to put Stacy out of my mind while I arranged the flowers in a vase, tidied the house, and changed into clean jeans. I wanted to forget about her as I watched a movie on television and while I read a book on Sunday. But her face haunted me for two days.

  Chapter 16

  Monday morning dawned with all the prospects of an ordinary new work week. I rose, showered, dressed, fed the dog, and brought in the paper. I poured cereal in a bowl, sliced strawberries on top, added milk and opened the paper.

  And that's when I learned of Jean Detweiller's death.

  Her picture stared up at me from the front page. An old picture but distinctly Jean nonetheless. I gaped at her thin face with the outdated hairstyle for a full minute before realizing that I could learn more by reading the story.

  The phone rang, startling me out of my chair. It was Ron.

  "Have you seen the morning paper?" he asked.

  "I'm just now looking at it. I haven't had a chance to read the story yet."

  "Well, I've had a call from Kent Taylor already. He'd like to talk to our client but it seems she's nowhere to be found."

  "What?"

  "Just that. She hasn't been home for two nights, and her husband says he doesn't know where she is."

  I was having a hard time digesting all this. I told Ron I would read the article and talk to him later at the office.

  The paper said Jean had been shot sometime around midnight Sunday night, as she left work at Archie's Diner. Her body was found beside her car in Archie's parking lot. No one had heard anything. The article mentioned the tragic shooting of the victim's husband less than two weeks earlier. The reporter speculated as to whether the two deaths might be connected but no conclusions were given.

  My cereal had gone soggy. I picked out the berries and a few palatable flakes and flushed the rest down the disposal. Locking the back door, I called Rusty and gathered my briefcase and jacket. We were out the door five minutes later. />
  At the office, things were hopping. Ron and Kent Taylor were deep in conversation in Ron's office when I walked in.

  "We've got an APB out on your client," Kent said without preamble.

  "Why? What's going on?"

  "She's still under arrest in the Gary Detweiller case," he reminded. "And now we want her for questioning in Jean's death."

  "Surely, you don't think. . . I mean, Jean might have been a victim of random violence. That's not the best part of town. Violence is everywhere nowadays."

  "We have every reason to think," he interrupted, "that there's a connection."

  "They've compared the bullets," Ron said. "Both Jean and Gary were killed by a nine millimeter weapon."

  "Of course we'll do ballistics tests to be sure if it was the same gun," Taylor added.

  I digested this for a minute. "I thought you got a search warrant and checked the North home for weapons last week," I asked Taylor.

  "We did. Didn't find the weapon, obviously. But that doesn't mean Stacy North doesn't own it. She could have it in her possession right now. And if she does. . . you can tell her this if she contacts you . . . if she's carrying a weapon, it's a violation of her bail conditions and we'll have her back in the can so fast she won't know what hit her."

  It was the longest speech I'd ever heard Kent make. And it wasn't especially reassuring.

  "Stacy came to see me Saturday morning," I told him.

  "Why didn't you say so?"

  "I was just about to." Now that I'd opened my mouth, I wasn't sure how much to tell. Stacy's marital problems weren't part of this, at least not directly.

  "Well?" Kent and Ron were both watching me.

  "Well, she didn't tell me she was going out to kill Jean Detweiller," I snapped. I made myself take a deep breath. "She was upset, but we didn't talk about the case at all. I gathered her problems were personal. Her husband is a difficult man to live with." Understatement.

  "Was she angry, defiant, or what?"

  "Not at all. Depressed was more like it. She spoke very little and was on the verge of tears the whole time. If Stacy North left with the idea of killing anyone, it was probably herself."

  Even before the words left my mouth, I realized their import. "Oh, God, do you think. . . " I turned to Ron. "Do you think she might do something like that? What if I could have stopped her?" My mind was spinning.

  Ron rose from his chair and came around the desk. He put a comforting arm around my shoulders.

  "Let's all sit down and think this out," he suggested gently.

  He led me across the hall to my own office and guided me to the sofa. "Sit here. I'm going to get you some tea."

  Kent Taylor was oddly quiet as he took the side chair next to my desk. Ron came back a minute later with coffee for Taylor and tea for me. He sat beside me on the couch.

  "Now, tell us about Saturday morning."

  I related the gist of the visit, without going into a lot of detail. Stacy obviously didn't even want to talk to me about her marriage. It seemed invasive to bring two more people into it.

  "So, you think she was depressed when she left?" Taylor asked.

  "I don't know. I'm no psychologist. She was unhappy. Maybe she just decided to go somewhere and be alone awhile."

  "Well, you better hope she hasn't left the city. And you better hope she comes back soon."

  "Will she be arrested again?" I asked.

  "We'll have to question her." He said this as though it would be obvious to a child.

  I didn't bother with a response. The conversation was about finished by then and he left a few minutes later.

  My desk was stacked with mail that I had not attended to last week. Somehow, though, I just couldn't put my mind to it now, either. I reread the morning's front page story.

  Jean had been killed outside Archie's. As far as I knew, Stacy didn't know anything about Jean Detweiller—her workplace, her schedule. I suppose she could have found out, but it didn't ring true. Stacy had been much too enveloped in her own problems to focus on tracking and killing Jean.

  Poor Josh. I thought of the troubled kid who'd now lost both his parents to violence. I had to talk to him. I picked up my jacket. Ron was on the phone, but I told Sally to tell him I'd be out for awhile.

  Taking the scenic route up Central Avenue might not have been the quickest path to the Detweiller house. It did, however, lead me past Archie's Diner. I decided to stop there first.

  It was past the breakfast hour and the parking lot was nearly empty. I saw Archie dragging a coil of green garden hose from a storage room at the back of the restaurant. He screwed the hose coupling onto a faucet mounted on the back wall of the building and attached a sprayer to the other end. He tried to walk toward the middle of the parking lot with it, but the knot of hose on the ground yanked back at him. A few choice words slipped out as he tried a whipping motion to get the thing untangled.

  "Hi, Archie," I called out.

  He squinted toward me, trying to place me.

  "Charlie Parker," I reminded, "I was here the other day." I was standing one parking space away now.

  "Oh, yeah . . .. You the one asking about Jean, weren't you? Well, I don't know how to tell ya this . . ."

  "I already know." We stood silently for a minute, neither of us knowing quite what we should say.

  "Um, I . . ."

  He gestured toward the next parking slot, and it dawned on me what he was doing. A large brownish stain formed an irregular circle on the pavement. He aimed the sprayer at it before realizing that he hadn't turned on the water.

  "Could you get that faucet for me?"

  I trotted to the building, glad that the little errand postponed our conversation, even for a short while. The faucet handle was old and caked with dirt. I struggled with it, taking a little longer than necessary. The spritzing sound of water blasted behind me.

  "Police said they were done here, so I guess it's up to me to clean this up," he commented when I walked back to him.

  "I was really sorry to hear about Jean," I told him. It sounded trite. I'm terrible at these things.

  "Yeah, me too," he said. He kept spraying, forming a red puddle that soon turned pink, then ran clear.

  "How's Josh doing?" I asked.

  He gave me a puzzled look.

  "Her son."

  "Oh, the boy. Well, gee, I sure don't know. Hadn't given him much thought." He guided the puddle of water out toward the street. "Funny, you know, she didn't talk a whole lot about the family here at work. Kinda like she came here to get away from them. She'd mention 'em sometimes, but not like some of these mothers do, where you hear about it every time the kid goes to the bathroom."

  "She didn't say how Josh was handling his father's death then, I guess."

  "Nope. Don't tell nobody I said this," he said, leaning toward me as if there were dozens of people standing around, "but I think Jean was so happy with her own freedom that she didn't take time to think about what her kid was doing."

  His eyes met mine with a knowing look. I tried to look surprised at his words, but truthfully, I wasn't.

  "I thought I'd stop by and visit Josh," I said. "Just to see how he's taking it."

  "Good idea," Archie grinned. "Poor little guy could probably use a friend right now."

  I wondered if he knew that Josh was sixteen, practically a man.

  "Were you here when it happened?" I asked, taking a different tack.

  "Nope. It was right when Jean got off work at midnight. I got me a night manager for that late shift." He chuckled in a humorless way. "I'm gettin' a mite old for that late night stuff. I can still get right up with the birds in the mornin' but when the late shift comes on, I usually go home."

  "Didn't anybody hear the shot?"

  "They say they didn't. Hell, in this neighborhood, it ain't that uncommon."

  We did a little more chit-chat while Archie coiled up the hose. He invited me in for another piece of pie but I told him I'd have to make it another time.
I drove away wondering how well he'd really known Jean.

  The Detweiller driveway was full of cars. Josh's was nearest the garage door, blocked in by three others. Relatives or friends?

  I tapped on the door, but the hum of voices inside was loud enough that no one heard. Finally I tried the knob myself and just went in.

  Josh sat on the sofa, a pretty blond girl of about fourteen wrapped around one arm. He didn't seem to be paying a lot of attention to her. A middle-aged couple had pulled two kitchen chairs into the living room and sat facing Josh. After pausing to gape at me for a second, they resumed talking in hushed tones. The man wore a dark suit and tie and had a Bible in his hands. Josh shot me a "rescue me" kind of look, but I wasn't about to get into that. I sidestepped the little group, heading in the direction I assumed the kitchen would be.

  It, too, had been commandeered by the church ladies. Two of them, in polyester pantsuits, had laid out a spread on the kitchen table that would feed twenty easily. They had a ham, two plates of fried chicken, potato salad, green beans, and various Jellos in several colors. Not to mention two sheet cakes baked in disposable metal pans. The two women smiled at me but I caught them looking at my empty hands. I ducked out the way I'd come.

  No one was especially paying any attention to me, so I slunk across the hall into the master bedroom. The thought had come to me, driving across town this morning, that Jean's death could be tied to Gary's because of something she knew. Gary's business dealings were a little on the dim side, to say the least. What if Jean had found out something about somebody and they knew that she knew . . . I wondered if Gary kept any files or papers at home.

  The bedroom drapes were pulled, making the room cool and gloomy. I pushed the door shut, guiding it with both hands, turning the knob so it wouldn't make any noise. Alone, I was like a kid in a toy store. What to touch first?

  The room was neat by Jean's housekeeping standards. The bed was made. Maybe she was like me, hating to crawl back into an unmade bed; the sheets and blankets have to be smoothed out or it feels icky. The rest of the bedroom was more in keeping with her neatness criteria for the other rooms.