Obsessions Can Be Murder: The Tenth Charlie Parker Mystery

by Connie Shelton

  She paused on the front step. “Before we go in . . . I’m here to deliver bad news.”

  Worse than the shocks Amanda had already received today?

  “That was no accident, David being in the lake. Preliminary autopsy showed blunt force trauma to the back of the skull. And, based on where we found the car, somebody sent the vehicle into the water at a pretty good rate of speed. Rigged the gas pedal somehow, is my guess, but we’ll know more about that later. The car sat in nearly twenty feet of water all this time. If we hadn’t had this drought it still would be. Lake hasn’t been this low in fifty years or more. Pure chance that fisherman bumped into it.”

  “Any way to know how long David’s been dead?”

  She shook her head. “Cold water, that amount of time. Can’t really say. Has to be nearly the whole four years, but no way to know if it happened the same day of the fire or a month later. Just can’t be that precise at this point.”

  “Does Amanda need to know all this?” I asked. “She’s pretty shaken up already.”

  “I have to tell her we’re changing the focus of our investigation. If David rigged the gas explosion, then who killed him? Bettina’s death might have been an accident, but this, this is obviously murder. State police are probably going to get their noses into it, too.” She said this last part with a small curl of the lip. “I’m going to need that envelope back, David’s personal effects.”

  We let ourselves into the house and I offered to get the envelope from the kitchen while she talked to Amanda. When I came back into the living room, Amanda was sitting on the edge of the sofa and Michaela perched on the edge of a chair, their knees almost touching.

  “I’m sorry that all the old questions are going to come up again,” the sheriff said.

  Amanda rubbed at her face but her eyes were dry. “It’s okay. I want the answers. I have to know who did this.”

  Michaela stood and I handed her the brown envelope. The unpleasant part was over for her. She could make her announcement and walk out the door, go home for a nice dinner. Amanda’s nightmare would go on for a long time.

  Chapter 11

  The sun was low in the sky and I was more than ready for some solitude. Shortly after Michaela left the Zellinger house Jake came in and I left Amanda in his capable hands. It had been an intense day and I wanted nothing more than a walk in the fresh air and a simple dinner.

  I parked in front of our rustic little cabin at the Horseshoe and turned Rusty loose in the wide open space behind it. I walked the perimeter of the big field, enjoying the sunset and hoping that Drake would be able to call tonight. I missed our daily contact when he was away on jobs. After thirty minutes of fast-walking I felt better. The sun had gone behind the mountain and the temperature had dropped ten degrees. We walked up to Jo’s where I ordered a salad to go.

  Back in the room I switched on the television and ate my salad, but neither the food nor the sitcom could distract me from the rush of random thoughts about the case. When Drake called he sounded tired and we covered the basics of the day and ended with our usual love-you, miss-you. I’d told him about David’s body being recovered and he sounded relieved because that would be the end of my involvement. And it probably should be. I should just check out of the motel in the morning and go back to Albuquerque. There were surely letters to be written and bills to be paid back at the office.

  I pulled off my jeans and T-shirt. A shower would feel really good. When I tossed the jeans over the back of the desk’s straight chair, something hit the floor. I went over to check.

  David’s key ring.

  I’d forgotten all about having put it in my pocket. I’d been meaning to ask Amanda to identify the keys when she woke up. Now that the sheriff had the envelope back, she’d surely check the contents and notice the keys were missing. Oh boy.

  A slew of thoughts hammered me—my culpability in hiding evidence or obstructing an investigation or some such thing. I glanced at the telephone. Should I call Michaela and explain? Should I tell Amanda? I fingered the keys, again wondering whether any of them provided actual evidence.

  Maybe not. Maybe they were simply keys. House, car, the usual. Safe deposit box. People put valuable and secret things in safe deposit boxes. I jammed the keys back into the jeans’ pocket and headed toward the shower.

  While I soaped and shampooed, I wondered what to do next. I couldn’t see that anything could be accomplished tonight. I would get the keys over to the sheriff first thing in the morning. If I slept on it, some kind of explanation would come to me.

  As it turned out, I didn’t sleep on it all that well. It’s never a good idea to go to bed with a guilty secret and mine seemed compounded by all the questions about both the explosion and David’s murder, by all the alibis and suspects that seemed to be everywhere. Somewhere in the early hours of the morning I drifted into a sleep of restless and disturbing dreams, the kind of dreams that feel disjointed and anxious. I woke about five and lay there in the tangled sheets, wondering what time the bank opened.

  There was no way around it. I had to find out what was in that box before simply handing over the keys to the sheriff. I would probably be in deep shit for doing it, but I’d deal with that when it happened.

  I paced the room, took another shower and dressed in the same pair of jeans, checking to be sure the keys were still in the pocket. The air was frosty again this morning, with clouds starting to build on the western horizon. Rusty nosed at the rimed blades of grass and would have probably done so all day, but I finally called him back.

  The bank probably wouldn’t open until nine and the suspense was killing me. I opened the book I’d brought and read the same two sentences over and over as I alternately looked at the clock and wondered when Sheriff Michaela would come pounding on the door.

  The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I wasn’t simply going to be able to walk into the bank, a stranger in town, and get into David’s box. A relative would have to do it and that meant either Amanda or Earleen. No way was I calling Earleen. I dialed Amanda’s number and got a sleepy response.

  “I’m so sorry to call this early,” I told her, realizing I’d done the same thing on the previous morning as well. “I need to check out something at your dad’s bank this morning and, well, I need your help.”

  Her voice brightened. Helping, I realized, was just the thing Amanda needed right now. Doing something is always better than lying around and waiting for news.

  “Jake must already be out in the lab,” she said. “What time is it?”

  “Six thirty. I know it’s way early for the bank. Maybe we could meet for breakfast and then go over there?”

  She hesitated.

  “I’m sorry. You probably don’t want to be out in public too much, do you?”

  “These black eyes would terrify my students if any of them were to see me. How about you come out here to the house? I’ll get a shower and try to become presentable, we’ll make breakfast here, and then we can go to the bank.”

  I found it amazing that she didn’t ask more questions about the nature of this banking business, but was just as glad to save the explanation as to why I had her father’s keys when I’d turned everything else over to the law. I told her I’d be there in thirty minutes.

  When I tapped on their door, Jake answered. He looked fresh and vital, wearing a white lab coat. He ushered me in and we walked through the kitchen where Amanda was just taking a tray of bacon from the microwave. Jake took two strips of it and headed out the back door, toward the lab.

  “He’s not much of a breakfast person?” I asked.

  “Hardly ever. He’s already been out there at work since before daylight.” She sighed and put the final stir on a skillet full of scrambled eggs and scooped them onto two waiting plates. I watched as she carried them to the table and pressed the lever on the toaster. Her face looked better today, as some of the smaller bruises had begun to fade. She still moved a bit cautiously but more fluidly than yester
day.

  We buttered the toast and dug into the food before saying much more. Finally, she paused and set her fork down. I knew the time for explanation had come.

  “I have to start out with an apology,” I told her. She gave a quizzical look and I continued. “I looked through your father’s things yesterday, while you were sleeping.”

  “The envelope?”

  “Yeah.” The words came out in a rush. “I should have waited for you, I know, but now that Michaela’s taken them away again . . .”

  “Tell me. What did you find?”

  I briefly described the wallet’s contents and the jewelry before I mentioned the key ring. Then I pulled it out of my pocket.

  “Do you know anything about a safe deposit box?” I asked.

  A wrinkle creased her forehead as she thought about it. “At the National State Bank branch here in town.” She flipped through the keys and came to the one I’d noticed. “Years ago, he made me a signatory on the box, just in case . . .” Her voice trailed off and she didn’t finish the thought. “I’d forgotten all about it.”

  “Can you still get into it?”

  “I’m pretty sure I can. He’d given me a key.” She got up and rummaged through a kitchen drawer that bristled with junk. After a minute or two she held up a key with a small paper tag on it.

  “Does anyone else have one of those?” I leveled a straight gaze at her.

  Her mouth opened and she froze. “Earleen?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe.”

  She stared off at a faraway spot and let out her pent-up breath. “I can see why you want to get down there right away.” She forked up a clump of scrambled eggs and began chewing furiously.

  “I have no idea what we might find, but if there’s a chance that we can find it first, I’d like to,” I told her.

  She nodded.

  “When was the last time you opened the box?” I asked as we watched the clock.

  “Never. I was with him the only time I ever saw it,” she said. “Like I said, he added me to the signature card but I actually saw the box only once.”

  “Do you know what was in there?”

  “Important papers, I guess. I can’t recall his ever telling me anything specific.”

  We lingered with extra cups of coffee and washed the dishes and finally it was a quarter of nine. She clicked the intercom box and told Jake she’d be gone for awhile.

  We arrived at the bank in time to see the manager unlock the front door. Amanda greeted the woman by name and received a few condolences on both her father’s death and her recent accident. I hung back, and the process of signing the card and unlocking the box with Amanda’s key went without a hitch. The manager, introduced to me only as Susan, escorted Amanda into a cubicle and allowed me inside at Amanda’s request.

  The box was not a large one, probably only about six inches square by eighteen inches long. Amanda lifted the lid and pulled out a stack of folded documents. She quickly unfolded and glanced at each one: an insurance policy, a will, a letter with her name scrawled across the back side. She unfolded this and read through it quickly.

  “Oh my gosh.” It came out in a whisper.

  I itched to look over her shoulder but restrained myself.

  “He was divorcing Earleen. Look.” She thrust the letter into my hands. It was dated the first of May, four years ago.

  Dear Amanda, it said, I’ll soon be telling you this myself, but in case there’s ever a dispute about the conversation, I want to put this in writing. I’m filing for divorce, this week. Horton Blythe is handling it.

  “Horton Blythe?”

  “Dad’s lawyer. He’s in Segundo.”

  In case Earleen tries to drag out the process, I’m doing everything I can to cut her off financially. The enclosed life insurance policy names you as beneficiary and my will has been revised to reflect the same. She married me only for my money, I can see that now. I know, I was foolish about her. I’m beginning to have some reservations about the YA-30, although I do see profits in it. I’ll explain very soon. I just want to be sure Earleen is out of the picture before the real money comes rolling in. Whatever else happens, Amanda, you’ll be taken care of.

  He’d signed off with love and reassurances that Amanda would probably never need to deal with any of this as the divorce would be finalized well before the new invention made it to market.

  Amanda took everything from the box and stuffed it into her purse.

  I found a dozen new possibilities flying through my head. Had David indeed set up the gas explosion, hoping to catch Earleen in it, not realizing that Bettina would get there first?

  We stepped out of the cubicle and Amanda handed the box back to Susan.

  “Did you also want to look at your father’s other box?” she asked.

  Amanda went blank. “Other . . .?”

  I nudged her and held up David’s key ring as it dawned on me that the two keys were evidently not the same.

  “Yes, please.”

  Susan pulled the signature card and I was sure this was the moment she’d realize Amanda knew nothing about this second box, but she merely glanced at it and filed it back in its place.

  She pulled a key from the ring on her wristband and opened another box.

  “There you go,” she said, showing us back to the cubicle.

  “What do you suppose this is all about?” Amanda asked, her fingers lingering before raising the lid.

  I shrugged.

  She pulled at the lid, tentatively, as if something might jump out.

  It jumped out at me, all right. A bright flash of gold caught my eye and I recognized the emblematic seal against the dark blue of a U.S. passport. The thing that jumped out was the fact that there were three more of them.

  Chapter 12

  Four passports, four Social Security numbers, four identities.

  Amanda fumbled with the documents, as if she were unsure what she was seeing. I knew what I was seeing, I just wasn’t sure why. The implications became huge.

  David’s picture was in each of the passports but none of the names was Simmons. Social Security cards, all looking brand new, matched the four identities. Driver’s licenses—issued in four different states—matched the other documents. A credit card went along with each, as well. It looked to me like David was prepared to establish himself under a new name in a new place, at any time. Why, then, didn’t he use one of these to disappear after the fire? We’d never have been able to track a name we knew nothing about.

  If we’d found this box before the car was retrieved yesterday, I would have believed that’s exactly what happened. There could have been five false identities, just as easily as four. But if that were the case, we wouldn’t have found the body with David’s true ID.

  Then another thought hit me. Was the body really David’s?

  My head began to pound with the implications.

  Amanda continued to flip through the documents, a stunned look on her face. She turned to me.

  “I don’t know either,” I said in response to her unspoken question. “But I think we better take all this with us and try to figure it out.”

  “Here, you take them. I don’t want this stuff,” she said, shoving a handful at me.

  I gathered everything and rechecked the box to be sure it was empty. We walked out, returned the box and left the bank. Both of us must have looked somewhat shell-shocked.

  Out in my car, we sat for a couple of minutes, both staring straight ahead.

  “What shall we do?” she finally asked.

  “I’m not sure. I think a good first step would be to run backgrounds on all these other names, just see if anything turns up. And I think we better insist that a positive identification is done on the body in the lake.”

  She sat in frozen silence. A tear trailed down each cheek.

  “I’ll talk to the sheriff about it, if you want,” I said. “You won’t have to look at him, you won’t have to deal with it. They might just ask you for a DNA sa
mple.”

  She nodded and the tears continued to roll. Rusty came forward and sniffed at her face, expressing concern in his own doggy way. She smiled and rubbed at his ears.

  “Want some coffee?” I finally asked.

  She pulled a tissue from her purse, wiped at her face and blew her nose. With dark glasses, she looked fine for a woman who’d lost her father and been in a car wreck. But she really didn’t want to sit in a public place and have people stopping by with their attempts to console her.

  “There’s a place I love to sit and just think sometimes. If we got coffee to go, we could drive up there.”

  “Sure.” I started the car and pulled out into a short stream of traffic, then turned left two blocks later at Jo’s. The stop took just four or five minutes and I handed the two coffees over to Amanda in the Jeep. Following her directions, ten minutes later we were stopping at a small turnout that overlooked the lake from a height of five or six hundred feet above.

  “I’m glad we can’t see the boat ramps from here,” she said as she took the first sips of her coffee. “I don’t think I’m ready for that yet.”

  I nodded and just let her talk.

  “Dad’s house was right over there. See the clear spot just above those rocks? You used to look over there and see reflections off the windows sometimes. At night, if the house was lit up, you could see it easily. It was a beautiful place, I have to admit. Even though Earleen hired the decorator, the location and floor plan were Dad’s. There was a lot of him in that place. I can’t believe—I won’t believe—that he had anything to do with destroying it. He was divorcing Earleen anyway, why would he destroy the house he loved so much?”

  “Did Earleen know about the divorce?” I asked.

  “I have no idea. I didn’t. But then he might have wanted to wait and tell me after the papers were served and he knew how she would react.” She sipped again at the coffee. “His lawyer would know.”

  I handed her my cell phone. “Let’s find out.”