Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries Boxed Set: Books 1-3 (The Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries)

by Heather Haven

  It took me a few seconds to figure out where I was, and by then, Guadalupe was knocking on my door with a breakfast tray laden with a carafe of coffee, Canadian bacon, and steel-cut oatmeal topped with brown sugar and raisins. Life doesn’t get much better.

  After feeding the kitten and myself and doing a modified barre, I was at loose ends. It was around nine-thirty and one of the most gorgeous mornings I’d ever seen.

  Standing in the doorway of the back deck, I looked out. The sun shone brightly, it was about sixty-eight degrees, and a soft breeze caressed my skin.

  I went outside with a second cup of coffee, followed by Tugger. One of the many things Tío did was put up temporary screening against the wooden slats of the railing so the kitten couldn’t slip through. Hanging from the guardrail are window boxes filled with various flowering plants. Like all the rest of the plant kingdom dependent on me, they’re on a self-watering timer.

  Maybe when Tugger gets older, he’ll figure out a way to jump into those boxes, but I’ll deal with it then, I thought.

  Said companion plopped himself down in the sun, rolled around a bit and wound up with his belly in the air watching me intently through tawny eyes. I sat down on the floor of the deck and played with him. What with one thing and another, a full hour went by. He was ready for a nap, and I was ready to pull what was left of my hair out. I was antsy, bored and tired of squashing down a niggling feeling, so I decided to take a walk.

  I took a shower and got out a clean sweat suit from the back of the closet. It was a faded hot pink number with stains and rips, but one I couldn’t bear to part with. To keep a modicum of self-respect, I added my old black leather jacket, since the one I wore to the warehouse was currently being boiled in oil, reconstituted and prayed over by Leatherworks. The outlook wasn’t good. I grabbed a baseball cap to protect my recovering scalp from the rays of the sun, and headed out.

  The main drag of Palo Alto is a street called University running east to west. It’s chockfull of shops, upscale restaurants, fast-food places, hotels, and shade trees, all the things to make a charming little town charming. From where we live, it’s only about five blocks, and I knew the walk would do me good. I took my time and wound up in front of Borders bookstore in about fifteen or twenty minutes.

  I was weighing the pros and cons of going inside when I saw a man out of the corner of my eye, who looked suspiciously like Captain Chen. Not believing it to be so, I stared right at him and saw it was he, indeed. He was talking on a payphone — one of the few remaining in Palo Alto — and in such a deep conversation that when a bird pooped on his shoulder, he didn’t even notice. I lowered the brim of my cap and circled around to the back of him. I couldn’t quite hear what he said, but I could tell from his body language he was angry, hostile and firm. After expelling an evil little laugh, he hung up the phone, picked up a folded newspaper and walked west.

  I’m going to be completely honest here. For somebody who was bored and antsy, with a nagging niggle, this was like manna from heaven.

  Who was he talking to on the phone? What was up with the evil, Boris Karloff laugh? Where is the dastardly Chen going now?

  It amazed me I was more intrigued by these questions than frightened by my former assailant, but that’s me. Nothing could have stopped me from following him, from a safe distance, of course. He walked another block on University. I darted in and out of doorways just like I’d seen in every B movie of the forties, trying to keep from knocking pedestrians over in the process. Then he turned left onto a side street called Dorcus.

  Like most of Palo Alto’s streets, both sides of Dorcus are lined with large, old trees. You know the kind I mean, the ones where the roots have upturned most of the sidewalks and created natural speed bumps in the road. If you want to keep your rear axle, you have to drive less than fifteen miles an hour, a boon to a neighborhood filled with children. I found myself hiding behind the thick trunks, as I followed him. Chen finally stopped at the third house from the end. He opened the white picket gate, went up the steps and checked the mailbox.

  I hugged the far side of a tree, elated at my vantage point, when I heard a commotion at my feet. Not daring to move, I glanced down and saw one of those small dogs on an expandable leash of about thirty feet long. It was attached to an elderly man on the other end. The octogenarian plodded behind, muttering, “Brutus, come,” “No, Brutus,” and so forth.

  The dog, reminiscent of a fox that had been shrunk in the rain, ignored his owner. He was too enthralled with whatever scent presented itself to him at the base of my tree. Wouldn’t you know, an overhead squirrel spied the dog and began making those chattering noises squirrels make. Now, I like dogs and this Brutus was small, cute and fuzzy, but he was a yapper. With Brutus yapping his head off below, the chattering rodent started to circle the upper trunk as if its tail was on fire.

  Not to be outdone, the yapper tried to keep up with the squirrel and the race was on. Brutus tore around the base of the tree several times pulling along his owner who looked like a man who had a whale on the end of a fishing line.

  During all of this, I didn’t move. I just knew Captain Chen was following this drama from the steps of his house, like everyone else on the block. I stayed quiet and allowed myself to be trussed up on the far side of the tree. For about five minutes, the dog yapped, the squirrel chattered, and the old man fussed. I just stood there like Joan of Arc before the lighting of the bonfire.

  Eventually, the senior citizen unwrapped me, apologized profusely and, carrying a still yapping Brutus, went on his way. The squirrel, now silent, watched me sink to the ground and had the nerve to come down the side of the tree headfirst and stop about five inches from my face, where it stared deeply into my eyes. By this time, I had had it, so I took off my cap, and swatted at the furry rodent.

  “Go find your own damn tree,” I growled. Startled, it leapt onto the ground, ran across the street and straight up another tree. There’s nothing more rewarding than a well-trained animal.

  I sat there for about fifteen minutes wondering what I had done in a past life to deserve this, when I became aware of more impending doom. A small child stared at me from a yard across the street. With my luck, the child’s mother had already called the police, who were on their way to arrest me for vagrancy. I got up, pulled the cap down to my nose and tried to saunter casually away, hoping no one other than the kid was still watching me. I immediately went to a nearby Starbucks and ordered a double mocha latte with whipped cream on top. There had never been a greater need.

  After that, I returned home and tried to put a positive spin on my latest adventure. Not being able to do so, I took a nap. The rest of the day passed uneventfully except for the delicious meals delivered by the wondrous Guadalupe.

  Mom and Tío dropped by in the early evening, and I went to bed around eight p.m. sleeping until nine-thirty the next morning. I had turned off the ringer of the phone in my bedroom and was in such a deep sleep, I hadn’t heard Mom, Tío or Guadalupe knock on the door. Worried, Lila let herself in with her key and finding me dead to the world with a sleeping kitten perched upon my chest, left a note and my breakfast on the kitchen table.

  I was dressed in another pair of ratty sweats — more faded than purple — and in the middle of reheating the omelet, when I heard a pounding on the front door. I opened it to find Frank standing there and in a rare mood, even for Frank. He had a look in his eyes that could peel paint off a wall.

  “And just where were you last night, young lady?” he demanded in a voice so loud Tugger darted under a chair. With that, Frank pushed past me to the center of the room where he wheeled around to continue his paint-peeling look. I stared at him uncomprehendingly.

  “Well? Where were you?”

  “I…I was here, Frank,” I stuttered. “I never left the place.”

  “That’s not true,” he bellowed. “Yesterday you were seen in downtown Palo Alto by one of my men. One of my men, Liana! How do you think this makes me look?”
/>
  “But that was yesterday morning. You asked me about last night,” I answered him, mystified by his behavior. I had never seen this side of Frank in my life, and I’ve seen a lot of sides. Watching him try to restrain himself, I wondered what this was all about. I was afraid to say anything until he got himself under control. He paced the room for a few seconds and then turned on me, blurting out,

  “Chen is dead. Dead! Shot three times in the chest, just like Wyler.” I stared at him and felt my legs go rubbery. I sank into a nearby chair.

  “A PG&E employee sent out to read the gas meter found him early this morning. The back door was wide open. Chen was lying in the middle of the kitchen floor covered in blood.”

  “Dios mio!” I exclaimed, too shocked to say much more.

  “You’d better ask the good Dios for help, because you’re in serious trouble, and I might not be able to get you out of it.”

  “Why am I in trouble? I don’t understand.”

  He leaned down and got so close to me our noses almost touched. My eyes crossed as he spoke slowly and quietly. “Because this is the second murder you have been involved in, and they are suspiciously alike. It has the same MO. It has the same everything. And you were there. Both times. You even found the first body. This doesn’t look good for you. Not one bit. So I’m asking you again, where were you last night?”

  I pulled back a little, uncrossed my eyes, feeling a little huffy. “You can’t seriously believe I killed him! Why on earth would I do that?”

  “Right off the top of my head, I might say it’s because he tried to kill you. That’s what a prosecuting attorney would say. But I don’t deal in motives. I’m just a cop. I deal in means and opportunity, of which you had plenty.”

  “But Portor Wyler was shot with a derringer. You said so yourself. I don’t own one of those things.” I was trying not to panic.

  He straightened up and began pacing the room again. “You’re a PI. You could have picked one up in your travels. You could have bought one on the Internet. Hell, I don’t know. The preliminary tests show Chen was shot with a similar weapon as Wyler, if not the same one.” Frank threw himself into the chair across from me, the one under which Tugger was wisely keeping out of sight. He covered his face with both hands and shook his head. Then he took a deep breath and looked at me, waiting.

  Tears sprang to my eyes. I didn’t know whether I was more shocked Captain Chen had been murdered or more hurt Frank thought I might have done it. “I didn’t kill him, Frank. I swear to you. I didn’t kill him.” With all the anger drained from him, I could see his fatigue and worry.

  “Oh, I know that, Liana, I do. I’m just scared for you. Don’t you see? You were the last known person to see Wyler alive, and you have no alibi for his death. Then you were kidnapped by his partner, Captain Chen, and almost killed. Now Chen shows up dead in the house you followed him to earlier in the day. It’s in one of my own reports written by one of my men, assigned to keep an eye on him.” He became exasperated again. “You idiotic child! How could you follow him like that? Don’t you realize what kind of compromising position you’ve put yourself in?”

  “Wait a minute!” I saw a glimmer of hope. “If you had someone watching Chen’s house, then he knows I didn’t go back after I left in the morning, doesn’t he?”

  Frank leaned back, completely deflated. When he spoke, his tone was low and expressionless. “Not really. We had a five-car pileup, with two fatalities, shortly before midnight. I had to pull Leo off the job for about two hours late last night.” He continued speaking, his voice filled with guilt. “We’re hurting, Liana. I didn’t have the budget to keep someone around the clock on Chen exclusively. I could only do it when, and if, nothing else was happening, but I didn’t want to tell your mother that. I knew she was worried enough. There’s a two hour window where I can’t prove you didn’t go back and shoot him.”

  I was more than a little scared. “What should I do, Frank? Tell me and I’ll do it.”

  “Well, first of all, answer me. Where you were between ten-thirty p.m. and twelve-thirty a.m. last night?”

  “I was here, asleep.”

  “Please tell me Lila was with you or your uncle. Someone. Anyone.”

  I shook my head slowly. “I’m sorry, Frank. There’s nobody. I was alone, and I was asleep.”

  He sighed deeply. “You’d better hope we find the killer and fast, or it’s going to be you in jail instead of that Wong woman. It’s not going to take San Francisco long to find out you are a common denominator. I only have this little time now because the killings took place in two different counties. They’re going to piece them together, and when they do, you become the number one suspect. I’ll do all I can, but you may want to get yourself a lawyer.”

  “A lawyer? But I…”

  He interrupted me sternly. “Yes, a lawyer, Liana, or we might be continuing this conversation from a jail cell. Now I mean it. If you don’t know a good criminal lawyer, I do. I won’t have Bobby’s baby girl in jail. I won’t have it.”

  We were on the same page with that thought.

  Frank left shortly after that, with a promise he would keep me up to the minute on everything. I also promised to stay put. I had several cups of chamomile tea to settle my jangled nerves and just sat there. I wasn’t sure what to do, so as Dad always said, when you don’t know what to do, do nothing. That was me, the Queen of Nothing.

  It was eleven-thirty a.m. when the doorbell rang. I assumed it would be Guadalupe with lunch and opened the door to find a deliveryman holding a package from Neiman Marcus. Surprised, I signed for it, tipped him generously and sent him on his way. When I ripped open the box, I saw a pair of black, suede boots exactly like the pair I’d worn at the warehouse.

  “That was the night that started everything,” I mused aloud. “Poor Portor Wyler. Even though he turned out to be a real scumbag,” I added. I put the boots back in the box and set it down on the coffee table.

  Tugger felt compelled to investigate the new item coming into "his" house and jumped onto the table for a closer look. The smell of new suede, an irresistible item for any cat, attracted his full attention. Several seconds later, I noticed he was standing on top of one of the boots in the box, gnawing on a leather tie.

  “No. No. Bad boy!” I shouted, shooing him away. “What do you want to do? Ruin my new boots before I even put them on?” I asked him crossly. I stopped and looked down at the kitten that studied me with marked curiosity. I had never yelled at him before, and he didn’t quite understand what I was doing.

  He was curious but certainly not fearful. Laughing, I picked him up in one hand and the chewed boot in the other. Then I froze. A new, and formerly inconceivable, thought came into my mind. I had heard the phrase “bolt out of the blue” but had never experienced one before this moment. Color me bolted.

  “Ruined shoes,” I said slowly. I dropped the boot as if it were on fire and ran to the phone, absentmindedly still carrying a lolling Tugger. I hit the autodial on the phone, waited a minute while it rang repeatedly then rolled over to the secretary’s desk.

  “Patti!” I said urgently, not allowing her to finish her usual telephone greeting. “This is Lee. Is Lila there?” After learning Lila wasn’t, I remembered Mom had left me a note reminding me this was the day she was going to the zoo with Mrs. Wyler.

  Fighting back the mounting fear, I asked her to transfer me to Richard and, instead, got his assistant, Erica. Richard, too, had taken the day off and had departed for parts unknown. He was going to call in later on in the day. Could Erica relay a message to him when he did?

  You’re damned straight you can, I thought, but kept my tone professional.

  “Yes, ask him to call me, as soon as he can,” I replied, gripping the receiver tightly. “Tell him it’s urgent. Tell him I know it wasn’t Grace Wong. Tell him that exactly.” I then had another thought.

  “Erica, is there any way you can give me the weather report for January twenty-second on the Penin
sula? Maybe it’s online somewhere. Thanks, I’ll hold.” I was pretty sure what I was going to hear, but listened intently to Erica’s reply, anyway, and hung up. I started to dial Tío, but remembered he was working at the animal shelter today.

  “Wait a minute!” I chided myself. The cell phones! Why didn’t I think of that in the first place? I finally dropped the now squirming cat on the sofa and quickly dialed Lila’s cell phone number. Of course it wasn’t on. They never are when you need them to be. Then I called Richard’s cell phone. It was on but call forwarded to the office. When I heard Erica’s voice again, I hung up. Alarmed at not being able to reach anyone, I went to the floor safe to get my revolver. I checked to see if it was loaded and took an extra round of shells.

  I threw on my leather jacket and almost ran out the door when I remembered I didn’t have a car. It was still in the shop and wouldn’t be delivered until next week. The battery was out of Dad’s car and stored somewhere in the garage. I had no idea how to put one in a car, even if I could find it. I sat down on the sofa to think, and forced myself not to listen to the pounding of my heart.

  “Douglas!” The name came to me, and I abruptly stood up. Douglas was only about four blocks away and had a car. I called The Creamery, and as luck would have it, he happened to pick up the phone. Overriding his demand for information about my current health, I asked to borrow his car for the afternoon on urgent business, promising to explain at a later time. Renting a car would take too much time was all I said and time was of the essence. His car was less than five months old, but Douglas finally acquiesced. He’s that kind of guy. “Just try to get it back in one piece. Ha, ha,” he added. I was more concerned about getting me back in one piece. Ha, ha.