The Claudia Hershey Mysteries - Box Set: Three Claudia Hershey Mysteries

by Laura Belgrave

  Dennis and Claudia spent forty minutes chasing off bugs and foraging for drug paraphernalia in the small clearing. She was tempted to try and pick up the trail Markos’ distributor used to and from the highway. But no. Let Suggs assign someone who gravitated toward the outdoors. The gnats were after blood.

  “You having a good time?”

  Startled back to the present, Claudia looked up and smiled. “The lake’s really peaceful,” she said truthfully.

  “No pun intended, but I figured you’d get hooked,” Dennis said.

  Claudia rolled her eyes and told him not to be too hasty in his assessment. As profound as the lake was in its beauty, fishing in likewise invited occasional anxiety. Claudia judged the Dennis’ vessel reasonably sized as boats went, but it moved unpredictably. The water itself reached depths of fifteen feet in places and it harbored sinister marine life. Snakes slithered at the lake’s edges. Logs metamorphosed into alligators. Kamikaze flies the size of pecans and with the raspy volume of lawn mowers swooped cantankerously. Small wonder that Robin refused to come along.

  When Dennis offered Claudia a chance at the tiller, she politely declined. She rummaged for a cigarette and lit up while he slowly maneuvered the boat to a new spot. A thin wisp of smoke curled skyward, then vanished. Claudia studied the thin tube between her fingers. In another week, maybe two, she planned to give them up again. Things could kill you.

  Of course, death could come at you from any direction. Look at the Reverend Donna Overton. In the end, cigarettes were the least of her problems. Hell, the woman had barely gotten past the first cigarette in a fresh pack when she made the mistake of opening her door, and there death stood.

  “Let’s try our luck here,” Dennis said. He cast out. “The guy at the camp says the bass go deep this time of year.”

  “What? Oh, sure. Sounds good to me.” Claudia recklessly let out line, her thoughts still on the dead medium.

  How very ordinary that night must have seemed. The woman had come home, dropped her purse, kicked off her shoes, and made for the kitchen—something like that. Paused to get a glass of water from the tap, and pulled out a cigarette. Dropped the pack on the counter. Maybe wondered if there was anything worth watching on TV at that hour. Or maybe she would just smoke her cigarette, and turn in for the night. Maybe—

  Claudia moved so abruptly the boat rocked. She looked at the cigarette in her hand.

  Goddamn!

  “Dennis, we’ve got to go back, right now,” Claudia said. She doused the cigarette in the water and dropped the stub into an old coffee can Dennis used for litter. “There’s something I have to do.”

  “Whoa, whoa.” Dennis shaded his eyes with his hand, peering questioningly at Claudia. “I don’t get it. What’s the rush?”

  “I need to get to the 7-Eleven.”

  “Now? Right now?” Dennis’ face registered exasperation. “What do you need that can’t wait?”

  “It’s not what I need that can’t wait. It’s what Donna Overton needed that couldn’t wait.” Claudia started to reel up her line. She stopped long enough to glare at Dennis until he began taking his in, too.

  “Okay, okay,” he said, surrendering. “We’re back to turkey for Thanksgiving.”

  Claudia laughed shortly. “Actually,” she said, “I’m not done fishing. I’m just going to fish in another place.”

  Chapter 21

  Claudia jabbed the fast-forward button on the VCR and fidgeted while the video tape ran to the end. She punched stop, then hit reverse and backed the film up. Too much. Then too little. On the fourth effort the film paused precisely where she wanted it. Lucille Schuster’s coquettish face swam into focus. She was handing cash to the medium and saying her goodbyes.

  Lots of background chatter: A woman chiding someone for slopping a drink on her; two men debating the administrative savvy of the junior high principal; a voice whining that they were running out of ice; someone crabbing about a kid who egged his car.

  And then, yes! There, by God, there it was. Overton was sorting through her purse, digging out car keys, but then still rooting around.

  Claudia hunkered lower in her chair. She rested her elbows on her knees and her chin on her hands and watched. The medium, mild annoyance crossing her face like a shadow, looked up at Lucille. “Damn. I don’t suppose you smoke?” she asked.

  And then, Schuster, a little haughtily: “Sorry, never picked up the habit.”

  Lighting her own cigarette, Claudia leaned back in the chair. Other than Sally, the dispatcher, and an occasional patrol officer who wandered in, Claudia had the police station to herself. And damn good thing, Claudia thought. Suggs would have a coronary if he thought Claudia were dickering around with the tape.

  In an irritable moment the evening before she’d made the unpardonable error of curtly suggesting to a radio reporter that he should think, just for once, think, not only about the repercussions of calling her at home (and how had he gotten her private number?), but about the possibility that there just might be other suspects besides Markos. Were all reporters equally brain dead? Did they always move in packs, bloodhounds bent on only one scent? Caught off guard as she was and annoyed as hell, it all just slipped out. That she didn’t elaborate seemed not to matter. The reporter seized on her comment about suspects. He edited her observations about the press, then aired the remark about Markos as a live exclusive during every news break.

  Plugged as tightly into the community as a wine cork, Suggs learned of the broadcast within minutes of its first airing. Before calling Claudia he waited just long enough to hear the report first-hand. Then he got her on the phone and for twenty minutes treated her to invective dependent on every barnyard profanity he could summon without losing breath. Afterward, he personally stomped to the radio station to set the record straight. In a honey-spun voice he told the reporter that Detective Lieutenant Claudia Hershey was “in error,” her judgment “understandably” clouded by exhaustion. Did the reporter know the police had been putting in eighteen-hour days? He rambled at length, repeatedly denying that anyone but Markos need apply for top billing in both of the mediums’ death.

  Feeling blessed, the reporter launched the second exclusive before the chief roared out of the parking lot. As for Suggs, he was not yet spent. He called Claudia back, gave her hell for another half hour, and told her to keep her damned fool mouth shut and her damned fool hands off the case. It was closed. Period.

  Except it wasn’t. Claudia put the end of the video through its drill one more time, but there was no doubt. The Reverend Donna Overton, bona fide medium and nicotine addict, had run out of cigarettes. Smokers didn’t idly shrug that off. Which meant that if Overton wanted a cigarette badly enough—and Claudia assumed she did—then the medium had to stop somewhere on her way home to buy a pack. In Indian Run, the only store open at that hour was the 7-Eleven, just about midway between Schuster’s house and the medium’s.

  With effort, Claudia pushed aside her mounting excitement. It was a shot in the dark, nothing more. Markos’ shirt, stained with Overton’s blood, certainly counted for a lot. Claudia couldn’t explain it. Still, she noticed her fingers trembled slightly as she riffled through Overton’s case file, looking for the crime scene report. But yes—there it was. Among the potential evidence inventoried was one unlit cigarette, found on the kitchen floor. The pack Claudia believed it came from was on the kitchen counter, and it showed two cigarettes missing.

  Donna Overton had driven to the 7-Eleven and purchased a pack of cigarettes on her way home. Like any smoker, she lit up immediately and finished that first one off in the car. The next cigarette, the one found on the kitchen floor, would have been her second had she not been brutally interrupted.

  Of course, it was possible that the medium had gone straight home and opened a pack kept there. But Claudia thought not. She didn’t recall seeing any other packs in the woman’s house.

  No, what had happened was the medium ran out of cigarettes, stopped at the 7-Eleve
n to buy some, and was followed home by her murderer. There might be a witness, someone who wouldn’t have given the medium a thought. Someone who might even have seen or spoken with the killer.

  It was almost six by the time Claudia got to the 7-Eleven. A couple of teenagers on skateboards outside the store scowled at her when she passed, whether making her for a cop or merely showing scorn for her adult status, Claudia didn’t know or care. She ignored them and went straight to the counter. A clerk pointed out the manager’s office.

  The manager, a skinny man with rosebud cheeks and a prematurely receding hairline, straightened when Claudia flashed her shield. She explained that she wanted to talk to the clerk or clerks who were working between ten and midnight Halloween night.

  When Claudia didn’t say anything more, the manager checked his schedule. He thumped the entry for Halloween with a long finger. “That would have been Mark Yastrepsky and Eddie Winn. They’re roommates. We call them Mutt and Jeff.” The manager smiled, and described the pair. “I always put them on the same shift.”

  “When do they work next?” Claudia asked.

  “Well, actually, they don’t,” the manager told her. He shrugged apologetically. “Unfortunately, they quit last week. We have fairly high turnover.”

  “You have a phone number for them in your files?”

  “Just a second.” The manager turned to yet another file, then recited a number.

  Claudia scribbled the number on her notepad, thanked the manager, and went to the phone booth outside. The teenagers still lurked near the door, just a few feet from the booth. Claudia glared at them until they skulked off. One of them mumbled something about “stilts.” The rest of them laughed.

  When the kids were out of earshot, Claudia slipped a quarter into the machine and dialed the number the manager had given her. She pulled her jacket a little closer around her; a wind was kicking up. The number rang three times and the moment she heard a connection Claudia began to speak. In the next moment, she realized she was talking to a pre-recorded voice. The number had been disconnected.

  Damn, damn, damn. It was going to have to wait. She slammed the phone down. As she headed to her car she noticed that one of the teenagers was already back at the booth, checking to see if the coin had bounced back out.

  * * *

  In retrospect, the most incredible aspect of Claudia’s marriage to Brian was that it took nine long years to finally disintegrate. He blamed it on the police revolver she strapped to her hip four and a half years after they took their vows. She blamed it on the women he strapped to his hip at about the same time. The divorce papers merely described their dissolution as the result of irreconcilable differences, and in reality the stiff legal document was probably more to the point. They shared far more differences than they did common ground. In fact, of common ground they claimed only music. Early on—very early on—it seemed enough.

  Brian’s skill with a piano was effortless. He was as much at home with a complex Bach overture as he was with New Orleans jazz. His fingers didn’t merely caress a keyboard; they made love to it.

  Claudia met him in an inky blue club where Brian had a three-month gig. The club, a step-down tavern in the Cleveland flats, encouraged customers to debut their talents every Wednesday night. On a girlfriend’s dare and bolstered by two drinks, Claudia toted her oboe there one Wednesday night and went solo. Closing her eyes to stave off terror and silently vowing to kill her girlfriend, Claudia drew the instrument to her lips and began. Beneath a sultry light that spun highlights through her hair, she softly executed a haunting melody made all the more ethereal by the oboe’s somber tones. To Brian, on a break and watching from the bar, she was an exotic. And to Claudia, meeting him immediately afterward, he was an electric charge.

  Four months later, they were married in a simple ceremony. Robin arrived less than two years later, and the badge, two years afterward. By then, Claudia had long come to recognize that what she originally admired in Brian as refreshingly spontaneous and cavalier was just window dressing for recklessness and irresponsibility. He couldn’t and wouldn’t hold a job. He pooh-poohed monogamy. He never put the toilet seat down.

  To Brian’s disappointment, Claudia was not the mysterious siren to whom he had been drawn. That gypsy hair? Under the bathroom’s fluorescent lighting it was merely ordinary. Her quiet nature was cloying. She cared too much about a steady income.

  They argued over money often. And eventually, having discovered that her English degree was sufficient for little more than secretarial positions, Claudia learned a weapon in order to earn a decent paycheck. Brian countered with a new playmate, the first of many. Even then, Claudia stubbornly clung to the marriage long past the time when it made even marginal sense. There was Robin, of course. Beyond that, however, giving up was not in Claudia’s nature. As for Brian, he didn’t much care one way or the other.

  They parted when Robin was seven. Now and then, when Brian thought about it, he sent his daughter a card. He called half a dozen times a year. On three occasions he arranged visits, never for more than one week.

  Claudia regretted only that she didn’t divorce him sooner. Living with him disoriented her in the way that unexpectedly rearranged furniture did. And it was that sensation that momentarily seized her the evening she returned from the 7-Eleven.

  When she opened the door to her house, her mind full-tilt on the murder investigation, she came upon a picture of domesticity so complete that she fleetingly believed she must have somehow entered a neighbor’s home. Dinner flagged its intent with an intoxicating scent of freshly cut vegetables and spice. Music—her kind—filtered quietly from a radio. Store-bought carnations set among baby’s breath sat artfully arranged in a vase on the dining room table. The house itself had been beaten into submission with a vacuum and polish.

  One hand on the door knob, the other clutching keys and briefcase, Claudia filtered the transformation. Her mouth fell into an oval.

  Giggling, Robin peeked around the corner of the kitchen. “Close your mouth, Mom. You look like you just swallowed a can of hair spray.”

  “Is someone coming over?” Claudia asked.

  Marty immediately came to mind. Somehow or another, the woman had become a part of their lives. Not a big part, but a part—a phone call here, a brief visit there, a story or joke in between. Claudia uncomfortably vacillated between liking and resenting the younger woman.

  “Unless you invited someone, it’s just the two of us,” Robin answered. “Although,” she continued, sternly poking her wrist watch, “five more minutes and it would’ve been just me. You would’ve been eating hot dogs.”

  “Sorry about that, kiddo.”

  “Never mind.” Robin adopted a mincing voice and a perfectly erect profile. “The menu du jour, Madam, features salad with a light vinegarette dressing, chicken almandine in a lovely cream sauce, cheese souffle, steamed broccoli, French bread, and strawberry cheese cake for dessert.”

  “Well, wow.” Genuinely impressed, Claudia shook her head and moved toward the kitchen. She sniffed the air. “Mmm, to what do I owe this pleasure? Are we celebrating something?”

  “Hah! I knew you’d be suspicious!”

  “Well—”

  “But as a matter of fact, there is something to celebrate,” said Robin. She disappeared into the living room. A moment later, she handed Claudia a paper. “Check it out.”

  It was an algebra test with a “B” clearly marked in red on top. The calculations meant nothing to Claudia, but she scanned the sheet as if they did.

  “That’s fantastic!” Claudia told Robin. She pulled the kid into a brief hug. “I knew you had something between those ears,” she said. “But how come you waited until Sunday night to show me?”

  Robin made a face, though her eyes reflected pleasure. “I was going to show you Friday, but you worked late. Then I started to think maybe it would be neat to surprise you like this—” Robin gestured toward the pots on the stove—“just because, you know.”


  Claudia smiled. “Yeah. I know.”

  “And by the way, you’re out of Windex and paper towels now. The windows took a whole roll.”

  In between stirring pots and getting food on the table, Robin prattled on about her day. It had taken her forever, scouring the place—and did Claudia notice she’d done the laundry, too? Dinner was a breeze—really, Mom, you ought to learn how to do more than broil—and hey, the cheese cake came out of her own little stash of money. Haw, haw. Don’t say I never bought you anything.

  They ate leisurely, exchanging stories of the day. It wasn’t until the dishes were done and Claudia flicked on the nine o’clock movie that Robin made her move.

  “So Mom,” she began when the first commercial came on, “that ‘B’ I got pretty impressive, huh?”

  “Mm-hmm. A definite step in the right direction.”

  Claudia checked her daughter’s hopeful expression and sighed. She should have recognized that the turnaround in Robin was too abrupt to ring true. There were no free lunches.

  “All right, kiddo,” she said. “Give it up. What’s on your mind?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing, huh?”

  Then: “Okay, there is one thing,” Robin blurted. “There’s this fund-raiser for the band coming up next Saturday. They’re holding a fishing contest out at the lake, and positively everyone’s going to be there. It’s like this major gig.”

  “Robin, you’re not in the band, and you hate fishing,” said Claudia, measuring her words, waiting for the rest.

  “I know, but it’s a really big deal, Mom.” Robin listed all her friends who would be going. She mentioned a few boys. “And it’s going to be supervised. The principal’ll be there. The band director. Couple of teachers. It’s going to be totally righteous. I have to go!”