Cold Case (11 page)

“He called later on, just before I went to work, and said it was all set. He'd had another key made, and he'd give it to Jill at the party. She lay down to nap. She said she wanted to rest so she could get stinking drunk at the party and dance her feet off.”

Olga looked at Barbara then and said, “That's the story about the key. That's what I told the police. They have no reason to be suspicious of David.”

Barbara motioned to the waiter and ordered antipasto. “Something to nibble on,” she said. “How did Jill get to the party that night? Did someone take her?”

“No. I had a car. She took it. The restaurant was by the Bijou, just around the corner from our apartment. I always walked over. We both did before she got too sick to work.”

“Was she likely to have picked up a hitchhiker that late at night?”

Olga shook her head emphatically. “No way. Not at any time of night.”

“Were you in the graduating class with her?” Barbara asked after a moment.

Olga had returned to river gazing. “No. I was a year behind her. I went back home a week after…I went home and stayed down there, got my degree at Southern Oregon in Ashland the next year. I didn't think I could stand going back to Eugene, back to the U of O.”

The waiter brought the antipasto and a basket of bread and crackers. Barbara helped herself to a slice of salami. “I know this is painful for you, but can you tell me a little about Jill's background, home life, anything that might shed a little light on her death?”

Olga hesitated, then said in a nearly toneless voice, “She had two older sisters, five or six years older or a little more, and they had very little to do with her. Her father was disappointed, even angry, to have a third girl and no son. I think her home life was pretty bad, lonely for her, and there was very little money. I don't think she was abused, unless you count being ignored and belittled. Her father had a truck, hauled trash for people, moved appliances, things like that, when he could get the jobs. David lived next door, literally next door, and they were pals from a very early age. His dad was in construction, seasonal work, and they had little money, but his parents seem to have adored him, and they were good to Jill. They made up for a lot, I think.”

She began to pick up tidbits from the platter, almost absently it appeared, simply because the food was there. And slowly the picture of Jill's childhood and adolescence through high school emerged. Emotionally neglected, hungry for attention, recognition, which she never got at home, despite her intelligence, despite winning a coveted scholarship, her continuing success in college.

“Did she have boyfriends in college, seem interested in any particular guy? Could there have been some jealousy involved?” Barbara asked.

Olga shook her head. “No time for any of that. School, three-point-eight grade average, work as many hours as possible and no time for guys. That was her life. She took classes that made my head spin just looking at her textbooks. Statistics! Math. Economic theory from the days of the Ark to present.”

“History, apparently,” Barbara said. “She was Dr. Elders's student that last term.”

“Undergrad requirement,” Olga said. “She had to take a history class and that was the only one she could fit into her schedule.”

Possibly her lack of interest accounted for Elders's scant memory of her, Barbara thought. “It seems strange that if she was still suffering fatigue from mono, that she would have been one of the last to leave the party that night.”

“Maybe not,” Olga said after a moment. “You can't believe the relief we both felt at the thought of cutting our expenses for rent by more than half. We did the numbers after David left us that afternoon. It meant she could fully recover, and in the fall she would have been a T.A., no more heavy trays to carry or crazy hours, a completely different life. And her real fear of losing the scholarship was gone. You have no idea how desperate an intelligent girl like Jill can be to change her life, to escape. I think she was experiencing an almost hysterical reaction to fear and dread of being forced back home, to a go-nowhere job, to her mother's kind of existence. I imagine she did nearly dance her feet off, and ate and drank far too much.”

She had begun speaking with an intensity that she had not shown before and Barbara wondered how much of Jill's life reflected Olga's own desperation to escape a dreary home life.

Olga glanced at her watch, finished her tea, and said, “I have to go get the girls. It's a long drive to Medford and I want to get there before dark.”

Barbara got out her credit card. “Let's get a box and let you take the snacks along. The girls will eat it, won't they?”

“They'll eat anything not moving,” Olga said.

The waiter came, left for a box and returned promptly. Taking the credit card with him, he left again. Olga emptied the platter and stood. “Thanks for the snacks,” she said.

“No, I'm the one to give thanks. You've been very helpful in filling in a cloudy picture in my mind. I appreciate it,” Barbara said.

Waiting to pay the tab, she thought about the passion that had come to Olga's voice as she described Jill's state of mind the last night of her life. She remembered that lovely young face in the yearbook and felt her pity for Jill swell anew.

No one that young, that determined and so full of promise should have her life choked out.

Darren's truck was in the driveway when Barbara arrived home. She hurried into the house, on to the bedroom, where she could hear the shower running. She stripped off her clothes and tossed them toward the bed, and seconds later she opened the shower door and stepped inside.

“Welcome home,” she said softly.

M
onday morning when Frank joined Barbara and Shelley, he said, “I talked to Lester Colfax a while ago. David's doctor,” he added to Shelley. “Lester agreed that the rehab clinic would be suitable for David. The transfer will be made this afternoon, depending on the results of a new MRI scan. He has a list of names of visitors to be allowed and he'll speak to Darren about treatment.”

“Good,” Barbara said. She told them what little she had learned from Olga Maas, then spread her hands. “So now we wait to see what the cops do next. Interesting, though, isn't it, that three women seem to accept that David had nothing to do with Jill Storey's murder and for that reason, the lack of motive, nothing to do with Robert's murder. The victim's mother, his sister and a friend's roommate from two decades ago.”

“What's strange about that?” Shelley asked, frowning.

“Amy was a kid when David left these parts, and didn't meet him again until after her brother was shot to death. Mrs. McCrutchen had seen him only as another student among many years ago and Jill's roommate hardly knew him at all. Just interesting.”

Frank nodded in agreement, and Shelley said, “Well, maybe they know something about him, or about one or the other death, that makes them sure.”

“Exactly,” Barbara said. “Well, I'll have a long talk with David later this week and until then, there's not much we can do.”

The weather took a turn that week, and by Thursday, when Barbara and Frank arrived at the rehab clinic, the temperature was in the high nineties and climbing. After leaving the cool car to enter the bake-oven heat outdoors, the clinic felt almost too cool.

Annie McIvey met them and greeted them both as old friends. She was one of the trustees in the nonprofit clinic and nominally in charge, but that was known to be a mischaracterization. Darren really ran the clinic.

“He's with a patient,” Annie said, “but he said to show you to his office, and David will be down in a minute.” She preceded them to the office and opened the door.

Darren's office was scrupulously neat. His desk held several folders with nothing loose scattered about, pens and pencils in a mug, a vertical blind closed most of the way.

Three chairs were arranged by a table with a sweating pitcher of ice water and glasses. Barbara and Frank were still chatting with Annie when there was a tap on the door; one of the interns opened it and David walked in.

Although he moved carefully, his color was better than it had been before, and he was steady on his feet. He was wearing chinos, a short-sleeved cotton shirt not tucked in, and Birkenstocks. His right arm was still discolored with bruises.

Annie excused herself and left them as Barbara introduced her father to David. “Dad is my colleague,” she said as they all seated themselves. “He keeps me on the straight and narrow as much as he can.”

David nodded, then said gravely, “He must be good at it. People around here seem to regard you as a modern-day Saint Joan.”

She waved it away. “Rumors, nothing but rumors. David, I'd like to start back at the beginning. Back twenty-two years or more. Okay with you?”

“Sure,” he said. “Back to my childhood, back to Jill's childhood. I assume that's what you mean.”

“It is. Whatever you want to tell us, and if we have questions, they'll come later.”

“We lived on the outskirts of Gresham,” he said. “Fields around and some woods, not quite rural, but close. It's all built-up now, of course. They lived next door to us, with no other kids our age in sight. Jill and I were playmates from my earliest memories of playing outside. We were explorers, astronauts, Indians, whatever came up, made-up games for poor kids with few toys and no planned activities.”

As he spoke the picture he painted was a repetition of the one Olga had related. Jill's two older sisters, aloof, disdainful; a father who rejected his youngest daughter from the day of her birth; a mother unable to cope with an extremely bright child.

“Her parents didn't want her to go to college, even though she had that scholarship. They wanted her to get a job, get married, settle down. We came down here together, and she was never really back home again, except for infrequent, short visits. She worked summers, after classes, whenever she could. They never gave her a cent. I saw her now and then, but not a lot. Different classes, different tracks. She was in business, I was in humanities, and we both worked part-time.”

Barbara poured ice water and handed him a glass and another to Frank. “So neither of you lived in the dorms.”

“No. We were both what they call geeks now, serious about school, and no interest in or time for dorm games, sororities or fraternities and no money for them in any event. Okay, getting up to the last year. That spring was the first time we were ever in the same class, Elders's history seminars. It shocked me to see how worn-out she was. Pale and thin as a rail. She told me she'd had mono, and was trying to get through in spite of it. She was afraid she wasn't going to catch up and that she would lose out on the scholarship and the MBA she was determined to get. I told her to talk to each instructor and try to make deals to allow some extra time. A week or so later she told me she'd done that, and it was going to be all right. Then I saw her and Olga on the day of the party.”

He drank his water and shook his head at Barbara's offer to refill his glass. “I was going to leave on Monday,” he said slowly. “My roommate, Ted Folsom, had already left for the summer, but he wanted to keep the apartment, and it occurred to me that Jill and Olga could help. They jumped at the chance, sure that they could get half the rent between them. I called Ted as soon as I left them, okayed it with him and I had an extra key made. Since I'd be in and out until Monday morning, I didn't want to give them mine, and I knew I wouldn't see them early on Monday. Later I walked over to the McCrutchen house. Jill was already there, and I gave her the key.”

“Did you and Jill ever date? As in romantic dating?” Barbara asked.

“Never,” he said.

“Did you give her money?”

“That spring I did. Ten bucks one time, fifteen another time. If I'd had more, I would have given them more. You have to realize they were dead broke. Olga couldn't carry both of them on her part-time job, and Jill wasn't able to work for months that spring.”

“Okay. At the party, did you and Robert have an argument?” Barbara asked.

He hesitated, then said, “He was pestering her, and I told him to bug off. No big deal.”

“Pestering her how?”

“Look, Robert was a chaser all through school. But he and Chloe had just become engaged. They announced it that night, and he had no business trying to hustle Jill. She told him to get lost and so did I. End of the little melodrama. The whole thing lasted less than five minutes, and no one else was on the deck.”

“How did Robert behave after that little episode?”

“I didn't see him again that night.”

“What about Jill? How was she afterward?”

He shook his head. “I didn't see her, either. I think she left immediately after that.”

“How much longer did you stay at the party?”

“Ten, fifteen minutes. There weren't many of us left by then, and when people realized that Robert had left, everyone decided it was time to call it quits. I walked back home,” he said, before she could ask. “I walked over, and I walked back to my apartment.”

“Back up a little. Did you have other classes with Robert?”

“A couple early on. But we weren't friends, or anything like friends. I never even saw him out of class except at the seminars. Why?”

“Well, you said you hadn't seen him for more than twenty years, and more or less implied that he wasn't the brightest bulb on the tree, a two-bit politician, a nothing in your universe. What was that based on?”

“The little I saw of him left the impression that he was a mediocre student, a shallow thinker, with no interest in anything except fun and games, A frat boy. Of course,” he added after a pause, “he could have changed, matured, and since he passed the bar exam, it stands to reason that he did apply himself to some extent.”

For the first time, Frank spoke. “Let's have a little break. David, do you want some coffee? Maybe we could have some about now. We don't want to tire you, and if you want to knock off at any time, just give the word.”

“I'm okay,” David said. “Coffee would be good. They make pretty decent coffee here, by the way.”

“I'll go rustle up some,” Barbara said.

“I read your book,
The American Myth Stakes,
” Frank said. “Damn fine book. Congratulations.”

Barbara left while Frank was speaking. Outside the door, she turned toward the reception desk, and met Darren coming from one of the treatment rooms. He grinned broadly when he saw her, pulled the door closed, then embraced her. “What I'd like to see every time I leave one room for another,” he murmured into her hair.

“You'll scandalize the staff,” she said with a laugh. “What do you think of your new patient, David Etheridge?”

Darren gave her a squeeze, kissed her lightly on the lips and drew back. “Good guy. A trouper. Working hard and making progress. Enough?”

She laughed again. “What a pro! I'm on a coffee search. Any reason we should be careful with him?”

“If he decides he's had enough, he'll tell you,” Darren said. “Come on, we'll order coffee. Then I'm back to the salt mines.”

“Let's take Dad for a meal somewhere with air-conditioning later.” Todd was at his mother's house for his usual summer visit, and Darren was working long hours, catch-up week, he had said, dismissing it. She had no intention of preparing a meal or expecting Frank to make dinner in the heat.

“You're on. I'll be late,” Darren said.

They had reached the reception desk. “I'll wait at Dad's. We have things to discuss, and it's no hotter there than at home. See you later.” She asked Molly, at the reception desk, if she'd call the kitchen for coffee, then returned to the office where Frank and David were still talking about his book.

“I condensed some lectures,” David was saying. “Tied them together with the theme of myth making, and it seemed to work okay.”

“Not just okay. Brilliantly,” Frank said.

“Coffee's on the way,” Barbara told them, taking her seat again. “I saw Darren and he assured me that if you decided you'd had enough interrogation, you'd be forthright about telling us. I assume that he spoke from personal experience.”

David shrugged. “I may have a tendency to forget diplomacy from time to time.”

A few minutes later Molly brought in a tray with the coffee service, smiled at David and left again. Barbara examined David, looking for whatever it was about him that made pretty young women look at him that way.

“I don't want to belabor this much longer,” she said, after pouring and passing the cups around. “Just briefly for now, fill us in on that Sunday night, and Monday morning. The night Robert was shot.”

“Okay. I had dinner with Randolf Gergen and his wife. He's another historian, and they were on their way to San Francisco, making a minitour of the northwest on the way. We talked a long time and I got home before eleven, but I can't say exactly when. I turned on the news at eleven, so that part's firm. I didn't hear a shot, and I didn't go out on the deck. I was making a few notes to add to my prepared text for my talk.”

He sipped the coffee and nodded. “Good. Monday morning. I heard the woman screaming and ran out. She began throwing up, out on the lawn, and I saw Robert's body by the door at the other end. I ran over, but no point to that. He was dead. You know about the ants. Chloe seemed to be in shock and almost instantly Elders appeared. I told him to get Chloe inside, and I ran back to my place for my cell phone, and I picked up the camera and put it in my pocket. I took water and a box of tissues out for the gardener. I called nine-one-one, and asked Elders where a phone book was and told him to make some coffee. I found an address book on a little desk in the kitchen. I took it out to the deck. I wanted to call Robert's mother before she heard it on the news. I saw Amy's name in the book and called her first, then I called Mrs. McCrutchen. I was standing in front of Robert's body, maybe trying to screen it from view of the woman. And I took pictures of the body. I'm not sure why, but I did. I thought maybe there was a paper by his hand. I couldn't make out what was on it. Anyway, I took pictures, and put the camera back in my pocket, and by then the police had arrived. They ordered me back into the kitchen and I went in and sat down. I was still there when Amy arrived and Chloe started screaming. Amy took her and put her to bed. Elders was fussing around, doing coffee, getting in the way, and the police made him sit down and stay down. And that's about it. Of course, they began asking questions, but we went to my apartment for that.”

“Why did you take the camera out when you went for the cell phone?”

“They were together. I just grabbed them both and stuck them in my pocket. From the outside, they look pretty much alike. I needed both hands for the water and tissues. I didn't stop to think about it.”