Murder in a Nice Neighborhood

by Lora Roberts

  At last one of the non-uniforms came over to the tree I had staked out and squatted down for a talk. He’d glanced over Horton’s notes. I’d watched him through the back window of the bus, rummaging in my file box. That had bothered me—a lot. Private papers are not meant to be read by any bozo who comes along.

  “I’ve been through your statement, Ms. Sullivan.” He shuffled some papers he held in his hands.

  “That’s not all you’ve been through.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You should.” I unclenched my hands and folded them in my lap. “You didn’t even bother to show me a search warrant before you turned my bus inside out.”

  He had the grace to redden a little. He didn’t look like a cop at all—maybe half a foot taller than I am, with a stocky build and a lot of curly, uncombed hair in a nondescript shade between brown and gray. The fact that he wore granny glasses was disarming, somehow. But still, he’d snooped in my files.

  “In cases of violent death, we tend to examine everything with a fine-tooth comb. You’re a suspect, Ms. Sullivan. Maybe you haven’t understood that.”

  Anger and fear have an unfortunate effect on me. I turn into a raving smartass. It took a minute before I could be sure I had my mouth under control. Deep breathing helps.

  “May I see your identification?” He scowled, but he handed it to me. I took my time with it, breathing deeply and exerting control over my emotions. His name was Paul Drake, which would have been funny under other circumstances. I browsed through the rest of the leather folder that held his ID, despite his smothered protest. There was a credit card slip from a gas station, a phone message that said “Call S. 555-5578,” and a small, blurry photograph that showed several indeterminate people sitting along a restaurant bench, their arms around each other.

  I handed the leather folder back and he shoved it into his hip pocket. He wore jeans, red high-tops, and a tweed sport coat that had seen better days. Really, he wasn’t much better dressed than one of the nattier street people. I didn’t know why he was staring at me. I am fond of vegetables and had used fabric paint to duplicate some of my favorites on the gray sweatshirt that had cost $1.84 at Goodwill.

  “Your identification, Ms. Sullivan.” He held out his hand, and I cannily gave him my naked driver’s license, with no supporting documentation. He took it over to the closest cruiser and reached in to use the radio. Waiting for the inevitable, I got to my feet.

  “You have a couple of citations for vagrancy on your record, Ms. Sullivan,” Drake said when he came back. “Have to ask you to wait in the car for me, please.”

  They took my keys, and I perched on the backseat of the cruiser, maintaining as much dignity as was possible in the circumstances. People were gathered on the sidewalks, coming out of their nice little bungalows and restored Victorians. They stared at me and at the police, who were finally scraping Pigpen out from under my bus. I thought about how long it would be before I could park overnight in that neighborhood again. It helped to divert me from the real fear that occupied my mind—how long it would be before I would even see my bus. Vagabonds are notoriously easy marks to fasten on when questions of guilt and retribution come around.

  Drake hovered over the uniforms, who were having some difficulty getting Pigpen’s remains out from under the bus. In my increasingly lightheaded state, the whole operation began to resemble commedia dell’arte. When at last they got Pigpen onto a stretcher, and those shoes disappeared into the ambulance, I nearly burst into applause.

  The impulse to levity dried up when Drake came back with one of the uniforms, and they climbed into the cruiser. “We’ll talk at the office,” Drake said, barely glancing at me.

  “What about my bus?” Among the crowd at the curb, I noticed Old Mackie, muttering and shaking and eyeing the bus with his usual yearning.

  “It’s the least of your worries right now, ma’am.” Drake faced front again and we made a wide U-turn, heading toward downtown. By craning my neck I could see my bus, still surrounded by a swarm of uniforms, like bees around the hiving queen.

  Chapter 4

  I cooled my heels for a good couple of hours in a small room with no windows and no doors. It was unpleasantly reminiscent of a cell, which made me a claustrophobic wreck. They’d printed me, which added to my nervousness. Besides, my bladder was responding to all this negative stimulus by letting me know that I needed the bathroom again. After losing my breakfast all over the creek bank, I felt weak, although not in the least hungry. Waves of panic alternated with the memory of Pigpen’s glazed eyes. I wondered about the third degree that undoubtedly awaited me. Why was it taking so long? What were they up to, those minions of the law?

  There was a time in the distant past when I truly believed that policemen were my friends. That was before various events showed me differently. I now knew that policemen weren’t anyone’s friends, although some of them could be rented as friends if you had money or influence, or both. In Palo Alto, I’d always gotten pretty fair treatment from the cops, partly due to my mobility. I was careful never to park too long in one place, to keep a low profile, to retreat to the campgrounds at Butano or Portola State Park at the first sign of interest. I had learned a lot after being stopped for vagrancy a couple of times in Southern California, when I was just starting out on the vagabond life. I had thought it was all under control. And there were so many more available targets among the street people that I’d managed to avoid attention.

  Not anymore, obviously. Even if I could miraculously elude any trouble brought on by this unsavory event, I would be branded, easily visible. And I’d grown to like Palo Alto. I’d gone so far as to put down roots in the three years I’d been living on its streets. Always a mistake for a vagabond.

  It must have been after ten o’clock before I was ushered into the inner sanctum. Drake’s office was of the cubbyhole persuasion. When we were both squeezed in there wasn’t much room left over. He plopped a cup of coffee down in front of me and took a sip of his own.

  “It isn’t poisoned,” he said finally. I hadn’t touched my cup.

  “I don’t drink coffee.” I was examining the walls of his office, looking for clues about how to deal with him, with all the ranks of officialdom. It was pretty obvious that if the police felt like it, they could just write scapegoat all over me and call it quits.

  Drake sighed heavily and left the room. He came back after a minute with another Styrofoam cup. The smell of Red Zinger filled the room. I really don’t like it either, but at least it wasn’t coffee, and the warm cup was comforting.

  “According to your story,” Drake said, taking another belt of coffee, “you had a disagreement with this Murphy last night and he went away, relatively unharmed. Sometime during the night his dead body turned up under the car you were sleeping in.” He looked up from the papers he’d been reading. “That’s enough to get you in trouble right there. No camping allowed on the streets of Palo Alto.”

  “I wasn’t camping.” The defense came automatically. I pretended to sip some of the Red Zinger. “I meant to go up to Portola State Park, but I was overcome by sleepiness and just pulled over.”

  “Sure, sure.” Drake wasn’t buying it, obviously.

  “I should have taken my chances with that winding road,” I added, putting a little more straw into my bricks.

  Drake leaned back in his chair. “These other vagrancy infractions,” he said softly. “Do you have a permanent address?”

  “I have a post office box,” I said after a minute. “I have a bank account. If I were living on a boat no one would give me any trouble. What’s the law against living in a bus?”

  “No law.” He looked uncomfortable.

  “Just isn’t allowed in nice Palo Alto, huh? I’ll have to get a slot in the trailer park. Except—there aren’t any trailer parks here, are there? They’d be too tacky for these parts.”

  He shot me a look, and I shut up. Something in me wanted to antagonize him—the stupid part of
me, I guess.

  “There are, actually.” He crushed his cup and threw it away. “Trailer parks. I live in one of them.”

  This was interesting information. I tried to fit it into my preconceptions about him, and couldn’t. “There’s always Redwood City,” I muttered. The Styrofoam cup cracked in my hand, and a little Red Zinger dripped onto my sweatshirt. “This cup is politically incorrect, you know.”

  He took a deep breath. “We know, Ms. Sullivan. But it would be even worse for the environment to throw them out without using them first.”

  I set the cup back on his desk, leak and all. “Well, it’s been nice chatting with you. Are you finished asking questions?’

  “You’re not going anywhere.”

  “You charging me?”

  For a minute he just glared. “Ms. Sullivan—” He ran his hands through his hair, giving himself an even wilder aspect. “You don’t seem like the kind of woman who usually hangs out with the street people. What’s the story?”

  “There’s no story.” For lack of anything better to do with my hands, I picked up the cup of Red Zinger again. “I don’t hang out with anyone. Not them, not you.”

  “You knew who this Murphy was,” he said, scanning the report again. “You obviously buy into that lifestyle.”

  “What lifestyle are we discussing?”

  “You have no fixed address,” he pointed out, pawing through the papers that strewed his desk as if the Dead Sea Scrolls were hidden there somewhere. “The street people know you as someone who keeps to herself, who carries it to an extreme, even for them. You—”

  “Wait a minute.” It was getting warm in the room. I peeled off the gray sweatshirt with the vegetables and was down to my final layer, a pink-flowered long underwear top originally owned by a woman of immense proportions, judging from the slack that existed between my hands and the ends of the sleeves. I rolled them up four times before they cleared my wrists. “You’ve been asking after me on the street?”

  “Field work,” he said mildly. His glasses flashed when he glanced at my chest. I could have kept my sweatshirt on, but I didn’t see any reason why I should roast to preserve Detective Drake from the necessity of admiring my figure. I don’t choose my fashions to enhance the body—in fact, the reverse.

  “So what did you find out?” There was another reason why I’d have to move on. When this was over with, even if I were cleared of complicity in Pigpen’s death, there would still be people with long memories for trouble who’d be wary of me. The underground community is very tight. For those living on the fringes of society, they have a touching faith in the law. If the law fingered me as a killer, if my innocence were never proved, I would be doubly outcast.

  “Not much,” he said, giving me a look. “Rucker asked around—he knows a few of them. You’re considered friendly, but not matey. You have some nice things for someone in your economic stratum, it’s been noticed.”

  I hoped that the police were guarding my van.

  “Well,” I said as nonchalantly as I could, “there you have it. My life in a nutshell. Any more questions?”

  “Where did the nice things come from?” Drake watched me, his face impassive, his glasses catching the light.

  “I earned them.” The Red Zinger was cooler now, and actually more palatable. “I work, Detective Drake. This is America, after all.”

  “What do you work at?” The skin around his mouth tightened.

  “I’m a writer.” The word made me glance around absentmindedly for my notebook, which I had slipped into the big carryall. At least the police hadn’t got their mitts on it. “As you may know, writers make on the average less than seven thousand dollars a year. Hence, the van. I earn enough to be comfortable in it. I couldn’t begin to afford to live anywhere else unless I hang out under the El Camino underpass with the rest of the bums.’’

  “What do you write?” He didn’t back off, which was the result I had hoped for with the disclosure of my meager income. Though I prefer not to mention such vulgar topics, there’s no denying that most people will avoid someone whose income is too low even to register on the tax tables.

  “I am a literary craftsman.” His expression didn’t change. “I carry on the tradition of the scribe. I write anything, anywhere, for anyone.”

  “Like who?”

  “Grit. True Confessions. Sewanee Review. Police Story. Family Circle. The Mercury News. The LA Times. Organic Gardener. Bon Appetit.”

  He wrote them all down, wrinkling his forehead over a couple of them.

  “If you’re published, how come you don’t make more?”

  I said patiently, “There aren’t many magazines that pay a living wage, and I haven’t yet managed to crack them. Just because I write a great article doesn’t mean anyone is obliged to buy it, although I am doing better each year. To rent an apartment around here you need first and last month’s rent and a hefty deposit. I couldn’t find a room in someone else’s house for what I earn.” I sat up a little straighter. “And if I could, I wouldn’t. My life suits me fine, Detective Drake. I have everything I need, and enough leisure—”

  The office door opened. “Paolo. Sorry to be late.”

  Drake waved permission to enter. “Hey, don’t worry about it, Bruno. This is Ms. Sullivan. About the Murphy killing.”

  The other man perched on one edge of Drake’s desk, examining me with real sympathy in his tender brown eyes. “Bruno Morales,” he said, extending a hand. I shook it before I realized I was going to. “How are you feeling, Ms. Sullivan? That was not a nice thing for you to find.”

  I felt warmed through by this simple little speech. “I got sick all over the creek bank,” I confided artlessly. And then thought, Was that me?

  “So I heard.” He turned his gaze on Drake, who seemed to squirm a little. “You’re not giving Ms. Sullivan a hard time, are you, Paolo?”

  “Of course not.” Drake was defensive. “She hasn’t given a very coherent account of herself, though.”

  “How can you say that?” Morales waved some papers he held in his hand. “All witnesses should be so succinct.” He turned to me, smiling again. “Admirable, Ms. Sullivan.”

  “Thank you.” I had the wild thought that Morales had brought a kind of tea-party atmosphere with him. Any minute now he was going to offer a plate of little sandwiches and ask me how my family was.

  “Is there someone you would like to call?” His nice face was worried. “The clerk says you haven’t even called a lawyer yet.”

  “Do I need one?” I knew a lawyer to call. But like most of the world, he was hung up on payment. And I didn’t care for the kind of payment he had suggested in the past.

  Morales considered it. “No, not exactly,” he said at last. “We don’t really have grounds enough to charge anyone yet.” He bent his limpid gaze on me. “You wouldn’t happen to know where Mr. Murphy spent most of his time, would you?”

  I stared back gravely into those warm brown eyes. “I never visited his pied-à-terre, if that’s what you mean.”

  His face relaxed a bit. Of course they knew where Murphy hung out. They’d been talking to all the street people. Those folks wouldn’t tell more than they could get away with, but Murphy was probably no more popular with them than I was.

  Drake leaned back in his chair, not quite smiling. I glanced from Morales to him. “Is this your usual method?” They both stared at me blankly. “Good cop, bad cop? He”— I pointed to Drake—“scares the suspect, and you come along and apply balm.”

  Neither of them bothered to reply. They chased me around the same old territory for a little while longer, and then a distraction came up. The surfer boy that I’d seen earlier came in.

  “Rucker.” Paul Drake stood up to greet him, taking the inevitable sheaf of papers from him. “What’s new?”

  Rucker looked at me, hesitant, and Drake gestured him into speech.

  “Talked to an old guy they call Mackie. He said he walked past Ms. Sullivan’s vehicle early this m
orning.” Rucker glanced at me, both apologetic and accusing. “Says he spoke with Ms. Sullivan here and tried to tell her there was a body under her bus, but she didn’t seem to catch on. She was eating breakfast, he said.”

  All the masculine eyes in the room were fixed on me. “So that’s what he meant,” I said. “I thought he was just talking about the broken glass.”

  “This man could be a witness in your favor, Ms. Sullivan. Why didn’t you tell us about your encounter with him?” Morales shook his head sorrowfully over my lapse.

  “Old Mackie is not exactly the most reliable character witness,” I pointed out. “And I didn’t think you should be pestering him. He’s old and—and not well.”

  “Drunk as a loon, he was,” Rucker said bluntly. With him in the doorway, the little office was crowded and hot. I didn’t mind the lack of space—I’m used to that. But the heat made me wish I’d put on something short-sleeved that morning under the long underwear top. I don’t mind cold too much, but heat bothers me.

  “We expect a full account from you of every little thing that happened to you from your meeting with Murphy last night on,” Drake said softly, his eyes hard behind his wire-rims. “Anything else you’ve neglected to tell us?”

  I thought for a minute. “I had an orange for breakfast,” I said innocently. “But then, you probably know that already.”

  Morales’s mouth twitched, but Drake wouldn’t loosen up. “I mean it, Ms. Sullivan,” he snarled. “If you’re not the guilty party in this whole setup, does it occur to you that someone planted a dead body right where it would do you the most harm?”

  There it was in the open, a thought I’d been suppressing rather successfully. “Actually,” I said, “it has. And if you want to know who would do that to a sweet young thing like me, the answer is—I don’t know.”

  I couldn’t keep the tremble out of my voice, and it seemed to occur to Drake for the first time that he’d been hot-boxing me for a quite a while.