Her Last Call (Arrington Mystery Book 2)

by Elle Gray

  I sit down on a bench before a sculpture depicting Chief Seattle, leader of the Suquamish tribe of Native Americans, who pursued a path of peace with the white settlers back in the nineteenth century. He was a great man who did extraordinary things in his time. Though some pro-environment speeches and letters have been misattributed to him over the years, many believe he’s one of the leading reasons the city of Seattle is so environmentally conscious today.

  The sculpture has Chief Seattle in his full Native American regalia, and really captures the strength and the wisdom of the man. It’s so lifelike; I swear he could step right off the pedestal, and I don’t think anybody would be surprised. There are times when I sit here, gazing at the magnificent monument, that I sometimes like to think I can hear his wisdom and intelligence in my mind echoing through the years.

  If nothing else, the sense of peace I find here, sitting beneath his ever-vigilant gaze, brings me some sense of comfort and peace. I take a sip of my coffee and gaze at the statue, letting the thoughts about the case churn in my mind, and make a silent appeal to Chief Seattle for a bit of his wisdom. I could use it right about now.

  After separating the wheat from the chaff, all I’m left with is a whole lot of nothing. I can’t prove Stella was taken from the Husky, or that the guy who’d accosted her had anything to do with it. Nor do I have a line on who the guy was anyway. The search of her room told me nothing really, and of course, I’m being shut out by the SPD.

  That last bit isn’t much of a surprise though. It’s why I have Brody stealing every scrap of information he can. What I wouldn’t give to have a look at Detective Lee’s investigative notebook. Unlike the murder book, a cop’s notebook is filled with on the spot observations, thoughts, opinions, and hunches. None of it is official, and usually, very little of it makes it into the murder book, but they can also provide some terrific insights. Notes that may not have seemed relevant at the moment but turn out to be instrumental somewhere down the line.

  But that’s something I’m going to have to get over since TJ is never going to give that up. Not in a million years. I briefly wonder if I can bribe him. Ten thousand for a peek at his notebook?

  I chuckle to myself. It’s about as likely as somebody being able to bribe me. I don’t know TJ well, but he seems like he’s buttoned up. Somebody who plays things straight. He seems like a decent guy, and I don’t get the impression he’s one of the department’s political hacks, who are only looking to move up the ladder. My impression is that he and I would probably have a lot in common if I were still with the SPD. My initial impression could be wrong of course, but I can usually size a person up pretty well.

  So with that avenue closed to me, where do I turn? I guess the next logical step would be to go ahead and talk to the girls Stella was out with that night. I saw their witness statements in the murder book, and neither had anything useful to contribute, but I’d rather look them in the eye when I ask them the questions. I want to see their reactions and their body language for myself.

  I walk into Delilah’s, an upscale restaurant in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle. Fremont is a hipster’s paradise, home to big companies like Google and mom-and-pop boutiques alike. The neighborhood has a quirky counterculture vibe they seem to pride themselves on.

  Delilah’s has a southern motif. The outside facade resembles a moonshiner’s shack, and the interior is filled with aged barrels and stills, replica bald cypress trees hung with Spanish moss, and old-fashioned lanterns. It’s a bit hokey. And very cheesy. Kind of reminds me of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland more than anything.

  I step to the deserted hostess stand and look around. At this time of day, the restaurant is only half-full of people wringing a little extra time off the clock as they finish up a liquid lunch. The place is quiet. There’s no music, and people are speaking low as if they’re in church or a library, the hushed buzz of their conversations punctuated by the soft clink and scrape of silverware on plates.

  I purposely picked this time to come in, knowing the lunch crowd would mostly be gone. Having struck out with Stella’s friend Abby already, I tracked down her other friend, Madison Greely. They were both with Stella the night she was taken, and though I don’t expect much, I have to do my due diligence.

  “Welcome to Delilah’s,” a girl says. “Table for one?”

  I turn to the hostess and give her a smile. “Actually, I need to talk to Madison Greely. Is she available?”

  The hostess, whose name tag identifies her as Courtney, nods. “Yeah, let me go grab her for you.”

  She turns and walks away, and I stand there, waiting for a couple of minutes. A girl in her early twenties walks up, offering me a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. I recognize her from the photo I took from Stella’s room: Madison Greely.

  Madison’s got long auburn hair, blue eyes, and skin the color of cream. She’s thin as a stick. Almost like she barely fits into the standard waitress uniform for the place: a light blue button-up shirt emblazoned with Delilah’s logo, with sleeves rolled up and a black half-apron over a pair of denim shorts.

  She looks tired. There are dark shadows beneath her eyes, and though she’s tried to cover them with makeup, it doesn’t really help all that much. She looks not just grief-stricken, but downright haunted. I get the idea that Madison was extremely tight with Stella.

  “Madison, my name is—”

  “Paxton Arrington. Yeah,” she interrupts, her voice trembling. “Abby and Sonya both told me I should expect you.”

  A rueful grin touches my lips, and I nod. “Can we talk?”

  “Sure.”

  Madison turns and walks off without another word, so I follow her through the restaurant. She leads me through the kitchen, and out a back door that opens out to a small courtyard that functions as the employee’s break area. We take a seat at a round, plastic table with a wide umbrella over it.

  She slips a pack of cigarettes out of her apron and pulls one out, slipping it between her lips. She holds the open pack out to me, offering me one, but I decline. Putting the box back into her apron, she lights up. I watch the smoke curling upward and notice how dark and dingy the underside of the umbrella is. She draws in another breath, the tip glowing an angry red, then blows out a plume of bluish smoke, and looks at me, clearly waiting for me to begin.

  “So you and Stella were close?” I ask.

  She takes another drag and nods, exhaling heavily. I’m not sure whether it’s out of frustration or exhaustion. “She was my best friend.”

  “I’m sorry. I know how painful this is.”

  “Do you?” She arches an eyebrow at me.

  I clench my jaw and meet her stare unflinchingly. “Yeah. Actually, I do...”

  Madison lowers her gaze for a moment as she takes another drag from her cigarette. The smoke drifts from her mouth, curling around her head before floating up and away.

  “So the night you went out with her and Abby,” I say. “Did anything unusual happen? Was there anybody bothering you?”

  She shakes her head. “No, not really,” she replies. “I already talked to the cops and told them nothing out of the ordinary happened.”

  “I get that. I’m not with the cops, though. So I don’t know what you told them,” I explain. “So bear with me since I’m going to be covering familiar ground.”

  Madison sighs. “Fine. Go ahead.”

  “Think back to that night. Do you remember anybody who was paying any undue attention to you?” I ask. “Was there anybody watching you? Anybody give you a strange feeling?”

  “I told you, nothing happened that night—”

  “That’s not what I’m asking. I’m asking you to think back. Close your eyes if you want. But try to remember the faces in the crowd around you wherever you were,” I interrupt. “Was there anybody watching you? Any faces that were familiar from one place you went to the next?”

  Madison tilts her head back and closes her eyes. She screws up her face and seems t
o be concentrating. Finally, she lowers her head and looks at me.

  “Now that you mention it, there was this one guy,” she starts slowly. “I remember getting a strange vibe.”

  “Why is that?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t know for sure. I mean, he looked like he was in his late forties, maybe early fifties, but he was hanging out in college bars. I remember seeing him at a couple of places,” she tells me. “I guess I didn’t think about it until now because people bar-hop on University Avenue. It’s just what we do.”

  “So why is it you remember him?” I ask. “What made him stick out in your mind?”

  “Well, it was the age thing for one,” she replies.

  My mind immediately flashes back to Don Gwynne, the owner of The Husky, which caters to college-age girls. It’s not overly surprising, or all that uncommon I guess, that older men hang out in college bars looking to pick up women half their age. Older guys having a mid-life crisis and dreaming of bagging a twenty-one-year-old sorority girl isn’t a stereotype without reason. So to my mind, there has to be another reason this guy stuck out in her mind.

  “What else is there?” I ask. “Aside from the age difference.”

  She shrugs again and takes a long drag from her cigarette before stabbing it into an ashtray that was already filled with butts. She looks down at her hands and picks at her nail polish, her face a twisted mask of grief and anger.

  “He just… I thought he was looking at me, but I think he was looking at Stella,” she says. “I mean, he wasn’t doing anything other than watching her. But I remember he had this weird expression on his face.”

  “What sort of expression?”

  “He looked angry,” she replies. “But I don’t know. Maybe he wasn’t looking at us at all. You know how some people just stare off into the distance, and it’s like they’re not really there?”

  I nod. “Sure.”

  “It could have been something like that,” she says. “I mean, if he was just staring off into space, it could look like he was staring at us, right?”

  “Yeah, it could have. Sure.”

  The fact that he sticks out in her mind tells me that he had left her a bit more unsettled than she’ll admit to. While her explanation could certainly be true, and he could have been staring at nothing, it’s worth trying to follow up on just because it’s something that’s vivid in her mind.

  “Can you describe the man?” I ask.

  She shrugs. “Like I said, he was maybe late-forties or early-fifties. White guy. He was a few inches shorter than you, I think,” she says. “Ummm… he had dark hair but was kind of gray at the temples. Dark eyes. He was clean cut. Looked like a professional type. Maybe a professor or something, I don’t know.”

  It’s the second appearance of the garden variety, generic white guy. To me, that’s significant. I don’t believe in coincidences. Never have. Madison has a few more details than Sonya did, but the basic sketch of the man remains the same. And the fact that he accosted Stella a few weeks before she was murdered makes it important.

  “Where did you see him again?” I ask.

  “At the Emerald Mine,” she tells me. “It was a couple of hours later.”

  “And was he paying attention to you guys again?”

  She shook her head. “Sort of, I guess? I mean, it was the same as at The Husky. He was just kind of looking nowhere.”

  I nod. “And what time did you, Abby, and Stella part ways?”

  “I guess it was close to midnight,” she replies. “Stella had a class the next morning and wanted to get some sleep.”

  “Did you and Abby stay at the Emerald Mine?”

  She nods. “Yeah, we didn’t have class the next day, so we stayed.”

  “Did anybody walk her out?” I ask. “Anybody see her to her car?”

  Madison’s expression darkens, and she looks down at the table. She’s bouncing her leg up and down underneath the table, shaking it, which is annoying, but I don’t say anything. Her hand is shaking as she lights up another cigarette and takes a long drag. She blows it out then looks at me, her face tinged with anger.

  “We’ve never had to before,” she hisses. “We’ve always been safe…”

  Her voice trails off, and she looks away, taking an angry drag of her cigarette. She blows it out and looks at me through narrowed eyes and with a clenched jaw, staring at me as if I had accused her of murdering Stella herself. Slowly though, the anger melts away. And in its place rushes in a flood of grief that makes her eyes shimmer with tears. She sniffs loudly and takes another drag on her cigarette and lets it out, wiping away the tear that had spilled from the corner of her eye.

  “No, we didn’t walk Stella out,” she says, her voice trembling. “I wish we would have. It’s just… you never think something like this could happen.”

  I nod. When you’re young, you think that way. When you’re Madison and Stella’s age, you think you’re invincible and are so blinded by the future you’re carving out for yourself, you’re oblivious to the very real dangers around you. But when you’re a bit older and have been around like I have, you know the world is a screwed up place. You know the worst things can happen to anybody, at any time, anywhere. Nothing is fair, and everybody is a potential victim.

  “Did you happen to notice the older guy after Stella left?” I ask.

  She looks away and wipes her cheeks again, seeming to fold in on herself. As she sits there, eyes watering but doing her best to hold back the flood of tears, Madison looks like a heartbroken little girl. She’s doing her best to be strong, but I can see cracks forming around the edges of her resolve.

  “I—I don’t think so,” she replies. “I wasn’t really looking for him, but I don’t recall seeing him afterward.”

  I ask her a few more questions, but don’t really glean a lot of information I didn’t already have. Still, Madison provided me with a few things to follow up on.

  “You did great, Madison. And I appreciate you taking the time to speak with me,” I tell her. “Thank you. I know how difficult this is.”

  She nods as I get to my feet and looks up at me for a long moment, gnawing on her bottom lip, still fighting to keep the tears from falling. She sniffs loudly and wipes her tears with the sleeve of her shirt.

  “Can I ask you a question?” she asks.

  I nod. “Sure.”

  “If you’re not a cop, why are you looking into this?”

  “I’m a private investigator,” I tell her. “Marcus asked me to look into it. He and Stella are… family friends.”

  It looks like something in her mind clicks, and she finally seems to recognize me. Or at least, finally seems to know who I am. I pull a card out of the holder in my jacket pocket and slide it over to her.

  “If you think of anything else, please call me,” I tell her. “Anytime.”

  “Are you going to find him?”

  “I’m going to try.”

  More tears spill down her cheeks. She doesn’t bother wiping them away this time, and when she looks at me, her eyes burn with ferocity and hate.

  “If you find him, I hope he makes you kill him,” she hisses.

  I give her a tight smile. “You take care of yourself, Madison.”

  I walk out of Delilah’s and head back to my car, all of the information she gave me swirling around in my head. The alarm beeps as I deactivate it with the key fob remote, but as I reach for the handle, my cell phone rings. I fish it out of my pocket, connect the call, and press it to my ear.

  “Arrington,” I answer.

  “Mr. Arrington, I have information regarding the murder of Stella Hughes that you will want to hear,” comes a woman’s voice.

  Every vein in my body suddenly freezes like ice. I turn in a circle, looking for anybody who could have an eye on me. The foot traffic this time of day is sparse, but I don’t see anybody that looks out of place.

  “Who is this?” I ask.

  “If you want the information I have, you’ll be at the Wi
lletson Garden at eleven-thirty tonight,” the mystery speaker says.

  The voice is muffled as if she’s speaking through a cloth to distort her voice. It works. I strain my ears to listen, and although there’s something naggingly familiar about the voice pinging in the back of my head, I can’t make it out.

  “And how will I know you?” I ask, hoping that if I keep her talking, I can puzzle it out.

  “Eleven-thirty. In the roses. Don’t be late.”

  “Wait, tell me—”

  The line goes dead, and I stand there looking at my phone like an idiot for a moment. I slip the phone back into my pocket, climb into my Navigator, start it up, and head for the office.

  As I drive, I keep replaying the brief conversation over and over in my head, trying to pin down the voice. I’m also wondering what sort of information this person might have.

  I’m intrigued, to say the least.

  Fifteen

  Arrington Investigations; Downtown Seattle

  “What are you, stupid?!” Brody practically shouts. “You have to be stupid to even be considering something like this.”

  Brody sits across the table from me in the Fishbowl, looking at me like I am, in fact, stupid. I lean back in my seat and give him a small shrug.

  “If it’s true and they have information—”

  “You do realize this is probably a trap,” he cuts me off. “And that you’re probably going to wind up dead if you go.”

  I chuckle. “Why do you always leap to the worst-case scenario?”

  “Because having spent practically my entire life around you, things usually end up being the worst-case scenario,” he fires back. “It’s kind of force of habit at this point, man.”