A Line To Murder (A Puget Sound Mystery) (12 page)

“Is that what you think?”

“I don’t believe in guardian angels. I think a badly injured bird knew if he died on your balcony you’d give him a decent burial.”

Francisco grinned and I snapped him with a kitchen towel.

We finished loading the dishwasher. He and Dave left soon after. I don’t know why, but I never mentioned the money clip. I had, however, made up my mind to take Dave’s suggestion and start looking for the vicar.

* * *

For the next three days after-work appointments kept me busy. Finally, on Thursday, I went to the Calculated Love agency in Old City Hall. My cynical, judgmental self was surprised the office wasn’t a seedy joint with artwork bordering on porn. Instead, the brick and oak floor were original to the building. The receptionist might have had the biggest hair I’d ever seen but she was courteous and professional.

I approached the counter.

“Hello. I don’t remember seeing you before.”

“I’m new.” I handed her my completed questionnaire. “Could I go through some of the membership books?”

“Have you made your video yet?”

“Uh, no. I thought maybe going through the books would help me prepare.”

“Well, you’re not alone. Lots of new clients feel that way. The video process can be very intimidating, now…” she looked at my sheet. “Okay, so you like movies and mature men. They sort of go hand-in-hand, don’t they?” She laughed. “Older men probably seem safe when you’re getting started. Ummm, let me see…” She swiveled in her chair and pulled out three thick loose leaf notebooks. “Do you want a private booth?”

Oh, ugh
.

“Uh, a private booth seems a little adult bookstore to me. A table will be fine.”

I took the books to the back of the room and started flipping the pages, hoping something would catch my eye. Who knew Tacoma had so many mullet-sporting men dressed like Sonny Crockett in
Miami Vice
? After an hour, the best I could come up with was that none of the men seemed to like vintage Hollywood.
Long walks on the beach and cuddling in front of a roaring fire, my ass
. I closed the last book on the face of a bald man with glasses and a large Bobby Burgess smile. I was pretty sure the vicar wasn’t there. I returned the books to the receptionist and told her I’d be back soon to make my tape. Out on the street, I stopped at the first drinking fountain and washed my hands.

* * *

In the days since Isca’s murder, I’d heard nothing more and follow-up articles in the paper had stopped. Andy hadn’t been arrested yet. He and I had met for lunch twice. At the office, the broker-trainee continued answering phones. It fell to the rest of us to keep the paperwork flowing while the firm interviewed for her replacement. The fair opened on Good Friday, a Wall Street holiday.

It wasn’t possible to be sad at the fair. The raucous activity was a chairlift to excitement. Even bawling kids weren’t sad. Just tired or determined to get their way.

“Why peanut butter?” I’d asked Francisco Sunday when he handed me the jars.

“Dr. Janoff says peanuts and certain other foods prevent one from reaching a higher level of consciousness.” He rolled his eyes. “We had to get rid of ours.”

I’m glad I haven’t had any peanut butter. I don’t want any interference with my consciousness level at the Bonanza Burger Barn.
I flashed my I.D. at the gate and headed across the grounds.

When I was in therapy, my psychologists had once explained a theory about problems being worked out subconsciously through a process of accumulating facts, their incubation in the brain and then a blinding flash of illumination wherein all was solved. I incubated happily as I rang up burgers, appalled at how easily people ate, figuratively speaking, through twenty dollars. I flirted with men, commiserated with moms and tried to make every child feel special. I wanted their memories to be as happy as mine.

My coworker came out of her shell enough to make a game of seeing who could refill the napkin holders and catsup containers first. I hollered, “Fries up,” through a steam cloud of onions heaped on the grill. All the time my brain carried on an independent task, searching and sorting through old memories. At the end of my shift, I walked to my car in the employee’s pasture parking lot, thinking and trying not to trip in molehills. Isca could have easily misunderstood the vicar when he talked about being reborn. He could have meant a rebirthing. If I’d gone to the seminar at the Church of Divine Humanity, would I somehow intuitively have spotted him in the audience, sitting there with a smile on his face and his ugly secrets tucked away? Not likely but damn and double damn anyway!

C
hapter 10

I got in my car and eased over the bumpy pasture to 7
th
Avenue. The car was warm and I cracked a window. The fair wouldn’t close for an hour and there were still plenty of people in the streets. Mostly teenagers in T-shirts, jeans and sandals. They pushed each other off the curbs, laughing and jostling. I didn’t envy teens, with the gangs and overriding drug problems they faced. My friend Jocelyn, who worked at a women’s shelter, once said a lack of religious foundation coupled with sadly fractured families meant many children had no firm base at the bottom and nothing at the top to give them hope. “They just keep on hopelessly spinning.” That night, though, I was jealous of their seeming innocence.

The road I chose wound through sleeping neighborhoods, over Clark’s Creek and past DeCoursey Park to Fruitland Avenue. The intersection offered two choices:  left toward the freeway or right along River Road. I chose the river.

As a child, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents. They told me stories about what the area was like when they were young. Some of the stories came back to me. Before World War II, the Puyallup Valley, through which the river made its way toward Commencement Bay, had been full of farms—patchworks of fruit orchards and vegetable gardens, many of them Japanese owned. Much of the land had been lost to those owners during internment, when they couldn’t earn the money to pay their taxes. Much of the beauty had been lost, too, in a hodgepodge of uncontrolled development. Now the river wound its way by taxidermy shops and cigarette stores.

I’d taken the longer route to give myself time to think—to make a mental list. People either did lists or they didn’t. I did. My briefcase was a clutter of Christmas lists begun in July, books I needed to reserve and Post-it notes to myself. The best part about mental lists was they didn’t need dusting.

Who killed Isca? Andy? The vicar? Was it a random act of violence?
Before Ted Bundy, a transient named Jake Bird had been a random choice murderer in Tacoma. The killings terrorized the city’s residents.

Darn it, Isca, you didn’t leave me enough to go on
. What did I know about the vicar? He was a man who read the personals and called nine hundred numbers. He liked phone sex. He had a proclivity for famous, but now deceased, women stars. Isca thought that he lived in Tacoma or the Tacoma area. She also thought she knew who he was. So where would she have come across him? Church? Not Isca. Work? Maybe, but I thought not. A grocery store? Possibly. A singles bar? Hmmm. The singles spots I knew of were in lounges of restaurants along the waterfront. They hosted country western nights, karaoke nights, Spandex nights. Plenty of ladies’ nights. However, Isca was really too sophisticated for those. She was also older than the run-of-the-mill bar crowd.

Then I thought about her impersonations. The theater? The movies?

Did the use of the word vicar narrow him down to the Episcopal Church?

I decided to write a letter to each Episcopal and Catholic church in town to see if I could smoke him out. Bottom line, though--if Isca had, indeed, figured out the vicar’s identity and had confronted him, did he kill her to protect his reputation? Or had Andy, who wasn’t sure Dominic was his son but was infuriated because Isca had exposed the boy to pornography, done it? He seemed to have a quick temper. Did he also have a deep-seeded fury over their failed marriage? What about the dowel he broke and didn’t even seem to remember. Most damaging of all, what about his money clip in Isca’s garden? And if neither of them was the murderer and he was a person or persons unknown, there was nothing I could do to find him.

I hadn’t cared much for Andy, until lately. He became more likeable when I learned his seeming arrogance was because he sometimes didn’t hear what was being said. So what? Why was it so hard to believe he was guilty of a murder that hadn’t only been ugly…
weren’t they all
. . . but messy? Andy was fastidious, that was why. Even his workshop was tidy. The bedroom had been demolished with blood everywhere. More convincing, to me though probably not the police, was the simple thought that single fathers, raising small sons, didn’t often commit murder. Or, perhaps, it was the boney wrists and hearing aid that convinced me. I knew of only one hard-of-hearing killer in history, “Deaf Charley” Hanks. He was supposed to have been the toughest member of Butch Cassidy’s gang and last to die. The movie left him out.

By the time I reached my dark and quiet street, my head ached with fatigue compounded by the lingering smell of fast-food in my clothes. I got out of the car and stretched. A breeze came up and stirred the trees.
A south wind. Good news. Bad news. The weather will cool off but it will probably rain.

On impulse, I hid my purse under the driver’s seat and locked the car. I’d walk down to Division Avenue, where the park boundary ended. I did this occasionally, to unwind, taking pepper spray if Dave couldn’t go with me. I liked the night, especially at Christmas when people didn’t close their shades and I could see their decorated trees.

My footfalls were quiet. I resumed my thoughts. What about Andy’s unconventional upbringing? Between eighteen months and three years, much of a child’s nature was fixed for life. Who knew what he’d learned in the commune about behavioral norms? His air of boyish bewilderment was somewhat appealing, but that didn’t mean it was genuine, or that a man who loved his son wasn’t capable of murdering his ex-wife. It seemed a bit extreme, though. A court hearing to stop visitation would probably be more his style.

“I think I know who the vicar is,” Isca had said on my answering machine. Knowing his unhealthy obsession, why had she felt it necessary to check him out? Why confront a man you felt had “wigged out”? Because Isca liked the fast lane. “I like to keep the pot boiling,” she’d often said.

Before I knew it, my steps had taken me to Division. I crossed the street and continued on past some brick apartment buildings. The wind freshened. Japanese cherry blossoms and bits of debris arabesqued down the sidewalk and went off point. Gargoyles on the old Casa Blanca Apartments leaned forward and glared. The walk had become creepy. Moisture cooled my face and I decided to turn at the end of the block and start home. My head felt better and I wanted a bath and bed. Maybe the cat would come up to snuggle.

I retraced my steps. Most of the lights in the apartments were off. Those on created pockets of darkness. I was alone on streets that weren’t particularly safe at any time of day or night. Or was I alone?
By the prickling of my thumbs
...I suddenly had a creepy feeling someone was following me. However when something snapped and I turned around, no one was there. In front and behind me, every spot of light from a window made the darkness darker. Apprehension closed around me like a pea-soup fog. At the next streetlight, I stopped and looked behind me again. A medium-tall man stepped out of the shadows less than half a block away.
Where did he come from?
He stood with his hands in the pockets of a heavy, hooded jacket, watching me. I reached in my pocket for my pepper spray. If the little canister had been there, I like to think I would have faced my stalker with the don’t-mess-with-me stance of a pit bull. Unfortunately I’d left it in my purse. My subsequent body language immediately said “terrified Chihuahua.”

Damp air—part of the approaching rain—settled on my face and hair. I shivered and walked faster. The man followed, his footsteps keeping time with mine. His breathing was louder than mine. The neighborhood had some businesses. A tavern on I Street closed for remodeling. Across from it, the Tacoma Little Theater was closed for the evening. Its
marquee threw a little light, and I turned around again. The man’s steps might have kept pace with mine, but he must have lengthened his stride because he was measurably closer. I hurried past a long building, home to a vintage clothing store, espresso shop and ballet school. All were dark. The cars that should have been on the street seemed to be missing—like a
Twilight Zone
episode. Ahead of me loomed the park and three-quarters down the street across from the park, my apartment.

Wright Park was over one hundred years old. Its shrubbery was well-developed, providing plenty of hiding places. A dip in the park’s south side, a sort of bowl where the duck pond, playgrounds and cribbage building were located, had a substantial area below street level not easily visible from the roads. Anything could happen there, and sometimes did.

I began to run. I ran straight down the middle of Division, hoping a car would come. When none did, I cut diagonally across the road and made the turn onto my street. I raced past the Seymour Conservatory. If I broke a window, would the police come? No time to look for a stone. My side got a stitch and my gasps for air were a knife in my lungs. I’d never been a fast runner. That night I made one of those promises with God. “Get me out of this and I promise I’ll exercise and give up Twinkies.”

Behind me, the footsteps seemed no closer. They just kept pace. Was that the idea? Scare me to death? I left the street and stumbled on the curb in front of the grilled windows and antique cannons of the Karpeles Manuscript Museum. The man’s breathing sounded labored as he drew closer. Good. As I passed other apartments, I wished for enough breath to scream. Unfortunately, in my neighborhood, screams late at night were more likely than not a signal to turn off the lights and make sure the dead bolt was in place. Finally I began to slow. I just couldn’t help it.

I was terrified prey with no thoughts other than those of survival. I reached my sidewalk and stumbled up the steps.
Thank you for not being a security building.
I burst through the front door with just enough strength left to drag the old wooden, entryway table over to act as a barricade. Then I collapsed on the stairs, gasping for breath.

After a while I realized no one was trying to get in. I got down and crawled under the table. For a minute, looking over the rungs through the door’s glass panes, the street looked empty. After my eyes adjusted, a figure leaned against a car. He’d pulled his hood farther down. The space where his face should have been was black emptiness. Cold air seeped through the doorjamb. It carried a faint sound of whistling. The figure stood there in the fog and gathering rain, leaves swirling round his feet, and whistled. I think I was more afraid than when I ran.

I don’t know how long I lay there. I was so cold my joints were frozen. I stifled a series of sneezes and inched backwards. I pulled the table away from the door, ran upstairs and pounded on Dave’s door. No answer.
Is the man never home?
At my door, I had a moment of fear while I groped for my keys.

Thank God!
They weren’t in my purse.

Inside, everything seemed normal. Jose made sleepy noises. Breakfast smells lingered. Fog obscured the balcony. I locked the door, left the lights off and went to the kitchen to find the biggest, meanest knife in the wooden block. The apartment was cold. I put the knife on the toilet seat lid and locked the bathroom door. For a few minutes I just sat on the toilet seat. Then the cold forced me to fill the bathtub. Undressed and submerged to my nose, I turned the hot water on and off with my toes every few minutes until I was parboiled. The previous Christmas, Dave had given me a bottle of rum for hot buttered rums. A quarter of it was left. When I got out, I put on a bathrobe, found the rum and a partial container of buttered rum batter in the freezer and half-filled a mug. The cat appeared on the balcony. While water boiled, I let him in. The answering machine blinked. I pressed the rewind then the play buttons. It was Andy.

“Hi, Merc. I just got back from dropping Dominic off with my folks. It’s, let’s see, four thirty. Do you want to go over to the Hob Nob for dinner?”

He’d obviously gotten back in town much earlier than expected.
Dang. Now I can’t rule out Andy as the whistler-stalker.

It was too late to return the phone call, and I didn’t call the police. The cat headed for my bedroom and I followed. We snuggled under the covers and I sipped the buttered rum. “Cat,” he looked at me. “Something is definitely going on. My life is usually so boring it could be used to cure sleep disorders, but now look at it. Someone thinks I enable something, my good driving record was nearly wrecked when I skidded into a ditch, a mutilated crow ended up on my balcony and someone just chased me.” I took a long swallow and enjoyed the slow, warming trek to my stomach. The cat started grooming himself. “So, here’s my take:  Isca gets her phone line, I’m her friend and she naturally tells me about it and someone kills her and writes “enabler” on my car because he thinks I encouraged her. The skid off the road was either a warning or an accident. The poor crow was some sort of warning too, and the chase tonight was serious. Now, the question was:  if the vicar is behind all this, how did he learn about me? And if it’s not the vicar, well, that pretty much left Andy.”

Lick, lick, lick, the cat continued grooming. Outside, the drizzle turned to heavy rain which tapped on the window. I finished the drink, turned off the light and pulled up the covers. “I guess if he can find me, than I can find him, unless Andy is the killer in which case my trying to hide isn’t possible.”

Worn out, the two of us fell asleep.

Chapter 11

I slept like a log for four hours, thanks to the liquor and the warmth of the cat and Great-Grandmother’s orange, wool-filled quilt. On Saturday, when I woke, it was an hour before I needed to get ready for another breakfast shift. A dry mouth and pressing need for the facilities were my immediate concerns.