Until Proven Guilty jpb-1

by J. A. Jance

  “How much of it is true?” Peters asked.

  It took a couple of seconds to comprehend the implications behind Peters’ question. “How the hell should I know?” Angrily I shoved my chair away from the desk, banging it into the divider behind me. I stalked out the door with Peters hot on my heels. We said nothing in the lobby or in the crowded elevator. A couple of people made comment about the previous day’s engagement party. It was all I could do to give their greeting a polite acknowledgment.

  Once on the street I struck out for the waterfront. Peters picked up the conversation exactly where we’d left off. “You mean she hasn’t talked about any of it, at least not to you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? That she told all this to Cole and not to me?”

  “Seems to me that she would have told you. After all, you are engaged, remember?”

  I stopped and turned on him. “Get off my back, will you? I’m your partner. You’re not my father confessor.”

  “But why hasn’t she told you? If you had spent eleven years in a mental institution, wouldn’t you give your bride-to-be a hint about it, so that if it came up later she wouldn’t be surprised?”

  “I don’t know why she didn’t tell me, but it doesn’t matter. It’s history, Peters. It has nothing to do with now, with the present or with us. Her past is none of my business.”

  “Why the big rush, then?”

  “What’s it to you? Why the hell is it any concern of yours?”

  “It looks as though she thought if you found out, you’d drop her.” He was silent for a minute, backing off a little. He came back at it from another direction. “Did you know she had that much money?”

  We resumed walking, our pace a little less furious. “I knew she had some money,” I allowed, “quite a bit of it. You don’t stay at the Four Seasons on welfare. She said having too much money made it hard to know who her friends were.”

  “And you think that’s why she didn’t tell you how much?”

  “Maybe,” I said, “but I didn’t ask her how much, Peters. Don’t you understand? I don’t have to know everything about her. She doesn’t know that much about me, either. That takes time. There’ll be time enough for that later.”

  “Has she shown you any of her book or have you personally seen her working on it?”

  “Well, we’ve discussed it, but…No.”

  “Tell me again why she came to Angela’s Barstogi’s funeral.”

  Peters is single-minded. I have to respect that; I am too, usually. The only way to get him to drop it was to tell him what I knew. So I told him about Patty, about how much Anne had loved her, how Patty’s death had upset and hurt her, how being unable to attend her sister’s funeral as a child was something Anne Corley was doing penance for as an adult. It was a sketchy story at best, lacking the depth of details that would give the story credibility.

  “How did she die?”

  “I don’t know.”

  We were walking north along the water-front with a fresh wind blowing in across a gunmetal harbor. Peters listened thoughtfully as I told him what I could. Even as I told the story, I didn’t need Peters’ help to plug it full of holes.

  “Just supposing,” Peters suggested, “that she did have something to do with Angela Barstogi’s death.”

  I stopped dead in my tracks. “Now wait a fucking minute.”

  “You wait a minute, Beaumont. You’re too embroiled to see the forest for the trees, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us are. All I’m doing is asking questions. If Anne Corley isn’t hiding something, it’s not going to hurt anything but your pride. Maybe there’s a connection between Anne Corley and Uncle Charlie.”

  “Peters, Anne Corley had nothing to do with Angela Barstogi’s death. She wasn’t even in town until after the wire services had the story.”

  “It shouldn’t be hard to prove, one way or the other. You owe it to yourself to get to the bottom of this. You can’t afford to accept her presence at face value, particularly if she’s not being up-front with you. You’re a better cop than that.”

  Unerringly Peters hit the nerve where I was most vulnerable. Cops want to be right, one way or the other. They have to prove themselves over and over. Usually it’s less personally important to them. Conflict of interest walked up and smacked me right in the face.

  “I’d better ask Powell to pull me from the case,” I said.

  “Don’t be an asshole. That’s not necessary, not yet. If we come up with something definite, then it’ll be time to bring Watkins and Powell into it. In the meantime, I think some discreet questions to your old friend Maxwell Cole are in order.”

  “Me talk to Cole?”

  “No.” Peters laughed. “Not you. I will.”

  “And what am I supposed to do while you do that?”

  “Go back over every shred of information we have so far to see if you can find anything new.”

  We had reached the Hillclimb, a steep flight of stairs that leads from the waterfront up through the Public Market and back into the heart of the city. I felt beaten, defeated. I had turned on her, given tacit approval to Peters to go ahead and scrutinize Anne’s past. Suddenly I was more than a little afraid of what he might find there.

  We climbed the stairs without speaking. The market was jammed with vegetable and fish merchants setting out their wares. The boisterous activity was totally at odds with how I felt. We came out of the market at First and Pike. Peters turned right and started back toward the Public Safety Building.

  I stopped. “I’m going to go talk to her,” I called after him.

  Peters came back. “Why?”

  “I have to. I have to give her a chance to tell me. I want to hear it from her.”

  “Suit yourself,” Peters said with a shrug.

  I didn’t go directly back to the Royal Crest. Peters’ questions hadn’t fallen on deaf ears. Why hadn’t she told me? More to the point, what had she told me? Very little, I decided. She had said she had been married once, but she hadn’t mentioned her husband’s profession or his subsequent suicide. That’s not surprising. Suicide is something that hangs around forever, dropping load after load of guilt on the living.

  Anne had divulged little of her family background, other than bits and pieces about Patty. And she certainly hadn’t mentioned being institutionalized; but then, that’s hardly something you go around advertising. I know I wouldn’t.

  Come to think of it, there was a lot I hadn’t told her, either, gory details in the life and times of J. P. Beaumont. I had touched briefly on my relationship with Karen, but that was all. It was as if Anne and I had an unspoken agreement not to let the past taint our present or our future. On the one hand, I could rationalize and justify her not telling me her life story. On the other hand, I was angry about it.

  I walked for a long time, trying to think what I would say to her. There wasn’t the smallest part of me that accepted the idea she might have been responsible for Angela Barstogi’s death. I finally turned my steps homeward. I stopped and bought a P.I. from a vending machine on the corner. I remembered her reaction when I had asked her about Patty. I had an obligation to be there when she read the article. After all, it was because of me that she was drawing Maxwell Cole’s fire.

  The halls in high-rises are less well soundproofed than the apartments. As I approached my door, I could hear Anne’s voice from inside the unit. That surprised me because I expected her to be there alone. I paused before fitting my key in the lock. Listening through the door, I could hear she was on the telephone, that she was finishing a conversation. I turned my key in the lock and pushed the door open.

  I expected to find her on the couch next to the phone. Instead, she was halfway across the living room, eyes frantic, face ashen. She looked at my face blankly, with no sign of recognition. All I could think was that she had laid hands on the article before I got there.

  I moved across the room quickly and grasped her by the shoulders. She was shaking, quivering all over li
ke someone chilled to the bone. “Anne, Anne. What’s wrong? Are you all right?”

  For a long second we stood there like that, with me holding her. I don’t think my words registered at all. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I came to check on you. I was afraid you’d read it by yourself. Have you read it?” She was struggling, trying to escape my grasp. Her eyes stared blindly into mine. She didn’t answer.

  “Who was that on the phone?” I demanded. “Who were you talking to?”

  My words finally penetrated and she seemed to focus on my face, to hear what I said. “No one,” she stammered. “It was a wrong number.”

  I shoved her away from me, sending her reeling into the leather chair. “Don’t lie to me, Anne; for God’s sake don’t lie to me!” I wanted to shake her, force her to tell me the truth. I started toward the chair, but the look on her face stopped me. In seconds her face had been transformed. She might have put on a mask. A calm, cold mask.

  “It was business,” she said, her voice flat and toneless.

  “Yours or mine?”

  “Mine,” she said.

  “Why did you tell me it was a wrong number?”

  “I was upset.”

  I turned back to the couch and sat heavily, the weight of the world crushing my shoulders. When I looked at her again, she was under control and so was I, but something was dreadfully wrong. I forced my tone to be gentle, made the words come slowly, the way you might if you were speaking to someone who didn’t know the language. “Was it about the newspaper article?”

  She blinked, puzzled. “What article?”

  “Maxwell Cole’s. In today’s paper. It talks about Milton Corley. Tell me about him.” I handed her the paper, open to Maxwell Cole’s column. She read it quickly, then dropped it in her lap. She looked up at me.

  “Why didn’t you tell me, Anne? You left me wide open to attack.”

  Her eyes, fixed on mine, didn’t waver. “I didn’t think it mattered,” she said.

  “But it does matter. You should have told me. Yourself.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Tell me about Milton Corley. Why did you marry him?” It was not a question I had expected to ask. It was the wounded cry of a jealous suitor, not a professional cop with his mind on his job.

  “Because I loved him,” she answered.

  “Loved him or used him?”

  “Used him first, loved him later.”

  Maybe she was being honest with me after all. “What about J. P. Beaumont? Is it the same with him?”

  She raised her hands in a helpless gesture, then dropped them back in her lap. She nodded slowly. “At first I only wanted information.”

  I felt my heart constrict. “And now?”

  “I love you.” They were the words I wanted to hear, but I couldn’t afford to believe them.

  “Why?” The word exploded in the room. “Why do you love me?”

  “Because you found the part of me that died when Milton did. I told you that last night.”

  “You expect me to believe that?”

  “Yes. It’s the truth.”

  My gaze faltered under her unblinking one. “Tell me about your book. I want to read it.”

  “All right,” she said. “After I get it back from Ralph. I sent it to Phoenix with him. He’s having it typed for me. I have to revise the last chapter.”

  “Why?”

  “I made a mistake.”

  “What kind of mistake?”

  She looked at me as if puzzled. “The kind that shouldn’t be made if you’re any kind of writer. Why all the questions?”

  “I wanted to hear this from you, Anne. You should have told me. I shouldn’t have had to read it in the newspaper. It makes you look suspicious.”

  For several long minutes we sat without speaking. “What about us?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll have to give it some thought.” I got up to leave. I had touched the personal issue and skirted the basic one. I had to ask. I had to have the answer from Anne Corley’s own lips. “Did you have anything to do with Angela Barstogi’s death?”

  She heard the question without flinching. “So that’s what’s bothering you,” she said in a monotone. She dropped her head in her hands. “No, Beau, I didn’t. I was in Arizona. Check with United. Check with anybody.”

  “Do you know someone named Uncle Charlie?”

  She shook her head. I went to the door and stood there uncertainly, my hand on the door-knob. I didn’t know whether to leave or apologize. “I didn’t think you did, but I’m getting some heat thanks to Maxey. I’d better go back to the office,” I said at last. “I’ve got work to do.”

  Chapter 20

  Work was a tonic for me that day. I worked like a fiend. I dove into every statement and every file with absolute concentration, finding comfort in the necessary discipline. Anne had said she had nothing to do with Angela Barstogi. I wanted to prove it to the world and to myself. There was nothing I wanted more than for Peters’ suspicions to be dead wrong.

  I put in a call to United. They said they’d call back with the information I needed. They did eventually, confirming Anne’s arrival in Seattle. It proved the point as far as I was concerned, but the rest of the world needed more convincing. I had to lay hands on Angela Barstogi’s killer. That was the only way to clear Anne once and for all. Who the hell was Uncle Charlie, and where was he? How could I find him?

  It had been just over a week, but already Angela Barstogi’s file was voluminous. I read through it all — statements, medical examiner’s report, crime lab report — searching for some key piece that would pull the entire puzzle into focus. I had moved on to the Faith Tabernacle file when Peters came back about four o’clock.

  “How’s it going?” I asked. It was a natural enough question, but I felt strange after I asked it. I didn’t know whether or not Peters would answer me. I didn’t know if I wanted him to.

  “Maxwell Cole is a jerk,” he said. That was no surprise. It was something that found us in wholehearted agreement. Peters peered over my shoulder at the files. “Any luck?”

  “Yeah. All bad.”

  He waited, expectantly, but I didn’t volunteer any information. I wanted to see if he would ask. “What did she say?” he inquired finally.

  “That she didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  He shook his head. “And that’s good enough for you, I suppose?”

  “As a matter of fact, it isn’t. If it were, I wouldn’t be going blind reading these reports, and I wouldn’t have called the airlines.”

  Peters settled on the corner of my desk. “Did you say you met Ralph Ames?” he asked.

  “The attorney. Yes, I met him.”

  “How did he strike you, hotheaded maybe? Prone to fly off the handle?”

  “No, just the opposite. Of course, he could be schizo. Who knows?”

  “I put a little pressure on Cole. He gave me the name of the girl he talked to in Ames’ office. I called right after I left Cole. Ames fired her fifteen minutes before that, for talking to Cole. That surprise you?”

  “No. When I tried calling there I went through a screening process. It strikes me that Anne is a valued client.”

  “Valuable, certainly. The lady’s loaded.” He paused. “I’m going down there, Beau, to Arizona.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve picked up some information, enough to warrant the trip.”

  I stifled the desire to demand the information, to get Peters in a hammerlock until he came clean. But I knew he was doing his job, holding out on me until he had something concrete. He was right, of course.

  “You’ve told Watty, then?” I could feel my heart pounding in my chest.

  “No. I’m going on my own nickel. It’s the weekend, and I want to get away from this drizzle. I’m feeling a yen for sunshine.”

  It took a second or two for me to understand the implication behind what he was saying. Gratitude wa
shed over me like a flood. “Peters, I—”

  “Don’t thank me, Beau. You may not like what I find.”

  There was more than a hint of warning in his tone, but I ignored it. I chose to ignore it because I didn’t want to hear it. “When’s your plane?”

  He glanced at his watch. “A little over an hour and a half. Want to take me down and keep the car?” He thought better of it. “Wait a minute. My plane gets in late Sunday evening. That’s probably a bad time for you to come pick me up.”

  “If you’re thinking about the wedding, we may go for a stay of execution.”

  He grinned and tossed me the keys. “Good,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  Late Friday afternoon traffic taxed my limited current driving skills. I had gotten out of the habit of fighting the freeway jungle. I had forgotten what it was like. Living downtown had liberated me from the tyranny of Detroit and Japan as well, to say nothing of Standard Oil. Peters winced at a tentative lane change.

  “I don’t get much practice driving anymore,” I explained.

  “That’s obvious.”

  I dropped Peters in the departing-passenger lane and drove straight back to town. I didn’t know what to think. There was no way to anticipate what I might find at the Royal Crest. My best possible guess was an empty apartment with or without a note.

  If Anne Corley did nothing else, she consistently surprised me. She was waiting in the leather chair. A glass of wine was in her hand. A MacNaughton’s and water sat on the coffee table awaiting my arrival. Anne was wearing a gown, a filmy red gown.

  “Hello,” she said. “You look surprised to see me.”

  “I am,” I admitted. I examined the gown. I was sure I had seen it before, but I couldn’t imagine where. At last it came to me — the hallway dream with Anne disappearing in a maze of corridors. I had dreamed the gown exactly, I realized, as the odd sensation of déjà vu settled around me.