Classmate Murders - Bob Moats (ready player one ebook .txt) 📗

recovered the letter. It read:

"James, I know its been years since we've seen each other, but I talked to joyce harper and she said she heard you were working for a detective company. I got your email address off the alumni website and I don't know who to turn to but I'm afraid for my life, I can't call the police and I thought you might help me. if you could call me, I'm at 555-3682. I can't even go out of my apartment. please call, Dee."

I printed out the letter and read it again.

I pulled my trusty Palm Treo cell phone out of my pocket and dialed the number. It rang about four times then a male voice answered.

"Hello?"

"May I speak with Dee, please?"

"Who's calling?"

"I'm a friend of hers from high school, can I talk to her please?"

"I'm afraid she can't come to the phone." He paused. "She was murdered earlier today."

Hearing those words sent a shuddering chill through my body.

The voice on the phone asked, "Who are you again?"

I didn't know what to say. "I'm a friend from high school." I blurted out.

"You said that already, but who are you?" He demanded.

"Well, who's asking?" I demanded back.

"Detective Sergeant Will Trapper, Clinton Township Police. Now, you wanna answer my question."

"Oh." My mind was blank. "Uh, My name is Jim Richards, I knew Dee from high school."

"Yeah, I got that much already. When was the last time you saw Miss Wittenfield?"

"I guess it's been over 40 years." My brain tried to do the math but I just rounded it off.

"You call now after 40 years, why?"

"She sent me an email today to call her."

There was a silence for a beat then he asked, "What did the email say?"

I read it to him from the print out, he was silent again.

"That's all she said?"

I assured him that was it. "What happened to her, may I ask?"

"We're investigating, that's all I can say right now. Wittenfield said in her email that you were with a detective company, who do you work for?"

"Oh, it's actually a security company, I was a guard. They had a contract with Dooley Cadillac on Eight Mile and I worked there 4 nights a week watching the cars. I'm not working for them at the moment. I quit."

"Why'd you quit?"

"Long story, be happy to tell you about it sometime, unless you got about 20 minutes now to hear me rant about my employers." He let it go.

He asked how I could be reached, I told him and he said I'd probably be called in to answer some more questions. I don't know what more I could have told him, other than Dee and I went steady for about a month 40 years ago. I hope that wasn't grounds for suspicion.

I hung up the phone, in a daze. A girl I had a super crush on years ago had been murdered and she wanted me to help her. I sat there for a long while, my mind just numb.

I knew Buck was working the midnight shift tonight at the dealership so I called him. He and I spoke to each other just about every night on the phone, but since I left working there our calls just amounted to when he was working, I didn't want to bother him at home.

"Hey, Jimmy, wass up!" His voice was smooth with a touch of southern in it. I never did ask him about that.

"Well, I've got a mystery on my hands."

"Talk to me, man, I'm intrigued." I could hear his smile through the phone.

I told him about the email and the phone call. I read the letter to him and he was quiet for a bit.

"Wow, a murder mystery. When you gonna start investigating?" The smile came again.

"Buck, she was a long ago love in my life and now her life is gone. I'm at a loss here as to how to feel or what I should do about it."

"Well, she thought you could help her, maybe you should." Buck has this outlook on life to seize the day and damn the torpedoes.

I loved good crime/mystery stories and I own over a hundred e-books that I read on my Palm TX when I have some free time. I read just about every Alex Cross book by James Patterson and I was up to my 20th "in Death" book by Nora Roberts writing as J. D. Robb about the futuristic police detective, Eve Dallas. My other crime heroes were Spenser, Sunny Randall and Jesse Stone in separate books by Robert B. Parker and lately Travis McGee by John D. MacDonald were the tasty meat that I devoured. The thought of being a P.I. intrigued me.

"Ok, so where do we start?" I posed the question.

"Whoa, you offering me a job as junior detective?" He kidded.

I ignored him and was studying the email printout.

"You know she mentions a mutual friend, Joyce Harper, in her email, maybe she would know what Dee was afraid of." I commented.

Buck was excited. "When do we start, Kemosabe?"

"I'm not the Lone Ranger, Buck. I'd rather be Spenser." Buck had no idea who I was talking about. "Remember 'Spenser for Hire', 60's TV show with the late Robert Urich?"

"Oh yeah and the "Hawk" his sidekick, one big mean mother fricker. Spen-sahh"

"Yeah that one." I had to relate Hawk with Buck, now my sidekick in crime solving. I smiled at the "Spen-sahh" reference which was the name Hawk often had called Spenser on the show.

"Ok, so how do you find this Harper woman?" Buck queried.

"Well, for the last 5 years I have been the web guy for my high school alumni website and I have seen her name on the alumni board. I could go there and get her email address and contact her that way. Or do a Google search for her. Either way this town is small enough I can locate her."

"So go look her up and talk to her, man." Being caught up in the flow, his excitement came through the phone.

"I'll see what I can do tomorrow to locate her. But tonight I have to get through the fact I lost an old friend and not to old age."

"Hey buddy, I understand. I've lost a few friends over the years." He spoke quietly. Buck was a biker, and I knew he lost some people he knew due to careless and often drunk drivers on the roads. People in cars don't watch out for those smaller vehicles on two wheels.

"Yeah, I know. Well, I'll call you tomorrow night and let you know what happens."

"Well, good night, buddy, you need me, just call! Don't get yourself murdered." He grinned through the phone.

"Not about to, take care."

I hung up and sat back in my rickety desk chair. It made it's annoying squeal that I often worried would wake my parents. I listened and heard nothing. I probably could oil the damn thing but that would have meant doing physical labor, I wasn't up to it anymore. I went to my computer's keyboard and brought up Google and typed in Dee Wittenfield. It came up with just over one million hits which was a bit of a lie, since Google looks for every instance of the name Dee and and every instance of Wittenfield. That can cover every Dee online, from Dee Wallace-Stone to Dee Dee Myers. My Dee Wittenfield was not to be found even after I searched through about ten pages. I knew then she wasn't a person to be found on the web. I tried Joyce Harper and she came up on the first page with her real estate agency. I added the address and phone number to my Palm Treo and put my computers back to sleep for the night. I wasn't in any mood now to be looking for more free software to download and pack into my already bloated computer.

I turned off the desk lamp and was left with all the tiny LED lights from numerous computer accessories that made my room look like the starry night sky. I still sat in my aging chair and just took in the lights. My mind wandered back to a day on the school bus when I passed Dee a note asking if she wanted to go steady with me. I watched her reading the note and she looked up and smiled, nodding a yes to my note. I was in heaven, but fate took us apart when she was bussed off to a new school in the district just a few weeks later. We lost touch and then when we all joined back into the big high school, I was afraid to approach her, so I lost her again though she was still close by. She was a beauty and after graduation I often wondered what had happened to her. Now I knew and even though I never saw her all these years, I still remember her as a young beauty.

I plopped down on the bed but didn't get much sleep that night.

*


Chapter Two

I did finally doze off by around 4 A.M., I think, it was the last time I looked at the clock. The alarm on my Palm TX rattled me out of bed playing the James Bond theme that I ripped off the DVD of the latest movie "Quantum of Solace". It had a jazzy attack on what was the thread for every Bond movie beginning from "Dr. No". The gun barrel moving across the screen as Bond walks into view and shoots his weapon. The music blares, our blood stirs as the screen goes red with blood.

I was already dressed since I forgot to get undressed last night, and it was just after nine o'clock. I whizzed out of my room almost knocking my Mother over in the hall way. I said my good mornings and gave a quick excuse for heading out the door. But I did pause long enough to ask her if there was anything she needed while I was out. After a bit of sorting through her gray matter, she said no. I think my Mom is tops but at 80 years old she was becoming a little slow getting her eggs in order.

I refuse to get any older than I am now.

Sitting in my car, I started up the map program on my Palm TX and did a quick find on the Harper Reality address. I got a pinpoint on the location on the tiny road map and headed there. Her business had what they used to call "banker's hours" and didn't open till 10. I wandered over to the small restaurant in the shopping plaza where Joyce had set up shop. It was a small diner and I scooped up the local paper off the counter and went to a booth. The front page screamed out about the murder yesterday of a local woman, giving a bit more detail than what Trapper had provided me with last night which actually was nothing. It said she was killed in her apartment by strangulation and there were no witnesses. My mind played a gruesome image of her having the breath squeezed out, and I