Partnerships Can Kill: The Third Charlie Parker Mystery

by Connie Shelton

  She shrugged in answer to my question.

  Ron piped up: “You should see Vicky’s place, Charlie. She’s really done a beautiful job with it.”

  “Great, I’d like that.” I addressed the answer to Vicky, although she had not extended the invitation.

  Ron sensed her reluctance to open up and he steered the subject to something else. After dinner, the two of them volunteered to do the dishes. Vicky laughed and talked with Ron, who had his arms in the soapy water. What was going on here? I could only guess that she just plain didn’t like me.

  I excused myself and took my dog and my Clancy novel downstairs to my room, where I could convince myself that being alone was just fine with me.

  Sunday morning I awoke early, dressed and took Rusty out for a walk. We bought fresh muffins at the small market on the highway and listened to the bells at the white steepled church chime out hymns half-remembered from childhood. I shared my muffin with Rusty. Despite the tantalizing aroma of coffee, Ron and Vicky didn’t surface until nearly noon.

  It was a bizarre weekend, to say the least. I was relieved to wave goodbye to them, as they drove away Sunday evening.

  There was a message on my answering machine from Drake. He said he missed me, and would call again later. His voice did sound wistful. Hearing from him completely undid all the self-talk I'd done over the weekend. My insides felt unsettled.

  The next morning, I was back at my desk by the time Sally arrived.

  "How was your weekend?" she asked, leaning against my doorframe with her mug of tea in hand.

  My eyes rolled, although I swear I didn't intend them to, when I told her where I'd been.

  "That good, huh." She didn't really look surprised.

  "Oops, there goes the front door." We both heard the bell, which we have rigged up to sound in the back and the upstairs offices, at the same time. Sally headed toward the front.

  About a minute later, my intercom line buzzed.

  "Sharon Ortega to see you." Sally's voice was neutral.

  Sharon had obviously dressed without much attention to detail this morning. She wore a pair of black slacks and a white sweatshirt that showed gray smudges at the cuffs and elbows. Her breezy blond hair now hung limply, and her face was without makeup and splotchy looking. She didn't waste any time on preliminaries once she was seated in the chair across from me.

  "David is dead," she said flatly.

  It took me a minute for me to associate that it was her restaurant business partner she was talking about. A variety of emotions flickered across her face and came out in her body language. Her face was puffy from crying, her eyes red rimmed. Her hands wouldn't stay still. She twisted her fingers around each other in a way that looked painful. Tension was evident in her arms and neck. Clearly, she was extremely shaken. Something told me she was scared.

  I wished Ron were here. I couldn't imagine that Sharon was coming here to tell me this dire news as a friend. We weren't that close. If she intended to hire the firm to look into David's death, I would prefer that Ron be here to handle it. But, he wasn't, so it looked like I was stuck.

  "Tell me what happened, Sharon," I suggested, as gently as possible.

  The quiet evenness in my voice unleashed a fresh flood of tears. It's like, when you're a kid, the cut doesn't hurt so bad until someone sympathizes with you. I handed her a box of Kleenex, and let her take her time. Finally, the sniffles slowed down a bit.

  "He was shot through the head," she said. "The police just called me about an hour ago. He was found in his car in the parking lot of a grocery store near his apartment. They think it was suicide."

  "What do you think?"

  "I'm not sure I am thinking right now," she said, taking a deep breath. "I don't believe it was suicide, at least I don't want to think so." She reached for a new tissue. "Charlie, I don't know what to believe."

  "Had David been depressed recently? Any problems that you know of, personal or business?"

  She was twisting one corner of the Kleenex between her thumb and index finger. "Not really depressed, no. We had a few business problems, like I told you the other day. Business had slowed down at the restaurant. We were both concerned about that. But, I always thought David had such a good grip on things. He was a doer, not a worrier. He was working on some new advertising to help bring people back."

  "What about his personal life?"

  "I don't know that much about it." She looked a little embarrassed. "We never talked about personal stuff very much. He was single, dated a lot. I never met any of his ladies. His parents are very devout Catholics. I remember meeting them when we had our grand opening. This is just going to devastate them." This started a whole new spasm of crying.

  "What would you like me to do?" I asked after she calmed down a bit. "Are you hiring my firm to look into it?"

  "Yes, I guess so. I don't know, Charlie. I don't have anything concrete to go on, but I can't believe David would kill himself."

  "Why not let the police continue to investigate? If there are suspicious circumstances in the case, I'm sure they'll follow through with it."

  She squirmed a little in her chair. "Well, there is one thing about this whole matter that involves me directly." She uncrossed her legs, and leaned toward me. "Charlie, please don't think badly of me for letting this be one of my first concerns. I mean, there hasn't even been a funeral yet, and I don't want you to get the wrong idea."

  I waited, wondering what on earth she was getting at.

  "When we started the business, David and I took out life insurance policies on each other. Well, really, the business paid for them. We each made the other partner beneficiary. Our thinking was, if something happened to one of us, the other would have money to keep the restaurant going."

  "And?"

  "And, the policies had a two-year suicide clause. If death was by suicide within the first two years, the policy wouldn't pay off. Oh, Charlie, I know that sounds horrible of me. I'd hate for anyone else to know I'm even bringing it up. But, without David, I'm going to have to hire someone else to handle the financial end of the business. We're operating on a shoestring as it is. I'll need that insurance money to stay in business."

  Chapter 5

  She was in a tough spot, all right.

  "I'll have to get some basic information about the case. I'm sure the police reports will have been filed by now. They may also be ordering an autopsy."

  "I want to give you a retainer," she said. "How much would you need?"

  I was torn. She was in a bind financially, and I felt guilty asking for anything. But, Ron and I had one basic rule of business. No allowances for personal friends. I couldn't do Sharon a favor at Ron's expense.

  "Our rates are two-fifty a day, plus expenses. I should be able to find out enough within the first day to know whether it's worth proceeding any further. If we have to take it beyond that, we'll settle up then."

  She wrote out a check for three hundred dollars on her personal account, and signed our standard contract. I walked her to the front door, and gave her a hug as she left.

  Ron walked in the back door as I started up the stairs. I motioned him into my office, where he took the seat just vacated by Sharon. I filled him in on the situation, beginning with my meeting Sharon and David at the restaurant on Friday. He said he'd drive down to the police station and see if he could lay his hands on a copy of the police report. That's what I like about doing business with Ron. He's great at the legwork, and he has contacts in all sorts of high places.

  He was back an hour later with a whole folder of tidbits. The little bit Sharon had told me checked out. David Ruiz had been found, shot through the left temple, in his Porsche which was sitting in the parking lot of the Food City supermarket at the corner of San Mateo and Academy Road. One of the busiest intersections in town.

  Ron had managed to make fairly decent photocopies of some of the crime scene photos. They showed the body draped across the center console, lower half in the driver's seat, u
pper half on the passenger side. The gun, a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum, lay on the floor near his left hand.

  I flipped through the sheets to a preliminary interview with the next of kin. Apparently, the parents had been too distraught to provide much information. Most of the answers had been provided by a cousin, Michael Mann. The transcribed interview read like a family squabble, with the elder Ruiz's insisting that David would never commit suicide, while Mann tried to tell the police that David had been worried about something recently.

  "Taylor said at this point, they excused Mr. and Mrs. Ruiz from the room, so Mann could tell his story uninterrupted," Ron said, pointing to a spot partway down on the page.

  "Kent Taylor? Homicide?"

  "Yeah, but he says they've not officially ruled on the case yet. Right now they're just looking at all the possibilities."

  I went on to read the rest of the cousin's statement. He told police that David Ruiz had been very upset about something recently. Mann thought it concerned business, but couldn't say for sure. David hadn't confided details to him. Mann had also told them that David was left handed.

  "The case isn't closed yet, but Kent says they're leaning toward the suicide theory. It all looks like a pretty self-contained incident."

  There were a few more photos of the scene, showing the parked car both close-up and at a distance. It sat at the outer fringes of the parking lot, not unusual for someone with an expensive car to do if they wanted to avoid getting their doors dinged up. Certainly not unusual enough to attract any attention at an all night grocery store.

  Time of death had been established as sometime between ten and midnight, Saturday night. I tried to picture the location in my mind. There was a movie theater in the same shopping center, as well as a couple of fast food places. Surely, on a Saturday night there would have been a lot of activity, even at that time of night. You'd think someone would have noticed a man sitting in an expensive car, putting a gun to his head. Even with traffic and horns and car radios blasting, you'd think someone would have heard the shot. The Porsche had apparently stayed in the lot overnight, until the police found it mid-morning on Sunday. I closed the file cover, but couldn't put the thoughts out of my mind.

  "So, what did you think about Vicky?" Ron asked. "Isn't she nice?"

  I didn't want to be cruel. "Ron, how old is she, really?"

  "Twenty-four." His voice got defensive.

  "Don't you think that's a bit young? What does she think about your three kids?"

  "We haven't exactly gotten around to that, yet. I mean, she knows I have them. She just hasn't met them yet."

  "Well, she sure seems to be crazy about you," I told him. I wanted to ask about her strange moodiness, whether she had anything to offer but sex, but when I tried to formulate the questions, I couldn't come up with a way to ask that didn't sound petty. Or worse yet, jealous.

  He wasn't listening anyway. He said something about dictating a report for Sally to type before she left, and headed across the hall toward his own office. I couldn't sit still. I felt like we had to be doing something to earn the money Sharon had given us.

  Rusty looked at me expectantly when he saw me pick up my keys and purse, but I told him he better stay here this time. He went back to his corner near the bay window. I buzzed Sally on the intercom and told her I'd be out for awhile. I went out the back door, and started the Jeep. It was nearly noon, and already hot. I switched on the air conditioner, and rolled the windows down to blow the intense air out. From the weather report on the radio this morning, it sounded like the week-long warm trend was going to continue.

  I wanted to take a look at David's desk at the restaurant, but hated to bother Sharon during the lunch hour. I decided to head across town to the scene of the ... was it a crime? I meant to find out. I drove up Lomas to Second, and headed north until I came to the freeway. As I remembered, the shopping center where the police found David was located just off I-25 and San Mateo. I almost saw the off ramp too late, and some jerk in a dark blue Cadillac honked at me as I changed lanes in front of him. I slowed to the legal speed limit, and let him stew as he was forced to follow along.

  At this time of day, the supermarket parking lot was packed. I wasn't sure exactly where the car had been parked, but judging from the photos I'd brought with me, I got a pretty good idea. There was one of those red and yellow free-standing photo booths in the middle of the parking lot, with two blue mailboxes next to it. I parked my Jeep, and walked around until I could see the photo booth at approximately the same angle as the Xerox copy of the photograph showed. There was no indication now that a violent death had taken place here—no broken glass, no blood, no police tape or spectators. David's life had ended without fanfare.

  I walked into the grocery store. The cold contrast of air-conditioning came as a relief after the hot sun outside. I found the manager in a little booth near the front.

  "Excuse me, could I ask you a couple of questions?"

  He looked up from a stack of papers he was rubber stamping. He was about forty, thin, with black hair and old acne scars. He had a smudge of ink across his chin, but I thought it best not to mention it. His name was Alvin Rodriguez according to his name badge.

  "Sure. How can I help you?"

  "Were you working Saturday night? Between ten and twelve p.m.?"

  "No, the night manager would have been here then."

  "How about any of the other employees? Checkers, or anyone who's here now that might have been working then."

  "I don't think so," he said. "Why?"

  I gave him my business card, which he dropped on his desk without a glance. Sighing, he said, "I’ll check the schedule."

  He pulled a white sheet of paper from a drawer down near his knees. I got a glimpse of a very complicated looking chart. He looked it over quickly, running his index finger down the rows, one by one.

  "No, I didn't think so. You want to talk to the night people, you'll have to come back at night."

  What a wealth of information this guy was. I guess I should have figured that out myself. I left the store feeling unsatisfied. I supposed the same story would hold true if I were to check the other businesses in the center. I would just have to come back in the evening to see if I could learn anything.

  It was after one o'clock, and I was starving. The french fry scent from the nearby McDonald's was beginning to make me salivate. I pulled through the drive-up, and got some chicken nuggets that I scarfed down without sauce. I figured it might be late enough now that I could catch Sharon, and try to gain access to David's desk.

  I had just pulled out of the shopping center, heading in the direction of the freeway on-ramp, when I noticed that the Porsche dealership was right here. On impulse, I swerved in and took the first open parking space I saw. I lifted the cover on the police file once more, to get a picture of David's car firmly in my mind. I spotted one just like it, and walked toward it.

  I had not quite circled the car once before a salesman was at my side.

  "Beautiful car, isn't it?" he asked smoothly. Despite the heat, his white shirt was still crisp, his tie perfectly knotted. He had, however, removed his suit jacket. His blond hair was expensively cut, and his flat nails were buffed to a shine. He looked to be in his late twenties.

  "Yes," I answered, "I was just admiring it. Could I sit in it?"

  "Go ahead," he said, pulling the door open, and standing back graciously.

  The leather seats felt like they'd been custom made for my rear end. A roll of padding lined the outside edges of the seat, rising up on either side of my hips just enough to make me feel secure. At a hundred twenty pounds, I consider myself to be about average build. Even so, I wasn't sure how anyone much larger would manage these seats. They were definitely built for slim people. The rest of the interior was just as comfortable. The gear shift was right at my fingertips. A padded console divided the space between driver and passenger, giving a nice place to rest my forearm. The instruments were basic and easy to look at
.

  I pulled the door shut, and put my hands on the wheel like I was driving. My eyes scanned the instruments—everything okay there. Now I reached for the gear shift with my right hand. Ready, clutch, okay. Yes! I could see myself zooming past other cars like they were standing still. The announcer's voice was clear and triumphant. Yes, folks, in the final laps of the Indianapolis 500, Charlie Parker easily takes the checkered flag.

  The door opened just then, abruptly bringing me back to Albuquerque. I guess the salesman was nervous, not being able to talk to me.

  "What do you think? Want to take it for a test drive?"

  I had to make a conscious effort not to drool.

  "I better not, not this time." I reminded myself that I had a job to do. This is purely research, I repeated internally. You cannot afford this car. You must get back to work. My inner voice kept working at me, but it had to do some imaginary tugging at the back of my collar to get me out of the Porsche and back to my own set of wheels.

  Chapter 6

  Still daydreaming twenty-five minutes later, I walked into Sharon's restaurant. She was making a gallant effort at conducting business as usual, but I could tell it was a strain. The waiters stood around like they weren't sure what to do next.

  "We had a good sized lunch crowd today," Sharon told me, as she showed me to David's office. "Morbid curiosity, I think. There was a long story and a picture of David in this morning's Journal."

  David's office consisted of a small room near the back alley door, which had been constructed by setting up some hasty partitions of two-by-fours and nailing drywall over them. The door had a lock, but even I could have easily gotten past it. Inside, an old metal desk took up most of the space. Behind it, some one-by-twelve boards laid across metal brackets formed a set of shelves, which were laden to the point of sagging. There were stacks of computer printouts, file folders, and miscellaneous papers, along with books on restaurant management and computer operation manuals. Unframed snapshots of David, each with a different woman on his arm, were propped against the books. The women all had dark eyes and lots of hair, like he'd gone through the roster of a modeling school to find his dates.