Deadly Gamble

Chapter 2 - Part 2

Deadly Gamble: The First Charlie Parker Mystery

By Connie Shelton

© Connie Shelton. All rights reserved

You can buy this book and the rest of the Charlie Parker series at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Google and iBooks.

Chapter 2 – Part 2

Stacy North waited in the foyer. Today she wore no makeup and her designer jogging suit looked slept in. Her feathery blond hair hung limp. Her lips looked thin without lipstick, her face grayish. I motioned her upstairs, watching her feet drag upward at each step. I offered coffee. She nodded. I trotted back down the stairs and came back with two mugs. The social formalities accomplished, I looked at her inquisitively. She handed over the morning paper tentatively before taking a seat on the sofa. The paper was folded so that page A-4 faced me. A captioned photo told me I was staring into the face of Gary Detweiller. The headline told me he'd been killed in a shooting. I read the rest of the article while Stacy perched on the edge of the couch. She was motionless except to raise the coffee mug to her lips occasionally.

Detweiller had been sitting in his car in his own driveway when an unknown assailant shot him at almost point-blank range, the article said. I pictured the heavily overgrown shrubs that bordered the drive. The victim was survived by his wife, Jean, and son, Joshua. No leads had yet been found in the case. I laid the paper on my desk and looked up at Stacy.

"This is the guy of our former discussion?"

She nodded tiredly.

"And?"

No response.

"Stacy, I assume you didn't just come by to share this with me," I said, holding the newspaper up. "What do you want?" I had a feeling I knew the answer, and I wasn't going to like it.

"I need help again, Charlie." Her voice came out thickly.

"Stacy, I told you, I'm not an investigator. Besides, aren't the police handling this?"

Her blue eyes widened slightly. "That's what I'm worried about." She reached for her bag. "Do you mind if I smoke?"

"I'd rather you didn't." It probably came out sounding harsh, but dammit, I have to live in this office after she leaves. "Stacy, you were never a smoker."

A trembling hand covered her mouth. "I know, Charlie. I only do it now and then."

"Stacy, what's really the problem here? Are you worried that the police will dig up your connection with Detweiller?"

"Of course I am!" She stood up and paced to the opposite end of the room. "Charlie, do you have any idea what Brad will do if he finds out about this?"

Truthfully, I didn't. But I also wondered aloud why she hadn't worried about this before getting seduced into the situation.

"I don't know," she said, her voice hopeless. She dumped herself back onto my couch, and rubbed at her temples with both index fingers. "It was stupid. I can see that now. I guess I just fell for the ... uh ... positive attention."

"I'm not sure what to tell you." I wanted to tell her about paying the consequences for our actions, but somehow I got the feeling she already knew about that.

She stared at a spot somewhere near the corner of my desk, and her face became even more pale. A long minute passed.

"Stacy, what do you want from me?"

"I'm not sure, Charlie. I guess I'm grasping at ways to keep my name out of this."

"Have you talked to a lawyer? Sounds like this is more a matter of needing legal advice than investigative work."

"I wouldn't know who to turn to. Our family lawyer intimidates me. He's so chummy with Brad I don't think I could trust him. I guess I was hoping that you could find out who really killed Gary before the police come asking questions of me."

The messes people get themselves into never cease to amaze me.

"Stacy, I'll tell you straight out. This is out of my league. If you can wait until Monday, I can set an appointment for you to meet with Ron."

Her eyes glistened moistly and a red rim formed around her upper lip. The hands shook as she reached for her purse. "That's four days away," she whispered. "I hope it's not too late." She walked toward the door.

"Stacy, wait." I knew this was foolish, even as I said the words.

She returned to the couch, perching expectantly on the edge.

"Tell me everything you can about Gary Detweiller," I said.

She stared blankly at me for a good half minute.

"Does he belong to the country club? What does he do for fun? Sports? Clubs? Hangouts?"

"I really don't know." Her palms fluttered upward. "I met him at Tanoan. He never talked about himself."

A man who never talked about himself? Please.

"Stacy, think about it. He must have said something. Surely you didn't hop into bed with someone who never said a word."

"Well, of course he talked. But mostly he talked about me." Her eyes turned dreamy. "He told me how beautiful I was, how sexy. Stuff I haven't heard in a long time." Her once-vivacious voice broke a little.

I let the silence stretch out a bit, hoping she'd come up with something more.

"I went to his house once," she remembered.

"That might be a start. Tell me about it."

"It was a depressing place. Of course, this was after he'd wooed me with a nice lunch out one day and he'd gotten a room at the Marriott that afternoon. I guess I wasn't thinking too straight."

"Then he invited you to his house?"

"Oh, no. I just showed up. I'd seen the address on a business card he gave to some guy in the Marriott bar. I remembered the street, so about a week later I looked it up and drove over there." She looked up at me briefly. "It had been a bad day."

"Tell me more about the house. He was home, I assume."

"Yes, he was home. Although not exactly thrilled to see me. He was jittery the whole time I was there, which was maybe ten minutes. I didn't realize at the time that he had a wife, one more thing he failed to mention. He couldn't wait to steer me out of there. We went to The Wine Cellar for a drink, even though it was only three in the afternoon."

"Okay, you were inside the house, right? Try to remember everything you saw."

"The place was a dump, actually. I mean, not just that it was small, but it was dirty. It smelled, and there was clutter everywhere."

"I'm trying to get a feel for the guy's lifestyle, what he did with his spare time."

"Well, he didn't clean house, that's for sure."

"Did you see any magazines laying around, any sports tickets, anything like that?"

Her eyes gazed upward, as she recreated the picture in her mind. "Newspapers," she said finally. "There were newspapers scattered everywhere. I just can't think of anything else."

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I will post one chapter each Tueday, but there are 22 chapters, so this may take a while. If you just can’t wait, you can buy the complete book and the rest of the Charlie Parker series at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Google and iBooks.

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