Less Than Frank Read online

  I shoved the door hard in frustration and the latch slid with the movement. All of a sudden the door pushed open towards me with something or someone heavy leaning outwards in a rush.

  I expected a roar from Frank, or whoever was on the other side, and braced myself for an argument. Instead the door just kept pushing forward until I had to get out of the way of the falling object cascading out of the space. Once the door was open I looked down at the asphalt in horror. Frank lay on the pavement not moving, eyes wide open, with a tiny neat hole between his bushy eyebrows.

  There was a scream coming from somewhere that was even louder than the dogs barking around me. It took the longest time for me to realize that the scream was coming from me. Only the sight and sound of Ben charging out the front door of the apartment yelling, “Mom? What’s wrong?” got me back from the edge of hysteria.

  “Go inside and call 911,” I told him, trying to keep him away from the area below. Looking down at Frank again, I knew it was too late for even the emergency officers who would respond, but I didn’t know what else to do except pray and wait for them to show up. It looked like Ben was going to be late to class after all.

  Chapter Two

  “I was afraid of this.” The detective standing in front of me looked like a television cop on the best shows; tall, dark, handsome and upset. Unfortunately he also looked very familiar. I’d seen all too much of Ray Fernandez last winter when Dennis had been killed.

  Ray was the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department homicide detective who had briefly considered arresting me for my husband’s murder. After that he even more seriously tried to pin the blame on Heather. Fortunately he came to his senses before making a terrible mistake. After several weeks that were traumatic for all of us after Dennis’s death, he’d found the person who had actually killed him. And although I’d been a big part of helping him solve the murder, he hadn’t seemed real appreciative at the time.

  “I had nothing to do with this one, honest,” I told him, putting up my palms in a classic protestation of innocence. “I just found him.”

  “That’s enough right there to have me concerned, Ms. Harris. Even finding a body gets you involved.” He opened his notebook, shrugged his shoulders under a beautifully tailored gray jacket that might have been Armani and gave me a thorough once-over. “Aren’t you cold?”

  “No, I’m not.” I tried not to snap, but it didn’t work. He seemed surprised at the strength of my response. “Sorry, but you’re about the fourth person in less than an hour to ask that.”

  Ben had asked when he charged out to tell me he’d called 911. Then one of the paramedics asked when he’d finished with Frank, which unfortunately didn’t take long. Apparently it was pretty obvious to a trained medical professional that Frank was beyond help. Probably had something to do with that hole in the middle of his forehead that I suspected was a gunshot wound.

  Shortly after that the first police officer on the scene, a uniformed young man from the sheriff’s department, had put in his two cents worth as well on whether or not I was cold. He hadn’t volunteered an opinion on what had happened to Frank.

  “You look cold, Ms. Harris,” Ray Fernandez said. We were back on formal terms again, apparently. By the end of last spring’s investigation he called me Gracie Lee and I called him Ray. “I could lend you my jacket, or you could go inside the apartment and grab a sweatshirt or something.”

  “Why don’t I do that, just to make all of you chilled Californians comfortable,” I said, trying not to grind out my words between clenched teeth. I stomped up the stairs, grabbed a black Pacific Oaks hoodie that had been draped over a living room chair, threw it on over my shorts and T-shirt and came back. If I’d had some of those dreadful pastel sheepskin-lined boots the girls all wore, I would have put them on just for effect.

  “Now, are you satisfied?”

  “That’s great. It gave me enough time to call and make sure the crime-scene techs are on their way, and to start my notes,” Fernandez said. He looked pretty good this morning; obviously there hadn’t been enough stress in his day yet to make him appear to have one of his perpetual migraines. There were still a few crinkles around those golden-brown eyes, but nothing serious yet. What was there already could have been laugh lines, even though I haven’t seen him laugh much.

  He looked down at the notebook in his hands. “So, it’s still Gracie Lee Harris, right?”

  “It’s going to stay Gracie Lee Harris until the cows come home,” I told him, earning a funny look. “Don’t worry, there are no cows in the kennels here, just dogs. When I’m upset I revert to things my grandmother used to say. Yes, the name is still the same. And you probably have the address from last time, too.”

  He nodded. “I knew when the call came in that I’d heard the address before. About halfway here I figured out why it was familiar.”

  He didn’t look all that happy about his memories, either. But then the weeks we’d spent in way too much of each other’s company in January and February weren’t my favorite times, either. He looked up on the deck, and then around the property. “The information from the dispatcher says that the call was phoned in by a man. Do you happen to know anything about that?”

  “Only that your dispatcher is being plenty generous in designating the caller that way. The caller is my son, Ben. He’s a freshman at Pacific Oaks now. He’s got classes this morning, but I told him you’d want to see him before he took off.”

  Fernandez smiled, a motion that lit up that lean Latino face of his, and definitely insured that I now felt way too warm in my sweatshirt. “Thanks. At least you’ve started out by making my job easier,” the detective said. “Would there happen to be a fresh pot of coffee going? Getting over here did in any chance I had for a cup this morning.”

  At least he wasn’t yelling yet. This was a good sign. “Sure. I can get you a cup when I send Ben out as far as the deck. Could you interview him up there? I don’t really want him to get any closer to Frank.”

  The smile disappeared. “Yeah, sure. I hadn’t even thought about that. Sorry. I see so much every day that I don’t consider that some people haven’t ever seen a dead body.”

  “As long as you can keep him up on the deck, and facing away from the railing, I think it will be okay,” I told him. “About that coffee…you still take it black, right?”

  “Right. Thank you.” He sounded a little stiff and formal again, but then it was a murder investigation. He had every right to sound that way. I went upstairs to find that Ben was making the most of his time away from class by playing a quick game on my computer in the living room. I suggested that he shut the game down, poured the detective his black coffee in one of my better-looking coffee mugs and told Ben to take the coffee outside and let Fernandez take a statement from him.

  “Cool. Maybe I can even get him to write me an excuse for my Philosophy of Religion class.” Ben took the mug and went out the door, while I pondered whether to follow him as a worried mother, or stay inside because he was a legal adult and I suspected the detective would rather talk to him alone.

  I went for the “legal adult” argument for a while. Then the worried mother won out about five minutes into their conversation. I slipped out the front door of the apartment as quietly as possible and stood about eight feet behind the detective, watching him talk to my son.

  It was odd looking at Ben and seeing him the way a stranger might; tall and thin, with his angular face made even longer by the awful scraggly little patch of chin fur I couldn’t convince him to shave off. He looked like a normal college kid in his Pac-Oaks sweatshirt and long, baggy tan shorts. Except for that scrawny little goatee, he also bore a striking resemblance to his father at about the same age. Hal Harris had been a nineteen-year-old college student when I’d met him, and it floored me to see Ben morph into a modern version of his father. He even had the same grin that I’m sure enchanted the girls at Pacific Oaks just as much as it had me back in the dark ages.

  Fernandez
must have heard me come out onto the deck, because he half turned. “We’re just about done here, Ms. Harris. Of course I’ll need to ask you to stick around so that I can take a longer statement from you once I talk with the crime-scene techs for a while. But you’re free to go, Ben. Thanks for your help.” They shook hands and Ben bounded inside to get his stuff.

  “Is it all right if I stand on the deck, or would you rather have me inside?” I didn’t want to do anything that would aggravate the detective or make him think I was getting too involved in another murder.

  “Either way, as long as this is as close as you come to the crime scene while the techs are down working,” he said, heading down the stairs himself.

  Since I had no desire to get any closer, staying on the deck was fine with me. I was thankful that Dot had already fed the dogs and dealt with them this morning. With that out of the way I didn’t have to ask permission to cut across the driveway and get too close to the crime scene.

  I did think of one thing I needed to ask the detective. “Is it going to be okay if Ben gets in his car and goes to school? That’s his car around the side of the driveway. I think it’s mostly out of your way, and he should be able to get out.” Dot and Buck’s driveway was wide where it opened up in front of the garage. Not only did it span the width of the three-car-plus building, but there was enough space at one side to put the footings for the deck and stairway on solid concrete, and on the other to provide space for another vehicle. Ben usually used that space when he was here for the weekend.

  Fernandez looked up, shading his face with his hand from the morning sun. “I guess that will be okay. Don’t let him forget to come down to the station and get his prints taken. For that matter, maybe you can come together some time in the next two days. I suspect we’ll find both of your prints around the scene, seeing as you live in the apartment upstairs.”

  “I know you’ll find mine just about everywhere. Ben’s won’t be quite as many places, probably, because he’s not here nearly as often but they’ll still be around.” I didn’t think they’d be too close to the actual scene of the crime at the portable potty, because Ben was usually the person using the inside facilities, making me go outside.

  Still, I wasn’t about to tell Fernandez any of that. I stood on the deck watching him talk to the crime-scene technicians. The conversation didn’t seem to be very heated as all of them went about their work. It looked odd that for the most part they worked around the body right there in the midst of things. From my limited experience I remembered that someone from the medical examiner’s office had to “sign off” on the body before they could move it.

  I wondered how things progressed from here, and who would have the onerous task of telling Frank’s wife about his death. Probably Fernandez got that job, and I didn’t envy him at all. I thought I remembered Dot saying that Frank and family lived in Simi Valley not too far from here. If memory served, they had several small children.

  Ben came out the door, slamming it behind him and shaking me out of my thoughts about Frank. He was dragging a heavy canvas bag loaded with clean laundry, and juggling his backpack and a grocery sack as well. “Got to run, Mom. Is it okay if I go down there?”

  “Detective Fernandez said it was. I would suggest getting his attention before you start down the stairs.”

  He nodded. “Sure. I took a couple things from the kitchen. Hope you don’t mind, but I’m all out of food at the dorm.” Of course his idea of a “couple of things” probably meant I was now out of food, but he was a growing boy and he needed it. He put his least-loaded arm around me and hugged me. “I’ll call you tonight if I don’t catch you to IM, okay?”

  Instant messaging was still Ben’s favorite form of communication with me. He’d gotten me used to it while he was back in Missouri finishing his senior year in high school and I was out here in California getting used to life last year. And now that he was close by, we still probably spent ten or fifteen minutes a day “talking” to each other that way. What surprised me even more is that he’d taught my mother to be computer literate before he’d left the condo they had shared for almost a year while he finished up high school. I had the odd experience of having a three-way online chat with my son and my mother at least once a week, thanks to Ben’s tutoring. Mom loved it because it was so much cheaper than long distance, even if she did have to type.

  I hugged Ben back, thinking we’d have plenty to IM about later, and I’d have almost as much to tell my mother. “Go ahead on to school. And be careful out there,” I told him. He might look like a grown man, but he was still my boy and I didn’t want him disturbed by all of this. I noticed that the crime scene personnel were zipping up a black bag that apparently contained Frank’s body. Somebody down there must be from the ME’s office. At least Ben wouldn’t have to see any more of Frank than he had to.

  He stepped back and nodded, shifted around his burdens and hollered down the stairs asking permission to come down.

  “Go ahead. Just stay over to the side closest to those stairs, and head to your car,” Fernandez answered. “Can you get out around the trucks and such?”

  “I think so, sir. Thank you.” Ben got his various baggage down the stairs without making too much noise or dropping anything that mattered, and after some slamming and banging I heard his car start.

  He backed out of the long driveway faster and more expertly than I could have around all the other vehicles. I almost didn’t cringe at all watching him. If he’d been on somebody else’s car insurance policy I probably wouldn’t have cringed at all. When I looked back to the scene below, the techs had eased the bag containing Frank’s body into the back of a vehicle marked with the Ventura County Sheriff’s logo and seemed to be ready to head out.

  Fernandez stood watching them leave, and then writing in his notebook for a while. I went back to the apartment and checked the contents of the coffeepot. Pouring the last of the coffee into my mug, I started some more fresh. For this kind of morning, I was going to need it. And it might even get the detective into a better mood, although I doubted it.

  Surprisingly, Fernandez’s questions were relatively brief. He verified that the victim was really Frank Collins, which is what the driver’s license in his wallet had said. “That’s his name as far as I know. He’s some kind of cousin of Dot Morgan’s, the woman who owns the big house in front and the kennels with her husband, Buck.”

  “And that’s Mr. Collins’s truck parked out front?”

  “Definitely. I noticed it this morning the first time I looked out the front window, which must have been about seven forty-five,” I told him. Might as well be as accurate as possible the first time around. With any luck, there might not have to be a second time around this time. I hadn’t been that fond of Frank in life, and didn’t particularly want to deal with his death at any length.

  “Was it unusual for him to be this early to get here?”

  “It was unusual that he would be here that early without my seeing him,” I admitted. “Normally he would be in the truck drinking coffee out of a thermos and reading the newspaper, waiting for his helper to get here. The helper’s name is Darnell, and I have no idea what his last name is. Dot might know.”

  “Where is she today, anyway? We need to ask her some questions as well.”

  “She and Buck left this morning early to deliver a puppy. I don’t expect they’ll be home until some time in the afternoon.”

  Fernandez nodded and jotted something down in his notebook. He looked back up at me then, intently. “You don’t own a gun, do you, Ms. Harris?”

  I nearly knocked over my coffee in surprise. “No, I certainly don’t. I never have, and I don’t imagine I ever will. Why do you ask?”

  His expression got even more serious. “Come on, Ms. Harris. Even you probably noticed that the victim was shot. I have to ask about guns. Of course I’ll find out if he owned one himself, and what type if he did. But your apartment is the dwelling closest to the scene, so it bears asking.�
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  “If you say so.”

  There wasn’t much to the questioning after that. I provided the detective with Buck and Dot’s phone number, and promised to come down to the station soon to be fingerprinted. I wasn’t totally sure that was necessary; it had only been nine months since I’d been fingerprinted after Dennis’s death. Didn’t they keep things like that?

  When I asked Fernandez, he gave me a funny look. “No, we don’t keep fingerprint cards once we’re done with them, not for private citizens who aren’t suspected of anything or have no criminal record.” So at least now I knew why I had to go back to get printed again.

  “Thank you for the coffee. I appreciate you sharing,” Fernandez said, standing at my front door.

  “You’re welcome.” I didn’t feel very charitable right at the moment, after the exchange about the gun. If I’d known then how much less charitable I’d be feeling about Ray Fernandez soon, I would never even have given him the coffee in the first place.

  Chapter Three

  The rest of Monday felt strange, disjointed and downright difficult. I cut class for the day, not the brightest of ideas so close to finals, but I just couldn’t concentrate enough to imagine going and paying any attention to anything. Dot and Buck still weren’t home by the time I had to go in to campus for my shift at the Coffee Corner, the coffeehouse in the same building with the student bookstore.

  When I got there, my best friend Linnette Parks, who is the assistant manager of the bookstore, was so busy dealing with textbook buy-back that she could only wave and nod when I called over the crowd that she needed to come see me when she got a break. It was ninety minutes into my shift and at the height of the afternoon rush for espressos and mochas to get everybody through that last class of the day before I saw her stunning red hair at the end of the line in front of me.