Cold Smoked

by K. K. Beck

  “You have your own dialect?”

  “We prefer to call it a language.” He smiled. “It’s got words from Old Norn, and Old Scots and some of our own as well. After a week on the road, we get weary o’ knappin.”

  “Knappin?”

  “Speaking English so other folk understand.” He smiled. “So you’ve come for your salmon?”

  “Is there any left?”

  He rummaged around inside his glass case and came up with a neatly wrapped package. “I’ve got it all ready for you,” he said.

  “Thank you very much. I hope you approved of my Patsy Cline,” said Jane. “She’s not easy to do.”

  “Your Patsy Cline was brilliant,” he said, adding a delicious row of extra rs to the word. She imagined he meant brilliant in the British sense—what an American would characterize as an understated “just great” rather than in the American sense of the word: dazzling and near genius.

  She gestured in the fishy-smelling air and said, “This show is pretty amazing. I didn’t know there was so much to fish.”

  “This is a pretty small show. The Boston Seafood Show, that’s the big one. And I do shows in Paris and Tokyo and Spain as well. We have to travel to let people know about us.”

  A new tacky lass, wearing fishnet hose and a tiny kilt and spiked heels, walked by. This one was a redhead. She was carrying a tray of smoked salmon.

  “Your competitors?” said Jane. Magnus seemed to be staring at her.

  His face took on a serious look. “Did you hear what happened to the other one?” he said. “Murdered. Shot. They found her in a bathtub in the hotel.”

  “The other one?” said Jane, staring at the redhead.

  “The blond lass. She was in the bar where you were singing.”

  Jane realized at once that the woman she’d seen in the tub was the woman she’d seen putting on makeup the night before. Without her makeup, and without that ridiculous outfit, she looked entirely different. But those small blue eyes were the same. Jane remembered her scrubbing her hands and her strange expression. She even remembered her name. Her brunette friend had called her Marcia.

  A couple of Japanese men came up to Magnus. “Got to be nice to them,” he said to her in a whisper. “They’re the biggest fish buyers in the world. And very pernickity.”

  “Thanks again for the salmon,” she said.

  “Have you got my card?” he said as he sidled away. “Come see us in Shetland. We’ll hire the community hall for you and you can give us a concert.”

  She left the convention center thinking about Marcia. Being able to imagine her alive made the whole thing much more horrible. She’d seemed so sullen and strange. Maybe they’d know more at the Meade. Maybe they had a suspect now that they knew who the victim was.

  When she arrived, she popped back into the kitchen and asked the chef if she could keep the salmon in his fridge while she worked. The food and beverage manager loomed up behind her.

  “Never mind about that,” he said, stepping between her and the fridge. “Hang on to it. I need to see you and Gary outside.”

  The way everyone in the kitchen turned away in embarrassment made it all painfully clear. Carrying her package, she followed him out into the bar, where Gary was seated at the piano in a dinner jacket—white to match the piano.

  “Listen, guys,” the surly manager said, “while you did your own gig last night I auditioned another act. With a boom box. They do a nice Hawaiian thing. We’re gonna tie it in with a mai-tai special, get a whole tropical Trader Vic kind of thing going. Here’s your last check.”

  “I guess there’s nothing to say,” said Jane. “Except why didn’t you phone us and save us the trip downtown to this depressing place?”

  He handed them each an envelope.

  “You could have mailed those,” she said.

  He shrugged. “You guys were classy, but, hey, we gotta look at the bottom line.” He shuffled away, then turned and said, “Have a farewell drink at the bar, on me.”

  “Thanks a lot,” said Jane. “But I’m not a mai-tai drinker.” She turned and gave Gary a brave smile. “Well, think there’s somewhere else for us?”

  Gary cleared his throat and looked guilty. “Um, I sort of saw this coming, Jane. I’ve got another job.”

  “Do they need a singer?”

  “I’m going to play piano at Nordstrom’s.”

  “You mean you’re going to be the guy by the elevator near ladies’ shoes playing ‘Lara’s Theme’?”

  “That’s right.”

  Jane gave this some thought. “Well, at least the piano’s black. And maybe you can get an employee’s discount.”

  “I’m glad you’re not pissed off,” Gary said gratefully. “I should have told you I was looking, I guess. So you could have been looking, too.”

  “Never mind,” Jane said recklessly. “I think I might be off to Prague. Or Budapest. Or maybe the Shetland Isles.”

  “Gosh, I’m sorry,” said Gary.

  “Yeah, okay,” Jane said. “I’ll be by to put the arm on you to pass along the discount next time I’m shopping at Nordstrom’s. Which may not be for quite a while.” She didn’t know why she was giving the poor kid a hard time. She was actually rather relieved to be out of the Fountain Room. “I’m going to take my salmon and go home.”

  Once at home, she was more than relieved, she was delighted. She got out of her green crepe number with a little tasteful beading at the shoulder and into a pair of soft old jeans and a sweatshirt. Then she made herself a supper of smoked salmon on toast and ate it with some nice Chardonnay and listened to the Maria Callas Tosca. That would blast piano bar standards out of her mind. And country music, too. She was in the mood for something sublime. And tomorrow she’d give the house a thorough cleaning. Then she’d decide what to do next with her life. Or wait and see what happened. Mr. Micawber’s optimistic phrase “Something will turn up” bounced around in her head.

  * * *

  Two days after that, Marcia’s parents came to see Jane. The father had phoned first. “I’m sorry to bother you,” he said. “My name is Phil Hunter. I understand you were the one who found my little girl. I got your name from the hotel. My wife and I are going crazy wondering what happened to her. The police are doing what they can, but it would help a lot if we could meet you. We have to know what happened, and no one seems to want to tell us.” It was a plain, straightforward voice, but with a strained, desperate note, as if it were trying very hard to stay controlled.

  “I can’t tell you much at all,” said Jane. “I wish I could.” There was a pause, and she said, “I’m very sorry—about your daughter.”

  “If we could ask you a few questions,” he said. In the background she heard a woman’s voice, unintelligible but clearly urgent and coaching him, the way wives sometimes did. Marcia’s mother.

  She was unable to turn them down. She doubted she had anything to tell them, but it sounded as if they wanted to be doing something to stave off helplessness. “Would you like to come to the house?” said Jane.

  The Hunters came over about half an hour later, two big people in their late forties. He was tall and broad and balding, with ruddy, weathered skin, and he wore a checked shirt and jeans. She was wide and solid with light brown hair streaked with gray and a slack, soft, hurt face, blotched with red from crying. He introduced her as Barbara. She had small blue eyes like Marcia—round and glassy like doll’s eyes, a loose dark green sweater that covered her wide hips, and black knit pants.

  They sat very close to each other on the sofa. Although he had spoken on the phone, now she took the lead. She held her husband’s hand in her lap and rested her other hand on a huge purse propped up beside her. She told Jane that they were cattle ranchers from Ellensburg, east of the mountains, and that they had just come back from burying their daughter.

  “We took her home,” she said. “She hadn’t been home for a long time.”

  Jane nodded, then told them very simply what had happened. H
ow Carla had rushed into the banquet room, how Jane had gone back up with her, how Jane had seen the body in the bath.

  Phil Hunter held up a hand. “We’ve talked to the coroner about all that,” he said.

  Jane was relieved that they didn’t want to hear any gory physical details. Instead she told them she had seen their daughter earlier, wearing her costume. “I’m sorry I don’t know more,” she concluded helplessly. “What do the police say?”

  “Not much,” said the father. “They don’t seem to know much at all. We talked to Stacy, the little gal that was with her that night, and she says Diane was with this Norwegian fellow, but the police let him go. He had the room next to where she was found.”

  “We don’t think they should have let him go,” said the mother.

  “I saw that Norwegian, too,” said Jane. “I’m afraid he was pretty drunk. Earlier in the evening, anyway.” Jane wondered why they had called her Diane. She distinctly remembered the girl’s name was Marcia.

  The parents exchanged glances. Apparently Marcia’s cohort hadn’t told them that Trygve was drunk. It was the kind of thing a young girl wouldn’t tell someone’s parents—teen solidarity carried through into young adulthood.

  “But your daughter wasn’t drunk,” Jane assured them. “I saw her in the ladies’ room earlier that evening.”

  “How did she seem?” said the mother, leaning forward greedily.

  How had she seemed? Very strange, really. Not silly or giddy, like some girl waiting to be picked up. If Jane had known she’d be killed in a few hours, she would have paid more attention.

  “She seemed rather serious,” said Jane. “Not frightened in any way. Just serious. Putting on makeup.”

  “She was always very serious,” her mother said. “Even when she was a little girl.”

  “She came here to go to the University of Washington,” said her father. “She graduated with a degree in English. I don’t know why she had that job running around handing out samples.”

  He seemed to be apologizing. Jane didn’t think it was unusual in the least for an English major to be working as a demo temp. “Young kids do all kinds of jobs these days,” said Jane. She started to add, “Before they find their niche in life,” but realized Marcia or Diane or whatever her name was had done everything she was ever going to do.

  “There’s a lot we don’t know,” said her father. “Her being over here in Seattle and all.” He looked away.

  “We found out where she was living . . . ,” began her mother. “Kind of near here.”

  Ellensburg was only a couple of hours away. Why hadn’t they known where she was living until now? Jane wondered. They’d said she hadn’t been home for a long time. “It’s hard when they move away,” she said.

  Mrs. Hunter sighed. “At first, at the U, we’d visit her and she’d visit us a lot. Then something happened. She moved out of the sorority and didn’t seem to want to have anything to do with us.”

  “Sometimes when people start out in life on their own, they go through a phase like that,” said Jane, horrified that murder had transformed an adolescent estrangement into a separation until death.

  The Hunters might have been the kind of rigid parents who drove their children away, but they seemed like well-meaning people who didn’t deserve to spend the rest of their lives wondering what they could have done differently and what their daughter had become. Now she understood why they were pursuing an investigation of sorts on their own.

  “You need to know more about your daughter’s death, but also more about her life here in Seattle, don’t you?” said Jane.

  “That’s it exactly,” Barbara Hunter said. “It’s so hard not knowing.” She began to weep without any struggle to contain it, without any spasms or shudder, just tears filling her little doll eyes and flowing out onto her cheeks.

  “We found out she had a boyfriend. His name was Curtis. Curtis Jeffers. She was living with him. But he won’t speak to us. We don’t understand it.”

  “Maybe she thought you wouldn’t have liked it that they lived together,” said Jane.

  “ ’Course we wouldn’t have,” said her father. “But she was over twenty-one. We couldn’t have stopped her.” He sounded quite rational about it and genuinely puzzled at the estrangement.

  “Our other daughter lived with her husband before they got married,” said Barbara. “It couldn’t have been that.”

  “Maybe her boyfriend was too upset to talk about her,” Jane said.

  “We don’t know,” said Phil. He looked over at his wife. “He wouldn’t let us in the house. It was pretty bad. And I sure wish we could have talked to that Norwegian before he left town. We’ll keep trying, but it’s hell. It’s hard on Barb, but she won’t let me do it alone.”

  “Maybe you need a good professional investigator to find out some of these things for you,” said Jane. “For your own peace of mind.”

  Phil sighed and said, “To be completely honest, I’d thought about it. Especially after we had such a bad time with Diane’s boyfriend. I even talked to a friend of mine in the sheriff’s department back home about how much it would cost.” He sighed. “What people don’t understand about ranching is that you can be land rich and cash poor. Or even deep in hock to the bank.”

  Jane took a deep breath and went into her pitch.

  Uncle Harold would have been proud of her. Her first instinct had been to help these people. Of course, that initial spurt of pure altruism, keen as it was, hadn’t lasted very long.

  A second later she had felt an added thrill as she realized the problems of these two people might form the basis for a satisfactory case. A case she could take before the board. A case she could turn into big bucks. Bucks that could allow her to tell the food and beverage manager at the Meade Hotel, for instance, what he could do with his job. Bucks that could allow her to lead the life she felt she really deserved after years of living out of suitcases and managing a sort of genteel, stylish poverty that had its on-the-edge thrill but was beginning to take its toll on her spirit.

  Under the terms of her uncle Harold’s eccentric will, Jane was in a position to benefit from a large trust fund if she carried on his work—providing investigative services to people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to get help. Uncle Harold, rich in his own right, had been motivated by the idea of helping his fellow man and wanted Jane to carry on after his death. A board of his cronies, nervous, querulous old men who hated publicity and feared oversight, decided whether her cases were worthy or not and doled out the huge income from the trust.

  Now, looking at those large, sad parents holding hands on her sofa, Jane tried not to think that they might find it strange or even suspicious that a lounge singer should rush in and help them find out about their daughter’s life and death.

  They didn’t seem defensive when Jane suggested that she find out for them what she could about their daughter’s life in Seattle and about the circumstances of her death. Maybe it was because they came from a small town and didn’t have a shell of urban distrust. Perhaps their reason was undermined by grief. There did seem to be a streak of fatalism in Barbara Hunter that made it an easy sell. “It seems like it was meant to be,” she said. “Because we do need some help.” She looked up at her husband. “We don’t know our way around Seattle. We’ve already come up against a wall with that boy. And the police. They won’t tell us about the Norwegian.”

  Phil Hunter looked down at his wife with an expression that seemed to say “I will agree to anything that you think could help because I don’t know how else to console you.”

  He turned to Jane and said with a defensive bristle: “You really mean it when you say you do this sort of thing for free?”

  “Absolutely,” said Jane. “I represent a family foundation that provides investigative services to people who need it. In your case, I feel strongly that this is the sort of work you are in no condition to do by yourselves right now. Emotionally. And practically. You live far away. You have a ra
nch you probably can’t neglect.”

  “Is this some kind of charity thing?” said Phil.

  “No,” Jane said. “This is what I do. I do it well, and it’s what I want to do. It’s the work my uncle chose for me.” She stopped for a moment and tried to imagine their lives and think of some way to reassure them. “In a smaller town, when there is a tragedy like yours, people can help one another in a more direct way,” she said. “This is the way it can happen in a city where people are more cut off from each other.”

  They nodded, and she decided to assume the sale was made and get down to business before they fretted themselves out of letting her help. “I’d like a picture of your daughter,” she said in a calm, low voice. “Also the name of her boyfriend and her old address. And some way to get in touch with the other young woman you spoke with. I’ll see what I can find out.

  “And maybe you can tell me,” she continued, “why you call her Diane and I heard the other girl that night call her Marcia. Was that her middle name?”

  Barb Hunter looked genuinely confused. “She didn’t have a middle name. We don’t understand it at all. The police tell us she was calling herself Marcia St. Francis. There’s so much we don’t get at all.”

  Before they left, Jane had written down all the pertinent addresses and phone numbers, including the phone and address of Marcia’s sister, Lisa, who lived in Kent, a suburb to the south.

  Jane took a look at her list, thought about it for a moment, and added, “Carla? Fish magazine,” to the list. After all, Marcia (Jane persisted in thinking of her as Marcia, at least until she discovered the reason for her name change) had been found in Carla’s bathtub.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Carla Elroy was in the phone book, and although Jane assumed she was at work at ten-thirty in the morning, she tried her home number anyway. Maybe Carla had a machine.

  She answered on the first ring.

  “Hi, Carla. This is Jane da Silva. The singer from the Meade Hotel.”