Authors: J. A. Jance
When I finished the puzzle, I approached the desk and asked if I could use a house phone to bill some calls to my room. The clerk, a sweet young thing with long blond hair, dropped her pen when I announced who I was. “I’ll have to check,” she stammered, retreating into a back office. She returned a few minutes later. “Mr. Dixon says that will be fine,” she gulped.
I smiled. “If anyone asks, tell them I was framed.”
She nodded, wide-eyed, and said, “Thank you.” She was so flustered she forgot to tell me to have a nice day.
I gave the hotel operator my room information, and asked Centralia Information for Tom Lander’s number.
“The number is 763-4427. “
I hung up and dialed. There was no answer. I dialed Information again. I’m a longtime believer in the old phone-factory adage, “Let your fingers do the walking,” except mine walk straight to directory assistance. This time I asked for a Union 76 station.
Again I dialed. A man answered, an older man whose voice was deep and whose speech was slow. “Tom’s Seventy-six. Tom speaking.”
“My name is J. P. Beaumont. I’m a friend of Ginger’s. I wanted to let you know how sorry I am.”
“Thanks.” There was a pause. I could hear him struggling to gain control. “It was your car she was driving, wasn’t it?” he asked. I was surprised that he recognized my name. “That’s right,” I told him. “I understand the funeral is tomorrow afternoon.”
“Yes,” he said. “Two o’clock.”
“I tried calling Darrell but was told the services will be private. I was sorry to hear that. I’d very much like to attend. Do you think that’s possible?”
“Far as I’m concerned. I don’t know where those characters get off making it private.
Funerals should have lots of people. It shows folks care.” “Where is it? The paper didn’t say.”
“Two o’clock in the Congregational Church downtown. In the chapel. ” “Could I come as your guest?”
“Sure.- “I’ll meet you at the church. About one forty-five.” “How will I know you?”
“I’ll be able to find you,” I told him.
“If anybody tries to stop you, tell ‘em Tom Lander said you could come.” The next call was to a florist in the Denny Regrade near my apartment. I ordered a bouquet of flowers for Ginger Watkins from Sig Larson. While I was at it, I called a Pasco florist and ordered flowers for Mona Larson, too. I told the clerk to check with the Pasco Police Department to see where should be sent. She took my credit-card number and wanted to put on the card. “Sign the card ‘A friend,’ ” I told her, and let it , . that. I hoped like hell it would be the last batch of flowers I’d be ordering for a while.
Chapter 22
IT was pouring rain the morning of Ginger Watkins’ funeral, the kind of hard, driving rain that demands umbrellas and confirms for unfortunate tourists that everything they say about Seattle’s weather is true. I rummaged through a closet searching for my one battered umbrella, a fold-up relic with two broken ribs and a bent handle.
I hardly ever use it. Seattle’s rain is usually no more than a misty drip, a dry drizzle that seldom merits use of what Seattelites fondly refer to as “bumbershoots,” ;otherwise known as umbrellas.
Ames settled into the Westin Hotel. He had work to do and didn’t want to be disturbed.
Peters went back to the department where one of our Battered Wife/Dead Husband cases was about to come to trial. He spent the day locked up in a series of depositions.
J. P. Beaumont, still on vacation, was left to his own devices. I stopped by to thank Ida Newell for tracking down Ames and Peters. “I was glad to,” she assured me. “Why, the way they wrote you up in the paper was criminal. Are you going to sue them? They deserve it, especially that columnist fellow.”
“Ames is looking into it,” I told her. “I will if he tells me.” Later, I went to get a haircut. Virgil has been my barber ever since I moved to the city. I’ve followed him from his first little hole-in-the-wall shop to gradually more prosperous surroundings. He’s located in an attractive brick rehab on the corner of hird and Vine.
Busy, Virgil waved me into a chair to wait. “It’s about time you came in here,” he griped. “Saw you on TV, and I says to Betty, I says, wouldn’t cha know he’d go and get himself on TV when he needs a haircut? Pray God he doesn’t tell who cuts his hair, know what I mean?” I knew exactly what he meant. I was long overdue. Getting haircuts was one of the things I had neglected in the previous months of malaise.
Virgil finished with a retiree from the Grosvenor House and beckoned me into the chair. “Saved all those articles from the paper for you,” he said. “Figured if you was out of town, you might not get ‘em, you know?” “Thanks, Virgil.”
“Understand your car got wrecked, too.”
“They’re working on it up at Orcas. I guess it’ll be all right, eventually.“
He clipped away, humming a country-western tune under his breath. I know enough about music to know he hummed very badly. When he finished, it was only eleven. I walked over to Seventh and stopped at the Doghouse, more for the company than the coffee.
Doghouse regulars greeted me as a celebrity. After all, the idea of a cop gone bad is a real attention-grabber. I sat in a back comer booth and did some serious thinking.
About Sig and Ginger and Mona. I had never met Sig while he was alive, but his death had profoundly affected me, Ginger and Mona I knew briefly, only a matter of hours, before they too were dead. The three deaths plagued me, weighed me down. I kept going back to Mona and Ginger. Different, yes, but both young and vital, and both cut down.
Something about the two of them nagged at the back of my mind, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. The harder I tried to capture it, the more elusive it became. The fingerprints accused Don Wilson, but where was he? How was he outmaneuvering all efforts to find him? Was he operating alone or with help? These were questions without answers; or if the answers were there, I couldn’t see them.
I ambled back to my apartment and made myself a peanut butter sandwich. Sometimes, out of respect for Peters, I occasionally add sprouts to the peanut butter, but the plastic bag of sprouts in the vegetable drawer of my refrigerator had deteriorated to a vile greenish goo. With the sandwich and a glass of milk, I settled in my recliner and dialed the San Juan County Sheriff’s Department. I more than half expected to be told that Huggins was in Seattle attending a funeral. Instead, he answered.
“Had? Beau here. You coming to Seattle for Ginger Watkins’ funeral?” “I was going to ask you to go, Beau. I’m up to my neck around here. Think you can swing it?”
“Sure. Homer tried to keep me away, saying Senator Watkins wanted a small, private ceremony, but I got my name on the guest list anyway.” “How’d you manage that?”
“Her father invited me. As his guest.”
Hal clicked his tongue. “Homer won’t like that.” I was sure that was true. “I take it you’ve had a couple run-ins with the old man?” “Like running into a brick wall.
I’ve tried to talk to the husband, and he’s stonewalled me at every turn.”
“Homer has?”
“Yes, goddammit. Homer.”
“Any word on Wilson?”
“Hell no.”
“Keep me posted if you hear anything, Hal.”
“Sure thing. The search warrant didn’t come through yesterday. I’m hoping for this afternoon. And Beau?”
“What?”
“You do the same. If anything turns up at the funeral, give me a call.” I dressed and walked down Fifth to University. The Congregational Church is located at the comer of Sixth and University. The tiny chapel at the south end of the building pinch-hits as a downtown Catholic chapel for weekday noontime business Masses. Ecumenism is alive and well and living in Seattle. Taking up a position in the lobby of the Park Place building across the street, I watched as people arrived or were dropped off at the church. The first black limo accompanied by two state patrolmen deposited Homer and his illustrious son, Senator Darrell Watkins. The second limo, also with an armed guard, brought Governor Reynolds.
When the third, unattended by official motorcycles dropped off an older, nondescript man who paused uncertainly on the sidewalk, I left my vantage across the street and approached him. “Are you Tom Larder?” I asked.
“Mr. Beaumont?” he returned, his tone doubtful. “Yes.” Relief passed over his face.
We shook hands. He looked down at his old-fashioned suit and dusted an imaginary fleck of lint from his arm. “Big cities make me nervous,” he said uncomfortably.
Homer materialized out of nowhere. “Hello, Tom,” he said, elbowing me aside. “They’re ready for us now.” He scowled at me, trying to place me. “This is a private service, Mr.-“
"Beaumont,” I supplied.
“It’s all right, Homer,” Tom said. “He’s with me.”
Homer Watkins gave Tom a constrained nod. “Very well,” he said, walking stiffly toward the church. Tom Lander and I followed. The chapel couldn’t have held more than forty people. An usher showed Tom to a front-row seat, while I took one near the door.
As people came in, I realized Peters would have recognized the political personalities from their pictures. I was an outsider, with no program or scorecard. My only hope of identifying the various guests was to lay hands on the guest book in the vestibule.
I did recognize the parole board, however. Led by Madame Bowdeen, they appeared far more nervous than they had been in Welton. Pressure was taking its toll. Had I been in their shoes, I would have been nervous, too. Looking around, however, I could have assured them with reasonable accuracy that Don Wilson was nowhere to be seen.
A young, bearded minister conducted the service in a smooth, professional way, telling us that Ginger Watkins was a person who had found herself in service to others. His comments made me hope that maybe he had at least a passing acquaintance with the lady.
As the eulogy began, my eyes were drawn to Darrell Watkins’ heaving shoulders. He sat in the front mw head bowed, silent sobs wracking his body. Next to him Tom Lander reached over and laid a consoling hand across his grieving. son-in-law’s shoulder.
I can stand anything but hypocrisy. Darrell was making an obvious play for sympathy, and Tom Lander fell for it-comforting the asshole who had screwed around on his daughter the whole time they were married, who had never bothered to give her the smallest satisfaction in lovemaking, who had kept her locked in a confining, stifling marriage, trotting her out on command when his rising political star demanded the display of a pretty wife.
It put a lump in my throat to realize I had given Ginger more pleasure by accident than that whining bastard had in eighteen years of marriage. I didn’t hear the rest of the service. I seethed, watching Dan-ell’s bitter, remorseful, crocodile tears.
Too little too late. When the pallbearers carried the white coffin out the door, Darrell followed, his face contorted with anguish, supported on one side by Homer and on the other by Tom. “That son of a bitch,” I muttered to myself. I don’t think anyone heard me. Outside, people milled on the sidewalk, waiting for the funeral cortege to form and lead us to Woodlawn Cemetery. I paused as long as I could over the guest book, mentally noting as many names as possible. Then I waited by Tom’s limo, expecting to tell him good-bye. Instead, he asked me to come along, to ride to the cemetery with him.
I didn’t particularly want to go, but it was hand to refuse the old man. He was so isolated and alone that, in the end, I went. We rode in silence. I was still seething over the funeral, and Tom seemed lost in thought. I stayed in the car during the graveside ceremony, refusing to be an audience to any more theatrics on Darrell’s part. I used the time to jot down as many names as I could remember from the guest book. Once we started downtown, I had myself fairly well in hand. “What now?” I asked, initiating conversation. Tom shrugged. “Darrell said I was welcome to come over to the house, but I don’t know. I don’t feel comfortable with all those mucky-mucks.”
“Do you know most-of those people?” I asked. “No. “
“How about a cup of coffee before you decide?” He seemed to welcome the delay. He nodded. “That would be real nice.” The limo driver raised a disapproving eyebrow when I dismissed him, telling him to drop us at the Doghouse. I knew Tom would be far more at home there than in the rarefied atmosphere of the Four Seasons-Olympic or the Westin. He settled gratefully into a booth and smiled when the waitress, calling me by name, brought a coffee pot with the menus.
“I guess even big-city folks can be friendly,” he said. “This is my neighborhood, Tom. I live just a few blocks from here.” We both ordered coffee. I watched Tom shovel three teaspoons of sugar into his cup. “How did you know Ginger?” he asked, stirring absently. “I only met her the day before she died,” I said quietly, “but she helped me, more than I can say. She talked me through a problem I had been avoiding for months. I had to go today. I owed her.”
“Ginger was like that,” he said. He smiled sadly. “Always ready to help the other guy, always a friend in need. She was the kind of kid who dragged home broken-winged birds and expected me to fix them.” He paused. “They mostly died,” he added. He stared disconsolately into his cup. “Did you know about the drinking?” he asked.
His question jarred me. “Yes.”
“I thought she had beaten it. Sig Larson helped her. What made her start again?”
“I don’t know.” I didn’t have a clue. I ached for him as he pondered Ginger’s death.
His child’s death. Why had she died drunk? Someone had neglected to tell him that her death had been reclassified as a homicide, and I figured it wasn’t my place to tell him. That was up to Hal Huggins. “There was some gossip about them, you know,”
Tom continued, “Sig and Ginger. But I never put any store in it. Ginger wasn’t like that.” “No,” I agreed. “I’m sure she wasn’t.” The topic made me very uneasy. “Did you know she intended to file for a divorce?” “She wouldn’t have,” he answered with firm conviction. “She might have threatened, to get Darrell to shape up, but she wouldn’t have left him. We Landers hang in there. It’s a family tradition. ” I wanted to say that Ginger had hung in there more than long enough but I didn’t. That would have been kicking him while he was down. Besides, it would have given away too much about Ginger and J. P. Beaumont. Better to let sleeping dogs lie. As far as Tom Lander was concerned, Ginger Watkins and I had been just friends. Nothing more.