Proof of Life

by J. A. Jance

  Once we were back at Belltown Terrace, I walked Lucy while Mel changed into something a little dressier than a tracksuit. When we left awhile later, Lucy seemed entirely content to stay curled up on her bed in the kitchen.

  “Did you know black dogs are the ones least likely to be adopted?” Mel asked as we rode down in the elevator.

  That’s one of the things I love about Mel. She’s a steady source for little-known bits of information.

  “Didn’t know that,” I told her. “I guess Lucy lucked out then.”

  “I guess she did.”

  By the time we got to Fishermen’s Terminal, the overcast was finally starting to break up. Inside the restaurant, the lunch crowd was mostly gone and the place was relatively quiet. It was late enough in the day that, if Cherisse was still suffering from morning sickness, she had recovered enough to chow down on her very own platter of clam strips. She looked happy. No, make that she looked radiant. My urging her to talk to Scott about the baby had transformed the whole situation, and I couldn’t help but be a little proud of myself when Scott started regaling us with his ambitious plans to redo the room that had been intended to be his “man cave” into a nursery. Whew! Bullet dodged!

  And Mel was right once again. On a day filled with murder and mayhem, talking about an upcoming baby—a future grandson, as it turns out!—was just what the doctor ordered. We talked about due dates and parental leave and cribs and day care. We said nothing about Kevin Blaylock’s murder. It was a needed emotional smoke screen, but once we left the restaurant and headed back to the car, reality intruded.

  “I need to talk to Erin,” I told Mel. “I gave her information to Stevenson to pass along to whoever is assigned to the Maxwell Cole part of the investigation. We still haven’t found his electronics, but once they have permission to access his online accounts, they may be able to find out what it was that put this whole mess in motion.”

  “Are you going to call her or go see her?” Mel asked.

  “I’ll call first, but I need to talk to her face-to-face.”

  “If you go, I’ll be glad to ride along.”

  “I thought you were going to head back north as soon as we finished up with Scott and Cherisse.”

  “After the day we’ve had today, I’ve changed my mind on that,” she said. “I’d rather hang in with you tonight and head back to Bellingham early tomorrow morning.”

  That was more than fine with me. I called Erin before we left the restaurant parking lot. It turned out Sunday was her day off and she was home.

  “There are some new developments,” I told her. “I’d like to deliver an initial report in person.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, if you’re not too busy. And if you don’t mind, my wife might come along. She’s a police officer,” I added with a wink in Mel’s direction. “She’s been assisting with the investigation.”

  Since Mel had probably saved my life, the word “assisting” was understating the case, but Erin didn’t need to know that.

  “Sure,” she said. “Bring her along.”

  Once I keyed in Erin’s address in Renton, the GPS directed us across Lake Washington on 520, on what we like to call “the money-sucking” toll bridge. The clouds had disappeared, and the sky overhead was clear, but the wind had picked up. The water in the lake was grayish-green rather than blue, and occasional whitecaps sent spray splashing across the windshield. And although it was only four o’clock in the afternoon, the sun was close to going down.

  “Obviously Bian was on her way out of town. Where do you think she was headed?” Mel asked.

  “Out of the country most likely,” I said. “I’m sure she’s been working on an exit strategy for a long time, but once Todd Farraday showed up, she needed to accelerate the program.”

  “I’ve met some cold-hearted bitches in my time,” Mel said, “but Bian Duong takes the cake.”

  “Yes,” I said. “If you ever get that tired of me, don’t chain me to a bed and leave me to die. Just shoot me and get it over with.”

  We both chuckled over that, but it wasn’t really funny.

  Erin Howard welcomed us into her apartment. It was about as different from Lawrence Harden’s Queen Anne mansion as you could imagine. It was a small two-bedroom unit, furnished on the cheap, but spotlessly clean. She directed us to a sagging, butt-sprung sofa while she sat on a beat-up recliner that could have been twins with the one Jim Hunt had forced me to toss into the trash.

  “What’s happened?” she asked anxiously. “Have you found out something about Uncle Max?”

  “Yes,” I said. “About him and several others as well.”

  “Several?” she echoed.

  “Have you been watching the news today?”

  “I saw that a Seattle PD detective was murdered last night. That doesn’t have anything to do with this, does it?”

  “Unfortunately, it does.”

  I told her the whole story then—as much of it as we knew and some of which we could only surmise. In the process of telling, I came to a surprising conclusion. If it hadn’t been for Maxwell Cole wanting me to investigate, and if it hadn’t been for Erin and I both dutifully carrying out Max’s final wishes, Lawrence Harden would no doubt have become victim number five.

  “You really think we saved him?”

  “Let’s hope we saved him,” I told her. “It depends on whether or not he pulls through.”

  “Even if we saved him,” Erin said sadly, “we didn’t save Uncle Max.”

  A phone rang then—a landline somewhere in the kitchen—and Erin excused herself to answer it. We heard only her side of the conversation, which was short, and curt to the point of being rude.

  “I’m not sure how you got my name or number, but I’m definitely not interested in selling at this point. Don’t call me again.”

  She stalked back to the living room, shaking her head. “That’s the third call today from real estate guys claiming to be developers and wanting to buy Uncle Max’s house for such an ungodly amount of money that it’s probably a scam of some kind. Besides, how can I think about selling it when I haven’t even heard from the insurance company about repairing the damage?”

  That was interesting. This early on, how would developers have gotten Erin’s name? Was that building inspector making a bit of money on the side by alerting potential builders to the availability of possible teardown properties? Or had that information been leaked by someone in Max’s attorney’s office or even by the attorney herself?

  “Have you spoken to the attorney?” I asked. I didn’t dare mention Delia Rojas’s name, because it wasn’t a name I was supposed to know.

  “I have an appointment with her tomorrow morning,” Erin answered.

  If Lawrence Harden’s place had sold for $2.3 million, I estimated that Max’s wouldn’t be worth much less than that. I suspected that the “ungodly numbers,” as Erin called them, were far closer to the mark than she realized.

  “Talk to her about this,” I advised. “In order to evaluate those offers, you’ll need to be represented by a reputable Realtor. That flurry of early ones are probably lowball all right, but I doubt they’re scams. There are people out there looking for places where they can build megamansions. Max’s place certainly . . .” I started to say, “comes with a killer view.” At the last moment, I managed to tone that down into something a little less offensive. “. . . qualifies on that score. Are you thinking of living there yourself?”

  “Are you kidding?” Erin asked. “I’d never fit in with all those fancy people up on Queen Anne Hill, not in a million years. Besides, I need to live closer to work. Commuting back and forth across Lake Washington would kill me.”

  “Sell the place as is, then,” I told her, “without going through all the agony and effort of fixing it. Let the insurance company write you a check for whatever they owe. I wouldn’t be surprised if the insurance settlement combined with proceeds from the sale of the property didn’t leave you in a position where y
ou’ll be able to pay cash for whatever you want.”

  “You think I’d have enough to be able to pay cash for a house? Really?”

  Erin shook her head as though the whole idea were completely preposterous. She had yet to grasp exactly how much Maxwell Cole’s generosity had changed her circumstances. And that reminded me of something else I had so far neglected to tell her about a few additional items about Max’s life, the secrets he hadn’t entrusted even to her.

  “Did you know Max was gay?”

  Erin shrugged. “I always supposed he was, but I never asked him. It wasn’t any of my business. Why?”

  “Did he ever mention someone named Amelia Rourke?”

  “No, who’s she?”

  “That’s a complex question,” I replied. “Amelia was one of Max’s friends. She’s also a transvestite who runs a place called the DQC.”

  “You mean Drag Queen Central over in Wallingford?” Erin asked. “I’ve heard it’s some kind of stand-up comedy place.”

  “Yes,” I said, “one that caters to other drag queens. Max was a minority partner in that establishment—and now you are, too. Max’s attorney should have the details on that as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if, once you contact Amelia, you’ll find that she’s willing to buy out your share.”

  That added another sizable ka-ching to what would probably turn out to be an amazing total, but when Mel and I left the apartment half an hour or so later, Erin, still in a state of disbelief, had yet to come to terms with any of it.

  As we drove away from that dodgy apartment complex, I couldn’t help but remember that old black-and-white TV show from the late fifties, The Millionaire, the one where a complete stranger named John Beresford Tipton shows up unexpectedly on someone’s doorstep and hands over a check for a million bucks.

  I was old enough to remember the show, but I didn’t bother mentioning it to Mel. That’s one of the life experience hazards of being married to a younger woman. I doubt she ever saw it.

  CHAPTER 33

  IT WAS FULL DARK NOW. WE WERE ON OUR WAY UP 405 when my phone buzzed. I had turned it off during our visit with Erin. I pulled it out and handed it over to Mel. She turned it on speaker before she answered.

  “J. P. Beaumont’s phone,” she said.

  “Greg Stevenson here. Can I talk to him, please?”

  “He’s driving. You’re on speaker.”

  “Hey, Beau, give yourself a gold star.” There was a hollow echo to his voice that made me think he was using a speaker for his end of the conversation.

  “Why? What’s happened?”

  “We executed the search warrant on that storage unit and came up with two crates of high-powered weapons. We’ve called ATF in on the case. Bian Duong is now looking at federal charges in addition to the others.”

  “You found illegal weapons but no drugs?”

  “Nary a one.”

  I had been wrong about so much on this case that it hurt to think maybe I was wrong about the drugs, too. Then again, maybe I wasn’t. “Since she owns the storage facility,” I suggested, “maybe the drugs are stored in one of the other units.”

  “That thought occurred to me, too,” Stevenson agreed, “but we have a warrant for only this one. We can’t go rifling through other people’s units and stuff. We’re in the process of bringing in some drug-sniffing dogs to walk past and check out the exteriors of those storage units. If they alert, we’ll have probable cause to obtain warrants.”

  “Any sign of drugs at the house?”

  “We found some substances that tested positive for roofies in Mr. Harden’s bedroom. In the meantime, I’ve got someone going through everything in the PODS. So far they’ve come up empty.”

  “What about the store?”

  “No dice here, either. That’s where I am right now. The place is cleaned out slick as can be—no merchandise, no shelving, no nothing. It’s completely empty.”

  “Did you check the basement?”

  “What basement? I’ve been over every inch of this space. There’s no basement.”

  But I remembered that newspaper photo, the one with the gaping hole in the floor of Natalie Farraday’s earthquake-damaged shop.

  We were just past Coal Creek, northbound on 405. Rather than sticking to the left lanes and going back home by way of 520, I swung onto the entrance to westbound I-90. “Mel and I are on our way,” I said into the speaker. “We’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”

  “Beau,” Stevenson argued, “I’m telling you, there’s nothing here, and it’s been a very long day.”

  “Please,” I begged. “Humor me just this once.”

  “All right,” he said with an exasperated sigh. “We’ll wait.”

  Ten minutes later we pulled into a parking place on Jackson, two spots up from where we’d parked earlier that morning. As we walked back toward Occidental, Mel noticed I was limping. “What’s wrong with your leg?”

  “Bian kicked me in the knee,” I confessed. “It hurts some.”

  Actually it hurt a lot. I was looking forward to going home, taking an Aleve, and putting my foot up.

  “Look, Stevenson already executed the warrant and didn’t find anything,” Mel said reasonably. “If your leg is bothering you that much, let’s just leave it at that.”

  “I know there is a basement under that shop,” I insisted, “and I’m going to find it.”

  Mel’s sigh of resignation mimicked Detective Stevenson’s. “Did anyone ever tell you that you are one stubborn man?”

  “It may have been mentioned once or twice.”

  When we arrived at the shop, the place was ablaze with lights. We were greeted by Detective Stevenson and three very grouchy crime scene techs. It didn’t take long to see that Stevenson was right. The place was bare-bones empty. There were lines on the floor that showed where display tables had once been located, but the tables themselves were gone. The only structure remaining in the room was the built-in cash-wrap counter toward the front of the shop, complete with a collection of electrical outlets.

  “See there?” Stevenson said. “What did I tell you?”

  I stood in the center of the room and turned in a circle. That’s when I spotted a door in the far back corner of the room.

  “What’s that to?” I asked pointing.

  “Utility closet,” one of the techs said. “I already checked. It’s completely empty.”

  Determined to see for myself, I limped over to take a look. It was a small closet, about four-by-four. Other than an electrical service box on the wall just inside the door, the closet was, as reported, completely empty. It smelled of disinfectant and janitorial supplies, but still, there was something odd about it . . . If there was a circuit breaker on the wall inside the closet, I couldn’t help wondering why there wasn’t even so much as a dangling lightbulb to provide illumination.

  “Hey, Mel,” I said. “Do you have your Maglite?”

  Dumb question. Mel may be a cop, but she’s also a woman who, in uniform or out, wouldn’t be caught dead in public without a large purse and her own personal Maglite. If a bag isn’t big enough to hold that, it isn’t the bag for her.

  She handed me her flashlight and I switched it on. With the extra light I could see that there was some difference in shading between the flooring in the rest of the room and the flooring in the closet. I remembered that the earthquake article had mentioned something about a granite floor. When the floor was repaired, granite tiles had been replaced with now grimy hardwood. I noticed, however, that wood flooring in the utility room was slightly different from that in the rest of the room, and so was the stain.

  I knew just from looking that I was onto something. There was a basement here, and the closet had to be the entrance. “Anybody here have a saw?” I asked.

  “A saw?” Stevenson repeated. “You’re thinking about cutting a hole in the floor? Are you nuts?”

  “I’ve got a Sawzall out in the van,” one of the techs said wearily. “I’ll go get it. With an
y kind of luck we’ll all make it home sometime tonight.”

  While he was gone, I swung open the door on the electrical box. There were several breaker switches inside, and I began flipping them one by one. The first one operated the lights out in the main room. The next one handled the lights in the front window. The one after that took care of the lights in the outside overhang, but the next one surprised the hell out of me. As soon as I hit it, the floor inside the closet dropped two inches and began to slide silently under the outside flooring. Grabbing on to the door frame, I somehow managed to lurch backward and pull myself to safety as a gaping black hole appeared just underneath where I had been standing.

  “What the hell?”

  Reaching back inside, I flipped the bottom switch in the breaker box. Fluorescent lights suddenly illuminated the hole. Then, with a low rumble and the distinctive smell of hot hydraulics, a rough, wooden-planked platform seemed to rise from the floor. It stopped six or so inches below the surface of the floor where we were standing.

  I turned to Detective Stevenson, who was standing just behind me. “What comes up must go down. Care to join me?”

  “How does it work?”

  “There’s got to be a control switch here somewhere,” I said. “All we need to do is find it.”

  It turned out to be two switches rather than one. I found them built into one corner of the platform, both of them mounted in the cover of a metal junction box. One of them was marked up and the other DOWN. I hit the DOWN one with the toe of my shoe, and away we went.

  “Do you believe this!” Stevenson exclaimed once we dropped below floor level and could see the extent of Bian Duong’s secret warehouse. I was excited, too, until I saw what was missing. The room was full of state-of-the-art big-box store metal shelving but, as in the floorspace above, every bit of it was completely, bare-bones empty.

  Whatever goods had been stored in that damp, musty cellar would have required plenty of moisture-proofing. I stepped off the platform and onto wooden decking that had apparently been installed over damp earth. I pushed the button marked with the up arrow and sent the platform back to the ground level so the others could come down and join us. The device was simple enough—basically a mechanic’s garage lift with the wooden platform added so it could be used to raise and lower heavy boxes rather than cars.