CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Jock and I were sitting in a rental car outside a duplex near the campus of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. It was late afternoon, the sun hanging at a low angle over the city, a bit cooler than in Florida, but not much.
A ten-year-old Honda pulled into the driveway and stopped. The young man who got out of it was tall and lanky, a mop of brown hair sticking out from under a ball cap. He was in jeans and a T-shirt stained with sweat. He moved slowly, a man tired after a long day of work in the sun. He walked to the front door and let himself in. He was the man in the photograph I held in my hand, the one of the boyfriend sitting across the table from Katherine Brewster on the night she died.
I’d talked to Debbie the night before, after she got off work and was home and in a less than great mood. I asked her to hack into the University of North Carolina at Charlotte computers and see if she could come up with an address for Doug Peterson. She gave us the duplex.
We’d taken a plane from Tampa nonstop to Charlotte that morning, arriving just after noon. We had open reservations back to Tampa and enough clothes to last us a couple of days if necessary. We’d come looking for information on the Brewsters and we figured Doug Peterson was the one who could enlighten us.
We’d been there for an hour, sitting in the car, watching the neighborhood. It was quiet, most of the people at work or school or somewhere. The area was depressed and depressing, a place for minimum-wage job holders and students struggling to better themselves, to live, or exist, until things looked up for them. Hope kept the residents moving forward, toward a college degree or the next promotion on the job. Hope that the future would relieve them of the necessity of living in a rundown part of town that had seen its best days shortly after World War II.
We had seen no movement in the other side of the duplex. No one home. Jock looked at me. I nodded. We got out of the car and walked to the front door. I knocked. Doug Peterson opened the door, a quizzical look on his face. Probably thought we were Jehovah’s Witnesses or something.
Jock stepped past me, put his hand on Peterson’s chest, and pushed him back into the house. I followed. “Doug Peterson,” I said, “you are in more trouble than you can even imagine. Sit down.”
Jock pushed him into a nearby easy chair in front of the TV. Fear was written on the boy’s face, shocked by the violent intrusion into his sanctuary. “What do you want?” he asked, his voice trembling.
“Where are the Brewsters?” Jock asked.
“How would I know?” He was making an effort, scared as he was. My respect level rose. He was scared but wanted to protect his friends.
“Because,” I said, “two days ago you rented a U-Haul van, packed up the Brewsters, and drove to Hickory with them following you in their car.”
He blanched, the color draining out of his face.
“Look, Doug,” I said, “we’re here to help. I met with the Brewsters three days ago. They couldn’t tell me much. We want to know about Katherine’s murder and why the Brewsters lied to us.”
“That was you who came to their house on Sunday?”
“Yes.”
“You said they lied to you. I don’t understand.”
“You don’t have to,” said Jock, scowling.
Doug looked at Jock and back at me. “We think you had something to do with Katherine’s death,” I said.
“No. God, she was my whole life. We were going to get married.”
“Why were you on the dinner boat with her the night she was murdered? You didn’t go to Florida with her.”
“Who are you?” he asked, plaintively.
“I’m a lawyer and this is my investigator. We’re looking into the murders on the Dulcimer.”
“Why?”
“That’s none of your business,” Jock said, a tightness in his voice. He was playing his role nicely. “Answer the question.”
“No,” Doug said, “I didn’t go to Florida with her. Look, we’d been having a little rough patch. I didn’t like her working at Hooters, but she was making too much money to quit. She was going back to school, and as soon as we finished we were going to get married.”
“What was your problem with Hooters?”
“Not with the restaurant, with some of the customers.”
“What do you mean?”
“Guys were hitting on her.”
“Surprise.”
“Yeah, but there was this one guy in particular. He was stalking her, calling her cell phone, driving by her house.”
“Did she give him her phone number or address?”
“No. I think he got it from one of the other girls, but I’m not sure.”
“Did he ever threaten her?”
“Not in so many words. But he’d come into the restaurant and sit for hours staring at her. He told her once that he loved her and would have her one way or the other. That may have been a threat.”
“Did she go to the police?”
“No. She thought she could handle it.”
“Did you ever talk to the stalker?”
“Once. I saw him at Hooters. Kat pointed him out to me. I went over and told him to leave her alone or I’d kick his ass.”
“What kind of response did you get?”
“He just laughed.”
“That was it? Nothing else?”
“No. Kat was embarrassed that I’d made a scene. Told me to butt out.”
“Did you?”
“Pretty much. That was the cause of our disagreement. I felt like I wasn’t protecting my girl, but she wouldn’t let me get involved.”
“Do you know the guy’s name?”
“No. She wouldn’t tell me. Said she was afraid I’d do something stupid.”
“Do you know anything about him?”
“Just what one of the girls told me.”
“What?”
“That he owned a travel agency and traveled a lot.”
“What was the name of the agency?”
“EZGo Travel.”