Authors: J. A. Jance
The driver of the van honked. “Hey come on, man. Them ferries don’t wait for nothing.”
Cole scrambled into the van and settled in an aisle seat. The van pulled out of the gravel drive, leaving me lost in thought. It takes clout to spike a story, a hell of a lot of clout. I wondered who was flexing his muscle, Homer or Darrell, father or son, or father and son. It didn’t matter. Whoever it was had robbed Ginger of her meager revenge, her sole token of defiance.
I charged into the lounge. It was deserted except for two slightly tipsy elderly ladies drinking sloe gin fizzes at a table by the arched windows. Barney folded a newspaper and shoved it under the bar as I sat down. “McNaughton’s?”
I nodded.
“It’s too bad about Mrs. Watkins,” he commented, placing the drink in front of me.
“She seemed like a real nice lady, from what little I saw of her.”
“She was.” I agreed. I downed the drink and ordered another. “Too bad about your car, too.”
“Cars can be fixed,” I said.
He grinned. “I guess old Ernie’s in seventh heaven. Heard he’s got himself a reallive Porsche to work on.”
“You know him?”
“Hell, yes. Went to school together, kindergarten on. Ended up in Vietnam at the same time. Different outfits, though.”
“That’s where he lost his arm and leg?”
Barney nodded. “He doesn’t let it bother him. Goes hunting every year, usually gets an elk. He’s got a wife and two kids; another on the way.” “Is he any good?”
Barney grinned. “You’ll have to ask his wife about that. He’s not my type.”
“As a mechanic, asshole. Is he a good mechanic?” “He’s good,” Barney said seriously.
“He’ll put that car of yours back together better than it was before.”
“Oh,” I said.
A couple came in and sat at the other end of the bar. Barney left me to serve them.
I sat there alone, nursing my drink, wondering where to start on a case that was not my case, on a murder that might be suicide or an accident, depending on your point of view.
In Seattle I knew what I’d do-sit down and try to pull together all the details on pieces of paper, set as many pieces of the puzzle on the table as possible, then move them around, trying to find a framework where they would fit.
Barney came back to me. “You want another?” he asked. I looked at my glass. “Sure.
Is that your paper under the bar?” “It is, but you can have it. I’m done with it.”
He pulled it out and laid it in front of me. I recognized Sig Larson’s face looking up at me from under a screaming headline. I picked up the paper warily. I don’t trust newspapers, don’t like them, usually wouldn’t be caught dead reading them; but this was different. This time I was outside the official circle of information, and I needed a starting point. I was going to do something about Ginger Watkins’ death, jurisdictions be damned. Sig Larson’s death and Ginger’s were inextricably linked.
I intended to find out how.
I read every word of the laudatory obituary. A retired Eastern Washington wheat farmer, Lars Sigfried Larson had been widely respected. The article mentioned his volunteer work-at Walla Walla and his involvement with Babe Ruth Baseball east of the mountains.
It mentioned his widow, Mona, as well as his three grown children, married and scattered throughout the West. The funeral would be held in Welton on the banks of the Touchet River on Tuesday at two o’clock. The governor himself was expected to attend. And so would J. P. Beaumont, I decided. I read on. The family requested that remembrances be sent to A.A. Even in death, Sig Larson didn’t duck the issue of sobriety.
I had finished the article and was folding the paper when Peters came in and caught me. “What are you doing?”
“What the hell does it look like I’m doing? I’m trying to fold this goddamned newspaper.”
“You haven’t been reading it, have you?” Peters’ eyes flashed with sly amusement.
“You feeling all right, Beau? Maybe a little feverish?” I stood up and struggled to return the newspaper to its place under the counter. When I flopped back down, Peters’ grin faded. “Ames and I are getting ready to take off. Want to have a bite with us before we go?” I signaled Barney for a new drink. When he set it in front of me, I raised the glass in Peters’ direction in a sloppy salute. “Who needs food?”
“You’re drinking too much c”
I cut him off. “Butt out, Peters.”
Without arguing the point, he stalked from the bar. Misery does not necessarily love company. I made short work of that drink and the next one. Detective J. P. Beaumont disappeared with a subsequent dose of McNaughton’s. All that remained was me, the man, or whatever bits and pieces were left of him.
“You’re hitting it pretty hand, aren’t you?” Barney asked, as he delivered my next drink.
“So what?” I returned. He handed me the glass, and I stared morosely into it. I swirled the amber liquid, listening to the crushed ice rustle against the glass.
Gradually, my carefully constructed defenses gave way. Pain leaked from every pore.
Ginger’s touch had reawakened that part of me that had died with Anne. Now Ginger’s death released the grief I had kept so carefully bottled up inside me. It washed across me like a gigantic wave, choking me, drowning me.
The next thing I remember is Barney taking my last drink away and leading me, sobbing, from the bar. He got me as far as the door to my room before I was sick in a bordering flower bed.
It was still light when I staggered out of the bathroom and crawled into bed. I have a dim memory of Barney closing the curtains before he went outside and shut the door behind him.
Chapter 14
WHEN I woke up, cold sober, at two o’clock in the morning, I felt painfully alive again. I still hurt, but I had somehow bridged the chasm between the past and the present and was ready to go on. I had Ginger Watkins to thank for that, and there was only one way to repay her. Ignoring my hangover, I rummaged around for paper, finally locating a fistful of Rosario stationery. I assigned each person a separate sheet of paper-Ginger, Sig, Wilson, Darrell, Homer, Mona. Under each name I noted everything I knew about them: things Ginger had told me, things I had heard from other sources. Maybe there’s a better way of sorting out the players than by using paper and pencil, but I’ve never found one. If I were keeping score, I’d have to say that Sig Larson dropped a few points in the process. I have an innate suspicion of perfection. Both Ginger’s comments and the newspaper’s undiluted praise made me wonder if the paragon had feet of clay. Being dead is only part of the qualifications for sainthood. Over and over, I recalled my offhand denial to Ernie, “Just friends,” and so was Sig to Ginger. Just friends, right? Like hell. A twinge of tardy jealousy caused me to turn to Mona Larson’s sheet. What about her? Ginger had dismissed her as a calculating bitch. What suspicious wife isn’t a calculating bitch, especially if she has some reason, especially from the other woman’s point of view? I could see Mona Larson in my mind’s eye, a woman from sturdy farm stock, someone well beyond her middle years who had stood by her man through thick and thin only to see herself losing him to an attractive younger woman. It would give the fruits of her labors a bitter aftertaste. So, how jealous was Mona Larson? Enough to make her anger public by sending Trixie Bowdeen with the message for Ginger not to attend Sig’s funeral.
Where had Mona been when she was supposedly en route to Orcas? Huggins had been unable to locate her to notify her of Sig’s death. It was an item that merited exploration, but it wasn’t top priority.
Not that many jealous spouses actually murder their spouses and their spouses’ friends.
Friends. There was that word again. Even in private thoughts I tended to gloss over it. Lover, then. Ginger and I had been lovers, briefly. And maybe Sig and Ginger had been, too. But if so, Sig was just as bad as Darrell. Ginger hadn’t faked her surprise or enjoyment, had she? No. My ego wouldn’t accept that, and no woman could be so unlucky as to have two men as insensitive and unfeeling as Darrell. No. My thoughts chased themselves full-circle. Ginger and Sig could not have been lovers.
What about Homer and Darrell? What did I know of them? Homer and Jethro, I thought.
Between them they wielded a large amount of power. With it they had imprisoned Ginger.
Neither had wanted to let her go; both had tried to get her to delay the divorce.
I recalled Homer’s resonant voice on the phone, explaining how erratic Ginger had been, trivializing her motives, warning me to disregard whatever she might say. And all the while Ginger had been dying, or was already dead.
Darrell. What about Darrell, the boozing, whoring scion of an old, established family?
A scion who had fallen on hard times, whose wife had to go to work to keep the wolf from the door. I recalled Ginger’s response to Hal’s question about a contract on Sig’s life. No money, she had said. Not no reason, but no money. And no justification, either, since Darrell himself had been screwing around for years. Darrell Watkins, one-man stud service, who never rubbed his wife’s neck, who never c I couldn’t believe Darrell would have had the nerve to confront Ginger on infidelity. That caliber of double standard is fast approaching extinction. But where had Darrell Watkins been on Saturday night? It would be interesting to know, just for the record.
Ginger. Ginger laughing, crying, stretching her neck as my thumbs massaged the muscles of her shoulders. Ginger’s face transformed by a pleasure she had never known or suspected. Remembering that hurt too much, so I stopped.
She had seemed totally carefree as she drove away, waving to me through the window of the Porsche. Respect for Sig had dictated that she go to the meeting and say good-bye, but she would have come back to me, to what I alone had given her. Of that I was sure. Who or what had stopped her? Not suicide. Not booze. That brought me to the last sheet of paper.
Don Wilson. Bereaved husband and father, plunged into the world of political activist, parading his grief on placards and sandwich boards, trying to get someone to listen, attempting to change the system that had robbed him of his wife and child. He had a point, but he had gone after the wrong people. Why had he agreed to meet Max? Max said something was about to break. What, other than Sig Larson’s head? Had the phony interview been a ploy, a device to guarantee press coverage? Maybe Wilson had believed that killing Sig and Ginger would give his cause the public airing necessary to bring it to the top of the silent majority’s consciousness. As if they gave a damn. But it’s a long way from political activism to cold-blooded murder, and there was nothing to prove Wilson’s conversionnothing but motive and opportunity.
Wilson had come to Orcas Island. That much we knew-not beyond a shadow of a doubt, but with relative certainty. And, as near as we could tell, he had not left it, at least not by any of the regular routes. He could have hired a boat or a plane, but that was unlikely. It would be too obvious. Besides, Huggins said he had checked all charters and tracked down all private parties who had booked moorage.
Assuming Wilson was still on Orcas, where was he hiding? Did he have an accomplice?
Was this the end of it, since Sig and Ginger’s decision had placed Lathrop in the work/release program, or was the entire Washington State Parole Board in jeopardy?
Questions. Homicide detectives always have far more questions than they do answers.
I analyzed the pieces of paper, pondering each word, poring over each scrap of information until I could have quoted it back verbatim. Hours later, eyes swimming with fatigue, I stumbled to the bed and fell across it, not bothering to undress or pull the covers over me. Questions continued to buzz in my head. Who had known of the A.A. meeting besides Sig, Ginger, and me? And how would the killer have known she would be in my Porsche?
The human brain is the oldest and best random-access memory. I had almost dozed off when a single word roused me. Calendar. I sat up in bed. The meeting had been noted in her calendar, and the calendar was missing. In fact, it was the only item still unaccounted for in the aftermath of the breakin. I groped through the darkness for the phone, knocking it to the floor. “What happens to your garbage?” I asked a startled Fred, who answered sleepily on the fourth ring.
It took him a couple of seconds to get his brain in gear. “It goes to the landfill,” he mumbled.
“Do you have garbage cans? Dumpsters?”
“Dumpsters, one by each wing, and two here at the Mansion.” Fred sounded more awake now. He was gradually becoming accustomed to my middle-of-the-night requests.
“When were they emptied last?”
“Friday afternoon, late. We’re on a Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule.” I banged down the phone and rummaged through my clothes for my most disreputable Levi’s and the dung-colored sweater Karen’s mother knitted for me the Christmas before we were divorced.
I had sworn to wear that sucker out. This would finish the job.
I stopped by the desk and begged a flashlight from Fred. It was cold, and rain was falling as I started my five A.m. assault on Rosario’s garbage dumpsters.
Those who think being a detective is romantic ought to try rummaging through three-day-old garbage with a raging hangover, flashlight in hand, in a driving rainstorm. Things happen to apple cores and orange peels and banana skins that can’t be described in polite company. If I had known about garbage cans, maybe I would have taken my mother’s advice and become a schoolteacher.
I started with the wing where Ginger’s original room had been, searching through each carefully fastened black plastic bag. I did the same to the second-wing dumpster, and again found nothing. In terms of garbage, this was lightweight stuff-tissues and soda cans, discarded hairspray cans, and a couple of pornographic magazines.
Clean garbage. No calendar. The last two dumpsters-were by the Mansion itself. They contained GARBAGE, foul-smelling foodstuffs that had sat around for several days and gotten surly. I took one whiff and almost gave up, but some of my mother’s stubborn determination must have stuck. I dug in and got lucky. At the bottom of the first dumpster, I found it-a leather-bound, gold-embossed executive planner with Ginger Watkins’ name imprinted on the front. Carefully I laid the book to one side and refilled the rancid container. After carrying the calendar back to my room, I stripped to the skin on the rainy porch, leaving my wrecked clothes by the door. I set the calendar on the floor just inside the doorway while I attempted to shower the odor off my body and out of my nose.