by J. A. Jance
“Mostly sins of omission,” I said, attempting to joke about it. But my voice cracked on the last word.
“Such as?” he asked.
“I left Heather and Tracy alone for a while the other day. Now some hard-nosed bitch from Child Protective Services is investigating me as a possible child molester. She told me last night that she was going to notify Internal Investigations.”
“You a child molester?” Ralph demanded. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Who the hell came up with that kind of fruitcake accusation?”
“It came from Ron’s ex-wife.”
“Roslyn Peters?” Ralph said derisively. “That figures. She is a fruitcake. When did she get back from Nicaragua?”
“Sometime recently, but long enough ago to make trouble. She’s suing for full custody of the girls. She told the C.P.S. investigator that I’m a dirty old man and that I only funded the mission she went on to gain easy access to the girls.”
At that, Ralph looked grave. “Roslyn Peters shouldn’t have custody of a cocker spaniel. Who would be dumb enough to believe a word she says?”
“An aging hippie social worker, for one,” I replied gloomily.
For a moment or two, there was dead silence between us. Finally, Ralph said, “Why didn’t you call me about this?”
“It only came up last night,” I answered. “Not the custody thing, but my part in it. I guess I was too upset to call. When Ron first told me about what was going on, it didn’t seem that serious. Besides, you were on a cruise, Ralph. On vacation. It wouldn’t have been fair to interrupt—”
“Not fair! Are you kidding? What the hell do you think friends are for, Mr. Jonas Piedmont Beaumont? Now what can I do to help?”
Everything seemed to be landing on me at once. Ralph’s unconditional offer of help was just the last straw. “I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “I have no idea.” Something in my voice must have given me away.
“What else is going on?” Ralph demanded.
When Ames puts on his no-nonsense, full-business mode, there’s no point in trying to dodge the issue. I could maybe get away with it with Lars. I could maybe bullshit my way around a roomful of strangers in an AA meeting, but I couldn’t skate out of harm’s way with Ralph. He wasn’t buying.
“It’s Karen,” I said finally, not trusting my voice any further than that. I couldn’t breathe. It felt like I was suffocating. Or drowning.
“What about Karen?” he asked.
I took a deep breath before I answered. “Dave called me last night. She’s back in the hospital and not doing very well.”
“You mean she’s not going to make it?”
“Yes, I guess that’s what I mean,” I managed. “Dave wants me to come down.”
“When?”
“Right away. As soon as I can.”
“So why aren’t you on a plane right now?” Ralph asked. “What in God’s name are you doing heading back to Bellevue?”
“It’s this case,” I began weakly. “I wanted to get it cleared up before—”
“Before you left town?” Ralph finished. “You mean you’re messing around trying to finish a case when Karen is in a hospital dying?”
Ralph Ames is usually the most diplomatic person I know. When he let me have it full blast, I winced.
“Yes,” I said. “It sounds stupid, but I guess I am.”
There was another period of silence after that. Ralph was the one who broke it. “Stupid? It’s completely asinine. Did anyone ever tell you, Beau, that at times you’re a total jerk?”
“Yes,” I said again, feeling enormously put-upon by the force of Ralph’s righteous indignation. “I tell myself that all the time.”
If I was looking for sympathy, I had come to the wrong place. Ralph Ames didn’t cut me any slack.
“Well for God’s sake,” he said impatiently. “Get your butt in the shower and let me see what I can do.”
While standing in the shower, a sudden mist of tears blurred my vision. One thing was certain. If Ralph Ames was going to see what he could do, it meant that I wasn’t in the fight alone.
That realization made me feel infinitely worse.
And better.
Eighteen
By the time I made it back to Old Bellevue, I had pretty well gotten a grip on things. Ralph was right, of course. If Karen was dying down in California, who was I to hang around Seattle finishing up a case? How much arrogance does it take to decide you’re indispensable? Seattle P.D. wasn’t that short of homicide detectives. Besides, it wasn’t as though I owned the Don and Lizbeth Wolf cases. Captain Powell had already assigned both Paul Kramer and Sam Arnold to help out, and my opinion of their respective capabilities was much less telling in the scheme of things than the captain’s was.
In case you haven’t noticed, I lectured myself silently as I jockeyed the Guards Red Porsche into a particularly small parallel parking place directly across the street from Dorene’s Fine China and Gifts, the S.P.D. homicide squad was there long before you showed up, and it’ll still be there long after you’re gone.
Glancing around the immediate neighborhood, I searched for a glimpse of Detective Kramer’s ugly Caprice—to no avail. Tim Blaine’s unmarked and empty Ford Taurus was parked across the street directly in front of the shop, but the Seattle P.D. Chevy was nowhere in sight.
By that time, it was ten to two. I settled back in my seat to wait. As the seconds and minutes ticked away, I found myself growing irritated. If I was the one who was such a lousy team player, if I was the one so damn uninterested in solving the case, why the hell was I present and accounted for when Paul Kramer wasn’t? Where did he get off throwing stones?
A few minutes later, right at two, an enormous white Cadillac—one that suspiciously resembled the ’61 I had seen overhanging the end of Grace Highsmith’s garage—slowly nosed its way down Main Street. As the car drove past me, all I could see of the driver was a fringe of silver hair visible over the sill of the Caddy’s left-hand window. I marveled that whoever was driving could see over the steering wheel, to say nothing of down that vast expanse of hood.
Maneuvering more by sound than sight, the Caddy’s driver eventually wedged the car into a parking space, but only after a long sequence of backing and filling and after bumping both cars on either end of her chosen spot. As soon as the Cadillac came to rest, Suzanne Crenshaw appeared out of nowhere. She rushed up, opened the car door, and helped Grace Highsmith out onto the sidewalk. So much for my telling her not to show up for our interview with Latty.
Shaking my head at the old lady’s stubbornness, I picked up the phone and dialed Watty. “Where’s Detective Kramer?” I asked. “It’s two o’clock. We’re supposed to be interviewing a suspect over here in Bellevue right about now, and he’s nowhere to be found.”
“We had a call from Anna Dorn up at the medical examiner’s office,” Watty said. “She wanted to talk to you before she went back to her hotel out by the airport, but since Kramer is assigned to the case every bit as much as you are, and since he was here and you weren’t, I decided to send him instead.”
“What about Sam Arnold?” I asked.
“He’s busy with Johnny Bickford,” Watty replied. “I believe he left here to take her back home. She showed up on the fifth floor about an hour ago in a state of absolute panic.”
“Not Johnny Bickford again. What does he want?”
“He?” Watty repeated dubiously. “I thought it was a she. According to Nell out front, she was pitching a fit all over the reception area.”
“What about?”
“That dead woman over in Bellevue. The homicide Bellevue P.D. is currently investigating.”
“Virginia Marks?”
“That’s right,” Watty answered. “That’s the one. Johnny Bickford saw a story about her on the noon news and recognized the picture. She says—”
“He,” I corrected. “Johnny Bickford is a he.”
“All right, all right. He, th
en,” Watty agreed. “He said the woman on the news was the same woman he saw down on Pier Seventy about the same time he discovered Don Wolf’s body and reported it. The woman was in a wheelchair. Bickford is convinced that since somebody went to the trouble of killing the Marks woman, that they’ll come after him next. He’s demanding police protection. He really wanted to talk to you, but I suggested—”
“When it comes to dealing with Johnny Bickford, better Sam Arnold than me,” I said. “And if Kramer calls in anytime soon, tell him the interview in Bellevue is going on without him.”
I got out of the Porsche and walked across the street. When the door to the shop opened, the bell overhead tinkled merrily just as it had the day before. The cheerful ringing of the bell was followed immediately by a series of raised voices.
“No, Aunt Grace. Absolutely not!”
“But, Latty, dear, you must listen to reason….”
“No!” Sybil Latona Gibson repeated furiously, her voice rising in pitch. “I will not do it. I don’t care what you say, I simply won’t.”
The door fell shut behind me and I found myself on the sidelines of a fierce family scrimmage. An uncomfortable Tim Blaine stood in front of the cash register holding a small, gift-wrapped package as gingerly as if it were a live grenade. Behind the cash wrap stood a highly incensed young woman—Latty Gibson, the Marilyn Monroe look-alike I had seen on Bill Whitten’s security tape. Except the video recording hadn’t done her justice. Even with her face flushed with anger and her blue eyes flashing outrage, she was lovely.
“How dare you bring people here in front of my customers to…to…”
She stopped, unable to continue, and glared at her aunt. Looking down at the two comparatively pint-size combatants, Tim Blaine shifted his massive weight uneasily from foot to foot. He looked as though he would have gladly been anywhere else on earth right about then.
Next to Detective Blaine, and with the crown of her head a full six inches short of his shoulder, stood Grace Highsmith. Backed by the solid presence of Suzanne Crenshaw, the old woman refused to give way to her niece’s anger.
“Now, Latty,” Grace crooned soothingly. “You really must understand. I couldn’t possibly allow you to speak to any police investigators without your being properly represented by an attorney.”
Latty Gibson spun around and turned the full force of her fury on me. “I suppose you’re the detective?” she demanded.
Nodding, I eased myself one more step into the room. “One of them,” I said. “My name is Detective Beaumont. J. P. Beaumont. I’m with the Seattle Police Department.”
Latty reached down and plucked something out of a drawer under the counter, then she came around the cash wrap carrying a purse. “You’ll have to watch the store for a while, Aunt Grace,” she said. “I’ll talk to him upstairs. In my apartment.”
“That’s fine,” Aunt Grace said. “I’ll be happy to look after things for a while. Suzanne, you go along with them, would you?”
“No!” Latty said again. “I don’t want anyone with me, not anyone at all. I’ll talk to the detective alone.”
“But Latty…” Suzanne Crenshaw began, but she gave up when Latty stormed past her without a backward glance.
Clearing his throat, Tim Blaine sprang to the door and held it open. “Detectives, actually,” he said apologetically. “I’m one, too, Miss Gibson. Detective Tim Blaine with the Bellevue Police Department.”
“You!” Latty exclaimed. “I thought you told me you came in to buy your mother a birthday present.”
Now it was Detective Blaine’s turn to flush with embarrassment. “I was early,” he mumbled. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“You came into my store and talked to me under false pretenses.”
“I’m sorry…” Blaine began, but Latty Gibson didn’t stay around to listen. Tossing her head, she stalked out of the store with Detective Blaine and me trailing along behind.
“Detective Beaumont,” Grace called behind me, catching the door before it had time to close. “Wait a minute. You can’t do this. You know very well that Latty shouldn’t talk to you alone like this, without Suzanne or someone else being present to advise her.”
“It appears to me your niece has made up her own mind about that,” I said. “I don’t think she’s likely to change it.”
“But—”
“I’m sorry, Miss Highsmith. Latty has the right to make her own decisions.”
“Even bad ones?”
“We all make bad decisions sometimes,” I said.
Outside and around the side of the building, I found Detective Blaine waiting for me, holding an unmarked door that opened on a steep wooden stairway. “She went up there,” he said.
By the time Tim Blaine and I made our way up the steep, creaking stairway, Latty Gibson had already disappeared through a doorway on the upper landing. After the gloomy darkness of the stairway, I was surprised when we stepped inside an airy but sparsely furnished apartment. Bright sunlight splashed into the room through sheer white curtains and from an overhead skylight. The living room was totally lined with fully laden bookshelves, but actual furniture in that room consisted of only a single couch, coffee table, and lamp. The dining room—with its small plastic patio table and four matching chairs—wasn’t much better.
Several paperback books lay scattered on the table—all of them of the bodice-ripper school of literature. With a baleful glare in our direction, Latty swept the books into a pile and banished them from sight on one of the already overfull bookshelves.
“Miss Gibson,” Tim Blaine was saying. “I didn’t mean to mislead you, I—”
“I hope your mother enjoys her napkin rings,” Latty said coldly. “You have excellent taste—for a cop.” She looked over at me. “I suppose the only place we’ll all be able to sit is at the dining room table.”
Tim Blaine hurriedly subsided into one of the four chairs. I followed his lead. Latty Gibson didn’t sit. Instead, she walked over to a window, pulled the dainty curtains aside, and looked out.
I cleared my throat. “As you are no doubt aware by now, Miss Gibson, there has been a series of homicides in the Seattle/Bellevue area in the last few days.”
Still peering out the window, Latty nodded. “I know,” she said. “Aunt Grace told me.”
“A number of different circumstances have led us to the conclusion that you might possibly be a suspect in one or more of them.”
At that point, she turned to face me. “Why?” she asked. “I haven’t done anything.”
“But we still need to talk to you,” I said. “And before we start, I’m required to read you your rights.”
“Go ahead,” she said. “I want to get this over with as soon as possible.”
While I Mirandized her, Tim Blaine kept his mouth shut, and when it was time to start the questioning, he still didn’t seem willing to say much. “I understand you knew Don Wolf?” I said for openers.
Latty took a deep breath. “Yes,” she answered, almost in a whisper. “We had been going out, but we had broken up.”
“Why was that?” I asked. I was reasonably sure I knew the answer to that question, but Tim Blaine didn’t, and he needed to hear it.
Latty turned toward us from the window. “He raped me,” she said.
Homicide cops aren’t supposed to be taken unawares, but Tim Blaine was. His broad shoulders sagged under the weight of her words. The skin across his jawline tightened into a hard, grim line.
“But you shouldn’t blame him,” Latty was saying. “It wasn’t his fault.”
“Not his fault!” I responded. “How could that be?”
Latty shrugged. “We had both been drinking and dancing and having a good time that night. I don’t remember a lot of what happened after we left the dance to go to his office.” She looked at me with a momentary trace of defiance. When it melted away, she turned back to the window.
“I guess I was…well…drunk. I was probably teasing him before
it happened, flirting and leading him on. I don’t know. I don’t remember.”
Latty may have forgotten, but the scene in Don Wolf’s office was indelibly etched in my memory. Yes, they had both been obviously tipsy. But she was dead wrong about her leading him on. She had done everything possible to prevent the attack. When he had started trying to go further than she wanted, she had begged him to take her home.
“That’s why this is all so silly, you see,” Latty said.
“Silly?” I asked.
“Stupid, then,” she returned. “Aunt Grace thinks I killed him because of it, because he hurt me. But since I don’t really blame him for what happened, why would I kill him?” She turned from the window and focused her troubled eyes on me. “You do understand that, don’t you?”
“Not exactly,” I said, in a reply which was, in fact, a gross understatement. I didn’t understand at all.
“It happened at his office downtown,” Latty continued in an oddly dispassionate voice. “We went there late in the evening because he wanted to show me the lights. What I didn’t know at the time was that Aunt Grace had me followed that the night. The detective was evidently parked right outside the building when we came downstairs after it happened. My dress was torn. I lost my coat. I had to wear his jacket home. The detective must have figured out what had happened. She reported it to Aunt Grace, and the next morning, Aunt Grace came after me.
“I wasn’t going to tell her or anybody else anything about it, but she seemed to know everything anyway. My lip was cut. I’m sure I looked awful. I had barely slept, and I had cried most of the night. She wanted me to go straight to the police to turn him in, but I wouldn’t. Aunt Grace and I had a big fight over it. She couldn’t understand why I was mad at her for spying on me when I wasn’t mad at Don for what he had done.”
“Why weren’t you?” Detective Blaine asked.
“Because I loved him,” she said. “Or at least I thought I did. Even when she told me he was already married.”
“Is that when you first found out about his wife?”