Balloons Can Be Murder: The Ninth Charlie Parker Mystery

by Connie Shelton

  “I’m Charlie Parker. A friend of Rachael and Grayson Fairfield.”

  Her ginger-brown brows crinkled, bringing back the names from the past, clearly wondering where this was going.

  “My company is investigating some threats Rachael’s recently received.” I shifted from one foot to the other, not really wanting to go into the whole thing out here on the porch. “Bill Fairfield recently got out of prison. You may have heard about it. Could I come in for a minute?”

  The news about Bill’s release seemed to surprise her, and with her guard down she stepped aside to admit me.

  We stepped into a foyer with baby-blue walls and blue floor tile. Directly in front of me a staircase led to the second floor. The focal point of the entryway was an oval rock garden tucked beneath the stairs, bordered by a tiled edge and accented by a mirrored wall behind it. Nestled among the white rocks sat a couple of garden gnomes and a stone bunny. I worked to suppress a smile but she’d already turned toward the living room.

  Through a wide archway, a sea of baby-blue carpet stretched across a living room of blue and cream furniture that looked as if it had never seen the weight of a human butt. The one sign of life in the room was a card table surrounded by four chairs, a deck of neatly stacked cards in the center. This was clearly the hub of the evening’s activity.

  “If you don’t mind, I need to get this cleared away,” Dottie said as she bustled ahead of me.

  “No problem. I just have a couple of questions.” I dropped my purse on a stiff Queen Anne chair and trailed her into a dining room—also done in baby-blue and ivory—where she began to gather the remains of a spread. Silver bowls of pastel mints and mixed nuts, a platter of decimated tea sandwiches, a silver coffee service. She began picking things up and carrying them through another doorway to the kitchen.

  “You seemed surprised that Bill Fairfield is out of prison,” I said, raising my voice as she went into the kitchen. “I guess you didn’t see him when he was in town last week?”

  A rattle sounded, dishes being set into the sink, then she returned. “No, I haven’t seen Bill Fairfield in twenty years.”

  “But you knew them well at one time. Bill and your husband were political rivals. Your husband won the election and was mayor of Clovis for awhile.”

  She picked up the sandwich platter and a handful of linen napkins. “That was a very long time ago. I can’t see what it would have to do with anything that’s going on in Rachael Fairfield’s life today.”

  She zipped back to the kitchen and made some more noise. I wished she’d just settle down for a minute.

  “Look, this gets kind of touchy,” I said when she came back. I reached out and touched her forearm, stopping her in mid track. “Rachael thinks Bill is threatening her now because she testified at his trial.”

  She made a humph sound and turned toward the table again. “Not Bill. I can’t see him thinking that would change anything now.”

  I stepped into her path. “Neither can I. So I’m wondering what’s really going on. And the more I learn about that family, the less I think I know.”

  Her lips tightened and she itched to be moving again.

  “How did Linda Fairfield die?” I asked.

  Her eyes darted toward her china cabinet, then at the table. Finally the gaze settled on the floor.

  “Dottie? How did she die?”

  Her fingers twitched and finally settled on her upper arms as she folded her arms and closed me out.

  “Officially, it was suicide. Now I think you’d better go.”

  “Who determined that? Was there a coroner or medical examiner who made that assessment?”

  I waited out a long beat of silence.

  “Old Doc Hardin was the medical examiner and mortician back then.” Her lips nearly disappeared into the tight line of her mouth.

  “Where can I find him now?”

  “The cemetery over at Bovina. He died ten years ago.” The tight line became a smirk.

  She sidestepped me and went back to clearing the table. I mumbled a thanks, retrieved my purse and left. Outside, the rain had become a mere sprinkle, whipped now by winds at the back edge of the storm front. I flopped into my car seat wondering what to do next. Rusty licked at my ear and I roughed up his fur. Enough for tonight. We headed back to the motel.

  I switched on the room’s TV set for company and took a hot shower, slipping into comfy sweats afterward. I pulled the photos from my purse and laid them out on the bed, shuffling them into different order from time to time but not coming to any new conclusions. I still had a strong hunch about there being something between Linda and Dean Patterson but nothing else to go on. I’d hoped to learn more about that situation from Dottie, but she clearly didn’t care to open up to me. My mind jumped around for answers, for ideas on what to do next, but I didn’t come up with anything firm and by ten o’clock my eyelids were drooping. I pointed Rusty to his usual mat on the floor and switched off the TV.

  I stayed unconscious until the phone jarred me awake. The bedside clock told me it was 5:43. I fumbled for it and uttered a groggy hello. A perky voice asked for Tiffany and I slammed the receiver back in place and let go with a few sailor words. Rusty padded over to my side and lay his chin on the edge of the bed, his deep brown eyes questioning me. I rubbed his ears and the brown eyes closed in contentment. Mine would have, too, but my stomach began talking urgently about breakfast. I forced myself to roll over and plant my feet on the floor. A sudden wave of nausea hit and I dashed for the bathroom. Nothing much happened but I hovered over the bowl with weak knees and wondering what the hell this was about.

  I studied myself in the mirror and decided I’d had too many combinations of strange food recently. Dark circles under my eyes also attested to the fact that all the early mornings were catching up with me. My damp hair had dried in bizarre kinks and bunches while I slept. I ran a brush through it, which blended the bunches and did nothing for the kinks. Forget it.

  I put my sweats back on and clipped a leash on Rusty’s collar. We headed for the rear edge of the parking lot. I saw that the sky had nearly cleared and the rain which, last night, puddled everywhere had rapidly soaked into the ground completely. The air felt crisp and clean. I let the dog make his rounds and realized that my stomach’s shakiness seemed completely gone and I felt ravenous.

  Back in the room I gathered our few possessions and put them in the car, checked out of the motel and headed for the Denny’s next door for breakfast. I lingered over my omelet and toast, saving a few crusts in a napkin for Rusty, who was fogging my car windows quite nicely by now. The phone book had given me an address for the Hardin Mortuary, and that was going to be my main stop this morning once they opened.

  Since that wouldn’t be for another hour—according to their yellow pages ad—I busied myself by taking Rusty for another short walk and calling Drake to touch base. As expected, I got his voice mail. He’d undoubtedly gotten up in the pre-dawn and was now somewhere over the treetops, flying over the most gorgeous country in the state. I felt a pang of . . . something. Something like being left out, like the kid who’s afraid to go on the giant roller coaster but then feels jealous watching all the other kids have a great time at it. I really needed to get back into the pilot’s seat. Drake was right about that.

  For now, back to the current case. I pulled into the mortuary’s parking lot, surprised to find it full. The stream of dark-clad people told me which way the funeral chapel lie and I headed the opposite way. Surely someone must man the offices during services. I hoped it would be Riley Hardin, son of the late Doc, whose thoughtful face adorned the company’s phone directory ad. And I hoped he’d remember something of the Fairfield death so many years ago.

  I located the office and was told by a woman in a navy suit that Mr. Hardin was presently tied up. After I presented my business card she punched a couple of digits into the intercom on her phone and asked someone named Sean to come up. Sean turned out to be another Hardin, a guy barely out
of his teens, whom I assumed to be Riley’s son or maybe a nephew. He had the clean-cut look of a kid raised in a fairly strict conservative family—dark hair that was short but not radically so, navy twill pants and navy polo shirt with the Hardin logo embroidered on the chest. He gave me a tentative smile showing perfectly orthodontured teeth and his gaze slid shyly off to the side.

  “Ms. Parker will need to see the M.E. records from . . . what year did you say it was?”

  “Eighty four, I think,” I told them.

  “Records that old will be in the second basement,” she said, probably for both Sean’s and my benefit.

  “Right,” he said. “Come with me.”

  I trailed him through a series of back hallways and down some stairs. Closed doors along the way probably hid all manner of activities that I didn’t even want to know about. At the bottom of the stairs we entered a large room, which contained rows of storage shelves, mostly flower vases, folded cloths in a variety of colors and assorted office supplies.

  Sean headed down one of the aisles and came to a door against the far wall of the room. It opened to reveal shelves of file boxes, all neatly labeled by year and letters of the alphabet.

  “There’s space in the front offices for about three years worth,” he said. “After that, nobody hardly ever wants to see them again so they come down here.”

  We passed boxes from the new millennium years, then headed back through the nineties.

  “Here we go,” he mumbled. “1984.” He pulled the box from the shelf and carried it to a table across the room. With a flop and a small cloud of dust, he set it down and raised the cardboard lid. Over his shoulder I could see tabs on neatly labeled manila folders. “What was the name you needed?” he asked.

  “Fairfield, Linda Fairfield.”

  His fingers had just reached the folder I wanted when a voice echoed from the storage room, calling him.

  “Here you go,” he said. “That’s Uncle Riley. I’ll be right back.”

  A man in a perfectly tailored charcoal suit stood in the doorway. He sent one quick glance in my direction then beckoned Sean toward him and began to issue instructions in a practiced, low tone that kept the words strictly private. I turned my attention to the folder Sean had given me.

  Linda Fairfield. A copy of the death certificate was the uppermost document. Cause of death: overdose of barbiturates. I flipped past it, came upon a photo of the body which I quickly went past, and found a page of hand written notes. I caught the words again: overdose of barbiturates. This time they were followed by a dash and the note—self inflicted? Apparently old Doc had questions about it. But he’d put his verdict firmly, without question, on the death certificate.

  I glanced up. Sean had left, apparently sent on some errand but Riley Hardin was puttering with something on one of the shelves, discreetly keeping an eye on me.

  “Mr. Hardin? Are you familiar with this case?” I asked.

  He stepped forward and took the folder from me. “Fairfield. I vaguely remember it, but it was a long time ago.”

  I pointed to the handwritten page. “I found this note. It looks like Doc had some question about the suicide. See how he put a question mark here? Wouldn’t that indicate that he wasn’t sure whether she took the drug herself or if someone else might have somehow given it to her?”

  He set the folder on the table and began to ruffle through the pages. “Here are the autopsy findings,” he said. “Everything seems consistent with barbiturate poisoning. Doc microscopically examined the liver. Also requested tox tests from the state lab. Fatal overdose. Conclusive. The method the drug was administered seems to be the question.”

  He gazed across the room and tapped his fingers restlessly. “I vaguely remember this case now. Dad—Doc, everyone called him—said there was some Marilyn Monroe-like about it. No pills remaining in the stomach, a very large amount of the drug in the bloodstream, but no sign of her having taken it herself. He speculated as to whether someone else could have given it, injected it maybe.”

  “But no mention of a needle mark?”

  “They’re not always easy to find.”

  “So, ultimately, he just listed the death as an overdose, with no opinion about the method.”

  “Right. As I recall, the Fairfield family was in turmoil. Something had happened to the father and the children were dealing with it. The son was of legal age but young and inexperienced with this kind of thing. Family friends came along and helped out, I think. The Pattersons.” He gave a little shake of his head. “Wow, where did that come from? Amazing how old stuff can just pop into your head, isn’t it?”

  “Uncle Riley? Brenda says they’re ready upstairs.” Sean’s voice interrupted my roiling thoughts.

  “That’s it, then?” Riley said. He put the folder back into the box and slid the box into its slot on the shelving. I noticed that he switched off lights and closed doors along the way as they escorted me out.

  Back in the car I sat for a few minutes pondering everything I’d learned. For the life of me I couldn’t see what any of this had to do with Rachael’s current problem and the threatening notes. Bill Fairfield was still the big unknown and I began to think it was about time I had a conversation with the man.

  Before heading back to Albuquerque I decided to call Ron.

  “Got the name of Bill Fairfield’s cellmate for you,” he said. “The most recent one anyway. Seems he had several over the years.”

  “Anyone who’d likely be a buddy of a Harley-riding biker?”

  “Buddy, hardly. He’s Tamsin’s brother.”

  Chapter 14

  “Henry Tamsin. Affectionately known on the inside as Hank the Tank.”

  “Hank the Tank?” I had a hard time picturing a tank as the confidant of William Fairfield, banker, politician, and Clovis’s man of the year.

  “Doing time on aggravated battery and attempted murder,” Ron said. “I went back into the newspaper archives and found that he put two guys in the hospital, one of them in critical condition, in a bar fight. Get this—the fight started when Hank busted up the place, raging drunk, on the night of his mother’s funeral. After the reading of her will.”

  “The same will that cut Ryan out without a cent did the same to his brother?”

  “Exactly. Dear old mom saw through both her sweet boys and didn’t approve of their lifestyles. Left her entire estate to her favorite charity. Score: battered women’s shelter, a million, Tamsin boys, zero.”

  “Oh boy. So Hank the Tank finds out he’s paired with Rachael’s father and learns all he needs to know to go after her.”

  “And Hank got out two months ago, get this, on good behavior. Just lucky for him that neither of his victims died,” he said.

  “And little brother Ryan is still running wild and free. Obviously, they talk.”

  “May have even paired up. We don’t know, although Hank’s records show that he’s living in Santa Fe. We should probably check that out. Can you make a run up to Santa Fe tomorrow?”

  And face The Tank alone? I told him there were probably a hundred good reasons why I shouldn’t do that.

  “I wasn’t suggesting you confront him yourself,” he said. “Just check out where he’s living, is he really there, is he holding a job. You know, check with the neighbors, stuff like that.” I grudgingly agreed and brought up another thought.

  Ryan obviously hadn’t cooled a bit in his attitude toward Rachael. I’d seen that first-hand. But I couldn’t see a series of threatening letters fitting his style. Wouldn’t he be more likely to just track her down and drag her into a dark alley somewhere? Taking the time to cut words from magazines and deliver notes to her house didn’t seem like the Ryan Tamsin I’d met and I told Ron so.

  “So, maybe it is her father after all,” he said. “Maybe Bill got the story about the will from Hank and added it to his own list of grievances.”

  “We better keep tracking him then,” I said.

  “I’ve been on him pretty constantly
.” He didn’t sound exactly thrilled. “He comes and goes from work, keeps a regular schedule, hasn’t done anything suspicious yet. At least Rachael’s safe for now. I just talked to her a couple hours ago. She’s gone with Sam out to his place in the mountains. Plans to skip tomorrow’s flying. I guess a lot of the crews do that, pick a day in the middle of the week and get some rest. She’ll stay at Sam’s until sometime tomorrow.”

  “I’m heading back to Albuquerque now. I can watch Bill for part of the time.”

  “Yeah, good idea.” He sounded relieved.

  “How about if I take over for the afternoon and evening?”

  We agreed that it didn’t seem necessary to sit outside Wal-Mart all night while Fairfield did his job. Ron had worked out a deal with the supervisor to call him if Bill left anytime during his shift, and this hadn’t happened all week. I’d stake out his apartment and see that he reported for work at eleven that night. We could each get a good night’s sleep and Ron could take over again in the morning.

  The drive back to Albuquerque passed uneventfully. The previous day’s showers were nowhere in evidence, I had the sun at my back, and traffic was light. What more could I want? Figuring that Rusty had endured about all he wanted of life in the car for awhile, I stopped at home to give him free rein of his own territory, to drop off my small duffle and to gather a small cooler full of drinks and snacks to get me through the next eight hours or so.

  It was a little after three when I pulled up to the very average-looking stucco apartment building that Bill Fairfield now called home. I couldn’t help but make the comparison to the two-story brick with white colonnades where he used to live in Clovis. A place he might still be living had events turned out differently. I gave another glance at the tan building with its three floors of all-alike windows and boxy construction that offered nothing architecturally interesting, then scanned the parking lot. I spotted Ron’s car near the street, beside a second driveway that I’d not noticed when I pulled in.

  “I am really ready to go home and stretch out in front of the TV,” he said with a yawn.