Gina Cresse - Devonie Lace 03 - A Deadly Change of Heart

by Gina Cresse

  I sat in my Explorer parked in front of the house and watched the mourners, dressed in black, make their way to the front door. I recognized some of the visitors as SONGS employees, who I’d seen on my visit there.

  I brushed some lint off of my black skirt and slipped out of the car. A couple walked down the sidewalk, each carrying a foil-covered dish. I suddenly felt unprepared. Was I supposed to bring food? I was reminded how lucky I was that I’d never had to attend a gathering like this before. The couple regarded me with somber nods as I crossed the street. I fell into step behind the pair and followed them into the house.

  I felt a little guilty because I wasn’t really here to pay my respects, but to dig up information. If I couldn’t connect Bradley Parker to SONGS, maybe I could connect him to Ralph Campbell.

  Hilary Campbell sat perched on the edge of the sofa. Sympathetic guests surrounded her, trying to offer comfort and support. I meekly approached her and offered my hand. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Campbell,” I said.

  She looked at me and forced a teary smile. Her expression was a little confused. “Thank you. Do I know you?”

  “No. I knew Ralph from SONGS,” I told her.

  “Oh,” she replied, then wiped her eyes with a tissue.

  I backed away to allow others—more appropriate comfort-givers—access to the sorrowful woman. I headed for the kitchen where a young man was offering glasses of water and sodas. A heavy-set Hispanic woman was pulling tamales out of a huge pot of boiling water on the stove and placing them on a large platter. Dishes of every kind of food imaginable covered the counters. There was barely room to set anything down.

  “Do you have lemon?” I asked as the boy handed me a glass of water.

  “Right there,” he said, pointing to a bowl of lemon wedges sitting next to a pitcher of iced tea.

  I squeezed the lemon in my water and headed back toward the living room. The woman at the stove stopped her scooping and turned to face me. “You from Ralph’s work?” she asked, wiping her hands on her apron.

  “I knew him from SONGS,” I replied.

  She squinted at me. “I’m Maria. I work for the Campbells. I never see you before.”

  “We weren’t close.”

  “Ralph very friendly man. Invite all his friends from work for parties. I cook. You never come?”

  I shook my head. “Like I said, we weren’t close.”

  She nodded. “Hmm. Then why you here now?”

  I set my glass on the one small square of free space on the counter. I stared at the ceiling for a moment to gather my thoughts, then looked back into the dark eyes of the woman. “Because something inside me told me it was the right thing to do.”

  She studied my face, then shoved the platter of tamales at me. “You good girl. Have tamale. Very good. I make myself. You like.”

  I smiled and found a paper plate and took one tamale. She forced a second one on my plate. “You too skinny. Need more than one. Here.”

  “Thank you. So, you’re the Campbell’s housekeeper?” I asked.

  She smiled proudly. “Yes. Two years. Very nice family.”

  I took a bite of the tamale. “Mm…. Very good,” I said, wiping my mouth. “Then you must know Bradley Parker?”

  She searched her memory. “Bradley Parker?”

  “Yes. I think he was a business associate of Mr. Campbell’s—tall, light hair, slender,” I said, hoping to spark a memory.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. Many friends come. Not know all their names.”

  I nodded with understanding.

  She returned to her cooking and I headed toward a group of mourners gathered around a bowl of chips and salsa. I recognized one of them from my brief visit to SONGS. A hungry-looking man with a mouthful of corn chips eyed my plate of tamales.

  “Where’d you get that?” he asked, almost drooling.

  I pointed toward the kitchen and he was gone before I could get a word out.

  “You’ll have to excuse Ruben. He skipped breakfast. He swears he has a blood-sugar problem,” a young woman from the group explained.

  I smiled and picked up a scoop of salsa with a chip. “I thought I saw Bradley Parker at the funeral. Have any of you seen him here?” I asked.

  They exchanged glances, then looked back at me with frowns. “Don’t know who he is,” they said, almost in unison.

  I wandered from guest to guest, casually mentioning Parker’s name and hoping for a response. No one knew who he was. I began to doubt my theory that Parker and Campbell had a connection. I plopped down on the couch and watched poor little Mike play with a small toy Corvette—red—like his dad’s. He pushed it around on the floor, but with little enthusiasm.

  The woman from the couple I’d seen when I first arrived approached and sat next to me on the couch. She had a plate of chocolate chip cookies.

  “Cookie?” she offered.

  I took one from the plate, then she set it on the coffee table. “Thank you,” I said.

  “I just can’t believe this has happened,” she blurted.

  “I know. It’s terrible,” I replied.

  “Poor little Mike. Just look at him over there. Can you imaging losing your dad at his age?”

  I shook my head. “No. It’s going to be hard for him, I’m sure.”

  The woman picked up a cookie and took a bite. “Did you work with Ralph?” she asked, chewing the cookie between words.

  “Sort of,” I answered.

  “I thought so. But I hadn’t seen you at the house for a while. I thought maybe you got a new car,” she said.

  I looked at her, confused. “New car?”

  “Yeah. The orange one? I used to see it parked out front some nights, but that’s been at least a year. Figured you got a new one or something,” she explained.

  I had a sudden hope that this busybody neighbor knew more about what was happening in her neighborhood than anyone else. “I didn’t buy a new one, but I took on a new position about a year ago, and my schedule changed. I couldn’t come over like I used to.”

  “I can understand that. Gee. Seems like you were there every Wednesday evening, then poof, you quit coming,” she said.

  I smiled and nodded. “Yeah. The new position meant a lot more responsibility and late hours at the office. I barley had time to pet my cat, let alone visit friends.”

  She seemed satisfied with my story. She picked up the plate of cookies and stood up. “I better see if anyone else wants a cookie before I eat the whole batch.”

  I stopped her briefly and took another cookie from the plate. She wandered off to another corner and pedaled her goodies to other guests.

  I wrapped the cookie in a napkin and walked across the room to little Mike, sitting cross-legged on the floor with his toy car. I kneeled down and handed him the cookie. “Here. Thought you might want it for later,” I offered.

  He took it and set it in his lap. “I remember you. You have a funny name.”

  “That’s right. Devonie. How ya doin’?”

  “Okay, I guess,” he said, staring down at his hands. “This is my car,” he continued, holding up the small replica of his father’s Corvette.

  “It’s cool,” I said, admiring it.

  “It’s just like my dad’s,” he boasted.

  “I know.”

  “My dad’s not here. He had to go away,” he explained.

  “I know.”

  “I don’t know when he’s coming back,” he said.

  I put my hand on his little shoulder. “I don’t know, either.”

  I stopped in the kitchen on the way out and thanked Maria for the tamales. She pushed a foil-covered plate full of a dozen more into my hands and sent me on my way. “Too skinny. You eat.”

  I slid into the driver’s seat and retrieved the cell phone from my purse. I punched in Sam’s number and listened to his recording.

  “Sam. It’s Devonie. You’re not gonna believe it. Looks like we need to take a closer look at Willy Mendenhal. I’ll fill you
in later. Call me when you get this.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Willy Mendenhal’s shifty little eyes darted quickly from Sam’s stern face to mine, then back to Sam’s.

  “I’m tellin’ you, I don’t know no Ralph Campbell. You got the wrong guy,” Willy insisted.

  “I don’t think so. I talked to some people who said they saw your car parked in front of Ralph’s house almost every Wednesday night before you checked into this prison,” I replied.

  Willy’s face turned into a collection of creases and drops of sweat. “That’s bull,” he finally whined. “I ain’t never been near the guy’s house.”

  “Thought you said you didn’t know him,” Sam said.

  “I don’t.”

  “Then how do you know you’ve never been near his house?” Sam pressed.

  Willy’s whining grew more intense. “This is harassment—pure and simple. I got rights. You can’t just come in here and accuse me without any proof.”

  I waited for Sam’s rebuttal, but there wasn’t one. I decided to take the conversation in a new direction. “So, what’s the going rate for plutonium these days, Willy?”

  His face turned pale and his chin dropped. “Plu…plutonium? Hey man. I for sure don’t know nothin’ about no plutonium. You’re diggin’ up the wrong weed.”

  Sam leaned forward in his chair, his face only inches from Willy’s. I took note of his clenched jaw, the tension barometer I’d learned to read, and was thankful I wasn’t on the receiving end of his anger. “Oh, I’m digging up the right weed, all right,” he hissed. “I’m gonna keep digging. When I find out you and Campbell were in the plutonium business, and you killed Diane Parker, you’re coming up by the roots. You got that?”

  Willy looked at me with pleading eyes. Tears started rolling down his face. “I swear I didn’t have nothin’ to do with that lady. I just took her stuff. That’s all. And I don’t know nothin’ about no plutonium. You gotta believe me.”

  I didn’t respond. If Willy ever had any credibility, he’d done a good job of destroying it. He certainly hadn’t done anything to earn my faith in his words. He directed his pleading eyes at Sam.

  Sam shoved his chair back and stood up. He pointed his finger in Willy’s face. “By the roots.”

  I followed Sam out to his car. “You think he’s lying?” I asked, trying to keep up with his frenetic pace.

  “Could be. But he’s right. Without proof, we can’t do a thing to him. He’ll be out on the street in six months unless we can connect him with Campbell.”

  I jogged a few steps to catch up. “What about the neighbor who saw the car in front of Ralph’s house?”

  “Can’t prove it was the same car without the license number. As hard as I find it to believe, Ford put that color on more than one Explorer. Could have been someone else’s car parked there. We need something more solid.”

  “You think it came from the factory that color?”

  “Competition Orange. It’s a standard option.”

  “Not Sunkist orange?” I said, bewildered.

  “Nope.”

  I slid into the passenger seat and slammed the door shut. Sam stared out the windshield for a few seconds, then started the engine and backed out of the parking space.

  Sam dropped me off at the marina and headed back to the station. He said he had work piling up around his ears and couldn’t afford to spend all his time on this one case. When I offered to take on more investigative duties, he laughed and drove away. I shook my fist at his taillights and headed for my mailbox.

  I tossed my purse on the sofa and flipped through the stack of mail. Junk. Junk. Junk. Wait a minute. What’s this? I inspected the envelope closely, front and back. I tore it open and pulled the contents out. “What?” I complained. It was a traffic citation—complete with a photo of my Explorer and me at the wheel, apparently exceeding the speed limit. “You’ve got to be kidding,” I whined.

  I read through all the fine print and concluded that I would indeed be paying the fine and attending the next available traffic school session to keep the whole ugly incident off my driving record. I stuffed the documents back in the envelope and filed it away to be dealt with later.

  There was still a dark cloud looming overhead—Pamela’s disappearance. I’d called her apartment a dozen times, but got no answer. I called Craig to see if he’d heard from her. Not a word.

  Something didn’t feel right. If Willy Mendenhal was responsible for Diane Parker’s death, or even involved, then where did that leave Bradley Parker as a suspect? Could he have a connection to Willy that I hadn’t uncovered, yet? At any rate, I couldn’t stop worrying about Pamela. I gathered up my purse and keys and headed for the marina parking lot.

  It was a gorgeous day in La Jolla. The sun shone brightly on the sparkling blue Pacific as I eased my way north toward Bradley Parker’s house. I pulled into his driveway and admired the view for a moment before I marched to his front door, ready to attack him if he gave even the slightest hint that he’d hurt Pamela.

  Parker answered the door, still in his robe. I could smell brandy on his breath. “Pamela’s not here,” he grumbled before I’d even asked.

  “Do you—“

  He closed the door before I could get the question out. Irritated, I rang the bell again.

  He reappeared, his bloodshot eyes squinting at me as though I were a lowly creature, unworthy of his precious time. “I told you, she’s not here.”

  “I know. Do you know where she is?” I asked, trying to keep my cool.

  “Not exactly, no,” he slurred. He’d had more to drink than I’d first realized. He started to close the door again, but this time I put my hand out and stopped him.

  “Wait. You saw her last, according to her neighbor. Where did you take her?”

  He glared at me. “None of your business. Now get out of here and leave me alone.”

  I kept my arm braced firmly against the door he was still trying to close in my face. “No! You’ve done something to her, just like you did your wife! Tell me where she is or I’ll—“

  “My wife? You’re crazy.”

  “I’m perfectly sane, Mr. Parker. You’re the only one who had a motive to kill your wife—the divorce, the financial troubles with your business, the insurance money.”

  Parker’s mouth hung half open. He swayed back and forth in the doorway, apparently dizzy from his drunkenness. “I didn’t kill my wife,” he hissed.

  I returned his scowl. “Just like you haven’t done anything to Pamela?”

  He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead with a trembling hand. “I dropped Pamela off at the airport yesterday. She got on the plane and flew away. I didn’t do anything to her,” he moaned. I couldn’t tell if the pain in his voice came from the brandy or the loss of Pamela.

  “Flew away? Where to?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I don’t…Florida…yeah, Florida.”

  I eyed him suspiciously. It seemed to me he was just making up a story to pacify me. “Why Florida?”

  He continued to massage his head as though a great pounding was going on inside it. “I don’t know. I think she said something about her mother. No, maybe it was her aunt. I think that’s it.”

  “Her aunt? Was she ill or something?” I asked.

  Parker aimed his red eyes at mine. “No. She wasn’t ill. Pamela left me and has gone to stay in Florida for good. Are you happy?”

  Elated, I thought to myself. The poor girl finally wised up and opened her eyes. “Do you have a phone number or an address for her?”

  He shook his head. “No. She didn’t want to hear from me.”

  I removed my hand from the door. “What in the world did you do to her?” I asked, my voice shaking.

  He stared at me for a long moment, then without saying a word, he closed the door.

  Pamela staying with her aunt? I played the conversation with Bradley Parker over and over in my mind as I drove home. There was something wrong with his story. Pa
mela told me her parents were dead, and I remember her saying that Bradley was all the family she had. Wouldn’t she consider an aunt family?

  By the time I reached the marina, I’d convinced myself he was lying. I dialed Sam’s number and waited for his answer.

  “Sam Wright,” he blurted into the phone.

  “Devonie Lace,” I blurted back.

  “You again?” he whined. “I thought I’d get at least twenty-four hours before you’d start pestering me.”

  I ignored this. “Listen. I just got back from talking to Bradley Parker. He told me he put Pamela on a plane yesterday. Said she went to Florida to stay with her aunt.”

  “Good. Then we can stop worrying about her,” he replied.

  “I don’t think so. As far as I know, she doesn’t have an aunt. I think he’s lying,” I said.

  “Do you know for sure?”

  “Do I know anything for sure? She told me Bradley was all the family she had. Isn’t it enough for you to at least question him?” I pleaded.

  “Maybe. I’ll look into it,” he answered.

  He’d look into it. I guess I’d have to be satisfied with that. It was better than a definite “no,” which is what I expected. “Hey, you wouldn’t by any chance be able to pull some strings and take care of a traffic violation, could you?” I asked, fully expecting a ten-minute lecture on the importance of obeying all traffic laws.

  “You got a ticket?” he asked.

  “Yeah. One of those cameras took my picture. I was only going twelve miles over the limit. Got it in the mail today.”

  “Tough break. Guess you better slow down,” he said.

  “Guess so. Don’t know if I like all this new technology. Seems like they could use it to catch the real criminals,” I complained.

  Sam didn’t respond.

  “You still there?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I’m here. You just gave me an idea.”

  “I did? It doesn’t involve me wearing stripes and living behind bars, does it?”

  “No. No. Nothing like that. Listen. The picture on your citation—you can make out the license plate. That’s how they knew to send it to you,” he said.