by J. A. Jance
“What was she wearing, did you notice?”
“One of those big funny sweatshirts. You know, the long kind.”
“Funny? What do you mean, funny?”
“It had an arrow on it that pointed. It said Baby.”
I had seen a sweatshirt just like that recently. At Darwin Ridley’s house, on the back of his widow, who never went to his games, not even statewide tournaments.
“What color was her shirt?” I asked.
“Pink,” Jenny told me decisively. “Bright pink.”
It was all I could do to sit still. “What time was it, do you remember?”
“Sure. It was just before we left. Mom brings me over as soon as I get home from school and have a snack. We’re at the store by about four-thirty or five, and we stay for a couple of hours. That way I catch people on their way home from work.”
“So what time would you say, six-thirty, seven?”
She nodded. “About that.”
“Jenny,” I said. “If I showed you a picture of those people, would you recognize them?”
Jenny nodded. “They were nice. The nice ones are easy to remember.”
Across the table from me, Sue was looking more and more apprehensive. “What’s all this about?” she asked. “This isn’t that case that was on the news today, I hope.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“I don’t think I want Jenny mixed up in this.”
“Jenny’s already mixed up in it,” I said quietly. “Aside from his basketball team, your daughter may have been one of the last people to see Darwin Ridley alive.”
Jenny had watched the exchange between her mother and me like someone watching a Ping-Pong game. “Who’s Darwin Ridley?” she asked.
“I believe he’s the man you sold all those cookies to,” I told her.
“And now he’s dead?” Her question was totally matter-of-fact.
“Somebody killed him. Late Friday night or Saturday morning.”
Kids have an uncanny way of going for the jugular. “Was it the woman in the pink shirt? Did she kill him?”
I’ve suspected for years that kids watch too much television. That question corked it for me, convinced me I was right. The problem was, it was closer to the truth than I was willing to let on. I already knew Joanna Ridley was a liar. I wondered if she was something worse.
“It’s not likely it was his wife,” I said, waffling for Jenny’s benefit. “At this point it could be almost anybody. We don’t know.”
“I hope she didn’t do it,” Jenny said thoughtfully. “I felt sorry for her.”
“What do you mean?”
“The man was in a hurry. He seemed angry. He kept looking at his watch and saying he had to go. She said he should go, that she’d pay for the cookies and leave them in his trunk.”
“Did she?”
Jenny nodded, big-eyed. “I helped her carry them to the car. She started crying.”
“Crying? Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure.” Jenny sounded offended that her veracity had been called into question.
“What happened then?”
“After she put the cookies in one car, she got in another one.”
“What kind?”
“Brown-and-white car, I think.”
“And did she leave right away?”
“No. She sat there for a long time, leaning on the steering wheel, crying. She finally drove away.”
I turned to Jenny’s mother. “Did you see any of this?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I must have been in the car, studying. When Jenny needs something, she whistles.”
“What about the check?” I asked.
Sue answered that question. “I turned it in to the cookie mother yesterday. She said she had to make a deposit this morning.”
I made a note of the cookie mother’s name and number. For good measure, I had Jenny go over the story one more time while I took detailed notes. “Is this going to help?” Jenny asked when we finished and I had closed my notebook.
“I certainly hope so,” I said.
“And can I tell the kids at school that I’m helping solve a murder?” she asked.
“Don’t tell them yet,” I told her. “I’ll let you know when it’s okay to say something.”
Jenny looked at me seriously. “Can girls be detectives when they grow up?”
“You bet they can,” I told her. “You’ll grow up to be anything you want to be. I’d put money on it.”
Sue Griffith got up. Jenny did, too. “We’d better be going,” Sue said.
“Thanks for buying all those cookies,” Jenny said. “But if you run out, I’ll still be selling next week. The sale lasts for three weeks.”
Jenny Griffith was evidently born with selling in her blood. I had a Porsche full of Girl Scout cookies to prove it.
I never did remember to buy the coffee. The coffee or the MacNaughton’s, either.
I called Peters as soon as I got home. “Guess what?” I said.
“I give up.”
“Joanna Ridley was at the Coliseum on Friday.”
“I thought she didn’t like basketball.”
“We’ve got a Girl Scout who says someone who looked like Joanna Ridley paid for the cookies we found in his trunk. By check.”
“She wrote a check?”
“That’s right.”
“So what do we do now, Coach?” Peters asked.
“I’d say we take a real serious look at the Widow Ridley and find out what makes her tick.”
“Starting with United Airlines?”
“That’s as good a place to start as any.”
“How about the neighbors?”
“Them, too.”
Peters hesitated. “What would she have to gain, insurance maybe?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” I replied.
“I’ve never dealt with a pregnant murder suspect before. The very idea runs against the grain.”
“Murder’s against the grain,” I reminded him. “Pregnancy’s no more a legal defense for murder than Twinkies are.”
Peters hung up then, but I could tell it still bothered him. To tell the truth, it bothered me. Joanna Ridley bothered me. I recalled her house, the way she had looked when she answered the door, her reactions when she finally learned what I was there for. I would have sworn she wasn’t playacting, but as I get older, the things I’m sure of become fewer.
I kept coming back to the bottom line. Joanna Ridley had lied to us, more than once. In the world of murder and mayhem, liars are losers. And they’re usually guilty.
Just thinking about the next day made me weary. I stripped off my clothes and crawled into bed. I wasn’t quite asleep when the phone rang.
“How’s it going, J. P.?”
“Maxwell Cole, you son of a bitch! It’s late. Leave me alone. I’ve got a job to do. I don’t need you on my ass.”
“Look, J. P., here I am calling you up to lend a little assistance, and you give me the brush-off.”
“What kind of assistance?”
“You ever heard of FURY?”
“What is this, a joke?”
“No joke. Have you ever heard of it?”
“Well, I’ve heard of Plymouth Furies and ‘hell hath no fury.’ Which is it?”
“It’s an acronym, F-U-R-Y. The initials stand for Faithful United to Rescue You.”
“To rescue me? From what?”
“J. P., I’m telling you, this is no joke. These people are serious. They’re having their first convention in town this week. They’re up at the Tower Inn on Aurora.”
“So what are they rescuing? Get to the point, Max.”
“They’re white supremacists. I interviewed their president today. No kidding. They want blacks to go back where they came from.”
“Jesus Christ, Max. What does all this have to do with me? I need my beauty sleep.”
“They said it’s possible one of their members knocked off Darwin Ridley.”
“J. P.…”
“Get off it, Max. You know how this works. Some kooky splinter group claims responsibility for a crime and manufactures a whole armload of free publicity. Don’t fall for it. And don’t complicate my life. I’ve got plenty to do without chasing after phony suspects who are playing the media for a bunch of fools.”
“Are you saying…” he began.
“If the shoe fits!”
With that, I hung up. The phone began ringing again within seconds, but I ignored it. It rang twenty times or so before it finally stopped.
Within minutes, I was sound asleep and dreaming about Girl Scout cookies.
CHAPTER
10
There’s only one thing to do with that many Girl Scout cookies—take them to the office and share the wealth. So I drove to the Public Safety Building and parked the Porsche in the bargain basement garage at the foot of Columbia. I’ve noticed that my 928 commands a fair amount of respect from parking garage attendants.
This one held the door open for me as I got out. Then I crawled back inside and dredged out the two cartons of cookies. When the kid handed me my parking ticket, I gave him a box of cookies.
“Hey, thanks,” he said, grinning.
“Just handle my baby with care,” I told him.
“We always do,” he replied.
I was halfway up the block when I heard squealing tires as he jockeyed the Porsche into a parking place. There was no accompanying sound of crumpling metal, so I didn’t worry about it.
Peters glanced up from his newspaper as I put the cookies on my desk. “Want one?” I asked.
“Are you kidding? That much sugar will kill you, Beau. What are you doing, peddling them for one of your neighbors?”
“Peddling, hell! I’m giving this stuff away, all in the line of duty.”
“Don’t tell me you bought that many cookies last night when you were talking to that little girl about the Ridleys.”
“She’s a terrific salesman.”
“And you’re an easy mark.”
For the remainder of the morning, while Peters and I valiantly worked at running a check on Joanna Ridley and tried to dredge a copy of the check out of a combination of Girl Scout and bank bureaucracy, our two desks became the social hub of the department. Word of free cookies spread like wildfire, and everyone from Vice to Property managed to stop by with a cup of coffee. Including Captain Lawrence Powell.
He wasn’t above taking a cookie or two before he lit into us. “Whenever you two finish socializing, how about stopping by my office for a little chat.”
Larry Powell’s glass-enclosed, supposedly private office offers all the privacy of a fishbowl, which is what we call it. It isn’t sound-proofed, either. You don’t have to be a lip-reader to know everything that’s going on behind Powell’s closed door.
“You’re out of line, Beau,” he said. “Dr. Baker has sent a formal complaint to the chief.”
“That jerk,” I said.
“Detective Beaumont, this is serious. Just because you can literally buy and sell city blocks in this town doesn’t give you the right to run roughshod over elected public officials.”
“Look, Larry, we’re not talking net worth here. Baker demanded information before I had it. Then he pitched a fit because I wouldn’t give it to him.”
“This is a sensitive case, Beau. If you’re going to go off half-cocked, I’ll pull you two off it and give it to someone who isn’t as hot-headed.”
“It wouldn’t be such a sensitive case, as you put it, if Peters and I hadn’t figured out who he was. Darwin Ridley was just an unidentified corpse by a garbage dumpster until we got hold of him, remember?”
“We’re making progress,” Peters put in helpfully, hoping to defuse the situation a little.
Powell turned from me to Peters. “You are?”
“We’ve been working one possibility all morning.”
“Well, get on with it, then, but don’t step on any more toes. You got that?” Powell had worked himself into a real temper tantrum.
“You bet! I’ve got it all right.” I steamed out of the fishbowl with Peters right behind me. Making a detour past our cubicle, I grabbed up our jackets, tossed Peters his, and shrugged my way into mine.
“Where are we going?” Peters asked.
“Out!” I snapped.
It took a while for the attendant to free my Porsche. It had been buried among a group of all-day cars as opposed to short-term ones. Once out of the garage, I hauled ass through Pioneer Square, driving south.
“I asked you before, where are we going?”
“Any objections to letting Joanna Ridley know we know she’s a lying sack of shit?”
“None from me.”
“Good. That’s where we’re going.”
“Do you think it’ll work?” he asked.
“She’s no pro. She’s not even a particularly good liar. It won’t take much to push her over the edge, just a little nudge, especially in her condition.”
Peters nodded in agreement.
By the time we got off the freeway, fast driving had pretty well boiled the venom out of my gut. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard sly references to the fact that having money had somehow spoiled J. P. Beaumont. Money doesn’t automatically make you an asshole. Or a prima donna, either. Damn Doc Baker anyway.
We drove across Beacon Hill, one of the glacial ridges that separates Puget Sound from Lake Washington. When we stopped in front of Joanna Ridley’s house, there were no cars there at all. I was disappointed. I had geared myself up for a confrontation. Now it looked as though it wasn’t going to happen.
We had turned around and were heading back to the department when we met Joanna Ridley’s Mustang GT halfway down the block. She was alone in the car.
“We’re in luck,” I said.
I made a U-turn and parked in the driveway behind the Mustang. When we stepped onto Joanna’s front porch, she greeted us with what could hardly be called a cordial welcome. “What do you want?”
“We need to talk.”
She stood looking up at us questioningly, one hand resting on the small of her back as though it was bothering her. “What about?”
“About last Friday.”
“I’ve told you everything I know.”
“No, you didn’t, Joanna. You didn’t tell us you had gone to the Coliseum and talked to your husband. In fact, you told us you never went near his games.”
Defiance crept across her face. “So I went there to talk to him. What difference does that make?”
“Why did you lie to us? You said the last time you saw him was at breakfast.”
She dropped her gaze. With eyes averted, Joanna turned to the front door. She unlocked it, opened it, and went inside, leaving us standing on the porch. Peters and I exchanged glances, unsure whether or not we were expected to follow.
“After you,” Peters said.
We found Joanna Ridley sitting on the couch. Her face was set, full lips compressed into a thin line, but there was no sign of tears. Peters sidled into a chair facing her, while I sat next to her on the couch.
“How did you find out?” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“It doesn’t matter. The point is, we know you were there. We have a witness who saw you there. You signed a piece of paper.”
She looked at me for a long minute. “The cookies,” she said. “I forgot about the cookies. I wrote a check.”
Putting her hand to her mouth, she started to laugh, the semihysterical giggle of one whose life has been strung so tight that the ends are beginning to unravel. The giggle evolved into hysterical weeping before she finally quieted and took a deep, shuddering breath.
“I don’t know why I’m laughing. I went to tell him I wanted a divorce, and I didn’t even do that right,” she said finally. “I ended up paying for all those damn cookies.”
“You
didn’t mention a divorce to us before.”
“I didn’t tell anyone. Why tell? If Darwin was dead, what did it matter?”
“But it could have some bearing on how he died, Mrs. Ridley. Do you mind if I ask why you wanted a divorce?”
“Mind? Yes, I mind.”
“But we need to know,” Peters insisted. “It could be important.”
She sat silently for what seemed like a long time, looking first at Peters then at me. At last she shook her head. “Darwin was screwing around,” she whispered. Once more Joanna Ridley began to cry.
Suddenly, I felt old and jaded. It didn’t seem like that big a deal. Husbands screw around all the time. And wives put up with it or not, divorce them or not. And life goes on. In most cases.
Darwin Ridley had not survived his indiscretion, however. I wondered if we might not be treading on very thin Miranda ice. We had not read Joanna Ridley her rights. I was beginning to think maybe we should have.
Peters and I waited patiently, neither of us saying a word. Eventually, she quieted, got control of herself.
“Does it have to come out? About the divorce, I mean.”
I did my best to reassure her. “We’ll try. If it has nothing to do with the murder itself, then there’s no reason for it to go any further than this room.”
She got up and walked away from us. She stood by a window, pulling the curtain to one side to look out. I knew what she was doing—distancing herself from us while she waged some ferocious internal war. Finally, she turned to face us.
“I guess I could just as well tell you,” she said softly. “You’ll probably find out anyway. I had a phone call that afternoon, about three-thirty or a quarter to four. From a man. He said I’d better keep that motherfucking son of a bitch away from his daughter.”
“Talking about Darwin?”
She nodded.
“That’s all he said?”
“No, he said I could tell that black bastard that his daughter wouldn’t be at the Coliseum to meet him, that she wouldn’t be at the game, and that if Darwin even so much as spoke to her again, he was a dead man.”
Stopping, Joanna looked at me, her eyes hollow. “That’s the other reason I went to the Coliseum. To warn him.”
“I don’t suppose the caller left his name and number,” I said.
Joanna shook her head. “This came yesterday.” Like a sleepwalker, she rose, crossed the room into the little study, opened a desk drawer, and extracted a large manila envelope, which she brought back to me. Her name and address were typed neatly on the outside. There was no return address in the upper left-hand corner. The postmark was illegible.