17
Eating chili alone is an unsatisfying experience. In fact, in Texas it just isn’t done. It’s practically a sin.
So while I fried up the bacon to produce the grease to brown the onions in, I racked my brain for someone to call.
I tried David, of course. Snow days are excellent boyfriend days, if you have one who is good company, which I do. But he was iced in way out in Hillsboro, which would do me exactly no good at all. He did express appropriate sympathy at my plight and anguish that he could not hop in his car and race all the way to Dallas to dine with me. Thin consolation.
I put some bread in my new pink Barbie toaster—my Christmas gift from Christine Zocci—and got my address book, flipping all the way up to L before I found someone I thought I could stand to spend the afternoon with. Helene Levine. She’d moved in from the suburbs last year and now lived about two miles away, in a high rise down on Turtle Creek. In this weather, that was less than an hour’s drive.
I called her but got no answer. Where could she be with the roads like they were? She was sixty-eight years old, had arthritic knees, and drove a Mercedes sedan. Plus she’s from New Jersey and hates the cold. No way was she out on the ice today.
My toast popped up, a little silhouette of Barbie browned into the bread. I spread some mayonnaise over Barbie’s face, sliced some tomatoes, made myself a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, and kept flipping through my address book.
M was populated solely by John Mulvaney. No thanks.
As I flipped past empty pages, I was reminded once again that I had essentially no friends. This horrifying thought had flitted through my mind a few days before when I’d been trying to think of someone to stay with. The day the note came from Gordon Pryne. But I hadn’t had time to let it bother me. Now it settled on me like a bad smell.
What was wrong with me? I’m a likeable person. Okay, I’m a little tense. And I tend to diagnose people whether they ask me to or not. And I have a teeny case of obsessive-compulsive inclination. And I can be pretty negative and a tiny bit hostile. And I’m a little controlling.
I scrolled back through my mind and tried to remember the last time I’d let David pick the movie. That could have been months ago.
Oh, and my thighs were liquefying even as I sat here eating thick-slab maple-sugar bacon between two slices of Barbie-toasted Wonder bread smeared with Hellmann’s Real Mayonnaise. I can’t help it if I hate fat-free. At least I work out.
I finished my sandwich and started chopping an onion, taking my frustration out on it by hacking it into tiny, satisfying little bits. I threw them into the pan and smiled at the sizzle. I stirred them around, wondering if the aroma was making the rats hungry. It could be just them and me for snow-day chili.
The phone rang.
“Dr. Foster, this is Detective Jackson with the Dallas Police Department.” As though I knew lots of other Detective Jacksons.
“Bad news and worse news. Which one do you want?”
“You pick.”
“Okay. Starting with worse. Gordon Pryne is still at large.”
“That’s not exactly news. What else?”
“We found a print on the note.”
“And?”
“It’s not his.”
“Whose is it?”
“The print remains unidentified.”
I translated. “You mean, you don’t know whose it is.”
“That is correct.”
“Why is that bad news?”
“It means he’s working with someone.”
“Oh.” That was bad news. “But you’re still running the prints, or whatever, to find a match.”
“Ran it through AFIS this morning.”
“What’s that?”
“Automated Fingerprint Identification System. Should have come up with a match by now, unless his prints have changed.”
“How would someone change their fingerprints? I thought that was impossible.”
“Meth addicts get burns on their fingers. Burn heals, the print changes. Manual labor can wear the prints down. Brick laying, things like that. Guy like Pryne doesn’t know anyone respectable. He’s running with someone, they got a record. They got a record, they got a print.”
It started to rain again. Not exactly rain, though. More like one of those Slurpees from 7-Eleven.
“You still there?”
“Yeah, I’m here,” I said.
“Cruiser still outside?”
I checked. “Yep.”
“Would you like the officers to escort you to a hotel?”
“Not really. I’m making chili.”
“Good day for chili.”
“Want to come over?”
I’d just invited humorless Detective Jackson over for chili. That’s how sad my life had become.
“I’m on duty.”
“Have you talked to Maria today? Is she okay?”
“I believe she’s decided to stay with a friend for a few days.”
“Do you have a number for her?”
I wrote down the number he gave me and thanked him for calling.
I threw a little bit of crushed habanero pepper into the pan, just for grins. Might as well make the chili hot, since I didn’t have anyone to breathe on. Besides, I’d read somewhere that really hot chilies cause the body to release endorphins, producing an opiatelike effect. I could definitely use an opiate-like effect.
I threw some ground beef into the pan, watching the grease splatter onto my stovetop as the meat started to brown. I began contemplating my clean-up strategy even as I made the mess. I’d take the whole stovetop apart later and scour it down with Antibacterial Soft Scrub with Bleach. It would give me something to do with my brain. The stove needed a good scrub anyway.
I dug in my rodent-defiled pantry for cans of crushed tomatoes and green chilies and for chili powder and cumin. I disinfected the containers with Clorox and opened them up.
I finished browning the meat, helped myself to a spoonful, added more salt and pepper, then stirred in everything else, put the lid on the skillet, and left the chili to simmer.
At my desk, I fired up my computer and started searching for information on Drew Sturdivant. Maybe Pryne’s buddy was someone she knew. It didn’t take long to scare up her phone number and address. She had lived pretty close to SMU, in a huge village of apartments populated almost entirely by college students. I wondered if any of her neighbors were aware of how she made her living. I wrote down the address.
Next I looked up El Centro College. I perused the website and was surprised to discover I knew a couple of faculty members. El Centro is a community college, not a four-year school. Professionals in the community sometimes teach at this level because it allows them the stimulation of teaching college-level courses without the mind-numbing hoop-jumping involved in a full-time academic career.
Community college professors are doing it for fun, in other words, and make real, actual money at their day jobs. They drive better cars than we do, are genuinely interested in their courses and their students, and are hardly dull at all, unlike most of my colleagues.
My accountant was teaching as an adjunct in the business department. And one of the psychology instructors had been a graduate student of mine a couple of years ago. He was a crummy student, had a pretty dynamic personality, and had figured out quickly that he wasn’t cut out for academic life. I’d heard he was doing well in private practice. He’d asked me out a couple of times. I’d always dodged the issue by hiding behind the professor/student thing.
I’m sort of afraid of my accountant. He’s always demanding receipts I don’t have, and I never get my tax stuff in on time. So I decided to try my ex-student first. The school was closed today, of course, but I shot him an e-mail anyway.
Since he was in private practice, I thought it was possible he might be seeing patients today. No play, no pay, as the saying goes. I looked up his office number in the business pages.
A woman’s voice answered.
“May I speak with Mitch Dearing, please?”
“He’s with a patient.”
Bingo. I checked the clock. It was twenty minutes before two. He’d be out in ten minutes if he worked on the hour.
“May I take a message?”
“Would you have him call Dylan Foster when he gets a minute?” I gave her my number.
“Are you calling for an appointment?” the woman asked. “I can help you with that.”
“No.”
“May I ask what this is regarding?”
Nope. “It’s a personal call.”
“Of course. I’ll give him the message.”
I hung up the phone and decided to do a perimeter check of my house. I checked the locks on all the windows and doors, peeked into the backyard to make sure there were no murderers or demons lurking in the bushes. I checked the garage door to make sure it was down. And double-locked the door between my bedroom and the garage, since I knew Peter Terry preferred this exit route. I even looked in the closets and under the bed, just to satisfy my burgeoning paranoia.
I knew it was a stupid decision to stay in my house. Any idiot would opt for the safer choice and leave. But I’m not just any idiot. I’m a stubborn idiot.
Honestly, I just didn’t want to make the concession. It’s my house. I’d fought to regain this ground the last time Peter Terry came sniffing around. I didn’t want to cede the territory. To Gordon Pryne or to anyone else. Especially if Peter Terry was the one stirring this brew in the first place.
I was betting all my chips on something a friend once said to me: As children of the King, we’re entitled to protection. I would have felt more confident in the veracity of this little ditty, of course, if I’d bought myself a gun before the ice storm hit, like Detective McKnight suggested. Just in case the Lord Almighty Himself needed a little help keeping me protected.
The phone rang as I stepped back into the kitchen to check the chili. I looked at the clock. Ten till two. Right on time.
“Dr. Foster, Mitch Dearing,” he said.
“Thanks for calling me back, Mitch. How are you?”
“I’m well, thanks. Enjoying private practice. You?”
“Not bad,” I said. “I’m calling to ask about an El Centro student. Drew Sturdivant.”
“The murdered girl.”
“Did you know her?”
“No, but a colleague of mine had her in class this semester.”
“Is she a psych major? Was she, I mean?”
“Design, I think. Had she applied to SMU or something?”
“Not exactly.”
“She wasn’t a patient of yours, was she?”
“No. My interest in her is more…indirect.” I wasn’t about to elaborate. “Do you think your friend would talk to me? I’d like to find out more about Drew if I could.”
I heard him clicking his electronic data thingy.
“Got a pencil?”
“Yep.”
I wrote down the name and phone number of Drew’s psychology instructor, thanked Mitch, lied about what a great student he’d been, and got sucked into an invitation to lunch. All in about thirty seconds. My boundaries needed a little work.
I phoned the instructor on her cell phone.
“Catherine Keene,” she answered.
I made my introductions, explaining that our mutual, close personal friend, Mitch Dearing, had given me her number and got right to the point.
“I’m calling about Drew Sturdivant. I understand she was a student of yours.”
“She was in my Intro to Psych last semester.”
“How was she? As a student, I mean?”
“Extremely bright. Very conscientious.”
Not what I was expecting.
“I understand she was a design major.”
“That’s right.”
“Interior or fashion?”
“Fashion. Very talented,” she said. “She’d landed a summer internship in L.A. Prada or something. No, that’s in Italy. Someplace. I can’t remember. It doesn’t matter. She was due to graduate from El Centro this spring. Early.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. She had a very bright future. Which makes her death even more tragic, I think. It’s rare that a student makes such a positive impression. At least in the community college system. Most of our students are there because they don’t know what else to do. Or because they’re cleaning up some mess they’ve gotten themselves into.” She paused. “Juicy something. Juicy Fruit.”
“Juicy Couture?”
“That’s it,” she said.
“Speaking of messes, did you know how she was supporting herself?”
“You mean the stripping?”
“Yes.”
“No idea whatsoever. I read about it in the paper like everyone else. But she was an odd bird. Quirky. Ran with a strange crowd.”
“Can you elaborate?”
“What’s your interest, Dr. Foster? Do you mind my asking?”
I did, of course, but needed to offer up something or this woman was going to stop talking to me.
“A friend of mine knows the suspect.”
“The police have a suspect? Who is it?”
“His name is Gordon Pryne,” I said, hoping I wasn’t breaking any sort of police investigation rule or anything. “Does the name sound familiar?”
“No. Was he a student at El Centro?”
“I don’t know anything about his academic interests, but I think it’s pretty safe to say he never attended El Centro.”
“How did she know him?”
“The police think maybe through her work.”
“The strip joint?”
“Right.”
“Which one was it?”
“Caligula. Down on Harry Hines Boulevard.”
“So seedy. I can’t imagine how she ended up there.”
“Hard to imagine how anyone ends up there.”
“You know who you should talk to, Dr. Foster? Her roommate. Her name is…what is her name? Carla, I think. No, Charlotte.”
“Charlotte what? Do you know a last name?”
“No, wait. Sharlotta. With an S-H.” She spelled it out for me.
“She might be able to help you out. I don’t know her last name. Sorry.”
“That’s okay. Thanks.”
“I hope they catch the guy,” Keene said. “Drew was a special young woman. Sad and a little lost. But really quite extraordinary”
“Any idea what the sadness was about?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Thanks for your time, Catherine. You’ve been a big help.”
“Good luck.”
I hung up and dialed Helene again. This time she answered.
“Where were you?” I asked. “I called you an hour ago and you didn’t answer.”
“I went to the grocery store.”
“You took your Mercedes out on the ice?”
“I took a cab.”
Southerners never think to call a cab. We’re not into public transportation.
“Cabs are running?” I asked.
“Of course they are.”
“How?”
“Ever hear of snow tires?”
I invited her over, but she didn’t want to get out again.
“Cold weather hurts my knees,” she said. “And your house isn’t really very warm.”
“Oh, for crying out loud. It’s not that bad.”
“You really should get some friends,” she said. “And central heat and air.”
Like it was that simple.
She thanked me for the invite and hung up.
I dialed Drew Sturdivant’s home number and had a quick conversation with Sharlotta. She agreed to see me. I hung up the phone feeling victorious, put the chili in the oven on warm, and called myself a cab.