by J. R. Rain
In the center of the lawn was a pile of roses. Mixed with the roses were teddy bears and cards and a massive poster with many signatures on it. The poster had photographs stapled to it. It was a sort of shrine to Amanda Peterson, marking the spot where she had been found murdered just forty-three days ago. The flowers themselves were in different stages of dying, and the grass around the shrine was trampled to death.
A lot of dying going on around here.
I let my car idle and studied the crime scene. The large round bushes could conceal anyone, an easy ambush point. There was only one street light in this cul-de-sac, and it was four houses down. Although upscale, the neighborhood had no apparent security. Anyone could have been waiting for her.
Anyone.
But probably not Derrick.
Then again, I’ve been wrong before.
According to the police report, a neighbor had been the first to discover the body. The first to call the cops. The first questioned. The neighbor claimed to have heard nothing, even while Amanda was being mutilated directly across the street. I wanted to talk to that neighbor.
I yanked a u-turn and parked across the street in front of a powder blue house. The house was huge and sprawling. And silent.
I rang the doorbell and waited. While doing so, I examined the distance from where Amanda was murdered to here. My internal judge of distance told me this: it wasn’t that far.
No one answered. I utilized my backup plan and tried the doorbell again.
Nothing.
Plan C.
I strolled around the side of the house, reached over the side gate, unlatched the lock and walked into the backyard. As if I owned the place. Done with enough chutzpah and self-assurance that even the nosiest neighbor will hesitate to call the police. I was also fairly certain there was no dog, unless it was trained not to bark at the doorbell. Which few were.
In the backyard, pruning roses, was an older lady. She was dressed much younger and hipper than she probably was. She wore white Capri pants, a tank top, shades and tennis shoes. Her arms were tanned, the skin hanging loose. In Huntington Beach no one ages; or, rather, no one concedes to aging. Because she was armed with shearing knives, I kept my distance.
“Mrs. Dartmouth?” I asked pleasantly.
No response. More pruning.
I said her name louder and took a step closer. I was beginning to see how a murder could indeed happen across the street without her knowledge.
But then she finally turned and caught me out of the corner of her eye. She gasped and whipped the shearing knives around, ready to shear the hell out of me. Although thirty feet away, I stepped back, holding up my wallet and showing my private investigator license. A hell of a picture, I might add.
“Jim Knighthorse,” I said. “Private investigator.”
“Good Christ, you shouldn’t sneak up on people around here, especially after what’s happened.”
“Yes, ma’am. I represent Carson and Deploma. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
She stood. “You’re representing the boy?” she asked, her voice rising an octave. Not representing the young man. But the boy. She also sounded surprised, as if I were an idiot to do so.
“Yes.”
She thought about that. She seemed to be struggling with something internally. Finally she shrugged.
“Would you like some iced tea?” she asked.
“Oh, would I.”
At her patio table, she served it up with a mint sprig and a lemon wedge, and I suspected a dash or two of sugar. We were shaded by a green umbrella, and as Mrs. Dartmouth sat opposite me, I noticed the shears didn’t stray far from her hand. Didn’t blame her.
“Great tea.”
“Should be. I put enough sugar in it.”
She wore a lot of lipstick and smelled of good perfume. Her hair was in a tight bun, and she watched me coolly and maybe a little warily. Again, I didn’t blame her. I was a big man. A big handsome, athletic and sensitive man.
“Have you talked to many people about Amanda’s murder?” I asked.
She brightened. “Lordy, yes. Reporters, police, attorneys, everyone. I’ve been over it a hundred times.”
She sounded as if she’d enjoy going over it a hundred more times, to anyone who would listen. Probably served a lot of this iced tea in the process. And the sugar kept them coming back for more.
“Well, I won’t ask you anything that’s not already on the police report.”
“Fine.”
“You knew Amanda personally?”
She nodded. “That poor dear. Such a sweet child.”
“Did you know Derrick Booker?”
“No,” she said. “He never dared show his face here. I understand that Mr. Peterson didn’t take a liking to him.”
“Were you aware of Amanda having any other boyfriends?”
“I wouldn’t know. I’m not a nosy person.”
I smiled at the lie. “Of course not. How well do you know the family?”
“I babysat Amanda when she was younger. But as she got older I saw less and less of her. They always forget about us old fogies.”
“When was your last conversation with Amanda?”
She took a sip from her tea and watched me carefully. “Two years ago, when she was a freshman in high school, after she had quit the school marching band. She played an instrument. The flute, I think. She loved music.”
“Why did she quit?”
“I hardly think this is relevant to her murder of a month and a half ago.”
“Just fishing, ma’am. After all, like my dad says: you never know what you’ll catch.”
“Well, I do. They caught that boy. And that’s good enough for me.”
“It’s good enough for a lot of people,” I said. “Mrs. Dartmouth, what would you do if your daughter dated a black man?”
“What a silly question to ask.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t have a daughter.”
“I see,” I said. “You were the first to come across the body.”
She swallowed. “Yes.”
I waited a moment. “At one a.m.”
“Yes. I was walking. I do that sometimes when I can’t sleep.”
“And at the time of the murder, you saw and heard no one?”
She raised her finger and waggled it in my face. “Nuh uh uh, Mr. Knighthorse. That’s all on the police report.”
I produced one of my business cards and placed it on the glass table. In the background on the card was a photo of the sun sinking below the blue horizon of the Pacific Ocean. The word keen always comes to mind. In one corner, was my smiling mug.
“Should you remember anything, please don’t hesitate to call.”
I set my card on the glass table; she somehow managed to not lunge for it. I finished the tea in one swallow and, leaving the way I had come, picked the mint sprig from my teeth.
Ah, dignity.
Chapter Seven
The field was wet with dew, and a low wispy mist hung over the grass. The mist made the morning look colder than it really was. Sanchez and I had been doing sprints along the width of Long Beach State’s football field for the past twenty minutes. Sweat streamed down my face, and I probably had a healthy, athletic glow about me. I tried desperately to ignore the pain in my right leg. But the pain was there. Persistent, throbbing and threatening to become something more serious. But I pushed on.
“You’re pretty fast,” I said to Sanchez. “For a cop.”
“I’ve got to work off the donuts.”
We finished another set of sprints and were now standing around, sucking wind like we had done at UCLA years earlier, when we had both been young and not so innocent. When the world had been my oyster. Before I had shattered my leg, and before Sanchez had become an LAPD homicide detective.
There were now two female joggers circling the track around us, dressed in long black nylon jogging pants and wearing white baseball caps. They moved spryly, their identical
ponytails swishing along their angular shoulder blades.
“Sooner or later we’re going to have to run to the other side of the field,” said Sanchez. He spoke with a slight Hispanic accent when he wasn’t careful, or when he was tired. He was tired. He was watching the two joggers. “Unless you prefer to watch them all morning long.”
“Worse ways of spending a morning.”
“How’s the leg holding up?”
I shrugged.
Sanchez grinned. “That good, huh?”
We ran back to the other side of the field, just in time to meet the two women again, who swished past us with a casual glance or two. One of them said something and the other giggled.
“They’re laughing at you,” said Sanchez.
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” I said. “By the way, I beat you this time. Bum leg and all. How does that make you feel?”
“Maybe I should shoot myself.”
“Got a gun in my gym bag.”
“So do I.”
We raced back and as far as I could tell we were dead even this time, pulling up just past the far sidelines. The throb in my leg was feeling unhealthy. We had done this for the past thirty minutes.
“We’re even on that last run,” said Sanchez. “So I say we call it a morning. Baby steps. This is your first day back in training. Want to take it easy on the leg, especially a man your age.”
“You’re only a month younger.”
“Lot can happen in a month.”
“True.”
We sat on a bench wet with dew. The mist was all pervasive, leaving nothing untouched. I enjoyed the solitude it allowed.
“You going back with me to San Diego?” I asked. “To try out?”
He laughed, and kept his dark eyes on the joggers. “I wasn’t the one they asked to come out of retirement.”
“You could make it.”
“I was good, but not that good,” he said. The mist was dispersing and more light was getting through. There were also more joggers now, three males, but these were not as interesting to look at.
Sanchez checked his watch. “Most people with respectable jobs have to get going now.”
“Luckily, neither of us have respectable jobs.”
“True,” said Sanchez. “So who do you think did this girl?”
“Don’t know,” I said. “That’s the part I’m working on.”
“Isn’t it just your job to get the kid off? And to give a damn who really killed the girl?”
“But I do give a damn who killed her.”
“You always do. But you shouldn’t. It’s not your job, at least not on this case. Your job is to spring the kid before he goes to trial.”
I said nothing.
“I know,” said Sanchez, “I know. You’ll do it your way.”
I smiled brightly. “Exactly.”
Chapter Eight
I was sitting outside Huntington High in my car, on a stretch of road that overlooked the Pacific Ocean. My windows were down and the engine was off; a cool breeze wafted through the car. Life was good at the Beach.
It was three o’clock and school was just getting out. High schoolers nowadays are younger and smaller than I remember, although the occasional curvy creature sashayed by. Most of the girls wore unflattering jeans that rode low on the hip, showed a lot of tanned flesh and a surprising amount of lower back tattoos. The high school boys were spiked, pierced and dyed. Those who weren’t natural blonds, wanted to be. Huntington High probably had a very popular surfing club. My old high school in Inglewood did not have a surfing club. We had metal detectors and hired security that were referred to as The Staff.
More than one Mercedes whipped out of the student parking lot, followed by nineteen different Mustangs, and twenty-two of the new Volkswagen bugs. I saw exactly seventeen near-fatal car accidents in the span of forty-five seconds.
The less fortunate, and those not of driving age, waited in line and boarded the various yellow school buses. Other students walked, some passing my Cobra. I was promptly ignored, being an Old Man, and Not Very Interesting.
I didn’t blame them, although my ego was crushed a little.
All in all, I saw a fair share of Asians and Hispanics, but no blacks.
Teachers on duty did their best to clear out the lingering students from the front halls. The buses pulled away. And the potential smash-up derby that was the student parking lot cleared away shockingly fast and without a single incident. I waited another ten minutes, then left my car there on the hill, and headed up to the administration building at the front of the school.
The building, and much of the school, was old cinder block, bright with a fresh coat of powder blue. A very school-like color. I stepped into the mostly empty admin office. There was a receptionist behind her desk, pen in hand and working furiously. She was young and pretty, probably a school senior. I stepped up to the front desk.
“Hello,” I said.
She jumped. She had been writing a personal letter, probably when she should have been working. Should I be tempted to read her musings, she quickly covered the letter with her folded hands. But not well enough. I saw the words: asshole, love and booty used repeatedly. Further proof that there’s nothing so sweet in life as love’s young dream.
When she had recovered enough to speak, she said, “Can I help you?”
I smiled engagingly and showed her my investigator license.
A hell of a picture.
“Doesn’t look like you.”
“It’s me, I swear.” I struck a similar pose, turning my head a little to the side, and blasted her with the same full wattage smile. “See?”
She shrugged. “The guy in the picture is cuter.”
I wasn’t sure if I should be offended. After all, it was me in the picture, and she was calling that guy cute.
“So you’re a private investigator?”
“Yep.”
She nodded, but her interest was already waning.
“I give autographs, too,” I said.
“I don’t want your autograph.”
“Of course not. Who would I see about gaining permission to access your school?”
“You need to speak with Mrs. Williams.”
“Great.”
“Let me see if she’s in.”
“That would be fantastic.”
“Are you always this cheery?”
“Yes!”
“Hold on.”
“Super!”
She removed herself from her post, snatched up her letter, and stepped down the hall and peeked into one of the open doors. I sat down in one of the plastic chairs lining the wall and made it a point to look cheery as hell. The office was covered with senior year group photographs, dating back to the forties. The photos were lined end to end and circled the room above the windows.
“Mrs. Williams will see you now, Mr. Knighthorse.”
“Keen.”
“Keen?”
“I was running out of superlatives.”
Chapter Nine
The brass nameplate on Mrs. Williams’s desk designated her as vice principal in charge of discipline. Ah, she would be the one the students hated and likened to Hitler, as all students did in all high schools to any vice principal in charge of discipline.
One difference.
She couldn’t have been prettier.
Mrs. Williams stood from behind her desk and shook my hand vigorously. She gestured for me to sit and I did. She was young, perhaps the same age as me. Her hair hung loose around her shoulders and I had the impression she had recently set it free from a tight bun. Of course, the three bobby pins sitting next to her computer mouse were a dead giveaway.
I am, of course, a detective.
Mrs. Williams wore a white blouse with a wide collar that fanned across her collar bones. Her face was thin and pleasantly narrow. Of course, the intelligence behind her emerald eyes were the dead giveaway that she was something more than just a pretty face. A lot more. The eyes were arres
ting and disarming, true. But, good Christ, they were penetratingly cold. Chips of ice. She leveled them at me now and I squirmed in my seat.
“You seem a bit preoccupied, Mr. Knighthorse,” said Mrs. Williams. “You must have a lot on your mind.”
Her voice was a little husky, and a lot of sexy. The chest beneath her blouse seemed full, and heaved slightly with each breath.
“I was just wishing I had had you as my vice principal in high school.”
She did not blush, and her gaze did not flick away from mine. “What are you implying?”
“You are a looker, Mrs. Williams.”
She cracked a smile, and placed one hand carefully on top of the other. I could see her wedding band clearly. A plain gold band.
“A looker?”
“Means I think you’re swell.”
“Lord. Is this some sort of come-on line?”
“You’re married, and I’m happily dating the love of my life. I am simply warming you up to get what I need.”
“At least you’re honest about your intentions.”
“That, and I think you’re a looker.”
“What do you need, Knighthorse?”
“What happened to the mister?”
“Anyone who calls me a looker loses that formal courtesy.”
“Is that a fancy way of saying I’m warming up to you?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Because I need access to your school.”
“What sort of access?”
Behind her the blinds were open, and I had a shot of an open quad. From here, Mrs. Williams could see much of the school. It was a good view for the vice principal of discipline to have.
“I’m here to investigate the murder of Amanda Peterson,” I said. Her eyes did not waiver. I forged on. “To do so I will need to speak to witnesses.”
“There are no witnesses to Amanda’s murder here.”
“But there are those here who could provide me some assistance, including yourself.”
She leaned forward and looked down at her ring. Her smooth face had the beginnings of crow’s feet. She used her thumb to toy with the ring, spinning it around her narrow finger. I wondered if perhaps she was regretting the ring was on, and thus losing an opportunity to be with yours truly. Or perhaps not.
