Murder Take Two (7 page)

“This Parkhurst guy.”

“What are you getting at?”

Nick smiled, shrugged. “Oh, hell, I don't know. I got the impression a whole lot of hostility was coming my way. Made me wonder why. Does he not like outsiders? Is that it? Or is it me in particular he doesn't like?” Nick hooked his thumbs over his belt and loosened his knees. “All right, stranger.” Good John Wayne imitation. “This town isn't big enough for both of us.”

Yancy smiled. For a big movie star type, Nick was an okay guy, they'd even gotten friendly over a beer or two. “The lieutenant's a good cop.”

“Yeah? Good enough he won't be swayed by trying to solve this immediately? Just to get it cleaned up?”

“What are you getting at?” Nobody answered his tap at the wardrobe trailer. With Nick at his heels, he went inside. Clothing on racks filled it until there was barely room to walk the length of it. Stacked washer and dryer at one end, worktable for sewing, mending, et cetera by the door.

“Hell if I know,” Nick said as Yancy closed the door behind them. “I'm just concerned. Kay was an okay kid. I didn't know her well, but she was a part of this game and if it was more than an accident—somebody has to look out for her. She can't do it herself.”

“What does that mean?”

Nick hunched his shoulders and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Oh, hell, justice, I guess. If that doesn't sound too high-principled.”

Yancy stopped and looked at the actor. “Are you asking me if the lieutenant has the smarts to recognize a clue if he trips over one? What are you going to do? Step in and clear the case? Real movie stuff. The cops are so stupid they don't know what they're doing. But, by God, you're going to track down the killer. See justice is done for this woman, because she can't do it for herself and she's one of your own.”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“You've been seeing too many movies, Nick.”

The actor gave him a smile. “Yeah, I guess.” After a moment he sketched a wave and started to flap off in his thongs. Not the best footwear for the terrain, his feet and ankles would likely be covered with chiggers by the time he got back to his trailer. For half a second Yancy wondered what that was all about—with these people you never could tell what was real and what was made-up—then he went back to worrying about Clem Jones. She was always around, looking at him with withering scorn, mouthing at him. She chewed bubble gum, for God's sake, and had pink hair.

“Oh, Yancy?”

He turned. “Yeah?”

“You might try the barn,” Nick said. “Clem's a morbid little thing. She might be there.”

Yancy headed for the barn. The yellow tape was down, that meant Osey had finished taking prints and picking through straw for evidence. The chief really was moving this along as fast as possible. He looked inside. Body gone, no Clem, no people, but everything else still there, tangles of cable, cameras, booms, mikes. Just as he turned away he heard noises, muffled sounds from the loft, then a high thin keening that stirred the hair on the back of his neck.

He clambered up the ladder, halted when he got to eye level, and cautiously peered into the huge shadowy space. It took a moment to spot her; the ankle-length prison-striped smock sort of fit in with the dimness. Pink hair didn't. She sat at the edge of the drop just where the railing had broken, knees drawn up, arms around them. She froze when she saw him.

“Ms. Jones?”

Like a wild thing, she scrabbled away, ended up against the rough wall, eyes wide with panic, mouth open for air.

“Hey now,” he said softly. “Take it easy.”

She was a mess; black eye makeup smeared all over her face, nose running, pink hair all every which way.

Recognition slowly seeped into her eyes. They were an odd tan color and a shaft of sunlight angling through the small window at the peak of the roof picked out gold flecks. Tears spilled.

“I killed her,” she whispered.

6

Slowly, Yancy levered himself up into the loft. Go easy here, Clem didn't look too well wired together. A sudden move on his part and he'd have her exploding, then there'd be raw nerve ends dangling all over the place. He edged along to a spot where he was between her and the broken rail, then squatted, facing her.

“It's all right,” he said. “Nobody's going to hurt you.” He kept his voice loose and slow.

She brought an elbow up over her eyes, gulped, and sniffled on a ghost of a sob. “Yancy, you got a sweet voice, but you're full of shit.”

Her flip, so quick from damp misery to attack, surprised him. Relieved him too. As long as she was mouthing off she wasn't likely to throw herself over the edge. She looked like a homeless cat, scared and spitting at everybody.

He'd better treat her like a stray, she seemed better able to handle that. This brought up thoughts about her life he didn't have time to go into at the moment. He stood up, took four strides, sat beside her with his back against the rough wall, and rested his forearms on his bent knees. “What are you doing up here?”

She pinned him with a gaze like rifle barrels. Leaning forward, he pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and held it out to her.

She looked at it like she'd never seen such a thing before, then she scrunched it and scrubbed it over her face, mixing tears and black mascara and blue eye shadow and white makeup into one big muddy mask. She blew her nose. “Go away, Yancy. I hate men.”

“You said you killed her.” He waited. “What did that mean?”

“Life is all one big gigantic joke. Nothing but banana peels and pratfalls. A fart in a cathedral. It was my fault.”

“What was?”

“Take your questions and your busy little mind and your dithyrambic little self and get away from me.”

Dithyrambic? He better get himself a dictionary. “Why was it your fault?”

“If I'd gotten Laura up here like I was supposed to, Kay wouldn't have fallen.”

“Then it might be Ms. Edwards who'd be dead.”

Clem grimaced. “I'm slaying dragons.”

“I've slain a dragon or two in my life. Maybe I could help.”

“Are you deaf? Get lost.”

“Sorry. I didn't just wander up for a straw to pick my teeth with. I was sent to get you.”

“Good boy. You did what you were told.”

“Yes, ma'am, I usually do.”

“Your mother must be very proud.”

“As is yours, I'm sure.”

“I don't have a mother. Go away.”

“You don't have a hope of making me go away. You will come with me, docilely and mutely, or I will cuff you and drag you.”

Clem looked at him seriously for a long minute. “Can you really do that?”

“No. So I'd appreciate it if you'd just haul ass out of here and come with me.”

She let a beat go by, then another, then tossed off, “Okay.”

Yancy attempted to help her down the ladder and got a kick for his attentions.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked when they passed from the dimness of the barn out into bright sunlight.

“Laura Edwards's trailer to answer some questions by the higher-ups.”

“That guy that looks like a grizzly about to attack? What's his name?”

“The lieutenant, that who you're talking about? Parkhurst.”

“He's a cop,” she said, getting everything clear.

“Yeah.”

“I don't want to talk to him.”

“They just want to find out what happened.”

“I saw him before.”

“Before what?” Yancy asked, sitting hard on exasperation.

“He was hanging around the barn during the lunch break, when nobody else was here.”

Yancy delivered her at the trailer and wondered if that crack about the lieutenant had any truth in it.

*   *   *

Susan pulled her blouse untucked as she opened the door of the pickup. The sky was taking on the hue of cobalt blue. The air was finally cooling down a little—it damn well should at almost seven-thirty—but the pickup, having baked all afternoon, was like an oven. She pushed on the air-conditioning, then pushed it off and cranked down the windows. With the truck in motion, a little air passed through and it smelled of coming dusk and recently cut grasses and lilacs. Cicadas hummed somewhere. Her mind replayed the session with Clem Jones. Susan couldn't get a clear fix on Clem. One minute she was world-weary, the next smart-ass, the next lost and bewildered. Parkhurst was surprisingly easy on her. Susan wondered why.

Parkhurst and Laura Edwards. Talk about surprise. Wife, for God's sake.

Lately, her interest in Parkhurst had just as much to do with hormones as business. She'd listed all the reasons why it wasn't a good idea, why she'd be a damn fool. And then this famous actress comes along, wraps herself around him, and Susan is as green-eyed as any teenager. Jesus. What a mess.

Focus on the dead woman and how she got that way. Get over to the Sunflower Hotel and go through Kay Bender's room. Find out next of kin and notify. Go through all the statements of cast and crew and see what doesn't fit. Find out when Owen Fisher had scheduled the autopsy and be there. Probably early tomorrow morning. Attending autopsies, while not her favorite activity, sometimes turned up important information that got to her quicker than if she'd waited for the formal report.

Okay? That enough to keep your mind in check? It still wandered back to Parkhurst and Laura Edwards.

Get a grip.

She drove along Main Street, a street paved with red bricks and lined with tall maples, and thought as she had many times before that Hampstead was actually a pretty little town. In the gathering dusk, the old-fashioned lantern-shaped streetlights glowed softly throwing out pools of gold. The buildings, many of them made of native limestone, were old and impressive with fancy cornices and parapets. At Seventh Street, she turned left past the courthouse, a Gothic-style type with a clock tower; the stone had mellowed over the years to a warm cream color. It had been built in 1906, the year of the San Francisco earthquake.

San Francisco. Maybe now was the time to go back where she belonged.

Can't. Work to do.

She pulled into the lot behind the police department, a relatively new building, red brick with white trim, and nosed in beside Parkhurst's Bronco. Sliding from the truck, she glanced up at the communications tower to make sure the owl was still standing sentry. Birds tended to roost there and interfere with transmitting and receiving, sometimes to the point of reducing everything to fuzz. The stuffed owl was to keep them away. Detective Osey Pickett's idea. He'd also been the one to scale the tower. Good kid, Osey. Chock-full of local lore.

Inside, she took the corridor covered with indoor-outdoor carpeting in an icky brown color and paused at the doorway of Osey and Parkhurst's office. Osey wasn't in. Parkhurst stood by his desk, back toward her, and turned before she could speak. The room was dim, not dark, but murky enough that she couldn't see his eyes clearly. His face was carefully blank.

“Right,” he said. “I'm on my way.”
To your office
was unspoken.

Well, at least they were still a team, no need for dialogue. Her office had glass halfway down across the front. She flicked the light switch—more light, more clarity, right?—and adjusted the blinds to half-mast. During her first year the natives had stared at her like she was a strange and wondrous fish. She was from San Francisco. We know what that's like. Freaks and perverts. The fishbowl effect still made her self-conscious. The carpet here was dark blue, not much better in quality, but at least better in color. The desk was gray metal, standard government issue, also the chair, swivel with green vinyl. The visitor's chair was a wooden relic with arms. She hung her shoulder bag over the coat tree in the corner.

She'd started as acting chief, temporary. The mayor didn't like her; the townspeople didn't like her and didn't want an outsider, especially a woman, in the job. Members of the department agreed with both. There was no danger of permanence. Well, the acting recently got dropped. Now she was the real thing, and the mayor still didn't like her, the townspeople still didn't want her, and some of her officers still agreed with both.

Parkhurst came in with two soft drink cans—a delaying tactic, she assumed—and handed her one. She bent up the tab and took a sip. He looked at her, paced to the window, held down a slat, and looked out at the street where streetlights were coming on.

“Wife?” She'd meant to be a little more smooth, work up to it with some finesse, for Christ's sake, but the word just popped out. She put her feet on the desk, legs crossed at the ankles. Why had she given up smoking? This was a cigarette moment, if ever she saw one.

With a knee, Parkhurst nudged the wooden armchair closer, sat low on his spine, and stretched his legs out. “Once upon a time,” he said. “Long long ago. Not now.”

“You were married to Laura Edwards.”

He made a sound, half laugh, half snort. “She was just plain Laura Edwards back then.”

He tipped the can, took a long drink, and rested it on his chest. “It was twelve years ago. We were a couple of kids. She thought I needed my horizons expanded. I thought she needed taking care of.” He gazed at the can, rubbed a thumb through the condensation, and took a quick swig. “It turned out we were both wrong.”

His voice was flat: don't push it, this is as far as I intend to go. If it had been only personal, Susan would have dropped it, but a death had occurred. She couldn't simply let it hang there. “It seems like you might have made at least a mention of the fact that you were married.”

“Oh, hell, it was an awkward
fact
to just drop into conversation. Lovely weather we're having. Oh, by the way, I used to be married to Laura Edwards.”

Yes, actually, any normal person would have done just that. Especially when news got around that Laura Edwards was coming to town. Susan hadn't known he'd ever been married at all, let alone to an actress of Edwards's note.