by R. P. Dahlke
"So it was you who called the cops, told them there was gun-fire and my red Caddy outside her home? What was that, another one of your 'just for fun' tricks?"
He shrugged, indifferent to the temper I was working on. Me mad at someone who didn't care, was a waste of time and I knew it.
"You still haven't told me how you knew I'd be here."
"Super-stealth hearing."
I blinked at a picture of Del with earphones on his head. "That's illegal, you know."
"Do I need to remind you what Brad said the other night?"
"The killer is a cop, but you've been holding out on me and I don't appreciate it."
"Baby, honey, sweetie—you know that isn't true. Anything for you."
"Right. If you don't trust your mom with me, at least let her talk to Caleb."
"Yeah, and I want to know how Pippa's involved with my cousin's murder, but I don't trust that dyke."
"Will you stop with the dyke stuff? The police want to question you about Billy Wayne's murder."
He shrugged. "Don't get your panties in a twist, and don't you go trusting Deputy Pippa, she's a cop, remember?"
"It's Officer Roulette to you, and Janice Bidwell said you can't be trusted, either."
"She would say that. Her and that Officer Roulette are both a couple of man haters."
"Another derogatory comment about women and I'm walking, you little creep."
He worked at wiping the merry humor off his face. "I'm joking, okay?"
I was struggling with my temper again. "Your mom? Jump in anytime."
"We'll get to my mom in a minute. Look, you've got to ask the right questions of Pippa. See, it didn't make sense until I went over the police roster."
"Yes?" Finally, he was coming up with something.
"Less than six months ago, Pippa arrives in town, and now Billy Wayne is dead. See what I mean?"
"That's it? Well that explains everything, doesn't it? You know we got ourselves a moratorium on new residents in Modesto. If anyone wants to move into town someone else has to die. You look surprised? I thought you already knew that. As for Jan or Pippa, if you quit propositioning every woman you meet, you moron, maybe they wouldn't want to rip your head off."
"I haven't had time to proposition Pippa, but I've got a hunch she's behind all my problems."
"You've got problems alright. Your aunt says you were the one who sold the story of your cousin's heart transplant to that sleaze rag."
"Of course I sold them the story. I'm a newsman, aren't I? How was I to know someone would…?"
"You really think someone murdered him because of his heart transplant?"
"It's true, but I have to prove it."
"And that's another thing; why didn't you tell me that Billy Wayne was your cousin?"
He shrugged. "I thought it best you should make up your own mind about my family, especially my Aunt Margery."
"Wouldn't have anything to do with that headgear she wears would it?"
He wiggled his stubby fingers up in front of his face in fearful pantomime. "I told her to go for the eyes. That's the only vulnerable part on their bodies."
"Aliens?"
His eyes twinkled. "Who else?"
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "You did this so no one would think she had a coherent thought in her head, she certainly couldn't be a credible witness, she's too crazy, right?"
He leaned towards me, and whispered, "I couldn't spirit both of them out of town at once. My mom thought of it. Great idea, huh?"
"Seriously, Del, you've got to talk to Homicide before they put out an APB on you for kidnapping. And what about your job?"
"You'll take care of the cops through Caleb Stone and let me worry about my job."
"Alright. Let's drop that for now, and you can tell me where you've stashed your mother, and then you can let Caleb talk to her."
"Better that you don't know yet, then they can't torture it out of you." He ignored my eye rolling. "Look, I haven't got much time, so let's set up a secret password. You can call me later and tell me what you find out from Pippa. And, that's a big if, 'cause I don't think Pippa will show."
"No."
"No? But you said –"
"No secret password, and you're wrong about Pippa."
"Why not? It'll be cool."
"We are not in Dick Tracy land, and I'm not going to contribute to your suspicions about Officer Roulette."
"Baby, sweetie, I'm doing this for your own good. If I can listen in on a cell phone conversation, so can she. Brad was right, you know, Billy Wayne's killer is a cop. Someone's always listening, so we have to be careful. Reveal nothing over the phone, just a time to meet. Okay?"
"I think Brad could've made it all up simply to get back at me."
"I have no doubt he added the part about your boyfriend just to watch you squirm. But we both know he was right about the killer being a cop. Look cops rousting the bums isn't a crime, but beating them up is not exactly departmental SOP, is it? I know these guys, and most of them are good cops trying to get by in a recession with dwindling budgets. They have to moonlight, and there aren't enough security guard jobs to go around. The others get into minor stuff, like muscling in on a dope deal now and then or turning a blind eye to the downtown dopers. Also, most news people pay for inside information. But, not this time. They won't give up one of their own for some bum who's threatening to ruin their second income. One goes down, they all do; which is what I'm counting on, as soon as I can find the leverage to make it happen. Then, I'm going to have to bring him or her to justice before they can silence me."
Good grief! He was reading me copy for his next story. "Call me tonight at six and we'll talk."
"Will do. Roger, wilco and out."
Then Del's eyes went wide and he lurched into me, giving my shoulder a hard shove so that I spun around. Tilting off axis I tried to keep my balance by wind-milling my arms, then braced for the inevitable impact. I felt my right arm slide out from under me and scrape the ground as my head hit the cement.
Dazed, I were I was, then tried to get up, but could only manage knees and elbow.
Someone was yelling for me to run, someone else was growling and cursing, but since the concrete looked cool and inviting, I decided to lie down and wait till the arguing stopped. Just before I closed my eyes, I saw Del squirm out of the officer's grasp and run.
Chapter eighteen:
"Lalla! Lalla! Can you hear me?"
"Roger that." I wasn't exactly connected when I said it, and then when I did, knew it sounded goofy. Del? Where's Del?
"Are you hurt? Lalla, answer me."
I was relieved to hear a woman's voice and see a pair of dark slacks kneeling beside me. Thank God, it was a policewoman.
Clutching at my savior's pant leg, I pulled myself up into a sitting position next to a bag of take-out boxes spilled out onto the pavement. Grace Kim. Her white shirt and black slacks must've made me think she was a police officer, though Modesto police wore brown, not black.
"Grace, how nice," I said, woozy from the head crack on the ground. "You brought me take-out."
With a tight nod at my feeble attempt to make light of the incident, she pulled me to my feet. When I winced at the painful scrapes on my elbow, she shifted her grip to my bicep and held on till I stopped swaying.
"I was across the street," she said, wiping at leaves clinging to my clothes. "This guy comes running out of the parking lot. That's when I saw you laid out on the ground. What the hell was that all about?"
"Did you get a look at him?" I asked, thinking it might have been Del running away.
"Sorry, Lalla, it all happened so fast, and to be honest with you, I wasn't prepared to chase down some mugger with a gun."
"He had a gun?"
"I don't know, but I assumed he must've had a gun to get the upper hand on you," She picked a leaf out of my hair and our eyes met—hers scampered off to settle on a speck of dirt on my shoulder.
I felt gut-punch
ed. Grace was lying, but why?
"Look Grace, I'm fine, really." I straightened my clothes and then noticed that her bowtie was askew and there were dark smudges on her shirt. This was awkward. To hide my growing unease, I offered to help her pick up the delivery boxes.
"Don't be silly. You shouldn't bend over just yet, and you need to see about those scrapes."
If Del had tussled with someone, surely it couldn't have been a lightweight like Grace Kim. "There was just the one guy, then?"
"Oh. I don't know. I didn't see anyone else." She shook her head, her sleek hair swinging, exaggerating the negative. The smell of Chinese food and a mental image of Mr. Kim, squeezing off quick nods as he offered me a quick peek at the one secret message I had yet to decode.
She smoothed some of her hair behind her ears and said, "I'm sorry, I was just so shocked. I honestly don't remember seeing anyone else. I mean, this is nuts! Like what criminal in his right mind would attack women in broad daylight, much less in a place like this? Did he get your purse?"
"Purse?" Her lack of eye contact, her clothes in disarray—I had the very uncomfortable feeling one gets when a favorite elderly aunt passes wind at the dinner table and everyone's too uncomfortable to say anything. There was no doubt that Grace had saved me from something or someone, but what, or whom?
"Okay, wait here, I'll look around." She stooped to look under a few cars, then stood up and trotted over to hand me my shoulder bag. Since the heft of it felt right, I didn't bother to check if anything was missing. I was still puzzling over the last few minutes.
Grace astutely averted her eyes and bent over to stuff the boxes into the bag. "I hadn't thought to call the police, but I could do that for you now."
"Oh, no, not necessary," I said, remembering a clandestine meeting I had with a police officer who could get fired for allowing me into the evidence room. At least that was the plan—if Pippa hadn't changed her mind. "I'm good. Really. He didn't get my purse, and I'm not hurt."
"If you say so," she said, worrying the top edges of her paper delivery bag. The excitement of the last few minutes was enough to make anyone sweat, except that I recognized her unease for what it was. I should know, I had my own lies to deal with.
"Not worth the paperwork," I said.
At least her quick nod of relief was real. "Well, I do have these deliveries, but if you're still a bit woozy I could drive you home."
"No, no. Don't give it another thought. Where'd you say you left your car?"
Grace pointed across the street then gasped. "Oh, my God! I left it running and I'm double- parked. If you're sure you're okay?"
I gave her a thumbs up and a nod. "I'm good, you go on."
She nodded once then sprinted for her car.
I thought again of what I knew about Grace Kim, that she was a waitress and delivery person in the only viable establishment in a block of empty shells along a Modesto street known more for prostitutes and drug deals than food. It was also Billy Wayne's favorite hangout and where he was murdered, and last but not least, she was Mr. Kim's daughter.
Or maybe I was seeing this all wrong. Maybe what I was seeing was guilt by association. Like, if she stayed for the police that this dangerous black cloud I seemed to carry around might just scoot over into her space.
If I were her, I'd want to distance myself from me, too.
I should write down my impressions while they were still fresh in my mind, analyze the events of only a few minutes ago and evaluate the clues before anything slipped away.
I poked my hand down into my purse and felt around for the soft leather case of my notebook and came up empty handed. It was gone. Somebody had taken my notebook. I'd kept everything in it from Billy Wayne's dying words, to my list of possible suspects: Byron Bettencourt, Detective Rodney, and Brad Lane. And now it was all gone.
As much as I hated to admit it, Del was right. Someone else knew where I was coming today, and now there was no doubt in my mind that Grace knew who it was.
Chapter nineteen:
Inside the Modesto City Police Evidence Building I collapsed onto an industrial style plastic bench seat and studied the gray concrete walls. I was already late for my appointment with Pippa and still shaking from my dust up with a mugger. Why would Del run off and leave me to an attacker? And Grace Kim saying she found me after the mugger ran? Then why the bowtie tilted and her shirt dirty? Not the fastidious Grace Kim I knew from high school. Did she steal my notebook? Or was she covering for a someone; a cop friend, or a lover? Was that why she was here? Nothing fit and I was getting a headache.
I dug a bottle of ibuprofen out of my purse and dry-swallowed a couple. As I saw it, there were three people who were linked to Billy Wayne. One: Grace worked at the restaurant next to the grimy alley where Billy Wayne had been murdered. Two: Mr. Kim was a Vietnam freedom fighter and liaison for the Americans until he came to the U.S., and Billy Wayne had been in the Far East with the Marines, hadn't he? Had the two crossed paths somewhere other than Modesto? Last: Brad said it was a cop. Why, oh why, did he have to infer that Caleb was involved and then die before we could get the truth out of him?
All of it was giving me a headache, and my scraped elbows were starting to sting, so I hit the buzzer and asked for Pippa Roulette.
Shocked at my disheveled appearance, Pippa listened to my brief account that I'd fought off a mugger. I left out Del, Grace, the missing notebook, and anything else that might make her think twice about supporting my cause.
She hustled me into the elevator for the second floor offices and an all-purpose emergency kit. Pulling open cabinets and drawers she found and extracted enough gauze, antibacterial spray, and Band-Aids to wrap up a Volkswagen. Taping the last of it onto my elbow she motioned for me to follow her into the hallway where she buzzed the duty officer.
"Wait here," she said pointing to the plastic chairs in the hallway. Then she slipped inside and I sat down to wait. I was beginning to feel anxious about involving Pippa in my illegal activities. But before I got the nerve to stand up and call off this chancy escapade, the door opened and she motioned me inside.
"I might have neglected to mention you to the duty officer," she said, "but he'll be taking a break so he won't know you're here. Ten minutes, okay?"
She set the box down on the smooth surface of the Formica counter top. The box was smaller than I would've thought. She took off the top, and we looked into the clutter of note-sized paper and the tightly penciled scribbling of an erstwhile poet.
Pippa gave the scraps of paper an exasperated sigh.
"Can you give me an idea of what you're looking for?"
"Something to tell me why he was murdered?"
"Can you narrow that down a bit? We now have seven minutes."
Her voice, I noticed had an edge to it. Couldn't blame her, since what we were doing was illegal. "I suspect it's going to be about as easy as his sign out in front of the new Chili's. It said, 'All of you smiling, is it dark in there?'"
Pippa sighed again. "I see what you mean. Well, I said I'd do this, so let's start digging." She picked up one of the snowflakes. "What about this one? Does this mean anything to you?"
I held the snowflake up and turned the delicate paper round and round as I read. "Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing –'"
"This is what he wrote and glued to your car? It's 'The Raven,' by Edgar Allan Poe."
"I don't recall anything like this. The ones he left under my windshield were always sweet."
"Then why something like this?"
"You mean miserably dark? I don't know." I picked up another one. "'My tears are like the quiet drift of petals from some magic rose' Tears? Depressed, I guess."
I shuffled through the paper snowflakes, reading one, then another. I saw a pattern developing; that of a lonely man whose communication skills had receded into this—a handful of pain, hope, and despair. He must've been very depressed when he wrote these. But why send them to me? I'd ignored him, t
hen had Caleb reprimand him, only to have him die at my feet without ever understanding why, or how, anyone could have hated him so much that they would want him dead.
"How long can I stay here and look at them?"
She looked at her wristwatch. "Five minutes left."
"Can I make a copy of a few?"
"Sorry, ID key is required at the copy machine, and that would blow our cover. Can you just write a couple of these down?"
She handed me a ruled note card and pen. "So what did he say to you before he died, I mean, besides, 'The more there is, the less you see?' I hate to speak ill of the dead, but it just sounds crazy."
I put my hand on top of the closed box of Billy Wayne's obscure poetry and looked at her under the harsh glare of a bare overhead lightbulb. The light cast heavy shadows on her lovely young face, and for a moment I thought her demeanor less than friendly, maybe even menacing.
I shook my head. Bad lighting. And besides, I'd promised myself not to allow Del's paranoia to infect my good opinion of Pippa. And I was sure that I'd been wrong to think the worst of Grace, because no matter what she did, or didn't do in the parking lot, I also knew she'd saved me from something much worse.
"I guess I was putting too much into what these snowflakes might reveal."
She nodded thoughtfully and I felt something shift, and we were back on easy terms. She lifted the box out of my hands, put the rubber band with its identifying tag around it, and left it on the table for the duty officer.
After she saw me safely to my car, I cranked up the A/C, and with my sweaty armpits held akimbo, put the car in reverse, and pulled out onto G Street. Going east I cut over to 11th and headed back for the freeway, wondering what the ambitious Pippa might be willing to do if it meant she could make detective before Byron. World peace aside, Pippa Roulette had ambition written all over her pretty face. Yes, if I were her, I'd befriend Lalla Bains, climb over Byron's back, and make detective in record time. Besides, unlike poor Byron, I was sure she could pass the detective's exam in one take.
I took one hand off the wheel and reached over for my bag and cell phone to call Caleb, then pulled it back. No, not the cell phone. If Del could listen to my cell, then so could someone else. Brad had said it was a cop. Cops have connections to listen in on cell phones. Now I was paranoid, and rightfully so. I had to see Caleb in person.