Murder A La Carte

by Nancy Skopin

  “Do you have five dollars?” I asked, as I printed the form.

  Scott reached into his jeans pocket and came up with some change.

  “Close enough,” I said.

  We both signed the contract and I asked Scott if he wanted a copy.

  “Yes, please,” he said.

  Considering all he had been through, Scott was extremely composed. I may not know much about children, but I study psychology in my spare time and I could tell that something in Scott’s life had caused him to mature beyond his years.

  “Call me before school tomorrow,” I said.

  “Okay.”

  He rose from his chair and walked toward the door, studying his copy of the contract as he went. When he reached the door he turned back to me. “Thank you, Hunter,” he said. There were tears in his eyes. He turned away quickly and I resisted the urge to follow and make sure he got where he was going safely. It was chillier than usual for December on the California coast, but at least it wasn’t raining. He’d probably be fine.

  Chapter 2

  After Scott left, Buddy looked across the desk at me as if to say, “What are you going to do about this?” Sometimes I imagine he has human characteristics. I looked back into his big chocolate-brown eyes and said, “I’ll take care of it.” He tilted his head to one side while I called Bill Anderson.

  Bill and I have been dating since last July, when the mother of a young woman who was brutally murdered hired me to investigate because she was unhappy with the local homicide dicks. Bill was one of the dicks in question. He’s thirty-seven and just under six feet tall, slim but muscular, and has a brilliant smile, black hair, and hazel eyes. He has some issues with the way I work, but that’s pretty much the only thing we argue about. Two months ago Bill suggested we try living together. I vetoed that idea, unwilling to give up my freedom and privacy to that extent; however his occasional overnight visits are just fine with me.

  The phone rang once before he picked up.

  “Anderson,” he said in a gruff voice.

  “Tough day?” I asked.

  “Hi, Nikki.”

  My heart warmed at the change in his tone of voice once he knew it was me. I’m pretty crazy about Bill. Most of the time when I’m with him I feel like life is full of hope and promise. Unfortunately, feeling hopeful scares the crap out of me.

  “I have a new case,” I said. “Gloria Freedman’s son just left my office.”

  “Scottie?”

  “Yeah. How old is he?” I wasn’t convinced Scott had been honest about his date of birth.

  “He’s nine, but he’s small for his age. He should be in school, damn it.”

  “His mom is dead. Maybe he doesn’t feel like going to school. What can you tell me?”

  “Nothing, right now. I’ll talk to you tonight.”

  Bill works in a bullpen-type environment with a bunch of other detectives and can’t always talk about an ongoing investigation with me, or anyone else who isn’t in law enforcement. Knowing this doesn’t stop me from asking.

  “What would you like for dinner?” I asked.

  “Is this a domestic bribe?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “In that case, I’d like a large Hawaiian pizza and a nice bottle of Cabernet.”

  “How late are you working tonight?”

  “I’ll probably get off around six.”

  “I’ll see you then. I have to do a survey in San Francisco later tonight. Would you mind Buddy sitting?”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem.”

  We said goodbye after muttering the usual endearments that I know Bill finds embarrassing. Serves him right for being such a guy.

  Buddy was still watching me when I hung up the phone.

  “That was Bill,” I said.

  Of course, he already knew that. Buddy has extrasensory hearing. He can hear Bill’s Mustang when it exits the freeway almost a mile from the marina. His ears perk up and he starts running laps around the office until I hook his leash to his collar and walk him out to the parking lot. The same thing happens when we’re aboard the boat, except instead of running laps he just lets himself out of the hatch and stands in the pilothouse waiting for me to open the door.

  I made a quick call to my best friend, Elizabeth, and invited her along for the San Francisco job. The restaurant I needed to survey tonight was one of her favorites because it’s often filled with celebrities. Elizabeth lives aboard a trawler not far from where my sailboat is docked. She enthusiastically agreed to accompany me to the city, and I told her I’d pick her up at 7:30.

  After we ended the call I decided to visit Mervyn’s to see if anyone wanted to gossip about the recent murder.

  I drive a vintage 1972 British racing green BMW model 2002. Since I adopted Buddy the backseat is carpeted with short, red dog hair. When we arrived at Mervyn’s I parked in a shady spot and opened the windows enough so Buddy would have fresh air, but not enough for him to escape. I told him I wouldn’t be long. I always say that when I leave him in the car and he never believes me.

  Chapter 3

  I entered the Mervyn’s store and found my way to the boyswear department, located the wall of jeans, and turned to find the fitting room about twenty feet away. The cashier was a young Hispanic woman whose nametag read Giselle. At the moment she was on the phone, speaking rapidly in Spanish. I approached the counter and took out my PI license.

  Sometimes I pretend to be something I’m not, and sometimes I just cut to the chase and ask for information. At the moment I didn’t feel like pretending, so when Giselle hung up the phone, I presented her with my license and a business card, and asked if she had a minute to speak with me.

  “Am I in trouble?”

  “Not that I know of,” I said, smiling. “I’m handling an investigation for the family of the woman who was killed here.”

  Giselle looked around the store, perhaps concerned someone might overhear. She was in her mid-twenties, five-six, with long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. She was dressed in beige slacks and a purple sweater, and she was pretty, but I had the impression she was short on self-confidence.

  “Were you working that day?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “It was a Saturday. I work Sunday through Friday, but I was here to have lunch with Essie, my sister. Essie works Saturdays.” She flushed and her eyes darted around the store again. “Please don’t tell anyone,” she whispered. “They don’t know we’re sisters. If they find out we could lose our jobs.”

  Many retail organizations have anti-nepotism policies because working with a relative encourages collaborative shoplifting and till-tapping. I know this because I worked in retail security management when I was in my twenties.

  “I won’t say a word,” I said. “I’m only interested in what happened to the woman who was killed.”

  “I didn’t see anything.”

  She paused, and I thought maybe that was it. I waited silently, hoping for more. Finally she took another furtive look around and leaned across the counter.

  “Essie heard the woman yelling at her kid in the fitting room. She said it was terrible. That poor little boy. She was in there with him while he was trying on jeans, Essie said, and she kept yelling at him to hurry up ’cause she had better things to do. She even said she wished he’d never been born. Can you believe that? Some people shouldn’t have kids.”

  I agreed with her. In my opinion, people should be required to go through a training program and a psychological screening process before becoming parents.

  “Did Essie say anything else?”

  “No. Just that the kid was quiet, like he was used to getting yelled at.”

  So, Scott was a victim. Interesting that he loved his mom in spite of her treatment of him. Some kids will t
ake the abuse and love you anyway. Scott would have to make some difficult choices in the years to come. Most children who suffer physical or psychological abuse become either bullies or chronic victims. I couldn’t help wondering which direction Scott would choose.

  My own childhood was not without trauma. My cousin Aaron used to misbehave when no one was watching and then point his finger at me, convincing my parents that I was the one who was guilty of his crimes. I received frequent spankings and was sent to my room without TV privileges more times that I can count. I hated Aaron as a child, but now we’re sort of on speaking terms. He’s a criminal defense attorney and, not surprisingly, excels in his chosen field. My other childhood issues revolve around the fact that my mother is a former nun and my dad was born a Cossack.

  Giselle volunteered to ask Essie if she remembered anything else that might help me. I gave her another of my business cards for her sister, thanked her for her time, and left.

  When I got back to the parking lot it looked as though Buddy hadn’t moved since I’d entered the store. His nose was pressed against the window and he had been watching the door he’d seen me go in through.

  “I came back again,” I said, as I unlocked the car.

  He sighed heavily and curled up on the back seat.

  Chapter 4

  Nina Jezek worked a swing shift data entry job and attempted to sleep during the day. The dreams didn’t bother her so much now that she knew they were actually memories. She had started having them a few weeks after her twenty-seventh birthday, which was the night her father had killed himself. She’d come home to visit her mom for a week, but had been staying at the Holiday Inn rather than with her parents.

  Her father had invited her over for dinner, but she’d told him she had other plans. Her mother had been at a club event that night, so her father was alone. He’d been ill for some time, but had outlived every prediction his doctors had made. He probably would have lived another ten or fifteen years. She’d never know what might have happened if she had accepted his dinner invitation.

  The last eight years of his life Nina had been living in D.C., but she would call every couple of weeks, and made a point of talking with her dad each time. It hadn’t been easy. Her father had been Czech and, even with all the years he’d been in the states, there was still a language barrier, which put even more distance between them. For reasons she hadn’t understood at the time, Nina had grown up fearing that her father would kill her.

  She didn’t really have plans the night he took his own life, but it was her birthday, and she didn’t want to be around him on her birthday. When she received the phone call from her mother the next day, she’d felt guilty and ashamed. Then the dreams began and a different kind of shame had surfaced.

  Nina had gone to a couple of psychiatrists, and each of them had diagnosed her with post traumatic stress disorder and recommended pharmaceutical therapy. When she’d told one of them about her dreams, the woman had explained that the mind often replays events we’re unable to deal with as dreams. The anxiety worsened, initially, when she realized they weren’t dreams at all, but memories.

  At first she felt responsible for what her father had done to her. She felt unclean, disgusted, and damaged. She hadn’t dated anyone since. But along with the shame, Nina had also experienced a profound sense of relief. She finally understood why sexual predators were drawn to her. She had been kidnapped and gang-raped when she was fifteen and molested by three physicians during her teen years: an oral surgeon, a podiatrist, and an OBGYN. She was thirty now, and only went to female doctors.

  Nina’s father had begun fondling her when she was six months old. When she was old enough to talk he had choked her while molesting her, threatening to kill her if she told anyone. She had run away from home for the first time at the age of three, believing her survival depended on getting away from her family. The molestation had continued until she was five, when she started kindergarten.

  She had repressed the horror so completely that she was incapable of remembering the assaults until her father was dead and no longer a threat. That’s when the memories had returned as dreams.

  Chapter 5

  By 6:00 I had the Hawaiian pizza box wrapped in heavy-duty aluminum foil to keep it warm, the cabernet uncorked, and a glass poured for Bill so it could breathe. I was wearing nothing but a short black chemise. I take bribing public officials very seriously.

  One of many changes in my life since Bill and I started dating is the acquisition of some sexy lingerie. I thought it might be nice for him to see me in something other than jeans or shorts, my usual work uniform, and I was right. The first time I’d surprised him with a garter belt and stockings his eyes had widened and his trousers had grown snug. I liked that reaction, so I purchased a few more items, among them the chemise.

  At 6:03 Buddy bounded up the companionway, took the leather pull-cord in his mouth, cranked it to the left, and pushed outward with his nose opening the hatch. He lunged into the pilothouse, but I had intentionally closed the pilothouse door so he couldn’t get out on deck. I watched as he head butted the door and then turned to gaze down at me.

  “You can wait,” I said. “He’ll be here in a minute.”

  He tilted his head to one side and whined. Buddy is a quiet dog; rambunctious and energetic, but quiet. Now he started mewing and chuffing, making sounds that were so close to words I could hardly stand it. When I didn’t come up the steps and open the door for him, he lifted a paw and scratched at the door a couple of times, then opened his mouth and took the handle between his teeth.

  “Hey!” I shouted. “What are you doing?”

  I should have known. He’d seen me open that door dozens of times and it had only taken him one try to get the more complicated hatch open. Moments later he was out on deck.

  “Buddy, stay!” I yelled. “Shit,” I said more quietly.

  Normally Buddy waits for me to join him with the leash and we walk up to the parking lot together to meet Bill. Today, however, I was not dressed, and I wondered how long he would wait before making the journey on his own. I pulled on a pair of jeans, quickly tucking the chemise in, and felt the boat rock as Buddy jumped onto the dock. I should have locked the damn door.

  “Buddy, stay!”

  I stepped into my boat shoes and grabbed a jacket before running down the dock after him.

  He was waiting at the gate when I arrived. I’d forgotten to grab his leash so I hooked my fingers under his collar.

  “Bad dog,” I whispered.

  He looked up at me, his tail wagging frantically. I’d also forgotten my gate key and I felt exposed, being commando under the jeans and jacket I’d hastily pulled on over the chemise.

  Bill drove into the parking lot and I pushed open the gate. Buddy dragged me along as he loped toward the Mustang.

  “Slow down,” I shouted.

  Bill was out of his car and laughing when we reached him.

  “This is not funny,” I said, as Buddy jumped up and licked his face. “Your dog has a discipline problem.”

  “My dog? Now he’s my dog?”

  “Only when he misbehaves.”

  “Of course,” he said, and ruffled Buddy’s ears.

  “I wasn’t dressed, so I thought we’d wait for you on the boat tonight. He opened the hatch and the pilothouse door all by himself and went out on deck. I told him to stay, but he didn’t, so I had to get dressed and chase after him.”

  “Have you trained him to stay?”

  “I’ve tried.”

  Bill turned his attention away from the affectionate canine and regarded me. “You weren’t dressed?”

  “I wasn’t dressed and he left the boat without me,” I repeated. His smile grew. “I had plans,” I said, blushing. “But I may not be in the mood anymore.”

  “Bad dog,”
Bill said. He threw an arm around me and took hold of Buddy’s collar. “We’ll work on doggie discipline later tonight,” he said, and he kissed me.

  The kiss put me back in the mood. I forgot about the discipline problem and my thoughts returned to my previous designs for the evening. Sex, pizza and wine for Bill, and talk about Scott’s case—in that order, then a trip to the city with my best friend.

  While Bill was eating we offered Buddy pizza toppings if he would sit and stay for a full minute. This seemed to work pretty well as long as there was a reward being offered, but when we told him to stay and didn’t offer a treat, the results varied.

  “So tell me about Scott’s mom,” I said, tossing Buddy a chunk of pineapple.

  Bill took a sip of his wine. “You know I’m not supposed to discuss ongoing investigations.” I said nothing. He always feels the need to remind me of this. “Her throat was abraded as though someone had grabbed hold of her windpipe so she couldn’t cry out. She was stabbed with a long narrow double-edged blade—upward through the diaphragm and into the heart. My guess is that she was looking into the eyes of her killer when she died. There was garlic in the wound. Garlic keeps blood from coagulating.”

  “Yikes,” I said.

  “Yeah. What’s really frightening is that the store was crowded at the time, and nobody saw anything.”

  “How is that even possible?” I asked.

  “People avoid looking at each other in public places. Do you ever look at other people when you’re shopping?”

  “Sometimes when I’m waiting in line and I have nothing else to do. But the people who look back at me almost always look away again.”