Partnerships Can Kill: The Third Charlie Parker Mystery (17 page)

"This doesn't prove anything," he protested.
"It's junk mail. Incorrect names stay on those mailing lists for
years."

"Ron, I was in the house. In their bedroom.
His underwear is still in the dresser drawers."

"What the hell were you doing in her
bedroom?" he shouted. "When were you there?"

"Friday afternoon. After you left, I decided
to check things out."

"That's breaking and entering!" His face was
livid.

I reached out to him, but he spun away. "Ron,
I went there thinking the housekeeper might still be around." It
wasn't true, and he wasn't pacified. "Besides, there was an
unlocked door. I might have entered, but I didn't break."

"How dare you! How dare you spy on Vicky." He
shook his finger in my face, and I wanted to slap it away. He was
starting to make me mad now.

"Ron, she's a cheat! She's cheating with you,
and she's cheating with at least one other guy!" I was beginning to
heat up, too. I reached for the other letter, the mushy love letter
I'd found in her desk's hidden compartment. I shoved the letter in
his face. "That is, unless you wrote this!"

He pulled the single sheet of paper from its
envelope. I kept talking while he read. My voice was only somewhat
calmer.

"Remember when I mentioned seeing Vicky at
the Ruiz house after David's funeral? She denied that she was even
there? Well, I saw her in the kitchen planting a big wet one on
some guy's face. Probably the same guy who wrote this drivel. Right
after she kissed him, she left. She never saw me."

Ron's body was tensed like a piano wire about
to break. The paper in his hand shook.

"Charlie, I just can't talk to you about this
any more," he said through clenched teeth. He crumpled the letter,
and threw it across the kitchen. The front door slammed, and a
moment later I heard the Mustang's tires squeal.

It had gone worse than I ever expected.

Chapter 21

When the phone rang, I was still standing at
the kitchen sink, staring out into the blackness. It wouldn't be
Ron. It would take him a couple of days to cool off enough to speak
to me again. I took a deep breath and reached for the phone.

"Charlie, what's the matter?" Drake
Langston's voice was low and soothing.

I didn't ask how he knew. Even though we'd
had only a short time together, there was a closeness between us
that I'd never had with anyone before.

"Ron just blew up at me," I told him. My
voice shook as I filled him in on the soap opera situation here. As
usual, he was sensible.

"Charlie, it's not your problem," he said.
"Ron's a grown man, and like it or not, he's entitled to make
mistakes. He'll work it out."

I knew that. Somewhere deep inside me, I'd
even probably said it to myself already.

"I just hate to see a nice guy get screwed,
so to speak."

He chuckled. "Always gotta help the underdog,
huh?"

I felt myself get a little defensive. What
was so wrong with helping the underdog, anyway?

Again, it was as though he sensed my emotion
before the words came out. He tactfully swerved the subject into a
different direction.

"Mack Garvey is doing a lot better," he said.
"He made a point of telling me how grateful he was to you for
getting him off the hook."

Mack is Drake's friend and employer on Kauai,
a nice man who got himself stretched a bit too thin, and wound up
being accused of murder. Another underdog.

"Anyway," Drake continued, "I guess Mack can
tell that I'm pining away over here without you, so he scheduled me
some vacation time next month. Would I be welcome if I showed up on
your doorstep?"

I felt my heart rate pick up. "Anytime," I
told him. A flash of his smile flickered through my mind, and the
sensuous memory of his hands made me suddenly warm.

"Don't worry about Ron, sweetheart, he'll
work it out."

Ron who? Oh, yeah. "I know," I told him. "I
guess I just need to back off and let him figure it out for
himself."

We talked a few more minutes. Drake sounded
excited about getting some time off. I promised to have both Ron's
and Sharon's problems out of my way before he got here.

I cleared the plates from the table, and
loaded the dishwasher. Threw the chicken bones and corn cobs into a
plastic bag, knotted the top and stuffed it into the trash can
under the sink where Rusty couldn’t get to it. He settled for a
dollop of mashed potato in his bowl. I put the unsliced pecan pie
into the refrigerator and poured myself a cup of coffee.

Switching off the kitchen light, I carried my
mug into the living room and snuggled into a corner of the sofa.
Rusty padded behind quietly, subdued by Ron’s outburst. I scratched
the dog’s ears and tried to focus on Drake’s call rather than the
scene that had preceded it. I pressed the remote button so the TV
news could work at overshadowing my problems. It droned on, only
marginally effectively.

Drake, here for a vacation. Sounded nice. I
wondered if things between us would be the same on my turf as
they'd been on his. The tropical Hawaiian nights might have
accounted for much of the romance between us, after all. Well,
having him here would be one way to find out.

By ten, I caught myself dozing so I shut off
the TV and went to bed.

I slept badly again that night. My mind
flicked back and forth, from the pleasant anticipation of Drake's
visit, to the final angry words Ron had shouted at me as he left.
Sharon's financial problems were close by, too. I kept phrasing and
rephrasing in my head different ways to tell her about David's
dishonesty. In the end, I decided perhaps the best way to do it was
to lay out the pages of figures I'd written down. She, too, was a
grownup. She might not like what she saw, but she'd have to deal
with it. Somewhere around two a.m. I drifted off.

At six, the phone rang. Just one ring. By the
time I reached for the receiver, it was obvious that it wouldn't
ring again. An early morning wrong number? Or, my first thought,
Ron wanting to talk again? I couldn't help but wonder how he had
slept. Had he called Vicky right away, or simply let himself stew
about the problem all night?

With all hope for sleep gone now, I crawled
from between the sheets, and headed for the shower. In more ways
than one, I wasn't looking forward to the office today. It could be
rather tense between Ron and me. Plus, I knew I'd have to face
Sharon. I'd be serving her up another set of problems, but no
answers. We still didn't know who had killed David.

I pulled on jeans and a cotton sweater, and
decided to postpone breakfast. It was still only seven. Rusty and I
headed for the Jeep, and I nosed out into the early morning rush on
Central Avenue. The traffic was quite a bit lighter than it usually
is at eight, and I decided to make an extra stop before going to
the office.

The University Bakery was not exactly on the
way, but a sudden impulse made me think that a peace offering might
be in order. The best cinnamon rolls in town are made only a couple
of miles farther up Central.

It's one of those places that doesn't look
like much from the outside—chipped white paint, pink lettering on
the sign, and a 1950s rendition of a wedding cake for a logo. But
inside, the place is clean and neat. Four small tables line the
walls, and the smell from the well stocked bakery cases will just
about make your knees buckle. A young couple sat at one of the
tables near the windows, and a sixty-ish woman wearing a lavender
skirt and pink and lavender print blouse sat picking a croissant
apart at the table in the far corner.

A girl dressed in white stood behind the
counter. She looked about fourteen, smiling at me with a mouth full
of braces when she asked if she could help me. I ordered four
cinnamon rolls. Noticing that I was keeping my eye on her, she
carefully chose four nice large ones with plenty of glaze, which
she placed into a white box. I dug out the correct change,
wondering how I was going to keep the box out of Rusty's reach
until we got to the office.

It was only when I turned toward the door
that I noticed the couple near the windows. They were holding
hands, having coffee and muffins. The girl was Vicky.

There was no way I could walk past silently.
I approached the table.

"Hello, Vicky." Icicles dripped from my
chin.

She looked up at me with a blank look. Her
makeup was much more refined today, her hair brushed smooth and
held back from her face with two combs. She wore conservative dark
slacks and a cream colored silk shirt.

"Yes?" she said.

"Come on, Vicky, cut it out. You can't
pretend you don't know me."

Her face broke into a wide smile, her hand
going to her chest. "Goodness, I guess you don't know," she
laughed. It was a rich, healthy laugh. "I'm Veronica, Vicky's
sister." She held her hand out to me.

"Sister? As in twins?" I felt a good two
inches tall.

"Vicky never told you about having a sister,
I guess," she said.

I remembered questioning Vicky about being at
the Ruiz house after the funeral. She said her sister had attended,
not she. Pieces were falling into place. Now that I gave him
another look, the man was definitely the one I had seen in the
kitchen that day.

Veronica caught my glance. "This is my
fiancé, Steve Silverman."

I was feeling decidedly red in the face by
now. When I looked carefully, there were slight differences in
Vicky and her twin, aside from their taste in clothing. Veronica's
beauty mark was at the right corner of her mouth, Vicky's had been
on the left. She parted her hair in the center, while Vicky's had
always been swept to one side. Veronica also had a certain maturity
to her. Whether it was an impression conveyed by the clothing, or
something definable in her face, I couldn't be sure.

"I believe I saw you in the kitchen at the
Ruiz's home the day of David's funeral," I said.

"Oh? Maybe so, I left early." Did I imagine a
slight blush? "Is that how you know Vicky? Through David Ruiz?"

"No, we have another mutual friend."

"Vicky and David were really close at one
time. Such a shock about his death," she said.

"Yes, it was. The police said suicide, didn't
they?"

"I don't think anyone close to David would
believe that," Veronica said. "David's family is so religious, kind
of like mine, I know they can't face the idea. Religion aside,
though, I can't go for that theory either. David was a very gentle
guy. I can't imagine that he'd even own a gun, much less use it on
himself."

Steve spoke up. "Even if David was depressed,
I'd think pills would be more his style."

"Did David have a lot of worries?" I asked.
"Money, women, business problems?"

They both shook their heads. "David wasn't
involved with anyone that I knew of," Veronica said. "He flirted a
lot, went out with a lot of pretty ladies, but no one that he'd
kill himself over."

"Maybe there was a jealous husband
somewhere," I said, half jokingly.

They both smiled. "David had the kind of good
looks that attracted women like magnets. But I think he had enough
choices, and enough good sense, to stick with the single ones,"
Steve said.

"I didn't know anything about his business,"
Veronica said, "except that he got into that restaurant a year or
so ago. We went to the grand opening for it, but that was the last
time I was in there."

Steve pushed his chair back. "Sorry ladies,
but I have to get going." He squeezed Veronica's hand across the
table.

I apologized for taking so much of their
time, and for the mixup. I wondered whether it had registered with
Veronica that I had spoken rather coldly when I thought she was her
sister. She hadn't seemed to notice.

Rusty was staring out the back window of the
Jeep when I got back. I placed the fragrant box of cinnamon rolls
under my briefcase beside me, and ordered him to stay in the back
seat. His nose was working double time by the time I stuck the key
in the ignition.

Ron's car wasn't in the parking lot when I
got to the office, so Sally and I helped ourselves to first choice
of the rolls. We were standing at the kitchen table, and I filled
her in on my amazing discovery at the bakery.

"No kidding!" Her eyes were even wider than
usual. "What was she like? Another ..."

Ron opened the back door at that moment, and
Sally scooted back to her desk up front. His jeans and plaid shirt
were rumpled.

"Cinnamon rolls," I told him. "It's a
sorry-for-the-fight present. You can have two."

He reached for the box without comment. His
face didn't look too great. The skin under his eyes sagged with new
wrinkles, and I got the idea that he hadn't slept at all.

"Want to talk?"

He sighed. "Sure. Let's go into your
office."

He plopped himself onto my couch while I
turned on the lights and set my briefcase down.

"Rough night?"

He stared at a spot somewhere in the middle
of the room. "Vicky had once told me not to call her after nine
o'clock at night. Said it would wake up her little girl. Last night
I called around ten. A sleepy sounding man's voice answered."

"Did you talk to him?"

"I just hung up," he said.

His voice had a ragged edge to it. I wanted
to go over to him and give him a hug, but we'd never been that kind
of family. Now I was sorry that we weren't better huggers.

"Have you talked to Vicky about it?"

He shook his head.

"Are you going to?"

He shrugged. The conversation was about over,
I could tell. Ron never had been one to share his feelings. What
little I knew about his heart was the part that showed on his face.
The only other time I could remember it looking this way was when
Bernadette left him. It made me want to cry.