Hotline to Murder (10 page)

The teams were huddling around their
coaches; the match was about to start. The Bonita Beach players
wore white home uniforms with red numbers on the shirts. The other
team was dressed in green. The players on either side placed their
hands together in the center of their circle and shouted bonding
words, intended to psych them up for the battle to come. Then the
six starters of each team trotted onto the court.

Tony had no trouble picking out Martha from
Shahla’s description. She was tall and lanky and looked a bit
awkward, in a body that had grown faster than her coordination.
Acne spoiled her otherwise pretty face, indelibly marking her as a
teenager, even though with her size she could have been a lot
older.

The female referee, who sat on a platform at
courtside, blew her whistle and gestured with her arm. A Bonita
Beach player served the ball and the game began. Tony was
immediately impressed by the quality of the play. Of course, here
in the beach volleyball capital of the world, outstanding players
were the rule, but Tony, who had grown up in western New York, was
always fascinated with them.

Each player knew her role. One of the back
players would dig out a smash so hard that Tony barely saw it and
bump it to the setter. The Bonita Beach setter moved like a ballet
dancer. She handled good balls and bad balls alike, making perfect
sets, low, high, and sometimes backwards over her head in response
to secret signals that Tony didn’t understand.

Unfortunately, the Bonita Beach hitters
didn’t do as well. They scored some kills, but they also hit balls
out of bounds or into the net. And too often two of the opposing
players would leap at the same time as the hitter and block the
ball back into the Bonita Beach court, often for a point or a side
out.

In the middle of the first game, Tony felt
his cell phone vibrate. He got up from his seat and walked quickly
through the door of the gym, extracting the phone from his shirt
pocket as he went. Outside he pressed the Talk button and said,
“This is Tony.”

“Tony, Mona.”

“Hi.” Several students were talking loudly
nearby. He walked away from them, hoping their voices wouldn’t
carry over the phone.

“How is that presentation coming for the
lunch tomorrow?”

He was presenting the company program to a
group of doctors. Mona, who didn’t usually accompany him for these
presentations, was going with him. Everything had to be
perfect.

“It’s almost ready. I’ve got one more call to make,
and then I’m coming back to the office to work on it. I should be
there by six.” It was the correct thing to do. Mona was a
workaholic, and he knew she’d still be there. He looked at his
electronic organizer. “Oh, I forgot. I’m supposed to work at the
Hotline tonight. Well, maybe I can skip that.”

“Do you have any calls scheduled for tomorrow
morning?”

“Well, no.”

“Can’t you finish the presentation then? I don’t
want you to miss the Hotline. I’ve noticed a change in you since
you started there. You’re more sensitive to people.”

“Thanks. Yeah, I guess I can finish it in the
morning.” That’s what he had been planning to do before Mona
called. And now it was her idea, which was good. And his working on
the Hotline had also been her idea. Whatever it took to keep her
happy. Within limits.

They said goodbye, and Tony walked back
inside. As he took his seat, Martha spiked the ball into the net.
She hit the ball hard, but not always where she wanted it to go.
Occasionally she scored with a blistering shot, and the handful of
spectators would yell their approval. When she learned to control
her shots, she would be a standout. Tony guessed that would happen
within two years. She did better on defense. Using her height and
jumping ability to advantage, she blocked several shots.

Tony hadn’t seen Joy play volleyball, but he
suspected that she had looked a lot like Martha on the court—with
better coordination. Shahla said she had been a league all-star.
Bonita Beach could have used her today. The opponents lacked an
outstanding player, but their teamwork eventually paid off in a
close victory. Their players were ecstatic. They probably hadn’t
beaten Bonita Beach for a long time.

After the game, the Bonita Beach players
congratulated the players of the other team, an act of good
sportsmanship Tony appreciated. As the sweat-soaked players headed
toward the locker room, he stepped in front of Martha and said,
“Nice game, Martha.”

She glanced at him with a who-is-this-guy
look, made a rueful face and said, “Thanks.”

“I’m Tony, from the Hotline,” he said,
falling into step beside her. She was taller than he was.

“Oh.” She stopped walking and faced him.
“I’ve heard about you. What are you doing here?”

Who had talked to her about him? “I’ve been
reading good things about your team, and I wanted to see it in
action.”

“Yeah, right. It was good before Joy…” her
voice broke, “when Joy was on the team.”

“That’s what I want to talk to you about,”
Tony said. “May I buy you a coke at the Beach House?” It was only a
few blocks away.

“I’ve got to shower. And I’ve got a lot of
homework.”

“I’ll wait here until you shower. And I’ll
only take a few minutes of your time.” Tony gave her his best
pickup smile, the one he had used so successfully in college.

“Well, all right. I’ll meet you outside in a
few minutes.”

Tony congratulated himself on still having
the old charm, but he suspected that the reason she had accepted
had more to do with the fact that they both worked on the Hotline.
That created a bond between people.

***

“Joy was my best friend,” Martha said, stirring the
milkshake she had ordered, with a straw. “I loved her. We grew up
together. We did everything together. We learned to play volleyball
together.”

Shahla had also said that Joy was her best
friend. This tended to confirm his jealousy theory—not that Martha
was jealous of Joy, but that Shahla was jealous of Martha. He said,
“I suppose the other players were a little envious of the fact that
Joy was an all-star.”

They had driven to the Beach House in
separate cars. Many of the Bonita Beach students had their own
cars, or at least had ready access to cars. This amazed Tony, who
hadn’t had a car until he had bought one for himself after he
finished college. He wondered if this affluence was good for
them.

Martha shook her head. “It doesn’t work that
way. When you’re part of a team, you want the team to win. With Joy
on the team, we were winners. Without Joy, we’re…well, we’re kind
of mediocre. And she didn’t have a big head. She was a team player.
We shouldn’t have lost today. With Joy, we would have won
easily.”

She was lecturing him. Could she fake that
level of intensity? Tony knew from his own experience as a teenager
that they could be devious. But she sounded sincere. Seeing her up
close, he realized that when she lost her acne, she would be a
knockout. And when her coordination improved, she would be a good
volleyball player. She didn’t have to take a backseat to anybody.
He sipped his black coffee and shifted tactics. “Do you have any
idea who might have killed Joy?”

“Detective Croyden asked me that question.
It sounds crazy, but maybe it was somebody who wants the Bonita
Beach volleyball team to lose. We’ve been dominating the league for
years. The other teams would give a lot to beat us. You saw how
they celebrated today. And it’s not just the kids. It’s the
parents. When I was playing AYSO soccer, sometimes the referees had
to red-card a rowdy parent.”

“Well, that narrows it down to a few hundred
suspects.”

Martha smiled. “It’s just my idea. I don’t
know of anybody in particular.”

“When Detective Croyden asked me what I was
doing the night Joy was killed, I realized that I had nobody to
vouch for me. Did you have that problem too?”

Martha noisily sucked the dregs of her
milkshake through the straw and looked at Tony. She said, “I was
studying at the library. When it closed at nine, I went over to
visit Joy. She didn’t like to work alone at night.”

It took a moment for this to sink in. “You
saw Joy the night she was killed?”

Martha nodded. “I was just there for a few
minutes. I didn’t take any calls because I wasn’t working.”

“What time did you leave the Hotline?”

“About 9:30.”

“Did you walk out with the guard?”

“No. I left by myself.”

“And then did you go home?”

Martha shook her head. “I went and walked on
the beach. Alone. I sometimes do that. I didn’t get home until
about eleven.”

“How did Detective Croyden react to you
telling him this?”

“He didn’t say anything; just wrote it all
down. But he did ask me a lot of questions about my relationship
with Joy. I think he was satisfied, especially because I
volunteered that I had seen Joy. If I hadn’t told him, he wouldn’t
have known.”

“Has it occurred to you,” Tony asked, “that
you might have been the one to get killed?”

“Yeah. All the time.” Martha had a haunted
look on her face. “I feel guilty about it. That Joy got it instead
of me. Or that I didn’t stick around until she left. I might have
been able to prevent it. I have nightmares about that night. It’s
strange, but as a result, I’m working harder to be a better
volleyball player. And a better person.”

CHAPTER 12

Tony arrived at the Hotline before Shahla.
She had signed up to work every shift he worked. Although he knew
she had done it only because she hoped that he could help solve
Joy’s murder, he felt good about it, because it meant she trusted
him more than the other men and boys on the Hotline. Still, there
was the possibility that he wouldn’t meet her expectations. Again.
He thought back to his encounter with the Chameleon.

A boy and girl were working the
four-to-seven shift. Tony said hello to them but didn’t bother to
introduce himself. They left before Shahla arrived, so she didn’t
get the opportunity to quiz them about what they had been doing the
night Joy was killed. Tony was glad, because he became embarrassed
when she did that. He guessed he wasn’t cut out to be a
detective.

He signed in and took the good seat by the
window. No sooner had he sat down than the phone rang. He answered
it with his usual greeting: “Central Hotline. This is Tony.”

“I’m fifteen, and I’m a runaway.”

There was nothing like being smacked in the
face by the first pitch. It was a girl’s voice. Tony thought fast.
He said, “Are you safe where you are right now?”

“I’m at a phone booth.” She named an
intersection in Santa Monica. “And I’m not going back home.”

Tony decided not to ask her reasons. It
wasn’t his job to judge her. It was his job to make sure she was
safe. Shahla had just come in through the door he had left unlocked
for her. He put the call on the speaker and looked out the window.
The sun was setting. He didn’t want the girl to be out there alone
in the dark.

“Do you have any friends or relatives who
can help you?” Tony asked.

“Not here. Not nearby.”

She sounded frightened. She may be having
second thoughts, but whatever crisis impelled her to leave home
must outweigh her fear. Tony was frantically leafing through the
directory of available services in Southern California. He said,
“There are shelters you can go to. Some of them will pick you
up.”

At that moment, his eyes focused on such a
shelter with a Santa Monica address. Thank God. “I’ve got a number
for you. Do you have money so you can call the number or do you
want me to call it for you? Oh, they take collect calls.”

“I’ve got some money.”

“Do you have a pencil and paper?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, write this down.” He gave her the
number. “Call it immediately. If they can’t help you, call us back.
Okay?”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“And call us back to let us know that you’re
all right.”

She promised and hung up. Tony hated to lose
the connection. The chances were that she wouldn’t call back.

“She’ll be okay.”

Tony looked up into Shahla’s dark eyes.

She said, “That’s a tough call because we
probably won’t find out what happened. But you did the best you
could.”

What if that wasn’t good enough? Tony
continued to brood about it.

“I see you grabbed the good seat.”

Shahla feigned being upset and sat down at
another table.

He had to shake himself out of his
depression. “You snooze, you lose.”

“I had to take my mom to her class. It was
the only way I could get the car.”

Apparently, they were a one-car family.
Unusual for Bonita Beach. But with her father dead…. She had a
tough road to travel with only one parent.

Shahla went to the snack room and came back
with her usual plate of chips. She said, “Have you thought over
what I told you about Martha?”

He had not told her he was going to talk to
Martha. He was hoping that as a result of their meeting he could
report that she had an ironclad alibi and couldn’t possibly be a
suspect. Unfortunately, it hadn’t turned out that way. Martha’s
alibi was clad in a light mist that could be blown away by a gentle
breeze. However, Detective Croyden also knew that.

Tony wanted to keep Shahla out of it. He
didn’t believe Martha had a motive for murdering Joy, even though
Shahla might not agree. If Shahla was jealous of Martha’s
relationship with Joy, she might do something she would regret.

“I think Detective Croyden has already
talked to her. I understand he talked to all the members of the
volleyball team.”

“Who told you that?”

Who told him that? “I can’t remember. Maybe
Croyden did.”

“But he hasn’t talked to all the members of
the Hotline.”