Breach of Duty (9780061739637) (17 page)

“Glad to be of service,” I mumbled. “And don't worry about notifying me as to the time of the memorial service,” I added. “I'm sure someone from down at the Hurricane Cafe will let me know when it is.”

“You work there, too?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “But I know several people who do.”

I
t's difficult for someone my size and build to feel lighter than air, but that's exactly how I felt as I drove away from the Hearthside—lighter than air. I had pulled it off. I had played Sue's hunch, one everyone else had discounted, and we had come up winners.

I wanted to call Sue and crow, to let her know that in my humble opinion we had kicked butt. When I dialed her number, though, her voice mail came on almost immediately. That usually means both lines are busy, and this wasn't a message I wanted to leave on an answering machine.

Next I tried calling Audrey. At the ME's office, the voice mail message under her name said Audrey was currently out of the office and would return calls as soon as possible. I didn't want to leave a message there, either, since there was a possibility somebody else might pick up Audrey's voice mail. It wouldn't be a good idea to have a recording of Detective J. P. Beaumont's voice brimming over with good news about two cases he wasn't supposed to be anywhere near.

My third attempt at placing a call went to Bridget Hargrave. That one went through. She must have been sitting on top of the phone because she answered midway through the first ring.

“Jimmy?”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Miss Hargrave. This is Detective Beaumont. Any news?”

“No,” she answered. “None.”

That was too bad. Jimmy Greenjeans's continuing absence definitely constituted a dark cloud on an otherwise rapidly clearing horizon. That bothered me. It was evidently bothering Bridget even more than it did me.

“I'm afraid, Detective Beaumont,” she sobbed into the phone. “I'm afraid he's dead.”

So was I.

“Did Jimmy ever talk to you about Anthony Lawson?”

“The guy in the lake? Tony you mean, the retard at work. Yes, Jimmy talked about him sometimes. He worried about him—that people were taking advantage. He said that every once in a while someone on the wait staff cheated him out of tips because he didn't know any better. But that was all he ever said. You don't think it was someone from there who killed him, do you? Someone who worked at the Hurricane Cafe?”

I knew exactly who had done it. What was lacking was proof. “No,” I said. “I doubt it was anyone who worked there. I'd better…”

“Detective Beaumont, please don't hang up,” Bridget Hargrave interrupted. “I need to ask you something.”

“What?”

“My mother came by a little while ago. She's…well…sort of stuck up, if you know what I mean. She says dating a bartender is beneath me. That's the way she put it—beneath me. She says the reason Jimmy didn't show up is that he was nervous about meeting her. That he took off so he wouldn't have to. She told me I was silly to be so worried about him and that I should have gone to dinner without him. We had a big fight over it. What do you think?”

There are few men who aren't at least slightly cowed at the prospect of meeting future in-laws. On the other hand, as a bartender dealing with the Hurricane Cafe's day-to-day flotsam-and-jetsam clientele, it didn't seem likely that a mere “stuck-up” woman would scare Jimmy into running for cover. I wondered if Bridget's mother wasn't downplaying the disappearance issue for her own purposes, hoping to drive a wedge between her daughter and her less-than-wonderful choice of heartthrobs. On the other hand, it seemed to me that Bridget had every reason to be worried about what had happened to Jimmy. I also thought she deserved a straight answer.

“Bridget,” I said carefully, “in my opinion, Jimmy's disappearance has nothing whatever to do with your mother and everything to do with Tony Lawson. I can't say any more right now, and I need to have your word that you won't pass that information along to anyone—anyone at all—until I give you the goahead. Understood?”

“I understand,” she said.

“Hang onto those phone numbers I gave you. If you hear from Jimmy—if he calls you or shows up at your apartment—promise that you'll call me right away.”

“I promise.”

“Good,” I said. “I have to hang up now. I'm going into my garage. The signal doesn't work very well from underground.”

I parked on P-3 and then rode the elevator up. I stopped in the lobby long enough to collect my mail. The doorman was busy chatting with people I'd never seen before, so I didn't have to bother making small talk on my way upstairs. Picking up messages has become such a way of life these days that as soon as I shed my jacket and shoulder holster, I went straight to the phone.

One message was from Ron Peters saying that artichoke-hearts pizza was on the menu that night in case I felt like coming downstairs and joining them. A glance at my watch told me 9:00 was far too late for dinner. The second was from Ralph Ames reminding me not to forget our dinner date for the following night. Taken together, the two messages left me chuckling that my friends go to such lengths to make sure I don't starve to death. The third and last caller, clocking in at 4:45, didn't bother to identify himself.

“Detective Beaumont, I really need to talk…”

That was all there was to it. The recording stopped in midsentence and didn't resume. I played it again, thinking that something was amiss with the recorder. After playing it a second time, I played it once more after that. It was on the third time through that I finally recognized the voice. Barry Newsome!

Once I knew who it was, I listened to the recording a fourth time, just to see if I had missed something, and I had. At the very end, just after the word “talk,” there was a little burst of sound, but it wasn't anything I could recognize. The beginning of a shout perhaps. Or maybe a door opening or closing. Without a competent sound engineer tweaking the tape, there was no way to tell. What didn't require a sound engineer to unravel was the nervousness in Barry Newsome's voice. He was either upset or scared, maybe both, and looking for me.

I slammed down the phone. There was no point in dialing 911. Whatever had happened was several hours old. My first instinct was to call back, but the Seward Park file, complete with all relevant phone numbers, was in my laptop. As per usual, the computer was down in the garage, safely locked inside the trunk of my 928.

Rather than race all the way down to P-3 in the elevator, I picked up the phone and dialed Bellevue information. The operator could find no listing for Don Atkins, but she did come up with one for Barry Newsome. I dialed it at once, only to run afoul of some of the phone company's most recent devices designed to bedevil the phone-using public—caller ID complete with call blocking.

Instead of ringing at the other end, a recorded message played in my ear. “The number you have reached does not accept blocked calls. In order to reach your party, you will have to unblock your number for this one call only. To do that, press…”

I'm a homicide detective and have been for most of my adult working life. Because of the kinds of people cops have to deal with on a regular basis, almost all the police officers I know have unlisted telephone numbers. For a long time, I resisted. When I finally knuckled under, however, what drove me over the edge wasn't receiving threatening phone calls from people I've helped send to the slammer. It was, instead, the unending flood of telemarketing solicitation calls. The ones I found most annoying came from the boiler-room operation of some lamebrained East Coast securities dealer.

These scuzzy guys always call me at 9:00 their time which happens to be 6:00
A.M.
Pacific. The concept of time zones seems to be one that never penetrates their dim bulbs. Nor does the word “No.” I turn them down for an Initial Public Offering one week, only to have them call back the next week to offer the next hot deal. After about the twentieth call, I asked the phone company to put a trap on my line, but that didn't work either since the East Coast longdistance provider wouldn't play ball. Finally, I had no choice but to change over to an unlisted number.

Now, however, my fancy two-line push-button phone with its unlisted number didn't allow me to get through to Barry Newsome's equally up-to-date phone. Much as I don't want to give up the convenience of modern telecommunications, there are still occasions when I find myself longing for the good old days when you picked up a phone and some nice, living lady gave you a straightforward, “Number, please.”

After dialing the appropriate code to unblock my number, I sat down in the recliner and slipped off my shoes while I listened to it ring. It was answered on the third ring.

“Beau?” a male voice said. “Is that you?”

Stunned, I tried to identify the voice. The person sounded like neither Barry Newsome nor Don Atkins, yet he obviously knew me on a personal basis. My unlisted phone is listed under the name of J. P. Beaumont. Only someone who actually knew me would call me Beau.

“Who's this?” I asked.

“Tim Blaine,” he said. “Somebody from the department must have told you I'd be here.”

Tim Blaine was a Bellevue homicide dick I had met months earlier in the course of unraveling a New Year's Day murder in downtown Seattle. The last I had heard from Tim, he was dating Latty Gibson, a young woman who had been one of several suspects in that case.

“We're a little busy here right now,” Tim continued, “but I can tell you you're on the list.”

“What list are you talking about?” I asked.

“The wedding invitation list,” he replied. “What did you think I meant? Anyway, the wedding's in late June, the next-to-last Saturday. As soon as the invitations get back from the printer, you'll get yours. After all, since you're the person who introduced us, Latty and I both want you to be at the wedding.”

“Congratulations,” I told him. “I'm delighted to hear about the wedding. But I wasn't trying to reach you. I was calling Barry Newsome. What are you doing there, Tim? What's going on?”

The tenor of Tim's voice changed from personal to professional. “Are you a friend of his?”

“Hardly. He's part of an investigation…”

“
Was
part of an investigation,” Tim corrected. “He doesn't exist anymore. Barry Newsome is dead, Beau. I'm no medical examiner, but it looks to me like he took at least two bullets to the heart.”

I was stunned. “That's why you're there, you're investigating a homicide?”

“Two,” Tim replied.

Two?
Just hearing the word made me almost sick to my stomach.
Barry Newsome and who else?
My mind flew at once to the missing Jimmy Greenjeans.

“The second victim doesn't happen to have green hair, does he?” I asked.

Blaine laughed. “What the hell are you smoking these days, Beau? Of course he doesn't have green hair. Other than a bullet in the back of his head, he looks like a pretty normal guy in your basic Men's Wearhouse double-breasted suit. Do you know something about this?”

It wasn't Jimmy Greenjeans, then. I was relatively certain he'd never be caught dead in a Men's Wearhouse suit, double-breasted or otherwise.

“Not exactly,” I said. “But your cases are no doubt connected to something we've been working on over here in Seattle as well as to a dead guy the Renton police pulled out of Lake Washington earlier today.”

Tim Blaine whistled.

“Your other dead guy, is he Don Atkins?”

“Newsome's roommate? No. The ID in the second victim's pocket gives his name as Calvin Owens. His business card says Sands of Time Gallery in Pioneer Square. Do you know him? Is he connected to any of those other cases?”

“Not so far as I know.”

“Where are you right now, Beau? And what are you doing?”

“I'm home. I just slipped off my shoes.”

“I hate to pull you right back out,” Blaine continued, “but it sounds as though we need to talk so you can show us what you guys have been working on. Would you mind coming over to Bellevue?”

“No,” I said. “Not at all, but you'll have to give me directions…”

Moments after he told me how to get to Newsome's South Bellevue address, I plugged my unwilling feet back into shoes that felt a full size too small. I had my holster on and was reaching for my jacket when there was a tap on my door. I looked out the peek hole to see Ron and Amy Peters' younger daughter, Heather, standing in the hall holding a dinner plate covered with several loose pieces of pizza.

Ron's two towheaded daughters, Heather, nine, and Tracie, ten, are the light of my life. With them around, I have all the advantages of being a parent or grandparent—taking them to ball games, the zoo, the Seattle Children's Theater and occasionally buying them extravagant stuff—with none of the disadvantages of parenthood like having to worry about them wanting driver's licenses or needing to be put through school.

It may not be fair to play favorites, but I confess that bright-eyed little Heather is mine, and it wasn't unlike her to show up at my door for an unannounced visit. “Hi,” I said. “Sorry I can't ask you in, Heather. I'm just on my way out. What's up?”

She held out the plate of pizza. “These are for you,” she said. “Dad told me to bring this up to you so these pieces don't go to waste.”

“Thanks,” I said. I took the plate and headed for the kitchen counter, helping myself to a single slice along the way. As soon as I bit into it, I realized how hungry I was. Invited or not, Heather followed me into the kitchen.

“Guess what, Uncle Beau?” she asked.

“I give up,” I said between mouthfuls. Eating standing at a kitchen counter was
verboten
in my mother's house, and I felt a little guilty to be observed red-handed, but Heather didn't object.

“Guess where Dad and Amy went?”

“I have no idea.”

“The hospital,” she crowed happily. “So Amy can have my baby brother. The pizza just got here when all of a sudden Amy got this real funny look on her face and she said ‘Ron, I think it's time.' And when Amy stood up, there was a big puddle on the chair. Like she wet her pants or something. So they left. Right away. That's why there's so much leftover pizza.”