Obsessions Can Be Murder: The Tenth Charlie Parker Mystery

by Connie Shelton

  “You’re looking a little green there, girl.” Michaela had apparently spotted me on the way to find Woody.

  She called out to him and he headed for his tow truck.

  “Looks like you’ve got the answer to your question,” she said to me.

  My face must have registered the blankness inside my head.

  “I suspected it from the description of the car,” she said, nodding toward the lake. “But the tag numbers confirmed it. That was David Simmons.”

  She walked away.

  I got a peculiar hollow sensation, like the air had been sucked out of the atmosphere and I was standing a great distance away, watching the whole scene down a long tunnel. Woody’s truck backed down the ramp and one of the divers took a cable. Minutes later, or maybe it was hours—I couldn’t be sure—the line came winching upward with a red car attached. The red convertible that several residents had sworn was seen driving out of town four years ago. I swallowed hard and walked over to Michaela’s cruiser where she was saying something into her radio microphone.

  “Amanda,” I said when she finished. “Has anyone told Amanda yet?”

  “Not yet. That’s usually my job. Not the fun part.” She gave me a straight stare.

  “You want me to do it?” My voice squeaked a little.

  She sighed and shook her head. “Not yet. We better make sure. All we know right now is that it’s his car. We’ll get the M.E. right on it, though. You could go sit with Amanda, if you would. Could go ahead and tell her about the car—only the car. When we do get the call, it would be easier for her if she’s had a little warning, a friend to be there with her. Earleen’s also going to have to get the news.”

  “I’ll take Amanda,” I said.

  Michaela could have Earleen any day. She gave me a wry grin that let me know she’d precisely read my thoughts.

  All of us watched somberly as Woody winched the scum-covered car onto his truck, tightened everything down, and prepared to drive away. The news would be filtering through town by now and I decided Michaela was right. Amanda would need a friend right now.

  I arrived at her front door in time to hear the phone ringing inside. I clenched my teeth, hoping it would be a wrong number. The ringing stopped and Amanda’s voice responded.

  “No!” she screamed, the word coming through clearly.

  I twisted the knob and was relieved when it opened. I stepped inside, calling her name softly. She was in the living room, standing beside the blanket-strewn sofa, the phone to her ear. Tears ran down her face and her gaze darted furiously around the room as if looking for a way she could escape the words from the telephone. I stepped over to her and reached out. She slumped into my arms and I barely caught the receiver before it dropped to the floor.

  “Thanks for calling but Amanda can’t handle this right now,” I said quickly and clicked off the call.

  I helped her to sit on the sofa and she collapsed against me. The phone immediately rang again, but we both ignored it.

  “At this point they’ve only identified the car,” I told her. “Sheriff Michaela said the medical examin—”

  “It’s him, I know it is,” she wailed. “It’s why he never called. It’s—”

  I patted her back, feeling awkward, not knowing what else to do or say.

  The phone quit ringing, then immediately started again. I set Amanda back against the cushions and reached for the phone. “Is there a way to turn off the ringer on this thing?” I asked.

  She stared helplessly at it, not even comprehending my question. I fiddled with it for another minute and found a small switch that did the trick. The phone had no sooner gone quiet than the wireless intercom, which I’d left for her earlier on the coffee table, crackled with a staticky version of Jake’s voice.

  “Amanda, what’s going on in there? Why’s the phone ringing?”

  I pressed the Talk button. “Jake, it’s Charlie. You better come in here.”

  Two minutes later, the back door opened roughly and his footsteps crossed the kitchen. “What the hell—I’m trying to get some work done out there,” he said.

  Amanda went into a fresh series of violent sobs and I shot Jake a look of pure impatience. His demeanor switched instantly.

  “Honey?” he crossed to the couch and sat on the other side of her, letting her collapse against him.

  “They found her father’s car in the lake,” I said softly.

  His face drained of color.

  “We don’t know for a fact that it’s David, but it kind of looks that way. People have been calling. I guess the news is getting around.”

  Jake pulled his wife to him and cupped his hand around her face. I left them that way and found a bathroom just off the kitchen. After I’d used the facilities for my own purposes, I dampened a washcloth with cool water and filled a glass for Amanda. Back in the living room she had quieted and I offered the small comforts I’d brought. Jake seemed distracted so I waved him away and he seemed grateful to get back to his lab.

  “He wasn’t always this way,” she said. “Jake and I were really close in the early years. When we first moved here it was nearly perfect.” He expression became soft. “The last few years . . . I don’t know.”

  I thought of Michaela’s comment about their money worries.

  Amanda dabbed at her face, but the stitches and blackened eyes were still painful.

  “Can I get you some more of your painkillers?” I asked, taking a seat in the recliner by the sofa.

  She shook her head and wiped her nose on the cloth. “I’ll be okay,” she mumbled nasally.

  “Anything from the kitchen?” I felt at a loss for what to do next. I’m not very adept at dealing with people’s emotions.

  She looked at me sympathetically and I got the feeling she was thinking up a small task for me so I wouldn’t continue to watch her so awkwardly.

  “Tea would be nice,” she said. “Everything’s on the shelf beside the stove.”

  I accepted her sympathy much more easily than I was able to give it. As she’d said, a canister with various flavors of tea was right there on the shelf. A kettle on the stove already contained water. I simply had to turn on the burner. While it began to hiss faintly I found some mugs and unwrapped two of the teabags. In a further stalling measure I poked around in the breadbox and cabinets and found a package of chocolate chip cookies. On the theory that chocolate chip cookies can cure virtually anything, I grabbed them. A decorative bamboo tray helped me carry off the illusion that I could play perfect caregiver, tending to the needs of my wounded charge.

  Amanda had recovered somewhat when I came back. I’d remembered to put sugar and milk on the tray, but she took the tea pure black.

  “When . . . when will they. . .”

  “I don’t know. Michaela said the M.E.’s office would run some tests. Pretty soon, I’d guess.”

  “Did you see . . .”

  “Not really,” I said. “I was there, but you couldn’t see much. The paramedics were very professional.” Somehow I sensed that she was reassured by this, some little knowledge that her father’s body hadn’t been treated badly, been an object of disrespect.

  She drained her tea and refused my offer to get more.

  “I should go there,” she said, rising. “To see him.”

  I shrank from the idea and it must have showed on my face.

  “I’ll take Jake’s car and go by myself,” she said. “You don’t need to come.”

  “Amanda . . .” I got up as she winced in pain. “Look, you shouldn’t be driving. Every muscle in your body hurts. Let me take you.”

  “I’ll just—just get dressed.” Her breath grabbed as she began to move but she waved away my attempt to brace her. She hobbled away and the bedroom door closed.

  Where would they have taken the body, I wondered. In a town of five or six hundred people, was there a morgue or hospital? I hadn’t seen anything like that. When Amanda came out, ten minutes later dressed in gray sweats and a baggy top, I
asked her. She’d pulled her hair back into a ponytail, making no attempt to cover the bruises on her face, ready to show them boldly to anyone who dared to stare.

  “I’m not sure,” she said, pausing to think about it. She picked up the telephone and dialed a number from memory. “This is Amanda Zellinger,” she said in a firm voice. “I want to talk to Sheriff Michaela. However you need to reach her.”

  A few minutes of silence went by, followed by a short greeting on Amanda’s part and a few uh-huhs and all rights. She hung up and moaned as she attempted to slip a jacket on.

  “You’re in no shape to drive,” I said. “Tell me where we’re going and I’ll take you there.”

  “The clinic. It’s near the community center.”

  I used the intercom box to tell Jake where we were going, then took Amanda’s elbow and made sure she was steady on her feet as we went out to the car. The fact of a big reddish-brown dog in the back seat startled her and I ordered him to back away. Luckily, he actually did so.

  She directed me as to which turns to make and we pulled up in front of an unimposing one-story wooden building with a steeply pitched red-metal roof. Apparently when necessary the county medical examiner worked from the small clinic that normally handled sniffles and the occasional broken arm. Michaela’s cruiser sat out front, along with a couple of other vehicles.

  Amanda unclicked her seatbelt the moment we stopped and was out the door before I’d shut off the engine. I hoped she wouldn’t go barging into a scene that could easily traumatize anyone; the sight of a body that had been underwater for four years couldn’t be a good one.

  Chapter 10

  Luckily, Michaela met us at the door and took Amanda firmly by the arm. “Come here and sit down,” she ordered, leading Amanda into the waiting room. I followed but left them a little space.

  “We’re getting the ID on the . . . the subject now,” Michaela said.

  Amanda’s eyes welled and her lips clamped together, but she nodded and managed not to break down.

  “Sit here,” Michaela said, directing the younger woman to a chair and guiding her into it. “I’m going to be back very shortly.”

  I scooted over and sat in the adjoining chair before Amanda could make a move to disobey.

  Michaela disappeared down a corridor, but true to her word she came back within five minutes. She carried a large brown envelope and strode purposefully toward us. Behind her, Earleen and Frank trailed along, Earleen whining something about her rights.

  Michaela turned on her and said something low and sharp. The grieving widow stopped and blinked, her mouth working up and down but not coming out with anything. I admired the sheriff’s way with words.

  “Come on, babe,” said Frank. “We’re getting out of here.” He took her arm and practically yanked her toward the door.

  I sent a questioning glance toward the sheriff. She approached Amanda, told her Earleen had identified David’s belongings, and offered condolences. Then she held out the brown envelope.

  “Your father’s personal effects. We found a note saying he wanted you to have them.”

  I remembered how, amazingly, documents can sometimes survive in cold water, as many had in the wreckage of Titanic. The body itself probably hadn’t fared so well. Temperatures and water had to have done their job, not to mention the little fishies. I forced my mind to other things.

  Amanda broke down again and buried her face against Michaela’s ample chest. Stiffly, the sheriff handed the envelope to me and put both arms around the girl. She let Amanda sob for a couple of minutes then started to make parting noises. Michaela handed her over to me, gave me a nod, and indicated that she needed to get back to the other room. I placed the envelope in Amanda’s hands and she hugged it to her as if it were a warm teddy bear.

  “I can stay with you awhile,” I said as I tucked her into the passenger’s seat.

  She nodded numbly.

  “Can you eat anything? It would be a good idea.” I’d had the idea of stopping along the way and getting some chicken or something to take home.

  She shook her head, the same blank expression on her face.

  “Okay. We’ll deal with food later.”

  Back at the house, Jake was still tucked away in his lab and Amanda seemed grateful that I’d offered to stay with her. I wondered at his detachment. In Amanda’s time of grief she needed him. And what about his own feelings about David, their work together? I guessed seclusion was simply his way of dealing with it.

  Amanda had put the envelope on the coffee table and curled herself into a tight ball of pain on the sofa, her blanket wrapped snugly around her.

  “You sure I can’t get you anything?” I asked. I felt like my role here should be some kind of cross between Martha Stewart and June Cleaver, dispensing care and comfort while the whole mess magically cleaned itself up and life became pretty again. “You haven’t eaten anything all day, have you?” I asked.

  She shook her head and mumbled something about not being hungry. June Cleaver would have never accepted that answer and while I wasn’t quite ready to make chicken soup the Martha way, by first killing a live chicken, I could at least locate a can of Campbell’s and get some bit of nourishment into my new charge.

  By the time I’d managed to find everything I needed in the kitchen, she’d cried herself out temporarily and I got her to sit up with a tray on her lap and consume some soup and crackers. Her bruises were looking worse, brilliant purple-black now, and she requested more pain medicine. Within ten minutes her eyelids looked heavy. I removed the lunch tray and when I came back from the kitchen she was out cold.

  The brown envelope called out to me. At first I resisted, knowing that Amanda should be the first to go through it, or should at least give her consent before I opened it. But she was so tired . . . and I wasn’t going to take anything. It would still be waiting for her when she woke up.

  “AmandacanIlookthroughthis?” I whispered.

  She snored lightly and burrowed deeper into the blanket.

  “Thanks.” Okay, I know that really wasn’t permission in the traditional sense. But let’s don’t argue semantics. I picked up the envelope and quickly undid the metal clasp. A wave of musty, damp smell came up at me and I decided to take it to the kitchen table.

  Someone had made an effort to dry the items but there was the desolate sense of drowning and abandonment when I dumped everything onto the table. A man’s wallet—the leather soggy and pliable, a gold watch—amazingly intact and still ticking, a ring of keys, a simple gold wedding band and a signet ring with a large round ruby that must have been a joy to retrieve. I gave the jewelry a quick look but couldn’t dwell too long on the image of the waterlogged flesh they’d come from.

  The key ring must have been pulled from the car’s ignition. It held one automobile key, three that looked like house keys, and an odd one that I could swear went to a bank’s safe deposit box. I stuck the keys in my pocket, thinking I’d ask Amanda if one of them belonged to her house or the lab, and if she knew anything about a safe deposit box.

  The wallet was of the most interest, still containing credit cards and driver’s license, which identified David Simmons; I jotted down the numbers. I looked at the photo of him. The laminate had held and the picture was as clear as if it had been taken last week, a serious-looking blond man of—I calculated his age—fifty-one. Well, he’d be fifty-one now. He’d been around forty-five when the picture was taken, a handsome guy whose charisma managed to show even in a routine DMV photo.

  A small ID card with “In Case of Emergency Call” was filled out with Amanda’s name. Curious, why his daughter instead of his wife, but that was undoubtedly the ‘note’ Michaela had referred to when she bypassed Earleen in favor of Amanda earlier. The wallet also contained twelve dollars in cash and a few other IDs, insurance, health plan, and all that. Twelve dollars wasn’t much for a man who intended to set a fire and disappear.

  Michaela must have inventoried these possessions before h
anding them over. I wondered if she was thinking the same thing I was thinking.

  I picked up the kitchen phone and dialed her office. The same receptionist who had offered to ‘hep’ me earlier informed me that the sheriff was out on business. I left my cell phone number and asked that she call me as soon as she could.

  I’d no sooner gone back into the living room to get my purse and retrieve the cell phone than it rang. I answered in a whisper and carried it out the front door, not wanting to disturb Amanda’s nap.

  “Michaela Fritz, returning your call.”

  “Hi, Sheriff. I’m at Amanda’s. She’s napping at the moment and I had a question about the contents of David’s wallet.”

  “Might as well hold on to it. I’ll be out there in about thirty minutes.” She clicked off before I could say anything else.

  Poor Rusty panted out the side window and I felt a pang that he’d had to spend so much time today in the car. I let him out and gave him free run of the woods until Michaela’s cruiser pulled into the drive. Rusty bounded up to greet her but settled onto the front porch within a couple of minutes.

  “So, what’s the big question?” she asked as we walked toward the house.

  “Twelve dollars in Simmons’s wallet. Doesn’t seem like much for a guy to live on if he plans to be out of town for awhile. I know lots of people use credit cards for everything these days, but that wouldn’t have been feasible if he planned to hide out, would it?”

  “Doesn’t seem like it to me,” she said. “Guess I looked through all his stuff but hadn’t really pieced it all together yet.”