by J. A. Jance
Janie, I surmised, was likely to be Etta Mae Tompkins’s longtime neighbor, the one Maxwell Cole had interviewed. Obviously this was a very full house. It seemed to me one more uninvited guest probably wouldn’t make much difference. After only a moment’s hesitation, I followed Mr. Dawson inside.
The small entryway also reeked of Pine-Sol. I wondered if Pastor Mark’s most likely unanticipated arrival had interrupted someone intent on the grim task of trying to erase from his mother’s walls and floors the bloody evidence of LaShawn’s untimely passing. Dried blood isn’t easy to remove, however, and subtle remnants of stains and splatters still lingered. I guessed that it would take new plaster, paint, and tile to do the job completely. A framed poster depicting Jesus in His crown of thorns hung on the wall next to the door. Real blood now marred the printed surface, meaning that would have to be replaced as well.
Beyond the entryway I could see a white man with long, flowing gray locks. He seemed to be in full retreat. “I’ll be going, then,” the man I assumed to be Pastor Mark said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“And I’m sorry for yours,” Etta Mae conceded. “I know Shawny was a big help to you.”
As Pastor Mark made for the door, I had to step into the living room in order to allow him to pass. I knew I’d need to interview Pastor Mark eventually, but now was not the time.
The living room was tiny, just big enough for two chairs. Between them was an occasional table with a single lamp. A small color TV set with no sound sat perched on top of an old-fashioned and apparently dead console set. And that was all. A large black woman with a halo of wiry gray hair was seated in one chair with a sturdy walker positioned close at hand.
Squinting to see me better, Etta Mae Tompkins raised an implacable finger in my direction. “Who are you?” she demanded. “And where did you come from?”
I dug out my ID and handed it over. “Homicide,” she mused, squinting some more and holding it up to her face in order to read it. “I’ve been talking to homicide people for days now. Can’t you-all get together and talk to each other and leave me alone? And what are you staring at?”
Embarrassed, I realized I was staring. I knew LaShawn Tompkins had been thirty years old. Human biology being what it is, his age gave me a rough idea of how old his mother would be—probably close to my age or younger. This woman was much older than that.
“You think I’m too old to be Shawny’s mama?” she asked. “Is that it?”
I was reminded yet again why it is that I don’t play poker.
“My daughter died a few days after Shawny was born,” Etta Mae explained without my having asked. “He was a breach baby, and they had to do a cesarean. She ended up dying of an infection—sepsis, they called it. I’m the one who brought Shawny home, and I’m the one who raised him. I’m the only mother he ever knew. You got a problem with that?”
“No, ma’am,” I told her.
She reached over to the table and picked up a folded copy of the front section of Sunday’s Seattle Times. “That’s what this here man, this Mr. Cole, thought, too!” She sniffed. “Elderly! Where does he get off calling me elderly?”
I realized then that Max was losing his touch—that he must have phoned in his interview rather than actually meeting with Etta Mae. If he had seen her in person, he would have noticed the same thing I had and he certainly would have mentioned it, but if Etta Mae wanted the world to think LaShawn was her son, far be it from me to say otherwise.
“So what do you want then, Mr. Policeman? Why are you here?”
I was the one who was supposed to be asking the questions.
By then my fellow visitor, Mr. Meals-on-Wheels, had off-loaded his food. He stood in the kitchen doorway observing the proceedings between Etta Mae and me with a good deal of satisfaction and no small amount of amusement. As soon as she sent one of her fearsome glances in his direction, however, Dawson seemed to think better of hanging around.
“I’ll be going then, Mrs. Tompkins,” he said hastily. “See you tomorrow.”
“I want to find out who murdered your son,” I said.
She nodded. “You and me both,” she said. “So sit down then. Take a load off.”
I sat.
“What’s your name again?”
“Beaumont,” I said. “J. P. Beaumont.”
“Your mama didn’t give you no first name?”
“Jonas,” I said.
Etta Mae nodded sagely. “A good Bible name,” she observed. “Like in the whale.”
Not exactly, but close enough that mean-spirited boys plagued me with that from the time my mother signed me up for kindergarten. It was due to a bellyful of whale jokes, if you’ll pardon the expression, that I pretty much abandoned my given name by the time I hit junior high.
“So are you saved, Mr. Beaumont?”
I thought about the blood-spattered picture of Jesus by the front door and realized that the interview wasn’t going at all the way I had intended. Where was Mel Soames when I could have used her to run interference?
My grandfather’s moral superiority, supposedly based on religious principles, had driven his daughter, my mother, away in disgrace. It was also the main reason I had grown up largely unchurched. Faced with Etta Mae Tompkins’s piercing stare, I decided that an honest answer was better than attempting to dodge the issue.
“Probably not according to your lights,” I said.
“You might be surprised about my lights,” she replied. “But I’ll tell you this: My son was saved. He went into prison one way, and, praise Jesus, he came out another. He wasn’t doing drugs,” she added. “And he wasn’t selling drugs, neither. Shawny wasn’t doing nothin’ wrong. He was here fixing my supper, looking after me. Why would someone want to kill him like that?”
“I have no idea.”
“And who did you say you work for again?”
“Ross Connors. The Washington State attorney general.”
“And why’s this Mr. Ross interested in who killed my Shawny?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Maybe he thinks those detectives from Seattle PD won’t do a good job?” she suggested.
That was, of course, a distinct possibility.
“That Detective Jackson seemed nice enough,” Etta Mae added.
I was happy to have that piece of information. Detective Kendall Jackson, who is probably as tired of wine jokes as I am of whales, is one of the newer guys in Homicide, but he’s also someone I know and respect. I was glad to hear he was on the case. I figured he was someone I could go to with a few discreet questions.
“What do you want from me?” Etta Mae asked.
“Maybe you know something,” I said. “Maybe your son said something to you that would have some bearing on what happened. For instance, did he mention anything to you about having any difficulties with people at work?”
Etta Mae shook her head. “If he had any troubles like that, he never said nothin’ to me about ’em.”
“What about friends from around here?” I asked. “Did he take up with any of his old pals from the neighborhood once he came home?”
“I already told you, Jonah,” she said firmly. “LaShawn came out of prison a changed man. He didn’t go back to any of his old friends or his old habits. He knew them for what they are, the way of the devil. So he stayed away from them. If you make a habit of standing in the way of temptation, you just might get run over.”
I didn’t bother correcting the Jonah bit. There was no point. “What about a girlfriend?” I asked. “Did he have one?”
“Not that I know of.”
“What about difficulties with money?” I asked.
Homicidal violence often has its origin in some combination of drugs, women, and/or money, and I’m not just talking about homicides in the Rainier Valley area of Seattle, either.
“He didn’t have no money,” Etta Mae declared. “Didn’t need it, neither, because he was giving his life over to the Lord and to the King Street Mission.
When he got that settlement from the state, I think Pastor Mark thought Shawny would turn right around and drop the whole thing in the collection plate, but he didn’t. Instead, LaShawn spent it on me, fixing this place up all nice and cozy so I’d have myself a comfortable place to live.”
I didn’t remember the exact amount of LaShawn Tompkins’s wrongful-imprisonment settlement. I wondered how much of it was left, and was it enough to provide a motive for murder?
“If your son had no money, what did he do for food and clothing?” I asked.
“He ate his meals at the mission. As for clothing? I don’t know nothing about that. You’ll have to ask Pastor Mark.”
I’ll do that, I thought, just as soon as I get a chance.
I said, “You and the good pastor seemed to be having a slight difference of opinion when I first got here. What was that all about?”
“Oh, that,” Etta Mae said. “Pastor Mark is under the impression that just because Shawny worked for him, it was like he owned him or something, and that he could say how and where the funeral was gonna be and all that. I had to set him straight on that score, and I did.”
Yes, Pastor Mark and the King Street Mission would bear some scrutiny. It would have been nice to think that LaShawn Tompkins and Pastor Mark had both seen the light and that the two of them subsequently had devoted themselves to lives of selfless service to others. But I just didn’t happen to think that was true. It was likely there was something else at work here. If I ever managed to figure out exactly what that was, I’d most likely know who had gunned down LaShawn Tompkins and why.
CHAPTER 5
I left Etta Mae’s house about midafternoon. Before leaving I had been introduced to Etta Mae’s neighbor, Janie Griswold, who had eventually emerged from the kitchen and resumed her thankless task of trying to clean up the blood-spattered entryway.
Walking back to the car, I felt frustrated. What should have been an uncomplicated, straight-up interview had ended up being more of a prayer meeting, one in which I had been on the defensive far more than I should have been. I came away knowing that Etta Mae’s belief in her son’s miraculous transformation was utterly unshakable. I, on the other hand, had my doubts.
When I had first pulled up in front of the house on Church Street, I had turned off my cell phone. It would have been more than a little awkward if Mel had called and asked what I was doing when I was in the midst of interviewing an important witness in a supposedly nonexistent case. As soon as I turned the phone back on, it was bristling with a collection of messages and missed calls.
I dialed Mel immediately. “Where are you?” she wanted to know.
“Headed home,” I hedged. I was in fact driving back toward downtown Seattle at that very moment—just not from the direction she might have anticipated.
“How’s Lars?” she asked.
“Medium,” I said.
“Did you invite him to dinner?” she said.
“Did,” I said. “He turned me down.”
“He probably shouldn’t be alone right now,” Mel said. “He should have people with him.”
I thought about the gaggle of unattached Queen Anne Gardens dames Lars had claimed were hovering around him, all of them circling for a premature landing. “I doubt he’ll be all that alone,” I said.
“Still,” Mel said. “He should be with family at a time like this. Do you think I should call and ask him?” she wanted to know.
Mel probably could have talked Lars into coming out for dinner, but if she did, we might end up having a discussion of exactly when I had dropped him off and what I’d been doing in the meantime, et cetera, et cetera. What was it my mother always used to say? “Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”
“He seemed pretty tired,” I said. “Let’s leave well enough alone.”
I gave her the arrangement details for Beverly’s services so she could pass them along to Barbara Galvin and Harry. She extracted a promise that I’d order more flowers. She also told me that she’d made arrangements for the kids to stay at the Homewood Suites a few blocks away from Belltown Terrace at the bottom of Queen Anne Hill. Once again I appreciated Mel’s attention to detail. Making room reservations was something I probably wouldn’t have remembered—until it was too late.
“What are you going to do now?” Mel asked.
“Go home and put my feet up,” I said. “It was a pretty short night.”
On the way, I listened through a string of condolence calls—from Ron Peters, a former partner and a good friend; from Ralph Ames, my attorney; from Ross Connors along with several other members of the SHIT squad. In other words, Mel had put out the word.
When I got as far as downtown, I thought briefly about stopping by Seattle PD, but decided against it. It would create far less of a stir if I phoned Kendall Jackson than it would if I showed up on the premises in person asking questions. And since Ross seemed to want deniability, less of a stir would be far preferable to more of one.
Back at the condo I settled into the recliner, picked up the phone, and dialed that old familiar number that took me straight to the heart of Homicide. In the old days I couldn’t have made such a call without spending several minutes chewing the fat with Watty Watson, who was, for many years, the telephone-answering nerve center for Seattle PD’s homicide squad. But now Watty had moved on—either up or out. The phone was answered by someone whose name I neither caught nor recognized. I was put through to Detective Jackson with no chitchat and no questions asked.
“Hey, Beau-Beau,” Kendall boomed into the phone. “How’re you doing these days? Did they finally get all that glass out of your face?”
Jackson had been first on the scene after I went through the shattered wall of that greenhouse. The last time he had seen me I had been a bloody mess on my way to the ER.
“Pretty much,” I said. “Although I still find shards of it now and then.”
“You’re doing better than Captain Kramer,” he said. “You know he’s still out on disability? Everyone says he’s coming back soon now, though, probably sometime in the next couple of weeks.”
Mel and I might have saved Paul Kramer’s sorry butt, but that didn’t mean I liked him any better. “Glad to hear it,” I lied.
The words came to my lips almost effortlessly. Maybe I was starting to get the hang of it. After all, I had managed to lie to Mel. Now it looked as though I might be able to spin believable whoppers at the drop of a hat for anybody at all, no exceptions.
“What can I do for you?” Jackson asked.
“I understand you’re working the LaShawn Tompkins case.”
“Yup,” Jackson said. “Hank and I drew that one.”
Hank was Detective Henry Ramsdahl, Jackson’s partner.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
“Is that an official ‘how’s it going’ or an unofficial?” he returned.
“Unofficial,” I replied. “After the state made that payout in the Tompkins case, Ross Connors wants to be sure everything is on the up-and-up, but he also doesn’t want to make a big fuss about it, if you know what I mean.”
“We’re not making much progress so far,” Jackson admitted. “From everything we’ve been able to learn, Tompkins had been keeping his nose clean. We’ve turned up no sign that he was involved in any illegal activities. According to what we’ve been told, LaShawn found God while he was in prison. Once he got out, he straightened up and flew right—right up until somebody shot him dead, which, if you ask me, sounds pretty iffy,” Jackson concluded. “Old bad guys mostly don’t go straight.”
We were on the same wavelength on that score.
“With the possible exception of the girlfriend angle, though,” he added, “we haven’t found anyone with a beef against him.”
“What girlfriend?” I asked. The fact that LaShawn might have a girlfriend was news to me, and it would no doubt be news to Etta Mae as well.
“Name’s Elaine—Elaine Manning. That would be Sister El
aine Manning.”
“Sister as in she’s black?” I asked.
“That, too, but mostly sister as in that was her title at King Street Mission. Also an ex-con. Spent five years at Purdy for armed robbery. From what I can tell, that’s pretty much the prerequisite for becoming a counselor at King Street—you’ve already done your crime and your time. It’s a cachet that gives you more credibility with the clients.”
“What about Elaine Manning?” I prompted.
“We’re hearing bits and rumors that she and Brother Mark may have had something going, but that was before Brother LaShawn turned up on the scene. Once that happened, Sister Elaine more or less spun out of Brother Mark’s orbit.”
“So we could be dealing with a simple love triangle?” I asked.
Of course, love triangles are hardly ever simple.
“Maybe,” Jackson agreed. “Problem is, so far we haven’t been able to locate Ms. Manning.”
“You’re saying she’s gone missing?”
“Yup. No one’s seen her since sometime Saturday morning. Took off right after breakfast. Since then, she hasn’t shown up at work and hasn’t called in, either. No one seems to know where she is or how to reach her. We consider her a person of interest.”
Someone close to a murder victim who goes missing about the same time as the murder is always a person of interest, especially if there are hints of a love affair gone bad. Jackson made it sound like it was no big deal, but I guessed that the full powers of Seattle PD were being brought to bear on locating Sister Elaine Manning. It was probably better if I just sat back and let them do the heavy lifting. There would be plenty of time for me to talk to her once she was found.
“Tell me about Pastor Mark,” I said. “What’s his deal?”
“That would be Brother Mark or Pastor Mark, depending on who you talk to,” Kendall said. “Last name’s Granger. Former druggie. Did a fifteen-year stretch for second-degree murder. Been out for the past five years. Another unlikely prospect for a Goody Two-shoes award, but we haven’t been able to find anything new on him, either. Everybody at King Street seems hell-bent on keeping their noses clean—no drugs, no booze, no illegal activities. They don’t even allow cigarettes.”