Buried Secrets Can Be Murder: Charlie Parker Mysteries, Book #14 (The Charlie Parker Mysteries) (13 page)

Chapter 14

Our food arrived and I had an otherworldly sense that no one else was seeing the same things I was seeing. I rubbed at my temples.

Chet had checked this guy every which way and swore he was the wronged party. I
had
to go with that. And so what if Boyd or his security men
had
caused Tali to vanish? There was still the torture he felt over his kids—not knowing where they were. I nibbled at the edges of my sandwich while the guys talked sports.

“You okay, Charlie?” Ron had obviously forgiven my previous impudence. “It’s not like you to leave half your dinner behind.”

“Yeah. Fine. I guess I got a headache from the flight.” I pushed my plate away. Ron was right—it was unlike me to lose my appetite.

We all walked back to Boyd’s apartment building and decided to call it a night. Chet drove us to the hotel he’d chosen near the airport. In one way I didn’t think we had learned a whole lot from Boyd Donovan during this trip. In other ways, perhaps we had learned too much.

* * *

In the hotel lobby, I waited while Ron headed for a soda machine in an alcove, but he came back empty-handed.

“I feel like we should touch base with the Flores family while we’re in town,” he said.

My brother, acquiring social niceties? Was it possible that Victoria was actually civilizing him? He began fiddling with something on his fancy phone and came up with a teensy map.

“We’re only about ten minutes from the hospital. I’d bet that Mel and Rosa are there.” Just to be sure, he scrolled through some numbers he’d programmed in and connected with one of them. A short conversation later he turned and asked if I wanted to go along.

My head wasn’t pounding any less fiercely than before, so I begged off to go to my room and take a few aspirin. It probably really was the plane flight and the fact that I was here in another city, when I’d wakened with completely different plans this morning. After seeing Ron into a cab, I rode the elevator to the tenth floor where I called home and told Drake I was going to bed early.

But sleep was a long time coming.

Boyd’s words about Tali kept circulating through my head but I couldn’t decide how to process the information. Did he truly hate her—enough to harm her?—or had the booze given him a bit of extra macho swagger this evening? The only way to know would be to track down Tali herself. Meanwhile, our true mission was to locate the children and give Boyd the closure he said he needed so badly. Perhaps then he could put his hatred of Tali aside and get on with his life. And that thought led me right back to the beginning of the relentless circular pattern—how much did he truly hate her?

Eventually, I heard Ron fiddling with the door to his room so I peered around my door and called out to him.

“How did it go?”

He looked subdued. “They’re holding together. Rosa can’t take her eyes off poor Ivana. She won’t last long, I’m afraid. Mel and Rosa have reconciled. It was good that we went to the trouble of finding her. Seeing the three of them together—it felt right.”

“Good. I’m glad.” Especially glad that he’d ignored my reservations and insisted on taking the case. I told Ron I would see him in the morning.

The TV in my room was on a station that ran old sitcoms, the kind with laugh tracks that won’t let you concentrate on anything else. I tuned out my thoughts of Rosa’s family and of Boyd Donovan and, after about an hour of being immersed in the corny humor of Mayberry, I was able to switch off the lamp and fall asleep.

Over ham and eggs the next morning Chet informed us that he’d booked himself on the same flight as ours to Albuquerque.

“Remember that I mentioned having a list of the jurors in Tali’s case and that one of them has moved to New Mexico? I’d like to get down there and talk with this lady. She was one of the last to come around to the idea of acquitting Tali. You familiar with the town of Belen? That’s where she lives.”

Ron nodded. It’s only about twenty minutes or so from us by freeway.

Chet swabbed up egg yolk with his toast. “Meanwhile, have either of you thought of any other questions for Boyd, while we’re in town?”

In the clear light of day my previous concerns seemed perhaps overblown so I didn’t mention them. Ron didn’t bring up any questions of his own. It seemed that we’d made a rather expensive trip for very little substantial information, but I guess Chet had an unlimited budget on this case. It must be a real luxury for a retired cop, accustomed to working within constant budget constraints, to have someone with money authorizing billable hours. I had to admit that he was certainly being diligent about following up on leads and reporting regularly to his client.

In a way that reminded me of my father, Chet picked up the breakfast tab and walked up to the register to pay it as I gathered my jacket and purse. Within minutes we were back on the road, making our way to the airport.

By noon we were retrieving Ron’s car from the parking garage in Albuquerque. Chet Flowers had decided to rent a car for himself so he wouldn’t be dependent upon us for rides everywhere. He followed us to our gray and white Victorian headquarters.

My office felt chilly and abandoned even though I’d been away less than twenty-four hours. I checked in with Drake by phone and gave Sally a quick call to see if there was any news on the baby story. Nothing new.

“I’m going to run down to Belen, see if I can catch Mrs. Vine at home,” Chet was saying to Ron as I walked into the hall. “Want to come along?”

The phone rang and Ron automatically reached for it. He even remembered to answer “RJP Investigations” rather than his customary “
y’hello
.”

The call seemed as if it would take some time.

“Chet, I could come with you,” I said. “There’s something I wanted to talk about.”

“Let’s go.” He tilted his head toward the stairs.

I picked up my purse and sent Ron some hand signals to let him know where I’d be. I gave Chet basic directions to get to I-25 southbound toward Belen. He handled the rental comfortably, a hand draped over the wheel, a casual ease to his posture.

“So, what’s on your mind?” he said. So much like my father.

I let it out, giving my thoughts and theorizing about the ideas that had run through my head after Boyd Donovan’s vehement statements about his ex-wife.

“Bottom line, could he be the reason we can’t seem to find Tali now?”

His relaxed demeanor didn’t change a bit. “Well, it doesn’t seem too likely that he would hire me to bring up all this past history if he’d caused her disappearance, does it?”

When he put it that way . . .

“I mean, there are guys who would. I’ve run across criminals in my career who love daring the police to catch them. They invariably think they’re so smart, that they’ve out-thought us at every turn, that they’ve committed the perfect crime and no dumb cop is going to ever see through them. I
love
taking down those guys.” He glanced over at me. “But Boyd Donovan? Not the type. In my professional opinion.”

He made a good point.

“But if you still think he’s involved, present your case. I’m willing to hear all arguments, either way.”

“Mainly, it was his vehemence about Tali and her family, how they all deserved to pay. And Boyd’s profound disappointment and shock at discovering Tali didn’t seem to love the children the way he did. But, you’re right. It would be stupid of him to bring in the very officer who worked this case in the first place, to try to pull something over on you. What would be his reason?”

“To find out what I know. To see if there were leads on the whereabouts of the kids that we never released on the first go-round. To find out what the rest of Tali’s family knows.”

I stared at him. “So, are you telling me that you think he
might
be playing around with you?”

He chuckled. “I’m saying that anybody can have a motive. You can never entirely figure out how people’s minds work. Even the best of the criminal profilers sometimes get that wrong. But Boyd Donovan? I think the man is too smart to screw around with me. I think his motive is exactly what he says it is. The fate of his kids has been a big unanswered question in his life for more than five years now. He wants peace of mind.”

“That makes sense.”

“Peace of mind before he really does go off the deep end.”

He just had to throw in that little bit of doubt for me, didn’t he? I gave him a rueful grin.

We exited the freeway and I read off the directions he’d written out from his study of the map. In ten minutes we were pulling up in front of a small house with cream-colored stucco and a brown pitched roof. A fluffy wreath of fake evergreens hung at the front door. Real evergreens flanked the sidewalk, junipers that had been trimmed with precision. Some brave pansies struggled to stay upright. The snow a few days ago had pretty well tromped them down. A tan Buick sat in the driveway and I could see lights on inside.

Chet rang the doorbell and as quickly as the door opened, I knew the tiny woman had been watching us. She came about to my shoulder, had a head full of springy gray curls, and wore red polyester slacks and a sweatshirt with a big candy cane on the front.

“Mrs. Vine?” he asked. “I’m
Ch
—”

“I recognize you,” she said with an impish grin. “Wait—just give me a second. I’ll remember.”

His mouth started to open.

“I’ll get it,” she said. “You are . . . you . . . Seattle. I was in a crowded place . . .”

She suddenly shivered. “Well, darn it, it’s cold out here. You better just tell me.”

“Chester Flowers, Seattle PD, retired.”

“That trial! Tali Donovan.” Her whole face lit up. “I was on the jury for that trial, you know.”

He nodded. “Anna Vine.”

The head of gray curls bobbed merrily. “Yes! That’s me. And I’ll bet that’s why you all are here. Well, come on in. You’re letting all the warm air out.”

Chet introduced me and we stepped into a room that could do with less warm air. No one had to ask me to take off my coat. I draped it over a chair as she invited us into a living room filled with tinsel and Styrofoam snowmen. It was all they could do to keep from melting. It must have been close to ninety in there.

“I was just having myself a little toddy,” Anna Vine said. “Could I make one for you all?”

The steaming beverage beside her recliner didn’t hold much appeal for me. When Chet asked for water I seconded the request. We exchanged a little smile while Mrs. Vine bustled away to an adjoining kitchen.

“It won’t take me a minute,” she called out. “You just make yourselves at home.”

We accepted juice glasses with cartoon patterns on them that must have been older than I, each filled with tap water and a single ice cube.

“You’re that policeman who got up on the stand in the trial,” she said as she handed Chet his glass. “That’s really something, that you would be here to see me now.”

“I’m retired now,” he said after his first sip. “Sometimes it’s what we old cops do, go back and look up cases that we worked in the past.”

“Well, with that one I’m not surprised. That was quite the hoopla afterward. A little scary. Some of the jurors got threatened I heard. I wasn’t all that unhappy to move away. Although that wasn’t the real reason I came here. You see, I’d gotten pneumonia twice and the doctors said I couldn’t handle that humid climate up there any more. And then my daughter got a transfer with her company. She works for this—”

Chet cleared his throat.

“Oh. I guess none of that matters much to you folks, does it?” She took a long draw on her toddy and giggled a little.

We had to catch her somewhere between tales of her personal life and the point when the toddy would be gone. I wondered if Chet could read those thoughts on my face.

“I’m glad to see that you’ve settled in here so well,” he said. What a diplomat. “Of course, I am mainly curious about the outcome of the trial. You were one of the last holdouts who thought Tali Donovan was guilty, weren’t you?”

She studied the ceiling for a few seconds. “The first vote was taken and it was about half and half—guilty or innocent. One man with long hair was very firm in saying we couldn’t find her guilty unless we were absolutely sure. Everyone pretty much agreed with that, but the sticky part came in getting them to agree whether that prosecutor lawyer had really proved her guilty. They kept bringing up things that were said, then they’d take another vote. After that first day it was me and one other lady who still thought she’d done it.”

“What was the main thing that made you feel that way?” I asked.

“Well. I guess it was her manner. She just had this way about her. I raised four kids—three girls and a boy. And I could always tell when those kids were hiding something. That Tali Donovan was hiding something. I would have bet the farm on it, and I still would today.”

“But you couldn’t convince the other jurors of that?”

“Every time they voted somebody else had gone over to the not-guilty side. Pretty soon it was only me saying guilty.”

“Did you have any reason other than her manner? Was there some part of the evidence that convinced you?”