Cold Crossover

by T. R. Kelly

  “Many of you have heard stories from your parents about the famous Indian woman, Wilhelmina,” Elizabeth said to the children. “This is the remains of the Madrona Resort she built with her husband, Mikko Kurri. They both were known for their generosity and kindness.”

  “Did they move away after their house burned down?” a boy asked.

  Elizabeth glanced around to eight curious faces. “About twenty years ago, Wilhelmina lost her life in a mysterious fire that the natives say glowed all night above these hills. Mikko had taken their son to see the big city of Vancouver. When he received the news, Mikko never returned to the lake.”

  Mikko Kurri was last seen by a steamboat captain who had hunted deer on vacation near Lake Wilhelmina. The captain contacted Angelica Kurri, Mikko and Wilhelmina’s only daughter, and told her that her father had arrived in San Francisco and was asking about the whereabouts of a wayward drifter named Vance Tyler. Three days later, Kurri had bartered his carpentry services for passage to Helsinki.

  “I did hear about the fire at the Madrona cabin on Lake Wilhelmina,” the steamboat captain said. “But I didn’t get word of it until after I left San Francisco. I knew Mikko was looking for Tyler, but I had no idea why.”

  A San Francisco hotel and saloon owner, a cousin of the captain, found Vance Tyler early one morning propped up in a booth at the rear of his honky-tonk bar. A carpenter’s knife pierced his heart.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Noon, Saturday, February 5, 1982

  When I finally reached Dr. Robert Oliver at the Cranberry Tree Inn, we agreed to meet at the Calico Cupboard for lunch. Slim but lacking the gauntness that sometimes sets in during late middle age, his silver-streaked hair floating above a flaking scalp, Dr. Oliver appeared exhausted as he drummed his fingers lightly on the table. A green turtleneck topped an olive-drab windbreaker. He looked like Alan Alda after an all-nighter in a M*A*S*H emergency tent.

  “Any news?” he asked before I slid into the booth.

  “Nothing this morning.”

  He fidgeted in his seat and removed his jacket without standing. “Can’t handle the AC noise in hotel rooms, so I got up early and walked around town. Hadn’t seen some of those cute new shops down by the river. Realized the guy who bought my medical building expanded the parking lot. Everything else looks about the same.”

  A waitress stopped by with ice water and menus, oversized plastic sheets that wobbled when she dealt them. We blew through the obligatory topics—his flight up, the Arizona weather, and the best of spring training ballparks near Scottsdale—before we got around to his fourth and youngest child. In succinct yet winded sentences, Dr. Oliver mentioned he had not heard from Linn in more than two weeks and had no idea what drugs he had been taking for knee pain “or any other pain.”

  “The last time you spoke, did he seem down, maybe a bit depressed?” I said.

  “To the contrary. Very upbeat. Maybe a little fatigued, but he seemed positive. He’s been flying pretty high ever since I saw him in Scottsdale heading home from the Mexico trip.” He crossed his arms on the table and leaned in closer. “You believe depression has something to do with his disappearance?”

  I shifted in the booth, grabbed the bench seat with both hands, and stared into his weary brown eyes. “It’s come up, Dr. Oliver, along with the constant tiredness. Some people say he’s always dragging. Not long ago, one coach got a look at Linn, then hesitated about asking him to help out at a kids’ clinic.”

  “Please, call me Robert. Now, about the drugs. You’re thinking they might have contributed in some way?”

  “I’m no expert, and I don’t even know what he’s taking.”

  “Patients can respond differently to certain medications. I doubt if anything prescribed for pain could possibly affect his behavior. A new drug combined with an existing one might produce some disorientation. Add to that possible dehydration, lack of sleep.”

  Robert reached for the pepper shaker, unscrewed the top, and checked the contents. He quickly replaced the top, then pushed the tiny container back toward its partner. “Ernie, where in the world is he?”

  I sat back and stretched my arms along the top of the backrest. “I’m guessing he probably loaned somebody his car and then got in a carpool with a bunch of guys and went off to play a tournament. If he did drive on that ferry, there’s a chance he went up top and walked off.”

  Robert dragged a hand over his freshly shaven chin. “I don’t know. The carpool idea might make sense, but walking off the boat seems like a stretch. Personally, I keep going back to him admitting to me that he was burning the candle at both ends. Linn said sometimes the knee feels great, so he plays as much basketball at night as he can. Apparently, he can perform well for several days in a row before the knee becomes bothersome.” He shook his head, then continued after a silence. “You know, we preached moderation to all our children, but the message didn’t stick when it came to Linn and basketball. It’s as if he lost the chance of playing at an elite level, but he’ll do anything he can to keep it going with what’s left.”

  Anything?

  “He did cancel on me twice this year,” I said. “We’d planned to see a couple of young post players down near Monroe. But some rec team somewhere needed another player, and he just had to go.”

  “I know what you mean. Plus he works his tail off at the Shell station, then he bails out Kelvin anytime somebody calls in sick. I think Linn feels he owes him for letting him work there during grammar school.”

  The waitress took our orders. Robert chose a tuna melt, and I went with a double cheese burger. We both opted for coffee.

  “And speaking of owing,” he said. “The awful situation with Cathy kept me from--”

  “We’ve been over that. I hold nothing against you. So, please, can we just focus now on Linn.”

  He winced and waited a moment. “Please understand that Cathy was the only patient I ever lost. For years, her death blocked me from approaching you about anything, really. Even when my youngest child became your key player. With her in the back of my mind ...”

  “You don’t have to--”

  “Please, hear me out. I never could get around to telling you how much I appreciated everything you did for him. Lord knows, I was never around in those days. Just holding off the college recruiters was a full-time job. All the counseling, ball games, fishing. Even now—you’re doing stuff with him a dad should be doing.”

  “Hold on a second,” I said. “We talked about how you wanted to be around, more present.”

  “But it stopped right there. With my wishful thinking and should-haves. I think I was too ashamed about what happened to your wife to properly thank you for all you have been to my son.”

  I rotated my water glass, mopped its slippery wet circle with an open palm, and glanced around the restaurant, praying for our lunch to arrive.

  “When Linn was in Scottsdale, I told him some things I would have done differently,” Robert said. “I began to realize how many surrogate pieces you accumulated over the years. Funny, I felt embarrassed and fortunate at the same time.”

  We ate mostly in silence. Later, he asked about this year’s Fighting Crabs, the current coaching staff, and how many of last year’s graduates enrolled at four-year schools. Before we left, I insisted that he move into my spare bedroom when he was in town.

  “Greatly appreciated,” he said. “I could use the company, and I’m sure you don’t have a fan that comes on in the middle of the night. I usually stay with Bill and Lucretia but, given the circumstances, it’s probably better they’re gone. Some convention, plywood I think. Anyway, they’d be worried sick. I will warn you, though,” he added with a sheepish smile, “that I’ll get up at least once to use the facilities.”

  Once we got him moved in, Robert drove his rental car to Seattle to meet with an old friend, a researcher at the University of Washington medical school. I planned some research, too—into Mark Rice’s possible enemies—before meeting Harvey John
ston at the lake. It seemed we needed more data on a guy everybody seemed to like and the only one I’d ever known who was killed in a home for sale, steps from where Linn Oliver was living.

  **

  According to a fellow salesperson in his office, Pee Wee Rice, age thirty-eight, had been on floor duty the day last summer when Emory Sherrard walked into Imperial National Real Estate Services at the company’s flagship office in North Seattle.

  Sherrard said he was impressed with Rice’s marketing ideas, which included an after-work wine tasting for potential buyers on the home’s deck, followed later by a weekend open house and a Saturday swim. Kids were welcomed by a lifeguard, hot dogs, soda, chips and make-your-own sundaes under the covered porch. Rice promised to print fliers and distribute them throughout the high-tech corridor and advertise the property in the Sunday Seattle Tribune.

  On the same day that the property went into the multiple-listing association’s database, he would release the information to his confidential “pocket” prospects, a group that included high-ranking officials at Boeing and Weyerhaeuser. Knowing Rice’s flair for the flashy, he probably followed through on all promises.

  Sherrard was quite comfortable with an asking price of $99,950, loved the idea of luring families with the Saturday swim open house, and couldn’t wait to hear the response from Rice’s corporate executive clients. If nobody made an offer at the original listing price, Sherrard would simply lower it by a few thousand dollars and relist the house as a brand-new listing.

  But the Sherrard house continued to sit with little, if any, winter action. Until this week.

  The Rice murder slid the once-anonymous Lake Wilhelmina region under the national microscope, thanks to a front-page story in the Trib that was picked up by every major wire service and a nationally syndicated radio feature. The National Association of Real Estate Agents, the nation’s largest trade association, wanted to know how one of its own lost his life while showing a gorgeous waterfront home to a potential buyer in the Cascade foothills. This wasn’t the dirty, nasty big city. This was a tight community of retired weekenders and carefree summer vacationers on an eight-hundred-acre lake surrounded by evergreens and snowcaps, twelve miles from a small town. Everybody knew everybody—or knew somebody who did.

  I knew all about the house and Sherrard, a former Californian who brought his home equity and a boorish Golden State attitude with him to a software job in the growing high-tech corridor northeast of Seattle. He bought the property on a day trip, eventually demolished the older, homey cabin, and built a spec palace that featured impressive window walls, hardwood floors, an imported gas stove fit for a gourmet, plus a three-car garage to stow summer toys.

  Sherrard, looking for a quick lucrative flip, contacted our office about listing his property but Elinor Cutter refused to accept his demand for a sixty-day listing. Sherrard also required the asking price be set at twenty thousand dollars more than our agents felt the market would bear. Cookie’s call proved correct—the home sat on the market for eight months with little activity. Big price. Poor design. No takers.

  On my way to meet Harvey, I grabbed a jacket and a pair of rubber dairy boots that I used to walk properties. I decided to head south on I-5 toward Arlington, check a few new For Sale signs on Highway 530 then zigzag up the Possum Road, a six-mile unpaved switchback stretch littered with empty shotgun casings, skeletons of abandoned cars, and kitchen appliances that led to the south end of the lake.

  The Possum Store proved to be a convenient target for my midday road meal of Dr Pepper and Snickers. The splintered plastic marquee that hung hard by the highway (“You’re in Possum, Ain’t It Awesome!?”) had seen better days, as had the Camel-smoking grandma who teetered behind the cash register in a frayed terrycloth bathrobe and slippers. The creaky fir floors held white metal shelves with two of everything tourists needed, plus cases of animal beer stacked to the ceiling and enough cartons of cigarettes to make Philip Morris smile. The coffee smelled like burned rubber.

  “You a cop?” the woman said.

  “No,” I said. “Did you need one?”

  “Slew of Smokeys blew in here this mornin’. Frickin’ Johnny Law convention. Just don’t figure in February.”

  She counted my change, hesitated, then counted again.

  At the phone booth outside, I dialed Big River Realty to check my messages. The line was busy. Busy? We’ve got three lines. Either we’ve got a lot of winter weekend lookers, or the homicide had trickled down faster than I thought, and the old biddies at the office were chatting it up. I gave up, then managed to dump part of the soda on my shirt as the truck’s rear wheels shimmied out of a Possum Road hairpin. The stain, coupled with a Snickers smudge on the crotch of my jeans, had me looking my normal spiffy self as I climbed down from the truck at the Sherrard abode.

  I didn’t feel that bad when I saw Harvey, who hadn’t changed his clothes since I saw him last night at the M&J Tavern. His mood had headed even farther south; I could tell by the way he held his forehead as he paced across the beam-framed front porch of the Sherrard lake house.

  “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again,” Harvey recited as I approached.

  “Opening line in Rebecca,” I said. “A classic. Daphne du Maurier. But aren’t you a Hemingway guy?”

  “Yeah, well maybe it’s just being around this quiet place, the still water.” He limped down the steps to greet me but put little energy into his handshake. “Thanks for coming. We just arrived. Cops, detectives, don’t have squat, the CB in my car’s broke, and I’m freezin’ my ass off. We’re really on a roll.”

  Maybe he felt rusty from not spending more hours in the field. Recently, it seemed that Harvey spent half his time turning down full-time positions from other jurisdictions—federal, state, county, and city—or rejecting requests to travel to bizarre out-of-state crime scenes. He became celebrated in the forensics industry for making his initial pass through a crime scene with both hands in his coat pockets, careful not to disturb any material that could eventually prove critical to an investigation. The man was known to observe, evaluate, and file an expert opinion faster than anyone. His accuracy in the business was remarkable. He linked circumstantial evidence with physical propensities; time and place to speed and distance; mental tendencies to a list of likely medications.

  For the moment, though, he had zilch. I gazed up at the house and thought of the countless strangers I’d met showing homes in the middle of nowhere.

  “Unbelievable,” I said. “Rice was a veteran agent, for chrissake. I can’t imagine how he was caught off-guard in a vacant house.”

  “Makes me start to think the killer was somebody he knew.”

  I turned to face him. “Don’t most homicides involve somebody close to the victim, like a family member?”

  “True. In fact, the murders in my last three cases were committed by angry exes.”

  I propped a boot on the bottom step and folded my arms. “Harvey, Pee Wee was never married—at least that I knew about—but he was definitely a mover and a shaker. The guy had a way with the ladies. Maybe this was a neglected lover. A torrid affair gone sideways.”

  Harvey didn’t look up; rather, he continued to peer at the ground around and under the cedar steps. He waved to a police photographer and pointed to three areas he wanted evaluated and shot.

  “Heard a lot of chatter last night from his broker and a couple of agents,” he said. “Not much to go on. Evidently, a few years ago, the rumor was that he was involved with the wife of a drugstore owner down in Edmonds. We found out they did mess around some, but she eventually told him to kiss off. End of story.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t the end of the story. Maybe the flame was rekindled; the drugstore boy finds out, follows Rice to this house and pops him.”

  Harvey straightened up and frowned.

  “Or, the girl wants back in the romance, and Pee Wee blows her off,” I said. “You know what they say about a woman scorned.”

  �
��What a theory!” Harvey shook his head dismissively. “If you ever choose to give up selling real estate for a living, you could tell more of your stories and make some bad TV movies.”

  We shared a grin, and I filled him in on the information I’d received from the Seattle agents. All said they were stunned, figured Rice could take care of himself—or at least talk himself out of a bad situation—and never heard a word about somebody holding a grudge.

  Harvey stretched his arms above his head after I completed my report. He continued to work his right shoulder like the former minor-league pitcher he once was.

  “Very thorough,” Harvey said. “Looks like shaking down high-school kids all those years about after-game beer parties has improved your investigative skills.”

  “Hey, I had an ulterior motive. Some years, I was trying to save my job, keep players eligible by being a full-time babysitter. Anybody caught at a kegger during the season—drinkin’ or not—had to sit. For a long time.”

  Harvey climbed the front steps and began a detailed inspection of the porch windows, his nose not quite touching the double-pane glass. He worked his way down to the entry where he closely eyed the brass knob and lock.

  “Why don’t you walk me through how agents would unlock this door,” he said. “Is there a lockbox in that refrigerator over there they call a garage?”

  Before I could answer, a distinctive voice boomed from behind me in the driveway, the same raspy growl that my students and players complained about when ticketed in town. One of my guards got nailed for “reckless driving” for hovering near forty miles an hour in a thirty-five zone. All vehicles the man deemed to be in violation contained an attractive female.