CHAPTER-03.
Jill and I sat in my six year old Taurus parked at the end of the block known as Antique Alley. We each took out a steno pad and started furiously writing notes. Jill finished in about forty minutes and it took me a few minutes longer to put down everything I remembered from the folks we had just interviewed. We had collected business cards from everyone we had talked to with the exception of the Adonis-like son of the mayor but it was not likely that Jill or I would forget any details of the lovely Mr. Donald Smith.
We had collected one security disc from Parnell Erickson that was unlikely to show us anything of value but we also had found that Steven Crowley of the Texas Treasuretrove had some tapes. He would not, however, turn them over unless we were cops, which, of course, we were not. I made a separate note to have Detective Samuels visit with Mr. Crowley.
We had found absolutely nothing that might point us to Lola’s next of kin. Everyone we had talked to seemed to like Lola but none knew her well. Those who knew her best knew nothing of her family.
There was perhaps an hour of sunlight left and we were still in the area of the crime so I took my digital camera out of the glove box and Jill and I walked around the area getting photos of the street and its buildings. We even walked around back and photographed the loading docks behind the storefronts including Lola’s.
Dinner hour on Sunday is an interesting time for businesses that depend mostly on week-end shoppers. The shoppers themselves were drifting away and would return to their own jobs Monday morning. The shops were doing their clean-up so they could shut down for the evening with most staying closed the following day or two. In other words Sunday evening for the shop owners was the Friday afternoon of regular week-day workers.
If one went south on Routh street a few blocks towards the central city one would find one’s self surrounded by clubs and restaurants that were also winding down the busy week-end. If one traveled north along Routh one would find some more traditional businesses like dry cleaners and convenient stores that yielded after a few blocks to a residential area that was the best address in Dallas fifty years ago but had felt a steady decline for decades.
Not far to the west of where Jill and I stood there was a large inner-city high-school which was, of course, this being a Sunday, all locked up. To the east was an area dominated by business offices mostly serving the legal community which would all be abuzz with activity Monday morning, but just like the high-school they were all abandoned right now.
Jill and I walked the neighborhood and kept my digital camera clicking away until the light faded on this small universe centered by the antique alley.
Senior Detective Eric Samuels had warned me to stay away from this case and then sent me in to interview the other business owners in the area. As Jill and I sat in the Dallas Police Station waiting room I reminded myself that I was on vacation, which basically meant that I wasn’t currently being paid by anyone. Still, I had just spent most of a beautiful Sunday up to my armpits on a murder case. My stomach growled at me to remind me I hadn’t eaten anything for hours. Jill and I would wait until we could give a brief report to Samuels, then, hopefully, we would be done with the case. It was a police case. Jill and I had nothing to do with it other than we had happened to be in the general vicinity of the crime a couple of hours before it had happened. As good citizens we had helped out as we could, but after our report we would leave it as a police matter.
Finally the detective called us into his small office where we verbally gave him our reports and he also had one of his techs download all the pictures from my digital camera. He thanked me for the one security disc I had been fortunate enough to collect, and he promised he would seek out the ones Steven Crowley would hand over.
We pulled out the business cards we had collected and Samuels carefully copied these. We went over each person we had talked to and Samuels promised to run background checks on each.
Samuels sincerely thanked Jill and I for our hard work and then once again warned us to stay away from the case as it was now officially a police matter. Fine with me. The one part of the mystery I was still worried about was contacting Lola’s next of kin. I had gathered no helpful information and Samuels had none either. He promised to let me know if anything turned up on that front.
We stopped at the first restaurant we could find open where we wolfed down something bland but hot.
It was 10:15 PM on a Sunday which meant that the bars in Dallas could only be open for another hour and forty-five minutes. I nudged the Taurus into a parking slot outside the Dallas Eagle which is a Gay/Lesbian bar in uptown. The place was filled with people but quiet, which fit my mood well. Jill and I went through the ritual we had developed where we tossed a coin. Fortunately I won the toss. I handed her my car keys and ordered a rum and coke. Jill sighed and whined a bit but asked for cranberry juice.
The music was played not as loud as a dance club but it was a bit louder then a quiet neighborhood bar would play it. There was a small dance floor but it was currently unoccupied. They had some sort of projector set up, and on a wall I saw a grainy black and white all male cast porno. Fortunately I could not well see that wall. It reminded me of a grade school party where all the boys sat on one side and all the girls were on the other. There were probably twice as many boys as girls. Since Jill and I are platonic I did sort of start looking around, but I never left the table.
When the big digital clock on the wall said “11:59” the bartender shouted out “Last Call.” I was just finishing up my third and felt a good deal better. We headed for the car and expertly Jill piloted my trusty steed to Irving while I enjoyed an open-windowed view of my fair city at sixty miles an hour. I was nowhere near drunk, but I was feeling pretty good. That all changed when we arrived at my house/office back in Irving and found it had clearly been broken into.