Slow Kill - Michael Mcgarrity [17]
“Why is it so run-down?”
Parker laughed. “The city would love to restore the house and grounds as a venue for concerts and community events. But the neighbors won’t hear of it. They don’t want the peace and quiet of the area disturbed.”
A bell sounded from inside the house. “That’s Alice,” Parker said. “I’ll go prepare her for your visit.”
Kerney stood on the patio and looked up. A covered second-story balcony dominated the back of the house, and, he guessed, gave onto the master bedroom. He wondered if an adjacent room served as George Spalding’s shrine. Although Mrs. Spalding’s obsession with her son probably had nothing to do with her ex-husband’s death, it was intriguing.
A ground-floor breezeway connected to what Kerney assumed were Parker’s living quarters. Parked in front was a sporty silver SUV that had probably never been off the pavement.
Penelope Parker stepped out on the patio and beckoned to him. He followed her through a spacious living room filled with ornate Spanish Colonial period furniture and tapestry rugs, and up a staircase to the master bedroom, where he was introduced to Alice Spalding.
A tiny woman dressed in powder-blue slacks and a creamy white blouse, Spalding smiled up at him from a beige leather easy chair near the windows. Her feet barely touched the floor.
She smiled vaguely at him. “What do you have for me today, Captain Chase?”
Parker touched Spalding on the shoulder. “This is Officer Kerney from Paso Robles, Alice, not Captain Chase.”
“Oh,” Spalding said, looking worriedly from Parker to Kerney. “What happened to Captain Chase?”
“Nothing,” Parker replied. “The officer has something to tell you.”
Spalding’s expression brightened with anticipation. “Yes?”
“I’m sorry to tell you that Clifford Spalding is dead,” Kerney said.
Confusion and anger washed over Alice’s face. “George isn’t dead.”
“I’m talking about your ex-husband, Clifford,” Kerney said.
“Well, he isn’t dead either,” Alice said emphatically. “Have you found George?”
“Not yet,” Kerney said, thinking he’d wasted his time coming to see her.
“I didn’t think so,” Alice said huffily as she rose. “Come with me, I have something to show you.”
She took him into an adjacent room. It was indeed a shrine, filled with framed photographs of George Spalding as a child, boy, teenager, and finally a young man in his Army uniform. On a heavy oak table were stacks of out-of-state newspaper clippings, some of them slightly yellow with age, others worn from constant handling.
She removed two recent news stories posted on a bulletin board behind a desk and handed them to Kerney. One, from an El Paso newspaper, had a picture of a middle-aged man accepting a civic award. The other article, with a photograph of a different man pushing a shopping cart filled with aluminum cans, was a story about homelessness.
“That’s George,” Alice Spalding said. “Now, all you have to do is go get him and bring him home to me. I never should have let him go. I need to tell him how sorry I am.”
Kerney stifled the impulse to ask which man was George, since neither one at all resembled the young soldier in Mrs. Spalding’s photograph. He glanced at Parker, who shook her head sadly.
“I’ll get right on it,” he said.
Among the photographs on the wall was a picture of Alice, Clifford, and a very young George Spalding in front of a pueblo revival-style motel that had been popular in the Southwest before the advent of the Interstate highway system. Kerney asked about it.
“It was our first motel in Albuquerque,” Alice said. “On Central Avenue. We owned it for years.”
“You lived in Albuquerque?” Kerney asked.
“I think so,” Alice replied as she glanced questioningly at Parker.
“Yes, you did,” Parker said.
Alice smiled in relief.
On the desk was a framed photograph of George in his Class A Army uniform, probably taken after his graduation from basic training.