Fatal Luck

by Dorothy Howell

  As I got out of the car I heard shouts. In front of the insurance office I spotted two women, a teenage girl, and a man involved in a confrontation, all of them yelling at each other. A police car was positioned nearby and two officers were in the mix.

  Had someone else been murdered?

  Chapter 6

  “Dana!”

  A woman separated from the group and hurried toward me. It was Marsha, Jerry’s part-time office help. One of the women yelled and tried to follow her, but a police officer stopped her.

  “Dana,” Marsha cried, rushing to meet me. “Thank goodness you’re here. I’m so glad to see a friendly face.”

  Marsha was easily in her fifties, with a stocky figure and red hair pulled back in a bun. She’d gone white beneath the sprinkling of freckles on her cheeks and nose.

  “What the heck is going on?” I asked.

  The woman who’d attempted to pursue Marsha was still being held at bay by the police officer. The teenage girl had joined them.

  “That’s Jerry’s ex-wife—one of them, anyway,” Marsha said, edging closer to me. “And her daughter.”

  I saw the resemblance then. Both had blonde hair, though the mom’s was over-forty short, and the daughter’s was still-in-high-school long.

  “I was sitting in the office trying to make heads or tails out of everything Jerry left,” Marsha said, “when in stormed Patricia. And she brought Brooke with her. Can you imagine? Bringing your teenage daughter for back-up?”

  The police officer was getting an earful from Patricia and Brooke. The other officer was dealing with the man, whom I didn’t recognize.

  “That’s Mr. Perkins, the insurance agent who rents—rented—space to Jerry,” Marsha said. “Persnickety old codger. Called the cops.”

  “What does Patricia want?” I asked, keeping a wary eye on her.

  “Money. What else?” Marsha said. “She accused me of holding back Jerry’s money, keeping it from her. She says it belongs to her now.”

  “Doesn’t she have to wait until Jerry’s will is read?” I asked.

  “Jerry was behind on his alimony and child support. He was always behind. I know it’s been hard on Patricia. Besides Brooke, she’s got two other teenagers at home.”

  “Was there insurance money?” I asked.

  Marsha nodded. “Yes, but you know how long those things take.”

  The police officer was herding Patricia and Brooke toward their car and it looked as if they were going willingly. Then Brooke turned back.

  “This isn’t over, Marsha!” she screamed. “My mom’s going to get what belongs to her, one way or the other!”

  Brooke spun away from the police officer and ran to a car. She jumped in behind the wheel and started the engine as Patricia climbed in on the passenger side. Brooke whipped the car out of the parking space and drove away.

  With that, Mr. Perkins marched over. He was sixtyish, with a carefully styled comb-over and a neat mustache, and dressed in a three-piece suit. The two police officers followed.

  “I can’t have this,” he told Marsha. “I’m running a respectable business and I can’t, and I won’t, have this sort of thing going on. You need to clear out right away.”

  Mr. Perkins spun around and headed toward his office. The police officers got into their patrol car and drove off.

  “Oh, dear,” Marsha sighed.

  “Do you want to come into our breakroom for a few minutes and calm down?” I asked.

  “If I thought it would help, I’d do it,” Marsha said. She shook her head. “I’ve got a real mess on my hands. The police took most everything out of Jerry’s office, including his computer. “

  “The appraisal reports,” I realized.

  Mid-America wasn’t Jerry’s only client. He did appraisals for many other lending institutions, and the data he’d compiled for each of them was on his computer.

  “Without Jerry’s finished appraisal report, dozens and dozens of home sales and refinances are going to be delayed,” Marsha said.

  “We’ll have to find a new appraiser,” I said. “Everybody’s loan will be delayed for weeks.”

  “Plus, Jerry’s won’t get paid for the work he did, and I’ve still got his bills to pay,” Marsha said. “I’ve got a lot of Jerry’s stuff backed up on my computer at home. I’ll see what I can come up with.”

  “Thanks, Marsha,” I said. “I know this is a tough time for you.”

  “Tougher for Jerry,” she said with a rueful smile. “And darn, wouldn’t you know it? Just when he was finally getting his life together, this happened.”

  This surprised me. “Jerry was getting his life together? How?”

  “I didn’t ask. I was just grateful.”

  Marsha headed toward the insurance office and I walked inside the Mid-America branch.

  Misty sat at her usual spot at the front counter and Gloria was at her desk just behind her. An empty desk that had been occupied by Janine was situated nearby. Eric was positioned at the rear of the office.

  Not all Mid-America offices had the same number of employees. That was determined by how many accounts were on the books. If an office was growing, acquiring new business, they were entitled to more employees. In the Santa Flores branch where I worked there were seven of us. Here, there were only four—three now that Janine was out—but that was changing. Thanks to Eric’s management skills, the branch was growing by leaps and bounds—as was Eric’s monthly bonus—and would soon qualify for another employee.

  Not that these employees looked like they were having such a great time. Misty gave me a quick smile when I walked past. Gloria glanced up but didn’t speak. Eric waved me to his desk.

  He was impeccably dressed, as usual, not a hair out of place. Handsome in a way that made women look twice at him.

  “I don’t know why the DM sent you.” Eric frowned and still he looked good. “We don’t need help.”

  That suited me fine. The atmosphere was tense in here. Gloria didn’t like me, for some reason, and I had plenty of my own work to do in the Santa Flores branch. Still, it annoyed me that Eric wasn’t the least appreciative of my putting all my responsibilities aside and coming to help out.

  Eric stewed for another minute, then huffed. “Since you’re here you may as well run through Janine’s collection route.”

  I sat down at Janine’s desk and logged onto the computer, then tapped a couple of keys and a list of delinquent accounts flashed onto the screen. The computer kept track of all the past due customers according to how late their payments were, thirty, sixty, ninety, or over ninety days.

  “Dana?” Eric called. “Janine was handling the Thanksgiving food drive. She must have a list of merchants who pledged donations. Find it and put it on my desk.”

  I picked up the telephone and started making calls. Customers walked in and Misty took their payments at the front counter. Gloria took loan applications over the phone. Eric went to lunch.

  Janine had been doing a good job working the accounts, I could see. Every time a Mid-America employee spoke with a customer we were required to note the conversation in the comments section. Janine had consistently called all the past due accounts and was working with them to get caught up.

  I kept dialing for dollars, as the old saying went, getting promises from customers on when they would send their payment, then marking the account accordingly. It was all pretty routine stuff, until the computer presented me with an account accompanied by a tiny red flag. A first payment default.

  Any company lending money was always on guard against fraud. Identity theft was a massive problem. So a brand new account that hadn’t had one single payment made on it caused alarm bells to go off. No branch manager wanted to admit he’d made a loan to someone who’d out-and-out lied, who’d given fraudulent information, and had taken the loan proceeds with no intention of paying it back.

  Still, it could simply mean that the new customer was unaccustomed to the payment date and had forgotten. Hopefully, that
would be this Mick Dudley’s excuse.

  I phoned his home and got a recording saying the number was out of service. Next I tried his place of employment, and was told that I had the wrong number. The guy who answered his cell number had never heard of Mick Dudley.

  At this point there was nothing to do but get the original paper application and go over all the information. I went to the file cabinet and pulled out the folder.

  “What are you doing?” Gloria demanded.

  Startled, I jumped, then saw that she was standing right behind me.

  “I’m checking the folder,” I told her. “I found a first payment default.”

  “Eric handles those,” Gloria said.

  “I’ve got the file right here,” I said. “I can follow up—”

  “That’s the way Eric wants it done.” She pulled the file folder out of my hand. “I’ll give it to him when he comes back from lunch.”

  Gloria went back to her desk, taking the file folder with her.

  Of course, the other problem with a first payment default was that someone in the branch might have made the loan to a fictitious person and pocketed the proceeds. That person was usually the manager.

  Had Eric done that? Since I already suspected him of murdering Jerry, nothing else was out of the realm of possibility.

  I returned to my desk and picked up the telephone but couldn’t bring myself to punch out a number. It occurred to me that I might have found Eric’s motive for murdering Jerry. Maybe Eric had made a loan to Jerry, which was strictly forbidden by Mid-America, then gotten cold feet, feared for his job, and killed Jerry to cover it up.

  I let the notion play around in my head for a while, then decided that it was thin, very thin. But still worth checking out.

  I changed screens on the computer and did a name search for an account held by Jerry Donavan. Nothing popped.

  Well, so much for that theory.

  I started calling customers again. A few minutes later, a couple walked into the office and inquired about a loan. Misty showed them to one of the interview rooms, and Gloria went in to talk with them.

  Another customer came into the office and while Misty was busy taking his payment, I slipped my cell phone out of my handbag and went to Gloria’s desk. I opened the Mick Dudley file folder and flipped through the documents. Eric had handled the entire transaction. I took photos of everything, closed the folder and went back to my desk.

  Misty’s customer left. She darted to my desk.

  “Oh my God, so what was going on outside?” Misty whispered. “I saw, like, the cops and everything.”

  “Jerry’s ex-wife,” I said.

  Misty made a pouty face. “Poor Jerry. I liked him. I used to see him out back and we’d, you know, have a smoke and talk. He was a really nice guy.”

  Misty had worked here for a short while so she hadn’t had time to know the real Jerry.

  “Too bad Eric was late for work that day. I mean, he might have seen who did it,” Misty said.

  “Eric is usually on time?” I asked.

  “Early most of the time. He’s kind of, you know, kind of psycho about things,” she said, and waved the stack of papers in her hand. “Like this bill. I have to write a check to have the baseboard in the interview room repaired. A customer accidently scuffed it. Eric had somebody come out that same day and fix it. A hundred bucks. I mean, really? A hundred bucks? Can you believe it?”

  “He seems to be big on appearances,” I said.

  “Yeah, I know.” Misty blushed. “He’s so handsome. Don’t you think he’s handsome? He could be screwing around on his wife big-time, but he’s not.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “They’re so much in love,” Misty said. “She comes in the office all the time. I can hear him talking to her on the phone, like, all the time. Seriously. All the time.”

  “Have you heard from Janine?” I asked.

  “She’s completely lost her mind, you know? But you can’t blame her, I guess. She knew Jerry, too. You know, smoke breaks in the alley,” Misty said. “Eric said not to bother her. He thinks she’s going to sue the company.”

  “Sue?” I asked. “For what?”

  Chairs scraped the floor in the interview room and voices got louder. Misty dashed back to the front counter as Gloria walked out with the couple she’d been talking to about a loan.

  I picked up the phone and started calling customers again. My mind wandered while I was on hold and listening to recorded messages.

  I’d seen Eric and Lourdes together at the after-work birthday celebration and they were a striking couple. Eric was as handsome as Lourdes was beautiful. That night she’d styled her blonde hair in an elegant up-do and worn expensive on-trend clothing. They seemed to be building a dynasty of sorts, with Eric climbing the Mid-America corporate ladder, and Lourdes managing the vintage shop she’d opened in the quaint, revitalized section of Santa Flores down on Sixth Street.

  By all accounts, Eric and Lourdes were desperately in love. I wondered about that girlfriend he’d left behind after high school, the one who’d sold stolen CDs with him.

  Maybe everything about high school was meant to be left behind.

  Nick flew into my head. Him too?

  I let the image of him stay in my thoughts for a while. I had feelings for him, and I was pretty sure he felt something for me. I was refusing to act on them. Was that a mistake?

  Poor dead Jerry came into my head next. He and Patricia must have loved each other once. They’d had three kids together. Now Jerry was gone and the neglect and mismanagement of his own life had turned her into something of a raving lunatic, causing a public scene and getting the cops involved.

  I felt bad for their daughter Brooke. Apparently this problem between Jerry and Patricia had gone on for years and become such a big part of daily life that now Brooke had been dragged into it.

  Patricia was desperate for money, according to Marsha. Desperate enough to run down Jerry for his insurance money?

  The long afternoon finally ended. I shut down the computer.

  “I checked Janine’s desk,” I said to Eric. “I couldn’t find a list of merchants willing to donate to the Thanksgiving food drive.”

  Eric mumbled under his breath and shook his head in disgust.

  I grabbed my handbag. Gloria didn’t speak. Misty gave me a little wave as I went out the door.

  The evening air was cool and crisp, a welcome relief from the oppressive office atmosphere. I hoped the district manager wouldn’t ask me to work there again.

  Of course, just because my time at Mid-America was up that didn’t mean I was done for the day.

  I got in my car and headed for my parents’ house.

  Chapter 7

  Was I different from Brooke Donavan?

  The idea came to me as I sat in my car down the block from my parents’ house, waiting for my dad to leave. I knew what time Mom always served dinner—though Dad would be lucky to get a grilled cheese sandwich out of her these days—so I figured that being parked with my headlights off, slouched down in the seat wouldn’t last long.

  Brooke, a pretty girl probably in her senior year, should be spending her time twirling that long hair of hers, talking about some guy she liked, Facebooking and tweeting her friends. Instead, she was in the middle of her parents’ bad relationship.

  Here I was in the same situation. Only I was more covert about it.

  The front door opened and my dad walked out of the house. It was dark but the street lights lit the area well enough for me to see that he was dressed in his usual work pants and shirt. He went to his pickup truck parked at the curb, got in, and pulled away. I waited until I saw his tail lights disappear around the corner, then started my car and followed.

  My dad was a nice-looking man. He was in his fifties, tall, still had most of his hair, and was a little thick around the middle from too many of my mom’s good meals coupled with Clint Eastwood and John Wayne movie marathons. While it was p
ossible he was having an affair, as Mom suspected, I didn’t want to believe it was true—nor did I want to think about it in too much detail.

  I hung back and followed him out of our neighborhood, then east on State Street. Dad kept going when the city of Bonita turned into the city of Maywood.

  Maywood had been created several years ago when developers had plowed under the massive orange groves that had covered the foothills for a century, and put in huge, expensive homes. Dad’s friend Leo, whom he was supposed to be spending his evenings with, didn’t live there. None of my parents’ friends lived there.

  I started to feel kind of sick.

  Dad turned right. I fell back a little, then turned in time to see him pull into a driveway halfway down the block. I whipped in behind a BMW parked at the curb three houses up, and killed the engine and my headlights. Dad got out of his truck and walked to the front door. The porch light came on. A woman opened the door. She was expecting him. She smiled. They went inside together.

  I wanted to cry.

  Mom had been right.

  I wanted to throw up.

  My dad was having an affair.

  Anger, hurt, outrage shot through me. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I just couldn’t believe it. But I’d seen it with my own eyes. There was no denying it.

  How could my dad do this? How could he cheat on my mom? They’d known each other since high school.

  And how was I going to tell Mom?

  I sat in the dark, my eyes trained on the house. I’d always known my parents’ marriage was strong. They’d been together for decades. I never saw them fight and seldom heard them disagree.

  Had their time together finally played itself out? Or was it another high school romance that was never meant to be, that should have been left behind after graduation?

  Knuckles rapped on my window. I screamed and jumped up, banging my head.

  Nick glared in the window at me.