by J. A. Jance
Latty nodded. “Aunt Grace gave me all the dirt that detective of hers—that Virginia Marks—had dug up. She warned me that a man like that was trouble and that I shouldn’t see him again. I told her she was only my aunt, not my mother, and that if I wanted to keep on seeing him, nobody was going to stop me.”
“And did you?” I asked. “Keep on seeing him?”
“Not right away,” Latty answered. “I was hurt. I wanted to see if he’d call me first. When he didn’t, I finally broke down and called him at work on New Year’s Eve. I asked if I could see him later that night.”
“New Year’s Eve was Sunday, but he was working?”
“Yes.”
“Doing what?”
“I don’t know. We never talked much about what he did. It had something to do with finances, I guess. Something to do with raising investment capital for the company he worked for. He didn’t seem to like his boss very much.”
“So you arranged to meet him that night? On New Year’s Eve?”
“Yes.”
“What time?”
“He was busy earlier. Eleven o’clock was the earliest he could get away.”
“Busy with what?”
“He didn’t say, and I didn’t ask.”
“When you arranged this date, did you know his wife was in town?”
“No. I had no idea she was here.”
“And what did the two of you talk about when you finally got together?” I asked.
The room grew suddenly quiet. In the stillness, I gradually became aware of the stark ticking of a hand-wound clock that sat on the kitchen counter. Latty turned back to the window. Her answer, when it came, was almost inaudible. “I asked him if he would marry me.”
“You what?” Detective Blaine and I both demanded in unison.
“To marry me,” she repeated. “I knew about his wife, but since he was up here without her, I thought maybe, if they weren’t, you know, getting along, that he might divorce her and marry me.”
There’s a book that’s supposed to be a very big asset to male/female communications, something like Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Since I haven’t read it, I wouldn’t know. But at that precise moment, it would have made more sense if the title had been Women Are from Outer Space. That would have been closer to the truth, at least as far as Latty Gibson was concerned.
“So you’re saying you didn’t go there armed and ready to kill him?”
“No,” Latty said. “I never did. I can’t imagine why Aunt Grace and that lawyer of hers would even think such a thing.”
“And what did he say when you asked him?” Tim Blaine asked.
When she answered, Latty Gibson turned her fathomless blue eyes full on him. “He said he couldn’t. That he and his wife had decided to get back together.”
Tim’s eyes widened slightly at that. He opened his mouth and then closed it again and waved for me to pick up the ball and run with it.
“How long had you known him before all this happened?”
“Three weeks is all. It was love at first sight, at least for me.”
“What about him?”
“I thought he loved me,” she answered.
“Did he fall in love with you before or after he knew about your Aunt Grace’s little family home on the shores of Lake Washington?”
“Detective Beaumont,” Latty said, “my aunt’s home—wherever it is—has nothing to do with me. And it wouldn’t have had anything to do with Don, either. I told him that. Aunt Grace is leaving everything to charity. And why shouldn’t she? It’s hers to do with as she likes.”
I tried changing the subject. “Are you aware that yesterday at noon your aunt tried to confess to Don Wolf’s murder? She wanted me to arrest her?”
“Yes. How could I help but? The phone rang here constantly yesterday afternoon and evening. I’m sure she was only doing it to protect me—because she thought I had done it. What I can’t imagine, though, is how anyone could have believed she was serious.”
“For one thing,” I said quietly, “she just happened to have the murder weapon that killed Don Wolf in her purse.”
Latty frowned. “What murder weapon?”
“It’s a handgun,” I answered. “A Seecamp thirty-two auto.”
“Oh, no,” Latty murmured. Leaving the window, Latty stumbled toward the table where Tim Blaine and I were seated. She dropped heavily into one of the two empty chairs. “Please, God. Not that one.”
“Which one are you talking about?” I asked.
“Ours. The one we keep in the shop is a Seecamp. It must be the same one. I thought I had just misplaced it, along with my coat, but Aunt Grace must have had it all along,” Latty breathed. “Maybe she did kill him, after all. What if she did?”
Since Grace Highsmith had no idea what kind of gunshot wound had killed Don Wolf, I was reasonably sure that wasn’t the case. “What makes you say that?” I asked.
“If I didn’t kill him, and if Aunt Grace’s gun is the murder weapon, who else is there?”
“Tell us about the gun,” I urged. “Where did it come from?”
“One of Aunt Grace’s boyfriends got it for her when she asked him to. Most of the time, we keep it in a drawer under the counter downstairs, the same place where we store our purses.”
“You keep the gun loaded?” I asked.
Latty nodded again. “Just before Aunt Grace bought the store, her friend Dorene Lowell, the lady who owned it before, was robbed on her way to the bank. It was dumb for anyone to bother, because—in a store like ours—very little cash changes hands. Most of our business is transacted either by check or credit card. Dorene wasn’t in very good health to begin with, and that incident scared her to death. In fact, I think it’s one of the reasons she sold out. So ever since we opened, Aunt Grace has insisted that I take the gun with me whenever I go to make a deposit, especially if it’s after dark. I usually did, although sometimes I forget.”
“I see,” I said. “And when you took it along, where did you carry it?”
“Sometimes, just on the seat of my car. Sometimes, if I’m wearing a coat or a jacket with a pocket, I slip the gun into that. It isn’t very heavy.”
“I don’t suppose you have a license to carry a concealed weapon, do you?” I asked wearily. The idea of having multitudes of untrained people walking around loose with loaded guns in their pockets is enough to make every cop in the country turn prematurely gray.
“Aunt Grace said that since the gun was just for protection, we probably didn’t need one. She says it isn’t ladylike for a woman to have to have a license for that kind of thing.”
“Aunt Grace needs to have her head examined,” I put in. “For your information, ladylike or not, having a permit to carry a concealed weapon happens to be a law around here. That goes for you as well as your aunt.”
“I didn’t know,” Latty said.
“No, I’m sure you didn’t. Go on.”
“Last Saturday night, when I went to make the night deposit, the gun was missing from the drawer. I tore my car apart looking for it, but it wasn’t there. I even went upstairs and checked in the pockets of all my clothes. That’s when I found out my coat was missing as well.”
“What coat?”
“My good winter coat.”
“When’s the last time you remember having it?” I asked.
“That night,” Latty said.
“What night?”
She paused, her eyes clouding. “The night I went dancing with Don. I must have left it there somewhere.” She stopped.
Again I recalled the scene on the tape. Latty hadn’t been wearing a coat when she first appeared in Don Wolf’s office, but she might have dropped it in the reception area before she entered camera range.
“So you think the gun might have been in the pocket of the coat?” I asked.
“That’s the only place I can think of.”
I felt a catch of excitement in my throat. If
the coat had been left in the D.G.I. offices, then the guy who had called himself prime suspect number one also had access to the murder weapon. And if Bill Whitten had been screening Don Wolf’s activities, he might have had inside knowledge of when and where Latty and Don had scheduled their New Year’s Eve meeting. That would give him access and opportunity. By his own admission, Bill Whitten had plenty of motivation. Thinking about the Whitten connection, I dropped out of the interview for a while and let Tim Blaine ask questions about Latty’s connection to and knowledge of Virginia Marks. Other than the fact that Latty knew Grace Highsmith had hired someone to investigate Don Wolf, Latty seemed to know very little about the dead detective. Finally, when we stood up to go, Latty started toward the door, then she stopped. “Wait a minute. I need to give it to someone,” she said. “I could just as well give it to you.”
“Give us what?” I asked.
“Don’s coat,” she answered. “The one I wore home that night. Ever since I heard he was dead, I’ve felt weird about having it here in the house—almost like I had stolen it or something. But I didn’t know what to do about it.”
She disappeared into what was evidently a bedroom and came back carrying a double-breasted wool blazer. I took it, thanked her, and headed toward the door. Blaine was behind me, but at the top of the stairway he stopped and turned back.
“By the way, Miss Gibson,” he said, “if you decide to get a replacement for that Seecamp, I can probably help out with the permit process.”
When he said that, I’m sure my jaw dropped. Dumbfounded, I looked first at him and then back to Latty. For the first time since I had been in their presence, Latty Gibson gave Tim Blaine the benefit of an actual smile.
“Thank you, Detective Blaine,” she said. “I’ll remember that.”
“Are you crazy?” I demanded after the apartment door closed and as we continued down the stairs. “That woman’s still an active suspect in at least one homicide case.”
“She didn’t do it,” Blaine declared. “I’m convinced she didn’t.”
He stepped out onto the sidewalk carrying the gift Latty Gibson had wrapped for his mother as if it were the most precious cargo in the world.
“She’s gorgeous, isn’t she,” he marveled. “She really does look just like Marilyn Monroe. I wonder if she’s ever entered any of those Marilyn look-alike contests. She’d win, hands down.”
Which only goes to prove, once and for all, that women aren’t the only ones who come from outer space. Men do, too.
At least some of them do.
Nineteen
When Tim Blaine and I came around the front of the building, I was eager to tell him where Latty’s story about the missing coat might lead us, but Suzanne Crenshaw was waiting for us by the shop’s front door.
“Miss Highsmith would like to see you before you go,” she said.
That was fine with me, because I wanted to see her, too. And because group gropes are never a good idea in homicide investigations, I wanted to do it before Latty came back down to the shop from her apartment.
Folding Don Wolf’s jacket over my arm, I stepped into the shop, with both Tim and Suzanne Crenshaw following behind. The door’s bell gave three distinctly separate jangles. If I had been forced to listen to that thing day in and day out, I’m sure it would have driven me bonkers.
We found Grace Highsmith seated on a tall stool behind the counter. “Well?” she asked, assuming a certain regal air that implied we were lowly petitioners who had been admitted into her august presence to beg a royal favor, rather than police officers going about their sworn duties.
“Well what?” I returned.
“Are you going to arrest her or not?”
So we were off on the arrest tangent again. Yesterday, Grace had been focused on my arresting her. Today, her focal point was the probability of our arresting her niece.
“Miss Highsmith,” I said patiently, “I think you have a slightly exaggerated idea of how we work. There’s a lot more to our job than meets the eye—a lot of behind-the-scenes questioning—before an arrest ever takes place.”
“I see,” Grace said, but I wasn’t at all sure she did.
“To that end, however, we do need to ask you a few questions about Virginia Marks, and about the work she was doing for you. Would that be all right?”
Grace glanced at her attorney, and Suzanne Crenshaw nodded her assent. “Of course,” Grace said agreeably. “What do you want to know?”
“How did she come to work for you in the first place?”
Grace shrugged. “I’ve known Virginia since she was a child, but I had no idea what had happened to her or what she was doing until I saw her on television a few months ago.”
“Television?”
“Yes, one of those television features they do from time to time on interesting or unusual people. They evidently chose Virginia because she was the only licensed private detective in Washington working out of a wheelchair. Later, when this thing with Latty and Don Wolf came up and I wanted someone to look into his background, Virginia was the one I called. There were things about Virginia that bothered me. I worried a little that she wasn’t entirely honest with me from time to time, but still, she did a good enough job as far as Don Wolf was concerned. She’s how I found out he was married.”
“Did you know that before or after the night Latty was attacked?”
“Before,” Grace answered. “Virginia dug that up in just a matter of hours after she went to work on the case.”
“But you didn’t mention it to your niece?”
“I was hoping she’d come to her senses on her own, you see,” Grace said. “That’s how one learns things in the real world, through experience. And, I thought he’d probably do something to give himself away, although I certainly never anticipated that he would…” Her voice trailed off and didn’t continue.
“Tell us about Virginia Marks’ connection to what went on that night.”
“Just as I asked, Virginia had placed Don Wolf under surveillance. She followed them, first to the night club and later to Don’s office.”
I had a clear memory of Virginia Marks’ car pulling away from the curb just as the elevator door opened and Don Wolf and Latty reentered the lobby from the elevator. “How did she know about the rape?” I asked.
“How?” Grace repeated with a frown. “What do you mean?”
“Did she somehow see what happened?”
“Oh, no. She was waiting on the street. When they came back downstairs, she drove away. Not wanting them to see her, she waited around the block. When Latty left in a cab a few minutes later, Virginia followed. From the state Latty was in—she was crying, her clothes were in tatters—Virginia more or less assumed what had happened, and, of course, she was right.”
“What about New Year’s Eve?” I asked. “Did you know Latty was going to meet him that night?”
“Yes,” Grace said.
“How did you know?”
Grace stole a sidelong glance at Suzanne Crenshaw, who was vigorously shaking her head. Grace looked back at me.
“Because I heard her on the phone. Virginia had fixed it, you see.”
“Fixed it?”
“The phone. She made tapes so I could listen.”
“In other words, she put a tap on the line?”
“Yes. I suppose that’s what it’s called.”
“A legal tap?” I don’t know why I even bothered to ask. As far as Grace Highsmith was concerned, I was a long way from being a virgin.
Suzanne Crenshaw was still shaking her head, but Grace Highsmith was not dissuaded. “I don’t know what’s illegal about it, Detective Beaumont. After all, it is my phone. It’s in my name, and I write the check that pays the bill each month.”
Great, I thought, another key piece of information gleaned from an illegal wiretap.
“So,” I said, “you knew Latty planned to meet Don Wolf. Did you have any idea she was going to ask him to marry her?”
For
the first time, Grace seemed indecisive. She hesitated. “I didn’t know, but I was afraid she might. She’s been reading all of Dorene’s old romance novels, you see, the books Dorene couldn’t take with her when she moved into smaller quarters. You know what they’re like.”
“No,” I said, quite honestly. “I have no idea.”
“They’re the kind of story where no matter how awful the man seems to be at first glance—no matter how repulsive or obnoxious, or unreasonable—he always turns out to be all right in the end. True love triumphs. He and the heroine get married and live happily ever after and all that sort of thing. Very unrealistic, if you ask me.”
“What does any of this have to do with Latty?”
“She’s rebelling against her mother, you see,” Grace answered. “Her mother is so impossibly unconventional—she never married, believes wholeheartedly in free sex, thinks marriage is the inevitable outcome of a patriarchal society, and all that other feminist nonsense. Naturally, Latty wants to do just the opposite—including wanting to marry the first man she became seriously involved with.”
“She might have been rebelling against you, too, Miss Highsmith,” I suggested.
“Heavens, no,” Grace said immediately, underlining her objection with a definitive shake of her head. “Not against me certainly. I may not read all those books, but in my own way, I’m every bit as much of a hopeless romantic as Latty is or as her grandmother was. I’m sure I would have married and settled down myself, if I’d ever met just the right sort of man.”
Not bloody likely, I thought. “Let’s go back to New Year’s Eve,” I said, bringing the discussion back to the subject at hand.
“What about it?”
“Virginia Marks followed Latty to Myrtle Edwards Park?”
“No. Since we knew that’s where they were meeting, I asked her to wait there for them.”
“And what happened?”
“Don Wolf showed up first. When Latty got there, they walked off down by the water. A few minutes later, just after the fireworks started, Latty came running back alone. On the way to her car, she ran right past Virginia’s. Virginia said she could see Latty was upset, that she was crying.”