Honeymoons Can Be Murder: The Sixth Charlie Parker Mystery (The Charlie Parker Mysteries)

by Connie Shelton

  A lump formed in my throat as he climbed into the aircraft, looking trim and professional in his khaki flight suit and leather jacket. For someone who thought she didn’t need anyone in her life a year ago, I’d become awfully attached, awfully fast. Now I couldn’t imagine my life without him.

  I waited while Drake climbed into his seat and fastened his harness. The aircraft’s turbine engine whined to life, the rotors slowly sweeping the air. He pulled pitch a couple of minutes later and I turned my head aside as the rotor wash kicked up a flurry of loose snow. Rusty and I climbed into the Jeep as the blue and white helicopter gently lifted above the building and headed west out of the valley.

  I shook off the low feeling that tried to settle over me when I arrived back at the empty cabin. There was lots of work to do. I’d keep busy and the two days would go by quickly. I looked around. The breakfast dishes were done, the living room tidy, and I’d already made the bed. Okay, so there wasn’t lots of work to do. I’d just have to make up some.

  Rusty went with me on this trip to town, where our first stop was to drop off the disposable camera at the one-hour photo place. On a whim, I called the Holiday Inn to see if Fred and Susie Montgomery were still there.

  “Well, hey there Charlie-girl,” Fred’s booming Texan voice greeted. “Any news for us?”

  “Nothing definite,” I admitted. “We’ve ruled out a couple of things, though.” I told him that we’d run the fingerprints through the national crime records and found no matches.

  “Well, that’s something anyway,” he said. He turned away from the phone to relay the information to Susie, repeating, “Ain’t that something, Susie?” to her.

  “Fred, I just had a thought. Hope’s out of town right now. Do you suppose there’s any way we could get into her house?” I nearly bit my tongue as I said it. Hadn’t I learned all I needed to know about sneaking around in other people’s territory? Drake would surely come unglued if he found out I was doing this.

  “I s’pose we could,” he said. “I mean, she ain’t given us a key or nothin’ but I’ll betcha someone’s around.”

  “We’d have to be very careful about the household staff,” I cautioned. “Couldn’t let them know we were snooping around but I’d like about fifteen minutes alone in her bedroom.”

  “Okay. I got an idea,” he said. “Can you come up there about eleven? Just park down the hill a short way. Toot your horn once then come up to the door. I’ll be listening and I’ll let you in.”

  True to his word, Fred Montgomery quietly slid the front door to Hope’s mansion open for me at 11:05.

  “Only person here’s Bertha, the housekeeper,” he whispered. “Susie’s got her busy in the kitchen. Bedroom’s down this hall. It has its own door to the outside—some little patio thing. You can go out that way and through a little gate. She’ll never know you been here. I’ll lock the door behind you.”

  “Bertha isn’t suspicious?”

  “Nah, we told her Hope’d invited us for lunch and musta forgot. Susie got right insistent with her that we want some food.” He chuckled. “Personally, I don’t think she speaks too gooda English. She kinda gives ya a blank look.”

  The poor Spanish Bertha probably couldn’t decipher his Texan, which even I had to listen to carefully.

  Whoever said, this is like déjà vu all over again certainly nailed it, I thought as I entered Hope’s bedroom. I couldn’t believe I was snooping into someone else’s dresser drawers twice in two days. If I weren’t careful, it would be pretty easy to slip into a life of crime.

  The room had the same feeling as a hotel, beautifully decorated but not really lived in. The décor theme was Southwestern, done in shades of turquoise, coral, mauve and tan, with a high cushy bed and carved bleached-pine furniture. Few personal items lay about. There’s something about rich people. The more money they have, the less clutter. Probably the fact that they own several homes; the clutter can be distributed among them. I wasn’t at all sure what I was looking for—something so dear to her that she would carry it everywhere, or perhaps something so incriminating she wouldn’t let it out of her sight. In either case, she might also have taken it to Las Vegas with her. But I couldn’t give up now.

  I started with the dresser, opening a drawer at a time, patting down the lacy undies and feathery cashmere sweaters, looking for something out of place but trying to leave the contents exactly as I found them. Women are funny that way; we usually know at a glance if anything is out of place.

  The dresser netted nothing so I went to the closet. A single neat row of expensive skirts, jackets, and slacks in richly textured fabrics hung with precision. Nothing unbuttoned, everything facing to the left, color coordinated outfits hanging together. I wondered if Hope was a neatness fanatic herself or if Bertha was paid to be fanatic for her. Twenty-three pairs of shoes and boots—I confess, I took the time to count them—were precisely aligned on the floor. The shelf above contained two folded blankets on the left end and a stack of bulky Nordic sweaters on the right. I ran a hand under the sweaters and came up with—voila!—a scrapbook.

  This time I didn’t dare take my find with me, so I sat on the only imperfect surface in the room, the floor, to page through it. The first page was dated at the top, 1961. A professional black and white photo was mounted with paper corners below the date. The name Monica Francis was printed in the border below the image. It showed a young woman, late teens or early twenties, dark hair and striking makeup, eyes smoldering at the camera, a pouty smile luring the cameraman. Stuck into the next page was a playbill from a minor New York theater. Monica Francis had the role of “Shopgirl.”

  The following page contained another professional photo, probably done at the same time as the first, this one with Monica’s head flung back slightly, lots of teeth showing in the smile. Another photo showed her full-figure, in a slinky evening gown of the type Jackie Kennedy might have worn had she been somewhat less cultured. Monica had a figure that men would have called dynamite.

  More playbills followed. Sometimes Monica moved up in the cast of characters, sometimes back down. She never seemed to make it to a leading role.

  Two-thirds of the way through the book there was a letter from a producer at Universal Studios inviting the young actress to Hollywood for a supporting role in the remake of a film that had originally starred Grace Kelly. Obviously, Monica wasn’t yet up for the Kelly role—it specifically said “supporting.” The letter was dated 1982. Twenty years had gone by and Monica would now be in her forties. Probably too old for the young ingénue roles and too young to start playing somebody’s mother. The professional photos had been updated, showing Monica now as a redhead, face still nearly perfect with only a hint of tiny lines at the eyes.

  She’d obviously decided to move to Hollywood. Snapshots showed her in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and at Disneyland. In one picture, she stood in a bathing suit holding one end of a ribbon that some important-looking man was about to cut with oversize scissors. Her figure was still fabulous.

  A few pages later a movie poster was folded into quarters to fit into the album. I unfolded it. A glowing picture of an older Jimmy Stewart with his arm paternally around a younger actress, whose face I knew but whose name I couldn’t come up with, filled three-fourths of the space. Monica’s name was in the middle of a list of six supporting actors in the film. The copyright date on the poster was 1983.

  Following pages contained a few more movie promotional items, none of them mentioning Monica by name. Next came a few more playbills, again with her name falling low on the cast list.

  Was this just more of Hope’s movie memorabilia? I didn’t think so—it was much more personal. Was Monica Francis a close friend? A relative? Or could—I flipped hurriedly back to the redheaded photo of Monica—could Hope actually have been Monica?

  Chapter 15

  I stared hard at the photo, looking for the resemblance. The age would be about right. I’d estimated Hope to be in her fifties. But eve
rything else seemed different—the hair, eyes, figure. How much cosmetic surgery would millions of dollars buy? How thorough a makeover could be done if the price was right? On the other hand, Hope could just be a big movie fan. I imagined the young girl, raised alone by her mother, not having much money. Movies might have been her escape, her passion. I thought of the movie memorabilia downstairs. Hadn’t Steve Romero told me that people seldom change their interests?

  A glance at my watch told me I’d way overstayed my welcome. I’d been in the room for nearly a half-hour, well beyond my allotted fifteen minutes. I looked again at the picture of the redheaded version of Monica. Did I dare? What the hell, I decided. I was already in so deep a little more trouble wasn’t going to make much difference. I slipped the photo out of its little corners and shoved it inside my parka. Closing the album and making sure nothing looked out of place, I slipped it back under the sweaters on the closet shelf.

  I listened at the bedroom door and heard nothing. Opened it a crack. Still nothing. I closed it again and slipped to the French doors on the far side of the room. It was just as Fred had described; the door led to an adobe-walled enclosure with a private outdoor spa, covered now for the winter. The adobe wall had a small gate—with a padlock. Dammit, Fred, how was I supposed to deal with this?

  I debated going back through the house but didn’t trust my luck to sneak down another hallway. Two days in a row was pushing it. I looked again at the wall. It was about six feet high. Bertha’s voice suddenly outside the bedroom door made the decision for me. In less time than it took me to formulate the idea, I’d bolted out the French door, closed it behind me, and dashed for the wall. Some gymnastics class in the distant past came back to me and I ran for the wall as fast as I could, put my hands on top and vaulted. Unfortunately, the vaults we’d done in phys ed weren’t six feet high and I hit the wall with the bottom edge of my ribcage. It was good enough. My legs scrambled for purchase and my arms worked frantically to hoist me higher. It wasn’t pretty but I was only interested in getting away, not in winning a gold medal. I landed on my butt in the snow and slid about ten feet down an incline before coming to a stop no more than six inches from the lethal spines of a yucca. My lungs grabbed for air.

  “God, what am I doing?” I moaned.

  Rusty waited anxiously in the Jeep at the bottom of the hill. My lower back was already getting stiff by the time I reached the car and I had a feeling a hundred muscles would be screaming at me by nightfall. I fished my keys out of my jacket pocket and checked to see how the photo inside had fared. I was surprised to find, given the beating my ribs had taken, that the photo was still in one piece. Ripped at one lower corner, but basically intact.

  “Hey, kid. Doing okay?” I asked, rubbing the dog’s ears and accepting a few smelly kisses. “Boy, am I glad to see you.”

  I twisted the key in the ignition and made a U turn to avoid going up Hope’s driveway. Ten minutes later we were at Burger King where we splurged on cheeseburgers all around. Rusty gulped his burger in two bites then tried to look starved so I’d share mine. I didn’t fall for it.

  The one-hour photo shop where I’d left the film was on the right side of the main drag as we left town. I belatedly remembered my film, and jerked the wheel roughly to pull off in time. The girl behind the counter couldn’t find the pictures and I was beginning to wonder if this bad luck would be my fate for the day. I waited, not-too-patiently tapping my nails on the counter. When I reminded her that I’d dropped the film off less than two hours earlier, she thought of one more place to check.

  “Wouldn’t you know it,” she giggled. “They were in the last place I checked.”

  I held my tongue, just pushed a ten dollar bill toward her.

  Out in the car again, I flipped through the pictures. It seemed like a waste to pay for developing only three shots, but I hadn’t wanted to wait until I had time to take the entire roll. All three pictures came out clear and sharp. I compared the new photo of Hope with the one I’d nabbed of Monica Francis. If they were the same person, I couldn’t see it.

  Face it, I told myself, Monica is probably Monica and Hope is probably Hope, and Fred and Susie are probably full of shit. I knew my sore muscles were making me grumpy and the fact that Drake would be away tonight wasn’t adding to my peace of mind. I decided to go home, take some drugs, and put everything else out of my mind.

  Three ibuprofen and a hot shower did wonders for my mental state, especially after I’d curled up on the cushy sofa with a mug of hot chocolate and the book I’d started reading a few evenings earlier. In keeping with the spirit of our new diet, I ate a microwave low-fat meal, then read my book until eight o’clock when I decided I could legally justify it being bedtime. I stripped out of my sweats and crawled between smooth sheets that still smelled of Drake’s aftershave.

  Raucous, wild, crazy barking awakened me with a terrifying suddenness that made my heart stop. It started up again with a pounding intensity and I looked at the bedside clock. Just after midnight. I spun around in bed, trying to get my bearings in the pure blackness. Drake kept a flashlight on the nightstand and I reached for it. Then remembering that I was clad only in a pair of panties, I reached for my robe at the foot of the bed before switching on the light.

  I was alone in the room.

  The barking continued, unrelenting, and I turned my head sideways to figure out where the dog was. Rusty is not normally a barker, not for the pleasure of it anyway except when he’d treed that squirrel yesterday, or when he’s on guard duty. This barking signified an intruder.

  I tightened my belt around my waist and crept around to Drake’s side of the bed. Feeling under the mattress I came up with his nine millimeter Beretta. Checked the magazine to be sure it was fully loaded. Flicked off the safety. I edged toward the bedroom door, grasping both the flashlight and the pistol awkwardly. Finally, I figured out the two-handed grip I’d seen the police use in the movies so I adopted that. I stepped out to the landing and shined the light quickly around the living room.

  Rusty stood at the door leading to the ski porch, back hair bristled, barking furiously. The bark rolled back to a growl when the light hit him. He glanced back quickly at me then pointed directly at the door. I shone the light at the window panel in it. The ski porch appeared to be nothing more than a black hole. Quickly, I aimed the light toward each of the living and dining room windows. More black holes. My heart finally slowed to the point where I could no longer hear it. I tiptoed down the stairs, one at a time.

  I kept my back to the wall, watching all the windows at once, keeping an eye on the door. Outside, an engine started with a roar. I raced down the remaining steps and across the living room to a front window. A large, dark vehicle swept a wide turn in the driveway and headed down the drive without benefit of headlights.

  “I hope you run off the road,” I muttered, although on second thought I wanted them as far from here as possible. The black hulk rounded the bend in the driveway and its sound gradually faded.

  Rusty remained rigid, nose pointed to the door, his growl quiet now. I reached out to him.

  “It’s okay now,” I assured him. “They’re gone.”

  I laid the flashlight and pistol on the floor and knelt to bury my face in the dog’s ruff. He licked my forearm and wiggled away, trotting to the living room window to place his forepaws on the sill and stare out into the blackness. I sank to a cross-legged position and held my head in both hands, my legs suddenly too trembly to hold me. I’d felt so safe here, completely isolated in the mountains. I’d become like other rural people, not closing drapes when I was alone, not worrying about whether the door was locked. Now I felt vulnerable all over again. I got up and checked the front door. It was locked. Thank goodness I hadn’t forgotten all my city paranoia.

  Turning on a lamp, I switched off the flashlight and went around the room, checking all windows. Nothing seemed disturbed. I pulled the drapes closed at each dark orifice. According to the indoor/outdoor thermometer on
the wall, the outside temp was hovering just below zero. Not the kind of conditions for casual drop-in visitors or even for kids playing pranks. Eloy had told me that lone cabins were sometimes targets for teens who wanted a place to take a girlfriend or those with the more sinister motive of a little larceny. The objects of their break-ins were usually the home’s stash of liquor, maybe a TV set or VCR. Kids usually picked places that were obviously unoccupied and paid their visits during daylight hours. This didn’t feel like teenage pranksters.

  I opened the front door into the ski porch. I’d left the outer door unlocked and there were chunks of snow on the floor. The intruders? I couldn’t be sure. The snow could have just as easily come off my boots hours earlier when I’d come home. In the unheated space it might not melt for days.

  Rusty had shoved his way past me and stood with his nose pasted to the outer door, whining to get out. I debated. If there were footprints in the snow that could help us identify the intruder, I didn’t want him messing them up. On the other hand, there were already prints from Drake, Eloy and me from recent days. And was I really going to call the sheriff’s office to report that I’d been frightened by a noise in the night? I let the dog out.

  He trained his nose to the porch and steps, taking deep whiffs of the stranger’s scent. If only he could talk. He could probably tell me exactly who it was. The trail took him across the covered porch to the living room window, then down the steps to the open area where we parked our cars. He homed in on a spot where fresh tire tracks made a wide arc in the drive. Next, he sniffed his way over to my Jeep, then to Drake’s truck. Neither of those held his interest, thankfully. I hadn’t even considered the possibility that someone might have tampered with our vehicles.

  My furry red detective sniffed the ground back to the new tire tracks, gave a long thorough analysis of them, then lifted his leg and peed on the spot. So there.

  Happy that he’d reestablished his territory, he trotted back to where I waited at the door. I’d been so wrapped up in watching his investigation I’d forgotten that I was standing on a frosty wooden porch barefoot, with only a loose terrycloth robe as protection against the sub-zero temperature. Gingerly, I stepped back into the warm cabin.