Before Harry could say anything he had spun around and reentered the office.
Back inside, Waldo led Bobby Joe away from the secretary’s desk, then leaned in close so he could speak without being overheard.
“Now you listen to me, son. You sure this detective isn’t gonna find anything out that’s gonna come back and embarrass this church?”
“I’m sure, Daddy.”
“I’m countin’ on you to make sure it stays that way, hear? And you also better check that list Emily’s putting together and keep anybody off it who might be a problem.”
“I’ll see to it, Daddy.”
“Make sure that you do. You also make sure everybody else knows that’s how I want it to be.”
“I will.”
Waldo caught his son’s eyes moving toward the exterior door of the office, and he turned and saw Harry standing there.
“Hot out there,” Harry said. “Thought I’d come back to the airconditioning while I waited.”
The ready-made smile returned to Waldo’s face. “Good thinking,” he said. “But I’m afraid we’re going to have to head right back out into it.”
CHAPTER NINE
Lola Morofsky sat in one of her oversized office chairs, her feet dangling well above the floor, her five-foot, hundred-pound body making her look like a small child who had stumbled into a giant’s living room. Lola adjusted her half-glasses on her long nose as she read the rap sheet Harry had just given her.
“Nasty fellow,” she said. She turned a page and raised disapproving eyes to Harry. “You realize, of course, that you have juvenile records here, as well as adult records-juvenile records that you are not supposed to have.”
Harry feigned surprise, without any attempt to be convincing. “Must have been a computer glitch.”
Lola looked at him over the half-glasses, her soft brown eyes incapable of anything more than a mild reproach. “Yes, I’m certain it was,” she said, her Brooklyn accent weighty with sarcasm. “What does your person of interest do for a living?”
“He’s come home to Jesus,” Harry said.
“What does that mean?”
“He’s a minister… ordained by his minister father. He works in Daddy’s evangelical church.”
“Quite a change for him,” Lola said as she went back to the rap sheet. “Let’s see, we had three instances of possession, along with several burglaries as a juvenile, which are charges that often go together. It seems that all were treated with in-house arrest and probation, except for one stint in a boot camp. Then, as an adult-he didn’t seem to learn anything in boot camp, which is often the case-we have several bad check charges, all dismissed after restitution was made.”
“Probably by Daddy,” Harry interjected.
Lola nodded. “Probably. It’s not uncommon for parents to open their wallets when young adults get into trouble. But it’s usually just a Band-Aid, not a solution, to the underlying problem.” She read on, nodding her head as she did so. “Next we have a possession charge which was dropped when he agreed to cooperate with a police investigation of his supplier. Then we have a conviction for fraud, where one Robert Joseph Waldo fleeced a retired couple out of ten thousand dollars in a phony home improvement scheme. This one Daddy couldn’t buy him out of and he was sentenced to a year. Since then nothing.”
“His jail record shows he had some trouble inside,” Harry said. “I don’t have anything in writing on this-it’s all verbal from people in corrections. But according to them Bobby Joe accused two inmates of sexual assault. Claimed they attacked him in a laundry room where they were all working. But the accusations never went anywhere. Three other inmates supposedly witnessed the attack, but claimed they didn’t see anything, so it became Bobby Joe’s word against the two men. Corrections, of course, took the easy way out. The two assailants got hit with some minor administrative punishments, loss of privileges, that sort of thing, and Bobby Joe got placed in an isolation unit. Down the road it was probably a factor in his early release-he got out after doing six months.” Harry offered up a shrug. “The sheriff doesn’t like news stories about inmates getting buggered in his jail, and the word going around is that he pushed to get Bobby Joe out early after he agreed to keep his mouth shut. The sheriff knows Bobby Joe’s father, although I’m not certain how well, beyond the fact that there’s a picture of them shaking hands on a wall in the minister’s office.”
“And, of course, you’re thinking that Darlene Beckett escaped more serious charges because the victim, after an agreement was reached with his parents, refused to testify against her.” Lola extended one palm up. “It’s an interesting coincidence, Harry. But as a motive for murder it is very, very thin.”
Harry nodded. “As thin as it gets, but I have to start somewhere. What do you think of Bobby Joe as a suspect?”
Lola gave him a noncommittal shrug. “His background certainly points toward him being a sociopath, but I’d need harder evidence to put that label to him. From what you’ve told me I suspect that his father is quite domineering. That could very well be the root of his psychological problems, but again that would require analysis, perhaps even long-term analysis.”
“So I’ve got nothing,” Harry said.
“You have a suspect, Harry. That’s always something.”
When Harry returned to the office he found Anita Molari, the exotic dancer known as Jasmine, going through driver’s license photographs of the men who had visited Darlene’s home. She was seated in the conference room next to Pete Rourke’s office, which now housed the additional members of the task force. One of the newly assigned uniformed deputies sat across from her.
Harry placed a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Go grab some coffee,” he said. “I’ll take over for a while.” When the deputy left Harry gathered up the photographs. “Let’s move out to my desk,” he suggested. “I’m expecting some phone calls I don’t want to miss.”
Anita Molari was a different person away from the Peek-a-Boo Lounge. The last time Harry had seen her she was wearing only a thong and a see-through beach robe that put her very shapely body on open display. Today she was dressed in an oversized T-shirt and loose-fitting shorts that made her seem small, almost frail. Her short, dark hair was damp, as though she had rushed straight from her shower, and the vivid blue eyes Harry remembered from the Peek-a-Boo Lounge simply looked tired. She reminded him of the saying: Rode hard and put up wet.
“Do any of the photographs look familiar?” he asked, as they seated themselves at his desk.
“Not yet.” She looked at him, head tilted to one side. “I don’t really understand why it’s important for me to look at these pictures if you already know these guys were at Darlene’s house.”
“I want to know if anyone who visited her home might also have followed her to other places.”
“You mean like a stalker?”
“That’s right. Anyone who might have been obsessed with her, or who might have been stalking her because of something she had done to them, or to someone else.”
“Like that kid they said she molested?”
“That’s right.”
Anita gave a small shake of her head. “I never understood that. I always wanted to ask her how she could do something like that, but we never got close enough where I felt I could.” She gave Harry a questioning look as though he might know the answer. “I mean she was beautiful, really beautiful. There aren’t many women who look like that. And the way men stared at her…” She shook her head again, then shrugged. “I get those looks when I’m up on the stage, practically naked. Darlene would have got them if she walked in wearing a burlap bag. And you know something? She wasn’t a bad person. I don’t know if she was a good person. I mean I talked to her and all, but not that much.”
“But enough to know she wasn’t a bad person,” Harry said.
“Yeah, that’s right. Somehow it just doesn’t make sense.”