Jack Fell Down: Deluded Detective Book One (Deluded Detective Series 1)

by Michelle Knowlden

  She narrowed her dark eyes at me. With her pasty skin and bright red hair, she reminded me of the Raggedy Ann doll I had as a child.

  “Is you a bill collector?” She spoke with a lisp.

  Suppressing a smile, I shook my head. “I wanted to ask her a question about the little boy who disappeared last year.” It’s my policy to be direct with children. Most adults prefer to sugarcoat the truth, but I find kids have a grisly view of the world and it’s best to speak accordingly.

  Her black eyes snapped to the bungalow across the street. “You been in the house.” It wasn’t a question

  I nodded.

  She glared fiercely at Mrs. Agra’s place. “Wish I could get in that house.”

  I didn’t ask why. The primitive desires of children always end with madness and death or a colossal waste of time.

  “Is your mom home?” I asked again. When speaking with children, I resign myself to constant repetitions.

  “Did you know I saw the whole thing?” She straightened her shoulders importantly.

  I looked suitably impressed. “What did you see?”

  She hopped from the porch to join me on the sidewalk. “It were a Wednesday. Only two cars and a truck are here on Wednesday afternoons. Ours, too, that day, ‘cause mom took me to the orthodontist.” She bared her teeth, and I saw why she spoke with a lisp—she had a full set of bright red braces. She pointed to a blue Honda Fit further down the street. “That belongs to the Emlingers’ grown son, and it’s out all the time, ‘cepting when they sweep the streets, on account of him living with his folks since he lost his job like before I was born. And the gardening truck. They do four houses on our block on Wednesdays. Not ours. My dad and my brother do our yard.” She looked at her yard without judgment, but it appeared as if her men folk did yard work haphazardly and infrequently. I heard a woman inside the girl’s house, call “Sophia,” but the girl didn’t react.

  “Well observed,” I said. “And the kidnapping?”

  She studied the side gate sadly. “Didn’t see it. Happened while I was at the orthodontist. Saw the cars on the street a half hour before he got took. We made it back fifteen minutes afterwards. Only thing gone was the gardening truck, but it left earlier so I don’t count it.”

  I remembered Mrs. Agra saying that the gardening truck had left and intended to return. Couldn’t find anything sinister in that. And another car could have appeared while Raggedy Ann was at the orthodontist.

  “Can you describe the gardener’s truck?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Old and blue with a knobby thing on the back.”

  “A trailer hitch?”

  She shrugged.

  The child had a different definition of “saw the whole thing” than I did. “No one witnessed the actual kidnapping?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “No one but me even remembered about the cars. But we all heard who done it.”

  Someone yelled “So-phi-a” again, this time elongating each syllable into a tin whistle scream. Again she ignored it.

  “It were a pirate.”

  I exhaled. “I heard that too.” I checked my watch. “I appreciate you talking to me, but I have an appointment. Sounds like your mother is calling you, too.”

  With a determined tilt to her chin, she settled on the wooden steps. “I’m supposed to be getting ready for the orthodontist, but I’m gonna sit on this porch forever. If the pirate comes back, I’m not missing him this time.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Pausing for an image

  Through numerous visits, I’d learned how to circumvent the long line at the Imaging Center’s reception desk.

  Catching the attention of a harried clerk, I mouthed “Bobbi.” Recognizing me, she buzzed me through.

  Roberta Havers was a large black woman in her late 30s. Aunt Ivy met her during one of my many scans and immediately adopted her. She took me to see Bobbi sing, her deep vibrato so close to the original that I kept checking to see if she was lip-synching. I asked Ivy twice if Bobbi was an aberration of my brain damage. We sat with her husband, and she joined us between sets. Wesley, a skinny British dermatologist ex-pat, talked about taking her to Presley conventions in Las Vegas, while she shimmered in oiled hair and early Elvis black leather.

  She had an Ivy League degree in law and worked for the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office till she could no longer stand it. Since quitting, she did the books for the imaging center in exchange for the use of a small office at the back of the building where she handled a few legal cases.

  Last year Ivy added them to our sprawling Thanksgiving dinner with my twin brothers Frank and Charlie including Charlie’s wife and five kids. Sometimes Bobbi and Wesley attended the quieter Sunday evening barbecues with just Ivy and me.

  I went down the main hallway to the alcove where Bobbi worked. She and her desk filled the space, so I leaned against the doorframe and waited for her attention. Nurses, technicians and doctors passed and averted their gaze. Bobbi didn’t need four walls for privacy—the awe she inspired demanded it.

  When Bobbi caught sight of me, she swung her computer screen to the wall and demanded, “Your auntie’s been calling all over, looking for you. Would it kill you to phone her?”

  “I’ll call her,” I said. “Did you get the information I asked you about this morning?”

  She hauled a fat manila envelope from the backpack stashed under the desk and dangled it at me. “What’s this about, Pamela?”

  A nurse apologetically ushered a patient past me. I waited till she passed, and then rolled my eyes at Bobbi. Only she called me Pamela. I’d never objected because she’s taller and built even bigger than Devlin. Like an annoying sibling, she’d stretch my name into three singsong syllables, and I was powerless to stop her.

  By her tone, I also knew she wouldn’t hand over the envelope without more information.

  “Fine,” I said. “I had a blackout last night where I talked about Jackson Galon’s kidnapping.”

  “How do you … ?”

  “The people I was with recorded it.”

  Red alerts lit her eyes, so I added, “I’m the only one with the video now.”

  “I’d like to see it.”

  “Bet you would.” I glared at her till she grinned and passed me the envelope.

  I should mention that Bobbi bided strictly by the law. She might stretch a few legal procedures to see a victim rescued or justice done. When I operated in the gray and black fields of criminality, I worked with more felonious colleagues and made sure Bobbi never found out.

  I weighed the envelope in my hand, noted the broken seal, and expected she’d already read through it. No matter. I only needed the summary anyway. Bobbi eyed me as I set my nifty digital recorder, the size of a thumb drive on her desk. I’ve used it both for practical and highly illegal purposes. Since she knew I needed it to confirm our conversation took place later, she kept her objections to a sour look.

  “So who’d they consider the prime suspect?”

  “Tracy Locksley, Jackson’s mother,” she said. She eyed a passing technician with such malevolence, he paled and fled down the hall at warp speed.

  Her news nearly floored me. The frail woman on YouTube didn’t look capable of it.

  “Why?”

  “Jackson’s kindergarten teacher reported that he had bruises. When asked what had happened, he said he ‘fell down’.”

  I felt a sinking feeling and rubbed the tiger scratches. Any teacher knew that was child-code for protecting the parent. “Anyone look into it?”

  Bobbi shrugged. “Children’s Services did. Same old song. Mom and boyfriend confirmed that Jack fell down a lot, that he was a normal boy, liked jumping off fences, out of trees, down the stairs, and had the bruises to show for it.”

  “And that was the end of it?” I kept my voice even, already knowing the answer. Spent too long working with children not to know.

  Unconsciously, her hand slid alongside the side of her head, escaping t
o a world where Elvis still sang and little boys lived in happier homes. “The kid and boyfriend wouldn’t finger the mom, and Tracy Locksley wasn’t confessing, so yeah—that was the end.”

  Which bothered me on many levels.

  “Why not the boyfriend? It’s usually the guy beating up his girlfriend’s kid, right?”

  Bobbi fingered the folder but didn’t open it.

  “The boyfriend had a boatload of charm.” Retrieving the data from her prodigious memory, Bobbi’s face showed no expression. “His colleagues liked him and so did the neighbors. Even the teacher said that he was super at helping the kid with homework. He even coached his pee wee baseball team, for Pete’s sake.”

  Again, Elvis-like, her hand swiped the side of her head, and I knew something troubled her about the boyfriend. She shook off her wandering thoughts and looked me square in the eye. “Jackson’s ma had been at the antique store on the Orange Circle, just a block from the kid’s daycare. She was there around the time he’d been taken.”

  My stomach knotted. I hadn’t known that. Either the boyfriend or the grandmother seemed more likely suspects. Could Tracy Locksley have bought an older woman’s clothing at the antique store, used a wig and heavy makeup to look like the neighbor woman with the rabbit flyer? Was she in cahoots with the boyfriend to do away with her son? I flashed again on the YouTube video of the grief-stricken mother. Too difficult even for delusional me to imagine.

  “The police have anything else besides proximity?” I spoke slowly, trying to sort this suddenly messy case.

  “Yeah. Tracy’s kid brother disappeared when she was 18. While she was supposedly watching him.”

  A mob-sized family filled the hallway, chatting happily as one of its members headed for his MRI. Shifting slightly as they passed, I gaped at her. “You couldn’t have started with that?”

  She shrugged. “And miss that priceless look on your face?” I shut my mouth. “The disappearance took place in southern Colorado. The Locksley family lived in a small town, near a national park. Mesa Verde, if you’ve heard of it. They ran a camp store, where folks go for ice cream and hash when they’re sick of cooking over a Coleman. Jackson’s maternal grandparents also ran the gas station in town.”

  “Hash?”

  “Corned beef hash. Breakfast of champions. The park was something like Cave of the Winds near Colorado Springs, but instead of bare rock, Mesa Verde was forest-covered hills and lousy with caves. Lousy with hikers and spelunkers, too.” Not an outdoorswoman, Bobbi sniffed. “The kid brother, about ten when he disappeared, was known for hanging at the campground, on the lookout for kids his age.”

  Ignoring a technician hovering near us with a clipboard, Bobbi paused for a moment, her mind obviously elsewhere, as if remembering her own childhood romps and the pleasant acquisition of summer visitors. “Tracy, her friend, and her brother had gone into the woods for a picnic. She claimed that she and the friend dozed off. When they woke, the kid was gone.”

  My stomach felt uneasy again, and I couldn’t ignore that instinctive gut reaction. “They never found him?”

  She shook her head. “They found his shoes near the river and figured he’d been drawn to a fast-moving river in the foothills, and bodies lost in those rapids don’t usually turn up again. They buried an empty casket some months later, and no one questioned the tragedy. Till Tracy’s son disappeared.”

  My stomach clenched again. Just what I needed—ulcers on top of delusions. The technician looked at me, then at Bobbi, and then at her clipboard. She hung her head and left.

  “You see anything else?” I trusted her insights. A brilliant litigator, she had a natural affinity for recognizing patterns.

  “Not at the moment, but I haven’t had it but a bit and could look at it longer.”

  I heaved a sigh of relief and started to pass it back to her, but she waved it away. “I got my own copy.”

  I read that as she had decided to work this case with me. It was never me who chose, but this time I didn’t mind. The chances of me finding what happened to Jackson had improved mightily.

  “About the grandparents …” I began.

  “Why you going in that direction?” Her eyes narrowed. “They been cleared.”

  “They had the best motive …” I started again, and again she cut me off.

  “And an airtight alibi.”

  “He was her alibi—could be full of holes.” My voice trailed off as an idea struck me.

  Bobbi had a talent for mimicry that I’d used brazenly since meeting her. She could be my ticket for investigating the grandparents. They’d aggressively tried to get custody of Jackson after his father died in the train explosion. The grandmother was the same age as the neighbor looking for the pet rabbit. I could definitely see the grandparents desperate enough to nab their grandson.

  Recognizing a request forming, she heaved a sigh and waggled a pen at me. “What do you want?”

  I checked my notepad for the information I’d taken from the links Gorgeous and Brunette had sent me. “I’d like to check out the grandparents. Would you call the residence of the William Durbins in Crystal Cove? The wife’s name is Lisa. Found out where they are this afternoon. On the internet, it said they’re well-off and retired. He’s a sports fisherman and on the boards of four universities. She’s Friends of the Bowers Museum, LACMA and underwrites exhibits at galleries like the Muckenthaller in Fullerton and the Mint in Laguna.”

  In four minutes, she had their unlisted number and put it on speakerphone. The technician with the clipboard approached us again, but Bobbi gave her a look and she retreated.

  A muffled voice answered. “Oy,” Bobbi said in the breezy accent favored by her Cornish mother-in-law. “Is Lisa Durbin available this afternoon? She rang me about scheduling the Renoir exhibit at the Huntington Library.”

  I’d neglected to tell Bobbi that the Durbins favored art more along the lines of southwestern pottery, colored glass and 1920s photography, but her query still elicited the information that they weren’t home.

  I smiled at an elderly woman wheeled down the hall by a nurse, her husband following anxiously, carrying her purse. The nurse glanced at me, then looked away when Bobbi half-turned. Besides the fear she instilled in the Imaging Center staff, I admired the way Bobbi adroitly extracted the Durbins’ whereabouts. She ended the call and fixed me with a stern look. “They’re at their Country Club, the Links at Dana Point, until two, having lunch in the Club dining room at noon. Meeting their accountant in Newport after that with dinner reservations at six at Morton’s on Pacific Coast Highway.”

  Excellent. I scribbled more notes and stowed the pad in my purse. The Durbins wouldn’t be home all afternoon, and I could get a peek at them at the country club. Before I could ask Bobbi to finagle a lunch reservation for me, she pursed her lips, one eye squinting with menace. “Now will you call your aunt?”

  I flashed her a brilliant smile. “Better yet—would you ask Ivy to join us at the country club. She can get the reservation at noon.”

  She singed me with a laser-like glare. “Us? You think I can prance around like a lady of leisure?”

  “I’m on disability,” I started to protest, but she cut me off.

  “I’ll make the reservation for you and your auntie. If you no show, I’ll eat your liver.”

  Fortunately the technician with the clipboard sidled towards us again, this time determined to take me in for my scan. “You’re the best, Bobbi,” I said fervently.

  “You tell me Sunday what happened?”

  I nodded and followed the technician.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  At the Links

  After the MRI, I stopped briefly at the condo for my iPad. While trying to read the MRI technician’s expression, being told that the neurologist would contact me, and taking a taxi to the Country Club, I’d decided that if they found a reason for the blackout last night, then I’d have to discount some of the information I’d gathered today: (1) The interview with Mrs. Agra could
be trusted as I had the recording and Devlin’s confirmation that it had happened. (2) The conversation with Sophia, the Raggedy Ann across the street, probably had not happened as I’d forgotten to record it and had no witness. Although most encounters with children have their bizarre moments, ours had wandered into the Twilight Zone. The best evidence that it hadn’t happened was my memory of it—I pictured her with red yarn hair and black button eyes. I could still return with a witness or better yet, find out what cars had been parked there on the day of the abduction. It’d be interesting to see how they correlated. (3) Same as item 1—my conversation with Bobbi Havers could easily be verified as I’d recorded it.

  Sitting at a linen-covered table on the patio, Aunt Ivy leaned forward from the potted palm that partially obscured her and waved as I entered through the dining room. Her sister Hillary had been a fraternal twin, and looked more like me than her. We had a riot of medium-brown curls and expressive faces, walked fast and ungainly (mine especially worse with the tiger-scratched left leg). She pastored a tiny church in Whittier, another way she differed from Hill and me. As if God had taken more time making her, Ivy had refined features and form. In her mid-60s, she wore clothes like a model a third her age while I fidgeted with waistbands and collars. Her honey-colored hair curved gently around her face.

  My parents died when I was 13 and my brothers in college. Ivy and Hillary had never hesitated taking me in. I still felt overwhelmed by their unstinting love and attention during my teens. Apparently Hillary, even in death, was still there for me.

  I kissed her quickly and slumped into my seat, feeling the frustration I always felt in her presence—that I would never be as chic, patient, or perfect.

  Although she had cause, I’ve never seen anything critical or even resigned in her regard of me. Still enveloped in the gardenia scent of our embrace, I smiled ruefully at her affectionate study of me. “Tell me true—I am not dressed appropriately for anything this ritzy,” I asked.