Bound to Die

by Laurie Rockenbeck

  “There weren’t many left, to tell you the truth.” Her lips twitched and she made a strange half-cough half-groan sound in the back of her throat. “It looks like he canceled everything. It’s not like he needed to be here anymore, but it’s odd. He didn’t do any confirmation emails or anything.”

  “We’ll need the details of your trip in order to confirm your alibi.” Court said.

  “My trip?” Her eyes widened as she figured it out. She shook her head with an aggression that would give some people whiplash. “I had no reason to kill the man I idolized. Besides, he was dying already. I was already freaking about how little time we had left.” She waved her hand at the computer. “This tells me he was planning on not coming back.”

  “Had he talked to you about committing suicide?” Court asked.

  Agnes fell back against the chair. Her lips twitched and curled into a snarl. “No. He’d never kill himself. Berk … Mr. Drummond was a fighter. He would never give up without a fight. He was fighting his cancer with vigor.”

  “What do you know about Mr. Drummond’s Wednesday evening appointments?” Court kept it vague on purpose. He wondered how a woman with such keen perception could not know about her boss’s extracurricular activities.

  She sat up, suddenly alert. “Wednesday evening. I think he spent them with his wife.”

  “Are you sure?” Court asked. “Mrs. Drummond informed us that he was otherwise occupied on Wednesdays.”

  “Ah. I see. I knew that he was seeing that … that … creature.” She spat the word out. “But, I didn’t know if Audrey knew, or what she might tell you. I … didn’t want to embarrass her. She’s such a dear.”

  Creature? Someone had no love for Karen Hunter.

  “What did you know about their relationship?” Ivy asked.

  Agnes pursed her lips one shoulder shrugging into her dangling earring. “Not much. One day, about two years ago, I was clearing away some papers, and his phone was on his desk. He sometimes would leave it here while he went to the bathroom. He’d dropped it in the toilet once. Sort of awkward that way.”

  Each woman he’d talked to about Drummond had given him a different picture of the man. Audrey had painted a saint, Karen Hunter had portrayed him as tired and needy, and, now, Mooring was describing a kind-hearted klutz. He was, no doubt, all those things to some degree.

  “Anyway,” Agnes continued, “I saw a text from someone named ‘Ma’am’ telling him to….” She paused as she swallowed and shuddered. “She told him to shave.” The frown of disapproval deepened the lines on her face as her eyes shifted into tiny slits. “You know. His private bits, but she used crude words and was very demanding about it. When the text popped up, I was so shocked, but couldn’t help myself, so I read it.”

  Court could picture her standing there behind the desk, thumbing through his texts. “Did you ever talk to him about it?’

  “No. It broke my heart a little bit, thinking of such a strong smart man like that, doing whatever it was they did. But, he was always out of here by four o’clock on Wednesday afternoons, and I knew where he was going. I tried my best to not think about it. If I thought about it too much, I might have lost respect for him.”

  Ivy put her hand on top of the monitor. “Did you ever come across anything from this same ‘Ma’am’ again? More texts? Emails? Notes?”

  “No. I did my best to not notice anything about her. There were signs, though, you know? Sometimes, he’d come in on Thursday mornings, and there would be red welts on his wrists, or he would sit down more slowly.” Her eyes watered. “To need that in your life?” Anguish washed over her face and softened her sharp features.

  Court had run into so much as a cop, he’d learned that people could get off on doing just about anything. He placed a hand on the woman’s plump wrist. “Can you tell us who might have wanted to murder Berkeley Drummond?”

  “Murder? So, it wasn’t suicide? I knew he wouldn’t kill himself.” Her other hand went to her chest, pressing her paisley blouse against her freckled skin. “He was a good man, detectives. He was. But he wasn’t perfect. There was the whole Montpelier affair. But that was years ago. Before Samuel. His poor boy.” Her eyes widened as she spoke Samuel’s name as if it were a top-secret code. “That woman.”

  It was a little creepy that she seemed happy he had been murdered. Was the taint of suicide so horrifying? Was suicide solely the responsibility of a single person? “We know about his son and about Montpelier. Is there more to it than the newspaper reported?”

  “Mr. Drummond bought Henri out mere weeks before stock went through the roof. Henri came back to claim that he was supposed to receive more for his patent than he had, but the courts ruled against him. He hadn’t read his contract very closely.”

  “Was there something intentional in the way that went down?” Ivy asked. “Did Mr. Drummond force Montpelier out?”

  “No. There wasn’t anything malicious in any of it. But, Henri didn’t take it very well. I think he and his wife retired out to North Bend or Snoqualmie. No. That’s not it. Issaquah. They’re in Issaquah.”

  “Didn’t they get into a fight or something? At a Mariners game?”

  Agnes let out a derisive snort. “That was an over-reported exaggeration. The press treated it like a drunken brawl, and it was nothing of the sort.” She turned her watery eyes on Court. “Henri was an honorable man, and what people don’t know is that Mr. Drummond has been paying him profit sharing ever since, even when he didn’t have to, even after winning the case. Mr. Drummond felt bad about his old friend being shorted. He’s been on the payroll as a consultant bringing in six figures, all because of Mr. Drummond’s soft heart.”

  “If he’d stayed, what would Montpelier be making?” Court asked.

  “More like millions. But, honestly, detectives, I don’t believe there’s anything there.” She turned her gaze back to the monitor, clicked the mouse a couple of times and printed out contact information.

  Though they’d already cleared Montpelier; Agnes’s take on this wasn’t exactly useless. It backed up Montpelier’s story and explained how he could afford to spend days sitting on his ass in a monastery in Oregon.

  She raised a hand, suddenly remembering something. “You should talk to Mr. Wu about what he was up to last week. Mr. Drummond was furious about something. He called Mr. Wu in here and they had quite the row. After yelling at each other for several minutes, they both got so quiet I couldn’t hear a word they were saying.” Her words picked up speed as she spoke.

  Court wondered if she had been holding a glass to the wall for the details. “Were you always in the habit of listening to Mr. Drummond’s conversations?”

  Agnes flushed, pursed her lips. “They were rather loud, especially at the beginning. They spoke more quietly for upwards of half an hour. I don’t have any idea what happened, but Mr. Wu was upset when he came out of the meeting, and Mr. Drummond even more so.”

  “What does Mr. Wu do here?” Court asked.

  “He’s a shipping manager. He handles all incoming shipments from overseas. Double-checks the stock and matches them against inventory.”

  “When was their argument?” Ivy asked.

  “Berkeley was only coming in on Thursdays. Had to be a week last Thursday.”

  “And you have no idea what they were arguing about?” Court asked.

  “Nope. Their words were muted through the walls.”

  “We’d like to speak to Mr. Wu. Can you call him up here?” Ivy asked.

  Agnes’ eyes narrowed, and she returned her attention to the computer. She typed rapidly focused intently on the screen. She raised an eyebrow and looked at Court with an “I-told-you-so” look. “Huh. Isn’t this interesting? He’s not been to work since Wednesday.”

  “Is there anyone here who is close to Mr. Wu we could talk to? Maybe they know more about the argument,” Court said.

  “There’s a break in ten minutes. I can take you into the courtyard and introduce you to the people
he works with most closely.”

  “Okay, let’s do that. Meanwhile, let’s talk a little about what we need you to do for us.”

  “Anything. I’ll do anything if it will help you find out who killed him.”

  People were always saying that. They’re willing to help, to do anything. Half the time it was an empty promise. In this case, however, he was certain Agnes Mooring would come through for them. She was invested in Drummond and the business. She’d be helpful. “I want you to go through the last week’s emails, correspondence, files, anything in his desk. See if you can find anything that would explain the argument between him and Mr. Wu. Maybe Drummond wrote something down, made a note somewhere. Did he keep a journal?”

  “No. He made notes on his calendar, sometimes. Is there anything specific?”

  “We need anything that could explain what was going on. Make a timeline of all his activities from Monday morning on. Where he was, who he was with. No matter how trivial, you never know.” He thought about her earlier obfuscation around the Wednesday night dates. “And, no matter how embarrassing it might be for Berkeley Drummond, we need it. If he’s got another thing going, like the domme, we need to know about it. Okay?” Every time he heard a Chinese name connected with shipping, his heart rate went up a notch. His history with the Sino-Trans case would have him jumping to all the wrong conclusions if he wasn’t careful.

  Agnes Mooring flushed but lifted her bulk out of the chair. “I’ll get you everything, uncensored, as soon as I can. Of course, I’ll need a warrant. The board wouldn’t look kindly on me throwing open our files to SPD without one.”

  31

  “Okay, Pearson. Fill me in on what they were all talking about in there.” Ivy buckled her seatbelt.

  They got nothing out of the other employees. Wu worked at the loading bay as a foreman, checking in bundles from the shipping containers. He was in charge of opening and inspecting each shipment’s inventory against the shipping labels. He had a team of six, all Chinese.

  Colchuck Down grouped workers by language. The Mandarin speakers were in receiving and shipping. The Spanish speakers pieced together fabrics at the heavy industrial sewing machines. The Vietnamese ran the strange funnels that forced the feathers into various products.

  Court finished typing Wu’s address into the GPS. “Something is going on, but they are generally suspicious of cops. A few are illegal, and they didn’t want to be caught. They know that Wu is off work due to an injury, but no one was willing to talk about it. They were being super cryptic, even though they had no reason to think I could understand them. They’re uneasy about something. Maybe Mr. Wu will be more informative.”

  Court got Ivy going in the right direction before checking his voice mail. One was from the uniformed officer sent to collect Audrey Drummond. He had located her taking a mud bath in a private suite of a swanky Eastside spa. No one at the spa had enough of a spine to order Drummond out of her sloppy cocoon and so she had not yet arrived at the station.

  A text from his sister reminded him about dinner. One was from Cami telling him she needed to talk to him in person afterward. Maybe she’d drive him up to Belle Nuit, too.

  Madeline had texted four times. One was a selfie that showed a picture of her reflection in the full-length mirror of his bathroom. The room was steamed over, her naked body swathed in seductive clouds. A thick dollop of shaving cream sat on her sweet mound. She held his straight razor in her free hand. The text read, Hope your day goes smoothly. He let out a small groan. Whether it was from the bad pun or the smoldering desire to touch her, he wasn’t sure.

  “You okay, Pearson? You sound like you got hit in the stomach or something.”

  Court cleared his throat, looking for words. “Uh, yeah. It’s nothing.” He hadn’t taken Madeline for a naked selfie kind of girl. Not that it was a bad thing. He didn’t mind receiving them, but he hoped she didn’t expect a response in kind. That was not going to happen.

  32

  Beacon Hill was one of those Seattle neighborhoods with a real mix between the good, the bad and the ugly. In one area were cohesive housing communities working together on crime watches, block parties and trash cleanup—both living and not. Other blocks were filled with disparate low-income workers, families scraping by on jobs that paid minimum wage—or less. On another street working-poor, law-abiding folks sequestered themselves from the rabble.

  Ling Wu lived in one of the latter neighborhoods. A house where there might have been a happy Father Knows Best sort of family when they were originally built in the 1950s might today be filled with an extended, multi-generational family. Maybe fifteen to twenty people sleeping crammed together in rows across the floor of a bedroom. If Immigration wanted to do blanket raids, this is where they’d come. Except the people living here were mostly Chinese, and those anti-immigration prigs concerned themselves more with Spanish-speaking workers.

  Chinese people didn’t bother them as much. Maybe the image of people walking directly across the borders freaked people out more. Maybe the fact it took more effort to get here from China made people less wonky about Chinese illegals. Maybe the Chinese hid themselves better.

  As they got out of the car, Court and Ivy were greeted by three sullen, droopy-eyed boys sitting on the front stoop of the house. Court was well schooled in apathetic, bored kids. He’d grown up around plenty of kids like this, and he knew how to play them.

  The porch was crammed full with worn out chairs and was piled high with boxes. The lanky youths sat on the floor of the porch, backs against the chairs, legs dangling down toward what might have once been a flower bed, but was now a scrabble-earth wasteland.

  The oldest boy tilted his chin at them, the movement throwing his sleek black bangs off to the side and clearing his eyes at the same time. “Whatchya want?”

  Court held his badge up close to their faces. “We’re looking for Mr. Wu.”

  “I’m Mr. Wu.”

  Court cocked his head to one side, his eyebrow shooting upward with a clear “don’t give me any shit” signal.

  The teen rolled his eyes. “He’s at work.”

  Ivy put a foot on the bottom step of the porch, leaning forward on her elbows. She reached down and pulled a dead weed out of the ground, tossing it at his feet. “He’s not working and you know it.”

  “He’s sleeping then.”

  Court stepped into the empty flower bed and met the boy eye-to-eye. “Wake him up.”

  The smallest of the three backed away and ran into the house, all the while the one who had spoken continued to stare directly at Court. As far as Court could tell, there wasn’t a lot going on inside.

  “You must be good at poker,” Court offered.

  The kid broke a tiny bit. His eyes blinked, and he jerked a shoulder upward. “Not bad. Better at Mah Jongg.”

  “You and your grandma? You’re too young for Mah Jongg.”

  Ivy moved up the steps and stood at the door, watching where the smaller kid had gone. He reappeared, holding the door open and beckoning them inside.

  The house was tidy. A short Chinese “po-po” teetered in the kitchen doorway, hands on the frame for balance. Her white hair was parted in the center and pulled back behind her ears. Wrinkles lined her face from forehead to chin, testifying to a hard and long life. She wore an apron over a traditional high-collared silk shirt. Her shockingly small feet were clad in elegantly embroidered shoes. Bound feet? Here? How old was she? He’d never heard of anyone binding their feet in the United States. Not even eighty years ago.

  Behind her, the kitchen counters were covered with bowls of chopped vegetables waiting to be cooked in the giant wok set on an improvised, and certainly illegal, wok rack. It sat on a large metal drum in a corner, with a hose running from behind to a propane tank on the floor. Aluminum foil was duct-taped to the wall behind the contraption. A thick layer of grease crusting the foil testified to the fact it had been used frequently and for a long time with no obvious explosions. A rice steame
r blinked green, sending little aromatic puffs into the air. The familiar smells of bamboo shoots and Szechwan peppercorns vied with another familiar odor—incense.

  Three glowing incense sticks stood in a sand-filled bowl in front of a fifteen-inch-tall statue on a tall wooden table next to the door. Court recognized the long glowing beard and fierce face of Guan Yu on the statue. The figurine held the customary halberd in his left hand. Plates with bits of food offerings and small scrolls surrounded it. Court’s stomach did a triple flip before settling into a general flutter of angst. Crap. Maybe he was overreacting, but regular people—even regular Chinese people—did not put this kind of altar together out of a casual desire to appear traditional. This was a Triad family.

  If Wu was Triad, there might be a connection between their argument and Drummond’s death. A chill crept down his back as he contemplated the possible link between Colchuck Down and shipping containers. He should have known the Triad was merely laying low after the whole Sino-Trans thing had gone down. If Wu had been part of some smuggling operation, wouldn’t the gangs unit have already gotten involved? Court ran over the scene earlier at Colchuck Down, but he couldn’t remember recognizing anyone there.

  The boy spoke to the old woman in rapid-fire Mandarin. The kid asked the old lady if they should be doing anything, calling anyone. The Po-Po told him to be quiet and show the cops into their father’s room.

  “What’s this altar thing?” Ivy asked.

  He needed to play it dumb until they got back to the car. “I don’t know. Some sort of Buddhist-shrine thing?”

  The boy grabbed him by the arm, pulling him toward a bedroom kitty-corner from the front door of the house. Court could feel the ancient woman’s eyes piercing him between his shoulder blades.

  A middle-aged Chinese man lay in the bed, with his foot up high on one set of pillows and another set propping him up at the back. He wore striped pajamas, something out of a Fifties television show. Except his were in color. The foot was covered in a towel, but the tell-tale signs of an ice pack were leaking out onto the pillows. A girl in her mid-teens sat on the far side of the bed, her hands in her lap. The boy who’d showed them the way climbed onto the bed, sitting cross-legged next to Wu.