Balloons Can Be Murder: The Ninth Charlie Parker Mystery Read online

  The line went quiet until I was able to take a breath again.

  “What?!”

  “Exactly. Our friend Rachael apparently called the shots back then, too. At the age of thirteen she decided she’d had enough and called the cops. Well, you can imagine the stink that caused in a town this size. I just spent the last hour listening to what a scandal there was, how Bill’s political aspirations went straight into the toilet, and how he was fired from the bank almost before the police car pulled away from his house with him neatly cuffed in the backseat.”

  “Whoa. So, what happened to Rachael and her brother?”

  “The boy was already away at college. He must be about ten years older than Rachael. The little girl stayed home with her mother, whose drinking kicked right back into gear, about ten-fold. Must have been pretty bad.”

  “I’ll say. Wow, what she must have gone through.”

  “Yeah. I got the whole blow-by-blow of the trial, in which Rachael was the witness. Guess she swung the jury with her combination of youth, innocence, and steadfast insistence on her story.”

  “So you think her idea that her father is now out of prison and out to get her is probably correct?”

  “Someone wrecks your career, your political aspirations, your marriage and your life it’s a pretty strong motivator don’t you think?”

  “What about the mother? Is she still in town?”

  “Died. The neighbor didn’t know many details about that, amazingly enough.”

  That seemed odd. My mind sorted and resorted the story. What a mess. What an ordeal for a kid.

  “Look,” he said, “I’m gonna try a quick check of the motels in town, see if I can find out for sure whether William was in town when that letter came.”

  “Even if he was, couldn’t he have gotten someone else to slip an envelope under Rachael’s gate? It’d give him the perfect alibi.”

  “Yeah, and we’ll probably go on that theory next. For now, I’d like to know if he’s still in Clovis. His parole officer has an Albuquerque address of record, so that’s probably where we’ll end up finding him.”

  But not without a lot of work. Not if he didn’t want to be found.

  “Maybe I’ll give Rachael a call,” I suggested. “See if she can help fill in any other details that might be pertinent.”

  “Good idea. Find reasons to stick close to her if you can. Until we know where William Fairfield is I’m not going to assume she’s safe. Meanwhile, I’ve just pulled into a gas station where I’m going to use the facilities before I bust. Then I’ll track down the other bank teller and start checking the motels. I’ll give a call when I head back that way.”

  We hung up and I brought up Rachael’s customer record that I’d just set up on the computer an hour ago. Got her phone number and dialed it. She’d listed her home and office at the same west side address, saying her law clientele consisted of wealthy people for whom she drew up wills and trusts. She worked from home and kept appointments at their homes or offices. Luckily, I caught her and we decided to meet for lunch at eleven-thirty.

  In the meantime I tried some of the really obvious ways to find a person. Called Information for a new listing for William or Bill Fairfield (there was none); checked with his parole officer, a harried-sounding woman who said she had no phone number for him either. I knew Ron had already gotten an address so there was no point in bothering the lady for that. Without his Social Security number—I wasn’t even sure he’d still have one after twenty years in prison (could they revoke it?)—I couldn’t get a whole lot further into employment records or possible credit transactions.

  I informed Rusty that he’d be staying in and lunching with Sally as I pulled on my jacket and headed downstairs. Rachael had suggested a lunch spot on the west side and I figured I better give myself thirty minutes to get there. As it turned out I was right on time.

  Today she’d dressed casually, although no less elegantly. If jeans can be custom made to precisely fit, hers were. They hugged her slender hips without one spot that looked too loose or too tight. Her purple sweater was surely cashmere, and black leather boots added just the right touch. She stepped out of a Porsche convertible about two minutes after I’d pulled my Jeep to a halt.

  She greeted me with a generous smile, much less reserved than yesterday. “I’m so glad you called. It’s great to get out of the office for awhile. What a gorgeous day!”

  I had to agree with that. We were enjoying a spell of that crisp October weather where the mornings are nippy and you could peel down to a T-shirt by afternoon. A few of the trees had turned, but most were still in the stage of brilliant green that precedes yellow, then gold, and finally rust.

  “I take it that there’ve been no more notes,” I said.

  A tiny line creased her forehead but went away immediately. “So far, so good,” she said. “Has Ron found him?”

  “Not yet.” We walked inside where a cutie with purple hair told us it would be about five minutes for a table.

  “He’s getting lots of information, though.” To say the least.

  Our table came up and we followed purple-hair to a back corner. The conversation didn’t go beyond the usual chit-chat until after we’d been properly greeted by our server, Sean, who recited a list of specials that went by so fast I didn’t get half of them. Once we’d ordered, received iced teas, and could be reasonably sure of peace for a few minutes, we got to the nitty gritty.

  “Ron met the woman who lives next door to your old house,” I told her.

  “And no doubt got an earful if it was Mrs. Pinkley. Did she invite him in for coffee and bend his ear for a minimum of an hour?”

  I chuckled. “Apparently so.”

  “She’s a gossip at heart, but usually gets her facts straight. So now you know about the trial and why he went to prison.”

  I nodded.

  “And undoubtedly she gave the version where my poor, long-suffering mother finally drank herself into oblivion and I abandoned her to my own selfish teenage doings while my loyal brother stayed by her side and watched her decline and eventual death. And you probably also got the part about how my brother blamed me because why couldn’t I have just kept my mouth shut.”

  Sean came back then, arms laden with salads—Chinese chicken for me and Southwestern Ranch for Rachael. He set them down and fussed a full minute over whether we needed anything else and to be sure and let him know and on and on until I was about ready to choke him. When he finally left, I picked through the whirl in my mind.

  “I don’t actually know what all she said to Ron,” I said. “He didn’t get that far into it with me. Only as far as your testifying at the trial.” I took a generous bite of chicken and lettuce. “You must have been pretty young when your mother died.”

  “I was thirteen. I remember reading lots of fashion magazines and experimenting with makeup and hairstyles and being pretty full of myself. I don’t know why. I didn’t have many friends and certainly no boyfriends. The months around the time of Mom’s death kind of blurred together with Dad’s trial and my being questioned by a bunch of lawyers. I was sent to live with my Aunt Carolyn in Albuquerque, who kept me pretty well sheltered from the whole mess back in Clovis.

  “Do you still stay in touch with her?”

  “She died about five years ago. Alcohol. I didn’t put this all together at the time, but now I can look back and remember that she used to buy cheap wine in big jugs, a new one every week or so. Mom was a little more upscale about it. She kept crystal decanters of brandy on a sideboard and discreetly refilled them so no one figured out how quickly the magic elixir disappeared.”

  She reached for a breadstick from the basket in the middle of the table. “I was young but I wasn’t stupid. I’d watched Mom quietly drinking for years and I knew the pace picked up once she figured out what my dad was doing to me. Aunt Carolyn tried to protect me but I overheard conversations. I knew Mom went to some clinic, someplace where she was supposed to quit drinking. And the
n all at once she was dead.

  “Aunt Carolyn came into my room one morning to tell me. That one scene is vivid. I wasn’t really awake yet, kind of fuzzy and snuggled deep into the covers. Aunt Carolyn had big, thick quilts and I loved to burrow into them. She came into the room and opened the curtains. It was bright outside and I squinted my eyes shut. She said, ‘Honey, your mother’s died.’ And I just kept my eyes squeezed shut tight, like it wouldn’t really be true if I didn’t look at her. She patted my arm and sat beside me on the bed for awhile. Then she just tucked the quilts around me and left me alone.

  “A few days later we went to the funeral and I remember looking all around for my dad but he wasn’t there. Thinking back now, he must have been in jail but I didn’t figure that out then. People whispered about it, saying Mom had killed herself. At the time I took the comments literally and thought maybe I was the reason. Looking back now, I guess they could have meant that she simply drank herself to death. I don’t know. I just kept my mouth shut and went back to live with Aunt Carolyn until I was old enough to leave for college.”

  The fact that the Fairfield’s nosy neighbor hadn’t remembered the details of this nagged at me, but I wasn’t sure how to formulate a question to Rachael about that. I’d nearly finished my salad while she talked so I ripped up a breadstick while she worked on hers.

  “So now, as they say, you know ‘the rest of the story’.” She stabbed her fork into the pile of lettuce on her platter and came up with a wad that was far too large to stick into her mouth. She scooted most of it off and tried again, more gently.

  I let a moment pass while I went for the last of my crispy chicken pieces and mandarin orange slices. Rachael chewed furiously for the first few bites, then slowed down.

  “At some point you went back to Clovis and testified at your father’s trial.”

  “Months later, I guess it was. Like I said, I don’t have a very good sense of the time line. I probably should have kept a diary and poured my heart out. I could have used it to write a bestselling tell-all later on. Since I’m still being harassed about it.” She laid her fork down with a clatter. “Sorry,” she said. “Parts of this still rankle.”

  “Well I guess so. I can’t blame you.” I took a long sip of tea to let the conversation settle. “I don’t really need the grizzly details unless you want to talk about them, you know. Only as far as any of this might have to do with these threatening notes.”

  “It’s okay. Probably time I let some of it out, rather than keeping everything inside like I have for more than twenty years now.” She paused as Sean went through another round of asking about our welfare. She waited until he walked away before she spoke.

  “My brother and I have only started speaking again in about the last three years,” she said. “He truly did believe that if I’d only kept quiet about the . . . uh . . . touching and stuff, that my father would now be governor of the state, my mother as first lady would have been so happy she’d have quit drinking, and we’d all be having Thanksgiving dinners together.” She rolled her eyes. “It’s only now that he’s got a teenage daughter of his own—and don’t even get me started on that one—” she raised a palm in a ‘stop’ motion, “that he realizes what a horrible thing that was for a man to do to his daughter.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say to that, but she kept talking.

  “Grayson—you’ll meet him soon, I’m sure—is all about image. Maybe banking does that to you. Or, more likely, politics. Both of them, he and my father, want the limelight. But only in a positive way. I’m sure Gray was horrified when, his final year of college, the family made the papers so negatively.” She shrugged. “I don’t know how much of it got reported in Albuquerque. People here probably didn’t even know about it. But Clovis—well it’s such a small town. There’s this certain mentality in places like that. I’m not at all surprised that Mrs. Pinkley could still remember every detail of those years. It made that big an impression.”

  “She told Ron that she’d seen your father just a few days ago. She must have recognized him right away.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised.” She stopped to push her half eaten salad plate aside. “So, did she establish an alibi for him?”

  “Nothing firm,” I told her. “Ron’s checking other sources, too. Your father may have only gone out there for a day or two. Do you know if he has a car? Does he have any resources for money, job, any of that?”

  “I have no idea. He may have a few friends who stuck by him all these years. And Gray would probably help him out. Even though he’s begun to believe me, he won’t ever abandon Dad. He’d get him a car, maybe even try to find him a job. I don’t know. I don’t even know how long he’s been out of prison. Could be he’s already settled in.”

  “Why do you think he’d send you the notes now? Wouldn’t time have taken away a lot of his resentment?”

  “You don’t know my father. Haven’t you ever known anyone who just doesn’t let things go? Somebody who can hold a grudge, a hateful emotion, for years?”

  I had to reach for it but a name did come to mind. Brad North, who’d been my fiancé in college up to the day he eloped with my best friend. I’d ended up better off for the whole thing, but poor Stacy would never hear the end of Brad’s obsessions. The man just couldn’t let go. I nodded to Rachael.

  “There are people like that,” she said. “There’s a client’s son, in fact, a guy who will never get over being cut out of his mother’s will. Thinks I somehow talked her into changing it against him.”

  This time the waiter’s appearance gave me just the break I needed to put a coherent thought together.

  “Is this client angry enough to threaten you? To send these notes?” I asked.

  “Ryan?” She shook her head in rejection of the idea but slowly looked up at me. “Oh, no, surely not.”

  “But he’s really angry. Really, really angry.”

  “Well, yes, but . . .”

  “I just think it would be a good idea to do a little checking. We’ll see what Ron finds out in Clovis, run down the leads about your father, yes. But we might also want to learn a little more about this Ryan. Is that his first name, or last?”

  “First. Ryan Tamsin. I’m sure I have an address for him at home in my files.”

  Whether she realized it or not, Rachael was grabbing for other suspects. She truly didn’t want this to be her father. And I couldn’t blame her.

  Chapter 4

  Rachael glanced at her watch. “Oh, gosh, I’ve got an appointment in fifteen minutes. I’m going to have to scramble.”

  We split the check and headed out toward our cars.

  “Look, some of my crew guys are coming over this afternoon to get the balloon ready for the weekend. If you’re free around five . . .?”

  “Sure.” I certainly didn’t have anyone to make dinner for tonight.

  “Since you’ll probably be spending some time around all of us these next few days, you might as well get to know everyone.” She handed me a card with her address.

  I watched her climb back into the Porsche and back out in a tight arc. She sent a quick manicured wave to me as I got into my vehicle. Interesting woman.

  Back at the office I wished Ron were here. I’d love to have some more background on Ryan Tamsin, but I didn’t have access to all his special databases. My contribution to the partnership had originally been with my accounting degree, handling financial matters for the firm. Ron was supposed to be the private investigator here, and I’d really never intended this much client contact. Somehow, over the years, things had changed. Having Drake in my life now, learning to fly and helping him run his business had taken me even further from any actual investigations—sometimes.

  I pulled in behind the downtown Victorian that houses our offices and entered through the kitchen. Up front, I could hear Sally’s voice, speaking on the phone. Rusty greeted me as if I’d been gone a month. He took great care to sniff every inch of my shoes and jeans, probably know
ing exactly where I’d been and what I’d eaten for lunch.

  “Enough already,” I told him, pushing my way through the swinging door and heading up the narrow hall toward the reception area.

  “Ah, you’re back,” Sally said. She was in the process of gathering her purse and jacket. Her desktop was clear except for a few sheets of paper neatly stuck into her IN tray. “I was just about to put the machine on and inform Rusty he had to man the doors.” She reached out and scratched his left ear, which he loves.

  “Yeah, I’ll probably just putter around here for the next few hours. Did Ron call?”

  “Um-hmm. He’s staying over in Clovis one more night. Says it’s pretty slow going, making the rounds of the motels.” Her voice rose in a question at the end.

  She slipped her jacket on and handed me a stack of mail. “Okay, I’m off to the daycare.” A grimace at that. Sally and Ross had agreed, when their daughter was born, that they’d work their schedules so one of them could always be home with her, no daycare. But recently Ross’s work hours had increased to the point where they had to rely on outside care a few hours each day. Sally didn’t like it, but she’d stayed loyal to us, too, and willingly put in her time here. A couple of times I’d nearly offered to let her bring the kid with her, but when the reality of having a three-year-old in the office hit, I knew it was a bad plan and I’d kept my mouth shut.

  She breezed out the back door while Rusty and I went upstairs where the afternoon sun cast long bars of light across the hardwood floor in my office. By the time I’d sorted the mail and taken care of a few calls and bills, I was startled to see that the bars of sun had turned into dim slits, obscured by the still-leafy trees in the front yard. Time to get going. I made the rounds, locking, switching on night lamps, turning off equipment.

  Rush-hour traffic was in full clog as we headed west on Interstate 40, the low afternoon sun in the eyes adding an extra degree to the misery index. Rusty was thrilled to be going somewhere other than home, I could tell, even though he didn’t realize he probably wouldn’t be allowed to run free at someone else’s house. I followed Rachael’s quick directions and found her place on a quiet cul-de-sac a few blocks off Coors Road.