by J. A. Jance
Since I was in the SRO crowd at the back of the room, I couldn’t help but notice the single attendee who came in after the doors had been closed, just as the service began. The newcomer was a scruffy-looking guy. His mane of shoulder-length gray hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and he sported a long, unkempt beard. He seemed vaguely familiar somehow, but I couldn’t for the life of me place him. He did nothing out of line, however, nor did he appear to be in any way threatening. He listened attentively to everything that was said, occasionally nodding in agreement. Eventually, since he looked like a contemporary, I wrote him off as maybe having been one of Max’s coworkers during his time at the P-I.
Max would have found the number of attendees gratifying. He had been Seattle’s best-known crime reporter for decades on end, and he had most definitely not been forgotten. During Max’s writing career, cops of all kind, but most especially homicide cops, had been the targets of his many published diatribes. As far as I could tell, I was the only current or former member of the thin blue line in attendance. As for everybody else? Point of view is everything.
Many of the people who crowded into the funeral home that day turned out to be family members of long-ago crime victims. Several of them stepped forward to speak, standing in front of the assembled group of mourners and heaping praise on the deceased. They told how much it had meant to them and to their families that Max had seen fit to air their side of some long-ago atrocity. Because that’s what murders are, after all—atrocities. For the family members who are left behind, memories of those events may diminish over time, but they never go away.
The last person to stand up and speak on Max’s behalf was Erin Kelsey Howard herself. When someone passes out of view for years at a time, it’s easy to freeze-frame them as they were when you saw them last. It’s what happens when months pass between visits with my grandkids. It seems like they’re always so much bigger than I expect them to be and so much older. The same was true for Erin Howard.
The last time I had seen her, she’d been a cute coed in her early twenties—a smart young thing with what should have been a bright future ahead of her. The middle-aged, overweight, black-clad woman who made her way to the microphone was in her late forties, but she looked far older than that—older and careworn. Her shoulders slumped. The corners of her mouth seemed permanently turned down. If there had ever been a smile on her face, there was no hint of it now, and I had the sense that it wasn’t just Max’s death that had robbed Erin Howard of all joy.
She approached the lectern warily and then stood for a moment, leaning on it, as if fearing she might topple over. Then, taking a deep calming breath, she finally began.
“Maxwell Cole was a part of my life from my earliest memories,” she said, reading aloud from a piece of paper that trembled visibly in her hand as she held it. Obviously Erin Howard was not a person accustomed to public speaking.
“Although I always called him Uncle Max, he was not my uncle nor was he any kind of blood relation. The people I thought to be my parents appointed him to be my godfather. When I discovered that everything else they ever did or told me turned out to be nothing but lies, Maxwell Cole was the one thing in my life that remained good and loyal and true. He was always there for me when I needed him—always. I miss you, Uncle Max. I will always miss you.”
Weeping openly now, Erin fled the stage. Once she was seated, the funeral director in charge of the service offered a brief benediction. When that ended, he approached Erin in her place in the front row, helped her rise, and then led her to the back of the room, where, as mourner in chief, she was expected to preside over the grip-and-greet honors as people exited the room. Two people hurried out the door before Erin arrived at her appointed place. One was the scruffy-looking man who had arrived after the service was under way. The other was a tall woman, dressed in flamboyant funeral finery, who had sat silently in the back row throughout the service.
As Erin attended to her duties, I took a seat on one of the chairs near the back of the room and waited. I watched while several funeral home employees went around the room gathering up abandoned programs and stacking chairs, leaving behind only two chairs—the one I was sitting on and the one next to it. By the time the cleanup concluded, the only remaining evidence that a funeral had recently taken place in that now eerily empty room were three items—the spray of flowers, the urn, and the photo—still standing forlornly at the front of the room.
That was the third time in my life that I felt sorry for Maxwell Cole. To give Mel her due, I was also grateful that I had taken her suggestion and come to offer my respects. I could tell from what Max’s eulogists had said that he and I had been opposite sides of the homicide coin. While I had been trying to solve crimes, he had been trying to help families somehow make sense of what had happened.
When the last of the attendees left, Erin came over to where I was sitting and sank down on the chair next to mine. “Thanks for coming,” she murmured.
“You’re welcome,” I said. “It was the least I could do.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“You asked me,” I reminded her. “And you look as though you could use some sustenance about now. Have you thought about where you’d like to go for lunch?”
As soon as she nodded, tears mixed with mascara began to slide down her cheeks. She mopped at them with the fistful of soggy tissues.
“Chinook’s at Fishermen’s Terminal,” she said. “It was one of Uncle Max’s favorite places. Mine, too. We used to go there a lot.”
The funeral director materialized behind us, discreetly clearing his throat. “Do you wish to take the flowers and the urn with you now, Ms. Howard, or would you rather come back and collect them later? There’s no rush, of course, none at all.”
For some reason, funeral directors always speak in hushed tones that remind me of the announcers who used to hold forth during bowling tournaments back in the early days of television, when Saturday bowling was standard network fare. This guy, whose name tag identified him as Ralph Poindexter, was no exception.
“I’ll take the photo and urn now,” Erin said, “but I’ve got no place for the flowers. I guess I’ll just leave them.”
“Of course,” Mr. Poindexter said. “As you wish.”
He collected both the photo and the urn from the table and brought them back to us. He handed the picture to Erin and then held out the urn to me.
I was surprised by the weight of it, because Maxwell Cole’s cremains turned out to be far heavier than I expected. Whoever said, “He’s not heavy, he’s my brother,” lied. Technically, Max was my fraternity brother. As Erin and I made our way out of the funeral home, the irony of the situation wasn’t lost on me.
Fifty years after Maxwell Cole’s and my initial interactions as freshmen at the University of Washington, J. P. Beaumont, who was never Max’s friend, became his sole pallbearer. Unbidden, several almost simultaneous visions from the past came flooding back—pranks from those long-ago carefree college days; the holiday formal where I’d snatched Karen away from him; and the regrettable time much later when I’d actually bloodied the man’s nose.
I remembered all those things and something else besides. Max was gone; I was still standing. As Erin and I stepped out into the cold winter sunshine, I was grateful about that—very grateful. We walked together across the parking lot, where I loaded the urn onto the passenger seat floorboard of her aging Honda, using Erin’s very large purse to wedge the urn against the seat in a way that I hoped would keep it from falling over. A pile of spilled funeral ashes would be a nightmare to clean up.
Erin and I drove to the restaurant in separate vehicles. Geographically, Seattle’s Interbay area is, as you might surmise, between two bays—Shilshole Bay to the West and Salmon Bay to the East, with Fishermen’s Terminal at the halfway point of the latter.
Salmon Bay used to be a saltwater inlet fed by a creek, with tides that rose and fell along with the tides of Puget Sound. Now it’s connected to Lake
Union by way of the Fremont Cut, which follows the old creek bed. The completion of the Chittenden Locks turned Salmon Bay into a freshwater lake that empties into Puget Sound through the locks complex.
Fishermen’s Terminal, as the name implies, offers moorage and a host of other services for fishing vessels—work boats rather than pleasure craft. It’s also the home of the Seattle Fishermen’s Memorial, which features a thirty-foot-tall column topped by Ronald Perry’s magnificent statue of a spear-wielding fisherman. At the base of the statue, engraved in bronze, are the names of all members of the local fishing fleet—halibut, crab, and salmon fishermen—who have been lost at sea. In case you don’t consider those to be dangerous occupations, please be advised that new names are added to the memorial each and every year.
In terms of both time and distance, Fishermen’s Terminal was practically next door to Poindexter’s Funeral Home, and Chinook’s, one of two restaurants located there, is on many people’s must-do list when hosting visitors from out of town.
We arrived at the restaurant a little after two. It was late enough that the lunch crowd had thinned. We were shown to a table by the window, where the delivery of our menus was immediately followed by a basket full of piping-hot focaccia bread that was both irresistible and delicious. I ordered my favorite—clam strips with extra tartar sauce. Erin chose the planked salmon.
“Okay,” I said, once the waiter walked away with our order. “As well as you knew Max, I’m sure you’re aware that he and I were never the best of friends. I came here today because you asked me to, but I can’t for the life of me understand why you wanted me to show up.”
“I didn’t want you here,” Erin said quietly. “Max did.”
I wasn’t sure I had heard her correctly. “You’re saying Max wanted me to attend his funeral?”
“Yes,” she answered.
“Was he worried that something might happen to him?”
Erin nodded. “He wanted something else, too.”
“What’s that?”
“He wanted you to find out who is responsible.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” I said. “I read an article online that claimed that the fire that killed him has been ruled accidental.”
“That may be the official ruling, but it can’t be right,” Erin declared hotly. “There’s no way that fire was an accident. Somebody set it. Uncle Max was murdered, and he wanted you to figure out who did it.”
“It’s your belief that he knew in advance that he was being targeted?”
Erin nodded. “It is. He told me so himself.”
“When?”
“In a text he sent me on Saturday afternoon.”
“This past Saturday?”
“Yes.”
“Did you mention the text to the cops?”
“No, because I didn’t think Uncle Max would approve. He wanted you to look into it, not them.”
“Regardless of what he may or may not have wanted, you can’t withhold information in a possible homicide investigation.”
In response, Erin pulled out her phone, turned it on, scrolled through her messages until she found the one she wanted, and then handed the phone to me.
I’m onto something big. Unfortunately, the people involved may be onto me as well. If anything happens to me, whatever you do don’t go to the cops. People at Seattle PD will just cover it up.
No doubt you remember JP Beaumont, the guy who solved Marcia’s homicide and who kept Jennifer from being able to drag you to your death. I never liked Beaumont much, but he’s a straight shooter, and he’s been away from Seattle PD long enough that if anyone can get to the bottom of things, he’s the one to do it.
I know he’s still around, because I saw him and his new wife last night at El Gaucho. If someone comes after me, I think he can be trusted to go after them. And if things go completely south, be sure he turns up at the funeral. He’ll be smart enough to notice if something is off.
That set me back. Clearly Max had been worried, and he had indeed wanted me in attendance at his funeral. Still mulling what I’d read, I handed the phone back to Erin, and she slipped it into her jacket.
“He sent that to me on Saturday afternoon, and the very next day he was dead,” she said.
“The report calling the fire accidental made some mention about his smoking in bed,” I suggested. “That’s plausible enough, isn’t it? I remember seeing him with a cigar on Friday night as he was leaving the restaurant.”
“Uncle Max adored his cigars,” Erin agreed, “but he never smoked in bed or even inside the house, at least not to my knowledge. Once he started using oxygen, he only smoked out on the covered porch.”
“Did you tell the cops any of that?”
Erin shook her head. “As far as I can tell, once they decided the fire was an accident, that was the end of it.”
“What if Max committed suicide and wanted to make it look like his death was accidental?”
Erin’s dismissal of that idea was as vehement as it was instantaneous. “No way!” she objected. “Who would be dumb enough to commit suicide by setting his own bed on fire?”
“But he had been ill, hadn’t he?” I asked.
Erin nodded.
“Cancer?” I asked.
She nodded again. “Third-stage lung cancer when it was first diagnosed. His doctors said he was in remission, but his lungs had been so badly compromised that he still needed oxygen.”
“And cigars apparently.”
“Yes,” she agreed sadly, “and cigars. I also thought he drank too much but what are you gonna do?”
I could see her point. Telling someone walking around with a cancer diagnosis that he needed to stop smoking and sober up was a bit like locking the barn door when the horse was already miles away.
“But he wasn’t in imminent danger of dying?”
Erin shrugged. “The cancer would probably have come back eventually, but for right now he wasn’t at death’s door.”
“So what about that whole Right to Try thing? What’s the deal there?”
“Uncle Max got involved in that because of a friend of his down in Tucson, Arizona. Jean Egan was retired Air Force. I’m not sure how they met initially, but they were pen pals for years. She died a year ago, less than two years after she was diagnosed with ALS.”
Somehow, knowing that I’d been suckered into making a contribution to Right to Try made me feel better about the whole thing—as though Maxwell Cole had somehow managed to pull the wool over my eyes and have the last laugh after all.
“So will you help me?” Erin asked.
“Yes,” I answered with some reluctance. “I’ll do what I can.”
CHAPTER 9
OUR FOOD CAME THEN. I DOVE INTO MY CLAM STRIPS AS though I were starving while Erin barely picked at her salmon.
“How did you learn about the fire?” I asked.
“A uniformed cop from Renton came to see me the next morning. Uncle Max was already gone by then—DOA at the hospital—but they found my name listed as next of kin on his driver’s license. He didn’t have anybody else. I was it.”
Erin’s eyes brimmed with tears once more. I didn’t blame her. I’ve been on both sides of those kinds of notifications. They’re hellish, plain and simple. But the fact that Seattle PD had passed the job off to Renton PD meant they were treating Max’s death as a very low priority. Rather than dwell on that, I attempted to steer the conversation away from the next-of-kin notification.
“Max said he was onto something big. Do you have any idea what?”
“Not really, just that he had stumbled on something from before . . . you know, from back around the time when everything happened.”
The way Erin grimaced when she said the word “everything” told me what she really meant. That would be back when Marcia Kelsey was murdered and when the world as Erin knew it fell apart.
“But he didn’t say what?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Or who all might be involved?
”
“Not that, either.”
“Is it possible all of this might have something to do with Marcia’s murder?”
“Maybe,” she said. “I don’t know.”
“To your knowledge, did Max have any enemies?”
“You mean other than you?” she asked, giving me the faintest hint of a smile.
“Yes,” I said, “other than me.”
She shook her head.
“Is there anyone who would benefit financially from his death?”
“That would be me,” she said. “Uncle Max had his will redrawn a few years ago. I just happen to have a copy. The original is at the lawyer’s office.”
She reached into her capacious purse—no longer doing urn control duty—and pulled out a thick business-size envelope. Dusting clam strip crumbs off my fingers, I opened the envelope and pulled out a document that turned out to be a photocopy of Max’s last will and testament. I scanned through it and saw that other than a few relatively small charitable bequests, everything else went to Erin Kelsey McLaughlin Howard. In the event of her death, Max’s secondary beneficiary was listed as Christopher Cassidy.
“You took your grandfather’s name?” I asked.
“For legal stuff,” she said, “and why wouldn’t I? Everything about Pete and Marcia Kelsey was a lie. At least Christopher McLaughlin was real.”
“And who’s Christopher Cassidy?” I asked.
“My son,” Erin said. “He’s eighteen and a freshman at WSU. He’s a good kid, going to school on a full-ride academic scholarship.”
No doubt the boy’s name, too, had come by way of his birth grandfather, Mr. Lowlife Chris McLaughlin. If Erin’s son was an honors student, however, he most likely wasn’t your basic chip off the old block.
“Sounds like you lucked out as far as kids are concerned,” I observed.
That comment was greeted by Erin’s first genuine smile of the day. “Yes,” she agreed. “I certainly did.”
I folded the document, put it back in the envelope, and returned it to her. “You realize what this means?”