by J. A. Jance
It took time to sort through all the hoops it takes to make a third-party long distance call from Gabe’s office phone. Call me a Luddite if you want, but please spare me from all that newfangled telecommunications equipment with all the computerized bells and whistles. There was something wonderfully simple and straightforward about the old days when you picked up a telephone receiver and some nice lady said, “Number, please.” Back then, if you wanted to bill a call to another number, all you had to do was say so.
In Gabe’s office at the crime lab in Tacoma, I discovered the hard way that it isn’t easy to make the Washington State Patrol’s long distance provider coordinate with Seattle P.D.’s long distance provider. I dialed in access codes until I was blue in the face before I finally made a telephone actually ring in far-off La Jolla, California, at ten after five.
Not only did the phone ring, but—miracle of miracles—a live human voice answered, “Homicide Captain Wayne Kilpatrick speaking.”
“Detective Beaumont of the Seattle Police Department, Captain,” I said.
“Oh, yeah,” he returned. “I just found your message asking about whether or not there are any new developments. Unfortunately, I don’t have much of anything to report from this end. I turned that situation over to one of my people, Detective Enders. Haven’t you heard from her yet?”
“Not so far.”
“Hold the phone and let me see if I can track her down.”
He put me on hold. I was grateful that, instead of the strains of Muzak, only silence greeted my ear. After what seemed like several minutes, Kilpatrick came back on the line. “Are you still there?”
“So far.”
“Hold on and I’ll transfer you.”
After only one ring, a woman answered. “Detective Lucille Enders,” she said.
“Detective Beaumont here,” I said. “Seattle P.D.”
“Sorry I didn’t get back to you earlier—I got called out on another case.”
“That’s all right. Do you have anything for me?”
“As a matter of fact, I do. I spent a big part of my morning at Alpha-Cyte talking to a guy named Harry Moore who owns the place. I picked up Lizbeth Wolf’s mother’s name, address, and phone number, but I still haven’t been able to locate her. Moore seemed really broken up by the idea that something may have happened to Lizbeth Wolf. He wanted details, and I told him I didn’t have any. That he’d have to talk to you or to someone else up there in Seattle to get the whole story. He gave me his direct line at work as well as his home number. He said for you to go ahead and call regardless of how late it is.”
She read off the numbers, and I jotted them down. “And the mother?”
I heard the shuffle of pages as Detective Enders thumbed through her own notebook. “Here it is. Her name’s Anna Dorn. She lives in Laguna Beach.”
“What about finding anyone connected to the other victim, to Don Wolf?” I asked.
“I’ve run into a brick wall there,” Detective Enders told me. “It’s as though he never existed. Are you sure you didn’t make him up?”
“I’m relatively certain I didn’t.”
I looked over my notes. “How far is Laguna Beach from where you are?” I asked.
“Ninety minutes or so, depending on traffic. Why?”
“Damn!” I said. “That’s too far. I guess I’d better call there and see if someone in the Laguna Beach police department will go out and track her down.”
“Why, what’s going on?”
“Don Wolf’s name was inadvertently released to the media today, and the connection to Lizbeth can’t be far behind,” I explained. “I’m afraid the mother will end up seeing it on television or reading it in the newspaper before we have a chance to notify her in person, especially since we still don’t know for sure whether or not the second victim is Lizbeth Wolf.”
“I’ll handle it,” Lucille Enders said briskly. “I’m off shift now. I was just completing some paperwork. I’ll leave for Laguna Beach as soon as I finish.”
“I can’t ask you to do that, Detective Enders. I’ll—”
“Nobody’s asking me,” Lucille cut in. “I’m telling you, I’ll handle it. And I’ll call you and let you know when it’s been done.”
“Why would you do that?” I asked.
“Because I’m a mother, too,” Lucille Enders answered. “And because Lizbeth Wolf is Anna Dorn’s only child.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you very much.”
Who says there’s no place in the world for women detectives? Maybe I would have said so once, but not anymore. I’ve learned my lesson.
When I finished that call, at least I already knew all the necessary codes. Compared to the first long distance call, the second one was a snap. And even though it was almost five-thirty by then, Harry Moore answered his direct line at Alpha-Cyte.
“Detective Beaumont,” he said. “Ever since Detective Enders left, I’ve been sitting here hoping you’d call. Tell me, what happened?”
“It’s all very sketchy, so far. At this time, we’re reasonably sure Don Wolf was murdered. If the victim found in his apartment turns out to be his wife, she may or may not have committed suicide.”
Harry Moore’s sharp intake of breath was almost a sob. “Oh, my God!” he whimpered. “Suicide? I was afraid that’s what you were going to say. If she killed herself, it’s my fault. All my fault.”
“Why would it be your fault?”
“We had a big argument, a couple of days after Christmas. She left in a huff.”
“What was the argument about?”
“What else? That worthless husband of hers.”
In Harry Moore I had encountered yet another nonfan of the late, great Donald Wolf.
“Wait a minute, Mr. Moore. Let me ask a question. How well do you know Lizbeth Wolf?”
“Very well. She started working here as an intern while she was still in college. I trained her myself. She’s done virtually every job here, from the most intricate research procedures to typing annual reports.”
“Can you tell me if she was right- or left-handed?”
“Left, of course. Why do you need to know that?”
I closed my eyes, remembering the scene in Don Wolf’s bedroom. I could still see a clear image of the dead woman’s lifeless left hand, complete with gold wedding band, hanging down on the left-hand side of the bed. Potentially, that made one more piece of the puzzle slip into place. The gun had been found on the other side of the bed. If Lizbeth Wolf actually turned out to be the victim, Audrey Cummings was right in saying she hadn’t committed suicide.
“In that case, Mr. Moore, if it’s any consolation, I think I can assure you that the dead woman, whoever she is, was murdered.”
“Did Don Wolf kill her?” Harry asked.
Good question. We had all been going on the assumption that Don Wolf had died first, thus leaving him out as a suspect in the death of the woman found in his condo. That possibly erroneous conclusion was largely based on the fact that his body had been found first. I made myself a note to check with Audrey Cummings to see if the autopsy had allowed them to pinpoint time of death for either victim.
“By person or persons unknown,” I said.
“Just wait,” Harry Moore said. “You’ll see. I always knew there was something terribly wrong with that guy. Oh, he looked great. He was a snazzy dresser—a real lady’s man. But when he waltzed in here last summer and swept Lizbeth off her feet the way he did, I knew right then something wasn’t right. Lizbeth had been with me for so long that she seemed more like a member of my family than an employee. Like the daughter I never had. Maybe I was a little overprotective, and I think Lizbeth resented it. But jeez, I could tell from the start that the guy was bad news. It’s hard for someone like me to keep my mouth shut. Then last week, when the SOB proved me right, I had to go and open my big yap and tell her ‘I told you so.’ After that, all hell broke loose.”
“Maybe you should try telling me the whole st
ory,” I suggested, “from the beginning.”
Harry took a deep breath. “Don Wolf showed up down here midsummer of last year. I forget now where he and Lizbeth met. Once they did, it was whirlwind courtship time. Within weeks, she was wearing a rock for an engagement ring. I tried to tell her that he was rushing things too much and pressuring her into getting married before she knew enough about him. These days, with all the drug dealing and such, when somebody has plenty of money and no visible means of support, no regular job, you can’t be too cautious. So anyway, when I tried to talk her into slowing down and taking some time to get to know him before jumping into anything, we had a huge fight. I was afraid she was going to up and quit on me. In the end, she just told me to mind my own business. Two weeks after that—less than a month after they met—they ran off to Vegas and got married. And two months later, he tells her, ‘By the way, I’ve got this new job up in Seattle. See you around.’ Lizbeth tried to pretend that his taking off like that didn’t matter, but it did. It had to hurt like hell.”
“My understanding was that she was down here waiting for the house to sell,” I said.
“In order to sell a house, you have to list it,” Harry Moore said. “That business about staying here to sell it is what she told everybody, just to save face. And who can blame her? There she was, a blushing first-time bride almost forty years old. And what happens? The groom takes off and leaves her high and dry.”
“So what happened last week?”
“Lizbeth called me from home. She had been off on sick leave for several days the week before Christmas, and Alpha-Cyte shuts down completely between Christmas and New Year’s. She called me, crying. She asked me to come over because she needed to talk to someone, and she didn’t know where else to turn. When I got to the house, she was in pretty bad shape. She had been in bed for two days with a terrible cold. Not only that, she’d just received a letter from Don saying there had been some kind of mistake. That there had been a glitch in the proceedings somewhere along the line. The upshot was that Wolf’s divorce from his first wife hadn’t been final at the time he and Lizbeth eloped to Vegas. According to him, it turned out they weren’t married after all. That sleezeball was a bigamist.”
Among other things, I thought. “What then?” I asked.
“First I said, ‘I told you so,’ which, as my wife pointed out later, was exactly the wrong thing to say. Then I offered to put Lizbeth in touch with my personal attorney so she could get some advice on her legal standing—like, did she need an annulment or could she take the bastard to court and sue his socks off? I don’t know why I bothered. It was just like pissing into the wind.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because as soon as I finished, she asked if she could have another week off once the Christmas holidays were over. She said she was going to drive up to Seattle and try to straighten things out with Don. And I said, ‘What’s to straighten out? Stay the hell away from the slimy bastard.’ I probably said some other things, too. I don’t remember it all. I’m sure I hurt Lizbeth’s feelings. I guess I’m not what you call a sensitive guy when it comes to women. I just wanted to protect her is all. I didn’t want her to be hurt.”
Harry Moore’s voice broke. I could believe that the connection between him and Lizbeth Wolf went beyond the ordinary employer/employee connections, although I couldn’t sort out exactly what their relationship might have been.
“When was this conversation, Mr. Moore?”
He cleared his throat. “The twenty-ninth. Maybe even the thirtieth.”
“She would have driven?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “Lizbeth loved to drive. She had herself a little four-wheel-drive Subaru wagon. Even with snow, she wouldn’t have had any trouble getting over the mountains.”
“When I first told you about Lizbeth, Mr. Moore, you asked me if her husband had killed her. Was there any particular reason you said that? Do you know anything about him that would make him a possible suspect in your mind?”
Harry thought for a moment before he answered. “I think Don wanted to be rid of her,” he said. “I don’t think he had any idea that she wouldn’t give him up without a fight. I think he just expected her to lie down, play dead, and take his word as gospel about their not being married. But she wouldn’t do that. The last thing she ever said to me was that some things were worth fighting for, and marriage was one of them. I couldn’t believe it. Sometimes I just don’t understand women at all, do you Detective Beaumont?”
“No,” I said. “Not at all. But let me ask you one more thing, Mr. Moore. This is about Don Wolf now. How close is the biotech community down there?”
“Did you say community?” he returned. “That’s not quite the right term, Detective Beaumont. I’d say it’s closer to a snake pit. Why?”
“But do you pretty much know what the other guys in your field are doing?”
“Of course. Nobody in his right mind turns his back on another snake. Why?”
“I was told Don Wolf had a considerable reputation as a financial wizard in biotech. His previous places of employment were listed as Downlink of San Diego, California; Bio-Dart Technologies, Pasadena, California; Holman-Smith Industries, City of Industry, California. Ever heard of them?”
“Never,” Harry Moore replied. “I can do some checking around, if you like, and see what I come up with.”
“You do that, Mr. Moore. And let me know what you find out.”
I put down the phone in Gabe Rios’s messy office and sat there staring at it. Latty Gibson and Lizbeth Dorn Wolf weren’t the only people Don Wolf had lied to. He had also pulled the wool over Bill Whitten’s eyes. Of the three, Whitten seemed like the only one who had seen through to the real back-stabbing Don Wolf. And maybe he, more than the others, had been prepared to defend himself.
All of which meant that Bill Whitten was right. He needed to stay on my list of prime suspects, and although it was a very short list, I reminded myself to keep him close to the top. Right under Latty Gibson.
Fourteen
I had no more than put down the phone after talking to Harry Moore when a proud Gabe Rios appeared in the door to his office. Grinning from ear to ear, he gave me the old thumbs up.
“Congratulations, Detective Beaumont. You’ve got yourself a Seecamp thirty-two auto murder weapon,” he said.
“Gee, thanks,” I returned glumly.
Gabe frowned. “What’s the matter, Beau? For somebody who just found a critical piece of evidence, you don’t sound very happy.”
“I’m not,” I said. “I may have a murder weapon, but that doesn’t mean I have a murderer.”
Gabe shrugged and booted me out of his chair. “You have to start somewhere,” he said. “For right now, I just eyeballed things. I’ll get the official ballistics report put together and sent up to you through regular channels. You should have it by the first of next week.”
“That’s the soonest I can have it?”
“You know it is.”
“What about prints?”
“Wiped clean.”
“That figures,” I said.
Grace Highsmith obviously watched too many police dramas on television. How could I possibly have expected anything else?
“Okay,” Gabe said. “Out of my chair so I can get back to work.”
As I vacated the chair, he was already reaching for the magazine he had been reading when I had first entered his office. “Reading magazines?” I asked with more than a trace of sarcasm. “Is that really part of your job description?”
He grinned. “What do you think?” he asked. “How else am I going to stay up-to-date?”
On the way back to Seattle, I puzzled over what I had learned so far. The gun—Grace Highsmith’s gun—really was the weapon that had been used to murder Don Wolf. That lent a good deal of credence to the theory that Latty Gibson was the killer, and that Aunt Grace had attempted to confess to the crime in an effort to save her niece from a long prison term.
But with all the focus on Latty, I couldn’t afford to ignore the other possibilities. The other detectives and I had somehow fallen into the trap of thinking that Don Wolf had been the first to die. But that might not be the case. The question raised by Harry Moore about whether or not Don Wolf had murdered Lizbeth was one that merited some serious consideration.
And then, there in the distance, stood Bill Whitten. Another station heard from, as they say, and one I couldn’t afford to ignore.
I must have driven another five miles or so before I realized what I had done. Even lacking proper identification, I had given the second victim a name. In my mind, Audrey Cummings notwithstanding, the dead woman found in Don Wolf’s apartment was Lizbeth Wolf and nobody else. Harry Moore had told me that Don Wolf had been determined to be rid of his relatively new wife. One way or another, now he was.
The trip back to Seattle from Tacoma took far less time than the drive down. Part of that was due to the fact that I was dreading the inevitable ass-chewing from Captain Powell. But by the time I finally made it back to the fifth floor at ten past seven that evening, I knew I was home free. Powell’s a day-shift kind of guy. He might stay late to work a case, but never just to issue a reprimand.
Ducking into my cubicle, I paused long enough to take three messages off my voice mail. One was from someone I didn’t know—a lady named Hilda Chisholm. She left two numbers—both for work and home—without giving me even a glimmer of information as to why she was calling. That wasn’t particularly disturbing or unusual. In my line of work, I often receive phone calls from witnesses who are reluctant to leave important information of any kind on a recording device. They have to be handled on a person-to-person basis. Consequently, I started my next day’s TO DO list by writing Hilda Chisholm’s name on the topmost line. Then I retrieved my next message.