by J. A. Jance
When it was time to leave for my appointment with Thomas Raines, I had a choice to make—take Lucy along or leave her home? In the end, I took her with me. Madison Park is a pretty nice part of town, but if I had to park on the street, I figured that having a hundred-pound canine security guard in the backseat would prove to be an effective deterrent to any prospective car thieves.
CHAPTER 14
THE ADDRESS TODD HATCHER HAD GIVEN ME FOR THOMAS Raines led to Madison Park Gardens, a low-rise condominium development near Prospect and Harvard, which—surprisingly enough—did have several spaces of designated visitor parking. The Gardens consisted of six separate four-story buildings built around a common courtyard. Each building held four luxury units—one per floor—with a coded elevator stop leading directly to each non-ground-floor unit.
My directions said Building A. At the entrance and despite all the dog-related delays, I punched the button labeled Raines/Cutler at the stroke of 7 P.M. “I’ll let you in,” a disembodied voice told me. “Once inside the elevator, you won’t be able to operate it without a keycard, but don’t worry. Once you’re in the elevator, we’ll be able to summon it from here.”
Having a remotely controlled elevator was a step up from Belltown Terrace’s security system, but our building has a round-the-clock doorman and this one did not. Given all that, the elevator arrangement made sense.
I entered the building and pressed the elevator call button. When it came, I stepped inside and waited. As soon as the doors glided shut, the elevator seemed to rise of its own volition. When the doors opened again, rather than finding myself in a building corridor of some kind, I discovered I was already inside an apartment. The tall, distinguished man waiting there to greet me was a few years older than I am. He was strikingly good-looking and exceptionally fit.
“Mr. Beaumont?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, “but please call me Beau.”
We shook hands. “And I’m Thomas Raines,” he replied. “Everybody calls me Tommy. Come on in.”
He ushered me out of the entryway decorated with only two items—a massive, gold-framed mirror hanging over a delicately fashioned inlaid wood table that announced its unequivocal status as a legitimate French antique even to an interior decorating dummy like me.
I stopped in the middle of an eye-popping great room and took stock. The place was a marvel. The entire east-facing wall consisted of floor-to-ceiling windows in which Bellevue’s glittering nighttime cityscape gleamed in the distance. That could only mean that the pitch-dark area in the foreground had to be a totally unobstructed view of Lake Washington.
Raines motioned me into a chintz-covered easy chair that was as comfortable as it was stylish. “I’m having scotch,” he said. “Care for a cocktail?”
“No, thanks,” I told him. “Went off the sauce a few years ago.”
Raines didn’t lose a beat. “Club soda and lime then?”
“Sure,” I answered. “That would be great.”
While he busied himself at the bar, I glanced around the room, noticing the touches of what Jim Hunt refers to as “glitz and glam” that are his signature style, while at the same time taking his clients’ individual tastes and preferences into account.
“How long have you known Jim Hunt?” Raines asked, handing me an icy rocks glass along with a coaster. The table next to my chair, also blatantly antique and costly, had a totally unblemished surface, and I didn’t want to be responsible for leaving behind a water ring.
“Long time,” I said. “Since the eighties, anyway. He did my first bachelor pad condo right after my divorce, and my second one, too, a few years later when I came into some money. Recently he helped my relatively new wife and me rehab a place up in Bellingham.”
A knowing grin suffused Thomas Raines’s face. “Wait a minute. Are you the guy who had to be blackmailed into unloading his recliner?”
“My reputation precedes me,” I conceded, “and you’re right. I’m the one. Jim’s a great guy to work with as long as you do things his way.”
Raines laughed aloud at that. “Isn’t that the truth! Now, what can I do for you? I believe you said on the phone that this has something to do with your belief that Max’s death wasn’t accidental.”
“Not my belief necessarily . . .” I began, but Raines held up his hand to stop me.
“Here’s the thing, Beau. Having read some of Max’s manuscript—not all of it, by any means—I couldn’t help but recognize your name. From what he wrote about you, it’s clear the two of you were never pals, so how is it you’re the one here asking questions rather than a homicide detective from Seattle PD?”
“I used to work homicide at Seattle PD,” I told him, “but as I said on the phone, their official investigation into the incident seems to have concluded that the house fire that killed Max was accidental in nature. Erin Howard, who is, to the best of my knowledge, Max’s sole heir, disagrees with that finding. She’s the one who contacted me about the situation.”
“Ah, yes,” Raines said. “That would be Erin Howard née Kelsey?”
I was taken aback by the idea that not only did Raines know about Erin Howard but he also knew she was formerly known as Erin Kelsey. “You know that how?” I asked.
“Because that’s what Max’s book Tangled Web is all about,” Raines answered, “or, rather, that’s what he told me it was going to be about. I sold the book based on the premise that it would be a retrospective of the cases Max had covered during his years as a crime reporter here in town. Once he started working on the book in earnest, however, the Kelsey case quickly got moved to the front of the queue, in part because of the personal betrayals involved. I don’t think Max ever fully recovered from those, and I can’t say that I blame him. In the last few weeks he indicated that something else had been added to the mix. He was excited about it, but he didn’t divulge what that was—at least not to me. But are you saying Erin Howard is the one who asked you to investigate?”
“Not exactly,” I hedged.
“What does that mean?”
“I said she contacted me, but the person who asked me to look into the situation was Max himself.”
“Max did that?” Raines echoed. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, he sent Erin a text on Saturday saying that if anything happened to him, she should ask me to handle the investigation because he was afraid Seattle PD would cover up their findings, and he didn’t think I would.”
“So he thought he was in some kind of danger?” Raines asked.
“He didn’t just think he was in danger,” I corrected. “If what Erin believes is true, he was in danger. As I said, he sent the text about involving me to Erin on Saturday afternoon and died early Sunday morning. I’m wondering if what happened to him could have had something to do with whatever he was working on. I was hoping I might be able to get a look at the manuscript itself.”
“Unfortunately, I can’t help you there,” Raines told me. “I sold Tangled Web for what’s considered to be a reasonably good advance these days. The sale was based on the first three chapters of the book along with a detailed proposal. You’re prominently featured in those first three chapters, by the way. But after that, once Max got into the material, he told me he was focusing far more on the Marcia Kelsey case than he had initially intended. As for anything he might have uncovered recently? I don’t have a clue about that. His deadline was fast approaching, however, so I’m assuming there’s quite a bit more to the manuscript now than what I’ve seen.”
Raines paused for a moment. “What about Erin?” he asked. “Did Max show any of the material to her?”
“She claims not. He told her he’d give her first dibs on reading it, but not until after he was completely finished.”
We fell silent after that. Raines’s glass was empty. He held it up to the light, rattling what remained of his ice cubes. “Care for another?” he asked.
“No, thanks. I’m good. But back to the manuscript. Did Max work on a computer?”
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“I’m sure of it.”
I sent myself a brief reminder to try to check with Seattle PD to see if any electronic devices had been recovered from the remains of Max’s residence. In this instance having access to either his phone or laptop records could prove to be vital. An address book would put me in touch with his contacts. His word-processing program would let me see his progress on the unfinished manuscript and maybe even allow me to read it for myself. In addition, being able to view Max’s phone records and calendar would bring me up to date on everything going on in his life in the days leading up to his death.
“Would it be possible for me to read the part of the book he had already given you?”
“No can do,” Raines said at once. “As far as I’m concerned, that material is part of Max’s estate. If, as you say, Erin Howard is Max’s heir, she should be able to authorize my showing it to you, but I’m not sure how long it will take to clear all those legal hurdles. In the meantime, as I told you, my partner and I are heading out for Palm Springs tomorrow morning.”
Had I still been an official cop investigating an official homicide, it would have been a simple matter to get a warrant and demand that he hand over the material. As far as I know, literary agents don’t get the same kinds of client privilege protections that attorneys and doctors get. In this instance, however, I didn’t have a leg to stand on.
“All right then,” I said. “I don’t like it, but I suppose that makes sense.”
“Anything else?”
“Max was a client of yours, but I notice you weren’t at his funeral.”
“You’re right. I wasn’t,” Raines answered. “I had a scheduling conflict—a long-standing conference call appointment with another of my authors, his editor, and a Hollywood producer. It can take months to get a whole bunch of people like that on the same page, to say nothing of on the same call at the same time. Besides,” he added, “since Max was already dead, I doubt he was offended by my absence.”
“An agent/client relationship, then,” I suggested, “but not close friends.”
“Yes, not that close.”
“All right,” I said, rising to my feet. “I guess I’ll be going.” I started toward the elevator and then, turned back to Raines and delivered my very best imitation of that great old-time television sleuth Columbo. “By the way, where were you on Saturday night?”
Surprisingly enough, although Raines clearly understood the implication behind my question, he didn’t object or even hesitate before he answered. “Sid and I went to a dinner party right here in the Gardens. There were three other couples involved. Before it was all over, I’m afraid things got a little wild. If you check with your sources, I believe you’ll discover that Sid and I were the subject of a noise complaint late that night, sometime between one and two. I believe there’s also video footage of all comings and goings in the buildings here. You’ll need to check with the association office in order to access them. I can tell you right now that Sid was in no condition to be driving back and forth to Queen Anne that night, and neither was I.”
Having a couple of tipsy seventy-something gay guys hauled up on wild partying charges was a story that was too good to make up. It was also way too easy to check.
“All right then,” I told him. “Asked and answered, so I’ll be on my way.”
Raines followed me as far as the elevator door. “On the off chance that Max’s death wasn’t an accident, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s connected to the book, you know. There could be some other simple explanation.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“It could be a hate crime.”
“A hate crime?” I echoed.
“There are people like Sid and me and Jim Hunt who have been out of the closet for so long that we don’t bother giving that aspect of our lives another moment’s thought. But there are plenty of people out there who have never come out. It so happens Maxwell Cole was one of those. In awkward situations where no one is quite sure about if you is or if you ain’t, there’s a lot of room for serious misunderstandings.”
I was utterly gobsmacked. “Wait a minute. Are you serious? You’re saying Max was gay?”
“Sure,” Raines answered. “Didn’t you know that?”
Believe me when I tell you. I hadn’t had a clue!
CHAPTER 15
I MULLED THAT UNEXPECTED BIT OF INFORMATION ALL the way home and all the way through Lucy’s and my dog walking exercise. It was a source of some humiliation to discover that the dog walking area recommended by Bob, the doorman, was a piece of lawn outside the church where I regularly attend AA meetings. He was right. There was a post with a supply of poop bags as well as a poop bag disposal container. How many times had I walked right past all that without paying any attention? Plenty.
That’s one of the reasons eyewitness testimony is so unreliable. People notice what’s important to them and forget the rest.
By the time Lucy and I got back upstairs, it was nearly nine. My noontime Top Ramen had long since evaporated. When I showed Lucy her new bed, she was happy to settle down on it. I took that as a sign that I was free to go.
I went back down in the elevator, out through the garage door, and hiked the few chilly blocks from Belltown Terrace to El Gaucho. It was cold enough to need a coat, but proximity to Puget Sound meant at least it wasn’t freezing.
Back when Karen and I were first married and didn’t have two nickels to rub together, the idea of going to El Gaucho for a meal would have been a splurge far beyond our means. Now it’s more or less Mel’s and my neighborhood joint, in the same way the Doghouse used to be, except the food is better and the atmosphere isn’t nearly as dicey.
Roger, the maître d’, greeted me by name and led me to a table in the bar where I ordered crab cakes along with a Caesar salad and let it go at that. I was about to order an O’Doul’s, but realizing what time of night it was, I ordered coffee instead. For the kind of under-the-radar investigation I was launching, I needed to check in with some of my law enforcement contacts at times when they had the least amount of adult supervision. For tonight, at least, I’d be pulling a night shift.
A few minutes later, when the maître d’ passed by my table again, I flagged him down. “It’s such a shame about Maxwell Cole,” I observed.
“Who?” Roger looked genuinely puzzled.
“Maxwell Cole,” I repeated. “He’s the guy who died in that house fire up on Queen Anne Hill last Sunday morning. He was here for dinner just last Friday.”
“That’s not a name I recognize, I’m afraid,” Roger said with a frown. “You’re sure he was here?”
Roger walked away but reappeared a few minutes later carrying the leather-bound volume that they usually keep at the front desk to track reservations. “About what time would Mr. Cole have been here?” Roger asked.
“Mel and I were about to have dessert as he was leaving, and we got here about seven thirty or so. He must have come sometime earlier than that.”
Roger scanned the page. “Nope,” he said at last. “No sign of anyone named Cole, so the reservation must have been under someone else’s name.”
When he walked away, I sat there sipping my coffee and wishing I knew exactly what the missing name was. There was a good chance that whoever Max had dined with on Friday night had been among the last people to see him alive.
I was partway through my Caesar salad when Mel called. “I just got home from a city council meeting,” she complained. “Why didn’t someone tell me that being a chief of police is way more about politics than it is about doing police work?”
In the run-up to Mel’s accepting the position, I had a reasonably clear memory of a conversation in which I had attempted to make that precise point. Fortunately I was smart enough not to mention it right then. Sometimes silence is golden.
“So where are you?” she asked.
“El Gaucho,” I said. “The cupboard was bare at the condo.”
“It’s pretty bare here, too
,” she said. “PBJ two nights in a row is not my idea of how to live.”
My waiter delivered the crab cakes. I let them cool off without mentioning their arrival to Mel since she adores that particular dish.
“Did you get Rambo dropped off all right?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “And it turns out her name is Lucy. Since Ken Purcell is most likely the guy who changed it to Rambo, we’re changing it back.”
“How would you know anything about how Rambo got her name, and what do you mean ‘not exactly’?”
So while my crab cakes went from hot to cold, I told Mel the whole story.
“You’re saying the dog is completely trained?”
“Completely,” I said. “You should see what all she can do! Colleen McDaniel gave me a cheat sheet of commands for easy reference. But tell me one thing. When your officers responded to that domestic violence call, where was Lucy?”
“Locked in the bathroom, apparently, and tearing the place apart,” Mel replied. “She was so ferocious that everybody at the scene was scared to death of her. Nancy was the only one who could get her to settle down.”
Huddled in the backseat of Mel’s Interceptor, Lucy hadn’t looked particularly fierce. In fact she had looked downright harmless. That missing bit about the bathroom was one of those telling details my wife might have considered mentioning to me in passing, but she hadn’t. It wasn’t a lie, exactly—more like a sin of omission. Sort of like not mentioning the crab cakes.
Let’s just call it tit for tat.
“All right,” Mel said. “I’m off to bed. Talk to you in the morning.”
“Sleep tight,” I told her.
I finished my salad, mowed through my dead cold crab cakes—no fault of the chef’s—swilled down two more cups of coffee, paid my bill, and headed out. As I was leaving, the lobby area was relatively deserted. Roger was there, but no customers.
“Would you mind doing me a favor?” I asked.
“Sure thing,” he said. “What do you need?”
“Would you mind letting me take a photo of your reservation page from last Friday night? I’ve been asked to look into Mr. Cole’s death, and it would be a big help to be able to contact some of the last people who saw him alive.”