Improbable Cause (9780061745034)

by Jance, Judith A.

  “I’m J. P. Beaumont,” I replied. “And this is my partner, Allen Lindstrom.” Calloway nodded briefly when I showed him my badge.

  “It’s too bad about the doc,” he said. “He was a good tenant. A bit fussy now and again, I suppose, but he usually paid his rent right on time.”

  When you’re a homicide cop, you get paid to look for discrepancies, and the word usually offered the promise of something out of the ordinary.

  “You mean he didn’t always pay on time,” I said.

  Henry Calloway shook his head. “Oh, there was just that once. One of the neighborhood bums spent the night camped out on the steps here and took a piss in the doorway before he left. The doc claimed I hadn’t cleaned it up good enough. Held up the rent until it passed inspection. That was the only time.”

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t a discrepancy at all. It seemed totally in character, considering what we had learned so far about Dr. Frederick Nielsen.

  Calloway wasn’t about to let us leave. “Heard someone say he’s been dead in there over the weekend,” he went on. “That’s too bad. When will I be able to get inside to clean up?”

  “You won’t,” I answered shortly. “Bill Foster’s still in there, gathering evidence. When he leaves, he’ll put up crime-scene tape. No one goes in or out until the tape comes down.”

  “I see,” Calloway said, sounding disappointed.

  I know the type. I meet at least one on every case. These turkeys thrive on morbid curiosity. They like to view crime scenes for themselves, preferably while the smell of spilled blood still hangs heavy in the air. Having a murder committed in his building would give Henry Calloway a lifetime’s worth of grist for barstool conversations.

  I suppressed a shudder. I don’t like the Henry Calloways of the world, but occasionally they prove useful. Big Al was the one who gave Calloway his chance to shine.

  “By the way,” he put in casually, “you didn’t happen to see anything unusual over the weekend, did you?”

  Calloway straightened his shoulders, puffed out his chest, and drew himself to full attention. “Can’t say that I did, except maybe this morning.”

  “This morning?” I asked. “What about this morning?”

  “Well, sir, when I saw that little receptionist of his go racing into the office a little before nine, I says to my wife, I says, ‘Jody, there’s going to be hell to pay. You mark my words.’ Dr. Nielsen didn’t hold with people being late, you know. But then, I guess he won’t be firing her on that account, now will he?”

  “No,” I agreed. “I suppose not. Did you notice anything else unusual, anything at all?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “What about your wife? Does she work here, too?”

  “She does, and you’re welcome to ask her,” he said, “but I doubt she saw anything else.”

  We took his name and phone number. Henry Calloway wandered away, no longer making even the slightest pretense of picking up the trash.

  “That lying little wench,” Big Al growled, as soon as Calloway was out of earshot. “She told us she was here at eight o’clock. What the hell do you think she’s up to?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered, “but we’re by God going to find out. First, though, we’d better go tell his wife.”

  CHAPTER

  3

  Green Lake is a former swamp that was dredged and landscaped during the thirties and forties. The lake and surrounding park constitute an urban Mecca for the city’s physical-fitness sorts, making it one of the most congested parks in the city.

  Every day crowds of people run, jog, skate, walk, bike, and, on occasion, even ski around its three-mile perimeter, jostling for position on the complicated set of lines and symbols that specify who can do what where on the narrow asphalt pathways.

  Legend has it that the name Green Lake comes from the brilliant coat of algae that formed on the swamp’s stagnating water, after development diverted cleansing contributory streams and creeks into sewers. I sometimes wonder if those modern health freaks out for their daily constitutional realize they’re doing today’s running on a foundation of yesterday’s garbage. Probably not. I’m sure it would offend their tender environmental sensibilities.

  The houses that front on the lake itself are mostly well-constructed older homes. Built high above massive stone retaining walls, they sit like unassailable fortresses guarding the street.

  Sixty-six ten Green Lake Avenue North was true to type. From a distance, we could see that it was large and white and gabled, with a windowed front porch and two full stories. But from directly below, only the latticed top of a gazebo was visible in one front corner. Steep steps led up through the rock retaining wall to a decorative wrought-iron gate.

  That Monday morning Green Lake teemed with summer-crazed Seattlites who had gobbled up every bit of on-street parking for blocks. Al pulled over to the side of the street and paused in a bike lane long enough for me to get out of the car and climb up the stairs to the gate. It was locked from the inside.

  Through the narrow bars I saw an immaculately tended front yard that instantly reminded me of Dr. Frederick Nielsen’s desk.

  The yard was bordered by a series of scrupulously trimmed miniature trees that looked like they’d been pruned by a surgeon wielding a scalpel. The grass was mowed within an inch of its life. No forgotten toys or tricycles or wagons lingered in that well-ordered, manicured yard. They wouldn’t have dared. There was no indication that children had come within miles of the place, to say nothing of ever having lived there.

  I felt a sudden, surprising wave of sympathy for Dr. Frederick Nielsen’s children, for that nameless seven- and eight-year-old boy and girl. Not because their father was dead, but because he had been their father.

  I turned and walked back down to the car. “The gate’s locked,” I told Al. “Let’s go around back and try the alley.”

  Finding the alley was easier said than done. Instead of running parallel to Green Lake as we expected, the alley was perpendicular to it. The entrance looked more like a driveway than a legitimate alley. When we finally attempted to enter it, however, we discovered it was totally blocked by a U-Haul trailer.

  Sitting with its end gates wide open, the trailer was parked beside a shaky pile of assorted household goods and boxes. A wooden rocking chair, moving slightly with every hint of breeze, sat next to the trailer’s open end, while nearby two women struggled to load an unwieldy four-poster bed-frame canopy into the trailer. They hadn’t bothered to take it all the way apart.

  “Looks to me like Mrs. Nielsen is bailing out and taking all her worldly possessions with her,” Big Al commented as he parked our vehicle as close as he could to the mountain of household goods.

  He switched on our yellow hazard lights, and we both climbed out of the car. We had moved only a step or two toward the end of the trailer when a voice exploded from the shadowy interior of the trailer.

  “Freeze, sucker!”

  The reflex is automatic. We froze, but only for a moment. Clutching desperately for the loaded Smith and Wesson in my shoulder holster, I dove for cover. On the other side of the car Big Al dodged behind the front wheel, groping for his own weapon as he too hit the ground.

  “Buddy!” a woman’s voice scolded sharply. “You knock that off right this minute! Do you hear me?”

  “Buddy’s a bad boy, Buddy’s a bad boy,” replied a suddenly artificial, singsong voice.

  One woman entered the trailer and emerged with a huge multicolored parrot perched jauntily on one shoulder. With his yellow head cocked to one side, he regarded Big Al and me with what seemed to be a lively interest.

  The woman, a silver-haired lady in her sixties or seventies, clambered down from the trailer and hurried over to me. She recoiled a full foot when she encountered my drawn .38.

  “Goodness gracious! Buddy’s just a harmless bird. You’re not going to shoot him, are you?” she demanded.

  Police officers live and die by the unexpected
. Response to danger, real or imagined, is reflexive, instantaneous, decisive. Hesitating a moment too long can be crucial. And deadly.

  But now as the sudden burst of adrenaline dissipated uselessly in my system, I fumbled sheepishly with my gun. My hand trembled violently. That silver-haired little old lady with her loudmouthed bird had come very close to dying in a hail of bullets. It would have been hell explaining that to a shooting review board.

  “No,” I managed with some difficulty. “I’m not going to shoot him. We’re police officers.” I finally succeeded in shoving my Smith and Wesson back into its holster and pulled my identification from my pocket.

  I glanced at Big Al, who was also struggling to his feet, his face gray and ashen. It had scared him as badly as it had me. For all the same reasons.

  “See what you did, Buddy?” the woman said crossly, turning back to the offending bird. “You caused these nice men all kinds of trouble.”

  “Buddy’s a bad boy, Buddy’s a bad boy,” the parrot agreed cheerfully, nodding his head up and down.

  A second woman, almost a carbon copy of the first, appeared at the open end of the trailer. Both women wore their hair cut short, with a thin fringe of straight bangs across the forehead—Mamie Eisenhower bangs in my book. Both wore gold wire-rimmed glasses and stood ramrod straight.

  “What’s going on, Rachel?” the second one asked briskly, smoothing her gray skirt and stepping to the ground in one easy movement. She was a spry old dame wearing what my mother always called sensible shoes.

  “Oh, nothing,” Rachel replied. “Buddy’s up to his old tricks again. He scared these two nice men half out of their wits, but there’s no harm done.”

  The second woman shook her head and clicked her tongue. “That bird never did have a lick of sense,” she said.

  Rachel turned back to me. “You’ll have to forgive him. Buddy spent his formative years sitting in a living room with his cage next to a television set. He grew up on ‘Police Story’ and ‘Starsky and Hutch.’”

  Big Al, getting a grip on himself, made a stab at polite conversation. “How old is he?” he asked.

  “Watch it, buster,” warned the bird. “Don’t come any closer.” Al stopped dead in his tracks.

  One look at Al’s face as he backed away from that parrot, and it was all I could do to keep from laughing. For two cents I think he would cheerfully have wrung that parrot’s cocky neck.

  “Buddy!” Rachel exclaimed, handing the bird over to the other woman, who had come to stand beside her. The three of them made quite a picture, the twin old ladies with the wise-ass bird between them. I surmised the women must be sisters.

  “Put him in the car, would you please, Daisy?” Rachel asked.

  Without a word, Daisy took the parrot and placed him in the back seat of an old two-toned brown and beige Buick Electra that was hooked to the trailer. As soon as the door slammed shut behind him, Buddy hopped up to the back window and sat there, hunched over, glaring out at us.

  I managed, with some difficulty, to stifle my laughter, but I was having a hell of a time thinking of anything useful to say. That didn’t matter much since Rachel was more than capable of keeping the conversation afloat single-handedly.

  “Buddy’s sixteen now,” she continued. “Parrots can live as long as forty or fifty years. Jake, the man who owned him first, was a neighbor of ours. He was in a wheelchair, housebound you know. For years it was just the two of them. All they did was eat and watch television together. Finally, Jake’s kids had to put him in a nursing home, and Buddy couldn’t go along. That’s when Daisy and I inherited him. He was so fat the first thing we had to do was put him on a diet.”

  I was still standing there holding out my ID, waiting for her to look at it. I felt a little silly. Eventually Rachel stopped for breath long enough to give my ID a cursory glance. I took the opportunity to get a word in edgewise.

  “I’m Detective Beaumont, and this is my partner, Allen Lindstrom. We’re with the Seattle Police Department. We’re trying to locate either Dorothy or LeAnn Nielsen.”

  The second woman, the one named Daisy, returned from the car. She stopped briefly beside her sister. “They’re not here,” Daisy answered curtly in response to my question. “Neither one of them.”

  Abruptly, Daisy turned toward the stack of boxes beside the trailer. Something seemed to have offended her, and I wasn’t sure what it was. I watched her tackle the stack of boxes. She wasn’t a particularly stout woman, but she was evidently quite strong. With a groan, she hefted a trunk-sized box from the swaying stack in the alley and dropped it with a thump onto the floor of the trailer. The U-Haul bounced on its springs.

  Daisy turned back to her sister. “Come on, Rachel. Let’s get busy. We haven’t got all day. I have to be at the zoo before long.”

  “Do you have any idea where either one of those people could be found?” I insisted, directing my question at Rachel now, trying to steer the conversation back to the dead man’s wife and mother. “It’s important that we reach one or the other of them this afternoon at the latest.”

  Daisy stopped where she was and stood with both hands on her hips. “What do you want ’em for?” she demanded.

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “Well, stick it out your ear then,” Daisy said sharply. She turned away and grabbed another box.

  Daisy may have been her name, but a sweet little wild flower she wasn’t.

  Rachel looked shocked. “You’re almost as bad as Buddy, Daisy,” she scolded. “There’s no need to be rude.”

  Her comment made me wonder which of them was older. It sounded like someone older and wiser chastising someone much younger. I would have thought those roles and distinctions would disappear with age, and these two were obviously well into retirement. But what would I know about that? I grew up as an only child.

  Rachel turned back to me.

  “Dotty’s in the hospital,” she said.

  “Dotty?” I asked.

  “Dotty. Dorothy, our sister—the one you asked about. She’s recovering from an accident, Mr. Beaumar,” Rachel explained.

  I didn’t attempt to correct her pronunciation of my name. There was no percentage in it. “Could you tell us which hospital?” I asked. “It’s urgent that we be in touch with her.”

  “Why? Is something wrong?”

  “We really must speak directly to her.”

  Rachel shook her head doubtfully. “I don’t know. She’s supposed to be released tomorrow, but there’s no one here to take care of her. I don’t know where that no-good, worthless son of hers is. We haven’t been able to reach him in days. We’re bringing her home with us. We just came by to pick up some of her things.”

  From that comment I gleaned at least one important scrap of information—there was no love lost between this zany pair of aunties with their outspoken bird and their precise, well-ordered, and recently deceased nephew. I’m sure he would have been shocked at the haphazard manner with which his mother’s prized possessions, including the four-poster canopy bed, were being crammed into the trailer. These ladies may have been quick movers, but careful they weren’t.

  “Ma’am, this happens to be police business,” I argued gently. “Of course we wouldn’t want to trouble your sister if she’s too ill to see us. Instead, maybe you could tell us how to contact LeAnn Nielsen, then. It’s about your nephew, Dr. Frederick Nielsen.”

  Rachel turned back to her sister, just as Daisy heaved another loaded box into the trailer. “What do you think, Daze?” she asked. “Should we tell him or not?”

  Daisy shrugged. “I already told him what I think. Nothing he’s said has changed my mind one whit.” Daisy went right on loading boxes with a vengeance.

  Meanwhile, Rachel was taking her sister’s opposition into consideration. She put one finger to her lips as if lost in thought. “I just don’t know what to say. I don’t think we should let you bother Dotty, not in her condition. This has been terribly hard on her, you know.�
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  I had almost decided to take the bull by the horns and tell them. Those two stubborn old bats weren’t going to give us an inch unless we gave them a damn good reason to do so. Evidently, Big Al had reached the same conclusion a little sooner than I did. He beat me to the punch.

  “Look,” he said patiently. “Like Detective Beaumont told you, we’re from the Seattle P.D. With homicide. There’s been a murder.”

  Rachel’s jaw dropped. Daisy swung away from the stack of boxes, her sharp eyes riveted on Big Al’s face. “A what?” she demanded.

  “A murder,” he repeated. “We’ve tentatively identified the victim as your nephew. Our first responsibility is to notify his next of kin. Out of common courtesy, we try to do that in person. If you could put us in touch with either your sister or your nephew’s wife, LeAnn, it would be a big help.”

  “My land!” Rachel exclaimed. “Daisy, did you hear that?”

  “I heard,” Daisy answered grimly.

  Behind us a raucous horn sounded as a huge blue garbage truck rumbled into the alley behind our unmarked patrol car. The driver of the truck leaned out the window and shook his fist at our offending vehicles. “Hey, you guys. You gotta clear outa my way. I got work to do.”

  Which is how Big Al Lindstrom and J. P. Beaumont, detectives with Seattle’s homicide squad, ended up helping two white-haired little old ladies load the last of Dorothy Nielsen’s personal possessions into a U-Haul trailer.

  When it was all loaded, with the rocking chair settled in the last bit of open space, the end result looked none too stable to me, but Rachel assured us that they weren’t going far. She stood to one side while Daisy pulled the trailer’s doors shut, bolted them, and headed for the driver’s side of the Buick.

  Rachel paused uncertainly with us as the old crate’s engine coughed and sputtered when Daisy turned the key and gunned the engine.

  “Why don’t you follow us?” Rachel offered tentatively. “We’ll try to decide what to do on our way to the house. Maybe you two could join us for a bite of lunch. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?”