Stalker (9780307823557) (8 page)

“We’re investigating Mrs. Trax’s murder,” Lucas said.

Mrs. Aciddo stopped rubbing her arm and pointed at Jennifer. “You and that girl? Don’t tell me that. She’s a kid, that’s all. She’s got no business here.”

“She’s my partner.”

Jennifer stood a little taller and sucked in her breath. That sounded good. It sounded right. “Mrs. Aciddo,” she said, “we’re trying to help Bobbie.”

“Why? Anybody who kills someone deserves what they get.”

“But Bobbie didn’t kill her mother.”

“I’m the one heard the fight.” She tilted her head and looked coy. “You see me on the TV? They interviewed
me. On Newseye. They showed it the next morning, too. I got to see it.”

Jennifer nodded. “I saw the morning rerun. You said you heard Bobbie and her mother fighting.”

“That’s right. I heard it, and the girl ran off.”

“But couldn’t someone else have come to the house afterward?”

“I didn’t see no one come.”

“Were you looking?”

Mrs. Aciddo’s lower lip jutted out. “You tellin’ me I don’t know what I seen or heard?”

Lucas stepped forward. “Mrs. Aciddo, we’re sure your testimony will hold up with the police and the court. We’re just asking if there could be something else that was missed, like someone else coming to the house—maybe after you went to bed?”

She shook her head stubbornly. “I didn’t go to bed for a while after that. I was watching the TV.”

“Someone could have come to the Trax house while you were watching television.”

She shrugged. “Huh. I guess.”

“Or afterward, while you were asleep?”

“I don’t watch everythin’ that goes on around here! I’m not a nosy neighbor!”

Lucas nodded. “I’m sorry. You seem to have a good eye for details. I thought you could help.”

Her eyes became little slits as she studied him. “What do you mean, help?”

“There are some questions I’d like to ask you. Like, has either Elton or Darryl Krambo been here in the last few days?”

“Oh, I can tell you that,” she said. She gave a heave of her chest, tucking back her chin, until she reminded Jennifer of the pigeons that strutted along Sherrill Park. “Elton
never came around. Stella would have told me if he did, and there’s been no sign of him since—since she was murdered. But that Darryl, he’s been here. Oh, yes. Came to my house last week, rang my doorbell, and wanted to borrow some money.”

“From you?” Jennifer gasped.

She was sorry immediately, because Mrs. Aciddo scowled. “Why not me? I’ve got a little money to use when I want. Everybody knows I’m not poor.”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Jennifer said. “I just meant that people usually borrow money from family members, not neighbors.”

“Darryl would borrow money wherever he could get it. That kind needs money bad.”

“That kind?” Lucas prompted.

“That kind on drugs,” she said. “Stella wouldn’t give him money for drugs. Even one night when he needed somethin’ so bad he was sweatin’ and shakin’ and makin’ a big fuss, she wouldn’t give him money. She didn’t like him messin’ with drugs. She got on him hard for that.”

“Did you see him Tuesday?”

“No.” She looked disappointed. “Tuesday he could have been here, I guess. I was busy gettin’ ready to go shoppin’ with Stella. It was her day off at the beauty parlor.”

Something made Jennifer feel uncomfortable. She wasn’t sure what had nudged her, but she asked, “What beauty parlor?”

Mrs. Aciddo suddenly turned to Lucas. “I can’t stand out here all night. If you’re not the police, you can’t make me.”

“That’s right,” he said. “You can go home.”

She took a couple of steps, and Jennifer came down the
wooden steps after her. “Please tell me, Mrs. Aciddo. Where did Mrs. Trax work?”

“How should I know?”

“You were her neighbor, her friend. You went shopping with her. She must have told you where she worked. Is there some reason you don’t want to tell us?”

Mrs. Aciddo’s short fat legs moved quickly, and Jennifer hurried to keep up. “ ’Course not. I told you everything you wanted to know. Right?” She paused and mumbled, “Maybe Stella worked someplace on Chaparral, I guess.”

“LaSalon?”

“Maybe. I’m not supposed to know everything about her. Now, go away and leave me alone. I’m missing my good TV shows, thanks to you and that man who is not a policeman.”

Jennifer returned to the back steps and followed Lucas into the house. When he had closed the door, she said, “I remembered something. It may not mean a thing, but it’s—well—peculiar.”

He turned to listen, so she added, “That guy who talked to me about Bobbie at school, the one whose name I didn’t get—” She stopped, embarrassed again, but Lucas merely nodded, so she said, “He told me something about his mother going to Stella to get her hair done when she used to work at LaSalon.”

“Used to work?”

“Yes, and Mrs. Aciddo acted so strangely when I asked her where Mrs. Trax worked. Why would she lie?”

“Make a note,” he said. “That’s one of the things you can find out.”

Jennifer had already pulled a small notebook and pen from the pocket of her jeans. “I’ll go to LaSalon tomorrow,” she said. “But—”

“What’s your question?”

“I don’t understand how Mrs. Trax’s job means anything at all in how or why she was murdered, and I don’t understand why Mrs. Aciddo should lie about where Mrs. Trax worked.”

“That’s what detecting is all about,” Lucas said. “Lots of questions, lots of answers. They start fitting together like pieces in a puzzle.”

“It’s frustrating.” Jennifer sighed. “I’d like it better if we could just find the murderer right away.”

“Like in the movies where you’d open a door and there he’d stand, with a gun pointed at you?”

“You are so aggravating!” Jennifer said. “I didn’t mean that at all. I—I don’t know what I mean.”

“Then suppose we get back to work. Want to check the bedrooms?”

“Not really,” Jennifer said. “But I will.” Reluctantly she entered the hall that connected the two small bedrooms. The door from the living room was near the door to Bobbie’s room. The bathroom door was in the middle of the hallway. Jennifer decided to start with Bobbie’s room and work her way down the hall.

The bulb was missing from the naked fixture in the hall, but it didn’t matter. She flipped on the light in Bobbie’s room. The room looked as it always had. The headboard of the bed, the chest of drawers, and the small desk and wooden chair had long ago been painted white. Now they were as yellowed and chipped as old piano keys. The corners of the worn, faded rose corduroy bedspread were neatly tucked in place, but the room was bare of mementos. With the exception of Bobbie’s notebook and textbooks on the desk, there was nothing to show who lived in this room. Jennifer shuddered. The room always
looked the same, but the sorrow of it had never reached her before. Why did Bobbie keep her room so bare?

Jennifer shook her head. Now she was behaving like Lucas with his endless questions. She went down the hallway to the bathroom, stepped inside and thought what a contrast it was to Bobbie’s clean room. The cracked mirrored door to the medicine cabinet hung open on one hinge. Bottles were strewn on the ledge and the sink. A couple of towels lay on the floor, and there was a sour smell, as though someone had been sick.

Jennifer, trying not to gag, quickly stepped back into the hall. Yuck! What a mess! Shouldn’t someone come into this house and clean it up?

Although the door to Bobbie’s bedroom had been open, the door to Stella’s room was closed. With trembling fingers Jennifer slowly turned the knob. She had no right to pry into the privacy of the woman who had lived here. After all, Stella had been her best friend’s mother. Although Jennifer had often been in this house, she had never been in Stella’s bedroom. It was a personal place, a—

She groped for the light switch, since the thin light that filtered from the living room wasn’t strong enough to do more than create shadows. But her hand froze, and she barely managed to clutch the doorframe to steady herself as a shape detached itself from behind the bed, rising with a groan.

Jennifer screamed as it lunged toward her and collapsed in a sour, ragged heap at her feet.

Lucas appeared, roughly elbowing her aside and muttering, “Be quiet!” as he bent over the body.

“I thought—It looked like a monster. I mean, coming out of the dark like that—”

“Call an ambulance,” he said. “Do you know how?”

“Well, of course I do!”

“Then move it!”

She quickly did as she was told, muttering to herself because he was treating her as he would a child. She stomped back to the bedroom and snapped, “I called your ambulance.”

“Good,” he said. “Do you know who this is?”

Lucas had rolled the man on his back. His eyelids were closed, one of them centering a deep purple bruise. His breath shuddered through swollen lips, and clumps of vomit had matted and dried on his unshaven chin.

“It’s Darryl Krambo,” she said. “He must have been in a fight.”

Lucas grabbed the edge of the mattress and heaved himself to his feet. “Stay with him,” he said. “I’ve got a phone call to make.”

He left the room, and Jennifer stared down at Darryl. Any sympathy she might have felt for him was washed away by a rush of anger. “Lucas is going to call the police,” she said to Darryl, not caring that he couldn’t hear. “And you’re going to be arrested for killing Stella, and I’m glad it turned out to be you, because you’re a no-good junkie. You’re a filthy, stinking—”

Darryl opened one eye, which rolled around crazily for a moment until it focused on Jennifer. He mumbled an obscenity.

Jennifer jumped backward, banging an elbow against the wall.

“I didn’t kill Stella.” The words oozed through his lips like soft butter through a cracked plate.

Lucas stepped into the room. “He’s conscious?”

“Yes,” Jennifer said.

Lucas sat on the edge of the bed, staring down at Darryl. “The ambulance will be here soon.”

“I didn’t kill Stella.”

“No one’s accusing you.”

Jennifer tried not to look guilty as Lucas gave her a quick glance and continued. “Someone beat you pretty badly. Who was it?”

Darryl didn’t answer. He closed his eyes and groaned.

“How long have you been here?”

“What’s it to you? I live here.”

“No, he doesn’t!” Jennifer interrupted, but Lucas frowned at her, shaking his head.

Darryl groaned again. “I need a fix.”

“Was someone here with you?” Lucas asked. “The person who beat you?”

Darryl mumbled something to himself, then apparently decided for some reason to answer the question. “I came here to be by myself.” Tears rolled from his eyes, making paths down the scum on his face. “I need something bad,” he said.

In the distance Jennifer could hear a siren. She hoped it was the ambulance. She was eager to get rid of Darryl and the smell and the horrible ugliness that made her want to gag.

“Do you know who killed your mother?” Lucas asked. His voice was suddenly soft.

“Stella—wasn’t—she was my stepmother, not my mother.”

Lucas looked at Jennifer, who could only shrug in surprise.

The siren was loud now. The ambulance was turning into their street. “Tell me who killed Stella,” Lucas said, but Darryl groaned and turned his head away.

“Let them in the front door,” Lucas said to Jennifer. She could hear footsteps on the walk, so she hurried to
the door and opened it as the men arrived on the front steps.

It didn’t take long for the ambulance attendants to strap Darryl into their folding stretcher and carry him back to the ambulance.

As the men left, Lucas followed them to the door, shutting it behind them.

“Is Darryl going to die?” Jennifer asked.

“I don’t know. That’s the doctor’s job, not mine.”

“You don’t think he murdered Stella?”

“No, I don’t.”

“So we cross him off the list.”

“Wrong. We put him near the top of the list. Who beat him? Why? Did the person who beat him intend to kill him? Why? What was Darryl doing in Corpus Christi?”

“Mrs. Aciddo said he was asking people for money to buy drugs.”

“A side issue. What was he really doing here?”

“You ask so many questions, and there aren’t any answers!”

“There are answers if we find them.” He looked at his watch. “Your family will be worried about you if you don’t get home soon.”

“Are we finished here?”

“For the moment. We might come back.”

Jennifer felt like crying. “We didn’t find anything that would help.”

“Weren’t you paying attention?” he asked. “For one thing, you may have found the entry the killer used.”

“Oh! The window.”

“There were a few grains of dirt on the sofa, under the window. They could have been left by Darryl, but they could also have come from the shoes of the person who murdered Stella.”

“Or the person who beat Darryl?”

“He wasn’t beaten in this house. There were no signs of the kind of fight he’d have been in. No blood. It looks like he came here after his beating.” He glanced toward the grouping of photos on the wall. “You’re also forgetting the missing photographs.”

“What good is something that isn’t there?”

“If Bobbie can remember who was in the missing pictures, we might find out who didn’t want to be recognized.”

“You mean it might be the killer? But with so many pictures missing he covered himself, didn’t he?”

“You’d be surprised how these things add up,” Lucas said.

“I just thought of something,” Jennifer said. “Didn’t you call the police? They didn’t come.”

“That’s because I told them to meet Darryl at the emergency ward of the hospital.” He gave one last look around the room. “That’s where I’m going now. I’ll drop you off at home first.”

He drove to her house as though he had been there before. Jennifer, wondering if he had checked her out and irritated because he must have done so, couldn’t keep the sarcasm from her voice. “You know everything, don’t you?”

“No,” he said calmly. “For one thing, I don’t know the identity of Stella’s murderer. But if we both work hard at the job, we’ll find out.”

“Sorry,” Jennifer mumbled. “I don’t mean to be rude. I just feel like—Oh, I don’t know how I feel!”