Consider the Crows (13 page)

“You wanted to see me.” His words came out flat.

So why did she get this sense of clamped-down anger? Back to the old resentments that she outranked him? Shit. I thought we'd gotten past that.

“Anything on Shoehorn?” Because the postman remembered the murdered girl receiving letters from someone in Kansas City with a last name like Shoehorn, they'd asked Kansas City PD to run a check on Lynnelle Hames. KCPD had come up empty.

“Osey's still working on it.”

It was a longshot anyway, but right now the best they had. Why the hell couldn't they get anywhere on Lynnelle's family? Telephone records hadn't turned up anything useful; no calls conveniently made back home; no long distance calls at all. David McKinnon had arranged for the phone installation and the bills showed only the monthly charges with nothing extra. In his spare time, Osey was calling every listing in the Kansas City phone book that looked or sounded anywhere near Shoehorn. Susan was irritable, but it was better than nothing, and Osey kept beavering away. Susan told Parkhurst what she had on Audrey Kalazar.

“That explains it,” he said with a quick smile. “Doctor Audrey Kalazar, vice-chancellor of Emerson, bashed in the head of a clerk-typist and took it on the lam.” He paced through the stripes on the floor made by the sunshine and stood with his back to the window, interrupting the pattern and making it hard to see his face clearly.

She was awkwardly aware she'd been staring at him. “All we know at this point is she left with a suitcase on Saturday morning.”

“Romantic weekend with a truck driver. Steamy, earthy sex.”

She grinned. Controlled, fastidious Audrey? “Mr. Kalazar informed me, quite firmly, they were very happy.” Husbands or wives with missing spouses always were. “They had no problems. No fights, no arguments, no disagreements.”

“The perfect marriage.”

“The only thing he admitted was that Audrey was concerned about Julie.”

“What has the perfect daughter been doing to cause concern?”

“He was vague. Apparently Julie isn't doing as well in school.”

“As well as what?”

“As Audrey thinks she should.”

Parkhurst rubbed the back of his neck and let out a breath with an irritated huff. “We have one woman dead and another woman missing. What's the connection?”

“I don't see any.”

“Emerson College. Kalazar is vice-chancellor, Lynnelle worked there and was a friend of Audrey's daughter.”

“So what? We can make all sorts of associations like that. Nick Salvatierra is a student and a friend of Audrey's daughter.”

He stared, brooding, at the shiny toes of his black shoes. “Nick's been on my mind. If he's not our killer, he's up to something and I'd like to know what.”

“It's unlikely to have anything to do with Kalazar skipping a conference.”

“Yeah. I think we should arrest Egersund and beat a confession out of her, then worry about Dr. Vice-chancellor.”

“I think we should find Dr. Kalazar. Check with the airlines, see if she left here and got on the flight to Dallas.”

He nodded impatiently. “Car?”

“Black Chrysler Le Baron, new.” She flipped through her notes and gave him the license number.

He copied it down. “Susan—”

Something in his voice had her looking down at her pale blue silk blouse to see if she'd spilled coffee all over it. It had a fancy rolled collar that ended in a tie in front. She suddenly felt self-conscious. Frills didn't suit her. “What?” she said more sharply than she intended.

Ponderous silence.

“I'll lean on Nick a little,” he said.

That wasn't what he'd meant to say. And when had he started calling her Susan? Chief was hard, it seemed to stick in his throat; usually it was a half-mocking Boss. “Parkhurst—”

“Don't worry. I won't leave a mark on him,” he said as he left.

She felt uneasy, and not a clue why. Too much coffee. Irritation at time spent tracking Audrey Kalazar with a killer loose. Was there a connection? Retrieving cigarettes and lighter from the mess on her desk, she shoved them in her bag. Probably just too many cigarettes.

*   *   *

Osey Pickett, curved over his desk, said, “Yes, ma'am,” into the telephone. Parkhurst sat at his own desk and waited. Osey's guileless blue eyes focused on him and Osey made a facial spasm of vexation.

“No, ma'am,” he said and raked fingers through his straw-colored hair. “No, I don't think that's really necessary. Yes, ma'am.”

He clamped down the receiver. “Damn it. That's the fourth one this morning.” The phone rang again before he could remove his hand. “Detective Pickett, may I help you?” He listened a moment and then went into his “Don't worry about a thing, ma'am, we've got everything under control, rest easy” voice of dealing with the public.

Parkhurst looked at Osey and tapped his wristwatch. Osey nodded, said another “yes, ma'am” and hung up. “Everybody's worried. We getting anywhere on this murder? They're all rushing out to buy handguns. Afraid to go out at night. Don't want their kids working at the fast-food places and service stations. We don't do something pretty soon, they're going to be shooting each other in wholesale panic.”

“Don't fret, son, it's all part of the job.”

“Couldn't I just chase bad guys? I hate this shit. We aren't getting anywhere, are we?”

“Not so's you'd notice. Unless you're making progress with Shoehorn.”

Osey grimaced. “Gone through about half the possibles. So far zilch. You wouldn't believe how rude some people are. Some of 'em think I'm an obscene caller. Some don't even bother to answer, they just hang up. I'd get along a whole lot faster if I didn't have to talk to all these nervous folks wanting to know if they should sleep with loaded weapons under their pillows. What's up?”

“We have work to do. Let's roll on it.”

*   *   *

At the campus, Susan left the pickup in the circular driveway in front of the administration building and trotted up the front steps, then labored up to the second floor. The vice-chancellor's office was at the end of the hallway. Edie Vogel, expression remote, stared at a blank computer screen and when Susan walked in, Edie's head whipped up, panic in her eyes.

“Oh.” She seemed to shrink back inside the boxy jacket of her beige suit. “For a second I thought you were Dr. Kalazar.”

Sunlight angling through the window accentuated the dark shadows under her eyes and made her brown hair, cut into points around her face, seem like wilted petals. She looked more tired and haunted then she had when Susan last spoke with her. Obviously, there'd been no word about the missing child. Next to her name plate, Edith Blau Vogel, was a framed photo of little Belinda in a frilly pink dress.

“You expected Dr. Kalazar to be here this morning?” Susan scooted a chair from the wall to the front of the desk and sat down.

Edie, looking uneasy as though moving furniture wasn't allowed, shook her head. “No, not till tomorrow. Do you know where she is?”

“Not yet.”

“Then something's wrong. She's always where she says she'll be.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“Friday. She was here all day till four-thirty, then she said she'd be back Wednesday and left.”

“Did you make the travel arrangements?”

“I always do whenever she goes anywhere. Hotel reservations and airline reservations and car rentals, all like that. I called Fran at the travel agency weeks ago about the tickets. One
P.M.
flight to Dallas Saturday afternoon.”

“Did she seem bothered about something, irritated or worried?”

Edie's lips curved in a half-smile. “She was usually bothered or irritated about something.”

“Any feuds going on? Resentments, jealousies?”

“With the faculty, you mean?” Edie shrugged. “Just the usual. Worry about tenure and getting department chairmanship and why their department doesn't get as big a piece of the budget. They're like a bunch of little kids.”

“Anyone with a specific grudge?”

Edie's mouth curved again and this time the smile was almost real. “All of them one time or another. Dr. Kalazar's not exactly sensitive about people's feelings.”

“Did anything unusual happen on Friday?”

“Well, she was furious at Dr. Egersund, like I told you. Read her out in this tight voice. Not shouting, you know, just mean and threatening. When Dr. Egersund left, oh boy, did she look mad. Her face was all white and grim. She better tippytoe pretty careful, because Dr. Kalazar gets really mad about mistakes and she doesn't give a second chance.”

“Was she looking forward to the conference? Nervous about speaking? Excited?”

“Just the usual, I guess. Duty and all that stuff. Like gratified she was asked. She never had any trouble feeling important.”

“Anything different about her? She didn't seem ill?”

“You mean like amnesia?” Edie grinned and Susan caught a glimpse of what Edie must have been like before her daughter was kidnapped. “She looked just healthy to me.”

“Did she say anything before she left?”

“Are you kidding? A detailed list of all this stuff I was to do while she was gone.”

“Thanks, Edie,” Susan said as she stood up. “Did she ever mention Lynnelle?”

Edie leaned back in her chair. “Not to me, she didn't.”

“I think I better take a look at her office.”

Edie followed and took a quick glance around. She said it looked the same to her; nothing unusual, out of place, or missing. She went back to her desk and her blank computer screen.

The office was in a corner, second-floor front with windows on two sides. Susan stood a moment staring down at the driveway in front. A boy with an armload of books raced down the steps and, just as he reach the curb, dropped it all. Papers scattered in the wind. She watched him scramble and grab. Moving to the side window, she looked out at bare-limbed trees and pathways between buildings. It was just past noon and students in jeans and down jackets were swarming along the paths.

She turned to the desk in the center of the room. Audrey Kalazar was excessively neat, desktop bare except for desk blotter, pens and telephone. Even the drawers were neat with the usual assortment of pens, rubber bands, paper clips and note cards all in their respective places. In the top right-hand drawer was an appointment calender and she paged through it. Diagonal lines had been drawn through the three days of the conference. On Wednesday, February sixteen, was a penciled note: Herbert Ingram four-thirty. She checked the file cabinets for that name and came up empty. She flipped through files randomly, seeing no reason at this time to study them more closely.

There was nothing to suggest where Kalazar might be, or that she'd planned to go anywhere other than the conference, or even that she'd suddenly developed amnesia and was wandering around somewhere asking herself who she was. Susan didn't like this. Where was the woman? None of it made sense. Ha, unless Parkhurst was right and Audrey attacked Lynnelle and lit out. She went back to the outer office and asked Edie, “Who is Herbert Ingram?”

Edie thought a moment. “Nobody I know. Not a teacher, for sure. Maybe a student, but I don't recognize the name.”

Susan told Edie to let her know if she remembered anything else and then stopped in at Registration. There was no student named Herbert Ingram.

*   *   *

Osey put the barbecued ribs on his desk with a stack of napkins handy, shrugged off his fleece-lined suede jacket and slung it across the back of the chair, then eyeballed his list of possible Shoehorns. The chief was getting a mite short-tempered about not finding the dead girl's family. She wasn't going to be too pleased they hadn't run down Kalazar either. At least he didn't have to tell her. Let Ben do it. Kalazar wasn't even due home till this evening. Maybe just took off somewhere on her own. Was strange, though.

Strange too that David McKinnon was paying the phone bills for the Hames girl. Why would he do that? Just a good guy? Chief letting judgment get skewed because he's a friend?

Most of the possibles on Osey's list didn't look all that much like Shoehorn to him. If he had anything else to dig at, he'd do it. Until then, he'd call every name starting with S, if he had to. Before he could pick up the receiver and get started, the phone rang.

“Evers, Oklahoma City. About that VW you're trying to get a line on?”

“Right,” Osey said, making a shift in thinking to Lynnelle's car.

“Sorry for the delay. Salesman left one place and went to work at another. Took a while to find him. He took the VW as a trade-in, then turned right around and sold it to your girl. The Adam Henry didn't do the paperwork right.”

Osey made a sympathetic noise. Adam Henry was polite talk for asshole.

“Help you any?”

“Not much but thanks anyway.” Osey went back to his list. In the interest of time, he would punch in a number and ask whoever answered for Shelley. Mostly, he got, “Who? Wrong number.”

Then things got a little more interesting. The name was Shoenhowser and the lady who answered had a daughter named Shelley.

Forty-five minutes and four phone calls later, he looked at his cold barbecued ribs and said, “I'll be damned.”

11

I
T WAS AFTERNOON
before Parkhurst got around to Nick Salvatierra. In the hallway of the dorm, he could hear heavy rock music through Nick's door and feel the pulse of bass notes beneath his feet. He knocked once and, when he got no response, reached for the knob; finding it unlocked, he stepped in and closed the door behind him. Noise leaped at him like a snarling grizzly.

Nick, between mounds of clothes, books, papers and blankets, lay on the bed, one ankle balanced on a bent knee, foot jerking in time to the music. Startled, he snapped his head toward the door. “Hey, you can't—” He came barreling up.