Take a Number

by Janet Dawson

  I looked blank, and Acey proceeded to explain. “VIN— vehicle identification number. Every car’s got one. Some guy buys a junker for a coupla hundred bucks, for the VIN and the license plate, which he puts on a stolen car. Then he can turn over the hot car legit.”

  Since Acey had done some time in Folsom, I saw no reason to doubt that he knew what he was talking about. “So you assumed all along the Mercedes was hot.”

  “Absolutely,” Acey said. “Tiff said they bought it from some guy who advertised in the classifieds. It’s not like going to some car lot where you can check the pedigree.” He rubbed his chin and took another sip of beer. “Thing was, I couldn’t get all the pieces to fit. I thought Raynor was after Tiff’s money. Then you come along and tell me he’s trying to hide money from his wife. The scam’s going the other way. Except I’m not sure what the scam is. Then the damn car gets stolen. I know Raynor had something to do with it. Tiff said she didn’t believe that either. But she was having trouble with the insurance claim, bitching up one side and down the other about the adjuster dragging his heels. I told her to think about that too.”

  I pulled out a chair and joined Genevieve at the table. “You talked to Tiffany after she’d talked to the insurance company?”

  “Yeah, Friday afternoon,” Acey said. “She’d had words with the adjuster that morning. Then she and I had words.”

  “So between the two of us,” I said, “we’d planted a few seeds of doubt. You wanted to talk with her again, to see if any of those seeds starting growing.”

  “That sums it up real good.” Acey finished off the beer, crumpled the can and tossed it into a cardboard box next to the trash can, filled with other cans as well as bottles and jars. “Tiff’s like that. You give her something to chew on and sooner or later she makes up her mind. I’ve been hoping she’d see what a shitheel Raynor was and blow him off.” He stopped and looked horrified at his choice of words. “But she wouldn’t shoot him, fer crissakes.”

  I cocked my head in Genevieve’s direction. “You saw them at the restaurant. Was the bloom off the rose?”

  “They looked like they were arguing,” she conceded. “But I didn’t hear anything. You’ll have to ask Zeke, the guy that waited on them.”

  “I will. What time did they leave?”

  She shrugged. “Don’t know. I was in the kitchen. When I came out they were gone.”

  I looked up at Acey. “Where were you?”

  “When Gen called me, I decided my best shot was to waylay Tiff when they left the restaurant. So I walked up from the Royal Flush and waited across the street.”

  “What time was that?”

  He shook his head. “Not sure. It was maybe nine-thirty when I left the bar, and it’s about a five-minute walk to the restaurant. I had time for a couple of cigarettes. There were a lot of people on the avenue, probably the movie crowd let out from the Piedmont Theater. So I’m guessing it was ten or after when I spotted Tiff and Raynor coming out of the pizza place. They hung a right and started walking up Piedmont toward Fortieth. I followed ‘em. They went to that parking lot behind the shops, between Fortieth and Forty-first.” I nodded. It was the same lot that bordered Howe Street, barely half a block from Ruth’s apartment. “They stopped right in back of Tiff’s Subaru. It was parked near the street, near Fortieth. Didn’t see Raynor’s Trans-Am. They must’ve been in separate cars, ‘cause Tiff drove off by herself.”

  “What happened before Tiffany left? Did you ever talk to her?”

  Slowly he shook his head. “No. I kept hoping Raynor would leave, so I could have a word with her. I stayed back about thirty paces, trying to keep out of sight and wishing I could hear what they were saying. ‘Cause they were having an argument for sure. Tiff was mad. I could tell.”

  Acey shook, his head again. “This Caddy came rolling by, blasting rap music. I turned my head, just for a second. When I turned back, Tiff was in her Subaru, backing it out of the parking space. And Raynor went walking off fast, toward Forty-first Street.” He smacked one fist hard into the open palm of his other hand. “I saw Tiff drive out of the parking lot, damn it. She made a left on Howe Street and hauled ass. She couldn’t have had anything to do with Raynor getting shot.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.” I considered what he had told me. The fact that Tiffany had driven away from the parking lot did seem to alibi her, but she could have returned. Now, at least, I had an idea of Sam’s movements shortly before his death. Had he met anyone else on Piedmont Avenue that night? “I’d like to know what they were fighting about.”

  “If I can find her, we’ll both ask her,” Acey said glumly. “But I sure as hell don’t know where she is.”

  Twenty

  I LEFT THE COLLINS’S HOUSE AND HEADED FOR PIEDMONT Avenue. I parked in the lot where Acey had seen his sister and Sam Raynor on Saturday night and walked the aisles, looking for Raynor’s red Trans-Am. Eventually, I found it, parked on Howe Street, three cars down from the construction site on the corner. Ruth’s apartment building was on the opposite corner. Time had expired in more ways than one. A parking ticket was stuck under one of the wiper blades on the front windshield.

  The car was locked. I examined the exterior and peered inside, searching for something that would tell me where Sam went and who he saw after he and Tiffany Collins parted company in the parking lot Saturday night. But the dark red upholstery gave up no secrets.

  Raynor must have gone somewhere else after Tiffany drove away and before he showed up at Ruth’s apartment. He and Tiffany left the restaurant just after ten. Ruth said she didn’t get home from her parents’ until eleven. Besides, Acey said his sister’s car backed out of a space on the side of the parking lot closest to Fortieth Street. If Sam Raynor had been heading for his car—or Ruth’s building—there was a parking lot exit on Howe Street, a few car lengths to the rear of the Trans-Am. But he hadn’t gone that way, according to Acey. Raynor had walked toward Forty-first Street.

  Maybe that doesn’t mean anything, I told myself. Maybe he was angry with Tiffany and didn’t care which direction he walked. Maybe he went to a bar. Ruth said she’d smelled beer on him. Maybe I was reaching when I wondered if he’d met someone later. But there was an hour, more or less, of Raynor’s life unaccounted for that night.

  I grabbed a sandwich and a soda at a nearby deli. While I ate I speculated about Raynor’s movements that night. Then I tossed the debris into a waste can and left the deli by the rear door, passing the Dumpster where Ruth and I had seen the homeless woman Friday afternoon, probing the refuse for cans and bottles. I walked past the construction site and crossed Howe Street.

  Today there was a large hand-printed sign on one of the apartment building’s glass doors, admonishing residents and guests to close the door immediately on entering and not to prop it open for any reason. I ran my finger down the tenant list, past R. Franklin in 303 to M. Parmenter in 304. I pressed the button. A moment later a disembodied voice answered, coming out of the square intercom speaker, sounding tinny and full of static. “Yes? Who is it?”

  “Mrs. Parmenter, my name is Jeri Howard. I’m an investigator. I’d like to talk to you about the shooting on Saturday night.”

  “I’ve already talked to the police.”

  “I’m a private investigator, Mrs. Parmenter. I work for Ruth Franklin Raynor.”

  “Well,” she said, her tone letting me know exactly what she thought of my credentials. “How do I know that?”

  “You can call Mrs. Raynor’s attorney. His name is Bill Stanley. Or my attorney, Cassie Taylor, at Alwin, Taylor and Chao. Both can vouch for me.” I gave her the phone numbers and she asked me to repeat them, which I did, slowly.

  “You just wait,” she said.

  The speaker went dead. I could understand her caution, born of necessity to survive the urban environment, underscored by the murder that took place in this building. While I waited, my eyes went down the list of tenants on the third floor. Next to the number 301 was the legend “L. Cope
land,” while the same space next to unit 302 was empty. I wanted to talk with the tenants of these apartments. Both units were at the front of the apartment building, their doors opening on the wall just to the left of the elevator, sharing with Ruth Raynor’s apartment the wide hallway outside the laundry room. If they had been home the night of the murder, maybe they’d heard or seen something.

  I took a seat on the concrete planter where I’d waited for Ruth on Friday afternoon. I looked across the street at the construction site occupying the lot on the corner of Forty-first and Howe but I didn’t see the homeless woman. Fifteen minutes crawled by. It was the middle of the afternoon, too early for the working crowd to come home from their Monday labors. Aside from the activity at the construction site and at Kaiser Hospital, two blocks away, the neighborhood seemed to be taking a siesta.

  I stood up, impatient, and debated punching Mrs. Parmenter’s intercom button again. I walked to the double glass doors that barred my entry into the building and peered into the lobby just in time to see two people step off the elevator. One was the elderly woman Ruth and I had encountered in the hallway Friday afternoon. She wore white sneakers, lime-green sweatpants, and a lemon-yellow T-shirt. Her white hair was short and stylish. She held the arm of a muscular young man who wore garish neon pink and orange shorts and a purple tank top. The two of them were so bright they lit up the dark paneled walls of the building foyer. They moved slowly toward the front door, he slowing his sandaled feet to her pace. He opened the door and they both stared at me. Her eyes were blue, sharp and suspicious; his were brown, curious and amused.

  “Mrs. Parmenter?” Up close she looked as though she was past seventy. She didn’t give any sign that she recognized me.

  “Yes. And this is Brett. He lives down the hall. We want to see some identification.”

  I reached into my purse and brought out my license. Mrs. Parmenter and Brett examined it. “Looks okay to me,” he said, tilting his head down to her. His curly blond hair was cut short, save for a wispy tail down the back of his neck, and he wore a tiny gold hoop in his left ear.

  “I don’t hold much truck with lawyers,” Mrs. Parmenter told me, “so I called the police instead. Sergeant Hobart said you were okay.”

  I mentally thanked Wayne Hobart for putting in a good word about me, or at least a neutral one. If she’d gotten Sid on the phone instead, I was sure he’d have given her an earful.

  Mrs. Parmenter motioned me into the building. She was shorter than me, skinny and a bit creaky with age, her movements abrupt and jerky. She reminded me of the egrets and herons I saw along the bay shore. In the elevator I asked Brett for his last name and he told me it was Steiner. He lived in the apartment at the far end of the hall, the last door on the left, and he had lived in this building for four years. Mrs. Parmenter had been here longer, ever since her husband died ten years ago.

  When the elevator door opened on the third floor, I saw the front door of Ruth’s apartment, number 303. The yellow crime scene tape had been removed. As we stepped out of the elevator, I glanced to my left, at the door of 301, where a wreath of dried flowers hung above the number. I didn’t think the wreath had been there Friday. The door of 302 was bare.

  “Who lives in these apartments?” I asked, a sweep of my hand indicating both units.

  “Lena’s in 301,” Brett Steiner said. “The other one’s empty.”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Parmenter added, “and poor Mr. Sullivan is worried about renting it, now that a murder has happened, right here in the building.” She clucked and shook her head, averting her head from the hallway next to the laundry room, where Sam Raynor met his death.

  We walked past Ruth’s apartment, toward the other doors ranged down the long corridor that ran the length of the building with odd numbers on the left, even on the right. While Mrs. Parmenter opened the door of unit 304, I turned and glanced back, guessing the distance to Ruth’s door, on the opposite wall, as about twenty feet. Then I followed the old woman into her apartment.

  “Martha wants me to sit in,” Brett said, bringing up the rear.

  “That’s fine. I may have some questions for you too.”

  He shrugged. “I can’t tell you anything. I was out. Didn’t get home until well after the excitement started.”

  Mrs. Parmenter led the way into her living room. Her unit had two bedrooms rather than Ruth’s one, but it was similar in the layout of the kitchen, dining area, and living room. She had some lovely antiques among the furnishings, including an intricately carved walnut secretary and a large lamp table with corkscrew legs and eagle claw feet resting on glass balls. Mrs. Parmenter seemed to have a thing about ginger jars. I saw them everywhere, cloisonné and porcelain, in all sizes and colors. They stood next to the family photographs scattered here and there throughout the living room, on the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room, on the end table and the coffee table in front of the sofa. The array of furniture and accompanying dust catchers gave the room an overstuffed feeling, as though Mrs. Parmenter had once lived in a larger house and crammed her possessions and memories into this smaller space after her husband’s death.

  The sofa and wing chair were upholstered in matching floral chintz, both scattered with solid-color pillows in pastel shades. My hostess plumped the pillows on the sofa and sat down, settling herself comfortably. There was a wide-bottomed oak rocker next to the TV set on the wall opposite the sofa, its seat and back covered with a frilly flowered pad. Brett slouched into it, crossing one tanned leg over the other as he rocked gently back and forth. That left me the wing chair. I shoved a couple of pillows out of the way and sat down. They both looked at me expectantly. As I took my notebook and pen from my purse, I felt as though I were about to conduct a class.

  “How well do you know Ruth? Or did you know her at all?”

  “Just to speak to, in the hall or the laundry room,” Mrs. Parmenter said. “I’ve seen her several times over at the Piedmont Grocery, when I was doing my marketing. I knew she lived there with her little girl. Seems to be a sweet little child, though very quiet. Her parents came to visit her from time to time, a short woman and a tall gray-haired man. I saw you visiting Ruth too. On Friday afternoon, when she got home from work. Brett told me Ruth works down the street at Kaiser. Didn’t you, dear?”

  “Yeah, that’s what she said.” His head bobbed up and down.

  “I assumed Ruth was divorced or a widow,” Mrs. Parmenter continued, “since I didn’t see any evidence of a man about the place. She certainly didn’t discuss that with me. The police told me it was her husband she shot.”

  “Estranged husband,” I said. “And I’m not convinced she shot him. I wonder how he got in. It’s a security building. I saw the sign about making sure the door’s closed and not propping it open.”

  “Mr. Sullivan, the manager, put that sign up Sunday. Closing the barn door after the horse is long gone. But he’s fussy about such things.”

  “Yeah.” Brett grinned. “He and Lena, the woman in 301, had a disagreement about her propping the door open, right after she moved in.”

  “I suppose he has a point,” Mrs. Parmenter said. “That must be how Ruth’s husband got into the building. Obviously the front door wasn’t closed properly. I do hope Lena didn’t prop it open again.”

  “Or maybe someone let him in, someone who was just leaving the building.” I looked from Brett to the old woman. “Mrs. Parmenter, please tell me what you saw and heard Saturday night.”

  “I was watching a video.” Mrs. Parmenter gestured at the VCR on top of her television set. “I think it was about eleven, because it was the second video. Sometimes I rent two and have a double feature. I watched the first one, then I started watching the second one around ten. I’m sure I was midway through it.”

  I glanced at the VCR. As was usually the case, it had a digital clock readout on the front. “You’re not sure of the time?”

  “I think I glanced at the clock once or twice, but no, I’m not ce
rtain it was eleven. Well, I stopped the video and got up to make myself a cup of tea. That’s when I heard the voices. It sounded like two people arguing. For some reason, when I’m in the kitchen I can hear people talking in that hall outside the elevator. It’s just the other side of that wall.” She pointed toward the far wall of her dining area.

  “You say it sounded as though they were arguing. Could you make out what they were saying?”

  Mrs. Parmenter shook her head. “No. It just had that tone to it, if you know what I mean. So I went to the front door and opened it and stuck my head out.” From the rocking chair, Brett flashed a sudden grin. Both Mrs. Parmenter and I spotted it. The old lady tilted her chin upward with a defiant jerk. “Well, I am a nosy old biddy. I admit it.”

  “Martha knows everything that goes on in this building,” Brett said, nodding his blond head.

  “Go on, Mrs. Parmenter. What did you see?”

  “I saw Ruth. She was having words with a young man, right in front of the door to her apartment. His back was to me so I didn’t see his face. But I’d say he was tall with fair hair.”

  That description would fit Sam Raynor—and a lot of other men. “What was he wearing?”

  “Blue jeans. And a short-sleeved shirt.”

  I frowned. This was no help to Ruth. The night of his murder, Sam Raynor had been wearing blue jeans and a short-sleeved pullover shirt, a pale green knit. But when Kevin Franklin arrived at his parents’ house early Sunday morning, he was dressed in jeans and a light blue knit pullover. Both men were tall and fair-haired.

  “Once you looked out,” I said, “could you hear what they were saying?”

  “No.” She shook her head again, this time regretfully. “But I’m sure they were arguing. I could tell from their gestures and the look on Ruth’s face. I didn’t want them to see me, so I shut the door and locked it. Then I put the teakettle on. While I was waiting for the water to boil I got a handful of cookies out of the jar, and I was carrying them back to the living room when I heard this loud bang. It startled me so much I dropped the cookies. I knew it was a gun. I’ve heard guns before. My late husband used to go to the firing range to shoot his pistol. I picked up the phone and called 911. The young woman said that they would send a patrolman around to check on it.”