Lying in Wait (9780061747168)

by Jance, Judith A.

  “Coffee sounds great,” I said.

  Sue nodded. “Coffee’s fine,” she said.

  “Just go on into the living room and make yourselves at home,” Ron Elgin directed. “There’s a new pot of coffee that should be ready by now. It won’t take me a minute.” He hustled off.

  As instructed, I walked into the living room and wandered over to a bank of windows that overlooked the Puget Sound shipping lanes. The fog had lifted just enough to reveal a huge grain ship moving sedately toward the grain terminal.

  “Great view,” I said, in a lighthearted but vain attempt to change the subject. Sue Danielson wasn’t about to be thrown off-track.

  “What’s this about donating a Bentley?” she demanded.

  “It’s nothing,” I told her. “Nothing at all.”

  I would have been fine if Bonnie Elgin could have had the common grace and decency to back me up on that story. But she didn’t. In her role as a member of the board of directors of the Seattle Repertory Theater Company, she had to come smiling into the living room, give me a big hug—as though we’d known one another forever—and thank me personally for my generous donation.

  In terms of my ability to get along with Sue Danielson, my new partner, that was the worst possible thing Bonnie Elgin could have done.

  4

  As an unwed mother with little education living in the post-World War II era, my mother supported us with her hands. We lived in a tiny two-bedroom apartment over a bakery in Ballard. Mother took in sewing. The whole time I was growing up, she slept on the living-room couch. One bedroom was mine. In the other, Mom’s treadle Singer sewing machine reigned supreme.

  Over the years, she became an accomplished seamstress. The word seamstress sounds almost quaint now, like something out of another century, but that’s what she was. She numbered some of Seattle’s best-known names among her clientele, and not a few of them found their way to our door, climbing up the rickety stairs for fitting sessions.

  I remember her telling me once that some of the society matron BB’s—Bottle Blondes—Mother worked for didn’t seem all that thrilled with their lives. “They may have all the money in the world, Jonas,” she counseled, “but they’re not happy. They don’t appreciate the good things they have.”

  Bonnie Elgin was most definitely a society matron, but she was neither a bottle blonde nor was she unhappy. Her naturally graying, shoulder-length hair was pulled away from her face and secured by a big barrette. She came bounding down the circular stairway and into the spacious living room wearing a white tennis warm-up and an expansive smile.

  Bonnie’s doorknob-sized diamond twinkled as she held out her hand to Sue, then she hugged me as if we were long-lost friends.

  “The way this morning started off, I didn’t think anything good could possibly come of it,” she said breathlessly. “But I’m very happy to meet you in person. Thank you so much for what you’ve done for the Rep. That Bentley of yours was a wonderful contribution. And it looks like it’ll be an auction item again this year.” Her face darkened. “The Guy Lewis trust, you know. The trustees decided to donate the Bentley for a second time. Of course, what happened to Guy and Daphne was a real tragedy….”

  I nodded, hoping to cut her off and steer the conversation into somewhat less volatile territory.

  Years earlier, the Belltown Terrace Real Estate syndicate, of which I am a member, had bought a pre-owned Bentley. A chauffeur-driven Bentley on call to ferry residents around town was envisioned as a one-of-a-kind building amenity—something unusual with some real snob appeal. Unfortunately, that selfsame wonderful-sounding upscale amenity had turned into a mechanical nightmare. No amount of high-priced tinkering from a series of inept mechanics could get the damned thing running right. It broke down time and again, stranding residents in any number of inconvenient places.

  In the end, and with me acting as point man, the syndicate had unloaded the British-made, decrepit albatross by donating it to a local charity auction. Months after the auction, both the unlucky purchaser and his wife had been murdered, but that’s another story.

  “Coffee anybody?” Ron Elgin asked cheerfully, joining us in the living room. He was carrying a beautifully inlaid wooden tray. On it was a vacuum carafe coffeepot, mugs, cream, and sugar. He set the tray down on a rosewood coffee table. “Detective Danielson?”

  She nodded. He poured a cup and passed it to her. “Detective Beaumont?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Are you and Alexis Downey still an item?” he asked with a wink as he passed me my cup.

  “Not really,” I said.

  “Too bad,” he said. “She’s a nice lady.”

  Pouring a third cup, Ron Elgin handed that one to his wife. “Are you going to be all right now?” he asked, regarding her solicitously.

  Bonnie Elgin nodded and smiled gratefully as she took the cup from him. “Sure,” she said. “I’m fine now, Ron. You go on to work. It was silly of me to let it throw me like that.” She reached over and gave him a light peck on the cheek, which he returned with a husbandly hug.

  “Well, you’re getting good service,” he replied. “With all the gang warfare and drive-by shootings in town, I never expected the police department to send out two whole detectives to investigate a harmless little fender bender.”

  Bonnie Elgin’s smile disappeared. “It wasn’t all that harmless,” she said seriously. “That man could have been badly hurt. For all we know, maybe he is.”

  “Do you want me to stay around for the interview?” Ron asked. “I will if you’d like me to.”

  Bonnie took a deep breath. “No, that’s all right. You’re already late for your first meeting, and I’m not nearly as upset as I was when it first happened. You go on.”

  “But you’ll call if you need me?”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “I will.”

  “And don’t forget to show them the wrench.”

  “No. I won’t.”

  Ron turned back to Sue and me. “I do have to go,” he said. “But I really appreciate your coming over right away like this. I didn’t know Seattle’s police department was this responsive.”

  Neither did I. Ron Elgin left his wife standing in the middle of the room, hurried to the double entryway doors, picked up a waiting briefcase, and disappeared outside.

  “So you were the driver in this morning’s hit-and-run?” Sue asked.

  I was surprised by the kindness in her voice. Sue was right. I had been distracted during the drive from Fishermen’s Terminal, and I hadn’t paid that much attention. But hit-and-run drivers aren’t usually accorded all that much courtesy, not even when they finally come to their senses and report what happened.

  Bonnie Elgin nodded somberly. She settled into a huge but elegantly upholstered easy chair, balancing her coffee mug on one knee.

  “I was afraid I’d killed him,” she said with a slight shudder. “I’ll never forget the thump when I hit him. It was awful.”

  “Suppose you tell us about it,” Sue suggested. “From the beginning.”

  “It was early,” Bonnie said. “I left the house right at six-thirty. I was supposed to be in Kirkland at seven to meet with the contractor and the landscape architect. November’s the best time to plant trees, you see, and seven was the only time we could all three get together. So I was heading over to the freeway. At that hour of the day, Emerson to Nickerson to Westlake is the quickest way to get there.

  “I turned left onto Gilman and started toward Emerson. It was foggy. I don’t think I was going very fast, but all of a sudden this guy ran out in front of me. I mean right in front. He didn’t even look. I slammed on the brakes and swung the car to the left as hard as I could. But I hit him anyway, and he went flying into the air. The next thing I knew, the car was skidding, and I slammed into a signpost.”

  She stopped and shuddered.

  “What happened then?” Sue asked.

  “Naturally, I was scared to death. I thought sure I’d run over the gu
y and killed him, but actually I must have booted him out of the way. He landed up in a rockery along the street, in some kind of bushes. I got out of the car and went looking for him. When I finally found him, he was lying facedown and not moving. I was afraid he was either dead or else badly hurt.

  “I ran back to my car and called nine-one-one on my cellular phone. I told them I’d hit someone and that maybe he was dead. And then, while I was still talking on the telephone, he got up all of a sudden and started to limp away. I put down the phone and went after him. He was bleeding. There was a cut on his face and another on his leg. His pant leg was torn to shreds. ‘You’re hurt,’ I said to him. ‘I’ve called the police and an ambulance. They’ll be here in a minute.’

  “He said, ‘No! No ambulance! No police! I’m okay, I’m okay. Leave me alone.’ And he kept right on walking. I couldn’t stop him. He crossed the street, climbed down over the edge of the embankment, and disappeared in that greenbelt that runs along the railroad track.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I don’t remember exactly. By then another car had stopped. The driver got out. He came over to where I was and asked me if I was all right. It didn’t take all that long for a patrol car to show up—only a minute or two. And the aid car came right after that, but by then the guy was long gone. The cop who was taking the report acted like it was all a big joke.”

  “A joke?” I asked.

  Bonnie Elgin nodded. “They all seemed to get a big kick out of it. One of them said it was the damnedest hit-and-run he had ever seen. I hit the guy, and then he ran. I told them I didn’t think it was funny. After that, they more or less straightened up and tended to business.

  “Since the fellow I hit was long gone, the medics insisted on checking me out, making sure I was okay. I told them they didn’t need to bother. I was fine, except now I think maybe I bruised my knee when I banged it against the dashboard. Anyway, pretty soon the aid car left. The cops were about to start measuring the skid marks, but they never got around to it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because all of a sudden all hell broke loose. There were sirens and ambulances and fire trucks coming from every direction. None of them came past where we were on Gilman, because they all turned off on Emerson to get over to the terminal. A minute or so later, somebody radioed the guys who were there with me. They told me they had been called to the fire along with everybody else. They gave me a case number and told me someone would finish taking the report later, and then they left. I have the case number right here, in case you want it.”

  She reached into a pocket, pulled out a slip of paper, and handed it to me. I jotted down the case number. “What did you do then?”

  “I called Ron,” Bonnie answered. “Luckily, he was still home. He asked me if the car was drivable, and I told him I didn’t know. So he came down to see. And it was. We got it home all right. I’ve called the dealer. He’s sending out a driver to pick it up sometime this morning. He’s bringing me a loaner.”

  “Your husband said something about a wrench.”

  “That’s right. It’s still in my purse. I’ll go get it.”

  “Tell us about it first.”

  “When Ron got there, he turned the key in the ignition, and the car started right up. But then he noticed that the hood ornament was missing. You know about Mercedes hood ornaments, don’t you? It’s better now, but there was a real epidemic of hood-ornament theft a couple of years ago. We lost seven by the time it was all said and done. It’s a small thing, really, but it drives Ron bonkers.

  “As soon as he saw it was gone, he turned off the motor and said we weren’t leaving until we found the damn thing. And we did, surprisingly enough. It’s in my purse, too. That reminds me. I’ve got to remember to give it to the loaner-car driver so the body shop can put it back on the hood when they fix the car. Hang on. I’ll go get them both while I’m thinking about it.” Bonnie Elgin put her coffee mug down on a cut-crystal coaster and dashed off upstairs. She returned a few minutes later.

  “It’s bent,” she said matter-of-factly, looking down at the shiny round chrome object in her hand. “I didn’t notice that before. We’ll probably have to get a new one anyway.”

  “Could I see the wrench?” I asked.

  She handed me a small box-end wrench—about a 5/16, although oddly enough, there were no markings on it to indicate what size it was or who had made it, either. And for some strange reason somebody had painted it with a solid layer of enamel.

  Sue and I weren’t playing with a full deck of information, but since we had been sent because Bonnie Elgin’s hit-and-run supposedly had something to do with the homicide on the Isolde, it was best to treat the wrench as though it were an important piece of evidence. Better safe than sorry. Using a cloth handkerchief and a glassine bag, I stashed the wrench in my inside jacket pocket. Meanwhile, Bonnie Elgin continued talking.

  “I found the wrench first, before Ron caught sight of the hood ornament lying over against the curb. He said the wrench probably belonged to the guy I hit—that the impact most likely knocked it out of his pocket. He said that if we ever found out who that was, maybe we could give it back to him. Ron’s a big believer in complete sets of tools.”

  “Me, too,” I said.

  “So do you need to look at the car?” she asked. “Or did the two cops get enough information on that earlier? I’m really not sure whether or not the man I hit was in the crosswalk. There is one around there, but I don’t remember exactly where I was in relation to it when all this happened. Are you going to give me a ticket?”

  “Mrs. Elgin,” Sue Danielson explained. “We’re not really here to investigate the automobile accident. That’s up to Patrol. We’re here because of a fatal fire at Fishermen’s Terminal early this morning. It was discovered a few minutes after your accident. We have reason to believe it was an arson fire, so anyone seen running from that same general area around the time the incident occurred would certainly be a person of interest. What, if anything, can you tell us about the man you hit?”

  “He was Hispanic,” Bonnie Elgin said immediately. “I know that much. He had an accent. A heavy Spanish accent.”

  “You said he was injured and bleeding. Where?”

  “There was a cut over his eye.”

  “Right or left?”

  She stared for a moment and then gestured to an invisible point in space. “Left, I think.”

  “And his leg?”

  “It was definitely the right leg. And that was bleeding, too. Pretty badly, I think. From a cut on his knee. My guess is that one will probably need stitches.”

  “What was he wearing?”

  “Jeans. Tennis shoes. A jacket—a green jacket. Only a windbreaker, really. It didn’t look like it was warm enough for this weather.”

  “Any identifying features—a beard, mustache, that kind of thing?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “How tall was he?”

  “Not very. Only five-five or maybe five-six. And not very heavy, either. Medium build.”

  To me, five-five sounded smaller than medium, but that’s all a matter of perspective.

  “Which way did he go when he walked away?” I asked.

  “The same way he came,” Bonnie Elgin answered. “Back down the embankment to the railroad tracks. It seemed like he was more scared of talking to the police than he was of being hit by a car. Right then I couldn’t understand why he was leaving, but if he was involved with the fire, I suppose then it all makes sense, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I suppose it does.”

  By the time we left Bonnie Elgin’s house on Perkins Lane, it was almost ten-thirty. The fog had burned off fairly well. Out on Puget Sound, the water was still mostly gunmetal gray, but here and there overhead were occasional chips of pale blue sky.

  “Back to Fishermen’s Terminal?” Sue Danielson asked as she started up the Mustang.

  “Let’s swing by that crosswalk on Gilman,
” I told her. “I want to get out and take a look around.”

  It wasn’t difficult to find the location of the accident. A splatter of shattered glass marked the point of impact. As far as that was concerned, Bonnie Elgin was in luck. The glass was well south of the crosswalk. Generally speaking, it’s not good to hit pedestrians at all. But if you have to hit one, it’s better not to do it in a marked crosswalk. Everyone, from judges to insurance companies, takes a dim view of that.

  Sue parked the car. I got out and walked over to the guardrail on the far side of the street. Heading down the embankment, a trail of footprints dug deep into the soft, wet earth on the other side. The person who had left those tracks had been in one hell of a hurry. From where I stood, I could look across the railroad cut and see the long creosoted beams that formed the retaining wall for the bank on the far side of the cut, but the metal tracks themselves were out of sight.

  Avoiding the footprints, I hitched my legs over the guardrail and climbed down. Even stepping carefully, the compressed mud squished beneath my feet, bubbling up around my heels and into my shoes. I stopped at the edge of the embankment. Just below me, hunkered up against the retaining wall on my side of the cut, was a makeshift tent. A blue tarp had been draped over a sheltering framework of blackberry bramble. Inside was a single box spring, minus the mattress, and the remains of a recent campfire.

  I had stumbled uninvited into the home of one of Seattle’s homeless, and from the looks of it, so had the injured victim of Bonnie Elgin’s hit-and-run. There were several bright red bloodstains on the fabric of the box spring.

  As I scrambled back up the incline to the guardrail, it struck me how little physical distance separated the Elgins’ marble foyer with its magnificent domed ceiling from this tarpaulin-covered hovel. Existing almost side by side, both were part of Seattle’s Magnolia Bluff community, and yet they represented realities so separate and alien that they could just as well have been on different planets.

  Or else in parallel universes.