Memories Can Be Murder
The Fifth Charlie Parker Mystery
By Connie Shelton
Copyright © 1999 Connie Shelton
Chapter 1
We come to certain crossroads in our lives. It is inevitable. Some are planned--marriage, career changes, cross-country moves. At other times we come to these crossroads quite suddenly, with no warning. I was orphaned in such a way over fifteen years ago and managed to get on with my life anyway. But within the past few days the discovery of some boxes of old papers dumped my preconceived ideas about my own life suddenly and completely upside down.
Last Tuesday started out as an ordinary enough day. After a month-long jaunt to Kauai in September to help my fiancé close up house and make ready to move to New Mexico, I'd arrived back in Albuquerque to our characteristically perfect October weather. Several days of confinement in the office followed, my penalty for taking a month off. So it came to be that Tuesday was the day I spent a couple of hours visiting with my eighty-six year old neighbor Elsa Higgins, and Tuesday was the day she dropped the bombshell on me, the fact that the circumstances of my parents' death were not at all the way I'd always believed.
From the day I'd received that fateful news, delivered by my best friend Stacy's mother while I was sleeping over at their house, I'd been of the belief that my parents' flight had been a vacation trip to Denver on a big steady commercial aircraft. Now Elsa was informing me that theirs was a small private craft, chartered by Sandia Corporation, my father's employer. That the plane had gone down in the northern New Mexico mountains under suspicious circumstances. In my self-centered state at sixteen, I'd only absorbed the fact that my parents were gone, that I'd be moving in with Elsa Higgins, Gram as we'd always called her, until I could legally be on my own, and that I'd be missing the Spring Break dance that Saturday night. In my ultimate selfishness these things were important but not necessarily in their true order.
I'd locked myself away in my room to alternately pout and grieve. I'd watched little of the television news coverage, read no newspapers, and no one had ever thought later to explain it to me.
Gram made tamales last Tuesday afternoon and I'd simmered a pot of pinto beans all day. Sometime between this filling main course and the pecan pie that followed was when the conversation turned to the past. I left her house feeling a bit queasy—from the tamales, the pie, or the news, I wasn't sure.
In the intervening days, I've been rearranging my house and my style to accommodate the crates of Drake's household goods which will arrive in a few weeks time. He'll be here Monday.
This morning I decided that there was no way everything from two entirely full households would fit into my place. So I started in on the closets, discarding, rearranging, sorting through junk I haven't even looked at in years. By noon a decent sized pile awaited transfer to the attic. An even larger pile is going to the Goodwill, and three trash bags will get hauled off on Monday. I felt pretty good about my progress.
The pull-down stairs creaked in protest as I tugged the rope to bring them down. At least two cupfuls of dust sifted down into my hair and onto the floor in the hall. I tried to remember the last time I'd been into the attic, but couldn't. Certainly not within the past ten years, and maybe not the last fifteen.
I tested the ladder-like stairs with my weight then crab-crawled my way up, figuring I'd better check out the situation above before hauling any boxes up. The dust and cobwebs were incredible. Literally measurable in places, no dustcloth would have an effect on this stuff. I'd have to see if I could drag the vacuum cleaner up here.
Rusty, my ever-present red-brown canine helper, waited expectantly at the bottom of the stairs, his head cocked to one side. He probably wondered how on earth I'd opened a hole in the ceiling. I stood on the next-to-the-top step and surveyed the space, feeling my throat tighten as dust motes worked their way into my nostrils.
The attic was a large rectangular space high enough to stand up only in the center of the house. Where I stood now, above the hallway between the bedrooms, I would have to bend at the waist to enter. My father, at over six feet, must not have wanted to bother because about a dozen file boxes with his angular writing on the ends circled the opening. They'd been pushed about an arm's length away from the edge, with no attempt to stack or organize them. Beyond them, I could see evidence that my mother had, at one time, tried to institute some order.
Trunks and boxes lined the far walls. A baby crib, high chair, and folded wooden playpen stood against a far wall, unused for nearly thirty years, as I was the last kid. I wondered if they had planned any more after me. Maybe she'd kept the furniture in hopes that grandchildren would use them one day. Both my brothers had produced offspring, but Mother had not lived long enough to meet them.
Enough. I had work to do.
Rusty sniffed at my jeans and sneezed mightily as I descended the steps.
"Fool," I told him. "Teach you to stick your nose right into the dust."
He wagged and sneezed two more times.
I pulled the vacuum cleaner out of the hall closet. It's not one of those lightweight plastic jobs and I battled with it until I got it up the ladder and resting safely on the attic floor. Hauling myself up after it, I brushed my hands on my jeans and looked around for a place to plug it in.
A bare light bulb overhead with a string hanging from it provided the only light source. I pulled the string and scanned the sloping walls. The only electrical outlet I could find was an attachment the light bulb was screwed into, so I used that one and connected the hose attachment to the vacuum. Thirty minutes later I'd cut through some of the dust on the floors and scooted my father's file boxes to one area against the north wall.
I stacked the last box, attempting to make them take up less space, then turned and spotted a small rubber-banded group of papers lying on the floor. The age-rotten rubber band snapped when I picked them up, revealing a small notebook folded within the papers.
A memory from my childhood flashed into my consciousness like an electric shock. My father always carried this little leather notebook in his shirt pocket. A scientist always, he pulled it out at the oddest times and jotted notes about whatever idea or theory crossed his mind. I stroked the worn smooth cover. It was designed as a case to hold a small spiral notepad. I wondered what he did with the spirals once he filled them. Over the years he must have surely filled dozens.
I flipped open the cover. Every page began with the date written in his neat slanted writing in the upper right corner. On the off chance that he might one day make a significant scientific discovery, I guess he wanted documentation.
The spiral I held must have been a fairly new one because only a few pages contained writing. The first entry was dated less than a month before his death. I flipped to the last written page. The notes were dated April 23, the day he died. Odd. Why would he write in the notebook that morning, then stash it in the attic before leaving for their trip? Why didn't he take the notebook with him? I couldn't remember a time when he hadn't had that little book somewhere on his person. I'd even seen him make notes while watching television in the evenings.
Something about my conversation with Gram three days ago clicked in. I'd always been under the impression that my parents were on their way to Denver for a weekend getaway. She'd told me that they were actually bound for Colorado Springs in a plane chartered by Sandia Corporation. If the trip was business, I know my father would have taken this little notebook with him. I flipped to the last page.
Heat really on, he'd written. Call WA first thing Monday/get protection.
Get pro
tection? What was that all about?
Chapter 2
I strained my memory banks but could recall very little detail about my father's professional life. As a scientist at Sandia Labs during the cold war years, he'd been sworn to secrecy to such a degree that it was probably a wonder that he dared to keep any kind of written journal. He'd certainly never carried stories home, and I couldn't even remember him mentioning names of fellow workers very often.
The late afternoon sun poked dustily through a vent at the far end of the attic. Characteristically for October, the temperature had dipped into the thirties overnight, but climbed to something over seventy this afternoon. In sweatshirt, jeans, and heavy socks, I realized I was becoming sticky. I gathered the small group of loose papers with the little notebook and jammed them into my back pocket. Unplugged the vacuum cleaner and pulled the light cord before heading shakily down the ladder.
Rusty danced little circles around me when I finally descended, glad to see me back on familiar ground again. I let him out to romp in the back yard while I put my cleaning stuff away and carried the boxes I'd originally planned to store back up the ladder. Thirty minutes later I realized my back was aching and I was stickier than ever.
I stripped off the jeans and sweatshirt and spent fifteen luxurious minutes under the shower. The outside temperature had begun to drop back to evening levels by the time I wrapped myself in a terry robe and let Rusty back in. He shot me a winsome look while I fixed myself a plate of crackers and cheese and poured a glass of wine. I filled his bowl with yummy nuggets and carried my feast into the living room where I could watch the news and look back through Dad's papers while I ate.
Have Hannah cancel dentist. Hannah--his secretary. What was her last name? I sipped at my wine. I could picture her in my mind. Shirtwaist dresses, dark hair in a bun, sensible shoes. She'd probably been in her fifties at the time I'd met her as a young kid tagging along on errands with my mother. She'd have to be seventy or more today. I wondered if she was still in Albuquerque or even still living.
Hannah, Hannah . . . what was her last name?
I flipped through the loose papers that had been rubber banded together with the notebook. Several of them were pink telephone message slips, faded now to pale salmon. Jack Cudahy X243 was the only thing written on one of them. Jack Cudahy, our Congressman? I didn't realize he'd ever been affiliated with Sandia. 243 must have been his phone extension. No number was given because it was an internal call. The slip was dated April 10 and the initials at the bottom were HS. Hannah Simmons. The name clicked into place easily.
My feet were getting cold so I went into my bedroom for a pair of socks, then carried my empty dinner plate to the kitchen. I pulled the phone book from the cupboard beside the kitchen phone and looked up Simmons. There were probably twenty of them, but only two beginning with H, Harold and H.B. I vaguely remembered that Hannah had not been married so I took a chance that she was H.B.
"Ms. Simmons? I hope I have the right number," I apologized. "Did you work at Sandia Labs years ago?"
The voice sounded elderly and hesitant.
"The reason I asked is that my father was a scientist there and I'm trying to locate his secretary."
"Are you Bill Parker's girl?" she asked.
I acknowledged that I was.
"Well, Charlie, for goodness sakes! You know I often wondered about you kids after Bill and Arlene died."
"We're all doing fine, thanks." I explained briefly that I'd just come across some reminders of Dad and told her I'd like to get together with someone who knew him well.
"Why don't you come over tomorrow," she invited. "I just got a sack of apples from Dixon. My neighbor drove me up there this morning, and I was planning on baking a pie. I'll do it in the morning and we can have us a cup of tea and a nice visit."
She gave me directions and I told her I'd be there around two o'clock. I hung up the phone feeling a mixture of anticipation and dread.
The next morning I puttered around the house, carrying the remaining boxes of junk up to the attic. The dust had settled a bit today, making the atmosphere less oppressive. I stashed my stuff against one wall, thinking that one day I really should get up here and clean out the old things my parents had stored all those years ago. After all, what use could I possibly ever have for baby furniture or scientific notes?
By noon, I was coated with dust again. I took a quick shower and made a sandwich for lunch. At one-thirty I told Rusty to guard the house while I was gone and I headed across town to the address in the northeast heights that Hannah Simmons had given me.
Her all-brick home was located near the fairgrounds, at one time on the very outskirts of the city but now smack in the middle of town. The white bricks had aged to a golden blond and the yard was neat with precise arbor vitae flanking the front door and pyracantha bushes hiding their deadly spikes behind thick clusters of orange berries. The Bermuda grass lawn was now tawny gold for fall, so the only highlights of color aside from the orange berries came from several fat bunches of chrysanthemums in bright purple, orange, and yellow. A ten-year-old blue midsize car sat in the driveway. I parked at the curb.
Hannah Simmons greeted me with frank curiosity. I got the feeling that she was scanning my face for physical traces of my father's genes. She had changed vastly from my childhood memory of her. I'd remembered her as tall, dark, and somewhat intimidating. Now she'd shrunk to just around five feet, with rounded shoulders, gray skin and white hair. Her blue eyes, once piercing, had become narrow slits behind her glasses, like it was painful for her to open them very wide. We both seemed at a loss for words for a couple of minutes.
Finally, she pushed the screen door open toward me. "Well, Charlie," she smiled, "it's so good to see you. You're not a little girl any more."
Yeah, twenty-some years will do that. "No, I guess I'm not," I assured her. "And how are you doing these days?"
She led me into a living room crowded with heavy old-fashioned furniture and carpeted with a gold sculptured weave that had long ago lost its sculpture. Paintings of ranchland and open prairies decorated the walls, while shelves at one end of the rectangular room were filled with memorabilia from a decade or two of retirement travel. The air was heavy with the scent of apples and cinnamon, reminding me of the promise that dessert awaited.
"Just set your purse there if you want, dear," Hannah said. "I'm going to put a kettle on for some tea."
I browsed the knick-knacks on the shelves while she ducked into the kitchen. Pictures in metal dime store frames filled a couple of the shelves—Hannah on a camel in front of the Great Pyramids, Hannah looking tiny and lost in front of the Taj Mahal, a group shot of thirty or forty people by the Eiffel Tower, Hannah standing before an indistinguishable plaque somewhere with high mountains in the background. Hannah looked timid and uncertain in each shot; none of them evoked joy or fun.
"I see you found my travel collection," she chuckled behind me. "See these little elephants? They came from Kenya." She pointed to a graduated set of carvings, the largest elephant being about three inches tall and the smallest around a half-inch.
I made some polite exclamations over each item she pointed out. When the tea kettle whistle interrupted, just before she was about to name all the people in the group photo, I quickly offered to help slice the pie.
We carried plates and cups to the kitchen table and settled in.
"Hannah, I wanted to ask about he plane crash," I told her. "You see, I only recently found out that Dad was on business and that it was a Sandia plane. I also found that little notebook he used to carry all the time."
She nodded, remembering his lifelong habit.
"One of the last notes in the book said something like 'The heat is on.' What would that mean?"
She finished chewing and took a swallow of tea before answering. "Well, Charlie, I really don't know, dear. It's been so many years, you know."
"What about the plane crash? I'm embarrassed that I didn't pay much attention to
the news coverage when it happened, but a friend recently told me there were some suspicious circumstances. What happened?"
"Oh, yes, my goodness. It was quite a big deal at the time. You know, top scientist and wife killed. Not to mention a couple of other people from our office who were to attend the meeting too. Actually, I was supposed to go along to take notes for Mr. Parker, but I caught a cold that week and had stayed home the previous day. He told me to stay home again because the trip would probably make it worse. Actually, I thought he just didn't want to catch my germs, confined in the airplane like that. I would have gone down too, if only I hadn't been sick." She shivered, remembering.
"What about the suspicious circumstances? I always thought it happened because of weather or something."
She offered more tea but I declined. "Well, the weather certainly didn't help. It was spring, you know, which can mean unpredictable weather at best. Anyway, they were up in those high mountains in the northern part of the state, around Cimarron or Red River, or someplace like that. And one of those spring storms came through—dumped over a foot of snow on the plane before the rescuers could get in and find them.
"But the suspicious thing didn't have anything to do with weather. Of course they called in the National Transportation Safety Board to investigate—that's standard. When all was said and done, they found evidence of an explosion on board."
My heart thudded to the bottom of my stomach.
Chapter 3
An explosion. My head reeled with the implications. Coupled with Dad's cryptic note 'the heat is on,' I tried to imagine what might have been going on. Could the 'heat' have been someone high up in the company? The law? The Soviets?
"Of course, we had so much top secret work going on at the Labs during those years," Hannah continued, "no one wanted to speculate very much."
"What did the investigation turn up?"
Memories Can Be Murder: The Fifth Charlie Parker Mystery Page 1
