Memories Can Be Murder: The Fifth Charlie Parker Mystery

by Connie Shelton

  When I walked back through the living room, Elsa was still dozing and a new show was starting. I glanced at my watch. Three o'clock.

  I stacked the boxes I'd already checked into one corner of the room, intending to carry them back home soon to keep them out of Elsa's way. My back felt achy and Drake was probably wondering by now what had happened to me. I'd just about decided to give up for the day, but glanced into the next box, which didn't have a top. One of the folders was labeled SANDIA. I picked it up along with the photos and some personal letters I'd found earlier and decided to carry them home with me.

  Elsa stirred when I walked into the living room and I asked gently, "How was your show?"

  "Oh, it was good today," she assured me. "I always watch those same two. Been watching them for years."

  I smiled. She'd probably been dozing through them for years, but I'd bet she could tell me exactly what the plots were.

  Drake was still at the desk when I got home. He had several neat stacks of papers clipped together, with envelopes addressed to the recipients on top of each stack.

  "I'll need to get to a copy shop tomorrow," he said. "I want copies of these bids to keep on file."

  "We can take them to the office and do it there, if you'd like." I started to put my arms around his shoulders, but realized how dusty I was.

  "I thought I'd make beef stroganoff for dinner," he called out, as I headed toward the bathroom to wash up. "Is that okay with you?"

  "It sounds wonderful," I assured him. "But you better watch out, I could get really spoiled to this."

  "I'd love to spoil you rotten," he said, nuzzling my neck from behind as I dried my hands and arms.

  The kisses trailed down my neck, while his hands worked their way around my waist. I started to pull away and protest that we had work to do, but didn't. Wouldn't it be better if we were always like this?

  We allowed ourselves a few more moments of closeness before we both drew back.

  "Guess what I found in those boxes?" I led him to the dining room where I'd laid the folder and other papers I'd brought home.

  "Bring them in the kitchen and tell me about them while I start dinner," he suggested.

  I parked myself at the kitchen table, flipping through the envelopes in the small stack.

  "Looks like a few letters from my mother that Dad received when he was in college. She must have been away one summer . . . let's see, 1950. They're mailed from Newport."

  Drake took a package of steak from the freezer and set the microwave to partially defrost it.

  "Gosh, I knew her family were society people, but Newport? You suppose she hobnobbed with those wealthy types?"

  Mother's parents had died before I was born. I was never really clear on when. Mother had talked about her childhood and growing up years as though it was a magic time, and as a kid, I imagined castles and princesses. Maybe that was closer to the truth than I thought.

  "Got any sour cream?" Drake asked, staring into the fridge.

  "Yeah, somewhere in there."

  I opened the first envelope, a fragile cream paper with two sheets of fine linen-weave paper inside. Between the folds of the letter was a small photo. Mother, looking very young and glamorous, with a Grace Kelly hairstyle, wearing a single strand of pearls against her slim bare neck. The letter was from a typical college girl to the boy back home. She missed him. The parties were nice, the people lovely, but she wished he could be there. She dropped a few names that you'd probably find in Town and Country.

  The smell of browning meat and onions reached me. Drake was stirring a skillet at the stove, humming an old Beatles tune. I thought of the hours we'd spent on the telephone during our weeks apart, a luxury even the rich didn't often indulge in during my parents' time. We'd probably become closer in a shorter time than they might have, but we'd never have perfume scented letters and black-and-white photos to remember our courtship by either. Somehow, a two-hundred dollar phone bill doesn't carry the same feeling.

  I opened the next letter. Apparently, they'd had a tiff of some sort. She'd wanted him to fly out for a ball at somebody's "cottage." He'd evidently not dropped his studies to go and she was miffed. The letter recounted the gala evening in detail so he'd know what he missed. A long-forgotten conversation came back at me like a flash.

  It had taken place in this very kitchen. I'd probably been six or seven. Mother stood at the stove, where Drake stood now. Dad had just come in from work, his tie loosened, his jacket hanging over his arm. The back door stood open, letting in a faint breeze from the back yard. I was at the table, coloring a picture. It was so hot, I remembered how the backs of my legs stuck to the vinyl chair seat.

  Mother was angrily stirring something on the stove. Dad was apologizing that he just wasn't up for a party tonight. He'd put in a long week and just wanted to put his feet up and watch the baseball game on television. But this was a personal invitation from Mrs. VanCliff, Mother said. Didn't he know what an honor it was to be invited to one of her summer soirées? I watched both their faces, each intent on its own purpose, neither of which I could fathom. I ducked out the open back door and ran all the way to the park and back.

  "Hon?" Drake's voice snapped me back to the present.

  "Huh—I'm sorry, what were you saying?"

  "Where were you? I just asked whether you wanted some iced tea."

  I let out a pent-up breath. "Yeah, that would really hit the spot." I set the letters aside. Maybe this could wait.

  Drake set the tall frosty glass in front of me. "I'm just going to let that simmer awhile," he said. "Are you okay?"

  "Oh, yeah. It's just amazing what kind of memories this kind of stuff can bring back. Let's do something else. I'll come back to this later."

  We spent a quiet evening watching television and acting like old married people. I worked hard to suppress the pictures of my parents, whose life had very much resembled this but always with an undercurrent.

  Chapter 10

  I awoke Sunday morning to find Drake's side of the bed empty. Rusty wasn't in the room either. I stretched and felt a tingle shoot through my muscles. We'd watched an old Ingrid Bergman movie on television last night, which somehow put Drake in a romantic mood. I preferred to think it was because she'd worn her hair dark in that particular picture and it reminded him of me, but I didn't ask. After a glass of wine, we'd retired to the bedroom but hadn't fallen asleep for close to two more hours. I glanced at the clock.

  After nine. Even for a weekend, this was an indulgence for me. I stretched again, enjoying the decadent feeling for another moment before slinking out from under the covers and pulling on a terry robe.

  Coffee smell wafted from the kitchen. Drake was at the table with the Sunday Journal spread out before him. I poured myself a mug of vanilla macadamia Kona blend and spotted Rusty out in the back yard, intent on some small critter in the far corner.

  "Morning," I mumbled into Drake's hair.

  He pulled open the front of my robe and planted his good morning kiss there. I slid into the chair beside him.

  "Ron called awhile ago," he said.

  "Really? I didn't hear the phone."

  "You were sleeping the sleep of the satiated." He grinned.

  "Umm. I guess so."

  "He asked if we wanted to go out to the shooting range later. I told him probably so. I'll go anyway, even if you don't want to."

  The sweet hot coffee coursed down my throat. I didn't want to do anything as strenuous as planning an activity yet.

  "How about if I whip us up some cinnamon rolls?" I suggested. "They're the canned ones."

  "Better yet, how about if I whip us up some waffles. With strawberries?"

  I glanced toward the counter top. He'd mixed the ingredients in a stainless bowl, just waiting to add the milk. The waffle iron stood there, its indicator light showing it already preheated.

  "You better watch out," I warned. "I'm really not one of those women who will get mad if you take over her kitchen. I'll get
so spoiled to this that you'll never get me to cook again."

  "Oh, I won't let you get that spoiled. This is temporary, while I'm waiting for some work to come in." He said it like he felt an obligation to be doing something—without a job to go to, he'd feel better if he pitched in around the house.

  Actually, when I'd stayed with him in Hawaii, we'd shared the housework about equally. I expected we'd do the same here.

  I watched him whisk the liquid into the dry ingredients in the bowl and test the waffle iron by shaking a few drops of cold water onto it. When they danced to his satisfaction, he poured in the first ladle of batter. While the steam rose from the iron, he pulled butter, syrup, and sliced strawberries from the refrigerator. Shuffling the newspapers aside, he quickly set the table. I sat back like a queen, sipping my coffee and letting him do the work.

  "I put your father's folder and letters up here," Drake said, indicating the top of the refrigerator. "I was afraid they might get mixed in with the Sunday section."

  "Um, I may take a look at those later when you and Ron go to the gun range," I said.

  "Don't you want to go?"

  "Next time," I assured him. "For now, you and Ron get better acquainted. It'll give you a chance to do `man stuff' without me around. You don't want to risk becoming joined at the hip with me, do you?"

  He pulled me to a standing position. "Joined there or anywhere else is fine with me," he said, opening my robe and pulling my hips tightly to his.

  "You better check those waffles before you start something else," I reminded.

  "Oh, shit," he exclaimed.

  The first waffle was golden brown. We shared it while the second one cooked. By the time we'd shared a third one, we were stuffed and could no longer ignore Rusty's signal to come in. He was allowed to lick the syrup from the plates.

  I rinsed the dishes and put them in the dishwasher while Drake located his boots and a light jacket. Counter wiped and hands dried, I kissed him goodbye just as Ron's horn cheeped outside.

  "You guys can take the Jeep if you want," I told him.

  "Nah, Ron's already here with his car. And you might need yours."

  "Well, I plan to be over at Elsa's going through the rest of those boxes, but if I go anywhere, I'll leave you a note," I said.

  I waved at Ron from the front door as Drake hopped into the sporty Mustang convertible. The house felt empty and over-quiet without Drake in it. I locked the front door and went out the back, through the break in the hedge to Elsa's. What I really wanted was a break in my research.

  Elsa was out in her garden, pulling the last of the carrots and potatoes from the ground. A plastic tub stood near her feet, filled with dirt encrusted blobs. Her thin arms worked at thrusting the spade into the loosely packed earth. A wide-brimmed straw hat perched at an angle on her head, held in place by an orange paisley scarf.

  I waved and commented on what a hard worker she was, but could tell by the empty look in her smile that she hadn't heard me. I pointed toward her back door and she nodded.

  Inside, the house was cool with that early autumn crispness that makes you want to pull out your winter sweaters and bake apple pies. Elsa's breakfast dishes, a cereal bowl, spoon, and coffee mug, stood upturned in the dish drainer. I walked on through to the back bedroom where my cartons awaited. Today, I should probably haul the ones I'd finished back to my own attic.

  Two more boxes revealed a variety of stuff, from office memos and telephone messages to personal items and photos. There was one, framed, of my brothers and me. It was a studio portrait, three teenagers with freckles and a few zits, posing stiffly together. Ron's dark hair looked strange to me, now that most of it on top is missing. Paul, a high school senior at the time, smiled with a bit of a swagger. One glance at the dress I wore brought back the day with clarity.

  I'd been in the ninth grade at the time, a freshman in a new high school. Mother had tried so hard to make me class up my act, wanting to transform me from the spiky-haired blue-jeaned little tomboy I'd always been into some semblance of a young lady. I wore a pastel flowered dress with a scooped neckline rimmed by a wide lace collar. Around my neck hung a single strand of pearls, borrowed from Mother's jewel box. Could they be the same strand she wore in that long-ago photo I'd just found yesterday?

  In this photo, a tight smile was pasted onto my face. I'd been belligerent and cranky all morning, wanting nothing in the world less than to be in a photographer's studio, decked out in uncomfortable clothes and my mother's pearls, and being told that I had to smile. The only way they'd gotten me to break loose with any smile at all was by reminding me that the photo was to be Daddy's birthday gift. My throat tightened a little, remembering.

  The box apparently held the contents of my father's desk, cleared out after his death by someone at Sandia. Obviously, everything had been scoured by security, because there was nothing here pertaining to his work, only personal mementos. I finished flipping through them but found not so much as a friend's phone number or a notation of a lunch appointment.

  I thought again of his little leather-bound notebook. A miracle it had survived. What had possessed him to store it in the attic before the fateful plane crash? If he'd had it with him or left it at the office, it surely would have been confiscated by the Lab and gone whatever way secret documents go-probably to that big warehouse where Indiana Jones's lost ark ended up.

  By eleven o'clock, I felt brain-dead. A few boxes remained unexplored, but I didn't hold a lot of hope. There was still the manila file labeled SANDIA that I'd taken home last night, and I decided the leather notebook and that file might end up being all I'd get.

  I waved again to Gram as I trekked back through the hedge to my back door. Rusty stood guard on the back porch, wagging happily at my return.

  The manila folder was still on the refrigerator. I washed my hands of their collected attic dust, made a cup of tea, and sat down with it. Peeling back the pages one at a time, I found a few company memos, some letters confirming appointments and meetings, and a roster of company employees' home addresses and phone numbers. None of it seemed significant, but this didn't look like the kind of information the security department would want floating around. I wondered if he had smuggled it out.

  There were informal memos about company picnics and a few group snapshots of people sitting around concrete picnic tables in mountain settings, holding fried chicken drumsticks and ears of corn. One of the photos was posed, five men wearing plaid shirts and Levi's with their arms looped over each other's shoulders. One was Dad, looking exactly as I remembered him. I turned the photo over. In Dad's bold slanted writing, was a date—the September before he died—and names of the four other men: George Myers, Wendel Patterson, Harvey Taylor, and Larry Sanchez.

  It didn't take a lot of detective work to find each of the names on the company roster and come up with phone numbers. Usually when I want to question someone, I prefer to just show up at the door rather than give warning, but I couldn't imagine what any of these men would have to hide at this point, and some of these numbers could be nearly twenty years out of date. I dialed the first number.

  "You've reached the Myers residence," an older female's recorded voice said. "Please leave a message after the beep and we'll get back to you."

  One for one, so far. I didn't leave a message, but checked off the name as being a valid one.

  The Sanchez number was answered by a young child who wouldn't talk. When I asked if its mommy or daddy were home, I got a lot of shuffling noises before a young woman took over.

  "Is this Larry Sanchez's home?" I asked uncertainly.

  "He's my father," the woman answered with that wariness that means you-better-not-be-a-telemarketer.

  "My name's Charlie Parker and I think my father used to work with Larry at Sandia Labs," I rushed to explain before she could click off. "I'd like a chance to visit with your father sometime if it's convenient."

  "What about?"

  I stammered a little. "Well . . . about
their work, I guess."

  "He never talks about his work out there."

  "Look, I don't want to grill him about top secret projects," I said, even though I probably did. "My father died fifteen years ago, and I didn't get much information about it at the time. I'd just like to talk to his friends. Will he be home this afternoon?"

  "Um, I don't know if this is such a good idea," she muttered.

  "Please? Is your address still on Alvarado?"

  She grumbled a bit but confirmed that it was.

  "I'll come out in about an hour, okay?"

  "If you can be here before one o'clock, you can have about fifteen minutes," she informed me, then hung up.

  Well, thank you very much. I couldn't imagine a grown man letting his daughter regulate his time that closely, but I'd play along until I found out whether he even remembered my father.

  A glance at my watch told me it was already nearing twelve-thirty, and I'd need to allow at least twenty minutes to get up to the northeast heights. I pulled off my dusty sweatshirt and exchanged it for a light cotton chambray shirt. I let my hair out of its stretchy ponytail band and brushed it out straight around my shoulders. Applied a touch of lipstick for good measure.

  "You stay here, kid," I told Rusty. His tail drooped in reply, but hey life is tough sometimes. I scribbled a quick note to Drake that I'd be home by three and grabbed the manila folder with the addresses and pictures in it.

  Albuquerque traffic patterns get totally messed up on weekends. Monday through Friday, you can count on where the clog-ups will take place, and at what times of day. Saturday I would have easily predicted a tangled mess around the two major shopping centers, which were so wisely built about two blocks from each other. But how would I know that today, Sunday, I'd get caught in the surge of after-churchgoers flocking in droves to Furrs Cafeteria and every similar all-you-can-eat place? It was one o'clock on the dot when I pulled up in front of the Sanchez home.

  It was in one of those neat neighborhoods where the homes have probably belonged to their original owners for all of their thirty years. Box-like stucco flat-tops sit among towering deciduous trees that were planted as twigs in the beginning and now, in places, create branch-arches over the streets. Now, in October, the arches are gold and yellow, with a few greens and oranges thrown in.