Holidays Can Be Murder: A Charlie Parker Christmas Mystery (6 page)

“I’m sure they’ll look at all that during autopsy.”

Drake walked him to the door and Catherine, who’d been yawning for the past half-hour, excused herself to go back to bed. I felt wired. No way would I fall asleep anytime soon.

“I’m going over there,” I told Drake.

He started to make some mild protests, but didn’t get very far with it. “Okay. I think I’ll switch on the bedroom TV for awhile. See you whenever.”

I pulled on my down jacket and stepped outside. The air was still, the night black. All the official vehicles had left and the snoopy neighbors had long since tucked back in and turned out their lights. Only our house and the Garfield’s showed any sign of activity. Yellow tape still circled their side yard, protecting the patches of snow that hadn’t yet melted. I blew out a deep breath, watching the white vapor puff into the darkness, then headed for the front sidewalk. I tapped tentatively on their front door.

“Oh, Charlie!” Wilbur seemed surprised to see me but ushered me in immediately. He wore pale gray pajamas with a tiny pattern on them, topped with a blue and red plaid robe. “Come into the kitchen. I’m trying to get Judy to have some hot chocolate.”

His face seemed drawn, with a set of age lines I hadn’t noticed before. His eyes were red-rimmed with dark smudges beneath. I followed him into the kitchen. Judy was rummaging through an upper cabinet, her back to the door, her quick movements masking the small whoosh of the swinging door. She was also clad in her nightwear—flannel floor-length gown with flannel ruffles at the cuffs and neck.

“Honey, Charlie’s here,” Wilbur murmured.

She jumped visibly at the sound of his voice. A mug clattered to the counter top and she automatically reached out to catch it.

“Charlie! Oh, god, I’m glad you’re here.” She left the mug lying on its side and slumped into a chair at the maple dining table. “I just can’t think . . . I mean, I just don’t know what . . .” Her fingers fidgeted with the top button of her gown at the base of her throat.

“I know,” I said gently. Wilbur patted her on the shoulder as I sat down beside her. “I’m so sorry to hear about what happened.”

They both nodded.

“Did the police have any answers for you?”

“Nothing yet,” Wilbur volunteered.

“I couldn’t keep up with them,” Judy added. “I think they went all over the house and spread black powder on everything. I haven’t had a chance to check. It’s going to be a mess to clean up.” She rubbed her index finger around in tiny circles on the table’s shiny wood finish.

“Let me get us some hot chocolate,” Wilbur offered. “The milk’s already hot.”

“None for me, thanks. We just drank a couple at home.”

He went to the stove and busied himself with the mix and the milk, making two mugs.

“Would it help to tell me about it? Did you come home from your dinner party and just . . . find her?”

“We went over all this so many times with the police,” Wilbur said. His voice almost had a sharp edge.

“I’m sorry.” I felt like a totally insensitive jerk. “I shouldn’t—”

“It’s okay,” Judy said. “Wilbur, I really don’t mind. Investigating is what Charlie does, you know. Maybe she could help.”

“Well, I—” I’d told Judy about my brother being a private investigator, and that I was a partner in the firm. I didn’t mean to imply that it was really
my
field.

“Yes,” she interrupted. “I want to tell you about it and see what you think.”

Wilbur picked up his mug and left the room.

“Judy, are you sure this is okay? I mean, well, Wilbur seems upset by my being here.”

“You know, I don’t really care,” she whispered. She took a long swig of her cocoa. “I mean, I do care. I’m sorry Wilbur lost his mother. He’s shaken up about it, but I don’t think grief has really set in yet. It’s just that I really felt like the target of all those police questions earlier, and I don’t care whether he wants me to tell you or not. I won’t sleep the rest of the night anyway.”

“Target? Judy, what do you mean?”

“I guess I’m their main suspect.”

8

It was no secret that Judy didn’t much like her mother-in-law, but to think she would have killed Paula seemed ludicrous. We
were
only kidding around.

“You’re not serious—surely.”

“Well, let’s just say that the questions were going one way when they first got here—what time did we get home, where had we been, was Paula alone when we left, that kind of thing. Then one of the officers who’d been outside came back in the house and there was a little whispered discussion between him and that chubby, bald cop.”

Kent Taylor.

“And then the questions started being about my relationship with Paula. Did we ever fight? Did we have words last night? That kind of thing.”

Oh, boy. I guess I wasn’t the only one Judy’d made little remarks to.

“Do you want to go over it again?” I asked. “Tell me what happened last night, the sequence of events?”

She drained her cup and shrugged. “Sure.” She carried the mug to the sink and ran some water into it.

“Wilbur and I were invited to dinner at the home of some people we know from church. They live off Rio Grande, in that new subdivision west of Old Town.”

“Okay.”

“We left here at six. Dinner wasn’t really ready, so we sat around and talked awhile, drank some iced tea. It was actually refreshing to be around people who don’t drink, after the week with Paula’s . . . you know.

“So, anyway, we ate about seven-thirty, I’d guess. Then we started a domino game that went on for quite awhile. I developed a horrible headache. I thought it might be a migraine coming on. The game was really in high gear and Wilbur didn’t want to leave, so Norma told me to lie down in their guestroom for awhile. I dozed off and must have been in there for an hour or more. But when I woke up the headache was gone.”

She’d been pacing the length of the kitchen while she related all this. Now she sat down again.

“We left their house around eleven, eleven-fifteen. When we walked in the front door, there was Paula, on the sofa.” She squeezed her eyes shut like she wanted to erase the picture. “You know, at first I thought she’d passed out there. Her head was on a pillow and one arm and one leg kind of hung over the edge. She was just, you know, sprawled out. Wilbur and I were just talking about whether to wake her up to go to bed when I noticed the blood.”

She paused and swallowed.

“Wilbur wanted to revive her. He kept shaking her. I called 911 but she was already . . .”

“It must have been so frightening.”

“It was. Charlie, I’ve only ever seen one dead person, and that was at a funeral home. This was . . . really . . .”

“It’s okay. It’s over now.”

“I just . . . I can’t figure out why someone did this.”

“Like robbery? Did you check the rest of the house? Maybe they broke in to steal something.” Aside from the fact that Paula was a real pain in the neck, I couldn’t think of any motives.

“We glanced around a little. We really didn’t have much chance. The police were here so quickly. I didn’t notice anything missing, though, and they said there was no evidence of a break-in.” She glanced nervously at the back door. “I think I’ll just check everything one more time. What if we interrupted them when we came home? They might decide to come back.”

I went around the house with her and checked all windows and doors. Everything looked secure, and I didn’t notice anything major out of place—no missing TV set, no drawers left open with clothing hanging out. Wilbur was locked in the master bath with the shower running, but that was the only window we didn’t test. I left a few minutes later, both of us trying to convince the other to sleep well.

I slid into bed beside Drake a few minutes later but didn’t actually close my eyes until gray dawn began to show at the windows.

The day after Christmas here in Albuquerque has become nearly the biggest shopping day of the year. Everybody has to rush out to exchange all the stuff they didn’t really want for the stuff they could have just bought for themselves if they hadn’t spent all their money buying other people stuff
they
really didn’t want either. Knowing this, the last places I’d want to be were the malls or downtown. However, curiosity was going to get the best of me and I knew I’d end up in Kent Taylor’s office at the main APD downtown station.

I sat in a straight wooden chair across from him, having cruised a four-block area three times to get a parking place. My excuse for coming was that Wilbur and Judy were too upset to ask about the autopsy report and had sent me to do it. My real reason was my usual one—I wanted to know the skinny on what the police were doing.

“Pretty much what we knew at the scene,” Kent was saying. “Blow to the head with the fireplace tool. The indent matches the hook on the Garfield’s poker. Beyond that, let’s see . . . blood alcohol level pretty high. Way more than is legal for driving. But then, she wasn’t driving, was she? Other drugs—pretty good amount of cocaine. The combination isn’t a good one. But she’d probably been mixing them for quite awhile and it wasn’t enough to kill her. That’s not the full, final report, but it’s the important stuff.”

“Was there a struggle at the scene?” I hadn’t noticed much out of place, but there’d been time to straighten everything by the time I’d arrived last night.

“Not much, if any. Couple of chair cushions on the floor. The son told us he wasn’t sure if the front door was locked when they got home.”

“How could he not be sure?”

“Said he approached the door, used his key, went on in. Didn’t really pay attention to whether the lock was actually engaged or not.”

“So, Paula could have opened the door to her killer?”

“Or it could have been someone with a key.”

“Who else would have a key but Wilbur or Judy?”

“Exactly. That, coupled with a few other things are pointing to her as the main suspect.”

“Really, Kent. Judy?”

He ticked off points on his fingers. “One, she made no secret of it that she wouldn’t mind seeing her mother-in-law dead. Two, she disappeared from the dinner party she was at for—let’s see, the hostess told us--well over an hour. Three, there were more sets of tire tracks in the snow at the front of their driveway than they can account for. Said they went out twice all day; there are three sets of tracks.”

“All those tracks are from their car? For sure?”

“Looks that way. And, four, the only prints on the weapon belong to your neighbor, Judy.”

“Well, whoever used it obviously either wore gloves or wiped it clean. Of course, there would be some partial prints of Judy’s. The poker’s in her home.”

His look told me I was getting a little too argumentative.

“Okay, okay, I’ll shut up. But are you at least looking for other suspects too? Kent, I can’t believe this quiet, mild-mannered woman is a killer. She just isn’t the type.”

“She’s pregnant, you know. Hormones and all.”

“Kent! Oh, please!”

“Hey, I’m just saying there’s a case right now where this woman’s using raging hormones as a defense. Doesn’t deny she did the crime.” He shrugged and gave me a raised eyebrow.

I gritted my teeth and suggested I better get going. He didn’t contradict me.

Outside, the sky was a clear, pale blue and the wind was sharp. I pulled on my knitted mittens and zipped my parka up to my chin. I race-walked around the block to dissipate a little energy. Back at the car, I fumbled with the key twice before getting the door open.

We’d be lucky if she killed herself
. Hadn’t Judy grumbled those very words to me at the cookie swap?

I could just kill her
. Didn’t she once say that to me, too? She must have said it to other neighbors too, because the police had obviously gotten some pretty strong ammunition in their queries among the crowd last night.

This wasn’t looking good. I didn’t have any idea how long it would take Kent to put together enough evidence to arrest her, but that sure looked like the track he was taking.

9

I cranked the Jeep’s engine to life and cruised the downtown streets before turning west on Central. Although we weren’t officially open all this week, on an impulse I decided to stop at the office before heading home.

The gray and white Victorian sits in a neighborhood that’s partly commercial and partly residential, and has been that way for many years. We like being on the quiet side street and the fact that there are some full-time neighbors around who keep an eye on the place. I pulled my Jeep into the driveway that follows the left hand side of the property to the back, where a one-time carriage house serves as storage and the yard as parking area.

The old house was cool and echoey, lonely feeling in its holiday abandonment. The linoleum on the kitchen floor creaked as I walked across it, switching on lights, heading for the hallway to turn up the thermostat. A pile of mail sprawled on the floor inside the front door and I scooped it up and deposited it on Sally’s desk. Absently, I picked up each piece and sorted them into piles—for Sally, Ron and myself. I’d become so engrossed in the mindless flipping of envelopes that I nearly jumped out of my skin when the phone rang.

Patting myself on the chest, I let it go four times so the answering machine would pick up.

“Charlie, are you there?” Drake’s voice came through the tinny little speaker.

I reached for Sally’s handset. “I’m here. How did you know?”

“Just a wild guess. I tried your cell, but it’s turned off. So I took a chance that you’d stopped at the office.”

I reached into my purse as he spoke and checked my little phone. The battery had gone dead sometime in the past few days.