Dismissed With Prejudice (9780061760631) (8 page)

“But what about the funeral? Who's going to handle that?”

“There isn't going to be one.”

“No funeral? How come? Everybody has funerals.”

“Machiko said no funeral, no memorial service. She was adamant. Big Al and I took Kimi downtown and had her sign all the necessary papers. Tadeo is to be cremated and the remains sent to them in eastern Washington.”

“That witch!” George murmured under his breath. “She's got no right to do that.”

“She has every right in the world, George,” I reminded him. “She's his widow, remember?”

“As if I could ever forget.” His voice was taut with emotion. There was something important lurking beneath the surface of his words, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

“What do you mean?”

“She always acted as though she had married beneath her, instead of the other way around, as though his friends weren't good enough for her. And now she thinks she can lock us out by not having a memorial service for him? No way, not if I have to do it myself.”

I had never seen George Yamamoto so uncharacteristically emotional. Machiko Kurobashi definitely pushed all his hot buttons.

“Tell me about her,” I urged.

“Tell you what about her?” he snapped back. “What do you want to know?”

“Tadeo wasn't her first husband?”

“No. She got hooked up with some sleazebag during the occupation.”

“Sleazebag?” I asked.

“I kid you not. This guy was a real creep, a smalltime hood. When he got discharged from the army, he went back to his previous lines of work. He was into horses and Indian reservation cigarettes and whatever else he could lay hands on. And he wasn't very good at any of it. They were
living in a run-down apartment down in the International District when someone took care of him. My guess is, he owed money to somebody who decided to collect the hard way.”

“When was that?”

“Forty-seven, forty-eight. Somewhere around there. It's a long time ago. I don't remember exactly.”

“And how did Tadeo meet her?”

“He was working his way through school delivering groceries for a little Mom-and-Pop store down in that same neighborhood. With her rat of a husband dead, she went looking for somebody to take care of her, somebody nice who'd pay the bills and look out for her. Tadeo was it. As soon as she found him, she latched on to him for dear life.”

“And when did they get married?”

“I remember that. Nineteen forty-eight for sure. Tadeo was only twenty years old, a junior at the university. I often marveled at what he managed to accomplish, dragging her around behind him like so much dead weight. He got both his B.S. and his Masters from the university here, and then he went down to Stanford and picked up a Ph.D.”

“Smart guy.”

“He worked down in California for a number of years, for Hughes or one of those other big defense contractor types, then he came back up here and went to work for Boeing. I figured he'd play it safe and stay there. They don't call it the Lazy B for nothing, but Tadeo couldn't handle the pace. He
wanted to make things happen, wanted to be a mover and shaker. He quit Boeing to work for RFLink in the late seventies and has been off on his own for the last three or four years.”

“Kimi said something about there being hard feelings when he left his previous employer, RFLink. Do you know anything about that or the people who work there?”

“No. He was pretty closed-mouthed about it when it happened. I got the feeling that his leaving wasn't entirely voluntary.”

“You mean he was fired.”

George Yamamoto nodded reluctantly.

“When's the last time you saw him?”

“Two months ago, down at the courthouse. I ran into him in the lobby. He had just lost the case, his patent infringement case.”

“And did you know what losing that case meant to him?”

“No, and he never let on. He acted as though it was no problem, said not to worry, that he'd be back on his feet in no time.”

“Would his secretary, Mrs. Oliver, know what kinds of things he might have been working on?”

“Mrs. Oliver? If she's still with him, she'd know everything there is to know.”

“You say that as though she's been part of the picture for a long time.”

“She has. She was his secretary when he worked for Boeing. When he left there, so did she. As far as I know, she's been with him ever since.”

“And you think she'd be privy to all his business dealings?”

“You've got it.”

“Anything between them?” I asked, knowing how the question would hurt, regardless of the answer.

“You mean romantically?” George shook his head. “No,” he replied. “I don't think so.”

But it wasn't the same kind of absolute answer he had given about whether or not the sword had been stolen. It made me wonder.

Our drinks had been empty for a long time. I ordered another round. George Yamamoto had told me a whole lot I didn't know about Tadeo Kurobashi, information I needed to get to the bottom of who had killed him and why. But there was still something missing, something about Tadeo and Machiko and George Yamamoto that I didn't understand, something that would unlock their history together and help it make sense to me. For all our talking, nothing in what George had said had given me a clue about the long-standing antipathy he felt toward his friend's widow.

I looked at George. Disconsolate, he sat holding his drink but gazing without seeing at the black-and-white picture of a German shepherd which, along with twenty or so other doggie portraits, lined the walls of the Doghouse's bar.

It would have been easy to let it go. There was little reason to think that the years of enmity between George and Machiko could have anything
to do with Tadeo's death in the here and now. But detectives don't let things go. It's not part of our mental makeup.

“What do you have against her?” I asked.

George's head came up. He looked at me, saying nothing, but he didn't ask me who I was talking about. He knew I meant Machiko.

“Why do you want to know?” he asked.

“It could be important.”

“I doubt it.”

“I'd still like to know, George.”

“He and my sister met in Minidoka,” he said evenly. “They weren't engaged, but they had an understanding. Tomi was prepared to wait until Tadeo got out of school. Then Machiko came along. Once she got her claws in him, that was the end of it.”

“And what happened to your sister?”

“Tomi married someone else eventually. She died in childbirth when she was twenty-eight.”

“That tells me what you have against Machiko,” I said, remembering the woman's unleashed fury as she shook her finger at George and drove him out of her yard. “But it doesn't tell me what she has against you.”

George Yamamoto met my gaze and held it as he answered. “It was all a very long time ago,” he said. “I'm willing to let bygones be bygones. Machiko's not. I've thought for years that Tadeo could have done better. I still do.”

I thought back to the devastated look on
Machiko's face as she heard the news of her husband's death and at her gritty determination to follow through with whatever he had wanted, no matter what the personal cost to her.

For the first time I began to wonder exactly what kind of man Tadeo Kurobashi had been, what had made him tick. I looked at George, sitting there grieving over the loss of his friend. The dead man obviously had made a deep impression on the people closest to him, had engendered powerful and conflicting loyalties in his wife, his friends, and also his secretary. Only Kimiko, his embattled daughter, seemed immune to her father's charm.

Not only Kimiko, I thought grimly. Somebody else was immune as well, so immune that they had killed him. I felt a renewed sense of urgency to find out who that person was.

W
HEN
I
GOT BACK HOME TO
B
ELLTOWN
Terrace it was after eight. The first thing I saw after I came in the door was the repeated flashing of the red light on my answering machine. Machines that count messages can be damned imperious.

I punched the playback button. One of the calls was from a telephone solicitor for the Seattle Repertory Theater, trying to sell me season tickets for their fabulous upcoming season. One was from a guy who wanted to be my stockbroker. All the rest were from Ralph Ames, my attorney.

Each message from Ames was time-dated, and they were scattered from early afternoon on, beginning in a two o'clock, breezy see-you-at-the-meeting-at-six tone and ending on a downright surly note at 7:59. Needless to say, I had not gone to the meeting, didn't remember I was supposed to, and didn't know where it was or what it was about. It was probably something concerning the real estate syndicate that owns Belltown Terrace, but that was only an educated guess.

Ames' final message said, “We've given up on you. I've canceled the meeting. I'll probably be back at the apartment before you are.”

Who was “we”? I wondered. And how pissed was Ralph Ames really? Knowing I had screwed up royally, I poured myself another MacNaughton's just for the hell of it. With the drink in hand, and with my injured fingers still throbbing painfully inside their metal splints, I settled down to wait for the other shoe to drop. It didn't take long. In less than ten minutes, I heard the unmistakable scrape of Ralph Ames' key in the lock.

I was sitting in the shadowy darkness of the living room when he walked in and saw me there. I have to give him credit for letting me have the slightest benefit of the doubt. He graciously allowed me to plead innocent until proven guilty.

“What happened?” he asked. “Get stuck working late on a case?”

“I forgot,” I said, not willing to play games or make excuses.

“Forgot?” he echoed.

“Yes,” I said. “I'm sorry.”

Unfortunately, apologies were not the order of the day. Ralph Ames blew his stack.

“Goddamnit, Beau, we set both the time and place specifically so you could be there. Six other people, not counting myself, built their day around that schedule, and you can sit there and say you
forgot?
”

You get used to those kinds of recriminations from a wife, and gradually, over a period of time, you develop a certain immunity. Coming from Ralph Ames, though, from a man who is both my attorney and my friend, they had a slightly different impact.

Still, feigning indifference, I took a sip of my drink while ice cubes clinked noisily against the side of the glass. Except for that, the room was silent. Ames reached back to the wall switch and turned on the light. He looked hard at the glass, but he said nothing more. Comment or no, the dumbest kid in the class would have gotten the message that Ralph Ames disapproved. Even a slightly smashed J. P. Beaumont read him loud and clear.

“How come you forgot?” he asked.

Time to go on the offensive. “Jesus H. Christ, Ralph! If I knew that, I would have remembered. I've had a tough day.”

“You left the department at five-fifteen.”

“You've been checking on me?”

“Damned right. I went by to give you a lift, but you were already gone, and since your latest reprimand, I didn't want to risk leaving a business message with Margie.”

At the instigation of one of the newer detectives, a jerk named Kramer, Watty had climbed my frame about my receiving nonofficial phone calls while on duty. Of course, I wasn't alone, but nobody else in the homicide squad drives a Porsche 928, and
the last thing I needed was any more trouble with the brass.

Saying nothing more, Ames went into the kitchen, poured himself a glass of orange juice, and came back to the living room, seating himself on the window seat across from me.

“How are the fingers?” he asked.

“Fine,” I answered warily, not willing to admit that they hurt like hell and not sure if he was really off the subject or merely coming at it from a different direction. I've seen Ames in action often enough to know he makes a formidable opponent. I didn't like this feeling of the two of us being on opposite sides of the fence.

“You're lucky you didn't lose them.”

“Yeah,” I answered. “I guess I am.”

There was a pause while we sat in not-so-companionable silence. Depth-charged silence was more like it. Naturally, I was the first one to break. After all, I was the guilty party.

“So what happened at the meeting?” I asked, keeping my tone light and casual.

“Nothing. Without you, there wasn't much point. I told them I'd try to reset it for later.”

“Good,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

Again the room became still. Ames was looking at me, studying me, building up to say something. Meanwhile, I paged through my mental catalog of smart-assed answers, preparing to pull one out and use it. I had a wisecrack all loaded up and ready to
light when he surprised me by dropping the issue entirely.

“I saw in the afternoon paper that you're assigned to that case on Fourth South.”

I breathed a small sigh of relief that he was willing to let it go. “Sure am,” I said. “It started out looking like suicide, but it's not.”

“Murder then?”

I nodded. As the tension between us eased, I went on to tell him what I could about the circumstances surrounding Tadeo Kurobashi's death. He listened, seemingly attentive and interested, but beneath the smooth surface of conversation, I sensed we were playing a game, a set piece where two old friends make inconsequential small talk in order to avoid wandering into treacherous conversational territory.

When I reached the part about the Masamune sword, though, Ralph Ames was no longer merely listening for form's sake. He sat up straight, his eyes snapping to full alert.

“So you recognize the name?” I asked.

“Masamune? You bet I do. And George Yamamoto seems to think it's genuine?” he demanded.

“As far as he could tell, but then George isn't exactly a fully qualified samurai expert.”

“No, I suppose not.” Ralph seemed to mull the situation for a moment or two. “Are you of the opinion that the dead man may have come into
possession of the sword through some illegal means?”

“That's how I read it. Otherwise, wouldn't he have used it to buy his way out of the financial trouble he was in?”

“Seems like,” Ames conceded.

With a sudden loud splatter, wind-driven raindrops banged on the double-paned glass behind him. The storm that had been threatening all afternoon and evening burst through the night on the wings of a fierce squall. Ames gave no indication that he saw, heard, or noticed the pelting rain at his back. Chin resting on his hand, he appeared to be totally lost in thought.

“Except,” he added quietly, “if—as this friend of his says—if Kurobashi was always interested in the ways of the samurai, what may seem reasonable to you and me and what might seem reasonable to him could be two entirely different things.”

“What are you getting at?”

“I have a friend,” Ames said, “someone by the name of Winter, a fellow I went through law school with. He never practiced, though. Instead, he went back to school and picked up a Ph.D. in Oriental Studies. He lived in Japan for a number of years. Now he's living in New York and working as the Oriental antiquities guru for Sotheby's.”

“Would you mind asking him about the sword?”

“No problem,” Ames said, glancing at his watch, “but it's too late tonight. I'll check with him first thing in the morning.”

Again we were quiet for a time, but now it wasn't nearly as uncomfortable. The heavily charged atmosphere had been defused. When Ames looked at this watch, I checked mine. It was after ten. Realizing plenty of time had passed for Kimiko Kurobashi to drive across Snoqualmie Pass and make it back home to Pullman, I picked up the phone.

“I should call the wife and daughter and let them know about the autopsy,” I explained to Ames. “When they left, we were all still under the impression it was suicide.”

“Except for the wife,” Ames added.

I nodded, dialing Eastern Washington information as I did so. In answer to my question, a tinny recorded voice recited Kimi Kurobashi's phone number. I dialed, but it was busy. I tried dialing it several more times in the next half hour, and each time the result was the same. At first I wasn't particularly worried. After a death there are often distant relatives and friends who must be notified. Finally, though, shortly after eleven, instead of getting a busy, I was told that the number was currently out of service.

Alarm began to nudge its way into my consciousness. What would cause a phone to suddenly go out of service in the middle of the night? I remembered George Yamamoto's concern that Tadeo's killer was still on the loose and that his wife and daughter were also potential targets.

Without bothering to put the phone back in its
cradle, I dialed information again and was connected to the Pullman Police Department. The dispatcher there passed me along to the Whitman County Sheriff's Department, where I found myself talking with a young man named Mac Larkin.

Speaking calmly but firmly, I attempted to express the urgency of my concern that Machiko and Kimi Kurobashi might be in jeopardy out at the Honeydale Farm. With the bland indifference of youth, Larkin assured me that I shouldn't panic about someone's telephone being out of order since there were scattered reports of telephone outages coming in from all over Whitman County that night.

I tried to let what he said allay my fears, but it didn't work. An insistent alarm continued to hammer in my head. The picture of Tadeo Kurobashi's mutilated body was fresh in my memory. His killer was free to kill again.

When I voiced my concern to Ralph Ames, he immediately began playing devil's advocate. “From what you told me about the hurried way they left town, how would anyone know exactly where they were going?”

“They wouldn't,” I replied, “unless they followed them out of town.” With that I was back on the phone to Mac Larkin.

“You again?” he demanded.

“When are they going to restore service to the Honeydale Farm area?” I asked.

“The phone company fixes phones,” he replied
curtly. “They don't tell us how to do our job, and we don't interfere in theirs. All I know is, they're doing the best they can.”

Another line buzzed, and Larkin left me sitting on hold for the better part of five minutes. “Have you been helped?” he asked, when he came back on the phone.

“As a matter of fact, I haven't,” I replied. “I'm still worried about those women. I'm telling you, the woman's husband was murdered last night. It's possible the killer will come after them next.”

“And it's also possible that California is going to fall into the Pacific. Possible, but not very likely. This line is for emergency calls, Detective Beaumont.”

“Couldn't you at least send a deputy by?” I asked.

“I've entered your call into the log, and I'll see what I can do, but I'm not making any promises.” With that he hung up.

“Do any good?” Ames asked.

“Not much,” I answered. “No way could I build a fire under that little jackass on the phone.”

“You've done as much as you could,” Ames said. “It'll probably be all right.”

But his words offered small comfort. While I had been on the phone, Ralph had turned around in the love seat and was sitting facing out the window, watching the pattern of splashing raindrops on the glass.

“Who all knew about the poem?” Ames asked thoughtfully a moment later.

“The one on the computer? Well, there was Doc Baker, George Yamamoto, Big Al—”

“No, no,” Ames interrupted. “I don't mean who saw it on the computer this morning. How many people around him were aware that it was Tadeo Kurobashi's favorite poem?”

“Probably several. Yamamoto said it was familiar as soon as he saw it, but he couldn't remember where he'd heard it. Kimi knew it well, and I would imagine so would her mother. Why are you asking about the poem?”

“Because it sounds to me as though whoever fed the virus into the MicroBridge computers must have known Tadeo Kurobashi very well in order to pick that particular verse, to know unerringly that it was part of his favorite poem.”

“So?” I asked. “What are you getting at?”

Ames cocked his head to one side. “Think about it. If you were a young woman struggling to get along on whatever crumbs the university dishes out to instructors and on what you could make shoveling horse manure in someone else's barn, and if you knew your father was busy squandering your entire inheritance, wouldn't you be tempted to do something about it?”

“I might,” I said, “but not in this case. Kimiko Kurobashi isn't the type.”

Ralph Ames looked at me sadly and shook his head. “Beau, you of all people should know better
than that. It seems to me that we were both suckered very badly once by a lady who didn't look the part at all, remember?”

Remember? Of course I remembered, and the memory of Anne Corley caused a burning pain in my chest that didn't seem to lessen with the passage of time. I got up and poured myself another drink. That was easier than talking.

“I'll look into it,” I said at last.

Ralph Ames nodded. “All right. In that case, I'm going to bed,” he said.

I followed suit, but once in bed, I didn't go to sleep. For a long time, I lay there, doing all kinds of mental gymnastics in an effort to keep my mind off Anne Corley. By focusing completely on the hows and whys of Tadeo Kurobashi's murder and other more immediate matters I managed to keep her at bay somewhere outside my conscious memory. Eventually my mind wandered away from Tadeo Kurobashi's mystery to one of my own, one much closer to home and very much in need of a solution.