Arousing Suspicions

by Marianne Stillings

  As he slid behind the wheel, he said, “The day Griffin attacked you, you told me he’d had a dream about killing a guy in an alley.”

  “Y-yes,” she said, her voice uncertain. “Why…what—”

  Pulling into traffic, he said, “Tell me about it again. And don’t leave anything out.”

  Chapter 10

  If you dream of a snake holding you tightly, you will soon meet your soul mate.

  FOLKLORE

  The crime scene was cold. From the look of things, the vic had lain for some time unnoticed among the debris choking the small alley behind the Acacia Palms Apartments.

  That he’d been overlooked was no surprise, Nate thought. Garbage pickup day wasn’t until tomorrow and the Dumpster was filled to overflowing with white plastic bags, black garbage bags, green waste bags, paper bags, rag bags, newspapers, magazines, bottles, and cans. When the elderly resident of Apartment 3C shuffled out to dispose of her trash, she’d noticed a stench emanating from behind the crammed Dumpster and called the police.

  Garbage was one thing, Nate thought grimly as he approached the old lady. But the odor of death was foul—overpowering and unmistakable, even by someone who’d never smelled it before.

  “Mrs. Sanchez,” he said, addressing the tiny woman whose milky brown bespectacled eyes were wide with obvious apprehension. “I just want to ask you a couple of questions. Okay?”

  Her lips didn’t quite curve all the way into a smile, but she nodded. “Sí, yes, okay.”

  Nate led the woman to a short brick wall that served as a planter at the corner of the ground-floor apartment and the alley. Mrs. Sanchez brushed aside some tendrils of ivy and settled on the narrow ledge, curling her bony fingers around the throat of her cotton print housecoat.

  “Mrs. Sanchez, your apartment overlooks the alley, is that correct?”

  She nodded. “Sí, yes. It is small, but the rent, it is good. And the padre is just there. Not so far for these old bones to go.” She gestured to the Catholic church across the street. “My granddaughter, she comes on the Sundays to take me to pray.” Her voice, like her papery brown skin, was frail and thin and dry.

  “So if there was any commotion down in the alley, you might hear it?”

  She shrugged her narrow shoulders. “Sometimes. Maybe.” Averting her eyes, she focused her attention on the faded pink puffs of slippers she wore.

  “Mrs. Sanchez,” Nate said quietly. “There is nothing to be afraid of. I just need to know if you saw or heard noises in the alley recently. Voices, yelling, perhaps a fight?”

  Pressing her lips together, she gave a quick nod. “I think it is maybe the drugs, yes? I don’t want to get caught in the middle of nothing.”

  “You won’t,” he assured her. “What did you hear?”

  She swallowed, glanced into the dark alley, now crazy with beams of light and activity. “There is yelling. A man. He is crying, too, a little, I think.”

  “When was this?”

  “Eh, four nights ago. I was watching the tellie vision. And then, outside the window, the noises start. A man. He screams, ‘No!’ and I am hearing the footsteps, ehm, running. Another voice I hear then. Mucho más suave, softer, see? I don’t hear the words.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I look around a little, but it is too dark.”

  Nate glanced up at the third-floor window belonging to Apartment 3C. While the window was tiny, it did command a view of the entire alley all the way out to the street.

  “Tell me what you saw.”

  “Very dark,” she said, her thin voice cracking. “I think at first there is just a shadow on the sidewalk, but it moves.” She lifted her chin, indicating the spot where the aid unit stood now, its blue and red lights swirling against the high walls of the buildings that created the alley. “Un momento, he is not moving, and then, poof!” She raised her hands in a gesture of bewilderment.

  “He? Are you sure it was a man?”

  She made a sound in her throat. “Could be man, could be woman. Very dark.”

  “What happened then?”

  “He goes down the hill, that way. It is very steep, this hill. Easier to go down.”

  Nate handed her his card. “Gracias. Usted ha sido muy provechoso, Señora Sanchez. If you think of anything else, I want you to call me, okay?”

  Taking the card, she glanced at it, then gave him a nearly toothless smile. “You look to me like a man in need of a woman to take care of him, Detective del Señor. My granddaughter, so beautiful—”

  “Sorry, Señora,” he interrupted gently. Patting her cool hand, he said, “It’s against the rules.”

  A uniformed officer escorted Mrs. Sanchez back to her apartment, while Nate sought out his partner. He found Inspector Stocker popping a couple of antacids, a scowl on his rugged face. His short gray hair was mussed like he’d been running his fingers through it in frustration, or agony.

  “You ought to get a wife, Stocker,” Nate snorted, “before your own cooking kills you.”

  Bob curled his lip and snarled good-naturedly, “Had a wife. Couldn’t keep her.”

  “Put her in a pumpkin shell?”

  “And there I kept her very well,” he drawled, “’till Jack Sprat came along. It’s been fifteen years, Darling. Like I’d ever be dumb enough to get married again, but I’ll tell you what. You go get your own ass married and if you live happily ever after, we’ll talk.”

  Nate unzipped the body bag and looked at the victim’s face. “I might just do that,” he mumbled, studying the gaping wound on the dead man’s neck. “ME says maybe a broken bottle did this? Anybody find it?”

  Bob glanced around the alley. “In all this crap? Lots of broken glass, but nothing we picked up had blood on it. Rat shit, bugs, the usual. Hard to get anything good.”

  Zipping the bag closed, Nate began meandering around. In the area where the body had been discovered and outlined with tape, he crouched and pulled a small flashlight from his pocket. A sticky black stain pooled at the spot where the old guy had fallen and bled out.

  Newspapers littered the asphalt, some saturated with blood, some not. Nate nudged the papers out of the way and shone the light on the broken green glass underneath. Most of the pieces were too small to get any kind of prints from, but he kept hunting around, finally revealing part of an intact bottle neck.

  “Hey, Bob,” he yelled over his shoulder. “Hand me an evidence bag, will you?”

  “What’d you find?” Tossing him the bag, Bob peered over Nate’s shoulder. “There’s tons of broken glass in this alley. What makes that piece special?”

  Nate used his handkerchief to slide the shard into the plastic bag and seal it. “Because it’s the only green glass near the body.”

  “So?”

  “So, maybe nothing,” he said, staring at the shard. “But most beer bottles are brown and fairly small. Not big enough to knock a man down, even an old man. Liquor bottles are bigger, but are usually made of clear glass, which is generally thin. I’m guessing the vic was slammed with an empty bottle, which would have made it even lighter, which means it would have to be a heavy bottle to begin with.”

  “Like a wine bottle.”

  Nate nodded. “Like a wine bottle, most of which are green. He has a contusion on his temple. If he was struck and the bottle broke on impact, the killer might have taken another swing at the guy with the broken piece, slicing open the carotid.”

  Bob cocked his head. “Okay, so our perp hits this guy with an empty wine bottle. It breaks. The old guy’s got to be stunned, probably down. Why take another swipe? Why kill him?”

  Nate labeled the evidence bag. “What did you find in his pockets?”

  “Not much,” Bob said. “Five bucks and change, so unless the perp got scared and ran off before he could rob the old guy, there must have been another motive.”

  “Another motive,” Nate repeated softly as he stood and switched off his flashlight. “That worries me, Bobby. That worries me a lot.”


  “Mom?” Tabitha closed and locked the front door, then turned out the porch light. As she walked through the foyer, Winkin and Blinkin came tearing out of Victoria’s open bedroom door on the second floor and down the stairs, making enough noise to rattle the walls. They sniffed her and slid their fluffy bodies around her legs. Winkin flung himself onto his back in the hopes of a protracted tummy rub.

  After cooing and complying for a few moments, Tabitha stood. “Enough for now, you two,” she said, and climbed the stairs to her mom’s room.

  Reaching the threshold, she peeked in and said, “Hey, Mom. Have the Ichabod sisters come back…Mom? Oh, God, what’s wrong?”

  Victoria sat in her nightgown and robe on the edge of the disheveled bed, tears dampening her flushed cheeks. In her fists, she gripped enough tissues to lead cheers at the next 49ers game.

  “I’b fide,” she choked, though it was obvious she was anything but fine.

  Tabitha hurried to her mother’s side and sat next to her on the rumpled white spread. Scooting closer, she urged, “First blow your nose, then tell me what’s wrong.”

  Victoria nodded, buried her face in a fistful of tissues, and blew. And blew. And blew. Tossing the used tissues into the little straw wastebasket next to the maple nightstand, she grabbed another handful from the dispenser and blew again.

  “Mom, stop. You’re moving into brain cell territory.”

  Victoria laughed into a handful of fresh tissues, but it was a choky, watery sound. “I’b glad you’re hobe, honey. How did your class go?”

  “Screw my class, what’s wrong?”

  With a labored sigh, her mother tossed everything into the wastebasket, then folded her hands in her lap. “It’s silly, really. I’m silly. Silly…and old.”

  “That’s not true, Mom,” she whispered, sliding her arm around her mother’s shoulders. “You’re not silly, but you are wonderful and beautiful, and the best mom anybody could ever have.”

  Victoria’s head bobbed up and down. “You’re my daughter. You’re biased. Not everybody in the world sees me the way you do.”

  “Such as…men?”

  Big sigh. “Such as men.”

  “Men are jerks, Mom. We know this to be true.”

  “Then God is very cruel, because there is only one alternative and I’m just not into that.” Swallowing, she lifted her red-rimmed gaze to Tabitha. “If I tell you, you’ll only laugh. I might even laugh, it’s so stupid.”

  “Tell me anyway,” Tabitha urged softly.

  Victoria’s smile was shaky, but it transformed her face into the lovely woman she was. “I guess I felt a little down today. Eleven men rejected me this week on the match site. I’d heard that while women read the descriptions and consider what the men say about themselves, men only look at the pictures.” She averted her eyes as if to say, And they didn’t like what they saw.

  Tabitha blew out a harsh breath. “Like I said, men are idiots.”

  Her mother shrugged. “I posted my best photo, but the truth is, I’m fifty-six, not twenty-six. No spring chicken.”

  “Mom, you’re letting a bunch of creeps you don’t even know make you feel bad about yourself. You’re the prize here. You. If those men rejected you, for whatever reason, you’re better off without them!”

  “I’ve never had a lot of self-confidence, honey. Your father dumping me was quite a blow. We were together for over thirty-five years. He was not only my husband, he was my best friend. Sometimes I, well, I feel such a loss, I hardly know what to do.”

  “Is that why you’re crying?”

  “Not exactly. I was tired, so I went to bed early. Just before you came home, I…I had this dream.”

  “Tell me about it,” Tabitha coaxed.

  Reaching for the nightstand, Victoria picked up a glass of water and took a few sips.

  “I dreamed I was playing a card game,” she began, setting the glass back on the nightstand. “It was a tournament, and I was a champion.”

  “What kind of card game?”

  She licked her lips. “It was Hearts. I was playing against this man, and I just knew I had a winning hand. I’d been dealt great cards and I was playing flawlessly. I was going to win. I knew I was going to win.”

  “What happened?”

  Her mother shook her head. “We started out playing in this one place, somebody’s house, and I was clutching my cards, when an official came in and said we had to move to another house. I held on tightly to my cards, because I was going to win, you see, and didn’t want to lose them. So suddenly I’m in this other house, and we’re playing, and then we’re told we have to move again. So we did, and when I looked down, my cards had changed. They were all different, but they were good ones, and I knew I still held a winning hand. But the officials weren’t letting me play. I couldn’t win if I couldn’t finish the game, and with all this moving around, they were keeping me from finishing the game.

  “Just as I looked down at my cards again, I began to worry somebody was going to trick me and I’d somehow lose. But I had such a good hand. I woke up then, and felt a tremendous sense of frustration and loss. It was…I was…I never got to finish the game, you see? I never got to win. And I so wanted to win…”

  Tabitha’s throat closed and her eyes burned with tears. She tightened her arm around her mother’s trembling shoulders. “Do you, um, want to know what I think it means, Mom?”

  Victoria smiled. “Oh, I don’t suppose I need a psychic dream interpreter, or even Freud, to figure this one out.” Her pretty blue eyes filled with more tears. “Hearts,” she whispered. “I wanted to win at Hearts. I guess you can’t get more symbolic than that, can you, Tabby? I’m a very nice woman, and I was a good wife, but your father didn’t let me finish the game. Instead of being the man he should have been, instead of working on our relationship, it was easier to dump me and move on. He changed the rules so I couldn’t possibly win.”

  “Like I said, Mom, men are…”

  The image of Nate Darling pushed its way into her head. “Some men,” she amended quietly. “Some men are jerks, like Dad and Cal. But just when you least expect it, you’ll meet somebody nice, Mom. I believe that.”

  Victoria giggled in a congested sort of way. “Men my age don’t want women my age. Younger men don’t want women my age. Hell, even those really old farts out there don’t want women my age. They all want twenty-five-year-olds, and they all think they can get them!” She snorted. “I’m angry because I really wanted to finish the game, to win, you know, at love. To have somebody at the end of my life to share with me whatever those years hold. I have what it takes, but I’m being denied. I have to tell you,” she said with a huge sigh, “that really…hurts.”

  “I know, Mom,” Tabitha whispered. “I understand completely.”

  Victoria sent her a wryly tilted smile. “Thank you for letting me have a pity party all over you. Now that I’ve gotten that pathetic little mess out of my head, I feel much better.” Adjusting her cream chenille robe, she said, “Let’s talk about you. Did you go out with some students after class?”

  Tabitha slid her arm from around her mother’s shoulder, then stood. “No, I, uh, actually, I had dinner with Nate Darling. He sat in on the class tonight.”

  Victoria’s eyes widened and her face split into an enthusiastic grin. “Really? Is he interested in you? I mean, he must be or he wouldn’t have…oh, Tabitha! He’s so smart and good-looking and—”

  “Mom,” Tabitha interjected. “Before you reserve the chapel and order flowers, you should know that it was just dinner. Nothing more. I probably won’t be seeing him again.”

  “Oh, I’m certain you will.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Because that’s what woke me up. The phone.”

  Just then the doorbell rang and Winkin and Blinkin scampered out from under the bed to scurry down the stairs toward the front door.

  Tabitha narrowed one eye on her mom. “Who was on the phone?”

&n
bsp; “Your Inspector Darling. He told me to tell you he was coming by to talk to you.”

  The doorbell rang again. With a watery smile, she said, “I’ll bet that’s him now.”

  Chapter 11

  To dream of large hands means you will soon enjoy sexual satisfaction.

  FOLKLORE

  “Good evening, Ms. March. I’m Inspector Stocker. I think you know my partner, Inspector Darling.”

  Tabitha stared up at the tall, distinguished gray-haired man at her front door, then shot a quick glance at Nate, standing a few paces behind, his gaze locked on her, his hands in his pockets.

  “I’ll explain in a moment, ma’am,” Stocker said, offering her a disarming smile. “May we come in?”

  Thoroughly confused at Nate’s tense silence, Tabitha opened the door to allow the men entry, then showed them into the main parlor.

  While the office was Tabitha’s domain, the parlor was her mother’s special world. Decorated in bashful peach tones and mossy greens, the room was cozy and inviting, reflecting Victoria’s own warmth. Her mother had strived to keep the original ambience of the era in which the house had been built by decorating with antique mahogany tables and cherrywood bookcases. Family photographs dating back to the Civil War were displayed in a variety of frames on the far wall, while Tiffany lamps and milk-glass vases added to the tasteful atmosphere.

  Indicating that the two men sit on the gold and cream brocade sofa, Tabitha took the chair in front of the fireplace. More photographs and an assortment of cream, pink, and green candles lined the mantel.

  “My mother’s not feeling well,” she said before either of the detectives could speak. “This isn’t a good time, so if you could be brief…”

  “We won’t keep you, ma’am,” Inspector Stocker assured her. Next to him, Nate seemed to have his jaw wired shut. “Inspector Darling is with me in an advisory capacity only tonight and will simply observe our conversation without contributing to it. He’s excused himself from the case because of his personal affiliation with you.”