Stalker (9780307823557)

by Nixon, Joan Lowery

The salesgirl was still watching her, so Jennifer knew she couldn’t wander through the store searching for Mrs. Aciddo. She’d have to report back to Lucas.

  “I blew it,” she said as she flopped into the car beside Lucas. She tugged off the scarf she’d been wearing and threw it and her package on the seat.

  “Tell me about it,” he said, so she went over the encounter.

  “You did a fairly good job,” he said, “for a beginner.”

  “I what?” Jennifer whirled to face him.

  “You got an important piece of information. She was using a credit card with someone else’s name on it. And from what you told me, she didn’t recognize you.”

  “But I lost her. I didn’t follow through.”

  “What were you hoping for? A signed confession?”

  Jennifer leaned back, clasping her fingers behind her head. “Now I feel better. When you said something nice about me, it was so unreal I couldn’t believe it.”

  He didn’t answer, so finally she asked, “Are we going to just sit here?”

  “I am,” he said. “When she comes out of the mall and gets in her car I’ll keep a tail on her. Why don’t you catch a bus to the courthouse and visit Bobbie?”

  “Don’t you need me to help you tail Mrs. Aciddo?”

  “Not at the moment. I’ve attached a beeper to her car.”

  “Won’t she see it?”

  “No. It’s on the frame of the car, near the rear. There’s a small antenna pointing down, but she shouldn’t notice it. Its battery pack ought to last at least five days.” He pointed toward the dashboard. “And here’s my receiver that will pick up the transmitting signal.”

  “That means you can’t lose her?”

  “It means that if I lose visual sight of her car, I can still pick up her direction. So, I’ll be taking care of that job, and you can talk to Bobbie. You’re her friend. She might come out with something to you that she wouldn’t tell anyone else.”

  “I don’t want to be a spy!”

  “There’s a difference between being a spy and being a detective.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Jennifer said. “What are we doing with Mrs. Aciddo?”

  “Go on,” Lucas said. “Get over to the jail, or you’ll be too late. And remember, you’re not there to give Bobbie information. You’re there to get information from her. So ask her about people her mother was with often. Boyfriends, and so on. Also, see if she can remember the people in those pictures that were missing. And be careful to keep the credit card scam to yourself.”

  “Don’t you listen to what I’m saying? I’m going there to see my friend!”

  “And get information.”

  Jennifer counted slowly to ten. She had heard it helped in tight situations. It didn’t help at all.

  “Well?” Lucas asked. “What are you waiting for?”

  Jennifer groaned. “I don’t like to ask you, but could I borrow a couple of dollars? I spent my money on this scarf for Grannie, and I haven’t got enough left to make bus fare.”

  Lucas fished in his pocket and came up with some change. He added four ones to it and stuffed it into Jennifer’s hand. “You’ll need lunch, too,” he said.

  “I’ll pay you back.”

  “I’ll expect you to.”

  “Will you get in touch with me later?”

  “Whenever it works out. Get moving.”

  Jennifer, grumbling to herself about Lucas, strode through the large parking lot toward the bus stop, running the last few steps to catch the bus going toward Leopard. The bus smelled of exhaust and the accumulated sweat and grime and cheap perfume left behind by countless passengers. It lumbered to each stop as though in doubt it would have enough energy to get there.

  Jennifer squirmed in her seat and wished she could shout, “Hurry! I need to see Bobbie!”

  When she arrived at the sheriffs office, she found a number of people crowded around the desk. There was a well-dressed woman who mopped at her eyes with a fistful of pink Kleenex, and a waddling girl with greasy hair who looked close to her baby’s time of delivery. A woman wrapped in a shawl and a man clutching a battered felt hat sat against the wall like a pair of fat gray dumplings and stared into space as though they’d been waiting patiently for years.

  Jennifer skinnied through the group to the desk. Without a word a woman handed her a paper to fill out, then gave her a large, numbered blue plastic card. “These have to be returned when you leave,” she said in a monotone. “Nothing can be taken in with you. Please leave all your property at the desk. You’ll be given a receipt.”

  She didn’t have much to hand over—just the pad and pencil and the small amount of money from her jeans pockets and the package for Grannie. She walked through a scanner and was led, with a few of the others, into an elevator and up to the fourth floor. There was a small yellow-painted waiting room, trimmed in a mustard yellow. She wondered if that was an attempt to make things look cheerful. Jennifer didn’t feel cheerful. She was terrified, especially after the guards on the fourth floor directed her through another metal detector and a heavy, metal door that clanged like doom behind her.

  She followed one of the guards down a narrow hallway to a small alcove in which two metal stools were bolted to the floor. In front of each stool was a small, screened window. The well-dressed woman she had seen earlier was seated at one of the stools, talking earnestly to a young woman on the other side. Jennifer could look into the cell unit, which was painted the color of green pea soup. Mustard yellow and pea soup! Some paint salesman must have unloaded some unpopular colors on people whose complaints wouldn’t count for anything. She could see four small cells along one side. They opened into a narrow area with a table and benches that must have been designed so that prisoners could stretch their legs. She guessed there were another four cells on this side of the area.

  A guard called Bobbie to the window in front of Jennifer. Without any makeup besides a light pink lipstick, Bobbie looked like a stranger. She slumped when she walked, and her eyes were glazed over as though she were looking into another time and space.

  Jennifer leaned forward, her hands instinctively reaching out to her friend, but touching only the cold metal screen. She forgot the intimidating guard who stood in the hallway against the wall. She was aware only of Bobbie.

  “Hey, you’re looking pretty good.” Jennifer tried to sound encouraging. “Do you have what you need? Are they giving you enough food? Is everything all right?”

  “They treat us okay,” Bobbie said.

  “Oh, Bobbie, you won’t be here long,” Jennifer said.

  For an instant Bobbie’s eyes sharpened, as though Jennifer had suddenly turned on a light. “You mean it?” she asked. Her eyes dimmed again as she answered her own question. “You’re just trying to cheer me up.”

  “Sure I want to cheer you up,” Jennifer said, “but Lucas and I are working hard to clear you.”

  Bobbie just shrugged.

  “Look, we’re really trying. He’s an ex-cop and knows all sorts of stuff about what to do, so it’s not like we’re amateurs. He’s—”

  “I met him,” Bobbie said. “He’s okay.”

  Jennifer waited just a minute. “Can you help us, Bobbie?”

  “How?”

  “For one thing, there are some missing pictures in your house.”

  Bobbie became alert again. “You were in my house?”

  “Yes. And remember those pictures on the wall—all those snapshots of your mother with different people?” As Bobbie nodded agreement, Jennifer added, “Some of them were missing.”

  Bobbie seemed puzzled. “Which ones?”

  “That’s what we need to find out. From you. I couldn’t bring my note pad with me, but I think I can remember. One of them was in the top row, third from the left.”

  Bobbie’s forehead scrunched into wrinkles, and her eyes squeezed shut. Finally she looked at Jennifer and sighed. “I don’t know. I can’t remember what picture was where.”

&nbs
p; “Then just tell me who was in the pictures—everyone you can remember. Maybe we can work it out that way.”

  “That’s tough, too.” She sighed. “Well, there were some of Stella with me and with Elton and Darryl, and one each of Stella with Daddy and with Mr. Krambo. And some of her boyfriends, and—”

  “Who were her boyfriends?”

  “Oh, there were a lot of them. I couldn’t begin to remember.” Bobbie looked away, and Jennifer had the uncomfortable feeling that Bobbie had suddenly remembered something and was hiding it from her.

  “Bobbie?” she asked.

  Bobbie shook her head impatiently. “It’s no use. Anyhow, you’re asking me questions like you were a cop. I thought you were my friend.”

  “I am your friend. I’m trying to help.”

  “Then don’t ask questions I can’t answer. Tell me things. I can’t find out anything in here. What have the police been doing? Where are Elton and Darryl? Darryl wasn’t at Stella’s funeral.”

  “Darryl’s in the hospital. Don’t worry, he’s going to be all right,” Jennifer added quickly.

  “What?—How?”

  “We don’t know. Someone beat him up. Lucas thinks the person who did it thought he’d killed Darryl. Don’t tell anyone, because Lucas and the police don’t want the person to know Darryl is still alive.”

  Bobbie’s words were barely more than a whisper. “Did Darryl say who did it to him?”

  “He won’t talk about it. Personally, I think Darryl’s covering for Elton, but Lucas said he thinks Darryl won’t talk because he’s so scared of whoever did it.”

  Bobbie shuddered so violently that Jennifer half rose from her chair. “Bobbie! Do you need some water? You look awful! You’re so white! Bobbie?”

  “I’m okay. Don’t make so much noise, or they’ll come over to see what’s the matter.” She leaned as close to the dividing window as she could get. “Jen, listen to me. Go home and forget about all this stuff you’re doing.”

  “I’m not going to forget. I know you didn’t murder your—uh—mother, and—”

  Bobbie interrupted. “You found that out, too, didn’t you? That Stella’s not my real mother?”

  “Hey, Bobbie, it doesn’t matter. What’s important is getting you out of here.”

  “I’ll get out. The attorney they assigned to me said if all they had against me was circumstantial evidence, then I had a chance.”

  “That’s not enough. We need to find the actual murderer so there won’t be any question that you didn’t do it.”

  “You don’t have to find out anything. I’ll be okay.”

  “I don’t understand you. We’re going to get the answers, and you want me to back off. Why?”

  “Just stop,” Bobbie said. “I mean it, Jen.” She quickly got up from her stool and walked back to the area between the cells, her back to Jennifer.

  “Bobbie?” Jennifer called.

  The guard stepped up and put a hand on Jennifer’s shoulder. “Come with me, please,” she said.

  Jennifer followed the guard into the small area by the elevators. Her sigh of relief as the metal door shut behind her was so loud, a few people turned to stare. She would hate to be in jail!

  She hated to have Bobbie in jail. But she was puzzled. She didn’t understand their conversation. Was Bobbie hiding something? Why would she do that? It didn’t make sense. And there was certainly no real reason why she wouldn’t want Jennifer and Lucas to keep up their work.

  As she squeezed into the elevator, a woman next to her was saying to her husband, “Donna doesn’t seem the same. She isn’t even thinking right.”

  And he answered, “Her circumstances are different. Naturally her thinking is mixed up.”

  Jennifer nodded. Of course. That was it. Bobbie couldn’t be expected to think things out rationally, not with all the stress she was going through.

  She turned in her plastic pass and received her belongings.

  What would be the next step? Well, why not check out Margo at LaSalon?

  As she reached the outside door, she nearly collided with a pudgy man whose light suit coat was yellowed with sweat. Each stepped sideways to the same side to allow the other to pass, then stepped to the other side at the same time, reaching an impasse.

  “Sorry,” Jennifer said, for the first time looking at the man in front of her. “Oh! Mr. Biddle,” she said.

  “Well well well, the young lady who came to see me. Did you have any luck with Crandall and Kline?” He giggled.

  “You knew I wouldn’t. I didn’t have that much money.”

  “So you found out something useful. Private investigators don’t come cheap.” He laughed again.

  “Excuse me,” Jennifer said. She began to move around him, but he asked, “Did you see your friend?”

  “Yes,” she said. She took another step then stopped and turned toward him again. “Are you going to see Bobbie, too?”

  “Me? I have nothing to do with her. No, I’ve got an appointment in court in a few minutes.” He patted the worn leather briefcase he carried. “Got some good pictures of a husband who’s going to lose out in a divorce case.” He sauntered into the building grinning like the Cheshire cat in the illustration Jennifer had always hated.

  She hurried down the steps. She had work to do.

  But LaSalon had to wait until Jennifer found something to eat. Suddenly she was so hungry her stomach began to rumble. Again she went to the shop on the corner of Chaparral and bought a sandwich and a Coke. This time she didn’t share her food with the gulls, but gulped it as greedily as though she too were a scavenger.

  She wiped her mouth on the back of one hand, rubbed her hands down the seat of her jeans, and walked down the street to LaSalon.

  The acid odors of highly scented hair spray and sour permanent-wave solution saturated the humid air. Two women sat under hair-dryers at the far end of the room, flipping magazine pages and occasionally shouting fragments of conversation at each other. Alice, wisps of her own hair flying from her elaborate hairdo and beads of sweat on her face, briskly teased the hair of a third customer who sat in the chair by the door.

  “Hi,” Jennifer said to Alice.

  Alice quickly looked up, then back to her customer.

  “I’m going crazy right now,” she said. “If you want to ask any more questions, you’ll have to come back.”

  “I just—”

  “On second thought, don’t come back, because it won’t do you any good. I don’t know any more answers, and Margo’s not here. Picks a Saturday to take off, when she knows that’s the busiest day we’ve got.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “Left a note, just stuck under the door if you can believe it!” She patted her customer’s hair with a sure hand and let go with such a long blast of hair spray that Jennifer began to cough. “Said she was going out of town.”

  Alice whipped off the cape she had tied around her customer’s shoulders, took her credit card and slammed it into the machine at the front desk, whamming the handle back and forth as though she were planning to batter the card into pieces. Her voice rose as she handed the card and the slip to the customer and waited for her to sign it. “You look lovely, Mrs. Ellison,” she trilled. “See you next Saturday.”

  One of the hair-dryers shut off, and the customer under it began to wiggle out. Alice sighed. “Here’s the note,” she said, picking up a piece of notepaper and tossing it toward Jennifer.

  Jennifer caught it and stared at it. The scrawly handwriting! The same handwriting that was on the note she had found in Mrs. Trax’s house!

  “Margo wrote this?” she gasped.

  Alice was already on her way to take care of the next customer. “No!” she snapped, pausing only to glare at Jennifer. “Shows just how rude she is, how little she cares about walking out on me on our busiest day! That’s not even Margo’s handwriting. She got someone else to write that note for her!”

  “I wonder who it was.”

  “Pro
bably the man she went out of town with.”

  “You know this for sure?”

  “Honey, when there’s a problem, there’s always a man behind it.”

  “Do you know who the man might be?”

  “That I don’t know, unless it was that skinny wharf rat I’ve seen her with.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Don’t ask me.”

  Jennifer held up Margo’s note. “Mind if I take this?”

  “Take it! Keep it! Have it framed if you want! I’ve got half a mind to fire Margo when she gets back. It’s just so hard to get decent hairdressers with a decent following, and—”

  She hurried across the room, muttering to herself.

  Out on the street, gratefully taking long gulps of the sea-fresh air, Jennifer tried to think about what to do next.

  The handwriting had to be the same as that on the note she had found. And again, it looked so familiar. She’d seen it somewhere else. If she could only remember.

  Lucas should know about this. And the other note. It was in her top dresser drawer. It would be a good idea to compare them.

  It would be an even better idea to go back to the Trax house as soon as possible and see if she could find anything else written in this odd handwriting. If she could only get in touch with Lucas!

  But how could she? Darn! She didn’t want to wait.

  Jennifer made her mind up quickly. She’d go home and put those notes together, just to make sure the handwriting matched. And she’d try her best to remember where she’d seen that handwriting. If Lucas called her, she’d have something to show him. If he didn’t, then she’d visit the Trax house again by herself. Tonight.

  A few minutes later, as she came up the walk toward her home, she noticed a small box propped against the house next to the front door. The mailman must have brought a package. The mailbox stood open, so if Grannie had brought in the mail she had missed this.

  Jennifer ran up the steps and picked up the package, automatically reading the label.

  Her own name and address were on the label, and they were written in that scrawly, scribbled, heavy handwriting.

  It was like being dropped into the bay in winter. It was hard for Jennifer to breathe, and her fingers were numb blocks of ice. Unable to think, Jennifer simply reacted and threw the package as far from her as she could.