Improbable Cause (9780061745034)

by Jance, Judith A.

  “She couldn’t because he—” Rachel blurted, then she stopped.

  “Because he what?”

  She lifted the hem of the apron and wiped her hands with it. “He beat her,” she said hopelessly, keeping her voice hushed and leveling a meaningful glance at the open doorway behind Big Al. “Freddie beat his own mother. I still can’t believe it. The doctor said that’s how her hip got broken.”

  “You never knew about it before Dr. Leonard told you?”

  She shrugged. “We may have had our suspicions off and on over the years. I knew he ruled LeAnn with an iron fist, but I never thought he’d stoop to physical violence—not with LeAnn and certainly not with Dotty. She’s his mother, for heaven’s sake!”

  “Is Saturday the first Daisy learned about it, too?”

  “As far as I know. If Daze knew otherwise, she never mentioned it to me.”

  “Where was Daisy Saturday afternoon?” Big Al asked.

  “The zoo, of course. Some of the time she works as an aide in animal health, but this week we’ve been busy getting ready for the Jungle Party. It’s tonight, you know.”

  Al arched an eyebrow. “Animal health?” he asked. “Would she know how to run an autoclave?”

  “Probably,” Rachel said. “Why?”

  “Never mind about that right now,” I said. “What you’re telling us is that Daisy wasn’t with you at the hospital?”

  “That’s correct. She dropped me off on her way. I caught a bus home after visiting hours.”

  “Dr. Leonard told us you and Daisy were arguing as you left her office. What about?”

  Rachel sighed. “It was something I said.”

  “What?”

  “That Freddie was a worthless son of a bitch. That I wished he would die.”

  “Daisy disagreed with that?”

  “She said someone needed to talk with him, to convince him that he needed help.”

  “Do you remember what Daisy was wearing that afternoon?”

  “Her uniform. We had the appointment with Dr. Leonard, and then she had to get right over to the zoo. She had a tour scheduled for one o’clock. We all have to work a certain number of public contact hours, you see.”

  “So she was driving?”

  Rachel nodded.

  “Which car?”

  “Freddie’s. The one he gave Dotty. He told us we should drive it at least once a week to keep the battery charged.”

  “And what kind of car is it?”

  “A nice one. A BMW. It’s out in our garage. It’s not that new, but it’s a whole lot newer than our Buick. We thought we should try to keep it in out of the weather to protect the finish.”

  “Had it been in an accident the last time you saw it?”

  Her eyes grew wide. “The BMW in an accident? No.”

  “It wasn’t damaged when you saw it last?”

  “Certainly not. It was fine. Daisy may drive fast on occasion, but she’s not careless.”

  “Would you mind showing us the car.”

  “Of course not. Why would I mind?” She opened a drawer beside the kitchen door and removed a single key as well as another key ring; then she led us out to the garage. We went in by way of a door at the courtyard end of the garage.

  “See there?” Rachel said triumphantly, pointing at the undamaged front end of the BMW. “What did I tell you?”

  “You’d better take a look at the back,” I said.

  When she did, her jaw dropped. “When did this happen? It wasn’t like this Saturday. Why didn’t Daisy tell me about it?”

  “Rachel,” I said quietly, “would you mind doing us a favor?”

  “What?” she asked.

  “Is there any kind of check-in procedure at the zoo?”

  “For docents, you mean?”

  I nodded.

  She looked at me for a long moment, then she nodded slowly. “So that’s what you’re thinking. That she didn’t go to the zoo at all. We’ll just see about that. I’ll call and check. Once I do, you’ll see you’re making a terrible mistake.” She turned and started briskly for the door.

  “May I have the keys?” Al asked.

  She whirled and glared back at us. “What for?”

  “We have a search warrant to search your premises,” I explained. “Including any vehicles.”

  I took the official document from my coat pocket and handed it to her. Without bothering to look at it, she flung the warrant and the keys on the floor of the garage and marched off toward the apartment with me on her heels.

  We went back inside through the kitchen door. While Rachel dialed the zoo on the kitchen phone, Buddy tried desperately to draw me into conversation. “What’s your name?” he whined plaintively. In his lonely kitchen exile, he was evidently quite miserable.

  Rachel finally got through to the zoo and asked for someone to check the sign-in sheet. For several minutes she waited on hold, without speaking to me or acknowledging my presence. When the other person returned and began speaking, Rachel’s head bobbed up and down in vigorous agreement.

  “See there?” she said to me, holding the phone away from her mouth and covering the mouthpiece. “I told you she was there. Her signature is on the sheet right where it’s supposed to be. In at twelve-thirty and out at three-thirty.”

  “How can that be? It doesn’t make sense,” I commented.

  “Of course it makes sense,” Rachel snapped. “I tried to tell you this was all a mistake.”

  “Did you say she was conducting tours?”

  Rachel nodded.

  “Who’s in charge of them?”

  “The tours? Madge,” she answered. “She arranges the scheduling.”

  “Check with her and find out if Daisy actually appeared for her one o’clock tour.”

  Although Rachel clearly thought me unreasonable, she removed her hand from the receiver and asked to speak with Madge. It was a minute or so before she was connected.

  “This is Rachel,” she said into the phone. “Rachel Miller, Daisy’s sister. I wanted to check on the tour Daze did on Saturday.” There was a long pause and Rachel began to frown. “She didn’t?” Her tone was incredulous. “You’re sure?”

  She listened to the answer, then hung up the phone. With a sigh she turned to face me. “Madge says Daisy never showed up. They held the tour for a while, but they finally had to send it out with somebody else. I don’t understand. Why would she sign in and then not go on her tour?”

  “Maybe she signed in and out later, hoping to give herself an alibi,” I suggested.

  Just then Al reappeared at the kitchen door. “You should come look at this, Beau.” He nodded curtly in Rachel’s direction. “You’d better come along, too.”

  “Rachel, what’s happening in there?” Dorothy called from the living room. “I thought you were going to make us a pot of coffee.”

  “In a minute,” Rachel replied. “I’m busy right now.”

  Big Al led the way back to the garage and around the car to the BMW’s open trunk. “Look at that,” he said.

  A rumpled docent’s uniform lay on the floor of the trunk. There had been some attempt to rinse the clothing out, but a splatter of brownish stains was still plainly evident on the material.

  “That’s Daisy’s other uniform,” Rachel said, “but what’s that all over it? It looks like it’s ruined.”

  “Try the shoes, Beau.”

  A pair of Maine waders lay at the front of the trunk. One was upright, but the other one had been knocked over on its side, revealing a distinctive chain-link pattern.

  “It looks like the one Foster took from the scene,” Al added, speaking guardedly.

  “From the scene,” Rachel echoed, looking back and forth between us. Suddenly everything we were saying seemed to coalesce in her mind. “You mean from my nephew’s office? You’re saying that’s blood on Daisy’s clothes?”

  I nodded.

  “Oh no,” I heard her say. Without another word and in painfully slow motion, Rachel be
gan slipping toward the floor. I caught her and pulled her to her feet, where she sagged in my arms like a limp rag doll. Still leaning heavily against me, she glanced once more toward the trunk, then turned away.

  “It isn’t true! It can’t be true!”

  “I’m afraid it is, Rachel. Where is your sister now?”

  I expected a violent storm of tears. Instead, Rachel Miller shuddered visibly like a tree caught in a strong gale; then, with determined effort, she pulled away from me and drew herself erect.

  “At the zoo,” Rachel answered slowly, pronouncing each word slowly and carefully as though it belonged to some complex foreign language. “She’s helping decorate for the party tonight. The guided tours don’t start until five.”

  “What tours?”

  “Behind-the-scenes tours, where people get to talk to the keepers and touch the animals. They put them on for the zoo patrons each year. Daisy’s scheduled to work some of those.”

  “Will you help us find her?” I asked.

  Rachel nodded in defeat. “Yes,” she said, “but first let me call George. I’ll see if he can come over and watch Dotty while we’re gone. I can’t leave her here all alone.”

  Following Rachel back into the house, we waited while she talked to George. “He’ll be over in half an hour,” she said quietly when she put down the phone.

  “Rachel,” Dorothy demanded impatiently. “Isn’t that coffee ready yet?”

  With a sigh, Rachel turned to the cupboard and began making coffee. Al got on the phone and called Bill Foster.

  “We need a crime-scene team out here right away,” he said, giving Bill the address of the Edinburgh Arms and bringing him up to date. “I’ll meet you out on the next street by the garages,” he added. “There’s no sense in your coming in here.”

  I dogged Rachel’s heels while she made the coffee and set a tray with the special bone-china cups and saucers as well as a plate loaded with ancient Oreo cookies. She carried the tray into the living room and served her sister first, then she offered some to me.

  It was a game gesture of hospitality, of carrying on with the niceties of life in the face of certain disaster. Out of respect for what she was doing, I accepted both the coffee and the cookie. I wasn’t tough enough to turn her down.

  While we waited for George to appear, Rachel carefully explained to Dorothy that she would have to be out for a while but that someone would be there in case anything was needed. It sounded like a mother explaining the presence of a baby-sitter to a willful child.

  I didn’t see Bill Foster arrive. The street was out of my range of vision, but Al came in a short time later and gave me a thumbs-up sign indicating the garage end of the situation was under control.

  Rachel handed Al a cup of coffee, too, and there we sat, the four of us, all of us drinking coffee with three of us lying through our teeth. That’s wrong. We were all four lying, come to think of it, but Dorothy Nielsen had been lying to herself and everybody else for so many years that she no longer knew the difference.

  I could understand why Rachel wasn’t ready to tell Dorothy the truth about what was going on. Big Al and I followed her lead. It was the least we could do.

  When George finally showed up, Rachel met him outside. His initial grin at seeing her quickly faded as she talked to him, outlining the problem. He was somber but nodding in agreement as they came into the apartment.

  “I’ll be glad to stay just as long as you need me to, Rachel,” he was saying.

  Rachel smiled up at him gratefully, then she turned to me. “I should go upstairs and put on my uniform,” she said. “It’ll make it a whole lot easier for us to get around in the zoo.”

  Big Al and I exchanged wary glances. We’d been led down the primrose path on this kind of deal once before by the very same lady.

  She read our reluctance correctly. “It’s okay,” she said. “There’s no outside door up there.”

  “How about windows?” I asked.

  “I told you I’d help,” she answered.

  In the end, we let her go upstairs to change. She was back downstairs in her uniform in less than five minutes.

  “We’d better get started,” she said, leading the way to the door. “The zoo’s a big place. It’ll be crowded.”

  It was one of the world’s all-time understatements.

  CHAPTER

  22

  On the way to the zoo, Big Al drove and I rode shotgun, while Rachel sat in the backseat. Big Al looked at me and nodded toward the radio. “Get dispatch and have them send us out some help,” he suggested.

  “What good would that do?” I returned. “Nobody else down there knows what she looks like.”

  “But if we try to do it all ourselves, it’ll take forever. This place is huge. I brought my grandson here a couple of times. He walked both my legs off.”

  “It’s only ninety-two acres,” Rachel said reassuringly from the backseat.

  “Ninety-two acres is a hell of a lot of territory for three of us to cover. Get us some help,” Al insisted irritably.

  “You know what comes with help,” I argued. “Reporters, television cameras, the works.”

  “Please, no cameras,” Rachel begged.

  Her whole short course in media relations came from what had happened to her as a result of her nephew’s murder. She may not have had my kind of longevity in the battle, but Rachel Miller and I were very much of the same mind when it came to the media. She didn’t want her sister hunted down with nosy cameras recording the arrest.

  In the end, Rachel’s plea swung the vote. Al reluctantly conceded defeat, and that’s how the three of us—two seasoned homicide detectives and a gray-haired little old lady—scrambled out of a departmental vehicle at the western entrance to the Woodland Park Zoo. We hurried inside with one single purpose: find Daisy Carmichael.

  The Woodland Park Zoo got its start in 1903 when the City of Seattle purchased a pioneer family’s estate and left a previously established herd of deer in residence. With the addition of various animals, the zoo evolved gradually over the years until the thirties when major development work was done by Frederick Olmsted, the same man who created Central Park in New York City.

  Rachel had told us that the zoo covers ninety-two acres, and it’s true.

  If you happen to be a wheat farmer who lives in the vast rolling hills of Washington’s Palouse, ninety-two acres probably doesn’t sound like much. And ninety-two acres is small potatoes when compared to the eight hundred acres in Central Park. But on a rainy summer’s day, with only three people searching for a fourth, ninety-two acres is plenty big enough.

  Rachel Miller took off like a shot and led us into the zoo through a building marked ARC. That may sound like a cutesy reference to Noah, but it actually stands for Activities and Recreation Center. The place was bursting at the seams with dozens of children who streamed in and out of a room marked DISCOVERY. Echoes of laughter from a noisy slide show leaked out of the room into the lobby, where Rachel left us standing while she hurried off down a hallway marked EMPLOYEES ONLY.

  “Something’s bothering me,” Big Al said after she left.

  “What’s that?”

  “If Daisy took all that time and trouble to clean up the dental pick and rinse off her clothes, why the hell didn’t she get rid of them before we found them?”

  “Maybe she never got the chance,” I suggested.

  “From what Dr. Leonard said, they’ve been busy as hell getting ready to move Dorothy into the house. Or maybe Daisy figured she’d get caught eventually and that it wouldn’t do her any good. Sometimes people want to get caught.”

  “Right up until they hear the iron door of the slammer,” Big Al observed. “Then they chicken out.”

  I heard his words and felt the gut-wrenching pain I always feel when something reminds me of the past I keep trying to forget. Al had no way of knowing how his words affected me. He wasn’t my partner then. We barely even knew each other. If he had heard about Anne Corley a
t all, it was only peripherally, but his casual comment there in the buzzing zoo lobby jarred me good.

  Making a pretense of checking out the children’s slide show, I walked away from him. I wandered into the Discovery Room and stood for a long time peering over the shoulder of a little girl who was engrossed in trying to reassemble the skeleton of a long-dead turtle. Eventually I got myself back under control and returned to the lobby just as Rachel hurried into the room. She was frowning, shaking her head.

  “I don’t understand it—Daisy isn’t officially scheduled to be here working at all. I was sure she told me she was leading some of the behind-the-scenes tours. She always does that, but her name isn’t on the list.”

  “What did I tell you?” Big Al muttered under his breath. “This whole thing is nothing but a wild-goose chase, if you ask me.”

  “I’m sure she’s here,” Rachel insisted. “Where else would she be?”

  “Try Mexico, maybe,” Big Al suggested dourly. His remark wasn’t lost on Rachel, who gave him a withering look as she marched away, leaving us no choice but to tag along behind her.

  She led us around to the back of the building where a waterproofed notebook hung by a chain from a peg in the wall. Rachel lifted it down. When she opened it, I could see that the notebook contained a volunteer sign in/ sign-out sheet. Rachel made a notation after her own name, then scanned up the list until she located Daisy’s.

  “See there?” Rachel announced with a sharp glance in Al’s direction. “She’s here. I told you she was.”

  He shook his massive head. “All that means is she signed in. She could have done that any time—yesterday or the day before, for that matter. There’s no time clock, no way to check it. And it doesn’t mean she’s still here, either.”

  “So where do we start?” I asked, wanting to begin the search before Big Al could think of another reason to call the whole thing off or bring in reinforcements.

  “The north meadow,” Rachel answered. “That’s where the tents are. Maybe she’s helping set up for the dinner or the auction.”