by J. A. Jance
“Very. So you won't have the calendar analyzed?”
“I'll take it, just for old time's sake, but that's the only reason.” Huggins glared at me, his face implacable.
“What are you so pissed about, Hal?”
“I'm pissed because I've got a homicide to work, and I'm shorthanded, and I didn't get enough sleep, and my neck hurts. Any other questions?”
“None that I can think of.”
The waiter brought Huggins his food and took my order. Halfway through breakfast, Hal's savage beast seemed somewhat soothed. “You going back today?”
“Probably.” Rosario had lost its charm. I wanted to go home and lick my wounds.
“You need a ride?”
“Naw. I can take the shuttle bus.”
The waiter brought my coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice. “Find any trace of Wilson?”
Huggins shook his head. “Not yet. Looks like he stepped off the face of the earth once he got on the ferry.”
“Maybe he did,” I said. “Still no sign of him at his house?”
“Not a trace. King County has round-the-clock surveillance on the place. It doesn't make sense.”
“Unless he's dead, too,” I suggested.
Huggins' flint-eyed scrutiny honed in on my face. “He might be, at that,” he said.
I didn't like the tone, the inflection. “Is that an accusation?” I asked.
“Could be,” he allowed, “if I thought vigilante mentality had caught you by the short hairs.”
“Look, Hal, I was only trying to help.”
He nodded. “I'd hate to think otherwise, Beau.”
It sounded like the end of a beautiful friendship. I tried to put the conversation on a less volatile track. “How'd she get the booze, then? It had to come from somewhere. It wasn't in the Porsche when she left here.”
“When she left you,” he corrected. “She might have gone back to her room and gotten it. She might have bought it on the way.”
I was shaking my head before he finished speaking. Huggins' face clouded. “You're sure you never met Ginger Watkins before last Friday?”
“I'm sure,” I answered, trying to keep anger out of my voice. From one moment to the next, Huggins and I shifted back and forth to opposite sides, like two kids who can't decide if they're best friends or hate each other's guts.
“Why's it so goddamned important to you that she wasn't drunk?” he demanded.
How does a man answer a question like that without his ego getting in the way? If she was drunk, then I'm not the man I thought I was. A psychiatrist would have a ball with that one. I know she was coming back. She and I had a date to screw our brains out after dinner. That one had a good macho ring to it. I had given her a reason for living. She wouldn't have thrown it all away. That dripped with true missionary fervor.
I said, “It's important to me, that's all.”
“My mind's made up; don't confuse me with the facts, right?”
“Something like that.”
“Beau—”
“Will you have the calendar analyzed?”
“I told you I will, but—”
“And you'll let me know what you find?”
There was a momentary pause. “I guess.” He stirred his coffee uneasily, looking at me over the cup. “It's probably a good thing you're going home today. We might end up stepping on each other's toes.”
“I take it that means you're firing me as a San Juan County deputy?”
He nodded. “Yup.” He gave me a lopsided grin. “If it's possible to fire someone who's working for free.” The tension between us evaporated. Huggins rose, taking his check and the calendar. I snagged the check away from him.
“It's on me, Hal, remember? Your beauty sleep?”
We shook hands. “No hard feelings?” he asked.
“None.”
“All right then. I'll be in touch. If I were a betting man, I'd say there won't be a goddamned thing in this sonofabitch.” He strode out of the dining room.
It's too bad I didn't take that bet, but hindsight is always twenty/twenty.
I went into the bar because I didn't want to go back to my room. Without Ginger, my room seemed empty. Barney was industriously polishing the mirror.
“Morning,” he said to my reflection. “Want a drink?”
“Just coffee,” I replied. “I need to think.”
He brought a mug and set it in front of me. “On the house,” he said, refusing my money. Barney had a sense of when to leave people alone. He said nothing about my making an ass of myself. Instead he returned to his mirror and his Windex.
The question I had asked Hal was far more than rhetorical. He was right, of course. Bloodalcohol readings don't lie. No matter how much I wanted to deny it, Ginger Watkins had been drunk when she ploughed into the water. So where had she gotten the booze? From her room? A liquor store? Where?
“Hey, Barney,” I said, “does Orcas Island have a liquor store?”
He grinned. “Hell, no. We're too small. We've got Old Man Baxter, though. He's the official agent. Lives up above Eastsound, about a half-mile beyond Ernie's.”
“Did Huggins leave one of Don Wilson's pictures with you?”
“Are you kidding?” He reached under the bar and pulled out a whole handful. “Why, you want some?”
“One,” I said. “I only need one.” He handed me a picture. I pulled out a pen to write on the back. “Tell me again how to get there.”
“Where?”
“Mr. Baxter's.”
“Now wait a minute. You come in here, and I give you free coffee. Next thing I know, you want to go see our agent so you can mix your own drinks? No way! I'd lose one of my best customers.”
“I promise I won't buy anything,” I protested. “I just want to show him this picture.”
“Well, in that case…. Go past Ernie's. It's the fourth mailbox on the left.”
“Thanks, have the desk call me a cab, would you?”
“Why?”
“So I don't have to walk.”
“No, I mean why do you want to see Baxter?”
“I want to know if either Ginger Watkins or this man bought something from him Friday or Saturday. Make the call, would you?”
Instead, Barney reached into his pants pocket and extracted a ring of keys. He tossed them across the bar, and I caught them in midair. “What's this?”
“It's the key to an old Chevy pickup parked over by the moorage. You're welcome to use it if you like.”
It was a small-town gesture, one that caught me by surprise. When I thought about it, though, there's no such thing as auto theft on Orcas Island. I pocketed the keys. “Thanks, Barney. Appreciate it.”
The pickup looked old and decrepit; but ugliness, like beauty, is only skin-deep. The engine ran like a top beneath a rusty hood. I drove into Eastsound, past Ernie's and stopped at the fourth mailbox on the left. The house was a picturesque gray-and-white bungalow that might have been lifted straight off Cape Cod. I knocked on the door.
Mr. Baxter himself opened it. He was a small man with a belly much too large for the rest of him. The living room of the house had been converted into a mini-display room, with a stack of hand-held shopping baskets sitting beside the door. The house had the smell and look of an aging bachelor pad—not much cooking and not enough cleaning.
“Help yourself,” he said, motioning me inside.
I pulled Don Wilson's picture out of my pocket. “I didn't come to buy anything,” I said. “I was wondering if you'd ever seen this man before.”
He peered at the picture, then looked up at me. “You a cop?” he asked. His face was truculent, arms crossed, chin jutting. Mr. Baxter was a short man embattled by a tall world.
Huggins had pulled the plug on my unofficial deputy status. “No,” I said. “The woman who died the other night was a friend of mine. I'm trying to find out what happened to her.”
“Not from me you won't.”
“I'm only asking if you
recognize him.”
“You ever hear of the confidentiality statute of nineteen and thirty-three?”
“Not that I remember.”
“It says no liquor-store clerk tells nobody nothing, excepting of course federal agents checking revenue stamps. We can talk to them.”
“All I'm asking is, Did you see him?”
“And if I give out information, they stick me with a high misdemeanor. Nosiree. I'm not talking to nobody.”
I could see right off I wasn't going to change his mind. I left. Something made me stop at Ernie's. The doors of the Porsche were wide open, and the insides of the car were scattered all over the garage in a seemingly hopeless jumble. Ernie glanced up as I walked in. He was bent over the engine, a grimy crutch propped under his good arm.
“How'do, Mr. Beaumont. I was just gonna call you.”
I figured it was time to jack up the price, now that the car was in pieces and I was a captive audience.
“Why?” I asked.
“You ever have any work done on the linkage?”
I shrugged. “No. Not that I know of.”
He hopped away from the car to a nearby tool bench, picked up something in his gripper, and handed it to me. I looked down at two pieces of metal, slightly smaller in diameter than a pencil. “What's this?”
“That's the throttle linkage cable. Looks to me like it's been cut.”
“What does that mean?”
“With that thing cut, Mr. Beaumont, all you have to do is put that baby in motion and you've got a one-way ride.”
I looked down at the shiny crimped ends of metal. “It couldn't have broken in the accident?”
He shook his head. “No way.”
“Mind if I use your phone?” I asked, keeping my voice calm. It was time for Hal Huggins to eat a little crow.
CHAPTER
16
Hal marched into Ernie's Garage looking thunderous. “What do you mean the linkage was cut?” he stormed.
Ernie pointed him in the direction of the tool bench where the two pieces of cable were once more lying in state. Silently Hal examined them, then he straightened. “How the hell could those crime-lab jokers miss something like this?”
“They were investigating an accident, remember?” I reminded him. “A DWI. Maybe even a suicide.”
He glared at me. “That's no excuse.”
“So where do we go from here?”
“Damned if I know.” Hal settled on a bench near the door. “Not a chance of getting finger-prints now, either,” he lamented.
Ernie, back under the hood, peered over his shoulder at Hal, grinning. “Only half as many as there could have been,” he said.
Hal didn't bother to acknowledge Ernie's black humor. “Two homicides,” he muttered. “Two goddamned homicides in as many days. Do you know how long we usually go up here without a homicide?”
“Did you tell anybody on the way over?”
“Hell, no. I tried to raise Pomeroy to come down to the dock and pick me up. I couldn't find that lard-ass anywhere. Luckily, somebody gave me a ride.”
My mind was working. “Then the only people who know are you, Ernie, me, and the murderer.”
“That's right. So what?”
“Let's keep it that way.”
“What good will that do?” Hal asked.
“It'll give us a chance to investigate without the media breathing down our necks.”
Hal nodded, slowly. “That does have some appeal.” For a time we sat in silence. “How far could it have been driven like that, Ernie?” Hal asked finally.
Ernie answered without looking up from his work. “A couple hundred feet if the front end was aligned and it was on a straight stretch.”
“What gear was it in?”
“Neutral when I got it, but I'm sure the towtruck driver shifted it so he wouldn't tear up the transmission.”
“Can you check with him?”
“Sure.”
“And not a word of this to anyone,” Hal admonished. “It's important.”
Ernie straightened and favored Hal with a sly grin. “Had a feeling it was, or you wouldn't have been here in twenty-five minutes flat. Last time I seen you move that fast was at the Fire-man's Picnic when a wasp was after you.”
Hal laughed. “I set all-time world records with that sucker on my butt.” The camaraderie was small-town stuff, foreign in a nice way.
“Don't worry. I'll keep it quiet.” Ernie resumed working on the car, as though we were no longer there.
“What about Wilson?” I asked. “Any sign of him?”
Huggins shook his head. “We're looking, still keeping his house under surveillance, but so far nothing.”
We rose and started toward the door; Ernie called after me, “By the way, Mr. Beaumont, maybe it won't cost you the whole seven grand after all.”
Hal's eyes widened. “Seven grand?”
“Maybe six and a half.” Ernie's head disappeared, dismissing us. Hal looked at me, stunned.
“Six and a half thousand? To fix the car?”
“It's a Porsche,” I said. It seemed to me that no further explanation was necessary.
“How much they paying you these days? When I worked Seattle P.D, I was lucky to afford a lube and oil. Matter of fact, I still am. You into graft and corruption?”
“I happened into some money, Hal, that's all.”
Hal glowered at me. “Some people have all the luck,” he sniffed, walking outside. I followed.
“Where you going?” I asked.
“I'm looking for Pomeroy. He was supposed to come pick me up. I can't drive the goddamned police launch all over the goddamned island.”
“Where do you want to go?”
“The duck pond, you asshole. Where else?”
That's how two homicide detectives, one legal and one not, returned to the scene of the crime in a bartender's borrowed pickup. It wasn't much, but it was a whole lot better than walking.
The place where the Porsche had laid down the layer of rubber made better sense now. The car had leaped forward from a dead stop. Even piecing that together didn't give us everything we needed to know. We gave up about mid-afternoon. I took Hal back to his boat.
“What are you going to do now?” he asked.
“Go home, I guess. Hanging around here won't do any good.”
He sat in Barney's idling pickup, one hand on the door handle. “We'll get him, Beau. I promise.” It was as close as Hal Huggins ever came to making an apology.
“Are you going to warn the rest of the parole board? What if he goes after the whole board, one by one.”
Hal looked stricken. “I'll check it out,” he agreed. “He could go through them like a dose of salts.” He climbed from the pickup and headed for the dock.
Back at Rosario, I packed and checked out of my room. I had the desk clerk call for a float plane. I could have taken the ferry to Anacortes, but without a car, I'd still be a long way from Seattle. A charter pilot could drop me on Lake Union a mile or so from my apartment.
I dragged a newspaper along in the noisy little plane. I suffer from a fear of flying. There's nothing like reading a newspaper to make me forget that I'm scared. Newspapers always piss me off.
The editor opined that the tragic deaths of two members of the Washington State Parole Board over the weekend—one an apparent homicide and the other in a motor vehicle accident—pointed out the high cost of public service. He went on to say that Darrell Watkins was showing great personal courage in continuing to campaign in the face of the loss of his beloved wife.
Bullshit! There was no hint that the beloved wife, now deceased, would have filed for a divorce had she lived to Monday morning. In the editorial, Ginger's and Darrell's life had been a Cinderella story, poor girl marries rich boy and lives happily ever after. As far as Ginger was concerned, the fairy tale had suffered in translation. Somehow I had an idea that Maxwell Cole's interview would never see the light of the day. It wasn't just spiked, it was buri
ed. For good.
The article on Ginger made no mention of drinking. The accident was described as a one-car accident on a narrow road. Darrell Watkins was quoted at some length. “I am going on with the race because I believe Ginger would want me to.”
The unmitigated ass! Ginger had been wrong. Darrell Watkins had developed hypocrisy into an art form.
The float plane dropped me at a dock on Lake Union. Without luggage, I could have walked. With luggage, I called a cab. It was early evening when I got home—the city boy glad to be back in familiar territory, with the comforting wail of sirens and the noise of traffic.
My apartment is in the Royal Crest, a condo at Third and Lenora. Condo conjures images of swinging singles. There are singles here, all right, mostly retired, who do very little swinging. It's a vertical neighborhood where people bring soup when you're sick and know who comes and goes at all hours. I moved in five years ago on a temporary basis, hoping Karen and I would get back together. We didn't. Five years later, my escape hatch has become home.
In the elevator two people welcomed me back, and on the mat in front of my door I found a stack of crossword puzzles culled from various newspapers and left for me by my nextdoor neighbor and crony, Ida Newell. Yes, it was very good to be home.
I put my suitcases in the bedroom and looked around the tiny apartment with satisfaction. One of my first concessions to having money was to hire a housekeeper who comes in once every two weeks whether I need it or not. The house smelled of furniture polish and toilet-bowl cleaner. It was a big improvement over the old days when it smelled like a billygoat pen and I needed two hours' notice before I could invite someone up to visit.
The mail was mostly of the bill/occupant variety, although I noticed that some of the occupant stuff was a lot more upscale than occupant mail I used to receive. Somewhere there's a mass-mailing company that knows when you move from one income bracket to another. The whole idea makes me paranoid.
I thumped into my favorite leather chair, a brown monstrosity that gives people with “taste” indigestion. I examined the bill from Rosario with its detail of all calls made from my room. I recognized most of them. Two of the numbers were unfamiliar. One had to be Homer's and the other Darrell's. I chose one at random.