by J. A. Jance
She shook her head. "Nobody ever handed Gunter anything on a silver platter. He worked like a dog to hold it all together. And it paid off. We own this house free and clear, BoBo. And the boat as well. We don't owe a dime on it, either. That's why, even these last few years when the fishing openers have been so short and when every man and his dog were out there trying to grab what few fish were left to catch, Gunter was still able to make it and do all right.
"We were lucky. For one thing, when the iron curtain fell, Gunter got in on the ground floor with some of the new joint-venture things coming out of Russia. For another, we didn't owe any money while everyone else was being eaten alive by interest rates."
Something was starting to bother me. Else Gebhardt was talking a blue streak, telling us all kinds of things we hadn't asked and didn't necessarily need to know. I wondered if we weren't being fed a line of some kind; if the tales Else was telling us were nothing more than a thick smoke screen designed to hide something else-something she didn't want to say.
"What happened last night?" I asked, inserting the question in a place where Else had most likely only paused for breath.
"What do you mean?"
"What was he doing down at the boat in the middle of the night in the middle of the winter?"
A slight flush crept up Else Gebhardt's neck. "He stayed there sometimes. Overnight."
"Why?"
"Because he wanted to."
I don't like boats much. They smell of diesel fuel and grease and dead fish and mold. They're dank and damp and cold.
"Why?" I asked again. "In the winter, if someone can choose between sleeping in a hard, narrow bunk on a boat or in a nice warm bed in a cozy house like this one, you'd have to be crazy to choose the bunk."
"We had a fight," Else said quietly. "He left the house and said he wasn't coming back."
"What did you fight about?"
"My mother. She's the one thing we've always fought over. You see, this house belonged to my parents originally. We bought it from them, and Daddy used the money to buy an annuity for Mother, so she'd have some kind of pension income of her own. And Gunter promised my father that Mother could always live with us; that we'd take care of her for as long as she lived.
"Gunter was a man of his word. He took that promise very seriously, and he kept it. We both have. But it's cost me more than it has him. You don't know what it's like living with her day in and day out. Mother still acts like the house belongs to her, like we're only living here because she lets us. The towels have to be folded the way she likes them. Everything has to be done her way, and I don't have any say in it at all."
Else paused again, and I thought I could see how this was all shaping up. In the age-old battle between contentious in-laws, someone is always bound to be caught in the middle.
"Let me guess," I said. "Gunter gave you an ultimatum. He told you that you'd have to choose between them. Either your mother was out the door or he was."
Else shook her head. "No," she said. "That wasn't it at all. I told Gunter last night that I wanted to sell the house and put my mother in a retirement home. I've found one I think she'd like down in Gig Harbor. I told him that if he didn't agree to back me up on this and sell the house, I was leaving-that I'd go live in an apartment over someone's garage if I had to.
"I tried to explain to him that sometime before I died, I wanted to live in a house of my own-a place that belonged to me more than it did to my mother. A place where I could leave the dirty dishes in the dishwasher overnight without running it and no one would ever know about it but me."
"What did Gunter say?"
"No. Not just no, but absolutely no! He told me I was being silly and selfish. And then he left-stormed out of the house right in the middle of the fight. He just walked out the door, got in his truck, and went down to Fishermen's Terminal to spend the night. That's what's so unfair about it. Men can do that, you know. They can leave. Women can't. Somebody has to stay behind to take care of things. I had to stay here with Mother. I've had to do that my whole life."
Else Gebhardt's blue eyes suddenly brimmed with tears. "I feel so awful. I loved him. And I'm sorry he's dead. And I don't know what I'll do without him, but I'm mad at him, too, dammit! Because he got away, and he left me holding the bag. And because he didn't even bother to kiss me good-bye."
Just then a door opened at the top of the stairs. "Else?" a woman's voice called. "Phone."
"I can't talk to anyone right now," Else managed, choking down a sob. "Tell them I'll call back."
"It's Kari."
"Oh, of course," Else said, wiping the tears from her face and lurching to her feet. "Kari. Tell her I'll be right there. You'll excuse me?"
Sue and I nodded in unison. After Else left, I looked down at the notebook on the countertop in front of me. The page was blank.
"All this stream-of-consciousness stuff isn't getting us anywhere, is it?"
"Not really," Sue agreed. "But there's one thing I'm curious about."
"What's that?"
"Why does she keep calling you BoBo?"
I didn't much want to discuss it, but I figured I'd be better off getting it out of the way once and for all.
"It's from back in the old days," I answered shortly. "Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. It's a nickname that dates from Ballard High School Beaver days, when the cheerleading squad used to give pet names to all the athletes."
"You two knew one another back then?"
"As well as a lowly sophomore ever knows the senior movers and shakers. You know how that goes. Else and Alan Torvoldsen were a real item back then."
"That's the guy she was going to marry? The one who knocked her up? Isn't he the same one Watty wants us to see later today?"
"That's right. In case you hadn't noticed, Ballard's really a small town stuck in the middle of a big city."
Sue Danielson nodded. "I'm beginning to figure that out," she said.
I got up and prowled around Gunter Gebhardt's compulsively clean workshop. Stored in one cupboard I found the collection of carefully crafted plaster molds he had used to create his army of lead soldiers. I also found the collection of paints and delicate brushes and files he must have used to do the finish work on the soldiers once they came out of the molds. Painstakingly making those soldiers must have been the sole creative outlet for a man with considerable artistic talent and capability.
The door at the top of the stairs opened, and the stairs creaked under the weight of heavy footsteps. Soon Else Gebhardt appeared from behind the partition at the bottom of the stairs. She was still crying, but she was smiling through the tears.
"Kari's coming down from Bellingham. Michael's bringing her down. They'll be here early this evening. I can hardly believe it." As far as I could see, it seemed reasonable that a daughter faced with news of her father's death would show up to help her mother. "What makes that so hard to believe?" I asked.
"You don't understand," Else replied. "The last time Gunter and I saw Kari was the night of her high school graduation. She cut us dead-refused to speak to either one of us. I thought it would break her father's heart."
"I heard you on the phone earlier. When all this came up, how did you know where to call her, then?"
"Kari stays in touch with her grandmother-with my mother," Else answered.
No wonder Else wanted to be out from under her mother's thumb. Inge Didriksen was a problem. On more than one front.
The phone call from Kari seemed to have had a calming effect on Else. After that we settled down and took some more organized information from her. What time her husband had left the house the previous evening-seven. Where had he said he was going-the boat. Did Else know of anyone with whom Gunter was having difficulties-she did not. Was she aware of any business dealings that may have gone awry-not that she could think of.
The questions were straightforward, and so were the answers. That kind of basic interview may not seem like much in terms of drama or excitement, but the info
rmation gained usually forms the foundation of a murder investigation. It's like a baseline X ray on a cancer patient. It tells investigators where and when things started going haywire. It's the hub of a wagon wheel-an initial point for branching out and asking more questions.
As we walked away from the house and threaded our way through the collection of parked cars, I was struck by how commonplace and ordinary the house looked. Yet inside those sandstone walls there had been a world of multigenerational conflict-years and decades of parents and children at war with one another.
Of course, everyone tries to pretend to the outside world that his own family isn't at all like that, but maybe if you scratch the surface, most of them are just that way. Sue Danielson's family certainly wasn't absolutely smooth and trouble-free. The little lunchtime set-to with Jared had proved that.
I left the Gebhardts' home in Blue Ridge convinced that Else and Gunter's seemingly troubled existence, one filled with marital and parental strife, wasn't all that different from anyone else's.
Mine included.
8
Sue Danielson and I drove back to Fishermen's Terminal and hit the bricks, or rather the planks. We stumped up and down the separate docks, asking questions, talking to folks.
That first pass wasn't particularly productive. No one had seen anyone acting strangely the night before. No one had noticed anything out of the ordinary. When you're working a homicide investigation, those kinds of answers are to be expected, either because the various witnesses really haven't seen anything or because they don't want to become involved. It's also the reason why detectives seem to go back over the same ground, asking the same questions again and again.
Gradually, however, through the eyes of Gunter Gebhardt's peers, a complex picture began to emerge. "That damn hardheaded Kraut," as Gunter was referred to more than once, wasn't what you could have called Mr. Personality.
Despite thirty years spent working there, he hadn't been especially well liked in Ballard's fishing community. Grudgingly respected, yes, but not necessarily liked. A few people made wryly derogatory comments about Gunter's fishing capability. I wasn't able to sort out if they were just making fun of him-which in Norwegian fishing circles pretty much goes with the program-or if Gunter Gebhardt really hadn't been all the good a fisherman. Still, not even his most outspoken critics faulted Gunter's general business acumen and sense of duty.
We spent almost half an hour with Dag Rasmussen, a grizzled and opinionated old salt whose boat, The Longliner, was berthed two boats away from the charred remains of Gunter Gebhardt's Isolde. Clad in greasy coveralls, Dag was elbow-deep in overhauling the main engine on his boat when we interrupted him.
"Gunter Gebhardt was one tough son of a bitch and hell to work for, too," Dag told us. Leaning on the rail of The Longliner, he seemed unperturbed by our dragging him away from his work.
"You have to remember that Kraut was still making money when lots of the other guys were falling by the wayside. And don't forget, either," Dag added, shaking a gnarled finger in my face, "after Henrik Didriksen's heart attack, Gunter was the one who held things together for Inge, and him only a son-in-law. I give him plenty of credit for that."
"What do you mean he was hard to work for, Mr. Rasmussen?" Sue asked.
Dag laughed and sent a brown wad of spittle arcing into the water between his boat and the one alongside. Several of his teeth were missing. The ones that remained were stained brown with tobacco juice. It reminded me why the Ballard area is sometimes referred to as Snoose Junction.
"He was big on busywork; always wanted the guys on his boat to work like dogs. Behind his back, they used to call him ‘Gunter the Nazi.'"
Sue and I exchanged veiled glances. Those words might have been truer than anyone speaking them could possibly have suspected. Dag continued with his garrulous recitation.
"He didn't want to pay them nothing, either. He made up his own rules and docked his guys' pay for every infraction. Years ago, he opted out of the Vessel Owners Association. Said he was sick of settling up according to the set-line agreement when he wasn't getting nothing for it. That's about the time he stopped taking union crews and started negotiating his own deals."
"Why was that?"
Dag looked at Sue as if she must have just crawled out from under a rock. "So he wouldn't have to pay union scale," he answered simply.
"But people still worked for him anyway?"
"Ja, sure," Dag said. "You know how it is. The ones who need money bad enough don't give a damn about union wages, and the newcomers don't know the difference. They're just happy to have a job."
The possibility of union/nonunion difficulties was something to think about-a new wrinkle in our inquiry. If it turned out that labor relations had something to do with the case at hand, it wouldn't be the first time union wrangling had ended up as part of a Seattle P.D. homicide investigation.
"Would you happen to know the names of any of these nonunion crew members?" I asked.
"Hell, no!" Dag Rasmussen answered. "Most didn't stay with him long. They got fed up and moved on. And the last few years most of 'em didn't speak English, leastwise not good enough so as you could understand 'em."
"They're immigrants, then?"
"Yeah, foreigners of some kind."
"Where from?"
He shrugged. "I dunno. Mexico maybe. Or maybe farther south. Speak Spanish mostly, and don't know nothin'."
Dag's words meandered off, spinning long, drawn-out, and dreary tales about the good old days when most members of the fleet had been born in Norway. Meanwhile, I wandered off on a separate tack of my own. Bonnie Elgin's missing hit-and-run victim. She had told us earlier that the injured man hadn't wanted to wait around long enough for either an ambulance or a police officer to arrive on the scene. She had also told us he was Hispanic. Was it possible he would turn out to be one of Gunter's nonunion fishermen? If so, that would be an unqualified Bingo.
I caught Sue's eye. She gave me a knowing nod that let me know I wasn't the only one making that potentially important connection. On our list of persons of interest, Bonnie Elgin's missing accident victim had just shot up to the very top. He was someone we would want to locate as soon as possible.
I jotted down a couple quick notes. One was to make arrangements to have someone pick up that bloody box spring and haul it down to the crime lab for analysis. The other was to try to lay hands on whatever initial reports Bonnie Elgin's accident might have generated.
It was possible the patrol officers who had responded to her frantic 9-1-1 call might have elicited some critical piece of information that she had inadvertently neglected to tell us. Years of doing this job have taught me that often the most mundane details-ones it's easy to overlook-turn out to be vitally important.
Well after five in the afternoon, Sue and I headed back down the dock, leaving Dag Rasmussen to return to his greasy engine overhaul. As we neared the Mustang, I reached into my pocket, pulled out the glassine bag, and examined the black-enameled wrench inside it.
"I guess we'd better get this down to the crime lab right away. And we'll need to make arrangements about getting that box spring picked up."
"Good thinking," Sue said.
I glanced up the darkening dock. Twice in the course of the afternoon, we had dropped by One Day at a Time in response to Watty's urgent lunchtime message to see Alan Torvoldsen. No one had been aboard Alan's boat either time. Now there was a light on inside, meaning he was most likely home. "How about paying a late-afternoon call on Alan Torvoldsen?"
Sue glanced at her watch. "Today's my turn to drive the car pool, and soccer practice gets over at six. If I don't leave before long, the kids will be left waiting in the park after everyone else goes home."
Such are the joys of single parenthood.
"That's okay," I said. "You go on and do what you have to do. I can handle the Torvoldsen interview."
"But you rode with me," Sue objected. "How will you get home?"
I
laughed aside her concern. "I'm a big boy, Sue. And Al's an acquaintance of long standing. When we finish up with whatever he has in mind, I'm sure he'll drop me off at Belltown Terrace."
She thought about that for a second. "All right then," she agreed reluctantly. "Give me the wrench. I'll handle both that and the box-spring problem when I drop the Mustang down at the department. It seems like cheating, though. I don't like bailing out while you're still working. I like to carry my weight."
I handed her the bag containing the wrench. "Don't feel guilty. Believe me, Alan Torvoldsen and I won't be working all that hard. My guess is that he wants to shoot the breeze and talk over old times. We'll most likely sit around and reminisce about our glory days as Ballard High School Beavers. It would bore you to tears."
"You're just afraid I'll pick up a few too many stories about BoBo Beaumont and carry them back down to the department, aren't you?"
"You wouldn't do that, would you?" I asked apprehensively.
Sue Danielson grinned. "Not on your life. I'm a great believer in what goes around comes around. I'd be mortified if Paul Kramer or one of those other jerks on the fifth floor ever got wind of the fact that in high school people used to call me Suzy Q."
Sue Danielson walked away and left me standing there on the end of the dock. She got in the Mustang and drove off before I realized what she had done-that she had given me the gift of trust. She was long gone before I had gathered my wits about me enough to realize I hadn't said thank you.
As I headed toward One Day at a Time, I noticed how cold it was. Once again a pall of thick fog was settling over the city. I stepped aboard Alan's boat and knocked on the galley door.
"Who is it?" he called from inside.
"Beau," I said.
When Alan came out, he was carrying an old corduroy jacket. The baseball cap had been replaced by a worn watch cap. He emerged grumbling, in a cloud of cigarette smoke.
"What the hell took you so long?" he demanded. "I was about to give up on you."