Free Hotline to Murder by Alan Cook Page B

was a couple of
miles out of their way, but he didn’t want to have to return her to
the mall in the middle of the night. She ran inside her house and
told her mom she was riding to the police station in his car.
    “What kind of a car is this?” Shahla asked
as she returned and settled into the passenger’s seat.
    “It’s a Porsche Boxter.” Tony was proud of
his car, the one outward sign that he had accomplished something in
his life. Well, there was the townhouse, which he had shoehorned
himself into, but he still needed to have Josh live there as a
tenant to come up with the payments. He had leased the Porsche—a
manageable down payment, and reasonable monthly payments made him
look respectable. Of course, when the lease ran out, he would be
left with nothing. But he would cross that bridge…
    “It’s small. And it sounds as if the engine
is behind us.”
    “It’s behind our seats. Located for maximum
stability.”
    Shahla looked nervously over her shoulder.
“I hope it stays there.”
    Those were not the comments of a car buff.
Shahla wasn’t impressed. Maybe he should have settled for a Honda.
He made it all the way up to third gear on Pacific Coast Highway
and felt a little better as he listened to the purr of the engine.
He needed to take a trip to the desert so he could let it run for a
while, like a racehorse. It was not built for the stop-and-go
driving of a city.
    They arrived at the police station within
five minutes. Bonita Beach was a compact city. Joy’s murder had
reverberated through it like a fire siren and left the residents
feeling betrayed and anxious. The full impact to the city and to
the Hotline had grown on Tony as his shock had worn off, and now he
wanted to find the murderer as much as Shahla did.
    They walked into the station together and
approached the counter, behind which sat a young female officer
doing something with a computer. After a few seconds, she looked up
and said, “Can I help you?”
    Tony explained that they had some possible
evidence for the murder investigation. He expected her to just take
the envelope and their names, but she said, “Detective Croyden’s
here. I’ll get him. Have a seat in there.”
    She pointed to a doorway that led into a
conference room. Tony and Shahla went into the room containing a
worn wooden table and worn wooden chairs. On the wall were posters
relating to drugs, alcohol, and other temptations of the flesh. The
posters exhorted the reader against yielding to these
temptations.
    Shahla said, “‘Can I help you?’ means, ‘Am I
able to help you?’ I was tempted to say, ‘I don’t know. Can
you?’”
    “So what should she have said?” Tony asked.
He had never paid much attention in English class.
    “‘May I help you?’ That asks for
permission.”
    “Thank you for the lesson.”
    “No charge.”
    “Well, if it isn’t two of my favorite
people. I might have known I’d see you on Friday the
thirteenth.”
    Detective Croyden had entered the room while
they had their backs to the door, looking at posters. Tony turned
around and said, “Working late, aren’t you?” He knew why Croyden
might be sarcastic with him, but not Shahla, unless she had let
some of her dislike of the police show when he talked to her.
    “Crime never sleeps,” Croyden said. “What
have you got for me?”
    He didn’t ask them to sit down, and he
didn’t take a seat himself, so the three of them remained standing.
Tony thought he looked tired. There were bags under his eyes, and
his facial wrinkles were pronounced, as was his broken nose. Tony
pointed to the brown envelope he had set on the table and told
Croyden what was inside. He related how he had found and handled
the white envelope, mentioning that several of his own fingerprints
might be on it.
    “But at least you came to your senses before
you covered it with your prints,” Croyden said, with what might be
faint praise. “Do you know what’s inside it?”
    Tony missed a beat while he