by J. A. Jance
“He threatened to pull your job?”
“It's no idle threat,” she returned. “He can do it.”
I stood near her, wanting to put an arm around her shoulder and tell her everything would be all right, to give her some of my world-famous Beaumont Bromides. Determinedly she wiped away a tear.
“I'm sorry,” she apologized. “I didn't mean to cry.”
“You have plenty of reason,” I offered.
She looked up at me with a faint smile. “I guess I do. I was thinking about Sig.”
“What about him?”
“He gave me back my self-respect,” she answered. “Nothing's going to change that. I'll resign if I have to, work as a waitress or a salesclerk, but nobody can take away what Sig Larson gave me.” She paused tremulously. “I can't believe he's dead.”
Abandoning her attempt to stave off tears, she fell helplessly into my arms, sobbing uncontrollably against my chest. I held her and let her cry, hoping no one was outside my window. Ginger Watkins was, after all, still very much a married lady with a husband who was a well-known statewide political candidate. This would provoke a terrific scandal if it ever hit the press.
I wondered briefly how I had fallen into such a mess. As her sobs subsided, I decided what the hell. Lie back and enjoy it.
CHAPTER
4
Once Ginger regained her composure, I suggested we order dinner from Room Service. It was close to nine. My three-meal-a-day system was going into withdrawal. I ordered two steaks medium-rare. “Some wine?”
She shook her head. “I don't drink.”
I ordered two bottles of Perrier. When in Rome, and all that. With her emotional outburst quelled, we waded toward dinner through a mire of meaningless chitchat. “Where are you from?” I asked.
“Centralia. My dad runs the Union 76 station down there.”
It was a long way from small-town girl to big-time politics. She readily followed my thoughts. “Good looks help,” she said with a smile. “Add some stupidity, and this is what you get.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was pregnant when we got married. Homer offered to buy me off, send me to Sweden for an abortion. Darrell only married me because his father was dead set against it. I was a first and last gesture of independence.” Her directness was unsettling. I was relieved when Room Service knocked on the door.
Our waiter was a young, local kid with a mouthful of braces and a winning smile. He wore a cutaway coat with a white towel draped casually over one arm. He spread the small round table with a linen cloth and served us with the arch panache of a British butler.
“That kid will go places,” I said to Ginger after he bowed his way out of the room.
“At least he seems to enjoy what he's doing,” she responded.
I poured two glasses of Perrier and handed her one. “You don't?” I asked.
“I was ready to,” she began, “but then after Sig—” She broke off, unable to continue.
“What about Sig?”
“He saved my life,” she said. “It's that simple.”
“What did he do? Pull you out of a burning car?”
Ginger studied me in silence for a long time. “Something like that,” she said quietly. “He got me to quit drinking.”
“Drinking?” I'm sure I sounded incredulous.
She picked up the empty Perrier bottle and examined it. “I used to drink vodka, Wolf-schmidts, on the rocks.”
I grimaced. “We're not talking one drink before dinner.”
“I almost died, Mr. Beaumont.”
“Beau,” I corrected. “My friends call me Beau.”
“Beau,” she added. “As long as I drank myself into oblivion every night, it didn't matter if Darrell had a steady girl friend down in Olympia when the legislature was in session, or that he was screwing around with some secretary after work. If I drank hard enough and long enough, I could almost forget. Not forgive, just forget.
“Sig was like a father to me. Never laid a glove on me, as far as sex is concerned. He just kept telling me I deserved better.”
“He was right,” I interjected.
She smiled at me then, green eyes flashing momentarily. “Are you going to take up where Sig left off?”
“At your service.” I waved my Perrier glass in a gallant flourish.
Her smile disappeared. “I can't understand why both Homer and Darrell are trying to talk me out of the divorce. Homer never liked me, and Darrell hasn't shown any interest in me for longer than I care to remember.”
“Come on, you have to be kidding!”
“Do I?” Her face was devoid of humor.
I groped for a thread of non-threatening conversation. She had said she was pregnant when they married. “You have a child?”
“Had,” she corrected. “A girl. Her name was Katy, after my mother. She was almost six months old when I found her dead in her crib. They call it Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, now. Back then it didn't have a name. I blamed myself. The kooks came out of the woodwork, told me God was punishing me for my sins. It was awful!” She closed her eyes, reliving the pain.
I wanted to say something, but it was a little late to offer condolences.
“That's when I started to drink,” she continued as naturally as if she were discussing the weather. “I never got pregnant again. I couldn't sleep. I started having a drink or two in the evening to put me under, to blot out the pain. Eventually I had to drink to live. It's only been since I dried out that I've come to terms with Katy's death, accepted it, allowed myself to grieve. Booze is like that, you know. It buries feelings, keeps you from dealing with them.”
The last sentence hit close to home. It was what Peters had told me I was doing, and Ralph Ames, and the chaplain. They told me to stop hiding out in McNaughton's and come to grips with grief. They said I should cry for Anne Corley and let her go. I wasn't ready.
I veered the conversation away from me and back to Ginger. “Sig helped you do that?”
She nodded. “We were in Shelton doing a series of hearings. Board members travel in pairs, like nuns. One morning I couldn't get out of bed. I had the shakes too bad. That was when Sig broke into my room. He dragged me to my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting that night. We were scheduled to go home the next morning, but we stayed over. Sig got us rooms in a different motel. It took three days for him to walk me through the DTs. That's when Mona started thinking Sig and I were having an affair.”
I looked at Ginger's trim figure and flawless grace. She didn't fit any of the standard stereotypes of a recovering alcoholic. Had she not told me, I never would have suspected.
“I won't go through that again, ever,” she continued. “Nothing can be worse than DTs. Sig kept me in the program, talked to me when I got discouraged, kept telling me I was a worthwhile person long before I could see it for myself. I'd be dead by now if it weren't for him.”
“He sounds like a hell of a nice guy,” I commented.
“He was.” She lapsed into silence.
“Do you love Darrell?” It was none of my business, yet I asked anyway. I already knew a great deal about Ginger Watkins, far more than our few hours together warranted, but I wanted to know more. It had nothing to do with Detective J. P. Beaumont. It was Beau, the man, who needed to know.
“I used to,” she said softly. “Not anymore.”
She met my gaze, then looked down at her plate. “I didn't mean to bore you.”
“I'm not bored. What will you do?”
“Live one day at a time. I'll file on Monday, resign from the board if I have to, and go looking for a job.”
“What kind of job?”
“Maybe I'll go back to school and get a degree in alcoholism counseling. I'd like to repay Sig Larson.”
“Somehow I don't think Sig expected to be repaid.”
“No,” she agreed, “he didn't. That's why I want to do it.” Suddenly she put the brakes on my questioning. “What about you? Who is J. P. Beaumont?�
�
I gave her an evasive grin. “A homicide cop in the middle of a mid-life crisis, trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up.”
“Married?”
“Not anymore.”
“Involved?”
I sighed. It was six months later, but the hurt was still there. Not bleeding, but raw nonetheless. “No, I'm footloose and fancy-free.”
“You don't sound very footloose,” she observed.
“That's very perceptive of you,” I said. “You're right.” I couldn't match her candor. The kind of open self-revelation that came easily to her eluded me. The telephone jangled a welcome interruption.
“Detective Beaumont?”
“Yes.”
“This is Smitty with the crime lab. Could you bring Mrs. Watkins up to take a look around the room?”
“Sure. Find anything?”
“Can't tell.” It was a standard answer. “Maybe she can tell us if anything's missing.”
“Okay, we'll be right there.”
I put down the phone and turned to Ginger. “Traveling time.”
She peered in dismay at her stockinged feet. “What about shoes?”
Scrounging the bottom of the closet, I turned up my ancient bedroom slippers. “Put these on. They'll fit like a pair of snowshoes, but it's better than going barefoot.”
Ginger stumbled across the room in a trial run. “Not much better,” she commented.
The walk to Ginger's room was cold and windy. The rain had stopped. Wispy clouds scudded before a half-moon. Ginger scuffed along, gripping my arm in case she tripped over the outsized slippers.
“Have you ever been the victim of a break-in before?”
She shook her head. I wanted to warn her, to ease the shock of seeing her things strewn and disheveled by unknown hands. She knew of the break-in from Huggins, but hearing it and seeing it are two different things.
We made it to her room without incident. If Rosario was crawling with reporters, they weren't in evidence. Thank God Huggins had managed to keep Ginger's room out of the limelight. By now members of the Fourth Estate would have filed their stories. They'd be settled in the Vista Lounge, drowning their sorrows or entertaining one another. The Seattle Press Corps Traveling Dog and Pony Show.
Pomeroy opened the door, grunting with displeasure when he saw me.
I ignored him, pushing my way past without any kind of acknowledgment. His face flushed angrily, but he said nothing.
Ginger followed me into the room. She stopped short inside the door, her face blanching, her hands involuntarily covering her mouth.
A man came forward and introduced himself. “I'm Dayton Smith,” he said. “Smitty for short. This your room?”
Ginger nodded.
“We've dusted for prints. We'll want your prints and those of any other people known to have been in the room—the desk clerk, maids, Room Service. That's the only way to discover unidentified prints. We'll go down to the lobby after we finish here.”
Again Ginger nodded, incapable of speech.
“Look around. Can you see if anything is missing?”
Walking trancelike through the room, Ginger fingered the heap of clothing piled on the floor, sifted through the contents of her makeup case strewn on the counter while those of us in the room watched in silence.
All the officers, with the possible exception of Pomeroy, understood the deep sense of violation a break-in victim feels. Fear, anger, and outrage passed over her face in rapid succession. She knelt beside a scatter of papers dumped near an overturned Gucci briefcase, awkwardly attempting to straighten them. When she finished, I pulled her to her feet.
“Is anything gone?”
She shook her head. “I don't think so.”
I looked at Smitty. “No sign of forced entry?”
“No. Whoever came in evidently had a key.”
I looked down at Ginger. She was pale and shaking. “Gather what you need,” I said. “You can't stay here. We'll have the desk send someone to clean up this mess.”
She approached the task purposefully, moving through the room, scooping up nightgown, robe, and shoes from the tangled heap on the floor. She sorted through the things on the counter, placing makeup, hairbrush, and toothbrush in a small case along with her clothing. Pomeroy watched her leeringly from the door. I wanted to kick him.
At last, still wearing my slippers, she turned to me. “I'm ready. Can we go?”
I led her from the room. She sank against me. I supported her willingly, J. P. Beaumont, Good Samaritan in an hour of need.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“You're welcome,” I replied, guiltily conscious of savoring the slight pressure of her slender body against mine.
CHAPTER
5
Smitty's partner from the Washington State Crime Lab took Ginger into the hotel kitchen for fingerprinting. I went to the desk where I tackled Fred, demanding another room. “I'm sorry Mr. Beaumont. We're full. We were almost booked before the reporters showed up, and now—”
“Look,” I said. “The crime lab's still not done with her room. Besides, she can't go back there. The lock wasn't broken. Whoever got in had a key.”
“As I said, we don't have any other rooms.”
I turned away from the desk in disgust, only to run headlong into the mustached human walrus who calls himself Maxwell Cole. “Hello, J. P. Why didn't you return my call?”
“Didn't want to, Max. Get out of my way.”
“You're being rude,” he chided. “I only need to talk to you for a minute.”
“What about?” I was pretty sure I knew what Max was after. For once in his life, he surprised me.
“Don Wilson.”
“Who the hell is Don Wilson?”
“You remember, Denise Wilson's husband. DeAnn's father. The Lathrop case.”
There isn't a cop in Washington State who isn't sickened by the very name. Philip Lathrop sits over on Death Row in Walla Walla, a slime thumbing his nose at the system. Seven years ago, he followed Denise Wilson home from the laundromat and raped her in front of her two-year-old daughter. Denise testified against him, and Lathrop got sent up. He went to prison vowing revenge.
Six years later he was placed in a work/release program. Nobody remembered that the Wilsons lived less than three miles away. He came back to their house one hot July day and finished the job, killing both Denise and DeAnn in a bloody carnage that left hardened detectives puking at the scene. It'll be years before he exhausts the appeals process. It's called a miscarriage of justice!
“What about Don Wilson?” I asked.
“I was to meet him here at four. He never showed.”
“So? What does that have to do with me?”
“I wondered if you had seen him. He turns up at parole board hearings, demonstrating, protesting—that kind of thing. He's lobbying for a statewide victim/witness protection program.”
“Look, Max, I wouldn't recognize him if I saw him. There hasn't been a protester in sight.”
Max blinked at me nearsightedly through thick glasses. “You're sure?”
“Yes, I'm sure, goddammit,” I snapped. “Now leave me alone.” I was still worrying about Ginger, wondering if there might be a room available somewhere in Eastsound.
Max backed away from me warily. The last time he and I had a confrontation, I loosened a couple of teeth for him.
Just then Ginger returned from the kitchen. She walked past Cole. “I'm done, Beau,” she said. “Did you get a room?” It was an innocent question, but I wondered how it would read in the morning edition. As recognition and wonder washed across Max's fat face, I wanted to crawl into a hole.
“Why, Mrs. Watkins, how nice to see you again.”
Ginger turned on him coolly. “I don't believe I know you.”
“Cole,” he said with an affable grin. “Maxwell Cole of the Post-Intelligencer. Would you care to comment on Sig Larson's death?”
Her manner changed from cool to frigid. �
��I would not.”
He shrugged and looked at me. “Doesn't hurt to ask.”
“Get out of here, Max.” I was in no mood to put up with any of his crap.
“Just one more question, Mrs. Watkins. Have you seen Don Wilson today?”
Ginger's reaction was totally out of proportion to the question. “Is…he…here?” she stammered. Color drained from her face. She groped blindly for my arm.
The change wasn't lost on Max. He stepped toward her, and she shrank against me. “He was supposed to be,” Max continued lightly. “We had an interview scheduled at four. He called late this morning. Said something was about to break. I barely had time to get here.”
I stepped between Max and Ginger. “Why did he call you? Why not someone else?”
“I've been working on a special piece—”
I took Ginger's arm, cutting him off. “Come on. Let's get out of here.”
“But—” Max protested.
“Stay away from her and stay away from me, Max. If you don't, I'll give your dentist and your eye doctor a little more business.”
His walrus mouth opened and closed convulsively. They weren't empty words, and he knew it. When Ginger and I left the building, he made no effort to follow.
I led Ginger back to my room and helped her into the chair before I went back to shut and lock the door. “What is it, Ginger?” I asked gently. “Tell me.”
“He did it,” she said decisively. “It has to be him.”
“Who did what?”
“Don Wilson. He killed Sig, I'm sure of it. I had no idea he was here. I never thought—”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don Wilson. He threatened us, both Sig and me. Sig just laughed it off. So did Darrell. No one took it seriously.”
“Why did he threaten you? I don't understand.”
“We—” She swallowed hard. “Sig and I conducted the hearing that sent Lathrop to that work/release program.”
My gut gave a wrench. I remembered the public outcry. There had been talk that the parole board should resign en masse. I had been standing next to her. Turning, I moved away, distancing myself. I couldn't help it.
“Please, Beau, it wasn't our fault. We were given incomplete records. We made the decision as best we could with the information at hand.” Her voice pleaded for understanding, for me not to abandon her.