Until Proven Guilty jpb-1

by J. A. Jance

  “Do you mind if I tag along? I have a feeling that Maxey may very well be waiting for me in the parking lot.”

  I looked down at her in absolute amazement. “No,” I managed. “I don’t mind at all.” She took my arm with the calm assurance of someone used to getting whatever she wants. I’d like to pretend that I had the presence of mind to offer my arm to her, but that’s not the case. She reached out and rested a featherweight hand on my forearm; then the two of us walked up the hill through the Mount Pleasant Cemetery as though it were the most natural thing in the whole world.

  It’s ironic to think that Maxwell Cole, a man who had been the bane of my existence for some twenty-odd years, was the catalyst that caused her hand to take my arm. I have a lot to thank Maxwell Cole for. Maybe someday I’ll get around to telling him.

  Chapter 7

  Anne Corley stood quietly near the door while an attendant photocopied the guest register for me. I tried not to stare at her while I waited. She smiled as I returned with the copy in hand. “Should I have signed that too?” she asked.

  “Shouldn’t be necessary,” I told her. “I already know you were here.”

  “What about you? Why are you here?” she demanded.

  I explained briefly how killers often present themselves at the funerals of their victims.

  “And do you think that’s true in this case?”

  I shrugged. I thought of Pastor Michael Brodie piously intoning biblical passages over a small casket, of Benjamin Mason/Jason kneeling with his hands clasped in prayer under the flowing beard. “It could be,” I answered.

  “Oh,” she said under her breath. Quickly I folded the piece of paper the attendant had given me and stuffed it into an inside jacket pocket. Out of sight is out of mind.

  Back outside, walking toward the tiny parking lot. I noticed a rust-colored Volvo still very much in evidence. Maxwell Cole was observing us over the roof of it. I couldn’t help but feel just a little smug. “Where’s your car?” I asked Anne.

  She nodded in the direction of a bright red Porsche parked at the far end of the lot. “What about yours?”

  “I don’t have a car,” I said, suddenly feeling embarrassed about it. “I walked.”

  “I probably should have,” she said unexpectedly, “but these boots aren’t built for walking. Why don’t I give you a lift?” The invitation caught me off guard, but not so much that I didn’t accept.

  We reached her car. She unlocked the door, and I opened it for her. Maxwell Cole followed us at a wary distance. He was approaching the driver’s side, jotting down the numbers from the temporary license in the back window. The Porsche was evidently brand-new.

  Anne saw him out of the corner of her eye as she turned to ease her way into the leather interior. She smiled again. “Well? Are you coming or not?”

  I closed the door behind her and hurried to the rider’s side. I came around behind the car, walking directly in front of Maxwell Cole, and climbed into the rider’s seat. Max was still standing there, a little to one side, when Anne fired up the powerful engine and rammed the car into reverse. He must have executed a pretty quick sidestep to be sure he was out of the way. I didn’t wave to him as we drove by, but I sure as hell wanted to.

  I liked this lady, liked her instincts about people and her ability to handle them. She was a lot more than a pretty box of candy.

  Anne Corley held the powerful Porsche well in check as she maneuvered the grades, curves, and angles that make Queen Anne Hill an incomprehensible maze for most outsiders. It’s a course lots of sports car drivers regard as a Grand Prix training ground. She drove with a confident skill that was careful but hardly sedate.

  The fire that had made her gray eyes smolder as she approached Angela Barstogi’s grave site had been banked. When she paused at a stop sign and looked at me, they sparkled with intelligence and humor. “Where to?” she asked.

  “I live downtown,” I said. “Corner of Third and Lenora. How about you?”

  “I’m just visiting. I’m staying at the Four Seasons Olympic.” That put me in my place. The Four Seasons is absolutely first-class, but then so was the lady.

  “Do you have to go home?” she asked after a pause. “Wife and kiddies, or major league baseball on television?”

  “Wrong on all counts,” I replied. “No wife and kiddies at home. I’ve got a twelve-inch black and white that I only use to keep tabs on how the media gets things ass-backward. I don’t like baseball. I wouldn’t go to a live game, to say nothing of watching one on TV.”

  “You sound like an endangered species to me,” she grinned, and we both laughed. “Then what you’re saying is that you don’t have any pressing reason to go straight home?”

  “No.”

  Her face darkened slightly. I might not have noticed it if my eyes hadn’t been glued to her face, drinking in her finely carved profile that could easily have graced the cover of any fashion magazine. A slight frown creased her forehead, then disappeared in far less time than it takes to tell.

  “They had a huge potluck after Patty’s funeral,” she said somberly. “I couldn’t go to that, either, so whenever I attend a funeral in Patty’s honor, I always treat myself afterward. Care to join me?”

  “Sure.”

  “Where, then?” she asked.

  How do you answer that question when you’ve just met someone and haven’t the slightest idea of their likes or dislikes?

  “I don’t know. Where do you want to go?”

  She looked at me and laughed. I felt stupid, inadequate, as though I had somehow failed to measure up to her expectations. “I’ll tell you what,” she said. “I’ll choose this time and you choose next time, deal?”

  I nodded but I didn’t feel any better. My wires were all crossed. I was a gawky kid on his first blind date, which turns out to be with the head cheerleader. I wanted to impress her, although there was nothing to indicate she was in need of being impressed. Like someone who has always lusted after fine china, once he is faced with a Wedgwood plate, does he eat off it or put it away on a shelf? Here I was in a Porsche with the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, and I didn’t know what to say or what to do with my hands and feet. I hadn’t been that ill at ease in a long time.

  She hit Lower Queen Anne, turned left at Mercer, and headed for the freeway, driving easily but purposefully. I didn’t ask where we were going. She bypassed downtown and took the exit that put us on Interstate 90. There had been a long silence in the car. I was content to leave it at that.

  She had tossed her jacket carelessly in the half-baked backseat they put in Porsches to evade sports car insurance premiums. Her dress was made from some soft fabric that clung to the gentle curves of her body. The neckline, a long V, accentuated her slenderness. In the hollow of her throat lay a pendant, a single jewel suspended on a delicate gold chain. I’m not much of an expert, but real diamonds, especially ones that size, have a way of letting you know they’re not fake.

  Despite the diamond, despite the fur jacket, despite the car, gradually I stopped being so self-conscious and started enjoying myself.

  First Seattle, then the suburban sprawl of Bellevue disappeared behind us. Forested hills rolled by as we climbed toward the Cascades. “Washington is really beautiful,” she said while the car sped effortlessly up the wide, curving roadway. We had been quiet for so many minutes that the sound of her voice startled me.

  “Have you been here long?” I queried.

  “No,” she answered. “Not long at all. I just flew into town yesterday.”

  “I’m not surprised,” I laughed. “You couldn’t have been around Seattle very long without my knowing it.”

  She took the Fall City exit and shot me a sidelong glance. “I take that to be a compliment?”

  “That’s how it was intended.”

  She said nothing. Somehow I seemed to have offended her. I reverted to adolescence and kept my mouth shut. I was still wondering how to make amends when we pulled into the parking lo
t at Snoqualmie Falls. Spring runoff was well under way. A thunderous roar of cascading water assailed our ears as we got out of the car.

  “This is one of my favorite places,” she said. She set off in her long-legged stride toward the viewpoint that overlooks the water, while I followed at a distance.

  Snoqualmie in spring is spectacular. Rushing water surges over a sheer basalt cliff into a swirling pool nearly three hundred feet below. The plunging torrent sends a cloud of misty spray back up the wall of the canyon. Mist settled around Anne Corley as she stood on the observation deck. It seemed to bathe her in an otherworldly essence.

  The viewpoint was filled with Sunday afternoon tourists, the bermuda-shorted, knobby-kneed, see-America-first variety. The hesitant sunshine of that spring afternoon had brought them out in droves. I didn’t miss the contrast between Anne Corley and them, nor did I miss the appreciative men and the covertly wary women. Her delicate beauty swathed in the flowing red dress commanded attention, although she was too engrossed in the water to be aware of it.

  When she finally turned away from the falls, she seemed almost surprised to find me standing at her side, as though she had forgotten my existence in her total concentration on the water. She recovered quickly. “Let’s eat,” she said. “I’m starved.”

  We followed a flower-lined pathway up to the lodge. Snoqualmie Lodge boasts a fine restaurant, and I certainly couldn’t quarrel with the choice. The place does land-office business, however. When I saw the jammed tables and crowded entry, I was sure we would have a long wait. Purposefully, Anne made her way through the crowd and spoke quietly to the hostess. “Why certainly, Mrs. Corley. It will only take a moment,” the hostess said.

  I stationed myself near the door, hoping we could spend part of the enforced wait outside rather than in the crowded vestibule. Anne made her way back through the crowd. I marveled at the grace and clarity of her movement. People simply melted out of her way. Heads turned to follow her progress. If she had noticed it, acknowledged it, I probably wouldn’t have been so impressed, but she was oblivious.

  She reached me, took my arm, and guided us back through the crush. By the time we reached the cashier’s desk, the hostess was waiting for us, menus in hand. “Right this way, Mrs. Corley.”

  “How’d you do that?” I asked in whispered admiration as we followed the hostess to a corner table set for two. Her answer was a shrug that told me nothing. Once seated, I pursued it. “Look here, I heard some of the men talking out there. You have to have reservations three weeks in advance to get in this place.”

  “I do,” she said simply. “I called from Phoenix when I knew I’d be coming up for a few weeks. I ate here with friends when I was here a few years ago and fell in love with it. I plan to have dinner here every Sunday afternoon as long as I’m in the area. It’s possible to have a standing reservation, you know, if the price is right.”

  It was my turn to be offended. At least I did an adequate job of faking it. “In other words, when you asked me to choose where I wanted to eat, it was a put-up deal.”

  “That’s right,” she agreed mildly just as the waitress arrived. “Although, if you’d come up with a brilliant suggestion, we could have canceled. Look at that line. I don’t think they’d fine me.”

  Anne ordered a glass of white wine with ice and I ordered MacNaughton’s and water. Anne picked up her menu, clasping it with long, well-manicured fingers. She wore scarlet nail polish that matched her dress. She gave the menu a cursory glance, then lay it back down.

  “You already know what you want?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Why don’t you order for both of us then.”

  She did. Prime rib, baked potatoes, steamed broccoli, and carrots julienne. The food was served elegantly, and it was masterfully prepared. Anne ate with a gusto that seemed at odds with her trim figure. I spent the entire salad course trying to think of something intelligent to say. If I’d had any illusions of turning this into a romantic conversation, she squelched them completely when she asked, “Just who was Angela Barstogi?”

  The question stunned me. The pleasure of Anne Corley’s company had removed all thought of the dead child, of the case, of time itself. It took me a moment to pull my scrambled thoughts together. “Just a kid who ended up living in the wrong time and place,” I said lamely.

  Anne leveled serious gray eyes on mine, looking at me with the unblinking steadiness of a skilled inquisitor. “Tell me about her,” she said.

  “You ask that in a very professional manner,” I responded. “Are you a reporter?”

  “Well, of sorts. I’m a sociologist. I’m working on a book about young victims of violent crimes. I’m not interested in them from the criminological or sensational point of view. I study them in terms of psychosocial considerations.”

  She was a far cry from the mousy, passive image of a sociologist that I’d formed, more from fiction than from experience. She was like a breath of fresh air. I guessed rich people could decide to do anything they damned well pleased with their lives. She sure didn’t live on a sociologist’s salary.

  I started out to tell her only a little of the Angela Barstogi story, but somehow it all rolled out, from Sophie Czirski’s unproved allegations to a Jesus Loves Me poster that had hung above Angela’s bed. I hadn’t talked about a case that way since Karen left, and never to someone I didn’t know. It was a serious breach of discipline in the loose-lips-sink-ships tradition, yet I was unable to check myself. Anne Corley listened quietly, nodding encouragement from time to time.

  I finished. We were sipping coffee. She stirred the strong black liquid thoughtfully. “If that’s what she had to live with, no matter how she died, she’s probably better off.”

  I don’t know what I had expected Anne to say, but that wasn’t it. She’d lost her professional demeanor and seemed to be weeping inwardly for Angela Barstogi. Her sadness didn’t seem weak, however. There was strength and resilience under Anne Corley’s veneer of graceful beauty. It was like finding real wood when you expected particle board.

  We left the restaurant within minutes after that. There was no question of lingering over a conversational after-dinner drink. Once more I felt oddly responsible for her abrupt change of mood. It was somehow my fault. That wasn’t the only thing that made me uncomfortable. Anne Corley bought my dinner. That had never happened to me before, and I wasn’t sure I liked it.

  We drove back to Seattle in a subdued mood. I wanted to redeem the evening, but it was obviously beyond recall. She had moved away from me, was grieving for a child she’d never met. No banter, no small talk could bring her back. I congratulated myself for being a social failure. Who goes to dinner with a gorgeous woman and squanders the conversation on murder, child abuse, and other such scintillating stuff? J. P. Beaumont, that’s who.

  When Anne stopped to let me out in front of the Royal Crest, I halfheartedly asked her up for a drink. She gave me a wilted smile and said, “Some other time,” in a voice totally empty of enthusiasm. Dejectedly I watched her drive away. It was clear that whatever interest I had held for her was gone. There was no sense in calling the Four Seasons. I had had one shot at her, and missed. Whatever it was I had lost, it was something I suspected I wanted.

  Chapter 8

  The phone was ringing as I stepped off the elevator. I didn’t rush to answer it. I figured whoever it was would call back later. It was still yelling at me after I unlocked the door and turned on the lights.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Peters growled before I had a chance to say hello.

  “It’s none of your goddamned business, actually. It is Sunday, you know.”

  “I’ve been trying to get you for a couple of hours. I’ll pick you up in ten minutes.”

  “I don’t want to be picked up. I want to go to bed and sulk.”

  “You’re going to the airport. We’re meeting someone.”

  “All right, Peters. Cut the crap. Who are we meeting?”

  “
A fellow by the name of Andrew Carstogi.”

  “You mean Barstogi.”

  “Barstogi is an alias. Andrew Carstogi is Angela’s father.”

  “I’ll meet you downstairs,” I said.

  Peters picked me up in a departmental car, explaining to me as we drove that Carstogi had called in during the funeral. No one could find me, but they had finally located Peters after he came home from watching the Yankees strangle the Mariners.

  “How was the funeral?” Peters asked.

  The funeral was light-years away. I had gone to the funeral without knowing Anne Corley, and now, five hours later, I had met her and lost her. It had to be some kind of indoor world record for short-lived romance. I shrugged. “Michael Brodie gave quite a performance,” I said.

  “Faith Tabernacle people were out in force?”

  I nodded. “They arrived as a group and left as a group.”

  “The inquiry came back from Illinois. Drew a blank on everybody — except Brodie and Jason. They show that old license on Clinton Jason, but that’s all. I asked them to check him further and to keep looking for the others.”

  We drove down the Alaskan Way Viaduct, along the waterfront with its trundling ferries and acres of container shipyards punctuated by the red skeletons of upraised cranes. We sped down a canyon of railroad freight cars that towered on either side of the road. The long springtime evening of gray sky and gray sea matched my own dreary outlook. I tried to get Anne Corley off my mind, to focus on Angela Barstogi, the case, anything but a lady driving out of my life in a bright red Porsche.

  “Tell me about Angela’s father,” I said. “What brought him out of the woodwork?”

  “There’s not much to tell so far. He called the department between two-thirty and three. He had just heard. I don’t know how. He raised hell with whoever answered the phone. Said he knew it would happen, that he had tried to stop it. When he said he was catching the next plane out, it sounded like he intended to do bodily harm to Brodie and Suzanne as well. The brass thought we ought to intercept him. Powell wants us to park him someplace downtown where we can keep an eye on him. I had to beat up the airlines to find out what flight he’s on.”