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

by Laura Belgrave

  Claudia heard the twang of a guitar from an old Ray Price song, and then the door slammed, leaving her alone with the rhythm of the crickets. There was nothing funny about the conversation she’d just had but she smiled anyway, finding satisfaction in the image of that fatuous little weasel jiggling the toilet handle while his guests sucked up all his birthday booze.

  * * *

  In the time it took her to swing by the 7-Eleven for gas on her way home, Chief Suggs had left two messages at her house. The mayor had apparently foregone his ice run to express his displeasure to Suggs, and Suggs had wasted no time passing it on to Claudia along with his own. She was to call him right away, “before you pick your nose or even think about lighting the cigarette you probably have halfway to your mouth right now.”

  Claudia pondered the cigarette she had halfway to her mouth. She’d cut down to half a pack a day. This one would put her over her quota by two. She lit up and went in search of an ashtray, making a smoker’s bargain to cut out two the next day. She prowled the refrigerator next and settled for another chunk of roast beef, the last of it. She chewed listlessly. If she called Suggs back while he was still raging he might fire her. And what if he did? Indian Run had grown on her—sort of—but the town wasn’t exactly the package she thought she was buying into when she and Robin settled into it some nineteen months earlier. Leaving . . . the idea was not without some merit. Unfortunately, getting canned right now would only lend weight to Bonolo’s badmouthing. That was something else altogether.

  Claudia flossed a shred of roast beef from between her teeth, then wiped her hands on a paper towel. She picked up the phone and dialed. She was as ready for the chief as she would ever be. But he surprised her. Either he’d burned through the worst of his anger or by now he’d calmed himself with a whiskey more fiery than his temper. That’s not to say he was pleased. He skipped past a greeting and got straight to the point.

  “I want you to listen, Hershey, and not talk,” he began. “We’re likely not to agree on everything that comes out of this conversation, but let’s at least agree to that much.”

  “Okay.”

  “Now the way I hear things told, you’re apparently on a mission to self-destruct. I find that I can almost live with that. What I can’t live with is you takin’ me down with you, never mind the rest of the police department.”

  “That’s a little dra—”

  “Just listen.”

  “Right.”

  “The mayor says you interrupted his private birthday party so you could read him the riot act.”

  Claudia bit her lip.

  “Now I don’t know what exactly you said to him, but I do know that showing up there at all was unauthorized as hell. It made you look bad. It made me look worse, which that silly little Napoleon was only too happy to point out.”

  “Did you hear the—”

  “Shut up, Hershey. Just shut up.” Suggs took a breath. “I spent ten minutes playing kiss-ass to talk him out of making me fire you. He enjoyed that, but in the end it wasn’t my squirming that stopped him from ousting you. He stopped short of that because he’s a politician and he was afraid that it might backfire on him with the press. The way he put is it might be seen as ‘capricious,’ what with all the hero stories that’ve been done on you.”

  They weren’t hero stories, not in Claudia’s mind. They were straightforward media accounts of a few homicide cases she’d broken. She supposed the stories were flattering to her, but she didn’t remember being called heroic. She did remember being called elusive when she refused an interview for a puff piece. Clearly, though, now was not the time to refresh Suggs’s memory.

  “The problem here, Hershey, is that you’ve become some kinda media darling. At least that’s how the mayor sees it and now, here we go again. You got the press back at our door, only this time he’s in a Catch-22 with you. If he makes like you walk on water, like Bonolo is full of shit, then Bonolo’s gonna go wild and keep the story alive. The press won’t go away. But by—”

  “I don’t believe this.”

  “—but by giving Bonolo his fifteen minutes of fame and explaining away the problem with his hero cop, Lane has himself some kind of middle ground. He gets to look like the good guy, like someone who sympathizes with everything you’ve been through and actually understands why you’d be worn out.”

  “I was not worn out. I’m not worn out now.”

  “Doesn’t matter. That’s the spin the mayor put on things and he’s not gonna change it just so your feelings aren’t hurt. And guess what? He’s the mayor. He doesn’t have to. Now you? You don’t get a spin, Hershey. You get to keep your mouth shut and enjoy the damned vacation you were scheduled to take anyway. When you get back in the office in a week, no one’ll even be thinkin’ about this anymore.”

  “You know I wasn’t worn out.”

  “Maybe you weren’t when you went into that house, Hershey. Fact is, I woulda recognized it if you were. But the judgment you used when you took it upon yourself to visit the mayor? That says to me that you are now. Have your vacation.”

  “There’s still paperwork to finish on the Hemmer case.”

  “I don’t need you. We got everyone’s statement, including yours. Face it. This one’s a slam-dunk. Hemmer made it that way himself.”

  “Someone ought to look at Bonolo for—”

  “Forget it, Hershey. While you were stewin’ in your ego I talked with the state attorney’s office. They’re not thrilled with the way things went down, but Bonolo’s got witnesses who say it was all about self defense—and your defense. Like it or not, he’s the hero this time. Not you. Live with it.”

  The phone went dead in her ear.

  Chapter 6

  Sandi Hemmer wasn’t the kind of girl who would dot the “i” in her name with a heart or a circle the size of an M&M. Once, she might have been that kind of girl. She might’ve been the kind of girl who daydreamed doodles on book covers and wondered whether coloring her hair maroon would attract the boy she’d had her eyes on all summer. She might’ve been that girl once, a girl so young and spirited that her energy would kindle sparks in anyone who stood even in its shadow. Too much had happened for Sandi Hemmer to be that girl now. The face she showed Claudia on Sunday morning was that of someone who had learned too early the distinctions between sadness and sorrow; disappointment and defeat.

  Claudia stood stiffly at the doorway of Hopper’s Motel where Sandi was staying with her grandparents. They had answered her knock, introducing themselves as Joseph and Phyllis Bayless—Hemmer’s in-laws. They looked as wrung out as she’d expected. They’d been jarred from dinner with the worst kind of news, rushed to the airport by a neighbor, and finally shuttled in the middle of the night to a camp where their granddaughter had not yet been informed that her father was dead. Claudia didn’t ask, but Phyllis Hemmer told her that Hemmer’s own parents had been deceased for years. Conversation lagged then, and they pulled the door shut so they could ask their granddaughter whether she wanted to speak to the tall cop at the door.

  A moment later Sandi appeared, her expression devoid of curiosity. Claudia introduced herself and held out the ragged Pooh bear. “Robin wanted you to have this,” she said.

  Sandi barely looked at it. She pushed unwashed auburn hair from her forehead and said, “Tell her thanks. It’s nice she thought of me.”

  Little of Hemmer showed in his daughter. In all the ways where he’d been merely average, she stood out. She had the tall, slender body of a dancer and skin so fair that her veins pulsed blue beneath it. Her eyes, though listless at the moment, were large and almost navy in color, attributes she must have picked up from her mother.

  Claudia wanted to sweep the girl into her arms. “I’m so sorry about your dad,” she said.

  Sandi shrugged. “He tried to kill you,” she said tonelessly. “Robin might be sorry. You can’t be. You’re probably glad he’s dead. You’re probably glad his fish are dead.”

  She spoke witho
ut accusation, but Claudia flinched as if she’d been slapped. “Sandi . . . it wasn’t like that. It isn’t like that. You need to know your dad didn’t try to kill me or anyone else. He didn’t hurt anyone. He wouldn’t have.”

  Sandi looked away. “Yeah,” she said softly. “Like you knew him.”

  “I didn’t know him. But I was getting to know him. He . . . Sandi, honey? Look at me. Please. This is important.” Claudia waited until the girl looked up. “You father’s gun wasn’t even loaded—”

  “I know all that. It’s all over the news.”

  “He died in my arms, Sandi. The last thing he said was your name.”

  The girl didn’t crumple. Her expression didn’t change. But her eyes grew moist and when she spoke again it was with a yearning that the single word she uttered could not conceal: “Really?”

  Claudia nodded. “Do you want to talk a little? Maybe take a walk?”

  Sandi glanced at the Pooh bear, then tossed it behind her onto a bed. When she turned back, a solitary tear showed on her face.

  * * *

  There wasn’t much around Hopper’s Motel. A gas station, coffee shop, and playground overgrown with weeds fronted it. Uneven rows of cabbage palms and yellow weeds blocked the back from a feeder road that paralleled U.S. 27. It was a destination motel for people on their way to somewhere else.

  It wasn’t yet noon, but already heat rose visibly from the asphalt parking lot. Claudia and Sandi crossed over it to the playground, neither of them speaking. A swing set with four vinyl swings, two of them broken, stood crookedly on parched grass that hadn’t been tended for months. A sliding board and jungle gym were its only companion pieces. They were in equally bad repair. Sandi tested one of the swings with her hand, then sat. Claudia hesitated, then set her handbag on the ground and slowly eased onto the swing beside her. Her thighs pressed so tightly together that she felt like someone had just given her a wedgie. The swing set creaked with her weight. She would have struggled off immediately, but thought she heard Sandi chuckle. She glanced over just in time to catch a half-moon smile on the girl’s face before she swung out of view. Claudia stayed grounded. At thirty-six she had no interest in testing the durability of her tailbone if the seat collapsed.

  A moment later Sandi skidded to a stop. “My dad was something else,” she said quietly. “This swing could be hanging by a piece of lint and he’d probably kick off and try to make his feet touch the sun. He’d try anything. Sometimes he’d get too goofy and embarrass me and I’d wish I could just snap my fingers and make him disappear. I never thought he ever would.”

  A lizard stood on the rusted cross bar of the swing, its throat expanded in a ruby display intended for a female a foot away. She skittered away, either unimpressed or playing hard to get.

  “Your dad was trying to make the house nice for you,” said Claudia.

  “I know. He was like on this . . . mission or something.” Sandi stopped swinging. She shook her head. “It didn’t start like that, but it grew into this huge war-like thing when the homeowners association kept telling him no about this and that. I told him, ‘Dad, just give it up. These people just don’t like you. For whatever reason, they don’t like you and they’re not going to do what you want.’ But he said it was all about fairness and he wouldn’t let it go.”

  Sandi picked at a scab on her arm. “It’s one of the reasons my mom divorced him. She used to tell him that he got too wrapped up in things. I heard her tell her friends that he was too intense. I was just a kid then. I didn’t get what she meant. I do now.”

  She kicked off again, swinging a little higher this time. “I didn’t even want to go to camp. Did you know that? I was only going because Dad thought I did and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. The camp is mostly about horses. Robin probably told you that.”

  “It’s all she talked about,” Claudia called out, trying to time her words with Sandi’s swings. “She wanted to learn how to ride before school started again.”

  “Not me. I’m more into doing things like drawing, but Dad didn’t seem to get that. He was even having some cowboy boots custom made for me. Turns out they weren’t going to be ready in time, but that was fine by me. I could care less about boots or horses.”

  “I understand.”

  “What?”

  “I said I understand.” Claudia sat astride a horse once, when she was four and her parents propped her on a pony’s back for a birthday picture. She didn’t remember the experience, but the picture showed her crying. “I like my feet on the ground.”

  Sandi slowed, then stuttered to a stop. Her hair was tangled and her face streaked with perspiration, and maybe some tears. “Is that why you haven’t moved an inch? You’re afraid?”

  Claudia tried not to read anything into the girl’s question, but there it was—that word again—or if not the same word, cousin to it: timid. Sandi’s expression was guileless, though, so she answered as lightly as she could. “It’s not about fear. It’s about being too big for the swing.”

  “So what? So am I.” Sandi kicked off again.

  There seemed little point in calling attention to the difference in their sizes, so Claudia gave an exploratory push with her feet. She didn’t swing so much as she rocked, but it was something.

  “Your feet,” said Sandi on a swing down, “are still on the ground,” she said as she rose back up.

  With a death grip on the rusted chains, Claudia pushed harder. When she felt something akin to liftoff, she began to pump. Her legs were too long and the swing too low for effective acceleration or height, and the entire swing set wobbled, its legs rocking nearly off the ground. Claudia would’ve quit if not for the unmistakable pleasure in Sandi’s expression every time she whistled past. She wasn’t sure what she had given the girl, but something.

  A few minutes later Sandi slowed to a stop, which was signal enough to Claudia that she could do the same. She longed to get off altogether in the worst way. But she waited, just in case Sandi had anything else she wanted to say. And she did.

  “You tried to save him, right?”

  “I did, Sandi. Yes.”

  She nodded. “I should go back in. Grandma and Gramps might start to worry.”

  “Are you leaving tomorrow?”

  “I don’t think so.” The girl was gone, replaced by the somber young woman Claudia had first met. “There are details about the house. About Dad. Gramps wants to do everything now, as fast as he can. I don’t think they can afford to fly back and forth. Anyway, they don’t want to.”

  “Will you live with them?”

  “I don’t know. Them, or maybe an aunt.” Sandi abruptly stood. “No one wants to talk about that yet. At least not to me.”

  Claudia worked her way out of the vinyl seat. Her hands were flecked with bits of rust from the chains. She wiped them on her pants. When sensation returned to her thighs she jotted her home number on the back of a business card and handed it to Sandi. She told her to call anytime, for any reason, even if only to swing again.

  They walked to the motel without speaking. Sandi didn’t turn and wave from the door. Claudia sighed and headed home, knowing that Steven Hemmer’s daughter would probably dispense with the business card without a glance. It was from an adult. Adults had let her down too often. Feet off the ground or not, Claudia was still one of them. Maybe the worst of them.

  * * *

  Among the woodwind instruments, the oboe was probably the least revered, or maybe just the most misunderstood. An oboe simply didn’t have the sex appeal of a saxophone or the coyness of a piccolo. Never mind that it was an oboe player who sounded the “A” note before concerts so that the other orchestra members could tune their instruments. The minute the note flared people craned their necks not to spot the oboist, but to see the violin players and check out what the harpist was wearing.

  Claudia didn’t mind any of that. She played the oboe because its complex tones suited her. She also played because she could wring notes from the instrument i
n a way that gave her a sense of mastery like few things in life did. But almost no one ever heard her perform except for Robin, who endured her mother’s nightly one-woman concerts with surprising good grace. Even if she didn’t, Claudia would play, anyway. The oboe transported her to a still place where the flotsam of a weary day could not reach, and she was always surprised when it failed her, as it was doing now.

  Dusk had crept up on her, its phantom gray penetrating the house long after she’d given up on a tricky piece that should’ve been a delight for its challenging depth, but had grown irritating instead. She knew what the problem was, or at least thought she did. The problem was the damned phone. Its shrill had interrupted her four times in the last two hours, but no one answered her hello any of those times. Claudia pictured shooting the phone with her .38 the next time it rang, but when it did she merely barked “what!” in a tone she usually reserved for fleeing felons. She regretted it a second later when Sandi’s voice came on, small and hesitant. Claudia assumed the earlier calls were from the girl, but feared embarrassing her by asking. She apologized for her gruffness, and asked how she could help.

  Well, Sandi said, she wondered a few things. Like was it true that Claudia was on vacation? Yes? Really? Well then, she wondered could Claudia maybe—because she was a police officer and all—could she maybe take her into her dad’s house tomorrow? To get some stuff? And maybe stop by the boot place, too? Because, see, the boots should be ready now and her dad had paid in advance, or at least left a deposit or something. They didn’t have to stay long. What? Oh. Her grandparents? Well, they’d probably do it if they absolutely had to, but they didn’t say no to the idea of that police lady going instead. She wondered . . . was this something Claudia could do?

  “I don’t care about the boots, not really,” said Sandi, her words still rushed. “I mentioned that on the swings, right? But I know Dad cares about them. He—” Her voice hitched. “He cared about them,” she said softly. “He wanted me to have them.”