The East Avenue Murders (The Maude Rogers Crime Novels Book 1) (14 page)

A half pack of unfiltereds later and nothing had changed. Maude was perplexed, tired, and needing rest. She leaned against the desk and fell asleep, her head braced against the wall. It was no less comfortable than the mattress.

In the light of day when she roused from the chair and surveyed the room, its dinginess appearing worse than it had in the half-light of evening. Morning sunlight shone through stained venetian blinds highlighting the dust particles that covering everything. The few shoddy pieces of furniture were water-stained and peeling, the rickety bedpost’s instability the obvious source of the night’s creaking. Maude didn’t recall turning the light on in the room the night before. For a moment she froze, unable to process some information that was banging in her head. The gin bottle had taken its revenge, clouding her brain after a restless night. Then she had it. The coverlet on the bed, it was the same red with white flowers as the ones in the murder-rooms on East Avenue!

“At last we have
a piece of evidence. You slipped up boy. You let me in your head for a while.”

Maude realized that the coverlets were probably a standard issue in small motels around Texas, but now she knew that the killer was moving around from one place to another. What kind of person would do that? A truck driver would, so might an airplane pilot, or a salesman.
A salesman who stayed in seedy motels might try to save money. But this killer was sophisticated and possibly wealthy. She considered the expensive photographic equipment in the cave. He bought those to keep from renting them, to avoid a trail back to him. So, okay,
maybe
he’s
a salesman; but maybe not. Still, it was a connection she could follow to its end.

The housekeeping staff of the small motel consisted of one Mexican lady who spoke no E
nglish at all. She smiled a lot, but even when Maude began to speak loudly, the woman still did not understand English. Holding her hand out, she pointed to the office and nodded her head.

“Yeah, I know. Go ask him. I’ll bet that gets me a lot.”

The motel proprietor was a dingy little man not unlike the property, old and falling apart. He introduced himself as “Fred Williams, but no, I don’t own the place.” His boss was a man who lived in town and owned two such establishments, both the same size. The coverlets were often stolen since they were the best items in the rooms. He had to replace two of them this year. “People seemed to like them.”

Maude got the address of the owner and made a decision to go and visit him before she left the small town. She
also borrowed the office phone book and searched through the business section, a task that took no more than three minutes. There was only one photography equipment store in the county and it was located in the square around the courthouse.

The store’s name was
Camera and Equipment Shop
, and it turned out to be a small, but compact place, with anything a person needed for photography. Maude sat in the car out in front of the store, smoking a cigarette with the window down, the curls of smoke drifting outside the vehicle, the heat of the day already making her feel sluggish. Finally she dumped the butt and got out of the car, into the heat.

The owner of the store was helpful as
Maude began asking questions about lighting equipment he had sold recently. She described the brand name and the size of each piece, including the hookup at the sight with the generator.

The man told her
, “It would take a very skilled person to figure out the logistics and technology, to know where to place an antenna outside, and yes, I sold some of the same pieces within the last three weeks. A man about six feet tall, with dark brown hair that hung below a baseball cap, and sunglasses covering the top half of his face, came into the store, found what he wanted and paid cash. He loaded it all inside a white van and hasn’t returned since.”

The store owner remembered the white van because it had a mark on the
back of it. A company logo that was unknown to the store owner. He drew a picture of the logo and Maude thanked him and left the store. The information was enough to cause some excitement in her.

“T
hat makes twice you slipped,” she told the killer. “Twice you’ve left yourself open. Let’s see what we can make of it.”

Technology was a wonderful thing, but most of the people in her age group didn’t know beans about fiber optics or how a computer worked.
When she needed to type on the keyboard, she punched a button and the screen turned on, and if it worked then lucky Maude. After that, give her a good document program where she could practice her sophomore typing class finger placement on the keys. That was about the extent of her knowledge.

Around the block from the
Camera and Equipment Shop
was a print shop, the kind where the employees took to technology like ducks to water. The kid behind the counter was overweight and acned. He wore smeared glasses on the end of his nose, and belted pants so low on his hips that two pennies added to the pockets would cause them to drop to the linoleum floor. Maude introduced herself to the young man who looked up for a minute from his preoccupation with a handheld game then continued to punch buttons with the speed of a digital stopwatch.

“Excuse me, young man, I need some help from someone and since you are the only one in the store, I guess you’re going to have to do.” 

“Umm, just a minute.” the clerk responded, punching the button on the game, fiercely intent on finishing what he was doing.

Maude waited a minute more
before reaching across the counter and pulling the game from the clerk. She held it against her chest and told him if he wanted it back he could have it after her questions were answered, otherwise, she would take it outside and use it for target practice.

The kid looked embarrassed. “Please don’t tell
my boss. He’ll fire me for sure. It just gets boring in here most of the time.”

“That’s fine,” Maude told him.
“Now listen, I have this picture of a logo that someone saw on a white van. I need for you to get on that computer and find out what you can about it. Think you can do that? If you do, I’ll pay for your time, give you back this piece of plastic, and no, I won’t tell your boss. Deal?” she asked.

‘Deal
,” the kid said, picking up the paper Maude had lain down. “Give me a few minutes. I have to do some searches; may have to get in touch with some friends of mine. You want to come back?”

“Sure. Any place to get a sandwich around here?”

“Two doors down, Buena Vista Café; they have good tacos.”

Maude started o
ut the door and the kid yelled, “Hey, leave my game, I won’t play while you’re gone.”

“See that you don’t,” Maude told him, handing over the equipment, glad to get rid of it.

The little cafe was old. She could see it in the window shade faded to pale at the bottom, still dark at the roll. The tablecloth was red and white checked oilcloth, brittle at the folds, pieces of the red gone; the white stained from continuous use. The plastic rose in the vase on the table drooped from its long life. Linoleum squares with broken corners formed a path to the kitchen, but they were clean giving Maude hope for the food and its preparation. She ordered the beef tacos because the kid recommended them then laughed to herself, wondering why she would trust someone with so little concern for his appearance.

Figuring the tacos for the grease that caused the kid’s acne, Maude
had a minute of reconsideration then said out loud, “What of it, a little grease won’t kill me.”

Actually the food was really good, the grease minimal. It had been a while since
a breakfast of black coffee and she had been hungry. She had heard about certain kinds of beef from animals treated with growth hormones, and how it was a cancer causing agent. For just a minute, the idea of stomach cancer from tacos lingered in her mind, but she shook it off.

The unfiltered cigarette sparked with a match, released its tars into
the bloodstream and gave her addiction a nicotine boost. Once in the car she started the motor and turned on the air conditioner, content to sit a minute and clear her head, the smoke from the cigarette creating a haze in the enclosed cold air.

Her watch said an hour had passed since she le
ft the print shop, enough time for the clerk to get a bead on the logo, or so she hoped. When she opened the door to the shop, the kid greeted her with a smirk, playing his game. He had no idea of her capabilities.

“You were gone long enough,” the kid said.
“Bring me a taco?”

Maude gave him the look that
asked, “Are you being a wise-ass or are you really stupid?”

“Your logo was like a lot of others,
” the kid began, “but they all had something making it too fancy. Finally found yours in a section that serves plumbing and construction. A company called Porcelain Worx, strictly wholesale, no retail. How’d I do boss?”

Maude gave the clerk a high
-five, appreciating the young man for his work. She reached in her pocket and withdrew a twenty.

“Here,
” she said. “Cops don’t make any real money. Thanks kid. You did good. Get me a phone number for this place?” she asked.

“Better than
that, got you a website,” he said, pocketing the money. “Here, use that computer on the desk.”

The keyboard kept sticking but finally she managed to press enter, going to the right screen.
The name of the company, Porcelain Worx, was located in Oklahoma, California and Pennsylvania, and had been a business for over forty years. With the clerk’s help, Maude managed to go to the home screen and locate the CEO of the company and the phone number of the main office located in Philadelphia. She also went onto the product page and saw the list of items that were sold to wholesalers. Scrolling down the page of various porcelain bathroom fixtures, Maude saw a grouping of pictures, one of which was the new high sided bathtub with plastic over porcelain bottom.

“
There’s the bathtub in my rent house! And that no-good shower head in
my
bathroom. How many connections does he have to me?” she asked of no one.

The phone rang several times before an automated voice came on line, asking Maude to
“leave a message for Porcelain Worx because we do not want to miss your call!” Because she didn’t know what position the killer served in the company, Maude was hesitant to give any clue as to her identity. She lied instead and left a false name and bogus construction company where she could be reached. Using her cell phone as the destination, she told the machine that it was important she be reached as soon as possible then she got on the phone and called her partner back in Madison.

The soun
ds of running water were soothing, recalling a childhood memory. The creek had been cold then, and clear, with a few rocks on the bottom here and there, but mostly sand that felt good between his toes. The small fish that swam away when he picked up his feet to take a step were shiny, their scales reflecting the sunlight that shone in streaks through the leaves of the trees.

“Bobby,” his nanny
had called, “Come here, get out of that water, you will catch your danged death.”

The bubbling water sounds with their con
stant rhythm always got his attention, even then.

His mama and daddy had been arg
uing that morning, using fierce words that even an almost-three year old knew meant terrible things to come. Daddy had told mama “don’t want you, don’t want him”.

Mama had cried, but then
she got real mad. “Not my fault!” The words from mama’s mouth rang in his ears, resounding now, shutting out the sound of the water. “You take him, Elridge! Don’t want him”.

Daddy got in the car. Bobby could see from the window in the nursery. He raised his small hand to wave at
Daddy who didn’t look back. Gone. Mama was in her bedroom, crying really loud. 

“
Heartless man, kill you. Don’t want him. So heartless, come back. Don’t want him”. Mama was sad, and Bobby opened the door to go to her, tears on his cheeks like mama. He lifted his small arms to her. Words sprang from him as she drew back her right hand again and again.

“O
oh. Don’t hit, Mama! No, hurts. Ooh, Mama. Head hurts. Mama, no, hurts. Tummy hurts, no, Mama. Daddy! Daddy!” Mama hugged him then, sorry for so much.

The nanny
came when Mama called and took the small screaming boy away to his favorite place, the creek behind the family home. She washed his face in cold water and removed the tears, sat him down upon the ground and checked his body for injury, hugging him against her. She soothed him, wiping away new tears. It was not the first time that the nanny had comforted the crying child after one of his accidents. That time there was nothing broken or bleeding.

“This time no big hurts for Bobby
, just little hurts that will go away soon.”

The nanny was young, no
t yet twenty, a student who went to college during the day when she was away from Bobby. She would be gone for good the next day, suspicious, unable to stomach what she believed to be abuse to the child. The nanny’s youthfulness made her more vulnerable to the pain she saw in the family, but even she who took care of Bobby was unaware of the extent of violence visited upon the child regularly. Once she had spoken to a fellow student about her beliefs that Bobby was being abused, but since her only proof was the sorrow of a child, she was advised by the law student to stay out of the family’s business. There was old money behind Bobby’s family and the nanny would be the one to suffer if she continued.

After giving her notice, the nanny was quickly replaced by another. But Bobby
had already been educated in the application of violence. He knew that his life was controlled by adults, Mama and Daddy who were so adept at producing pain in the boy. Oh yes, he knew all about violence, he had lived with it for three years as the perfect target for Mama who used Bobby for her punching bag when Daddy misbehaved.

The new nanny came, but she was old
, and didn’t love Bobby. She chastened him for the messy in his pajamas and told Mama and Daddy. The bruising on his small body went unnoticed by the nanny, except one time Bobby saw her smile at his broken finger, his pinky, where Mama had bent it till it hurt so bad. That time Mama had cried and hugged him and said “no more messy in his pajamas”. Her hugs were the best when she held him to her breasts, his face against her soft skin, his small mouth open to receive the dry nipple to suckle. Mama would make sounds and keep hugging him. Bobby lived for those times when Mama loved him for a little while, before she flung him from her bed, screaming for the nanny to take him away.

The coolness of the cave was good for sleeping, for recovering. Mama had come again, looking for him, but she didn’t find him in his special place. Not ready yet for Mama but so glad that she still loved and wanted him! The water
, in the river under the tabletop in front of the cave was rushing below him, comforting the man who was once a boy. Later he would climb down, shed his clothes and jump into the cold sparkling water, revived in spirit, ready for the day.

He missed his treasures, they brought him pleasure to touch and remember. His latest one
s lay hidden in the cave, in his special place where he would keep them for a while, to hold when the scary night came. The woman had been hateful to him, calling him names, screaming for him to go away, but Bobby had stayed. He had held her tight, but she didn’t hug him. Her hands had scratched his face, his arms, hurting him. His head had hurt so badly, the noise of her screaming matching his, the sound of the gurgling breath from her chest frightening him, his hands around her throat squeezing to stop the noise in his head.

He didn’t remember
much after that, but
Someone
had used the knife, the special knife to stop her for good, because she had kicked him and tried to crawl away, forcing his hands from her neck as the last surge of her strength broke his hold. After that he laid the post on the ground and re-tied her to it. Her dead weight dragged him down as he lifted and replaced the post in the same position, the knife in her back difficult to maintain. Then
Someone
cleaned her, removing his touch, his saliva, the prints from the knife. But
he
took his treasures. She would never scream again or look at his face with hatred.

He had
two more vacation days to play before going back to the job and after that, home. The JOB, a means for him to ‘travel and meet people,’ the salary a pittance received for a job well done. The ad had run in the local newspaper advertising for employees to sell products in home improvement
. ‘Would require some travel and an outgoing personality ready
to make things happen and grow a business
.’ He had been young when he applied, the second of two applicants. Both got the job, selling porcelain products for business and the home through wholesale contacts.

He outlasted the other salesman. T
horoughly successful in his line of the business, he had managed a compelling sales portfolio. More importantly, he concealed his considerable intelligence and the fortune left from his loving parents after their untimely accidental death in the northern Rocky Mountains. When he had turned twenty one-a responsible and grieving adult-the money was his. The large family fortune that passed down first to Bobby’s father had been sought after by an uncle, Daddy’s brother, but the man’s legal standing was declared void for there was an heir, daddy’s only son, Bobby. There were also considerable amounts of life insurance on both his father and mother with double indemnity for accidental death.

The uncle had declared a suspicion of foul play in the death of his brother and sister-in-law. The brakes on their car had failed on one of the downhill mountain roads
, causing the car wheels to escalate their rotations to a sustained speed of at least one hundred and twenty miles per hour just before it jettisoned off the s-curve into the valley below. No evidence of brake-tampering was found even though there was so much damage to the entire vehicle it might have been overlooked in the wreckage.

The rental car, a foreign sports model, had been issued with the standard safety inspections before the man and his wife took the car on the scenic drive into the mountains. The local Colorado police who had too much to do to worry about a man jeal
ous of his nephew’s inheritance shrugged their shoulders and got on with other business.

The couple, who
had been back together for a short time were trying to revive a failed marriage, hoping the mini-vacation would be the stimulus for a second trip to the alter. On one of their son’s short visits to his parent’s home, he had overheard the kitchens cooks talking about the planned trip a week in advance, and though he waited patiently as always, he was neither asked by his parents to go along, nor informed of the plan.

Bobby lived in
his own apartment in another city and had returned there after the authorities began searching for him. When they found him at his job and told him of his parent’s death, they advised him that it was routine police work to question him of his whereabouts at the time of the deaths. Sad-faced Bobby nodded his head and showed them his time card from the small shoe store where he worked, then closed the door of the business behind them.

That night, he moved into
his
new
apartment and called to thank a particularly helpful man in the rental car business in Colorado. Afterward, he opened a bottle of very expensive wine and drank several glasses in celebration of a job well done.

The next week the helpful man
in Colorado had his own accident in his new porcelain shower, although there was never any evidence that might incriminate
Porcelain Worx
or its products. The delivery man who carried death to the helpful Colorado man had parked his van behind a convenience store a block away then walked to the door, thank you gift in hand.

In
side a colorful wrapper tied with a red ribbon, a large container of body wash with skin softening glycerin additives lay waiting to be used by the helpful man. The delivery person returned later, jimmied the lock, and hid in the house, waiting for an opportune time to finish his task. Even later, the no-longer-patient delivery man jerked the shower curtain open and surprised the helpful man who slippery from the glycerin in the body wash, lost his footing and allowed maximum forced contact between his head, the stainless steel faucet, and the tub bottom. The delivery man carefully removed the body wash label and erased all fingerprints other than the victim’s from the bottle. He left the helpful man’s house by the back door, removed his gloves and returned to the unmarked van.

The
coroner found no conflicting evidence to prove foul play and thus ruled in his report;

‘
The cause of death appears to be a large cerebral contusion resulting in hematoma of the frontal and rear lobe, traumatic brain injury was due to a slip and fall within the home.’

Bobby
became a very wealthy man after the will was read and the insurance claim on his parents was paid. His inheritance allowed him many privileges, one was the ownership of the large family home which his educated father had christened
, Feldspar.
The grounds of the property were Bobby’s play area where he had begun the early preparations for his craft.

In the forested area outside the
privacy fence there had been feral housecats that came onto the grounds to deposit their litters of wiggly babies in concealed places, but they couldn’t hide from little Bobby. He found the kittens and began his ministrations that were done with such precision that his mother might have approved had the small boy told her.

Their little hearts were hard to find at first
, but he got better after more and more tries, learning to poke them first with an icepick, (don’t touch that Bobby, it might hurt you!) that he stole from the kitchen cook and returned later. Scissors with blunt ends were hard to use, but he found some with pointy ends in the sewing drawer, and they worked just fine.

The small boy always took care of the things he loved. Scissors back to the drawer, his treasures in a kitchen match box under a rock near the patio and the useless kitty thrown into the creek to float away. Mama always thought he had cut himself when she saw the blood on his little short pants. She didn’t worry about him though. Just smiled and wiped her drippy nose, sniffing up the
white medicine that she said made her strong.