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

by Laura Belgrave

  They were wrong about everything. Robert scrabbled to find jobs that, once obtained, never seemed to last. He started drinking. Wanda held out longer, but waitressing in Florida wasn’t any different than waitressing in Chicago. In fact, she made less money, and of that, what didn’t go to raising her babies seemed to go down Robert’s throat in a whiskey habit that sometimes turned him mean. Eventually, she went the same way. The babies—toddlers by now—received less and less attention, and ultimately wound up as temporary wards of the state. Robert didn’t seem to care, or perhaps he just didn’t notice. Wanda cared, but couldn’t stay sober long enough to be persuasive. When the kids were four and five, Robert and Wanda formally relinquished all parental rights. Before long, it was if they’d never had children at all.

  The couple never divorced. Robert spared Wanda the expense and aggravation of that process by getting himself killed in a bar fight over a perky young woman who reminded him of his wife before she’d gotten herself all worn out and ill-tempered. There was no evidence to suggest that Wanda ever remarried. Indeed, Wanda’s history grew spotty as the years unfolded. She didn’t work regularly—at least not on the books—though what work she did report showed a twenty-year pattern of wandering that eventually brought her to Indian Run. At first, her interest in the town seemed more a flirtation than a commitment. She stayed; she left. She stayed; she left. Finally, she took a job at a diner, where despite a sullen demeanor she remained for a surprising four years and may have remained longer if a gas fire hadn’t reduced the diner to rubble. What happened after that wasn’t documented, though it seemed certain that Wanda must have taken to the streets for years—jobless, loveless and homeless.

  Booey apologetically told Claudia that he’d been unable to learn when Farr’s obsession with cats began. During his endless round of phone calls, he turned up one old man who vaguely recalled seeing her about a year after the diner burned down, feeding cats—and herself—from dumpster pickings. She wound up in church shelters during inclement weather, and occasionally as a guest of the jail on charges of vagrancy. How she survived wasn’t clear. But then she got lucky—more or less. During a brief but ambitious state-driven campaign to rehabilitate homeless drifters, she was among five recipients awarded free housing in Indian Run.

  “The trailer?” Claudia asked.

  Booey nodded vigorously. “She owned it, free and clear. The state donated the trailer, hers and four others. The town donated the land. All she had to pay for was utilities. Someone must’ve shown her how to collect Social Security, because that’s what she lived on. And can you believe this—she lived in that trailer for twenty-two years!”

  “What I can’t believe is that the trailer is still standing,” Claudia murmured, thinking back to the dismal structure.

  “Guess what else?”

  “What?”

  “She wasn’t a hundred years old. She was only seventy-two.”

  Claudia said nothing to that. What was there to say? The chief had been right. Farr lived her life hard. It showed.

  “Is there any surviving next of kin?” she asked.

  “I couldn’t find any. Her father was listed as ‘unknown’ on her birth certificate and her mother died when she was fifteen. There were no brothers or sisters. She had the two little boys, but they stopped being hers a long time ago.” He sighed. “I guess she just had her cats.”

  They hadn’t spoken for the remainder of the ride to the No-Name, further discussion blotted by the thought of what lay ahead. Drowning deaths in the elderly were not common, but neither were they unheard of. As Claudia watched Booey angle for another shot on the bank of the No-Name, she hoped she could wrap this one up quickly. No one seemed to be grieving for Wanda Farr, but a woman who didn’t know she was a widow yet waited anxiously for news of the man in the pond.

  “All right, Booey,” Claudia called out. “That should do it. I’m going to call in and see what’s keeping the crime scene unit. Just sit tight.”

  “Want my cell phone?” he yelled back.

  Claudia smiled. “No. The radio’s fine.” The point was moot, anyway. No sooner were the words out of her mouth when she heard car doors slam in the distance. Five minutes later a team of crime scene technicians strode into view. A burly man in civilian dress barked orders at the others, then turned to Claudia. He introduced himself as James Rigg.

  “What’ve we got?” he asked.

  Claudia gestured at the body in the water. “Best we can figure, this is an old guy named Henry Becker, who had a history of wandering off.” She told him what little she knew, then walked the bank with him for a bit.

  “You think the old guy fell in trying to cross the bridge?”

  “Possible. It’ll hold human weight, but for how much longer I don’t know. The thing is shaky and there’s not much handrail left to grab hold of.”

  “Handrail! There’s not much bridge, period. What’s left looks like it’s held together with toothpicks. You try it?”

  She nodded. After Suggs left she’d reluctantly crossed once, slowly, half afraid to breathe for fear of making the structure sway more than necessary. It wasn’t something she intended to attempt again. But then, a man whose ability to reason had long passed might not have given it another thought. Claudia told Rigg as much.

  “You got a point, Lieutenant.” He shaded his eyes against the sun and slowly surveyed the area. “All right. We’ll get started. The M.E. is about an hour behind us, but we should be wrapped up before dark. Anything in particular you want us to look for?”

  Claudia glanced at her notes. Rigg’s crew would make detailed drawings, but she had her own rough sketch as well. Between that and Booey’s digital pictures, she probably had as much as she would likely take away from the scene for the moment. There weren’t any witnesses to interview, no fingerprints to lift, nor was there evidence of a scuffle to suggest anything but an unfortunate accident. Later, she would talk to the man’s doctor, and she’d talk to the man’s wife. Beyond that, it looked like the chief could put aside his concerns about a federal case. This wasn’t one of them.

  Rigg slapped at in insect. “Yes? No?”

  “Sorry. No. I’ll hang around, but nothing strikes me right now.”

  “Okay. By the way, who’s the carrot-top over there?”

  “Chief’s nephew. He’s . . . sort of an intern.”

  He laughed. “Aren’t you the lucky one. The kid looks like he stepped off the pages of an old Archie comic book.”

  “Some of those comics are worth a lot of money now,” she said.

  “Yep. Probably more than the kid.”

  “Actually, probably not,” said Claudia. She left Rigg standing there, and walked away to smoke a cigarette.

  * * *

  Claudia never wanted to own a cell phone. Robin called her a technophobe, but it wasn’t that. Fax machines, computers, voice mail . . . even if she didn’t exactly embrace them, she used them all, understood their value. But cell phones? From what she could see, more people used them to clarify shopping lists from grocery stores than for emergencies. Fine. They saved a buck a pound on veal with a quick call to the spouse. They spent forty bucks a month for the convenience.

  Right now, though, with darkness descending and one more miserable place to go, Claudia reluctantly asked Booey if she could borrow his. They had just settled into her car, though she hadn’t started it yet, and as she watched him fumble for the phone she fought a snap of irritation. His eagerness to please was just so damned cloying. She mumbled a “thank you” when he handed it over, then stepped out of the car and leaned against the hood to dial.

  Robin answered on the third ring—late for her—and chirped a hello.

  “Hey, hon, it’s me,” Claudia said. “I’m running late. Probably won’t be home for another hour or so. Everything all right?” Meaning: Is Brian still there?

  “Yeah, everything’s cool. Dad just ordered a pizza.”

  “Terrific,” Claudia said. She closed her eyes and
listened to the crickets for a beat. “Save me a piece?” Robin’s response was muffled, and then Claudia heard Brian’s deep laugh in the background. “Robin? Hon?”

  “Sure. I said sure, we’ll save you a piece.”

  Claudia wanted to ask what was so funny. She asked about the kitten instead.

  “Oh, Mom, he’s just so cute. Dad gave him a paper bag and he must’ve played with it for maybe an hour. Dad said he likes him because he doesn’t have to run out and buy batteries to keep him going.”

  Yeah. Like ‘Dad’ knew anything about buying batteries.

  “You’ll need to come up with a name for him,” Claudia said.

  “I know, I know. I’ve been bouncing around a few ideas. Dad’s got some ideas, too.”

  “I have a few thoughts myself,” Claudia lied quickly.

  Robin groaned. “Puhleese don’t tell me ‘Radar’ or ‘Bandit.’”

  “Nope. Nothing cop-like.” What was wrong with Radar or Bandit? “I’ll tell you when I get home.” She heard more muffled laughter, then her daughter’s voice again, telling her she had to go. By the time she got a goodbye out, Robin had already hung up.

  * * *

  People reacted to the news of tragic death differently. Most often, their eyes widened in disbelief, then shock, then horror. They wept, nearly all of them. Some screamed. Some shook so violently and unremittingly that they literally had to be carried off. Others, no matter the depth of their love for the victim, showed almost nothing at all.

  Barbara Becker fell somewhere in the middle. When Claudia quietly confirmed that the police believed an elderly gentleman found dead in the pond was her husband, she nodded once, twice, then briefly closed her eyes and cried so quietly that only her tears gave her away. They stood just inside the dimly lit foyer of the Becker house, as far as they’d made it before Mrs. Becker guessed why Claudia and Booey had knocked on the door.

  “I’m so very sorry,” Claudia said. She put a sturdy hand on the woman’s arm. Barbara Becker leaned on a cane, but in the low light Claudia couldn’t see her expression adequately enough to gauge how well she was holding up. She worried that the elderly woman might pass out. She’d seen it happen. “Would you like to sit down?”

  “I’m all right,” Mrs. Becker replied hollowly. “But thank you.” She played with a pearl necklace that rested in two thick loops against her sweater, momentarily lost in her own thoughts.

  Claudia dropped her hand, but inched closer, just in case. The woman was nearly as tall as she was, but appeared shorter, stooped as she was on the cane. Claudia couldn’t quite place her age. She might’ve been sixty—or seventy-five. Her makeup was heavily applied, though artfully so, and Claudia idly wondered whether she’d benefited from a facelift or two; her chin was firm, her flesh tight. Then again, perhaps her appearance was merely flattered by the low light and feathery hair expertly styled to frame her face.

  “As you might imagine, Detective, your news is not completely . . . unexpected. I guess it couldn’t be. But . . . my husband, my Henry—he was found in a pond? And there’s no doubt that it really is Henry?”

  Claudia nodded. “We have no reason to think otherwise, Mrs. Becker. We’ll still need a formal identification, but the body matched the description we’d been given when you reported your husband missing. The officers on the scene also found a wallet with a photo ID in his pocket.”

  She gave Mrs. Becker a minute to absorb the information, then presented a brief accounting of the discovery. She didn’t gloss over details, but neither did she offer specifics that could only be upsetting. Booey stood solemnly to the side, his own face so drawn that Claudia feared he might begin crying himself. She needed to cut this short.

  “Mrs. Becker, do you have children? Or anyone else I can call for you? A friend? Maybe a brother or sister? It’s not a good idea to be alone after something like this.”

  Mrs. Becker seemed to consider that. She pushed an errant strand of auburn hair behind an ear, then shook her head. “That won’t be necessary. I have someone who . . . well, never mind. Frankly, I think that right now, just at this moment, I’d rather be by myself. You know, Henry and I, we were so close, so . . .”

  Claudia waited.

  “Did you know that after he retired he developed a passion for model railways? No, I don’t suppose you’d know that. Of course not.” Mrs. Becker smiled briefly. “He’d spent his whole career with trains—buying them, selling them, negotiating deals for them in the U.K., Australia, and, of course, the United States. But it was his job, a career, and although we were rewarded with a handsome lifestyle because of it, it was really only after he retired that he could enjoy them.” Her face clouded over. “Then it seemed like he’d no more than started to find that passion when he started to experience moments of forgetfulness and sometimes odd behavior. I guess that’s when the Alzheimer’s began to show. It’s, well, it’s a . . .”

  She couldn’t continue, and Claudia tensed.

  Mrs. Becker wiped at a tear. “I’m sorry. I’m all right. Really.” She drew in a breath and smiled. “One day, I’ll show you his trains, his models. They’re really quite something.”

  Claudia murmured that she was sure they were, that she wished she had found an opportunity to meet Mr. Becker, said that she’d always loved trains herself, found them soothing, romantic. After that, there seemed little else to add. For a minute, she could hear them all breathing in the still of the foyer.

  “Mrs. Becker, it’s late now and I know you have a lot to absorb. Unfortunately, I still need to go over a few points, ask you some questions. They’re just routine, questions that are standard in a situation like this, but—you know, why don’t I just come back tomorrow? It won’t take a lot of your time.”

  Mrs. Becker tiredly waved a hand. “I’m not sure I understand, but I know that Henry would. He would give you a brisk nod and . . . well. Please call before you come. I imagine I’ll have to see to funeral details and . . . that sort of thing. Where have they taken Henry?”

  Claudia hated this part. “He’s been moved to the morgue,” she said as gently as she could. “I’m afraid that’s standard.”

  “The morgue! Oh, Detective, I assume you’re not going to let them leave him there! Surely he can be moved to a funeral home. We haven’t lived here that long, but I know there’s one in town. Give me a minute. I’ll just go look up the number and—”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Becker.” Claudia winced. “I’m afraid there needs to be an autopsy first. It’s procedure.”

  Mrs. Becker’s mouth opened to respond, but she said nothing. She merely looked at Claudia, swayed briefly, and slumped toward the floor. Claudia got an arm around her just in time.

  Chapter 5

  The pizza was long past its prime by the time Claudia got home, but someone had wrapped two slices with tin foil and left them on a paper plate for her. She perched on a stool at the counter and devoured both pieces. The force of her appetite surprised her. It had been a lousy day—Becker in the pond, Suggs on the war path, Farr on her mind, Brian in the house. Still in the house.

  The TV played quietly in the living room, sending random showers of blue and white light toward the kitchen. Claudia crumpled the foil and tossed it in the trash. She didn’t want to go in there. Brian lay stretched out on the couch asleep. Or maybe he was faking, trying to avoid her as much as she was avoiding him. In the last days of their marriage, that’s what they did. But now they had to talk, because this business about taking Robin for the summer . . ..

  Claudia poured herself a glass of wine and pushed herself into motion. Brian must have heard her in the kitchen because he was up now, stretching his arms and yawning. He blinked in her direction, then squinted at his wristwatch.

  “Still keeping late hours, huh?”

  “Not normally,” said Claudia.

  “Got any more of that?” He nodded toward her wine glass.

  “Help yourself.”

  Brian disappeared into the kitchen. When he ret
urned, he held up his own glass and the wine bottle. “It’ll save us a return trip.”

  “Where’s Robin?” Claudia asked. She eased into an armchair, watched Brian take his place on the couch again.

  He laughed lightly. “Better you should ask where the kitten is. She’s become joined at the hip with him.” He sipped his wine. “They’re both in bed asleep. I don’t think she was planning that, but the kitten’s like a narcotic. I moved the stereo to her room and he fell asleep on her chest while she was listening to music. She was out like a light a second later.”

  Claudia picked up the remote control and aimed it at the TV. She pressed the mute button, but didn’t turn it off. Her hands felt clammy.

  “You used to do that when we were married,” Brian said.

  “Do what?”

  “Turn off the sound, leave the picture on, as if you couldn’t bear the thought of being alone with me.”

  “It’s just a habit, Brian. Don’t read things into it.”

  They fell silent again. Claudia turned her eyes to the screen, weighing how best to say what she had to say. For him to take Robin for the summer—unthinkable. “We didn’t get a chance to talk yesterday,” she said at length. “The kitten, the store . . . time just got away from us.”

  “Yeah. And I know I came at you from left field. I’m sorry for that.”

  “Why, Brian? Why now? What’s changed in your life that you want to spend time with Robin? We’ve been divorced for almost eight years and in all that time you’ve visited her—what? A dozen times? You’ve missed every single thing that’s been important to her since she was seven. But now, here you are, wanting her for the entire summer. I don’t get it.”

  Brian went to fill their glasses. Claudia put a hand out. “No. Tell me what’s going on.”