Sideout for Murder
43,400 words
by Paula Murphy
Sideout for Murder © 2008 by zanybooks.com
Cover photo by Samuel Knochs III
Smashwords Edition
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without permission.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblances to persons, living or dead, places, events, or locales is purely coincidental. They are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
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Chapter 1
There’s nothing better than a sunny day at the beach—at least, once one finds a place to park. A clear blue-sky overhead, a long line of foaming white breakers in a blue green sea, even the occasional flash of silver as a fish breaks the water. Add a bikini-clad crowd of sun worshipers working on their tans, a glimpse of sails on the horizon, and it is as close to perfection as a day can be.
Then why was I sitting with my back to the waves watching game after game of beach volleyball?
Two reasons. First, I was a guest at the Lackland Beer Women’s Beach Championships, a guest of that very special person in my life. Second, it was one of the few and only times that person has lent full approval to my watching bikini-clad blonds cavorting in the sand.
Say what you will about women athletes in other sports, in volleyball the athletes are as curved or curvier than the girl next door. Flat tennis-player bellies, lean flanks, and long lean legs that reached the limits of my imagination.
Take the lithesome twins I’d watched as they progressed up the rungs in the early rounds of the tournament. Twin blond pony tails, twin wet-look bikinis in a shocking pink, twin dimpled bellies in a golden tan, and twin bikini tops that held their own small secrets high above the sand. Add to this a talent that could send the two leaping six feet in the air and keep them hanging above the net for what seemed hours to their terrorized opponents, and you had a team of two sure tournament winners.
Alas, a somewhat muscular brunette and her slim blond companion eliminated the twins in the quarterfinals, rather decisively in fact. But on second appraisal, the brunette wasn’t that muscular and her blue one-piece revealed a rather generous amount of curve. The slim blond companion was only slim in the leg; her gray bikini top held more than the twins had between them, and to watch her body soar into the air was to watch an R-rated film played in slow motion.
I was not alone in my admiration. Courtside was crowded with bronzed bodies, surfers, several generations of volleyball professionals and volleyball players to be, mothers and fathers just past the age of playing this grueling sport, a couple of hundred children who didn’t seem to belong to anyone in particular, and a camera crew from a local cable network (the only ones who ever seem to cover volleyball). The tournament organizers had outdone themselves.
Our vantage point was a blanket an ideal three feet from courtside (we were roughing it; most spectators had a comfortable beach chair at the very least). Marlene, that very special person in my life, kept cutting me slices of cold fresh melon along with thin slices of ham. Add wedges of Jarlsberg cheese, a dash of lime, and sips of the white wine we had concealed in a water bottle and, yes, you could still say my day was very close to perfection.
The one easily forgiven flaw was a black girl seated by the net who’d set up a cluster of parasols to shield herself and her three-month old baby from the sun. O.K. for her and her baby, I suppose, but as for Marlene and I, and the several dozen people who sat near us, any close plays near the net were completely lost in the shade of her parasols.
Adding ants to the sand fleas, the black girl kept her back to the court most of the time. She had all the paraphernalia of the new mother, ointments and creams, bottles of formula that she kept mixing and exchanging, half a dozen baby outfits, diapers, baby powder, etc. Between changing her kid’s clothing, feeding him, kissing him on the nose and cheeks, and tickling his tummy, I doubt whether she saw more than two or three minutes of each game.
“Isn’t that little baby cute.” Marlene says, and this just after the mother’s activities had made us miss a close play at the net.
Two of the contestants, the muscular brunette and an equally broad-shouldered redhead on the opposite team, had fought for possession of the ball, fingertips grappling in mid-air. One had come down hard on the other’s ankle, or so the other said, and the two were screaming at each other like ex-roommates.
The referee, a short, freckle-faced combination of Doris Day and Dennis the Menace, ended the impasse. Instead of intervening, she scooped the ball up from the sand and started volleying with someone in the crowd. The crowd roared. As for the brunette and the redhead, it’s hard to stay angry when the crowd is laughing at you.
In the end, the screaming was unnecessary. The muscular brunette and her playmate partner won the semifinal handily, 15–6, 15–8. The low point was the frequent quarrels. The high point was when the two partners collided, sending Sara Newcombe, the playmate, sprawling deep in the sand.
How do you get sand out of your bathing suit with two hundred people looking on? Very carefully. Sara retrieved a large beach towel from her pile of belongings, carefully wrapped herself in the towel, loosened the sand-clogged folds of her suit and then carefully rotated back and forth while sand rained from under the towel ends. Gypsy Rose Lee couldn’t have done it more discreetly and with greater effect on the male portion of the audience. But Marlene only said, “pigs,” when I pointed out the obvious.
After the semifinal, the television camera crews moved in, roping off an area at each end for the cameras, setting up markers on the ground, and so forth. Most of the crowd, which had grown considerably since the early rounds of the tournament, used the opportunity to take a seventh-inning stretch. How much time could I spend stretching? With light checks and sound checks, the interval just stretched on and on.
“Want to take a walk along the beach?” I asked Marlene. A genteel snore was the only reply. Too much wine or maybe Marlene was just working on her tan.
I may have had a little too much wine myself. Picking my way through the crowd was like trying to walk across Pacific Coast Highway: beach blankets, Frisbee throwers, small children with sand pails, larger kids with ghetto blasters and boogie boards, paddle ball players—and those paddles are lethal. Just when I thought I’d found my way clear to the surf, I almost stepped into a line of kayaks drawn up at the water’s edge.
The kayaks were part of the iron-man contest that Lackland Beer had running back-to-back with the volleyball tournament. If Lackland didn’t get you watching the girls, they figured they would snag your attention with one of the long row of muscle-bound types that stood in a poised line waiting for the starter’s gun.
I’m in pretty good shape myself—I’d once thought of competing as a bodybuilder—but these guys had to live for their bodies, judging by their bulging pects and the oil sheen on their backs and shoulders. Of course, it took more than muscle to win this iron-man contest. You had to be crazy, too. The race began with a 500-yard swim in rough surf—250 yards out and 250 yards back, followed by 750 yards paddling the kayaks through the same huge waves, and, finally, for those with time on their hands and a half hour or so to kill, a grueling 750 yards kneeling on surf boards, digging with both hands at the rough water.
Twenty yards from the start—a false start by the way—two of the contestants got wiped out by a wave, ate sand, and limped back into place. A second false start and a third of the muscular contestants was banished, shamefaced, never to return. That made three out of the contest and they hadn’t even started! Given the size of the waves that day, they’d be lucky if anyone finished. Unfortunately, I never got to see the actual race, because a sustained cheer from behind me announced the volleyball finals were about to begin.
I ate a little sand myself getting back to my place at courtside. The crowds had gathered around the finals court like ants converging on a piece of fallen melon. I got nothing but hostile looks from the rows of bronzed surfers who stood in a wall outside the blankets. I tried to edge my way among them and was tripped a couple of times deliberately, once by a small girl. But make it back I did, only to be greeted with a chorus of “shhs” and “sit downs,” before I could say a word.
The pair who’d won the last semifinal, Sara Newcombe and Erica Mueller—Sara the sexy blond, Erica the muscular brunette—were just starting to warm up. During the break, Sara had exchanged her gray bikini top for one of bright orange with the logo of her sponsor, Pacifica, a maker of suntan lotion, displayed in black across the front. The sponsor couldn’t have picked a better location for the ad.
Erica had switched from a pale blue one-piece to one of a dazzling green. Perhaps the color matched her eyes. I wished she would smile more. More than ever, give or take a few pounds, Erica reminded me of the girl who had a locker next to mine in high school. She too could go from a smile to a frown in a fraction of a second. And I’d seen the effect the change had on anyone with the nerve to go up to her.
The black Madonna was still holding forth next to center court from beneath the shade of her parasols. The two remaining finalists and the referee were standing next to her, playing with the baby and taking generous swigs from their name-brand mineral water.
So this girl knew the players. Just who was she? I really resented her being there, holding down the very best spot at center court next to the net, taking up the players’ time, and then not paying any attention to the game, herself.
“Just who is that black girl?”
Marlene looked at me as if I’d just stepped out of a space capsule. “That’s Dee-Dee Williams,” she said.
Dee-Dee Williams. And who in the hell is Dee-Dee Williams, I wondered, feeling just as ignorant as Marlene had hoped I would. Fortunately, the barrel-chested blond next to me whispered, “Just the number one female player in the entire world,” to which a somewhat sunburned redhead sitting next to him added the single word, “Olympics.”
Olympics. So the black girl was an Olympian, part of the team that had captured the silver medal for the U.S. I still thought she was rude.
The referee for the finals was the same freckled-faced kid whose relaxed friendly refereeing style we’d enjoyed so in the two previous matches. I noticed she used her hands a lot when she talked. And she seemed to bubble over with laughter. She laughed a lot during the games too, and joked with the players, trying to get them to forget what they were arguing about. Kind of the same approach a rodeo clown uses to distract a raging bull.
I wished her good luck with this approach in the tournament final. Beach volleyball players are supposed to call their own fouls, but, somehow, with money on the line, I didn’t think she could rely much on tradition.
The two players the ref was joking with were an unlikely pair. One was tall—very tall, very elegant, and very blond, your All-American, California girl. Standing beside her, the referee resembled a whippet next to a greyhound. The tall blonde’s partner, wearing an abbreviated bikini, was a dark-haired girl with dark-brown skin and a dazzling bright smile. She was shorter than the blonde’s 6’2,” but not short by any means, and was some kind of Central American—Cuban or Guatemalan.
“Who are they?” I asked.
“Just the tournament favorites,” my friend said knowingly.
“That’s Barbara Dahl and Chara deCastro.” the barrel-chested surfer set me straight again. “Barb was on the ‘00 and ‘04 Olympic teams with Dee-Dee Williams. She’s been beach women’s champion now for three years in a row. Actually makes a living at it with all her endorsements. Probably the only female player that does. deCastro’s new this year. She’s a former member of the Cuban Olympic team. She’d be playing for them now except she pissed off some Commie bigwig.”
“Doesn’t speak English.” someone else put in.
“Best players in the world.” added a fourth person.
“The best two players in the world,” whispered Marlene, “are Dee-Dee Williams, that black girl on the blanket next to us, and that tall handsome guy standing next to the T.V. commentator.”
“He’s . . .”
“He’s Karch Kiraly. He’s a hunk isn’t he?”
“Seems kind of stringy to me.”
“Mmph. Eat your melon.”
Barbara Dahl didn’t do as much for her swimsuit as Sara Newcombe did, but she had a certain class that made you think of Princess Di or Catherine DeNeueve. Her partner, deCastro, had no class at all. Her bikini even shocked me—well almost. In action, deCastro reminded me of a stripper I’d seen once at an amateur night, running up and down the runway in high heels and a G-string, popping her gum and yelling, “whee!” Strictly off the wall.
deCastro’s opening serve was strictly off the wall too, a high spinner that went thirty feet up into the air and came down kerplunk on her own side of the net.
“Best players in the world, uh,” I said, as Erica and Sara took over.
The first three or four plays went the same way with deCastro and Dahl seemingly just warming up, while Erica and Sara made spectacular plays all over the court. Was an upset in the making?
Apparently, we weren’t going to find out for a while. At a signal from a cameraman, the referee stopped play for a commercial break. Cries of outrage came from all around the court. Was beach volleyball to be yet another captive of the tube? Of course it was, but this didn’t make the crowd any happier.
The players seemed to take the pause in stride, either swigging mineral water in the shade of Dee-Dee William’s umbrellas, or standing in the bright sun joking with the referee.
When play resumed, it followed more or less the same pattern: deCastro and Dahl relaxed and easy, Erica and Sara hustling for every ball. Surprisingly, given the unmatched nature of the action, the score was tied 8–8 and remained tied after half a dozen side outs.
“What’s going on?” I asked Marlene.
“Barb and Chara make the points when they need them.”
My turn to say, “Hmphf.”
By the time the cameraman signaled for a second commercial, brunette and friend looked somewhat the worse for wear. As Marlene had observed so acutely, Dahl and deCastro were making the points when they needed them. Erica and Sara were not scoring when they had the serve, or, if they did score, it was only after a long, drawn out rally in which one or the other had made a spectacular but exhausting play.
Professional volleyball is not exactly the game you play at the church picnic. All sorts of rules cover the handling of the ball. The players are supposed to call their own fouls, but there’s always room for argument. Was it a clean pass or wasn’t it? Did the player touch the net or didn’t she? Apparently, Erica Mueller didn’t think the other team was calling their own fouls. And she knew the ref wasn’t. The more points Erica and her partner lost, the more she screamed at her opponents. Once I thought she was going to physically attack Barbara Dahl for whom she seemed to have a special hatred.
Of course, this didn’t set well with the crowd at all. Princess Di cheat? No way. The referee must have thought so too, for she just kept smiling in the face of Erica’s insults while Dahl and deCastro piled up the score.
Another commercial break. Barbara Dahl tossed back half a flask of imported bottled water, the product of one of her many sponsors, while Erica strode up and down her end of the court like some avenging fury.
It was still a close game, 17–15, when the difference between champion quality and spectacular effort was made plain. deCastro delivered another of her crazy up-in-the air serves and Erica missed it completely. She started to argue, but this time even her partner told her to shut up. With Sara and Erica quarreling, the score quickly went from 27–25 to 29–25 in Dahl and deCastro’s favor. One more point and the match would be over.
As the scorer flipped the card with the 29 on its front, Erica had sense enough to take another little stroll around her backcourt. Long enough to regain some of her class, but not enough to get her second wind, alas. The last point, a long, long rally ended with Erica face down in the sand pounding her fists like a child, while the crowd swooped down to congratulate her grinning opponents.
From where I sat, you could see deCastro was beaming from ear to ear. Barbara kept leaping into the air as if replaying her last wonderful game-winning spike over and over. The camera crew got through to them finally—the crowd just wouldn’t give way—and Barbara took a final sip from the bottled water before turning to the interviewer. Then in full sight of the crowd, the hundreds on the beach, and the tens of thousands who would be watching when the action was replayed on T.V., Barbara clutched at her stomach, doubled over, and collapsed dead on the sand.
Chapter 2
The people around us started to get up and rush forward, thought better of it, and then sat back down again. The ones standing in the back oscillated to and fro, some talking, some, the talkative ones, more silent than they ever had been. Only a few hardy souls gathered up their blankets and their parasols and started the slow trudge toward the parking lot.
Marlene, that very special person of mine sat very still, holding my hand and, I think, crying while we waited for someone in authority to tell us that what had happened had not happened after all. “She’s dead,” Marlene said, wanting me to tell her, that no, Barbara was not dead. But I was sure she was.
I’d been sure she was dead when I saw the way she crumpled to the ground, like a gracious dying bird, its wing feathers heavy with oil. And what convinced me that Barbara was dead was that no one, absolutely no one, had rushed forward and tried to comfort her since the initial scramble. No one was sitting next to Barbara talking quietly to her the way you would with someone who had just fainted or was injured and waiting for the ambulance. Instead, the other players kept their distance, standing in little clusters whispering. One or two of the players hugged each other, but no one spoke.
I think the freckle-faced referee may have gone up once and touched Barbara’s prone figure; I’d seen her down on one knee beside Chris Marlowe, the announcer, holding Barbara’s wrist and counting. Chris had come over because he’d been doing the play-by-play of the game for ESPN and had been going to do the interview with Barbara afterward. But mostly the media people and the tournament officials waited off by the sidelines as we did for someone in authority to tell us what to do.
I wished that someone would go over and cover her body with a towel. It wasn’t just that Barbara had been a symbol of all that was good about the game, it was that a few moments before she had been as warm, as vibrant, as healthy as any one of us. I was having too many unhappy thoughts about my own mortality. I think all of us were.
The police were a long time in coming. Just before they arrived, one of the iron-man contestants, still dripping from the surf, broke through the waiting crowd. He was a big man, with the well-developed muscles of a weight lifter. With a sound somewhere between a cry and a bellow, he threw himself on Barbara’s crumpled form.
She looked so tiny in his arms. Barbara Dahl had been six feet one, six feet two in life. Now she lay limp and small as if she were some kind of a rag doll.
He was crying. He kept trying to give Barbara artificial respiration as if somehow he thought she had drowned, but his crying prevented him. Then two of the women, Erica Mueller and someone else from the group of players, led him away. He was still standing off to the side sobbing questions, “My God, what happened? Can’t somebody tell me what happened?” when the police finally came.
If you thought that because I’m a private detective I spent any particular amount of time the next day speculating about Barbara Dahl’s murder, then you’re wrong. The police are paid to solve crimes. They have the manpower to interview the 400 odd spectators, passersby, Frisbee throwers, etc. present at the scene, any one of whom might have had the motive and the opportunity. Even then the police might not have the answers for several days or ever depending on how the clever the killer had been.
Like everyone else, I’d seen Barbara taking that last drink and falling over and over again on the TV news, but I still had no idea what had really happened. “It was poison wasn’t it?” I asked Marvin the Account Rep, when he showed up at my office unexpectedly the next day.
Marvin had all the answers. “Yeah. It was poison all right. They found strychnine in the water bottle. Gezmuller water for your health. Can you imagine? Gezmuller is one of our biggest sponsors.
They’ll be ruined. Volleyball will be ruined. Now you know why I’m here.”
“I’m not exactly sure why you’re here,” I told Marvin pointedly, “I’m a private investigator but the police...”
But Marvin (I never did learn his last name and maybe I didn’t care) was already plunging ahead without me. Marvin didn’t take no for an answer. Marvin couldn’t hear the “no” as Marvin didn’t listen.
To be frank, Marvin the Account Rep kind of made a bad first, second, and third impression on me. It was a question of style. Marvin’s style was modeled on some ancient Greek despot patronizing a distant relative. His cocky walk—he was a short little guy—his puffed up chest, and an irritating habit of beating at his thigh with a gold pen as if the pen were a riding crop, suggested that his own personal role model was General George Patton.
Marvin (Marv?) lived in a world of first names—Morgan, and Larry, and Dee-Dee, and Bill. Some were in show business, some venture capital, some played volleyball. If Marvin were to be believed, all had in common that they did not eat, sleep, invest, marry, or purchase the morning paper without first consulting or confiding in Marvin.
Had Marvin the affability of a salesperson, I’d have found him marginally tolerable. But he didn’t. Put him down as kind of a pompous combination of Laura (Dr.), Russ (Limbaugh) and Howard (Cosell). (See, I can drop names, too.)
Marvin was definitely not a beach type, with his salon blow-dried hair, horn rim glasses and three-piece suit—vest matching. (At least he didn’t wear gold chains). But he was directly responsible for the Professional Volleyball Association and its current, record high six million dollar account.
“Six million dollars?” I gasped.
“Six million dollars.”
There was a pause as both of us began to wonder why a guy with a six million a year account would be interested in a bottom-of-the-line P.I. like me.
I don’t work out of a high rent neighborhood. I’m near the docks, in fact, so I can dash down and do a little fishing. I don’t have a display ad in the yellow pages. When a corporate exec wants discreet inquires, he doesn’t punch me up with his computerized dialer. I get delivered along with your canteen supplies and plastic forks. Three hundred dollars a day and I’ll settle for two fifty, if you guarantee me a week’s work.
I knew Marvin’s firm had an investigator on retainer, in fact they had an entire agency, one of the biggest agencies in town. It was one of these agents, a guy I’d flunked out of the police academy with years before, who’d spotted me on the films they had borrowed from the local T.V. station.
As Marvin put it, less than tactfully, “We’re hiring you because one of my guys spotted you in the crowd. You were the only P.I. in the book who was sitting on the beach yesterday not four feet from where the murder was committed.”
You can’t often count on that degree of specialization in my business. Then again, if the entire murder was on film, suspects included, that was all the more reason the police could handle it, and I told Marvin so. “Wrong again,” Marvin told me, “The films merely cut down the number of suspects to 50 instead of 450 people.
“And the worst part is that they’re all connected in some way with professional volleyball.
“Do you know how much suspicion that generates? I don’t mean with the public, all the press about the murder has been real good for us, I mean the players are all upset and suspicious. The players are suspicious of one another, they’re suspicious of the managers, they’re suspicious of the promoters.
“Do you how many calls I got last night after I went to bed?” And here Marvin was off again on another orgy of names that I didn’t recognize but that avid readers of Sports Illustrated, People, and the National Enquirer would probably have got right off the bat.
The bottom line, as Marvin explained it to me, and Marvin, I knew by then, dealt only in bottom lines, was that while professional volleyball looked to be very, very big long term, right now it was on a shoestring budget. “$2600 first prize,” Marvin said. “That’s what Barb and Chara got to split for winning the tournament. Can you believe it? Would you play golf for $2600?”
I would, but I got the point. It was hope for the future and sheer love of the game that kept the professionals going. And trust, Marvin said.
“We’re a family, O.K. A family is built on trust. Take that trust away, make the players suspicious of one another, and it all goes down the tubes.
“You keep talking about the police. But there’s one and only one reason I’m here in your office that, by the way, needs an interior decorator. We want someone to check into this situation quickly, quietly, and discreetly. Just like it says on your business cards. Someone who knows something about volleyball. Someone who can do a job .”
“But the police . . .” I tried interrupting him once more.
“What we don’t need are the police, stepping on everybody’s toes, raking up old animosities. Of course, the police are going to investigate. We can’t do much about that. What we can do is have you cover the same ground, but quickly and quietly. You solve the murder, the police make the bust, no more suspicion.”
“We all live happily ever after?”
“And I get my ten percent.” He wasn’t joking.
I must have been eating stupid pills not to have taken his money then and there, but still all I could see were the objections. “Suppose I need backup. The police have already assigned three or four detectives to the case.”
“Be real. The police have only assigned one guy, a detective named Carpenter. He’s new and he’s already got a heavy caseload. You need backup? I’m your backup. You get a hot lead? You call me.”
Marvin stepped back and took a long hard look at me as if seeing me for the first time.
“Money. It’s money isn’t it? You’re worried about money.”
“No. No, I’m . . . .”
“I’m going to write you a big check. Now. I’m going to write you a second big check later. Soon as you solve the murder.”
“But. . .”
“You find the murderer you come to me.”
“But we’re going to have to tell the police sooner or later.”
Marvin gave me the look old time Greek tyrants reserved for imbecile relatives. He wrote the check. He handed it to me.
I glanced at the check. About two thousand dollars more than I’d expected and almost as much as I’d taken in during the past two months.
“Naturally,” Marvin said, “there will be a second check just like this one once you identify the murderer.”
My mouth opened. Words came out. “But if we know who did it, we’ve got to tell the police.” Who said that? Did I say that? I needed the money. I couldn’t afford not to do what Marvin said. Fortunately, though Marvin had listened, he still hadn’t heard me.
“And if you’re wrong?” he said. “I’m paying for quickly, quietly, and discreetly like it says on your business cards. Have we got a deal?”
And that’s how Faust sold his soul to the devil. Me too.
Chapter 3
The long-distance monologue that followed Marvin’s presentation of the check was every bit as boring as the long-distance monologue he’d delivered earlier and it covered much the same ground—Marvin’s accomplishments as testified to by Jane, Clint, and Karch Kiraly, Marvin’s early career, Marvin’s prospects, even Marvin’s likely choice of a date for the evening. Little about Barbara and the possible suspects in her murder. Nothing I could use in the investigation. In fact, it was only as an afterthought that Marvin handed me the list.
“I’ve left you the names of the five prime suspects,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll find that one of them is the killer.” With that Marvin left finally, leaving only the reek of his cologne in my office.
I unfolded the piece of paper I’d been handed. Five names were neatly typed on a sheet of Marvin’s embossed letterhead, the results, I suppose of a morning’s brainstorming session at his agency: Erica Mueller, Diane Purdy, Sara Newcombe, JoAnne Greene and Derek Chzynski. Choose one as a murderess or murderer of beach volleyball’s leading woman player.
Three of the names on the list I recognized: Erica Mueller, Sara Newcombe, and JoAnne Greene. Erica Mueller, she of the bright green bathing suit and the bad manners, had been Barbara’s opponent in the finals. She had spent most of the game threatening her opponents and the referee. I could see why she was a suspect and marked her down for an early interview.
Sara Newcombe was the blond with the playmate figure. She’d been Erica’s partner in the tournament and had done her best to keep Erica from losing her temper. Definitely not my notion of a murderer, but with her figure, she too was a must for an interview. Maybe later.
JoAnne Greene was a well-known media personality—at least to volleyball fans. Brought in the previous year to substitute for one of the regular ESPN commentators, she’d gone on to be the permanent replacement. She’d played and coached in college. She’d even played beach volleyball at one time, although those days were long past.
JoAnne wasn’t an Angela Joli for looks, but she was a Mary Tyler-Moore for personality. Pleasant and extremely knowledgeable. As with Harry Cary the late baseball announcer, listening to JoAnne was almost as much fun as watching the game itself. She always had something to contribute. A murder suspect? No way. But she knew as much about pro volleyball and the players as anyone did and, because I’d always wanted to meet JoAnne, I decided to start with her.
The drive through the nearby college town where JoAnne lived was the usual stop and go with students crossing the street at random with little regard to the signal instructions. Spree bikes with skimpily dressed riders predominated and in my ancient Plymouth coupe I was an evident intruder.
A positive note was a new Top Dog franchise that featured five different types of hot dogs, from Native Americans—your Chicago dog and Louisiana red hot, to exotic European breeds like bratwurst and knaacksad. I marked the stand down for a possible later visit. I’m not a taste-a-vin gourmet, but I do like my food.
I was eager to meet JoAnne. On the tube, she came across as a relaxed easygoing individual whom you would like the instant you met. Over the telephone and later on our first contact in the living room of her town house, she came across the same way. If she wasn’t Mary Tyler Moore, she was Mary’s mother, and I could tell at a glance where Mary got her personality.
JoAnne’s house was located in a quiet area near the University, though a small spot of domestic violence marked my arrival. Through my window I could see him, yelling back into the open doorway before he stomped off furiously to his car. She followed a scant instant later, slamming the door behind her, and yelling something equally inaudible in reply. He backed furiously out of his driveway at three times the speed approved by the local vehicle code, narrowly missing my front fender. An instant later, she got in her car and did the same thing. I parked. Life in suburbia was too rough for me.
The interview didn’t go the way I expected. It wasn’t JoAnne’s fault. It was the fault of the seven angry women I found seated on the couch in her living room. All somewhere in their early or late twenties, all dressed like JoAnne in collegiate casual, sweat shirts and baggy pants, with a glint of gold chains underneath. Her students and ex-students I imagined, though nobody actually introduced us.
I’d sort of slipped in JoAnne’s front door when no one answered my knock. Her house was located midway along the row of identical town houses, and I’d almost walked by it. Even then I wasn’t sure I had the right address. It was that kind of neighborhood. Some kind of party going on inside—lots of talk and laughter. But the noise came to an abrupt halt as soon as I put my head in the door. Seven faces gave me swift looks of disapproval. Seven pairs of steely eyes followed my walk from the front door to the living room. And of course, all this time I’m thinking, could I be in the wrong house?
JoAnne was the one familiar landmark, and I greeted her with relief. JoAnne is not the sort of person you can overlook even if you have never seen her on the tube. She’s stocky to begin with, and her laughter makes her seem larger than she really is. Once we’d established I was not a prowler, she gave me a big hello and even a half hug just the way I’d imagined she would. “Hey guys, this is someone, what’s your name again?”
“Phyllis Ludwigsohn.”
“Ok, Phyll, who needs to talk to me about Barbara.”
We began talking away a mile a minute just as if we were old friends instead of two people who’d met on the phone only a half hour or so earlier. We talked about her appearances on T.V. and games we’d both seen and which teams looked good this year. She knew the people we talked about; I knew about them. The interview should have been both the beginning and the end of my investigation. But what’s wrong with the picture is the seven pairs of silent staring eyes and the general air of hostility like the Charles Manson family at bay. I guess Jesse Jackson felt the same way the first time he was introduced to George Bush.
I had lots I wanted to say, but I soon ran out of words. It’s hard to talk with someone face to face when every nerve in your body is telling you to look back over your shoulder. And the silence only made things worse.
This goony looking star child on the couch, all mascara and eye shadow, nineteen or twenty and probably the youngest one in the room, is the first to speak up. She turns to me and asks, “How do you know JoAnne?”
“Everyone knows JoAnne,” I reply, “She’s a media personality.”
Then the chick turns to JoAnne and asks her, “Why is he talking to you?”
“He’s a friend of Marvin.”
After which the chick settles back to giving me the hate stare along with her six friends.
“JoAnne,” I ask, “can we go somewhere so we can talk alone?”
“Will it take long?” JoAnne beams. I know she’s on my side, but. . .
“Just a few questions. I need to go over the list of suspects with you.”
“No problem, come on in the kitchen.”
JoAnne leads me through the newly painted swinging door into a white-walled kitchen, immaculate, yet lived in like the rest of her house. I’m glad to get away from the hate squad, but the weird looking girl is only a step or two behind us.
JoAnne gestures toward the table, a breakfast nook separated by a counter from the main part of the kitchen, but it’s the girl who takes a seat. I stand awkwardly while JoAnne gets two bottles of mineral water from the refrigerator and puts them onto the table. “Open these will you,” she says to the girl.
We both stand waiting while the girl fetches two glasses, fills one with mineral water and hands it JoAnne, then fills the second glass and sits down to drink it herself.
“So how can I help you?” JoAnne asks.
There is a pause while I clear my throat thirstily, then I begin. “Marvin gave me the name of five, uh four people, he thought might be suspects in the case. I was sorta of hoping you could give me a little background on each one. In private?
She doesn’t move. I continue. “Like I said, I’ve watched you on television, and you really come across like someone who knows the game and the players. It would be really good for volleyball if we could close this case in a hurry. I’m hoping you can help me get a handle on the suspects’ personalities, their likes and dislikes.”
“Well thank you, I’ll see what I can do,” JoAnne says. The weird chick merely gives me a hard stare.
“Uh, the first one is Erica Mueller.”
“Erica Mueller? Hard worker, lots of energy. She was one of the founders of the Women’s Association. Really put her heart into it. A little hard to get along with sometimes, which is maybe why she’s no longer one of the officers. And, oh yes, a great competitor.”
“Do you know of any reason why she would want Barbara dead?
“No.”
“Do you think she killed Barbara?”
“Probably not.”
“Sara Newcombe.”
“Hah.” This from the weird chick who has been making a steady stream of faces throughout the conversation.
“One of the best young players in the country. Strong competitor. Good figure also which really turns on some of the guys.”
The weird chick makes another noise in her throat and JoAnne finally turns to her, “Look Deb, why don’t you beat it. Go review the new rotation so we can work on it later this afternoon.” She smiled indulgently as she said to me, “Typical California airhead. Sara beat her out for a slot on my team five years ago and she’s still mad.”
“Your team?” I hadn’t thought of JoAnne as a coach, though I suppose it was obvious.
“My team. I coach too you know. College and club both. Sara was one of my best players at one time.” (And to the girl again.) “And you’re one of my best players now, Deborah. O.K. Now run along.”
Deborah doesn’t move. The whole situation reminds me of a divorced mother I knew with three impossible children all of whom she loved a lot more than any guy or girl. The mom still doesn’t have a partner as far as I know.
“What was Sara’s connection with Barbara?” I ask.
“You know, for awhile I thought they were going to pair up this year on the beach volleyball circuit. But then Chara deCastro came along.”
“de Castro? She the dark-skinned girl who was Barbara’s partner in the tournament?”
“Yea. She used to play on the Cuban Olympic team, until she defected to this country. I suppose she’s on your suspect list, too.”
I shook my head.
“Well she should be. They say Barbara was robbing her blind.”
“Can’t even speak English.” This from the girl.
“Neither can you dear. Sometimes I wonder how you ever made it through college.”
“Athletic scholarship.”
“Yes dear, I know.” JoAnne gave me another of those what can you do about it looks. I thought, maybe chase the kid away so we can get some work done, but I didn’t say what I was thinking. JoAnne clearly wasn’t going to make a move in that direction.
“Who else is on your list?” she asks.
“Diane Purdy. I’m not even sure who she is.”
“She thinks she’s Doris Day.” This time the voice came from behind me. A tall blond girl dressed in baggy blue sweats had popped her head into the doorway about a head and a half above where you normally would expect a woman’s head to be. So now there were two of the Manson family listening in. I wondered how long it would take before the entire group put in an appearance.
“Diane is another great competitor,” JoAnne began. “She’s kind of short for the pro circuit, but she really makes it up for it in hustle.”
“No, no,” I interrupted, “I mean who is she? How does she fit into the picture? Was she Barbara’s trainer or what?”
“Diane refereed the finals.”
Now it came to me. The sassy girl with the freckles who’d laughed everybody through the tense moments. Doris Day. Yeah, that description really fit. Diane (and Doris) were proof Hugh Heffner is right, it’s the ones that look like the girl next door who are the sexiest.
“Why would she want to kill Barbara?” I asked.
“Why would anyone want to kill Barbie?” mimicked two voices behind me in the doorway. “She was a slut.”
Realizing I was hearing something that might be important, I asked to no one in particular, “Was she sleeping around?”
“Yea,” came a choir of voices.
JoAnne laughed, “Will you be quiet. This man will get a terrible impression of us. No, to be frank, I don’t think Diane killed Barbara.”
“So far you don’t think anyone killed Barbara.”
“Except maybe deCastro.”
Who is not on my list, I thought. “Last chance, Derek Chzynski.”
“Hah.” This time the laughter was general. “Not a chance, Barbara led him around by the muscles.”
“Sides, his momma wouldn’t let him play with weapons.” This from the blond in the doorway.
“Sides, he didn’t have a weapon,” this from two more voices behind the blond.
“O.K., guys,” JoAnne interjects, “Let me answer the questions. All right?”
“Thanks.” I say and I mean it. “Maybe you could give me a little background on Barbara herself.”
“Not much I can add to what Marvin already told you or what I said on T.V.She was a great competitor and a natural leader. She’s always been the sort of person younger players would look up to, the sort of person a coach would want on her team.”
“That’s more or less what you said on T.V.”
“Yes.”
“Is there anything else?”
“There’s Barbara’s Kids of course.”
A chorus of snorts came from the door behind me.
“Barbara really tried to do good in her way.”
“But your girls seem to feel, they suggested . . .”
“Oh, pooh. They’re jealous. I think we all were jealous of Barbara’s success. It’s hard not to when you consider she was a relative newcomer.”
“She’d been playing beach ball for nearly five years!” I had to ask myself why I was so hotheaded, why I was defending a woman I’d never met.
“Oh you know what I mean,” Joanne said, and she crossed her arms for the first time in our conversation.
“O.K.,” I said recovering. I did not want to offend her; she was still my best source of inside information. “Derek Chzynski didn’t kill Barbara, nor did Erica Mueller, Sara, or Diane. Any other suggestions?”
JoAnne shrugged. “Nope. I don’t think so.” Her arms were still crossed. Clearly, she thought the interview was over.
Then that really leaves only you, I thought, or deCastro.
“Did you do it?” I asked. JoAnne laughed. The laugh should have been and was intended to be infectious, but I persisted, “Did you kill Barbara Dahl? Where were you during the final matches?”
“She was with me,” a half dozen voices answered. By this time, the entire Manson family had piled into the kitchen. The vibes were as hostile as they’d been when I first arrived.
“I was sitting with my friends,” JoAnne said, “Marlowe was handling the telecast.”
“Marlowe?”
“Chris Marlowe, the guy I usually do the games with, used to be captain of the men’s Olympic team.”
The announcer. I knew who he was. Marcelled hairdo. Profile for the camera. He’d been the first to reach Barbara after she fell. But that was after she fell. I had a sudden inspiration. “What about the black chick that was watching the game from center court with her little boy.”
“The black what,” a half dozen voices wanted to know. The vibe in the kitchen got still more hostile, if that were possible.
“The black girl,” I stammered, “I mean the black woman. The one on the blanket.”
“Thank you,” JoAnne said, “that was Dee-Dee Williams.”
I knew that. What I wanted to know was how Dee-Dee and Barbara had gotten along. What I wanted was to talk to JoAnne alone, for half an hour, like I’d imagined I would when I first called her up.
The weird chick was holding open the back door so I could leave. The rest of the Manson family pressed close behind me. So I left. Quickly. I had ran afoul of a group of girls in the third grade once; something to do with my talking out of turn and the teacher punishing the entire class by canceling our painting period; those girls beat the hell out of me.
Ten minutes later, I emerged from the alleyway behind the row of townhouses where Erica’s players had let me out. They might have noticed I couldn’t get directly back to the street that way. It took a block and a half of back-alley walking before I could retrieve my car. No trouble; I stay in shape. Only the Capezios I’d put on specially for JoAnne had problems.
So now I know that Erica Mueller is a great competitor, so is Sara Newcombe, and so is Doris Day, that is, Diane Purdy, volleyball player and volleyball referee. As for Derek Chzynski, Barbara’s fiancée, a natural strongman who could probably have ripped a telephone book apart with his hands, he was just a little boy whom Barbara had led around by the muscles. That left nobody as a real murder suspect, unless you counted the Cuban defector Chara deCastro. And one more person.
I’d lied to JoAnne. There hadn’t been four names on Marvin’s list; there’d been five. And the fifth was my new number one suspect, JoAnne Greene.
Chapter 4
It took a ham sandwich—Virginia country with plenty of hot mustard, and a beer from the Trader’s—Groetz Pilsner from Czechoslovakia, very tasty and as the Trader says a lot less than you’d pay at the supermarket—before I even began to feel whole again. I’d have liked a turkey sandwich, too, but there were about three months to go before leftover season.
The interview with JoAnne had taken a lot out of me and my clothes, both. The Capezios I’d worn to the meeting—I normally favor a pair of Nikes—were scuffed beyond repair. My dressy slacks I tossed into a heap by the front door for the cleaners. Too much back alley work.
And yet what had I learned? Nothing concrete, just something bad about almost everyone connected with the case. Despite JoAnne’s seeming endless good cheer, there’d been an edge to each of her compliments. Erica Mueller, a wonderful person, was hard to get along with. Diane Purdy, the great competitor, was too short for the pro circuit. And so on and so on. My brother’s ex-wife had been much the same way, all sunbeams on the outside, all knife work if you got in too close.
I hoped Erica Mueller, the next one on my list, was a straight shooter. It was time I had some hard answers to my questions.
Erica Mueller was one of those women who look better with her clothes on. A lot better. Excess flesh gets tucked away beneath the folds. Out come the nail polish, the lipstick, and the accessories. The eye and the nose of the beholder are bewitched and distracted. I liked what I saw.
Erica was in her mid to late thirties. Because of that, the other players called her Grandma. Well, Grandma had very shapely legs and calves encased in carefully tailored Liz Claiborne slacks. Grandma’s bosom amply filled her matching Liz Claiborne blouse and strained against the buttons. Grandma had frosted fingernails of light coral and deeper coral lips. Even Grandma’s feet looked sexy in open-toed sandals. It wasn’t quite the way I remembered her looking on the beach, but they touch up playmates of the month with an airbrush don’t they?
The only distraction was a dog or a cat that was prowling at the rear of Erica’s small apartment which like Erica, herself, (grandma, if you prefer), showed a lot of class. Within the limits of a J.C. Penny budget, Santa Fe colors of peach, gray and tan accented the room. The big throw pillows on her couch—they looked hand-woven, they felt like cotton—were beginning to feel very comfortable. Definitely a comfortable room decorated by a caring woman.
I listened again. Yes, someone or something was moving about in the adjoining room. I just hoped it wasn’t a male companion. Erica and I were beginning to feel very comfortable as a twosome. What I hoped must have shown in my face—I never could play poker—and Erica was on her feet in an instant.
“It’s time to wrap up this interview, Ms. Ludwigson. I didn’t invite you in to devour me with your eyes. If you have questions to ask me. Ask them now.”
Wow! Not what I intended. Things couldn’t have gone wronger. Erica stood up from the couch, her bosom a ship’s prow, and in less time than it had taken me to walk from the front door to her couch I was back at the front door again.
“Now wait a minute,” I stammered, “I still have questions.”
“Ask them. You have two minutes.” And, so help me, she took off her wristwatch and held it up pointedly in front of my face.
The interview had started out on a relatively friendly basis despite the frosty reception she’d given my original telephone call. Apparently, between the time I telephoned and the time I arrived at her apartment, Erica had called Marvin or Marvin had called Erica. I’d gotten a warm smile from her at the door, a comfortable seat on her couch, and a hot cup of coffee, fresh, not instant.
In fact, we were side by side on the overstuffed couch, two woman wondering if the attraction were mutual, when I let my extended adolescence betray me. Now I was face to face in a narrow hallway with 150 pounds of angry female. And so help me, I loved every minute of it.
Besides her perfume was sexy as hell.
“You, Ms. Ludwigsohn are a pig.”
“And you, Ms. Mueller, are a murder suspect. You threatened Barbara Dahl’s life on the court yesterday. I heard you; I was only three or four feet away. You called her a bitch.”
“Under my breath.”
“I can lip-read, Ms Mueller. We all can lip-read.”
Whatever sympathy the crowd may have had that sunny Sunday afternoon for Erica Mueller and her partner as underdogs, that sympathy soon vanished in the face of Erica’s foul mouth and bad temper. True, one or two close calls could have been argued either way. but as the score began to pile up against her, Erica had launched an endless barrage of abuse that first amused and then annoyed the crowd. There’d even been one entire time out, off camera during a commercial break, in which Erica had walked about the court kicking at the sand, yelling to the world, “that bitch.”
As I reviewed her behavior on the court, Erica had the grace to look embarrassed... momentarily, of course. “I’m very competitive,” she said.