Obsessions Can Be Murder: The Tenth Charlie Parker Mystery

by Connie Shelton

  Pedro’s Mexican Restaurant has been Ron’s and my old standby for years. As I pulled into the tiny parking area, I had the fleeting thought that he might actually bring his date here and I’d get a look at her. But the only vehicles in the lot were Manny’s battered pickup and two sedans I didn’t recognize.

  Pedro greeted Rusty and me with open arms as he called out to Concha that I was here. His rotund little wife is one of those naturally loving people who gathers you up into a squishy hug that’s like snuggling into a down pillow. I asked after her sister in El Paso, who’d been ill recently, accounting for Concha’s absence on my last two visits. They, of course, inquired as to why I hadn’t been in for my customary green chile chicken enchiladas, which led to a quick explanation about my travels up north.

  Meanwhile, Rusty settled into the corner beside our usual table and waited patiently for his expected ration of tortilla chips. Manny, the old guy who sits at the bar and downs tequila shooters, raised his grizzly chin in greeting, and the other two couples—tourists, by the look of them—tried hard not to stare at the dog but didn’t succeed very well.

  “Only one tonight?” Pedro asked, heading toward the bar.

  I nodded, wanting to tell him about Ron’s date, but knowing the ears of the whole place were already upon us.

  Within minutes, I had one of the world’s finest margaritas in front of me and Rusty was getting his regular handouts from the basket of chips Concha had set in the middle of the table. I basked in their friendship and wondered what I’d been thinking, pondering a new life in a small town. Look at the fabulous margaritas and enchiladas I’d be giving up.

  A half hour later, satiated, I made my way home to find another pile of mail waiting for me. My neighbor, Elsa Higgins, is a jewel—bringing in mail for me anytime I’m out of town, without even being asked. I glanced at her house and noticed she seemed buttoned in for the night with just one light and the flicker of her ancient television set in the living room. I’d call her tomorrow.

  I performed the same ritual with the mail here, relieved that about ninety percent of it was trash. By the time I’d emptied my travel bag and thrown a load of dirties into the washer, the letdown began to hit. By nine, I’d showered and settled down with a book but my eyes wouldn’t stay open. Tomorrow is another day, I quoted as I switched out the bedside lamp.

  The morning dawned with uncharacteristic clouds and dampness in the air. When I opened my eyes I was startled to see that the bedside clock showed 9:43, unheard of for me. The dimness of the room made me want to roll over once more but I fought it. Today was Friday, perhaps my last chance this week to reach some of the resources I needed to check. After that, I’d probably find myself with two days of empty time. I smiled at that thought and wondered if there were any way on earth that Drake might also have a break and we could hook up somewhere. Rarely does he get to come home during a job, but he gets mandated days off and we sometimes manage quick conjugal visits in a town near the job site.

  That idea was quickly shot down a few minutes later. As I dressed in jeans and a light sweater, he called and let me know that they were working through the weekend. His next day off would probably not come for another full week. We made do with some very suggestive conversation and promises of what the next weekend would bring.

  I went into the kitchen and fumbled through the meager supply of breakfast options, deciding that the bread would have to be thrown out and none of the cereals were appealing. I would make fresh coffee at the office and see what could be scrounged up there. I gave a quick call to Elsa next door while Rusty gobbled doggie nuggets, then we headed back to the office. The dog settled into the back seat and I, too, soaked in the sights of spring flowers and new leaves on the trees and the peaceful feeling of being back in our familiar routine.

  Sally stood at the kitchen sink, scrubbing at the gunky coffee pot, her shaggy blond hair in its usual disarrayed style.

  “Doesn’t Ron ever wash this thing?” she complained.

  “Probably not. And he was a little preoccupied last night.” I told her about the date and she was as surprised about it as I’d been. Sally’s life is firmly planted around Ross and their little girl, and she’s been out of the dating scene way longer than either Ron or I.

  “Is he here yet?” I asked.

  “Nope, and I was wondering about that.”

  I didn’t want to even think about my brother’s getting lucky, especially if this was a first date, so I turned my attention to my office and the mail which had not magically disappeared during the night. At one point I ventured to stick my head into his office, wondering what he’d done with his notes on our previous David Simmons inquiries, but the desk was way too scary to contemplate. There was no way I’d find a specific bit of information in that mess.

  Ron rolled in around noon, looking happy. Not exactly glowing, but chipper. I gave him a quizzical look but didn’t ask.

  Before he had the chance to get occupied with phone calls, his usual way of spending a big part of the day, I inserted myself into his doorway.

  “How much farther back can we go into David Simmons’s past?” I asked. I quickly outlined what I knew about the guy’s activities near the time he disappeared, and my feeling that there was more to be learned.

  “As far as you want,” he said in answer to my original question. “Birth certificate, work history, marriage. We could spend months and learn everything there is to know.”

  “Marriage. Earleen was at least his second, we know, because she’s not Amanda’s mother. What can we get on that?”

  “Depends on where they lived at the time.”

  “California. Amanda told me she grew up in both Sacramento and Pasadena, then they moved to Silicon Valley—I don’t know specifically which town.”

  “I’ll see what I can get.” He didn’t even complain that he already had too much to do or anything.

  “He’s got it bad,” I told Sally a minute later in the kitchen, as the smell of fresh coffee began to fill the room. “He hasn’t grumbled once this morning.”

  “Yeah, and he’s wearing a new shirt. When was the last time Ron bought a new shirt?”

  “Wow, I didn’t even catch that.”

  We shushed as we heard his footsteps on the stairs.

  “I brought a coffee cake from the bakery,” he announced. “Did you see it on the table?”

  Sally’s eyes widened and I felt mine do the same. My brother is usually the one who comes in demanding that someone else go out for the morning treats. I wanted to meet this lady who’d converted my brother to a gentlemen in such a few short days. When had he met her, anyway?

  We helped ourselves to the coffee cake, which had a cinnamon crumble topping that probably contained way too much butter (I refused to check), and went back to our respective duties. Ron gave me a couple of websites to check, while he began a round of phone calls on David Simmons.

  Using the data from David’s real driver’s license from his wallet, we managed to come up with a positive match to a Simmons in Sacramento, where he’d been born on July 21, 1954. The California records tied to a marriage license issued in 1978 to David Simmons and Samantha Bradley. Based on Amanda’s age, I could reasonably guess that Samantha was her mother, but I would ask her.

  “No divorce decree between those two?” I asked.

  “Not yet. If they divorced in another state, it’ll take some time to find,” Ron said.

  Amanda had never mentioned her mother, so I decided to give her a call. Maybe they’d stayed in touch.

  “Charlie, my mother died when I was a child,” she said, sounding puzzled. “I thought I’d told you that.”

  I was pretty sure she hadn’t but didn’t make an issue of it.

  “Were you still living in California then?”

  “Oh, yes. I was only three. I don’t even remember her. It was an accident. Dad just never talked much about it and I’ve never heard of any other family. We were on our own for quite awhile. He met Ea
rleen about the time I left for college.”

  “And I gather that was pretty much an oil and water relationship, you and her.”

  “From the start. At first I just felt a daughter’s normal jealousy over the new woman in my dad’s life. Over the years I watched her go through his money and I had the feeling that he felt stuck, that he’d like to get out but didn’t know whether he could take the step or not. She manipulated him terribly, everything from the places they’d travel to the television shows they’d watch. She dictated their social life and told him what to wear. The only big battle I ever saw him win was the choice of where to live. She didn’t want to come to Watson’s Lake. Boy, the fur flew over that one. She wanted to be in L.A. or Vegas. He wanted to be here because Jake and I had moved here the year before. He bought the land and started having house plans drawn up without even telling her. She finally came around when she saw that she’d get the biggest house in town and would have free rein to decorate it as she wanted.”

  “So why does she stay here now? With him gone for four years?”

  I heard a sigh over the line. “I don’t know, exactly. I suspect something to do with Frank Quinn. He certainly didn’t give her the lifestyle Dad did, but there’s something. He’s got some kind of hold over her.”

  I pondered that for a minute. Blackmail of some kind came to mind. But then again, Earleen wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. Maybe it was something as simple as a great time in bed with the guy. Maybe they were both biding their time, lying in wait for the insurance settlement, when they’d take the cash and head off for more glamorous places.

  Amanda thanked me again for staying on the case and I told her I’d be back to Watson’s Lake in a few days.

  “Something interesting here,” Ron said. I hadn’t even heard him cross the hall between our offices. “One of those Social Security numbers you gave me a few days ago? I’d told you he never used it, but that wasn’t quite right. He never used it in any employment, so no contributions were made under that name—Mark Franklin.”

  “Franklin. He used David Franklin as one of the other aliases.”

  “Franklin was his mother’s maiden name, so the logic is there. It was convenient and easy not to get messed up.” He held up a hand as I started to open my mouth.

  “That’s not the interesting part. He used the name Mark Franklin to open a bank account here in Albuquerque. I located it at Fidelity State Bank.”

  I opened my mouth again and got shushed again.

  “That’s not the truly interesting part,” he said. “The account contains nearly four million dollars.”

  Chapter 16

  My jaw dropped, I’m sure, and a feeling like a heavy stone settled in my stomach. “Four million?” I managed to croak.

  He nodded, as if this kind of news came across his desk every day. “Want to hear more?”

  There was more? I could only blink.

  “I recognized the address on the account as a mail drop location here in town. Called in a favor to the guy who owns the place.”

  Thank goodness for Ron’s contacts and all the favors people owed him.

  “When did you do this?”

  “Just now. You were so wrapped up in your online research you didn’t even hear me say I was leaving. Anyway, he let me collect the mail from the box and voila—” He held up a stack of envelopes.

  I came around the end of my desk and reached for them. “Isn’t this completely illegal, us looking at this stuff?”

  “Possibly. But we’re acting on behalf of David’s legal heir. And it’s no more illegal than his setting up these accounts under a false identity anyway.”

  I liked his reasoning. “But—”

  “Charlie, just look at what we’ve got here.”

  I flipped through the envelopes. Statements from a brokerage house. Two of the envelopes had already been slit open so I pulled out the contents of the first one. A mutual fund account whose balance topped three million. The second statement showed that another fund contained nearly another four.

  I grabbed my letter opener and quickly slit the remaining envelopes open. Most of the statements pertained to the same two accounts. They were merely duplicates of the ones we’d seen.

  “Oh my god,” I whispered. Over ten million dollars. Where had David come up with this?

  I glanced at the postmarks on the envelopes. They’d arrived quarterly over the entire time David had been missing.

  “Don’t these get sent back to the mailer if they’re undeliverable after so many days?” I asked.

  “The Post Office does that. But a private mail drop, they don’t especially care. They figure they’ve got a lot of clients who are hiding out in some way. As long as the box doesn’t fill to overflowing they pretty much let the customer check their mail as often or as seldom as they want. My buddy didn’t remember Mark Franklin, didn’t really worry about it ’cause Franklin had prepaid for five years.”

  “The box didn’t contain anything but statements from this one firm, did it? So it looks like David set up this whole identity for only one purpose.”

  “Kind of looks that way,” he said. “Although there were also some IRS notices.” He handed me a few more envelopes, which revealed that the government had expected, but never received, tax returns from Mark Franklin.

  Something nagged at me. “So, if David had this kind of cash, why did he take out a two million dollar mortgage on the house at the lake?”

  “That may be the two million dollar question,” Ron said. “Maybe to throw the locals off track, maybe to embellish this little stash . . .” He nodded toward the envelopes.

  “No, I don’t think that’s it.” I told him that David had seemingly put the proceeds of the loan toward the invention he and Jake had been developing. “I know he was successful in Silicon Valley but this successful? Everyone I’ve talked to seems to agree that he took his nice profit there and invested in the property and house in the mountains. I don’t think any of them have a clue that there was more.”

  “And I’m wondering about the other identities,” Ron said. “We’ve accounted for two of the four. What else is out there?”

  His phone rang just then and he stepped across the hall to answer it.

  What else, indeed. David had set up one of the identities and worked under that name, we assumed as a test whether the ruse would work. The second clearly worked as a front for a lot of hidden money. What other uses does someone have for a false name? Skipping the country seemed like a logical reason to me. With a fake passport and access to all this money, David could have disappeared from modern society and be set for life anywhere in the world.

  So why didn’t he?

  When he drove out of Watson’s Lake that day, why didn’t he head for an airport with ticket in hand and more than twelve dollars in his wallet?

  I brooded over it until I began to smell something tomatoey and Italian from the kitchen’s microwave. My stomach growled and I noticed for the first time that Rusty had disappeared from his usual spot on the rug near the bay window. Just like him to know when and where food was happening.

  Ron was pulling a heated Lean Cuisine dinner from the oven when I got there.

  “You’re dieting?” I couldn’t hide the incredulity from my voice.

  He shot me a look.

  “Sorry, I mean, hey it’s great that you’re dieting.” I watched him dig through the utensil drawer for a fork and take a seat at the table. “So, are you going to tell me about her? Or is it some kind of State secret.”

  “I just don’t want your opinion about anything,” he said.

  “When have I ever given my opinion on your love life?”

  “The last time.”

  Okay. But I’d also found out that his little twit girlfriend was deceptive as hell and he was far better off without her.

  “I won’t do that, I promise. What’s her name?”

  “Victoria.”

  Oh shit, the last one was a Vicky. I clamped
my mouth shut and nodded. “Where’d you take her last night?”

  “Scalo.”

  Okay, nice place, high class.

  “Look, I’m not going to play twenty questions with you,” he said. “She’s a very nice woman, my age, no kids. Has a decent career and she’s not needy, greedy or seedy. That’s all you’re getting for now. If things begin to work out for us, I’ll introduce you and you’ll get all your morbid curiosity satisfied.”

  I yanked the refrigerator door open with a little more force than I intended, rummaged around until I found an apple, and took it up to my office without another word. I found a blank file folder and jammed all the David Simmons stuff into it, then plopped into my chair and chomped into the apple. By the time I’d chewed until my jaws ached I decided that Ron was almost right. His love life was certainly not my business and he could screw up his life in any way he saw fit. It’s just that . . . dammit . . . he’s my brother and I don’t want to see him hurt again. I blinked away the extra moisture from my eyes, just in time, because his heavy tread sounded on the stairs.

  When he peeked around the door frame tentatively, I appeared to be very busy with paperwork.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m going to stay completely out of your personal life, okay?”

  “Just give me a little time and space. That’s all.” He went back into his office and I heard him pick up the phone. When the conversation turned sweet, I tuned out.

  David Simmons presented more than enough of a puzzle to keep my mind occupied and I resolved to stick with that. I debated calling Amanda again but decided not to. What was I going to say? She clearly knew nothing of this huge stash of his, and bringing it up at the wrong time might cause more harm than good.