I reached for my mug but it was already empty.
“The next time the experience was similar but this time he rubbed his hands over my breasts and I was wide awake. I didn’t know what to do. I just kind of froze. He kept whispering endearments and telling me this was our special secret.” Her face had become soft and childlike as she spoke. “Months went by and I began to think I’d imagined it all. Then he came back. Always in the dark, always touching and whispering. I felt repulsed and stimulated at the same time. It was just . . .” Her voice cracked.
My skin crawled in horror. I couldn’t imagine how awful it must have been for her.
She took a deep breath. “I don’t know how long it went on before he began to ask me to touch him. He guided my hand . . . I--I couldn’t do it. I rolled out of bed and ran for the bathroom. The next day I told my counselor at school.”
“How absolutely horrible,” I said.
“When my mother found out she insisted that I tell the story to the police and testify in court. Without her support I probably would have been too scared to say anything. On the other hand, as an adult now I can see that she wasn’t happy in the marriage anyway and was probably looking for an excuse to leave him. It would have worked out well for her if she hadn’t died so soon afterward.”
“And your father’s attitude?”
“Oh, he pleaded his innocence all along. Never did even admit to coming into my room.” The afghan fell aside as she waved off the statement. “As much as anything, his lying destroyed all credibility with me. I mean, it’s bad enough that he did what he did but not to face up to it, not to even apologize.” Her words trailed off.
Something about the whole situation nagged at me. Unanswered questions from twenty years ago . . . I couldn’t pin it down. But I still wasn’t convinced that Bill Fairfield would take this threatening tactic now, this many years later.
I walked over to the kitchen counter where I’d left the pictures and descriptions Ron had left with me. Rachael had gone to the bathroom and came back looking steadier, back once again in the present day. She saw me shuffling through the pictures.
“Back to our other suspects,” I said. “I’m not discounting your father or Chuck, but let’s keep them on the back burner for a minute. Assuming that as long as Chuck’s got someone else to batter, he’ll leave you alone. He may still be a threat, but there could also be others.” I spread out the papers. “Let’s talk about them for a minute.”
Picking up one of the descriptive sheets, I said, “Wilbur Johnson, your brother’s disgruntled customer.”
“I doubt it,” she said. “I’ve never even met the man. If he was this angry at Grayson, why wouldn’t he be threatening him? For that matter, why wouldn’t he be down at the bank, shooting at everyone?”
Good point.
“Our list is getting short here. How about Ryan Tamsin?”
“Well, he stood to inherit quite a lot of money, and I’m sure he thought he would. But his mother made her wishes—”
The phone interrupted her and she reached for it absently.
With a sharp intake of breath she dropped the receiver on the couch. I leaned over the huge coffee table that separated us and grabbed the fallen instrument, jamming it to my ear. Nothing but a dial tone.
Chapter 11
“Rachael, write this down!” I ordered, punching *69. I repeated the number given to me by the mechanical voice. Immediately, I dialed it, hoping the person would be dumb enough to pick it up. It rang fourteen times.
“One more try,” I said. I dialed Ron’s home number and was about to give up when he answered. “Can you get your buddy inside the phone company to trace a number?” I asked before he had a chance to take a breath. I read it off to him.
“With any luck, we’ll have an answer sometime tomorrow,” I told Rachael. “Now, while it’s fresh, what did the voice sound like? Male, female, what did they say?”
“Nothing,” she said. “There was someone on the line, but all they did was breathe. Strong, heavy breathing. It was so creepy, Charlie. Just like the other times.”
“Other times? Ron didn’t mention others.”
“Yeah, there’ve been a few. Once there was a whispery voice that I thought was male, but couldn’t be sure. I yelled at him that time, thinking it was Chuck. All the other times, though, it’s just this breathing.”
“Have you ever tried to have the calls traced?” I asked.
“No, didn’t think of it. I’m sorry I freaked tonight. I guess with the lack of sleep and all this talk about the suspects, I’m just extra jumpy.”
“Hey, perfectly understandable. Speaking of lack of sleep . . .”
“There’s no way at this point. My mind won’t settle down for another couple hours. Maybe if we changed subjects. I have a Scrabble board,” she suggested.
By the time we finally went to bed around eleven, I knew that four-thirty would come way too early. I took one of the bedrooms that faced the street, hoping I’d hear anything out of the ordinary. It felt like mere minutes after pulling the luxurious puffy comforter over me that the bedside alarm went off.
I wanted so badly to roll over for another two or three hours, but that wasn’t my job. I sat up groggily and rubbed at my eyes, forcing them open. Rachael had told me that she planned to leave the house by five, and since her truck was at Justin’s house it would be my duty to get her out to the field to meet up with her crew this morning.
We found them huddled on launch space T-12, Thermoses of coffee being passed around, and anxious eyes focused on the sky. In my early awakening haze I hadn’t noticed that a breeze quickened from the east. Now that the sky had begun to lighten over the Sandias, thick gray clouds became more apparent with each passing minute.
“Looks like we may get weathered out,” Sam said, sliding an arm around Rachael’s shoulders.
She stared at the sky and flinched as a raindrop hit her eye. “I’ll go see what they’re saying up front.”
I followed her to the large tent where the pilot briefing was just getting underway. We caught the last few numbers on the winds-aloft report. A few pilots bothered to jot them down but most just stood around with hands in pockets, scuffing their boots against the fine, powdery dirt floor. I glanced at Rachael.
“The rain wouldn’t be that big a deal,” she whispered, “if it were just a few sprinkles. It’s the wind. I think they’re going to call it.”
Sure enough, after a show of discussion among the officials and a halfhearted vote among the pilots, the decision came down to put the day’s flying on hold. ‘Hold’ was a fancy way of saying that, if by some miracle the weather improved in the next hour, people could fly if they wanted to. The forecast didn’t indicate much chance of this, but only those in the tent knew that. No such announcement would be made to the crowds, who by this time were queued up by the thousands at the vendor booths to fortify themselves with burritos, cinnamon rolls and coffee.
“What’re you going to do?” Liz Pierce had edged closer to Rachael and showed her a scrap of paper with the winds-aloft written on it.
“Guess I’ll see what Sam and the guys think. They might appreciate getting home early and sleeping a little longer.”
“Us too.” Liz’s eyes scanned the crowd until she spotted Kevin. She headed his direction.
“So, do you think you’ll actually fly today?” I asked Rachael as we walked backed to the truck.
“In this?” The wind had picked up to a steady ten knots by now, with spatters of rain sending occasional drops our way. It wasn’t the kind of weather that would keep you off the streets or even off the beach if it had been warmer, but balloons are sensitive craft and any wind over five knots, especially in a crowd this size, would be too dangerous.
“So, will everyone pack up and go home?” I think a touch of wistfulness crept into my voice.
“The official line will be that we’re holding until the weather improves. That will keep the crowds here because they’ve paid the
ir money and are hoping to see a show. It also gives the vendors a chance to recoup a little something for the day. They lay out big bucks for booths out here, not to mention thousands of dollars in product, and they bitch like crazy when the crowd goes home early. Took a few years, but the Fiesta officials finally figured out they’d make everyone happier if they stalled and kept the people around. It works. Look at ‘em.”
True, few of the spectators were wandering around the middle of the field full of parked pickup trucks. They were all milling around the edges where the vendor booths were happy to snap up their money. It wouldn’t net them a full day’s income, but they might salvage an hour or two worth of sales. If some of the stunt planes flew, it would help keep everyone happy.
We trudged back to T-12 and found several of the guys huddled inside the cab of the truck. Justin and Danny were slipping a rainproof cover over the wicker gondola, cinching it in place as we walked up.
Sam slid the window of the driver’s seat down and stuck his head out. Rachael filled him in on the verdict while I stepped back to see what the guys were doing. They’d covered the inflator fan with a small plastic tarp and secured the other equipment.
“I had a feeling about this,” Justin said. “Forecast was right on.”
A meteorology major in school, Justin would have been the logical one to ask. Silly me, I hadn’t even thought to check it last night.
Rachael had climbed into the cab of the truck beside Sam and I felt somewhat at loose ends.
“Think you guys can watch each other for the day?” I asked through Sam’s open window, even though I was pretty sure I knew the answer to that one.
With their assent and after some cautionary words about her safety, I gratefully extracted myself from the Balloon Fiesta scene and found my Jeep. A few other people, obviously having figured out the weather, were also leaving but most would stay until the official announcement came in a couple of hours. My first thought was how nice it would be to go home, retrieve my dog, and snuggle in for a rainy day of reading and catching up on little chores. But the more I considered it, the logical choice seemed to be following up with a couple of our suspects.
Six o’clock on a Monday morning turns out to be an excellent time to catch a person off guard. I retrieved Chuck Bukovsky’s address from my purse stuffed under the back seat of the Jeep and headed his direction. Traffic on the freeways was picking up but hadn’t yet reached the full-on mess it would be in another hour. I found the house on Valencia Drive and parked across the street.
Drapes across a large front window, probably the living room, were closed tight, as were the mini-blinds on a smaller one that I guessed might be the kitchen. A newspaper in a plastic sleeve lay in the driveway. Even the paperboy had noticed the forecast. A red Lexus and a silver Toyota sat in the driveway. I backed up, positioning myself so I could see their property clearly but wouldn’t be the first thing they spotted when they looked out. I didn’t have long to wait.
The mini-blinds cranked open—the first sign of life—and about a minute later the front door opened and out stepped Chuck. He wore some kind of sweatpant-type pajama bottoms, in a plaid fabric with a cord at the waist. His black T-shirt was either several years and many washings old, or he actually thought the skin-tight look enhanced his muscles. He bent to pick up the newspaper and the plaid slid dangerously low. He hiked it back up, scratched at his crack and walked back toward the front door.
My goal was to find out whether he was current on Rachael’s whereabouts, but this didn’t seem like the best time to approach someone from whom I wanted information. I waited in the car another hour until the transformed Chuck appeared—showered, shaved, and wearing a business suit. He climbed into the red Lexus in the driveway. I knew he worked for one of the smaller brokerage houses with offices in the Uptown business park, only about ten minutes away. I followed discreetly and saw my chance when he whipped into a Starbucks along the way. He angled the Lexus across two parking spaces and walked toward the coffee place, his step jaunty, his metro-business persona in full evidence. I followed him to the door, managing to get there in time for him to hold the door for me.
“Hey, Chuck. Wow, it’s been awhile.”
He struggled to figure out how I knew him, working to balance confusion with his natural inclination to flirt.
“How’s Rachael?” I asked. “Haven’t seen you guys in ages.”
He fumbled for an answer and I kept up the chatter.
“Did she end up taking that position with . . . what was the name of that firm?”
We approached the end of the line of five people standing at the counter. He clearly didn’t have a clue who I was. But he wanted to keep the conversation going.
“Uh, well, Rachael and I split. Awhile back,” he said.
He grinned stupidly and got ready to make a move.
Uh-uh, I thought. I know too much about you, buddy. “So, what’s she up to these days? Have you seen her recently?”
“No, uh, I’ve been pretty busy,” he said.
Yeah, busy beating up on someone else. “I’ve been wanting to call Rachael for ages,” I said. “I really need to do that. Wonder where she’s living now.”
“Can’t help you there,” he said.
I studied his face while he studied my sweater. My turn at the counter came up and I ordered a double latte. He cleared his throat, like he was about to say something but I handed some money across the counter and brushed past him.
“Well, it’s great to see you again,” I said casually. “I really will call Rachael one of these days.”
“Uh, maybe I can give her a mess—” The rest of it was cut off by the closing door.
I got to my Jeep and ducked low until he came out. He scanned the parking lot but didn’t see me. I followed the red Lexus to the Morgan Stanley building and watched him carry his Starbucks cup and a briefcase inside. I sipped at my latte and fought back the urge to settle deep into my seat and nap. I tended to believe that Chuck didn’t know where Rachael lived now. The spontaneous meeting, catching him completely off guard just now—I thought I’d actually caught him in a moment of honesty. Plus, the man was a flirt. If he could have kept me in conversation longer he would have. But, he was also a charmer, and they’ll say anything, truth be damned. I might do a little follow up.
The silver Toyota in their driveway hadn’t moved. My dashboard clock indicated that it wasn’t yet eight o’clock. I rummaged through some papers I’d left on the back seat and came up with a lined pad and a manila folder. I padded the folder with a sheaf of random papers, mostly financial reports from Drake’s business, added four or five blank pages ripped from the lined pad to the top of the stack and wrote Garcia, Nora, on the folder’s tab section. I actually didn’t hold much hope that this hokey ruse would work but I’d give it a shot.
She came to the door only after my second press at the doorbell. The door opened a few inches, revealing half of a tan-complected, dark haired woman in a pale blue fuzzy bathrobe. The scent of herbal soap drifted toward me.
“Yes?” Her tone clearly conveyed that she had no intention of opening the door farther.
“Nora Garcia?” She nodded. “I’m with the Department of Family Services. We have a report that you called the police a couple of weeks ago about a, a situation, here. Our department does a follow up call to see if there is . . .” I glanced up and down the street. “Could I come inside? It won’t take five minutes.”
Across the street a neighbor walked out to her car, openly staring toward us.
Nora glanced over my head at her, then pushed the screen door open and stepped back. The living room drapes were still closed and she left them that way. Light from an overhead fixture in the kitchen cast a beam into the dim room and a glow from a hallway to my left probably came from the bedroom beyond. Even in the dim light I could tell she had a puffy, blackened eye.
My semi-plan of asking her to verify Chuck’s whereabouts when the notes had showed up at Rachael’s wen
t out the window. So did the cool, professional manner of the government social worker. I took her hand and pulled her into the kitchen where I could get a better look at her face.
“I have to get ready for work,” she said, staring at the floor in that if-I-can’t-see-you-you-can’t-see-me attitude.
“Nora, how long are you going to let him keep doing this?”
She pulled away from me and picked up a mug of coffee from the counter. It shook so badly that she set it down again.
“It’s up to you,” I said gently. “You call the police but you won’t let them do anything. You put makeup over the bruises and a smile on your face and act like it’s going to be okay?”
“He says he’s sorry and he won’t do it again,” she pleaded.
I let a full minute go by. “They all say that, Nora. They all promise to change and they rarely do. I’ll bet he’s made that same promise more than once, hasn’t he?”
She stared at the floor again.
“You have to get out. Put your things in the car and drive away.”
“It’s my house. He moved in and I can’t make him move out. I’ve told him to, he just laughs at me.”
“The law can help you there. Cooperate with them and they can make him move.”
“I can’t make it without him. He tells me that. I’ll never make enough money to—” She stopped abruptly, her eyes darting to the doorway behind me. I spun, half expecting to see that Chuck had returned.
A little girl stood in the beam of light in the living room, her jeans and sneakers neat, her pink jacket unzipped, her school pack squarely on her back. Eyes like liquid chocolate stared at me from an unsmiling face.
Chapter 12
Nora bustled forward and zipped the child’s jacket. “Got your lunch money?” she asked.
Balloons Can Be Murder: The Ninth Charlie Parker Mystery Page 8
