“Oh, all right, then,” she said, seeming to calm. “What can help you with?”
She continued to talk to me through the screen, clearly not wanting me to enter. Poor thing.
“I understand you worked for the Lowells for almost thirty years. Can you tell me anything about their daughter, Harper?”
Her heartbeat skyrocketed again, and she glanced around as though wondering if she were being watched. Just as her replacement had when I tried to question her at the Lowells’ mansion.
“I really can’t say much. She was very disturbed and they had a lot of problems with her, but that’s all I can tell you.”
“Yes, I’ve heard. Do you remember when it all started?”
She glanced at the dish towel in her hands. Fear radiated off her in waves. “It seemed to start right after Mr. and Mrs. Lowell got married.”
I nodded. “Did you notice anything suspicious at that time?” I couldn’t help but wonder if Harper’s stalker wasn’t an employee, maybe even a disgruntled one. “Did the Lowells hire anyone new around that time? Or maybe someone quit?”
A thought dawned. I could see it in her expression. But she dismissed it with a frown.
“Mrs. Beecher, anything you can tell me will help, no matter how small you think it is.”
She drew in a long draft of air. “It’s nothing. I just remembered that Felix started right before the wedding.”
“Felix?” I asked, taking out my memo pad and pen.
“Felix Navarro. He kept their lawns for years and—” She paused in thought.
“And?” I asked.
When she refocused on me, her expression was full of regret, like she hated to vocalize her suspicions. “And, well, he liked Ms. Harper. Very much.”
“How much?”
“H-he carried pictures of her in his wallet. Several pictures.”
Okay, that was creepy. I couldn’t help the accusation that crept into my voice. “You don’t think he was doing anything—”
“Oh, goodness no,” she said, cutting me off with a wave of the dish towel. “Not at all. He was just … well, he was very fond of her.”
I’ll bet. “Thank you,” I said, offering her a reassuring smile. “You’ve been very helpful.”
She bowed her head as though ashamed she’d said anything and closed the wooden door.
* * *
After making a phone call to have Cook check out the gardener who was fond of little girls and carried pictures of them around in his wallet, I pulled around the side of a mental asylum that had been abandoned in the fifties. I’d found Rocket there when I discovered a love for exploring such mental asylums in college. Partly because of my fondness for old buildings but mostly because of my fondness for departed mental patients. They knew the secrets of the universe, each and every one, and I could talk to them for hours on end. It beat the heck out of homework.
Surprised to discover an abandoned asylum smack-dab in the middle of Albuquerque, I cased the joint for a couple of days, then went in one night when the moon was full of glow-in-the-dark chalk and my belly was full of a cheap, nondescript wine. As I stumbled around the place, oohing and aahing at the forgotten equipment, wondering exactly what one would do with an instrument that looked like garden sheers, there stood Rocket.
I wasn’t sure which of us was more surprised by the presence of the other, but once I assured him I was not there to steal his checkers, we became fast friends. However, because of Rocket’s minimalist approach to the whole attention-span thing, it took me several visits to discover anything definitive about him. I did find out that he’d died in the fifties. He also had a sister who’d died during the Dust Bowl. She kept him company at the asylum, but I had yet to meet her.
Oddly enough, a local biker gang, the Bandits, owned the asylum in which Rocket lived, and they lived next door. I’d sneaked past them for years despite their tendency to have a slew of Rottweilers on duty at any given time, but the leader, a rough-and-tough type who went by the name of Donovan, had recently given me a key to the place. I had yet to use it, but today seemed like the perfect day to try it out.
And yet I seemed unable to just pull up to the front door. I’d always pulled around the side and hidden Misery behind a Dumpster so I could sneak in without announcing my presence. Apparently that habit was hard to break. After locking her up tight, I patted Misery’s fender and went in search of the mighty Rocket. Or I would have had my interest not been piqued by the goings-on behind the Bandits’ headquarters.
I looked through the ivy covering a chain-link fence and could just see the back area of the Bandits’ yard, where they had an old attached garage. They’d always had a plethora of bikes and parts scattered around the cinder-blocked area, but there was a van parked out back and several guys dressed all in black loading nylon duffel bags into it. Among the guys in black were Donovan and his two sidekicks: Michael, a Brando-esque kind of guy who could look cool in a tutu; and Eric, a tall kid who looked more like a Greek prince than like a biker. But what struck me as most odd was the fact that they were all dressed exactly alike. Eric and Donovan wore black bandannas around their necks, but other than that, there were four men total and one woman with black long-sleeve shirts and black military-style pants. They all wore leather gloves as well and were either wearing sunglasses or had them propped on top of their heads. That was taking the biker club colors to a whole new level, in my opinion. But to each his own.