Trial by Fury (9780061754715) (11 page)

W
hen I stepped away from the locker, Andi Wynn was looking uncertainly from Peters to me. “What is it?” she asked. “What did you find?”

“Look for yourself,” I said.

She did. I watched her expression when she turned back to face us. “I don't understand.”

“It's a trophy case,” I told her. “The cheerleaders' trophy case.”

“What does it mean?”

“It doesn't matter. Let's get out of here, Peters.”

I welcomed the fresh air when we stepped back outside. I felt sick. Ned Browning, too. The one who had been so protective of his “young people.” He, too, had fallen victim to the cheerleaders' hit list. More than once.

We were nearing the office when I rounded
a corner and ran full tilt into Ned Browning himself. Ned Browning and Joanna Ridley.

Joanna looked surprised to see me. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Working. What about you?”

She nodded toward Ned Browning, who was carrying a large cardboard box. “Mr. Browning asked me to come get Darwin's things. They're hiring a replacement and he needs to use the desk.”

Ned nodded. “It was most awkward, having to call, even before the funeral, but the board has moved forward and hired a replacement. He'll be here at school tomorrow. I felt Mrs. Ridley was the only one who should handle her husband's things.”

“Did you find out anything?” Joanna asked.

More than we expected, I wanted to say, but I didn't. Instead, I reached for the box Ned had in his hands. “Would you like me to carry this to your car?”

She nodded, and Ned handed it over. It was fairly heavy. “I'll be getting back to my office,” he said. He turned to Joanna and took her hand. “Thank you so much for stopping by. Will you be attending the memorial service tomorrow night?” he asked. “Mrs. Wynn here is in charge of planning it.”

Joanna glanced in Andi's direction and shook her head. “I don't know. I doubt it. It'll depend on how I feel after the funeral. I ap
preciate what you're doing, but I may be too tired.”

Ned nodded sympathetically. “I understand completely. It would be nice if you could. It would mean a great deal to the students, but of course your physical well-being must come first.”

He took Joanna's hand and pressed it firmly. “You take care now, Mrs. Ridley. We'll hope to see you tomorrow. Let me know if there's anything else I can do.”

Ned Browning scurried away toward his office, the little shit. I wanted him out of my sight. I turned to Peters. “I'll help get this loaded into Joanna's car and be right back.”

We left Andi Wynn and Peters standing together in the breezeway. “Where did it come from?” Joanna asked.

“What?”

“The picture. I thought you were going to find out how the man at the newspaper got it.”

“Oh, that.” Maxwell Cole's column seemed eons away. “No,” I told her. “I haven't been able to locate him yet.”

“Oh,” Joanna said. She sounded disappointed.

Her Mustang was parked in the school lot. She led the way to the trunk and unlocked it. The cover bounced open. A large tin-plated container, the kind restaurants use to hold fifty
pounds of lard, sat in the middle of an otherwise empty trunk.

Joanna looked at it and frowned. “What's that doing here?” she asked.

“What is it?”

“It looks like my flour container. But what would it be doing in my car?”

I put down the box. “I don't know,” I said. “Let me take a look.”

As soon as I cracked the lid on the container, before I even looked inside, I was sorry. The stench was overpowering. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. I lifted the lid anyway.

Coiled at the top was a length of rope. Under it, through the center of the rope was what appeared to be a man's shirt. A maroon man's shirt, dusted with flour.

For a moment, Joanna had recoiled, driven away by the overwhelming odor of human excrement. Despite the smell, she came forward again to peer warily inside the container. She saw the shirt at the same time I did.

“That's his shirt,” she whispered.

I shoved the lid back shut. “Are you sure?”

She nodded, holding her hand to her mouth. “That was his favorite, his game shirt. He always wore it.”

“That day, too?”

She nodded. “It's either his shirt or one just like it.”

I examined the outside of the container. A
fine film of white powder lingered on the outside and on the top. I took a tiny swipe at the bottom edge with my finger and touched it to my tongue. It was indeed flour.

“And this looks like your flour container?”

“I'm sure of it. I keep it in the storeroom out in the carport. There's a smaller one, a canister in the house. When I need to refill it, I get the flour from this one.”

“And you have no idea how long this has been in your trunk?”

“No.”

I closed the lid of the trunk. “Open the car door,” I ordered. “We'll put the box in the back.”

Unquestioningly, Joanna did as she was bidden. She unlocked the rider's door and held up the front seat while I shoved the box in. When I turned back toward her, she was trembling visibly, despite the fact that a warm afternoon sun was shining on her.

“Wait here,” I said. “We'll go somewhere we can talk.”

I left her there and went in search of Peters. I found him and Candace Wynn standing right where we'd left them. They were laughing and talking.

“I'm going to be gone for a while,” I told Peters abruptly.

Puzzled, he looked at me. “Want me to go along?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No need. I'll be back in half an hour or so.”

To this day, I'm not sure why I didn't have Peters come along with us. Joanna's Mustang was small, but there would have been room enough for the three of us.

Peters shrugged. “Okay. Suit yourself. I'll wait here. Besides, I should get the camera from the car and take some pictures of that list. Even if it's not admissible, doesn't mean it isn't usable.”

I nodded in agreement. Leaving them, I hustled back to Joanna Ridley. She was still standing beside the Mustang, where I'd left her, as if glued to the spot. She jumped like a startled deer when I returned.

“Would you like me to drive?”

Wordlessly, she handed me her keys. I helped her into the car and shut the door. I got in and put the key in the ignition.

Joanna seemed dazed, unable to grasp what had happened. “Why are those things in my trunk?”

“That's what we're going to find out,” I told her. I started the car and backed it out of the parking place. The only restaurant I knew on Mercer Island was a Denny's down near I-90. I fought my way through the maze of highway construction and found the restaurant on only the second try. For most of the drive, Joanna sat next to me in stricken silence.

Once in Denny's, we went to a booth in the far corner of the room and ordered coffee. “Tell me again where you kept the flour container,” I demanded.

“In the storeroom at the end of the carport.”

“Locked or unlocked?”

“Locked. Always.”

“When was the last you saw it?”

“I don't know. A couple of weeks, I guess. I don't keep track.”

“And you haven't noticed if the storeroom has been unlocked at any time?”

“No.”

“When were you out there last?”

She shrugged. “Sometime last week.”

“And the flour container was there?”

“As far as I know, but I don't remember for sure.” She paused. “What are you going to do?”

“Take the container to the crime lab. See what they can find out.”

“Why was it there?”

“In your car?”

She nodded.

“Someone wanted it found there.”

“So you'd think I killed him?”

“Yes.”

“Do you?”

“No.”

There was another long pause. The waitress came and refilled both our coffee cups. While
she did it, Joanna's eyes never left my face.

“Is that smart?”

“For me not to suspect you? Probably not, but I don't just the same.”

“Thank you.”

I was sitting looking at her, but my random access memory went straying back to Monday night, the first night I had seen her, when I brought her back from the medical examiner's office. The light in the carport had been turned off. Was that when the flour container disappeared?

I leaned forward in my chair. “Joanna, do you remember when we left your house that night to go to the medical examiner's office? Do you remember if you turned off the light in the carport before we drove away?”

She frowned and shook her head. “I don't remember at all. I might have, but I doubt it.”

“Did you notice that when we came back the light wasn't on?”

“No.”

“Where's the switch for the light in the carport?”

“There are two of them. One by the back door and one by the front.”

“Both inside?”

“Yes.”

I downed the rest of my coffee and stood up. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“We're going to drop the container off at the crime lab and make arrangements for them to send someone out to your house to dust it for prints.”

“You think the killer was there, in my house?”

“I'm willing to bet on it.”

“But how did he get in? How did he open my car without my knowing it?”

“Your husband had keys to your car, didn't he?”

She nodded.

“And the killer had Darwin's keys.”

She stood up, too. “All right,” she said.

“I'm making arrangements for someone to put new locks on all your doors, both on the house and the car.”

Joanna looked puzzled. “Why?”

“If he got in once,” I said grimly, “he could do it again.”

I had no intention of unloading the container from Joanna's car into ours to take it to the crime lab. Janice Morraine, my friend at the crime lab, tells me evidence is like pie dough—fragile. The less handling the better.

It was rush hour by the time we were back in traffic. I-90 westbound was reduced to a single lane going into the city. It took us twenty minutes to get off the access road and onto the freeway. Rush hour is a helluva funny word for it. We spent most of the next hour parked
on the bridge. I would make a poor commuter. I don't have the patience for it anymore.

Joanna was subdued as we drove. “The funeral's tomorrow,” she said finally. “Will you be there?”

“What time?”

“Four,” she replied.

“I don't know if I'll make it,” I said. “What about the memorial service at school. Will you be going to that?”

“No. I don't think I could face those kids. Not after what happened.”

I didn't blame her for that. I would have felt the same way. “If I were you, I don't think I could, either,” I told her.

The entire cheerleading squad would probably be there.

Except for one. Bambi Barker.

J
oanna Ridley dropped me back at Mercer Island High School a little after seven. It wasn't quite dusk. The only car visible in the school lot was our departmental Dodge. A note from Peters was stuck under the windshield wiper. “See the custodian.”

I went looking for one. It took a while, but I finally found him polishing a long hallway with a machine that sounded like a Boeing 747 preparing for takeoff. I shouted to him a couple of times before he heard me and shut off the noise.

“I'm supposed to talk to you.”

“Your name Beaumont?” he asked. I nodded, and he reached in his pocket and extracted the keys to the car in the parking lot. “Your partner said you should pick him up at the Roanoke.”

It didn't make sense to me. If Peters had gotten a ride all the way to the Roanoke in Seattle, why hadn't he asked Andi Wynn to drop him off at the department so he could have picked up his own car? I was operating on too little sleep to want to play cab driver, but I grudgingly convinced myself it had been thoughtful of him to leave the car. At least that way I'd have access to transportation back downtown.

None too graciously, I thanked the custodian for his help and set off for Seattle. Something big must have been happening at Seattle Center that night. Traffic was backed up on both the bridge and I-5. I finally got to the Roanoke Exit on the freeway and made my way to the restaurant by the same name on Eastlake at the bottom of the hill.

Andi Wynn's red pickup wasn't outside, and when I went into the bar, there was no trace of Peters and Andi inside, either.

“Can I help you?” the bartender asked.

“I'm looking for some friends of mine. Both of them have red hair. A man, thirty-five, six two. A woman about the same age. Both pretty good-looking. They were driving a red pickup.”

“Nobody like that's been in here tonight,” the bartender reported. “Been pretty slow as a matter of fact.”

“How long have you been here? Maybe they left before you came on duty.”

The bartender shook his head. “I came to work at three o'clock this afternoon.”

I scratched my head. “I'm sure he said the Roanoke,” I mumbled aloud to myself.

“Which one?” the bartender asked.

“Which one? You mean there's more than one?”

“Sure. This is the Roanoke Exit. There's the Roanoke Inn over on Mercer Island.”

“I'll be a son of a bitch! You got a phone I can use?”

He pointed to a pay phone by the rest room. “Don't feel like the Lone Ranger,” he said. “The number's written on the top of the phone, right under the coin deposit. It happens all the time.”

Sure enough, the name Roanoke Inn and its number were taped just under the coin deposit. Knowing that I had lots of company didn't make me feel any better. I shoved a quarter into the phone and dialed the number. When someone answered, I had to shout to be heard over the background racket.

“I'm looking for someone named Peters,” I repeated for the fourth time.

“You say Peters? Okay, hang on.” My ear rattled as the telephone receiver was tossed onto some hard surface. The paging system at the Roanoke was hardly upscale. “Hey,” whoever had answered the phone shouted above
the din, “anybody here named Peters? You got a phone call.”

I waited. Eventually, the phone was picked back up. “He's coming,” someone said, then promptly dropped the receiver again.

“Hey, Beau!” Peters' voice came across like Cheerful Charlie. “Where you been? We've been waitin'.”

It didn't sound like Peters. “Andi and I just had spaghetti. It's great. Want us to order you some?”

Spaghetti? Vegetarian, no-red-meat Peters pushing spaghetti? I figured I was hearing things. “Are you feeling all right?” I asked.

“Me?” Peters laughed. “Never better. Where the hell are you, buddy? It's late.”

Peters is always accusing me of being a downtown isolationist, of not knowing anything about what's on the other side of I-5, of regarding the suburbs as a vast wasteland. I wasn't about to 'fess up to my mistake.

“I've been delayed,” I muttered. “I'll be there in a little while.”

It was actually quite a bit longer than a little while. I drove and cussed and took one wrong turn after another. The thing I've learned about Mercer Island is that no address is straightforward. The Roanoke Inn is an in-crowd joke, set off in the dingleberries at the end of a road that winds through a seemingly residential area. By the time I got there, it was
almost nine o'clock. I was ready to wring Peters' neck.

The building itself is actually an old house, complete with a white-railed front porch. Inside, it was wall-to-wall people. The decorations, from the plastic scenic lamp shades with holes burned in them to the ancient jukebox blaring modern, incomprehensible rock, were straight out of the forties and fifties. I had the feeling this wasn't stuff assembled by some yuppies trying to make a “fifties statement.” This place was authentic. It had always been like that.

In one corner came a steady jackhammer racket that was actually a low-tech popcorn popper. I finally spotted Peters and Andi Wynn, seated cozily on one side of a booth at the far end of the room. A pitcher of beer and two glasses sat in front of them. Peters, with his arm draped casually around Andi's shoulder, was laughing uproariously.

I had known Peters for almost two years. I had never heard him laugh like that, with his head thrown back and mirth shaking his whole body. He had always kept himself on a tight rein. It was so good to see him having a good time that I forgot about being pissed, about it being late, and about my getting lost.

I walked up to the booth and slid into the seat across from them. “All right, you two. What's so funny?”

Peters managed to pull himself together. He wiped tears from his eyes. “Hi, Beau. She is.” He ruffled Andi Wynn's short auburn hair. “I swear to God, this is the funniest woman I ever met.”

Andi Wynn ducked her head and gave me a shy smile. “He's lying,” she said. “I'm perfectly serious.”

That set him off again. While he was convulsed once more, Andi signaled for the bartender. “Want a beer?”

I looked at Peters, trying to assess if he was smashed or just having one hell of a good time. “No thanks,” I said. “Somebody in this crowd better stay sober enough to drive.”

The bartender fought his way over to us. I ordered coffee and, at Peters' insistence, a plate of the special Thursday night Roanoke spaghetti. The spaghetti was all right, but not great enough to justify Peters' rave review. I wondered once more exactly how much beer he had swallowed.

“What's going on?” Peters asked, getting serious finally. “It took you long enough.”

“We found something in Joanna's car,” I said. “I took it down to the crime lab.”

Peters frowned. “What was it?”

I didn't feel comfortable discussing the case in front of Andi Wynn. “Just some stuff,” I told him offhandedly. “Maybe it's important, maybe not.”

Peters reached for the pitcher, glanced at me, and saw me watching him. “I went off duty at five o'clock,” he said in answer to my unspoken comment. Leaning back, he refilled both his and Andi's glasses from the pitcher.

“We waited a long time. It got late and hungry out. We finally decided to come here. What do you think? It's a great place, isn't it?”

I wouldn't have called it great. It was nothing but a local tavern in the “Cheers” tradition, with its share of run-down booths, dingy posters, peeling paint, and loyal customers planted on concave barstools.

“I was telling Ron that we used to come here after school,” Andi said. “Darwin, me, and some of the others.”

When she called him Ron, it threw me for a minute. I tended to forget that Peters had a first name. And it surprised me, too, that in the time since I'd left them to go with Joanna Ridley, Peters and Andi had moved from formal address to a first-name basis. I felt like I'd missed out on something important.

“Is that right? When was that?” I asked, practically shouting over the noise of a new song blaring from the jukebox.

“Last year,” she answered.

I swallowed the food without chewing it, gulped down the coffee, and rushed them out the door. Andi's pickup was parked outside. I got in to drive the Dodge while Peters walked
Andi to her truck, opened the door for her, and gave her a quick goodnight kiss. Andi started her engine and drove away. Peters returned to our car looking lighter than air.

That kiss bugged me. I distinctly remembered Ned Browning calling her Mrs. Wynn, not Miss Wynn. What the hell was Peters thinking of?

I climbed Peters' frame about it as soon as he got in the car. “Isn't she Sadie, Sadie married lady?” I asked.

“Divorced,” Peters said. And that was all he said. No explanation. Not even a lame excuse.

I stewed in my own juices over that for a while before I tackled him on the larger issue of the Roanoke Inn. “It's a good thing you left the car where it was when you decided to go drinking. We'd have one hell of a time explaining what we were doing hanging out in a tavern in a departmental vehicle at this time of night.”

“Wait a minute. Who's the guy who was telling me just the other day that I needed to lighten up a little, to stop being such a stickler for going by the book?”

“I didn't mean you should overreact,” I told him.

I took Peters to his own place in Kirkland rather than dropping him downtown to drive his Datsun back to the east side. I didn't know
how much beer he had drunk, and I wasn't willing to risk it.

When I told him I was taking him home, he gave a noncommittal shrug. “I'm not drunk, Beau, but if it'll make you feel better, do it.”

On the way to his house I told him about the contents of Joanna Ridley's trunk. “The rope was coiled on top?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“And she could tell looking through the rope that those were the clothes he wore the day he died?”

“That's right.”

“Doesn't it strike you as odd?”

“Why should it?”

“It seems to me that one way of knowing what's inside a closed container is to be the one who put it there.”

“Joanna Ridley didn't do it,” I replied.

He didn't talk to me much after that. I couldn't tell what was going on, if he was mad because I thought he was too smashed to drive home or if he was pissed because I wasn't buying his suspicions about Joanna Ridley.

As we drove into his driveway, I said, “I'll come get you in the morning if you like.”

“Don't bother.” His tone was gruff. “I'll catch a bus downtown. This is only the suburbs, Beau. Despite what some people think, it isn't the end of the earth.”

He got out and slammed his door without
bothering to thank me for the ride. I was too tired to worry about what ailed Peters. My three hours of sleep had long since fallen by the wayside. I needed to fall into bed and get some sleep.

It's hell getting old.