Deadly Gamble: A Girl and Her Dog Cozy Mystery Read online

Thick gray clouds hung low over the Sandia Mountains. The air felt chill and smelled of moisture. Yesterday had been sunny with a sky of lapis. I was glad for my thick down jacket as I walked back to the car. A favorite memory from my high school years is hot fudge sundaes at Big Boy. With the past crowding suddenly back into my psyche today, the old craving came back. I turned east on Central Avenue.

  Remodeling has changed the building somewhat, but the sundaes are the same as ever. I took a corner booth and put my feet up on the opposite seat. A few minutes later, my sundae arrived. I spooned whipped cream with a sprinkling of almonds into my mouth. I pulled my notebook out of my purse and made a few doodles in the corner. There would be something therapeutic about letting all my old feelings about Stacy and Brad flow onto the paper along with the ink from my pen but I wasn't ready for that yet. My mother had always cautioned me never to write down anything I wouldn't want to see in the newspaper. Consequently, I've never been a diary keeper. I still harbor resistance to pouring my soul out on paper. I decided to confine my notes to the murder case. Perhaps writing a plan down would help solidify a course of action for me.

  Gary Detweiller. Seducer. Hangs out at country club. Wife and son. Poor neighborhood. Steals Rolex. Needs money. ???? The notes covered my small page.

  I had to believe that Stacy wasn't the first woman Detweiller had seduced, probably wasn't the first he'd stolen from. His approach sounded pretty smooth, his routine well rehearsed. Except for the time Stacy had surprised him at home. Maybe his home would be a good starting place.

  I scraped the last of the fudge from the bottom of the cold metal parfait cup, left too large a tip, and stepped out into the biting wind. Trotting out to the Jeep, I pulled my jacket together in front with one hand and fumbled in the pocket for my keys with the other. The clouds spat a few crumbs of snow over the hood as I started the engine. I rehearsed my story as I drove up Central, looking for the turn.

  Detweiller's house was no more inviting this time, despite the addition of two cars in the driveway. A pale blue Honda held the anchor position in front of the single car garage door. The car was probably eight or nine years old, and the sun had faded the paint on the hood to near-white. Obviously, the garage held something other than the car. The second vehicle, a muscle car from the seventies, had been left primer gray with chrome pipes showing at the sides, and windows tinted so dark they were surely illegal. Stickers with illegible words drawn in sharp diagonals decorated the back window.

  I pressed the doorbell, but it felt mushy and dead. When I got no response to it, I tried knocking on the screen door frame. It wobbled ineffectually, so I opened it wide enough to get my hand through, and pounded on the wooden front door. Paint flakes drifted downward.

  A tired-looking woman opened the door. She was probably in her late thirties, but the eyes were aged to forty-something. Her medium brown hair was wound haphazardly around pink sponge curlers, and she clutched a limp pink robe together in front. She kept herself mostly behind the door, which she had allowed to open only about six inches.

  "Mrs. Detweiller? I'm Charlie Parker. I wonder if I might speak to you about your husband."

  "He's dead." So was her voice.

  "I know. I'm very sorry. I just have a few questions for the investigation." The half truths were beginning to slip out more easily.

  "You'd better come in," she said impatiently. "You're freezing me out, here."

  She stepped back, pulling the door a bit wider. I opened the screen and stepped into the gloom. She quickly closed the door behind me. As my eyes adjusted, I could see that she wasn't wearing anything under the robe, which hung from her thin frame like a sack.

  "I had just stepped out of the shower," she said. "Can you give me a minute to get dressed?"

  Without waiting for an answer, she turned away. Picking up a lit cigarette from an ashtray on an end table, she disappeared into a dark hallway leaving me the perfect opportunity to check the place out.

  The interior of the small house was about what I'd expected, given the looks of the exterior and what Stacy had told me about her one and only visit here. The living room where I stood was boxlike and stuffy. A tweed couch with saggy cushions, a peeling vinyl recliner, and a console stereo with a nineteen inch TV on top seemed to fill the room excessively. Decorator items were minimal—a framed print showing a dirt road winding away into the woods hung over the couch. A lump of wadded laundry, presumably clean, covered about a third of the couch. Newspapers, magazines and unopened mail were stacked on the seat of the recliner, while a couple of coats were draped over its back. One of the jackets was a man's sports coat. Hmmm...

  Tentatively, I patted the pockets. A wallet sized lump rewarded my little feel-up. My heart rate picked up as I realized what I was about to do. I am not, by nature, a sneaky person. Well, maybe sneaky but I'm not dishonest. Somehow this felt dishonest.

  I could hear Jean Detweiller in the bedroom. She wasn't a particularly quiet dresser. I only had a few moments, and I could think of no plausible explanation should she walk in and catch me with her husband's wallet in my hands. My stomach felt a little watery as my thumb and forefinger reached toward the pocket.

  Picking through someone's wallet was better than interviewing any day. The first thing I did was to memorize Detweiller's driver's license and social security numbers. Ron had at least taught me that much about investigation. Then it was on to the good stuff. There was about thirty-five dollars cash and a condom in the money section. My, how responsible. A little sheaf of plastic windows held an insurance card, expired six months ago, a picture of a teenage boy, presumably Joshua, a coupon for a free sandwich at Subway, and some lined pages from a tiny spiral notebook, covered with angular black writing and folded in half. Somehow those leaped from the wallet to my coat pocket. In the hidden away-from-wife's-eyes section I found a small wad of four or five hundred dollar bills, neatly folded. It would have probably been better politics on Gary's part to keep the money in the money section and put the condom here. It didn't matter now, anyway.

  A noise in the hallway startled me. I dropped the wallet back into the pocket, patted it shut, leaped the six feet or so to stand beside the stereo, and picked up the first newspaper my hand came to. I was casually glancing over it when Jean Detweiller walked back into the room. My hands were hardly shaking at all.

  "There, that's better," she said. She wore a pink and gray waitress uniform, the kind from the fifties where the dress is one color and the cuffs, pocket, and collar are the other. A perky handkerchief, folded to a point, stuck out of the pocket on her left breast. She'd brushed out her hair and teased and coaxed it into some kind of modified bubble. She looked ready to report to the set of "Happy Days." She glanced at her wristwatch.

  "I've gotta be at work at four," she explained. "Now, who did you say you are?" She continued to bustle as she talked, apparently realizing what a trash heap the place was.

  "Charlie Parker." I avoided the real question, figuring it was better not to tell her that I was here at the request of her husband's latest fling. "I was sorry to hear about your husband's death. Were you home at the time?"

  "Nope. I work six nights a week, four to midnight, at Archie's Diner." She gathered the heap of clean laundry into her arms and headed back to the bedroom.

  "Archie wouldn't let you have a few days off? I mean, considering what's happened?" I raised my voice as she left my sight.

  "Oh, he would have. But what's the point?" She came back into the living room, eyeing the stack of mail and papers. "What good would it do me to sit around here for a few days?" Her voice was flat, resigned.

  She picked up the mail, flipping through part of it. Apparently it was all junk, because she carried it away, presumably to the kitchen, where I heard it thunk into a trash can. I glanced at the paper I'd picked up. It was a racing form from the track down near El Paso. Quite a few entries were circled.

  "Gary had been out of town, hadn't he?"

  "Yeah, I
think so. I didn't keep tabs on the man," she said wearily. "I tried that in the early years, but it's just too, you know, too draining. Gary gambled, he drank, he cheated. Nothin' I said or did was gonna change that."

  "Why didn't you just boot him out?"

  "I guess for Josh's sake. Gary didn't give a lot, but having him around did help keep Josh under control. Do you know what a single mother has to cope with these days? Especially with a teenage boy?"

  "I saw two cars out there. Is Josh home?"

  "He's asleep. Stayed home from school today. He's taken this pretty hard, and I don't think he slept at all last night."

  She had tidied up the room quite a bit while we talked, but I imagined her son would return it to its previous condition by the time she got home. I noticed that she avoided touching her husband's coat, which still lay across the back of the recliner. She glanced at her watch again, giving me my cue.

  I drove away wondering what, exactly, I had learned. The thick gray clouds still blanketed the city, blending with the streets, sidewalks, and barren trees. The effect was like driving through a scene on black and white television where only the cars and billboards have been colorized. The sleet-like granules had disappeared. It would be rare to have any lasting snowfall in town this late in the season. Afternoon traffic was beginning to pick up, and it took me almost thirty minutes to get to the office.

  Rusty was waiting at the back door anxiously. Sally had left hours ago, and with no one else there he had probably begun to wonder if he was abandoned. His thick tail whapped against the doorframe as I unlocked it. He took about ten seconds to sniff my hands and give me a couple of doggy kisses before racing to the back yard to avail himself of the facilities.

  I checked the answering machine and Sally's desk. No messages. My desk was similarly clear, so I closed the shades, double checked the locks and left, guilt-free.

  The stolen notes from Gary Detweiller's wallet were burning a hole in my pocket and I could hardly wait to get a look at them. Fortunately, the traffic accommodated me. It was considerably lighter this side of town. Unfortunately, my next door neighbor was not quite that accommodating. She met me in my driveway.

  Elsa Higgins is eighty-six years old, practically a grandmother to me. In fact, I call her Gram because Mrs. Higgins seems too formal and calling an older woman by her first name was unthinkable in my mother's eyes. So, from my earliest memories, Elsa has been Gram to me. She's feisty and opinionated and I want to be just like her when I grow up. We've been neighbors all my life. She lives alone in the same house she's occupied for more than forty years, where she does all the cooking, cleaning and gardening. She took me in when my parents died, letting me live with her for probably the two most difficult years in anyone's life, age sixteen to eighteen. That's when I decided I was grown up enough to take care of myself, so I moved back into my own house. I grew up here and my parents left the house to me, so I found no reason to go elsewhere. I still haven't.

  The neighborhood is one of the older ones in town, the Albuquerque Country Club area. It's situated near Old Town, the site of the original Albuquerque, now an official historic district complete with adobe buildings, a town square and tourist trap prices. Our residential area is just far enough away to avoid the traffic and tourists. The homes are not elaborate by today's standards, but they have a certain charm, including tall old trees and neatly clipped lawns. My place is typical, a three-bedroom ranch style white brick with hardwood floors. I have it furnished with oriental rugs and antiques. The back yard has fifty-foot tall sycamores and my mother's peace roses. No, I wouldn't trade it for a trendy little townhouse in Tanoan.

  I pulled the Jeep to a quick stop in the driveway, and Rusty and I both hopped out.

  "Gram, you better get inside before you freeze!" She was wearing polyester slacks and blouse, with only a thin cardigan over it.

  "Oh, I'm okay, Charlie. I only stepped outside when I saw your car coming up the street." She shivered anyway, though, so I put my arm around her small shoulders and guided her to the door. Inside, the heat was a welcome relief.

  "Is anything wrong?" I asked. Meeting me at the car in freezing weather was not exactly Elsa's style.

  "Paul's coming," she breathed.

  "Paul, my brother? When did this happen?"

  "He called me this afternoon. Said he couldn't reach either you or Ron, and wanted to be sure you'd be home this weekend."

  "This weekend? Oh, boy."

  "Why? Will you be gone?"

  "Oh, no, I'll be here." The enthusiasm in my voice was about zero point one on the Richter scale. "I wonder why he called you. I was at the office most of the day."

  She shrugged. She stands all of five foot two, which puts her shoulders about chest-high to me. Second-guessing Paul is futile. He's not irresponsible, understand, just unpredictable. Of the three of us, he appears to be the most solid. Married to his original spouse, two kids, churchgoers all, a respectable job with a computer firm. We don't have a lot in common.

  Ron and I, on the other hand, tend to barrel through life, seeking our own way. Although Ron did the marriage bit once, and I never have, he and I have more of a kindred feeling than either of us share with Paul. Like this making of weekend plans on a Thursday, then going into a panic when he couldn't reach anyone. No doubt he'd left messages on both Ron's and my home answering machines, but did he think to call the office where we'd likely be during the day?

  I turned to Elsa again. "Would you like a cup of tea?" I asked, deciding I could look at Gary Detweiller's papers later.

  "Yes, that would be nice," she answered.

  She followed me into the kitchen, where I put water on to boil and looked for cups. My mother's collection of delicate china teacups sits unused most of the time, so I chose a couple of especially pretty ones, delicately flowered. There was half a Sara Lee pound cake in the fridge, so I sliced it and got out raspberry jam. We might as well make a real tea out of it. Elsa doesn't get out much.

  "Will Paul's family stay here when they visit?" she asked, eyeing the pound cake slices even though the water wasn't hot yet.

  "I guess so. Ron's apartment has only one bedroom. Usually Paul and Lorraine stay in my guest room, and we make up pallets on the floor in my office for the kids."

  The image of letting two permissively raised kids spend time in my home office made me think of all the stuff I'd have to hide first. Annie and Joe aren't purposely destructive, just presumptuous. At home they have access to everything on the premises without asking. I'm not that gracious with my things.

  The water boiled and I went through the ritual of preheating the teapot, steeping the bags precisely five minutes, and pouring. I never do this just for myself, but I enjoyed giving Elsa the extra attention. The stolen papers could wait. I might not have Gram around that much longer. We each helped ourselves to two slices of cake, and since there was an extra, I coaxed her to take the last one. Thirty minutes later, I watched her safely across the narrow expanse of yard that separates her house from mine.

  After checking the mail (two bills, eight pieces of junk) and the answering machine (one message from you-know-who), I finally sat down at the kitchen table with Gary Detweiller's neat little notebook pages. They were in some kind of code.

  Chapter 4