Trial by Fury

by J. A. Jance

  “Are you here about the memorial service?” she asked.

  “Memorial service?”

  “For Darwin. Tomorrow evening, after the funeral. Mr. Browning asked me to be in charge of planning it. The funeral is going to be small and private. We thought there should be something here at school for the kids. Something official.”

  “I’m sure that’s a good idea, Mrs. Wynn, but that’s not why we’re here.”

  “What, then?”

  “Do you have keys to the lockers in the girls’ locker room?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “I had a long talk with Bambi Barker in Portland last night,” I said. “There’s something on one of the locker ceilings we need to see.”

  Andi Wynn frowned. “I could probably get a master key,” she said doubtfully, “but I’m not sure I should. Did you talk to Mr. Browning about this? Shouldn’t you have a search warrant or something?”

  Peters sighed. “We probably should, but we’re not searching for evidence per se. It’s a matter of our simply corroborating something Bambi told us. I can assure you, we won’t be looking for anything but that one thing.”

  Andi Wynn sat quietly, considering what Peters had said. Finally, she shrugged. “I don’t suppose it would matter that much.”

  The three of us waited in her office chatting about inconsequentials until the final bell rang and school was dismissed. Then Andi left us to go to the office for the key. When she returned, she led us to the girls’ locker room. While Andi stood to one side and waited, Peters and I spent twenty minutes opening lockers, glancing up at the top to see if anything was written there, and then closing them again, being careful to disturb nothing else in the process. We were almost finished when we opened locker number 211.

  Peters was the one who saw the names written there. “Bingo! Holy shit! Look at this.”

  Peters isn’t the excitable type. He stepped aside, and I moved quickly to the locker, craning my neck to see what was written there, scratched with a sharp object into the gray paint on the locker’s metal top.

  Just as Bambi had said, Darwin Ridley’s name was the last one on the list, printed in awkwardly scrawled letters.

  The name that caught my eye, though, was that of Ned Browning. The principal.

  His name was on the list, too.

  Twice.

  CHAPTER

  18

  When I stepped away from the locker, Andi Wynn was looking uncertainly from Peters to me. “What is it?” she asked. “What did you find?”

  “Look for yourself,” I said.

  She did. I watched her expression when she turned back to face us. “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s a trophy case,” I told her. “The cheerleaders’ trophy case.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Let’s get out of here, Peters.”

  I welcomed the fresh air when we stepped back outside. I felt sick. Ned Browning, too. The one who had been so protective of his “young people.” He, too, had fallen victim to the cheerleaders’ hit list. More than once.

  We were nearing the office when I rounded a corner and ran full tilt into Ned Browning himself. Ned Browning and Joanna Ridley.

  Joanna looked surprised to see me. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “Working. What about you?”

  She nodded toward Ned Browning, who was carrying a large cardboard box. “Mr. Browning asked me to come get Darwin’s things. They’re hiring a replacement and he needs to use the desk.”

  Ned nodded. “It was most awkward, having to call, even before the funeral, but the board has moved forward and hired a replacement. He’ll be here at school tomorrow. I felt Mrs. Ridley was the only one who should handle her husband’s things.”

  “Did you find out anything?” Joanna asked.

  More than we expected, I wanted to say, but I didn’t. Instead, I reached for the box Ned had in his hands. “Would you like me to carry this to your car?”

  She nodded, and Ned handed it over. It was fairly heavy. “I’ll be getting back to my office,” he said. He turned to Joanna and took her hand. “Thank you so much for stopping by. Will you be attending the memorial service tomorrow night?” he asked. “Mrs. Wynn here is in charge of planning it.”

  Joanna glanced in Andi’s direction and shook her head. “I don’t know. I doubt it. It’ll depend on how I feel after the funeral. I appreciate what you’re doing, but I may be too tired.”

  Ned nodded sympathetically. “I understand completely. It would be nice if you could. It would mean a great deal to the students, but of course your physical well-being must come first.”

  He took Joanna’s hand and pressed it firmly. “You take care now, Mrs. Ridley. We’ll hope to see you tomorrow. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do.”

  Ned Browning scurried away toward his office, the little shit. I wanted him out of my sight. I turned to Peters. “I’ll help get this loaded into Joanna’s car and be right back.”

  We left Andi Wynn and Peters standing together in the breezeway. “Where did it come from?” Joanna asked.

  “What?”

  “The picture. I thought you were going to find out how the man at the newspaper got it.”

  “Oh, that.” Maxwell Cole’s column seemed eons away. “No,” I told her. “I haven’t been able to locate him yet.”

  “Oh,” Joanna said. She sounded disappointed.

  Her Mustang was parked in the school lot. She led the way to the trunk and unlocked it. The cover bounced open. A large tin-plated container, the kind restaurants use to hold fifty pounds of lard, sat in the middle of an otherwise empty trunk.

  Joanna looked at it and frowned. “What’s that doing here?” she asked.

  “What is it?”

  “It looks like my flour container. But what would it be doing in my car?”

  I put down the box. “I don’t know,” I said. “Let me take a look.”

  As soon as I cracked the lid on the container, before I even looked inside, I was sorry. The stench was overpowering. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. I lifted the lid anyway.

  Coiled at the top was a length of rope. Under it, through the center of the rope was what appeared to be a man’s shirt. A maroon man’s shirt, dusted with flour.

  For a moment, Joanna had recoiled, driven away by the overwhelming odor of human excrement. Despite the smell, she came forward again to peer warily inside the container. She saw the shirt at the same time I did.

  “That’s his shirt,” she whispered.

  I shoved the lid back shut. “Are you sure?”

  She nodded, holding her hand to her mouth. “That was his favorite, his game shirt. He always wore it.”

  “That day, too?”

  She nodded. “It’s either his shirt or one just like it.”

  I examined the outside of the container. A fine film of white powder lingered on the outside and on the top. I took a tiny swipe at the bottom edge with my finger and touched it to my tongue. It was indeed flour.

  “And this looks like your flour container?”

  “I’m sure of it. I keep it in the storeroom out in the carport. There’s a smaller one, a canister in the house. When I need to refill it, I get the flour from this one.”

  “And you have no idea how long this has been in your trunk?”

  “No.”

  I closed the lid of the trunk. “Open the car door,” I ordered. “We’ll put the box in the back.”

  Unquestioningly, Joanna did as she was bidden. She unlocked the rider’s door and held up the front seat while I shoved the box in. When I turned back toward her, she was trembling visibly, despite the fact that a warm afternoon sun was shining on her.

  “Wait here,” I said. “We’ll go somewhere we can talk.”

  I left her there and went in search of Peters. I found him and Candace Wynn standing right where we’d left them. They were laughing and talking.

  “I’m going to be
gone for a while,” I told Peters abruptly.

  Puzzled, he looked at me. “Want me to go along?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “No need. I’ll be back in half an hour or so.”

  To this day, I’m not sure why I didn’t have Peters come along with us. Joanna’s Mustang was small, but there would have been room enough for the three of us.

  Peters shrugged. “Okay. Suit yourself. I’ll wait here. Besides, I should get the camera from the car and take some pictures of that list. Even if it’s not admissible, doesn’t mean it isn’t usable.”

  I nodded in agreement. Leaving them, I hustled back to Joanna Ridley. She was still standing beside the Mustang, where I’d left her, as if glued to the spot. She jumped like a startled deer when I returned.

  “Would you like me to drive?”

  Wordlessly, she handed me her keys. I helped her into the car and shut the door. I got in and put the key in the ignition.

  Joanna seemed dazed, unable to grasp what had happened. “Why are those things in my trunk?”

  “That’s what we’re going to find out,” I told her. I started the car and backed it out of the parking place. The only restaurant I knew on Mercer Island was a Denny’s down near I-90. I fought my way through the maze of highway construction and found the restaurant on only the second try. For most of the drive, Joanna sat next to me in stricken silence.

  Once in Denny’s, we went to a booth in the far corner of the room and ordered coffee. “Tell me again where you kept the flour container,” I demanded.

  “In the storeroom at the end of the carport.”

  “Locked or unlocked?”

  “Locked. Always.”

  “When was the last you saw it?”

  “I don’t know. A couple of weeks, I guess. I don’t keep track.”

  “And you haven’t noticed if the storeroom has been unlocked at any time?”

  “No.”

  “When were you out there last?”

  She shrugged. “Sometime last week.”

  “And the flour container was there?”

  “As far as I know, but I don’t remember for sure.” She paused. “What are you going to do?”

  “Take the container to the crime lab. See what they can find out.”

  “Why was it there?”

  “In your car?”

  She nodded.

  “Someone wanted it found there.”

  “So you’d think I killed him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you?”

  “No.”

  There was another long pause. The waitress came and refilled both our coffee cups. While she did it, Joanna’s eyes never left my face.

  “Is that smart?”

  “For me not to suspect you? Probably not, but I don’t just the same.”

  “Thank you.”

  I was sitting looking at her, but my random access memory went straying back to Monday night, the first night I had seen her, when I brought her back from the medical examiner’s office. The light in the carport had been turned off. Was that when the flour container disappeared?

  I leaned forward in my chair. “Joanna, do you remember when we left your house that night to go to the medical examiner’s office? Do you remember if you turned off the light in the carport before we drove away?”

  She frowned and shook her head. “I don’t remember at all. I might have, but I doubt it.”

  “Did you notice that when we came back the light wasn’t on?”

  “No.”

  “Where’s the switch for the light in the carport?”

  “There are two of them. One by the back door and one by the front.”

  “Both inside?”

  “Yes.”

  I downed the rest of my coffee and stood up. “Come on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “We’re going to drop the container off at the crime lab and make arrangements for them to send someone out to your house to dust it for prints.”

  “You think the killer was there, in my house?”

  “I’m willing to bet on it.”

  “But how did he get in? How did he open my car without my knowing it?”

  “Your husband had keys to your car, didn’t he?”

  She nodded.

  “And the killer had Darwin’s keys.”

  She stood up, too. “All right,” she said.

  “I’m making arrangements for someone to put new locks on all your doors, both on the house and the car.”

  Joanna looked puzzled. “Why?”

  “If he got in once,” I said grimly, “he could do it again.”

  I had no intention of unloading the container from Joanna’s car into ours to take it to the crime lab. Janice Morraine, my friend at the crime lab, tells me evidence is like pie dough—fragile. The less handling the better.

  It was rush hour by the time we were back in traffic. I-90 westbound was reduced to a single lane going into the city. It took us twenty minutes to get off the access road and onto the freeway. Rush hour is a helluva funny word for it. We spent most of the next hour parked on the bridge. I would make a poor commuter. I don’t have the patience for it anymore.

  Joanna was subdued as we drove. “The funeral’s tomorrow,” she said finally. “Will you be there?”

  “What time?”

  “Four,” she replied.

  “I don’t know if I’ll make it,” I said. “What about the memorial service at school. Will you be going to that?”

  “No. I don’t think I could face those kids. Not after what happened.”

  I didn’t blame her for that. I would have felt the same way. “If I were you, I don’t think I could, either,” I told her.

  The entire cheerleading squad would probably be there.

  Except for one. Bambi Barker.

  CHAPTER

  19

  Joanna Ridley dropped me back at Mercer Island High School a little after seven. It wasn’t quite dusk. The only car visible in the school lot was our departmental Dodge. A note from Peters was stuck under the windshield wiper. “See the custodian.”

  I went looking for one. It took a while, but I finally found him polishing a long hallway with a machine that sounded like a Boeing 747 preparing for takeoff. I shouted to him a couple of times before he heard me and shut off the noise.

  “I’m supposed to talk to you.”

  “Your name Beaumont?” he asked. I nodded, and he reached in his pocket and extracted the keys to the car in the parking lot. “Your partner said you should pick him up at the Roanoke.”

  It didn’t make sense to me. If Peters had gotten a ride all the way to the Roanoke in Seattle, why hadn’t he asked Andi Wynn to drop him off at the department so he could have picked up his own car? I was operating on too little sleep to want to play cab driver, but I grudgingly convinced myself it had been thoughtful of him to leave the car. At least that way I’d have access to transportation back downtown.

  None too graciously, I thanked the custodian for his help and set off for Seattle. Something big must have been happening at Seattle Center that night. Traffic was backed up on both the bridge and I-5. I finally got to the Roanoke Exit on the freeway and made my way to the restaurant by the same name on Eastlake at the bottom of the hill.

  Andi Wynn’s red pickup wasn’t outside, and when I went into the bar, there was no trace of Peters and Andi inside, either.

  “Can I help you?” the bartender asked.

  “I’m looking for some friends of mine. Both of them have red hair. A man, thirty-five, six two. A woman about the same age. Both pretty good-looking. They were driving a red pickup.”

  “Nobody like that’s been in here tonight,” the bartender reported. “Been pretty slow as a matter of fact.”

  “How long have you been here? Maybe they left before you came on duty.”

  The bartender shook his head. “I came to work at three o’clock this afternoon.”

  I scratched my head. “I’m sure he said the Roan
oke,” I mumbled aloud to myself.

  “Which one?” the bartender asked.

  “Which one? You mean there’s more than one?”

  “Sure. This is the Roanoke Exit. There’s the Roanoke Inn over on Mercer Island.”

  “I’ll be a son of a bitch! You got a phone I can use?”

  He pointed to a pay phone by the rest room. “Don’t feel like the Lone Ranger,” he said. “The number’s written on the top of the phone, right under the coin deposit. It happens all the time.”

  Sure enough, the name Roanoke Inn and its number were taped just under the coin deposit. Knowing that I had lots of company didn’t make me feel any better. I shoved a quarter into the phone and dialed the number. When someone answered, I had to shout to be heard over the background racket.

  “I’m looking for someone named Peters,” I repeated for the fourth time.

  “You say Peters? Okay, hang on.” My ear rattled as the telephone receiver was tossed onto some hard surface. The paging system at the Roanoke was hardly upscale. “Hey,” whoever had answered the phone shouted above the din, “anybody here named Peters? You got a phone call.”

  I waited. Eventually, the phone was picked back up. “He’s coming,” someone said, then promptly dropped the receiver again.

  “Hey, Beau!” Peters’ voice came across like Cheerful Charlie. “Where you been? We’ve been waitin’.”

  It didn’t sound like Peters. “Andi and I just had spaghetti. It’s great. Want us to order you some?”

  Spaghetti? Vegetarian, no-red-meat Peters pushing spaghetti? I figured I was hearing things. “Are you feeling all right?” I asked.

  “Me?” Peters laughed. “Never better. Where the hell are you, buddy? It’s late.”

  Peters is always accusing me of being a downtown isolationist, of not knowing anything about what’s on the other side of I-5, of regarding the suburbs as a vast wasteland. I wasn’t about to ’fess up to my mistake.

  “I’ve been delayed,” I muttered. “I’ll be there in a little while.”