“Also, all three of them were strangled with stockings.”
“Really? That’s interesting. Their own stockings? Like panty hose?” What a repulsive thought. I hoped the crotch was clean.
“I don’t know,” Fred answered, shaking his head again. “I can’t seem to get more than that out of my source. I keep trying. Now you tell me. Why is your client interested?”
“You promise to keep it under your hat?” I put my most serious expression to work on my face.
“Sure. We made a deal, didn’t we?”
“Yeah, okay” I don’t know why I hesitated. I had to trust Fred if he was trusting me. “Fred, it seems there’s a mystery surrounding Doris Jones. My client says that she came out of nowhere, and he wants me to find out about her life before she came to Houston. He’s adamant that her murder was not part of the others.”
“What is he basing that on?”
“Gut feeling.”
“That’s it? That’s all you have?”
“Yes. I just started this morning. But if there’s any reason to suspect that she wasn’t killed by the same guy well, I need to know it before I get any deeper into this.”
“Hey, Mavis, that’s tough, because the cops aren’t going to tell you if they do know. Even if it was a separate murder, it still falls under the jurisdiction of Captain Ron.”
“Well, I have to try. I’ve been paid, and as far as I’m concerned, the money is spent.”
We gathered up our things and went back out into the heat with a promise to keep each other posted on anything else that came up. Plus, Fred extracted a promise from me that I wouldn’t do anything that would put me in danger. Although he’s wanted to be more, Fred’s like a father to me.
As I walked the six blocks back to where I had parked my classic car, I pondered my next move. Knowing that I couldn’t go down to the police station and barge in with questions, I decided to go out to The Rex Cafe to have a look around Doris’ apartment. Maybe I could make a start on her background search by seeing how she lived.
CHAPTER FOUR
I expected to see a run-down two-story building that housed a greasy-spoon cafe, and I wasn’t disappointed. The exterior of The Rex was badly in need of a paint job. The white paint was cracked and peeling off the wood. A large plastic red and white coke sign with the name of the cafe printed on it in black letters hung down on a post above the entrance. Off to the right was a set of stairs that I suspected led up to Doris’ living quarters.
I had to go inside the cafe to get the key. I opened the wood-framed screen door and then a wooden door with a glass window in which a plastic open sign hung from a nail. To my surprise, the interior was a lot more modern than I expected. And cleaner, too.
To my right and left were rows of booths. Pink plastic rosebuds in narrow, imitation-milk glass vases were centered on bright tablecloths. Four-top and eight-top tables were lined up neatly on the main part of the floor with Samsonite chairs surrounding them. Overhead was modernized recessed lighting.
At the back was the kitchen where I could see Carl through a serving window. He was moving around, intently concentrating on something that was, undoubtedly, someone’s meal, which explained the stains on his running shoes. He hadn’t told me he was the cook.
I made my way to the kitchen entrance and stood there for a minute watching him. He wore a large white apron that covered him from neck to knees and was tied at the waist. He was garnishing a plate with an orange slice and a sprig of parsley. When he finished, he put the plate up in the window and hit a little bell; then I caught his attention.
“Nice place you’ve got here,” I said, gesturing.
The corners of his mouth turned up slightly, in a melancholy little smile as he glanced through the window. “Yeah, Doris helped me redecorate, kind of brighten up the place, you know? She had a lot of good ideas.”
“I was wondering if I could get a look at her apartment,” I said bluntly. I was never one to mince words.
“Sure,” he replied, reaching under his apron. I heard the jangle of some keys and then he separated one out and gave it to me. “I don’t know what you’ll find that the police ain’t already seen, but go ahead.”
Shrugging, I said, “I don’t know either, Mr. Singleton, but it’s worth a look. At least maybe I can get an impression of her from it.”
“Carl. Call me Carl.”
I smiled at him. “Only if you call me Mavis.”
“It’s a deal. You found out anything yet, Mavis?”
“Not much. I did a little reading about the other two murders and have been asking around. I’ll let you know if I learn anything significant. I have an angle I’m working on.”
“I’m not trying to rush you. I know it’s only been a few hours.”
A waitress in a pink uniform and a small, ruffled, white apron came up to the window and retrieved the plate, replacing it with a ticket. She stared at me and nodded her head, but didn’t speak. I nodded back, knowing that eventually I would have to talk to her and everyone else associated with the cafe. I was saving that for after I saw the apartment.
“Guess I’ll go on up and have a look. Okay if I come back and talk to some of your employees later?”
“Sure. Holler if you need anything, Mavis. Anything at all,” Carl said, and then reached for the ticket, his attention turned to preparing the next meal.
As I went out, I saw three waitresses sitting together at a table near the cash register. They were watching me intently. I smiled broadly at them, hoping to set the tenor of our future conversation. I was hoping they wouldn’t be paranoid about talking with me. They each smiled in return.
I climbed the stairs to the apartment door and inserted the key that Carl had given me. The door opened easily into a large living area. I pushed it closed behind me, and stood there, trying to get a solid first impression of what I saw. It was not a very large place, but looked somewhat comfortable. There was a sofa, a TV, and books.
It wasn’t two minutes later that the door I had just closed crashed open behind me. I must have jumped a mile high.
“What do you think you’re doing in here?” A gruff voice barked from behind me.
I thought I recognized it. I prayed that I didn’t.
CHAPTER FIVE
Turning around, I came face-to-face with one of the sorriest excuses for a police officer that I have ever known: Lon Tyler.
He was glaring up at me, his fierce brown eyes sunken into a head that always appeared to me to be too large for his squatty body. His dark hair was pasted to his head with sweat that I could smell from two feet away. The underarms of his shirt were stained in huge circles. He stood there, hands on his hips, feet spread apart, an angry snarl on his lips, and looked as if he was going to order me to assume the position so he could frisk me.
Creeps. I had a feeling of deja vu. For a minute I felt as if I were back on my college campus some fifteen—uh, or twenty—years earlier at a busted sit-in.
I had to think fast to come up with a cover story. I didn’t like Lon. Never had since a run-in with him a few years earlier when I was a probation officer. I let him know that I thought he was too violent with defendants.
Lon didn’t like me either. Called me The Social Worker. He always thought he was Mister Perfect. I always thought he had a Napoleon complex and couldn’t stand the way I towered over him. It gave me great pleasure now to have the opportunity to look down at him once again. I was especially pleased that I’d chosen two-inch heels to wear with my dress.
“Lon,” I called his name in my most melodious voice and held out my hand for him to shake. “How are you? Long time no see.”
He didn’t fall for it. He ignored my outstretched arm and repeated himself. “I said, what are you doing here?” he snarled.
“Here?” I asked, all wide-eyed innocence. “Oh—you mean in this apartment? Well, really, what business is it of yours?” My brain was doing overtime trying to come up with some logical reason for my presence.
“Police business, that’s what,” he spouted.
“Police business? Oh because of what happened to the last tenant. I see. Yes. I read about that in this morning’s paper. Poor thing. How’s the investigation going, Lon? They got you on it?”
“That’s none of your business. Now you want to tell me what the hell you think you’re doing?”
“Sure, Lon. I was thinking of leasing the apartment. I talked to Mr. Singleton downstairs and he said it would be all right if I had a look around. It’s a nice place, isn’t it?” I was flashing the friendliest smile I could muster and hoping that my shiny blue eyes would take him in at least a tad. I hadn’t gotten more than a few steps inside when I was interrupted. Really—I hadn’t seen a thing. It was a shame Lon was such a tough nut.
“Look, Mavis Davis,” he said, uttering my name in such a nasty way that I wasn’t pleased, “you’re up to something. I can just feel it. I’ve had my eye on you for a long time. I know you couldn’t make it at child welfare or the probation department and went out on your own. I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you’d better not be messing around in my case. You’re not interested in renting this apartment any more than I am, and I want you to clear out right now.” With that, he held the door open and pointed toward the stairs.
Talk about adding insult to injury. It was all I could do to maintain my facade. “No, Lon—really. I’ve been looking for a new place. I haven’t been happy with Montrose lately, know what I mean?” It didn’t work, didn’t fool him for one iota. But what the heck, I had to give it my best shot.
“Out!” he said in a voice so loud it made my ears ring. What can I say? I departed.
Back into the cafe I went to tell Carl what had transpired so that he could cover for me. He was still making meals in the kitchen so I hastened to him in case old Lon decided to give Carl the third degree.
“Hey.” I peeked my head through the door and caught Carl’s eye. “Did you tell anyone that you hired me?”
“Only the girls here. Why?” Carl asked as he came over to where I stood. I could smell the aroma of fried food on his clothes, but it was better than what I smelled on Lon.
I grimaced. “I didn’t any more get inside the door than a cop came in and ordered me out. You didn’t tell me they were still watching the place, that they weren’t through with it. Do you think the girls told the cops about me?”
“No. I swear they wouldn’t do that. We didn’t know, Mavis. They didn’t say anything about it. You didn’t get a chance to look around?”
“No. Listen, they must have him parked across the street watching the place, so there’s no way I can get back in without their knowing about it. I told him that I was thinking of leasing the apartment from you. Can you handle that story?”
“Sure, and I’ll tell the girls. Say, I’ve got a key to the back door; you want to use it?”
“I don’t know, Carl. I’d better not right now. I have a feeling that if I don’t leave here pretty quickly, Detective Tyler, and I use that term loosely, is going to come find out the reason why. Are you sure you don’t just want to continue with the cops investigating it? It appears they’re taking it pretty seriously.” I was feeling awfully disappointed about the thing, I must say. I had wanted to come up with something quickly. I wanted to impress Carl with my ability.
“Hey, we’ve got a deal, Mavis. You can’t give up on me that easily. I hired you for the rest of the week and I expect you to earn that money,” he said in a kind voice. It was as if he could read my face.
I sighed. Yes, sighed. I wasn’t sure where to go from there. The initial excitement had worn off. No more adrenaline.
“Okay, Carl. You’re right. You hired me to do a job this week, and I’m gonna do it. I’ll be back at my office this afternoon if you need me. Otherwise, I’ll call you tomorrow.”
I went out, sure that Lon Tyler would be watching. I scanned the street and spotted him in a parked car at the comer. I grinned and waved to him. The son of a gun.
Back at the office, I gathered my little group around me for a brainstorming session. I thought three heads were better than one, and maybe together we could come up with some decent ideas. We were a colorful group, me with my carrot-colored hair, Margaret with her lemon-yellow, and Candy, who had chosen a lovely shade of blue that day.
We congregated behind the counter, sitting at the circle of desks, elbows on typewriters, and stared at each other. I explained the job to them, for in my haste to get started that morning, I hadn’t stopped to tell Margaret much about it, and of course Candy hadn’t yet arrived from school then.
“Gee, like this is really bad, Mavis!” Candy exclaimed after I told them about the mystery surrounding Doris Jones. “It’s like Madame X. Did you ever see that movie?” Needless to say, Candy is an old movie buff.
“I fail to see the similarity, Candy. In Madame X, the heroine, so to speak, killed someone. In this case, this lady was killed,” I said, the pain that was growing in my head and elsewhere making me frown at her.
“Yeah, but Mavis, both of them were hiding something, right? The lady in Madame X was trying to protect her family from what she’d turned into. You know? What had Doris Jones turned into? Was there something wrong with her? Maybe she was a drunk or killed somebody. What had she run away from?” Candy’s enthusiasm was overwhelming. She was like an animated character out of the cartoons when she spoke, brown eyes flashing, head bobbing, earring dangling. Today she only wore one, a huge loop.
Margaret chimed in. “Did she look like Lana Turner?”
“Give me a break,” I said, turning to Margaret. But Candy was right, we didn’t have enough information. Heck, we didn’t have any. I could see right off that I was going to have to go back and have a long talk with Carl and the waitresses.
I rolled a sheet of typing paper into the typewriter. “Let’s do a profile of Doris Jones. Let’s make a list of all the questions we have about her and fill in the answers as we get them, okay?” I typed her name at the top of the paper.
“Budge over, Mavis,” Margaret said as she shifted from her chair toward mine. “You talk; I’ll type. I want to feel useful.”
“Okay.” I stood up. “What do we need to know about Doris Jones, and what do we already know?” I began pacing the floor. “Candy, you really sort of hit the nail on the head. I don’t know if she drank. Maybe she was using drugs. And Margaret,” I said in an apologetic tone. “I really don’t know if she looked like Lana Turner or not. I didn’t get a photograph of her or even a description from Carl. My brain must have taken a hike. Let’s get organized.”
Margaret’s fingers were flying across the keys as I spoke. I gave her a minute to catch up. Candy perched on the edge of the desk, leaning forward as if about to sprint.
Margaret stopped, pulled the paper from the typewriter, got up, and went over to the computer, turning it on. She slipped in a couple of disks. “I’m going to do the list on the computer so I can rearrange our questions by category when we get through. I wish, now, that I had a program that would somehow do profiles on people,” Margaret said.
In spite of what she looked like, Margaret was a computer whiz.
“Sometime when it’s really slow, Mavis, I’m going to design a program like that. I’ve been thinking about doing it for our child-custody studies. You know, feed the computer the characteristics about the ideal home situation for a child and then the characteristics about both parties wanting custody?” She was punching keys as she spoke and then looked up.
I felt a little stab in my head as Margaret rambled on. “That’s a great idea, Margaret. Are you ready now?”
“Yes. I’ve listed things we need. Like a picture. Now what do we really know about her?”
“She was a white female aged thirty-six,” Candy piped up.
“She was a waitress for almost a year. She came from northern Texas, Carl said. She was secretive, quiet, elegant, a real lady. She was well-read or else had a good educatio
n,” I said.
By this time, Candy and I were standing behind Margaret watching the screen as she quickly punched in the information we were giving her.
“Did she own a car? Have any bank accounts or charge accounts?” Candy asked.
“Those are some of the things I need either to ask or get into her apartment to find out.” I had told them about my run-in with Lon Tyler.
“She was strangled,” Candy put in.
I grimaced at the thought. “With a stocking. Sometime between the hours of well, I’m not sure what time Monday night, write that down, Margaret, but she was found around six Tuesday morning.”
“Was she raped, Mavis?” Candy asked, her eyes meeting mine over the top of Margaret’s head.
In spite of Candy’s weird hair and wild clothes, she was still a kid. I couldn’t help but feel that a seventeen-year-old girl shouldn’t know about such things. I mean, the way society is today, kids know about violence, but it’s a shame. I shrugged at Candy and then reached over and patted her on the arm. “I don’t know.” I needed an aspirin. “Write that question down, Margaret.”
My First Murder Page 3