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

I could tell that Chet wanted to know what part of his case had broken down. What had been lacking.

“When the neighbors testified about the day it happened.
Miz
Donovan didn’t much seem to care what any of them said, except one. Remember that neighbor who talked about how she heard Tali’s little kids playing outside in the yard?”

Chet nodded. He knew it well.

“When that lady first started talking, I watched that Tali Donovan, more than I watched the lady. She—
Miz
Donovan—looked real nervous when the lady first came up to the stand and they started asking questions of her.”

“Really? Can you think specifically what about the woman’s testimony made Tali nervous?”

“No. See that’s the thing that kept tripping me up. When those other jury folks started to get impatient about how long it was taking . . . I mean, all of us wanted to go home, you know. Well, they kept asking me what specific thing I didn’t believe and I just couldn’t put it into words. I knew, but I couldn’t explain it. I finally got tired of being pestered about it and I knew I wasn’t going to change
all
of their minds. So I just gave up and changed my vote.” As she spoke she’d picked up the corner of a knitted coverlet and had unconsciously twisted it into a knot.

“That thing—the part you couldn’t explain to them? That’s been bothering you a long time, hasn’t it?” I asked.

Her lip quivered a little. Finally she nodded.

“It’s okay,” Chet said in a gentle voice. “Tell me about it. Take your time.”

“When that lady, the neighbor, started talking Tali Donovan looked pretty nervous. Like extra alert. But as soon as the lady told her story, about how she’d heard the kids playing in the yard, especially when she said what time she heard them. Tali Donovan got this little smile. I only know it because I happened to glance at her right then. This tiny smile. It’s the same one kids get when their brother takes the punishment instead of them. You know what I mean?”

“You mean kind of smug?” I’d hung so many crimes on my two brothers when we were little, I knew exactly what she meant.

She nodded vigorously and the curls shook crazily. “Yes. Exactly. Like she’d gotten away with something. She had the very same look on her face when the verdict got announced.”

She drained the toddy and her whole body relaxed. I doubt she realized how stiff she’d been in that chair while she was talking to us.

Chet thanked her for the information and she insisted on giving both of us hugs as we left.

“She was right, Charlie,” he said once we were underway again. “About that superior look on Tali’s face at the reading of the verdict. It was what crucified her in the media.”

“But the earlier time, during the neighbor’s testimony? No one else must have caught that one.”

His jaw twitched. “I can’t believe I missed it.”

Were his terse words about the neighbor, or about Tali’s smile?

Chapter 15

Chet pulled up in front of our office and I got out at the curb.

“I’m going to pull a surprise visit to that sister of Tali’s who lives here in town,” he said. “I agree with you, I don’t think they’ve had a falling out at all. I’d bet money they are in contact all the time. And at some point, Scout Stiles is going to give away a vital clue. Who knows? I might even happen upon Tali herself, visiting sis at home.”

I wished him luck and watched him drive away, a warm feeling settling over me. He was a sharp cop but he was also a kind man. I was glad we’d agreed to help him.

My own thoughts had trailed off in another direction during the ride back to town. Tired of turkey leftovers, I was ready for something entirely different for dinner tonight. I debated between grabbing a pizza or making something fresh at home. After days of potatoes and gravy, meat and sweets, a salad sounded like the right thing. And I knew we didn’t have much in the way of fresh greens and veggies at the moment.

After a quick check of my desk I closed up and drove to the market a few blocks from home. Everyone else must have gotten to that same point in the week because the parking lot was pretty full. I snagged a plastic hand basket and headed to the produce aisle.

“Hey, Charlie,” a young voice said.

“Well hey, Katie. How’s it going?”

She was clutching a bag of candy that must have come from the mark-down basket near the front door. I had bravely resisted those myself. I turned toward the bundles of romaine.

“Katie, huh-uh, no way. Put those back.” Felina Brewster came up beside me and she’d obviously spotted the candy immediately.

Katie glared at her stepmother and held her ground.

“Now. I mean it.”

The girl slumped away.

“I swear,” Felina said with a sigh. “It’s a battle all the time. Do you and your husband have kids?”

I said that we didn’t and she went on.

“You don’t want them. Trust me. It’s the hair, then it’s those horrid piercings, and she’s been threatening to go out and get more tattoos without our permission. I’d search her room for drugs but who knows what awful thing I would catch.”

“Really? Last time I talked to her, Katie seemed eager to get her act together so she could work with her dad.”

“Oh yeah, like a weekend job at the dealership is going to be a long-term thing with her. She changes interests as often as I change Adam’s diapers.”

“How is Adam’s arm, by the way?” If I could steer her off the subject of Katie it would probably be better all around.

Felina shrugged. “You know kids. They heal fast. The doctor sees him again next week.”

I spotted Katie two aisles away, eyeing the bags of snack mix. I turned toward the tomatoes to divert Felina’s line of sight.

“Jerry did invite you and Don to our New Year’s Eve party, didn’t he?” she asked.

“Drake. Yes, I think he mentioned it.”

“Oh, excellent. It should be a good crowd. I love doing a real dress-up party at least once a year. So much fun to get out the bling, don’t you think?”

I nodded but felt a little like a deer in the headlights. I could probably find one piece of bling in my entire wardrobe. And that was only if gold hoop earrings counted. Yikes, what was I going to wear to this thing?

Felina sent me a hasty “see
ya
” and headed toward Katie, apparently to head off the kid from picking up whatever she wanted. I grabbed a few tomatoes, the lettuce and some other things I could throw together for a salad and then searched out the shortest of the checkout lanes.

Drake was home when I got there and said he’d already walked Freckles around the block. I noticed he’d also picked up the dead luminaria sacks that I hadn’t even thought about for several days. We stood in the kitchen, washing and chopping the new produce I’d brought home.

“I ran into Felina Brewster at the market. She reminded me that we’re invited to their house for New Year’s Eve. Had Jerry told you it was a super-dress-up event?”

He rinsed a cucumber and started paring the skin off it. “He might have. I don’t remember what he said about it.”

“You are such a guy,” I teased. “Don’t you know that the first thing a woman needs to know about a party is what to wear?”

He sneaked a kiss onto my neck. “I’m sure whatever you choose will be perfect.”

“That was diplomatic.” I mentally ran past the contents of my closet, which included one simple black cocktail dress. Without something brilliant to jazz it up, I knew that wasn’t going to make Felina’s bling list. I would have to go shopping at some point. I felt my inner ogre growling as I attacked the grater with a carrot.

We ate our salads, feeling virtuous, and settled in front of the fire, happy to be home as a family without social commitments for a change. Drake switched on the TV and became engrossed in an aviation program while I continued to fidget over the need to buy a new dress. I was in no mood to go out shopping after the long couple of days I’d had, so I wandered to the desk and browsed online for possible sales. But clothes soon lost their appeal and I found myself rereading the articles about the Donovan case.

Within an hour I felt my eyelids getting heavy. I planted a kiss on top of Drake’s head and told him I would see him whenever he came to bed. Fat chance. I was out cold, in minutes. The next time I became aware of anything it was the phone on the nightstand ringing insistently. The room was in complete darkness except for the red numerals on the clock, which said 12:47.

Drake picked up the receiver and sounded remarkably alert when he said hello. Years of practice, I supposed, being ready for a night flight on a moment’s notice.

“Charlie?” he said in a half whisper. “You awake?”

I groaned something incoherent.

“It’s Ron.”

I came awake in a flash and switched on my lamp. Late night calls were not his norm.

“Sorry to wake you guys,” Ron said. “I just got a call from the police.”

A hundred thoughts flashed through my head, none of them good. One of Ron’s kids, our brother Paul in Arizona, Elsa?

“Chet Flowers was in an accident near Santa Fe this evening,” Ron said. “He was killed.”

I made him repeat it.

“That doesn’t make any sense. What happened?” People always ask that, even when it’s just been stated. I mumbled something else and sat up.

“. . . found our business card and the notes we made on the Donovan case. Ours was the only New Mexico number programmed into his phone so they called me.”

I think he gave a few more details but my brain had shut down. Chet. That sweet guy who reminded me of my dad, who’d devoted his retirement years to finding a man’s two lost children.

“Nothing we can really do tonight,” Ron said. “We’ll pick up in the morning. Looks like it’s only you and me on the Donovan case now.”

I clicked off the call and buried my fingers in my hair, scraping it back from my face. Drake took the phone and replaced it on the cradle on his nightstand. I had to repeat the scraps of information for him. Something about retelling it made it feel more real. Chet really was dead.

“I’ll go in the kitchen,” I told Drake. “You get your sleep.”

“Come back soon.”

I doubted I would sleep all night after this but told him I just needed a minute. He rolled over. I pulled on my thickest robe and wormed my feet into my slippers before turning out the light and feeling my way to the door. Freckles snored away in her crate as I edged through the living room. Enough light came through the window in the kitchen for me to find the light switch over the stove top and I used that to fill the kettle and set it on a burner.

Chet. I still couldn’t believe it. How does a guy have a long career as a police detective and end up dying so suddenly? Had he hit an icy patch? I’d thought all the roads were clear now. I went through a whole set of possibilities and justifications as to why none of them were true. The kettle began a slow shriek and I pulled it off the stove.

Instant cocoa mix was my go-to comfort food at night. In automatic mode I dumped the contents of a packet into a mug and added the water, stirring absently and watching tiny, hard marshmallows bob on the surface.

The problem with getting four hours’ sleep before the phone rang was that it was just enough to keep me going. My mind stayed in overdrive until gray light began to show at the windows. I wondered if Ron was having the same sleep problems.

I padded to the front door where I’d hung my purse on a hook with my coat, pulled out my cell phone and reached for the speed dial number for Ron’s cell. When the readout lit up I noticed that I had missed a call the previous evening. I walked back to the kitchen while I listened to it.

“Charlie, Chet Flowers here. Sorry I missed you. Wanted to chat for a minute. I’ve got some new information and I’m driving up to Santa Fe now to see if I can talk with Roxanne Freizel. I’ll be going to the airport early in the morning and I’ll try to call you from there.”

He sounded so normal, all business. He’d been on the road. On the way to his fate.

I held the phone against my chest.
What
new information? It would have helped us immensely to know. I looked again at the listing of messages and saw that he’d called around seven-thirty last night.

Freckles whimpered in her crate. Now that the room was getting light she expected attention and I let myself become distracted from the earlier problems by getting dressed and attending to her. By eight o’clock when I arrived at the office I’d cleared my head enough to start making plans.

Ron and I would keep working on Chet’s leads in the Donovan case, but without the advantage of his knowledge and insights. This wasn’t going to be easy.

Ron’s car pulled into the parking area behind the building as I was filling the coffee maker at the kitchen sink. He looked more rested than I did, but there was a somber cloud around him.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.” I set the switch on the coffee. “Wow. Can’t believe this.”

He wagged his head back and forth. “I need to call Boyd Donovan. Make sure he wants us to stay with the case.”

I hadn’t even considered that, had only assumed we would. But Boyd
was
paying the bills. When I carried two mugs of coffee upstairs a few minutes later, Ron was hanging up the phone.

“We’re still on it,” he said. He accepted his cup and sipped noisily.

“I want to know what happened to Chet. Specifically.” I told him about the message from Chet about his evening drive to Santa Fe.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “We’ll have to know. I don’t like this.”

I didn’t like it either and was glad he agreed with me.

He picked up the phone and punched numbers from memory. He started the conversation with a request to talk with someone in traffic who might have information about an accident. That led from a dispatcher to someone in Santa Fe who apparently hadn’t arrived at work this morning quite awake. A series of frustrating obstacles and I found myself losing patience. I penned a note on a sticky tab and held in it front of his face.

“Good idea,” he mouthed quietly. He thanked whoever was on the phone, disconnected and dialed another.

“Taylor,” he greeted. A little polite chit-chat but he got to the point quickly.

“I know this isn’t your department, Kent, but I could use some help. There was an accident near Santa Fe last night, a guy we knew. We need some details and I need any files he had with him. We were working a case together.”

I hadn’t specifically thought about the files but it was a good point. My attention wandered but soon Ron had come up with a contact at the State Police.

“I want to see the car,” Ron said to whoever was on the line, “and the accident report.”

He’d tossed in Kent Taylor’s name and it must have been the magical open-sesame because he hung up and turned to me. “We can go up to State Police headquarters this morning and get what we need.”

Finally, it felt as though something was happening.

Ron’s foot seemed a little heavy on the gas pedal of his Mustang this morning but I didn’t mind. The Christmas morning snow had vanished except in small shaded spots and the road was clear and dry. We pulled into the parking lot at the State Police building an hour after we’d left our place.

After being issued Visitor badges we got escorted to the desk of a Sergeant Ramirez, the guy Ron had spoken to on the phone. A short explanation of our role in the current case Chet had been working, signatures on release forms, and Ramirez handed over the familiar battered briefcase and a plastic bag of personal items including Chet’s wallet, keys and cellphone.

“We’d like to see the car,” Ron reminded him.

“Sure. It’s a bit of a walk. They put the impound lot at the far back corner of the property.”

I zipped my jacket up a little higher and we set out, through a vast parking lot full of police cruisers and some other official vehicles, past a huge metal maintenance building, and out to a chain link-enclosed lot with barbed wire strands around the top. Beyond the wide gate sat an assortment of cars and trucks, some in perfect condition, others smashed beyond recognition.