Left Holding the Bag

by Carol Dean Jones

  Amber knew the young man Courtney had been seeing, and she made it very clear that she didn’t approve. “His name is Douglas Kester. We knew him back in junior high,” she offered. “He was a few years ahead of us and really wild. I tried to talk her out of dating him, but she felt lucky that a college boy was interested in her.”

  Suddenly her eyes grew very wide. “Do you think he had anything to do with Courtney’s murder?” she asked, looking from Sarah to her mother and back to Sarah with a fearful look on her face.

  “Do you think he did?” Andy asked. Andy had left most of the questions to Sarah but felt compelled to pursue this himself.

  Amber was quiet. “I don’t know,” she finally responded thoughtfully. “I didn’t like him, but…I don’t know. Are you going to be talking to Doug?”

  Doug? Sarah thought, wondering just how well Amber knew the boy.

  Once they got into Andy’s car, he handed Sarah the list of phone numbers. “Hang on to these, will you? You’ll probably be making the calls anyway if you don’t mind.”

  “Are we going to talk to Douglas? And did you notice she called him Doug when she wondered if he could have killed Courtney?”

  “I noticed that, but it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. I’m sure Courtney called him Doug when she talked about him to Amber.”

  “And are we going to talk to him?” she asked again.

  “Let’s see what we get from the others. This might be a better interview for Charles to do, assuming he’s willing to. I know he wants to stay on the sidelines.”

  As they drove past the Cunningham Village kiosk, Sarah said, “Drop me off at Sophie’s, if you don’t mind. I want to tell her about the interview and get all these names and numbers into her fancy recording system.”

  Andy chuckled. “It’s a rather extravagant system, but it just might turn out to be useful.”

  “Charles says it keeps her busy and out of trouble. I love my friend, but she can be rather impulsive. She’d be on her way right now to the Kester house demanding to know if Douglas killed the Waterford girl.”

  They both laughed, and neither was surprised when Sophie came rushing out of her house as they pulled up. “What happened? Did you find out who killed the girl?” she asked excitedly.

  * * *

  Sarah spent the afternoon in her sewing room. She had partially finished three projects and was beginning to feel scattered. “I’m going to finish off the feedsack quilt first,” she told herself aloud, “and get it to the quilter.”

  She then picked up her embroidery hoop wall hanging and put it into a plastic project box along with a few spools of thread in compatible colors. The wall hanging involved hand piecing hexagons together randomly until the piece was large enough to snap into an embroidery hoop. “This I can work on at quilt club meetings or sitting in the living room with Charles in the evenings,” she said to herself.

  “Are you talking to me?” she heard her husband call out from the computer room.

  “No, dear. I’m just getting organized.”

  The only other projects she had started were the pillows that she was making for the guest room. She had purchased two scrap bags of feedsack fabrics from Bernice and was going to sew them together in a crazy-quilt style, but she hadn’t worked out the details yet, so she put that project in another box and set it aside for now.

  “So you’re all organized now?” Charles called to her as she passed by the computer room door.

  “I have the guest room projects organized, but once that’s done, I have several UFOs in the cabinet that I want to get back to.”

  “Unfinished Objects!” Charles announced proudly. “See, I listen.” Sarah chuckled as she continued up the hall toward the kitchen.

  “Come on, Barney. Let’s go pull some weeds.” Barney came running, responding excitedly to his favorite word – ‘Go.’

  * * *

  Charles was again sitting across the desk from his friend and ex-superior, Lt. Matt Stokely. Matt’s desk was covered with file folders, and he was making notes on a yellow legal pad. Charles waited quietly until Matt indicated he was ready to listen. Finally, the lieutenant laid his pen down, sighed, and looked directly at Charles.

  “So what is it now, Charlie?” There weren’t many people left at the station that still called him Charlie. Most of his cohorts had retired long ago. Matt still hung in despite departmental encouragement that he retire. “It can’t have anything to do with the Waterford case, I’m sure,” Stokely continued, “since you assured me you aren’t going to get involved with that in any way.”

  Charles shrugged, feeling sorry that he wasn’t able to tell Matt about his friend’s efforts. At least he wasn’t personally involved. At least not much.

  “I do have something to tell you about that case, but it’s not because I’m involved. It’s because Sarah is friends with Darius’ foster-mother and she shared something with Sarah that I think you need to know.”

  “Okay,” Matt responded with a deep sigh of resignation. “What is it?” He looked tired, and Charles wondered if he was sleeping. The sparkle he had always had in his eyes had long since faded.

  “She got a call from Darius,” Charles said, wishing he had better news to give his friend.

  “What?” Charles thundered. “The foster mother?”

  “Yes,” Charles replied.

  “Does Halifax know this?”

  “Not that I am aware,” Charles responded, glad that his answer confirmed his lack of involvement in the case.

  “Not that you know of?” Stokely shouted. “Didn’t you ask?”

  “That might have been construed as ‘interfering in the investigation,’” Charles responded calmly, trying not to let the sarcasm in his voice be too obvious.

  Lt. Stokely’s face was beet red as he picked up the phone and demanded, “Get Halifax in here right now.”

  Charles watched as his friend pulled an almost empty pint from his desk drawer and added the remainder to his coffee. He remembered another officer who had done the same, leading to the end of his career. “It’s time for you to retire, Matt,” Charles said in a gentle tone.

  “I know,” his friend muttered as he pushed the mug aside. “But there doesn’t seem to be much reason now that Doris is gone.” The two men remained silent, Charles because he didn’t know what to say, and Matt because he never talked about the sudden and tragic death of his wife the previous year.

  Detective Halifax tapped on the door and stuck his head in saying, “You wanted to see me, Lieutenant?”

  “Have a seat,” Matt responded, sounding somewhat more in control.

  “Lieutenant,” Halifax said once Matt explained about the phone call, “there’s no way I could have forced that information out of the woman if she didn’t volunteer it. She’s not a suspect. She never let on in any way that the guy had contacted her. In fact,” he added, “I asked her more than once.”

  “Well, we can sure interrogate her now,” he responded. “She lied to an officer and withheld information in a murder investigation. Those are crimes in any state.”

  “Do you really want to go after this woman?” Charles asked, momentarily stepping out of his bogus role as an uninvolved bystander.

  “I guess not,” Stokely responded resting his elbows on the table and burying his face in his hands. “I just wish we had something – anything. The Chief is on my back about this. He wants it solved now. He’s got the governor on his back. I hate politics,” he muttered as he stood and nodded toward the door, apparently dismissing the two men.

  As he drove home, Charles reflected on the years he had worked for the department and, for the first time, acknowledged that his stroke and subsequent retirement had been a lucky thing. I’d be dead by now, he told himself, contemplating the effect that continued stress would have had on his body.

  Charles vowed to have a serious talk with Matt about retiring. He remembered a time when Matt was full of energy and life – a good-natured man, fun to be aro
und. Charles reflected on those years and had to admit that every good time he could remember with Matt involved Doris as well. The Stokelys had never had children, and when he lost his wife to a drunk driver, he threw himself into his work. He’d been eligible to retire for the last couple of years but hung in, probably because it was the only life he had any more. And now the political pressure, Charles mused.

  Charles vowed to stay on his friend about retiring. They could find things to do together. “Who knows?” he said to himself. “Maybe I could sit in that row boat in the middle of the lake with my friend, at least once in a while. It doesn’t sound all that bad. A little boring maybe, but not bad.”

  Chapter 15

  The next meeting of the Undercover Sleuth, as Sophie was now calling their rogue investigative team, was much livelier than their first one. The group spent the first half hour touring Norman’s luxurious condominium in the Barkley House, a new high-end building on the North side of town overlooking the lake. His unit was on the nineteenth floor which was, in fact, the top level but he discouraged his friends from calling it the penthouse. “Too pretentious,” he had said. Two sides of the living room were windowed, floor to ceiling and overlooked a wraparound balcony lavishly decorated with greenery. “Most of that will come inside this winter,” Norman commented.

  Sarah had never noticed how humble Norman was, sidestepping and downplaying all compliments. “He’s quite a catch,” she whispered to her friend Sophie with a wink. “He’s done very well for himself.”

  “Oh stop,” Sophie responded with a dismissive hand gesture. “You know I don’t care about that kind of stuff.”

  “Well, at least he’s comfortable,” Sarah added.

  “Who wouldn’t be in this place,” Sophie responded, looking around for the dining room. “Where do we eat?”

  “Right this way,” Norman called right on cue, directing his guests into the dining room. The table was not only large enough for the six of them, but another dozen or so would have been able to join them. Pushing a button, he remotely opened the curtains exposing another view of the lake and the waterfront park.

  Norman had just finished pouring wine and making a toast to their sleuthing success, as he put it, when two serving people entered the room. Each guest was served a delectable meal consisting of a Cornish hen, mushroom dressing, and asparagus with hollandaise sauce. The meal was followed by coffee and a scrumptious, artery-clogging dessert which caused Charles to swoon as he lifted each bite to his mouth.

  “Do you suppose he had this meal catered?” Sophie asked Sarah when they were alone later in the evening, and Sarah responded that if Norman cooked the meal himself, she must marry him immediately.

  They took their wine glasses and settled down comfortably in the living room for their meeting. Andy and Sarah had the most to report. After talking about their meeting with Amber, Andy explained that the girl had given them a list of some of Courtney’s other friends. Sarah had contacted the parents and, with the exception of one family, had received permission to talk with the teens at a local coffee shop where the group got together on Friday nights. All of the parents were concerned about what had happened to Courtney and seemed pleased that someone was looking into it besides the police. One father, himself a private detective, had said, “When politics are involved, an investigation can really get fouled up.”

  Sarah and Andy went on to report that on the previous Friday night they had met Amber and her mother at the coffee shop and Amber had introduced them to Courtney’s friends. To Sarah’s surprise, they seemed eager to talk about Courtney and particularly her rather wild habits.

  “She was just asking for trouble,” one of the boys had said shaking his head soberly. Although no one in the group confessed to drinking themselves, they pointed out that Courtney frequented a bar on the west side of town and, before she met Douglas, had a reputation for picking up older men.

  “Did her parents know?” Sarah had asked.

  “According to Courtney, they didn’t care,” one girl volunteered.

  “I’m not sure I believe that,” Amber had added. “I’ve known Courtney since sixth grade and her mother always seemed to care about her. I think they had a pretty good relationship, but her father wasn’t around much.”

  “I wonder if we should talk to Courtney’s parents,” Norman speculated.

  Charles responded, shaking his head and saying, “Absolutely not. That would definitely be interfering with the investigation, Norman. No way can we go near her parents.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Norman replied, “but I feel as if we’re missing a vital piece of information.”

  Andy went on to explain that he had visited the bar the previous night. “The bartender said that the last time he saw her, she was leaving with a scraggly looking guy in his early twenties.”

  “The description sounds like Darius,” Sarah said.

  “I went back this morning and showed him the picture,” Andy added. “It was Darius.”

  “I don’t guess there was really any question in our minds that she left with Darius since she was found in my car,” Bernice said.

  “Not necessarily,” Charles interjected. “Someone else could have stolen the car and taken Courtney.”

  They went on to discuss the possibility that Douglas, the current boyfriend, might have played some part. Charles reported that he’d done a computer search of the law enforcement databases and couldn’t find anything on him. “Of course, that can just mean he hasn’t been caught. He’s skirting the law just by going out with an underaged girl.”

  “Were you able to find out why they might have been driving to Tennessee?”

  “Amber spoke up and said that Courtney was just leading Douglas on,” Sarah responded. “She had this guy down in Tennessee that she met online. She told her friends they were in love, but actually, they’d never met. She wanted to go to Tennessee and surprise him according to Amber. Andy and I suspect that’s where Darius was taking her.”

  “It would be like him to do that,” Bernice added. “Sure, he made a lot of bad decisions, and this was probably one of them, but he was always ready to help people when they were in trouble. He understood having trouble…”

  “Charles, do you have anything to tell us?”

  “I haven’t found anything helpful on the department’s computers. Detective Halifax is still assigned to the case, but they haven’t entered any updates on the investigation. Due to the politics involved, they’re playing their cards close to the vest.

  “I also scanned for similar crimes between here and where the car was found,” he continued. “There were a few carjackings, and I realized that could be a possibility. Of course, they could have picked up a hitchhiker who turned on them. There was a jailbreak in southern Kentucky at about that time, and it’s conceivable that they picked up a couple of convicts on the run, but I think that’s pretty unlikely.”

  “That’s a scary thought,” Sophie commented as she grabbed another card and entered it.

  “The two guys took off from a minimum security facility, both there on drug charges and I didn’t see any reference to them being dangerous. My gut tells me that’s not the route to follow.”

  “Bernice?” Norman began. “Have you thought of anything that might help us?”

  Bernice became flushed and dropped her eyes for a moment, but then raised her head and said, “I have a confession to make. I should have told you folks at our last meeting, but I’ve told Sarah, and now I want to tell everyone.” She proceeded to describe the message on her machine from Darius and attempted to explain why she had kept it to herself. “I should have told the detectives. I guess I was still somewhat under his spell. He asked me not to tell, and I didn’t.”

  “I told Lt. Stokely and Detective Halifax earlier this week,” Charles offered. “Of course, he wished they’d known earlier because they might have been able to trace the call, but they understand and are moving on. Thanks for telling everyone tonight, Bernice
. I know that was hard.”

  “I’m just so ashamed of how I’ve allowed myself to be taken in by this young man,” Bernice said apologetically.

  “You raised the boy, Bernice,” Sarah responded. “You’re the only family he knows, and he’s like a son to you. I think it’s admirable that you have stuck by him and trusted him over the years.”

  “I agree,” Andy chimed in while the others nodded in agreement.

  “The positive thing we can take from this information is that we know now that Darius is alive,” Sarah added.

  “Good point, Sarah. So, does anyone have anything else?” Norman asked.

  “One other thing,” Charles added. “I told Sarah that I’d be willing to interview the boyfriend, Douglas Kessler. He might have reason to go after her considering she dumped him for what she thought was a quicker way to get to Tennessee.”

  “Good idea, Charles. Just don’t get yourself in trouble with the lieutenant,” Norman commented.

  “If there’s nothing else…” Norman began, but Charles again spoke up.

  “There’s still that Capello issue. I’ve tried unsuccessfully to get the department interested in looking at the political aspect of this.”

  “You think Capello could be involved?” Andy asked. “Do you think he’d go to such lengths just to win a local election? I mean, we’re talking about murder here.”

  “Maybe it was intended to be a kidnapping just to distract Waterford long enough for Capello to make some headway with the voters,” Charles suggested.

  “I don’t know how we could look into that…” Norman pondered.

  “I’ve already come up with how to deal with that one,” Sarah interjected, “but I’ve been shot down.”

  “How’s that?” Bernice asked.

  “I suggested that Sophie and I volunteer to help at their campaign headquarters. We could keep our ears open and find out what’s happening on the inside. Charles says it's too dangerous.”