Becky Lee
Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, I was married for about five minutes. Her name was Becky Lee, and we were both seventeen. Barely seventeen. As soon as our parents found out, they had the marriage annulled. There was nothing either of us could say or do to stop it from happening.
Becky and I stayed friends and kept in touch for a lot of years. She married again, to a guy named Rick Baker. She told me she was gonna be married to a Rick one way or the other. I stayed as far away from marriage as I could. Besides, I had a spouse of sorts – Simon and Winchester Private Investigators. After Eddie died it became Simon and Donahue. Sean and I tended to butt heads when he was a Sergeant with the LAPD and I was a lowly Private Eye. Things changed for both of us when he got tired of the crap the Police were dishing out to him, and something in me said he’d make a pretty good partner. I was right about that – he has.
Back to Becky. I hadn’t seen her since she became Becky Baker, but we’d kept in touch by phone pretty regularly. And then, all of a sudden, we didn’t. Months went by without a call, until the Friday afternoon before Thanksgiving. I was sitting at my desk expecting to hear from Dani Coleman, the woman I was seeing, so when Robin buzzed me and said I had a woman on line one I expected it to be Dani. What I got when I answered the phone was a voice I recognized crying hysterically. It was Becky Lee.
“Calm down, honey, I can’t understand a word. What are you trying to say?”
“I-I-I need your help, R-R-Rick. Please come, or he’s going to kill me.” She continued sobbing.
“Who’s going to kill you, Becky?” I needed to know so I could call the police.
“My h-h-h-husband.”
“Becky, honey, you’re imagining things.”
“No, I’m not. He threatened to kill me and I know he’s going to!”
“Alright, calm down, I’ll call the police and I’ll come over.”
“No, no police. You come.”
“Where do you live, Becky?”
“2834 McKenzie Street, Burbank.” She’d stopped blubbering, at least for the moment.
“You know it’ll take me a while to get to Burbank, don’t you?”
“Yes, I know. Just hurry.” And the phone went dead. I started to call the cops anyway. I should have called them, but I didn’t. That was my first mistake. I grabbed my coat and slipped my gun in its holster and headed for the front door.
“I don’t know when I’ll be back, Robin.”
She said something as I ran out the door, but I didn’t pay any attention to her. That was my second mistake. I jumped in the Mustang and blasted out of the parking lot, going as fast as I dared go. I hopped on the 5 Freeway, which was the quickest way to where Becky lived, except when it wasn’t. And tonight it wasn’t.
I sat for almost fifteen minutes while the police tried to clear an accident up ahead. Finally, I could stand it no more and pulled onto the shoulder, going around all the cars in front of me. The police were occupied in the slow lane; I was in the passing lane. They couldn’t have caught me if they’d tried. I practically flew the rest of the way on the freeway, and reached my exit in just a few minutes. McKenzie would take some bobbing and weaving on my part to get there, down one street and up the next. It took me much longer than I wanted it to, but I finally pulled up in front of the right house. There were no lights on inside, but the front porch light was on. Which meant I could be seen by anybody looking out their window.
I went around the back of the house to see if there was any entry available there. The back door was locked and it was too heavy for me to break down. In my haste to get here, I’d left my lock picking tools at the office. I wondered if that’s what Robin was trying to remind me to take with me when I didn’t pay any attention. There were no windows in the back of the house – I didn’t have any choice. I had to check the front door, bright porch light and all.
To my great relief and biggest fear, the front door was unlocked. I pushed it open and went in. “Becky! Becky Lee! It’s Rick Simon! Where are you?”
There was no answer, or sound of any kind. It was black as night inside, but I didn’t want to turn on any light I didn’t have to. I pulled out my flashlight and flicked it on instead, making my way cautiously through the place until I got to the back of the house, the kitchen. There appeared to be something large and still on the floor and I shifted my light. It still wasn’t bright enough to be sure what I was looking at; I found the light switch on the wall and flipped it on. What I saw on the floor made me sick to my stomach. It was Becky Lee . . . or rather, what used to be Becky Lee.
Someone had used a large, heavy object to do as much damage to the girl I once loved as they could manage. They’d bashed in her skull and face. Whoever killed her hated her very much. I couldn’t imagine anyone feeling that way about Becky. She was sweet and kind and caring.
I saw a smudge of blood by her right hand, but it was so small that’s all it looked like – a smudge. Ignoring it was my third mistake. I turned off the kitchen light and finally remembered to put my gloves on. That was my fourth mistake. I walked back into the living room and pulled out my cell phone, calling the police. Then I went back outside and sat in my car until they got there.
Two squad cars arrived first, and after two officers went inside and came back out looking green, they called the coroner and a detective. Thank God it wasn’t Brian Baylock – he’d have me drawn and quartered before I could even tell anyone my name. It was Cliff Norcross – a mostly reasonable man who’d been around almost as long as I had. I’d already explained to the uniformed officer how I came to be there, but Norcross made me go through the whole thing again. Then he started asking me questions. “How did you know Becky? How long did you know her? How long were you married? Why did you stay in touch? When was the last time you talked to her? Why were you here tonight? What did it look like when you get here? Were the lights on or off? Did you go around the back? Did you touch anything? Did you know she was married? Have you ever met her husband? Was Rick Baker here tonight? And finally, did you kill Becky Lee?”
I answered each one of them in turn, giving brief answers. “High school; since then; 5 minutes; we were friends; months ago; she called and begged me to come over; like it does now; lights were off; yes; yes; yes; no; I don’t know; no, most certainly not.” I showed him my P.I. license and gave him my card; he told me not to leave the state. After about an hour and a half of back and forth he finally told me I could leave.
I went straight home and threw up. Then I stripped and got in the shower, letting it run until I felt the water getting cold. I put on jeans and a t-shirt and sat on the couch. It wasn’t five minutes later my phone rang. It was Robin. “Good, you’re home. How is everything?”
“Not good,” I told her, “Becky Lee is dead.”
“And you’re not in custody?”
“No, Robin, I found her. With her head bashed in.”
There was sadness in her voice. “Oh, Rick, I’m so sorry.” Robin knew about my brief marriage and how I’d scrupulously avoided the institution ever since.
“Yeah, me too.” It took me a minute to gather myself. “I’ll be in tomorrow morning. I have to tell Sean the whole story.”
“Alright. Go to bed and try to sleep.”
“Right. Night, Robin.”
“Goodnight, Rick.”
I sat there staring at the wall for I don’t know how long. All I could think about was Becky Lee, and why anybody in their right mind would want to harm her. Of course, since I knew nothing about her husband, I didn’t have a clue about their relationship; I only knew what she’d sobbed to me when she called. “He’s going to kill me.”
I didn’t expect to sleep that night, and I got out my old high school yearbook and looked through it. Becky was everywhere; most of the time I was in the pictures with her. Eddie and I were best friends, but Becky was my girl and we did lots of school activities together. In the very back of the yearbook was the picture we’d had taken the day we played hooky from school and gone to the courthouse for our brief ‘marriage.’ We looked so happy – little did we know what was coming from our parents.
Sometime during the night I was worn out enough to fall asleep. I don’t think it lasted long; it was a little before six when I woke up. I got up and shaved, then made myself some coffee. I sat down with a cup and turned on the tv, waiting to see anything about Becky Lee. The police were keeping it quiet, because I saw nothing. That wouldn’t be difficult to do, since everything happened in the middle of the night.
Not knowing what else to do, I got dressed, then left for the office. I opened up the front door and went in, making a pot of coffee before I sat down at my desk. I checked the messages Robin left for me; it was too early to return any of them. It was a little after seven-thirty when I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore, and I rested my head on my desk, telling myself I just needed to close my eyes for a minute. The next thing I remember is hearing the front door – it was a few minutes after eight and I knew it was Robin.
“Hey, girl,” I called so she wouldn’t have a heart attack.
“I brought you a breakfast sandwich from Subway. Good lord, you look awful,” she said as she came into my office.
“Thanks. For the sandwich. And I’m not surprised I look awful. I feel awful.”
“Can I sit?”
I almost snorted. “Since when do you need permission to sit? But I wish you would.”
She sat and I wolfed down breakfast. By the time I was finished Sean arrived. “Get some coffee and come back. I only want to tell this once.”
“Last night?” he asked.
“How did you – ”
“I still have my police scanner. I heard the radio call and kept listening.”
I gathered myself. This wasn’t going to be easy. “That call from a woman you transferred to me last night, Robin . . . that was Becky Lee. Robin knows this, Sean, but you don’t. When Becky and I were seniors in high school we played hooky one day and went to the courthouse to get married.”
“Did you?” Sean asked me.
“Yes – and we remained married until we got home. Long story short, our parents got it annulled immediately. We stayed friends and stayed in touch over the years. She married sometime back to Rick Baker. As far as I knew, the marriage was fine. I hadn’t heard anything from her in a while, until last night.”
“She was almost hysterical,” Robin explained. “I could barely understand her.”
“She begged me to come over,” I continued. “Said her husband had sworn to kill her. I was going to call the cops and she pleaded with me not to, just wanted me to get there as fast as possible. Damn it, I listened to her. She lived in Burbank, for God’s sake. It took me longer than I expected; there was an accident on the 5 Freeway. I was too late. She was lying on the kitchen floor, bludgeoned to death. I looked for a weapon but didn’t find one. Then I called the police and waited for them. The detective they sent was Cliff Norcross, and he asked me every question he could think of – including the ones I’d already answered for the street cops.
“He finally let me go after telling me not to leave the state. That’s about it.” My stomach was churning again; all I could see was what remained of Becky Lee.
“Did you wear gloves?” Sean asked.
“I put them on when I was examining the scene.”
“Did you touch anything without them on?” Donahue was ever the cop.
“Yes, the front doorknob and the kitchen light switch.”
“Are you sure that’s all?”
I nodded. “Yes, that’s all.”
“And you didn’t move the body?”
“Nope.”
“Was the husband there?” I’ll say this, Sean was thorough.
“I don’t think so. I didn’t see anybody, but I never met her husband, so I can’t be sure.”
Sean sat there for maybe five minutes thinking. “Well, they didn’t arrest you, so that’s good. And her husband’s name the same as yours is something else in your favor. But the fingerprints . . . what were you thinking?”
“That’s just it – I wasn’t. I was just plain stupid.”
“I hate to agree with you, but you’re right.” Sean gave me that sort of sad hound dog look that he manages to get, and I prayed I hadn’t screwed up too bad. As long as the police didn’t come to arrest me.
