Lying in vait jpb-12

by J. A. Jance

  "When did I see her?" Inge returned after another question-deflecting sip of coffee.

  "Yes."

  "It must have been three years ago, now. Maybe a little more. Yes, three, I think. It was just after Kari came back from being an exchange student. And it must have been around this time of year, too. I remember I was going to go with you to spend the day at the Christmas bazaar, and then I didn't because I wasn't feeling well. I believe my arthritis flared up."

  "Stick to the point, Mother," Else insisted.

  "I'm sure Gunter had no idea I stayed home," Inge continued. "If he had, they never would have come here in the first place. After you left for the bazaar, I must have fallen asleep. When I woke up, I heard voices-someone laughing-a woman's voice laughing. I thought you must have come home early, but then the back door slammed shut. I looked out the window and saw them. They were just leaving the house. I sat on the edge of my bed and watched the whole thing."

  "And never told me," Else breathed. "You knew about it, and you never said a word!"

  "What good would telling you have done?" Inge returned petulantly, with an air of offended innocence.

  "If I had known and chosen to leave then, I would have been three whole years younger than I am now," Else replied with commendable self-control. "I would have been a hell of a lot smarter a hell of a lot sooner."

  "Please don't swear, Else," Inge scolded. "I've told you time and again, that kind of language isn't at all necessary or ladylike."

  "I'll talk any damn way I want to!"

  My pager went off right then. The number displayed on the tiny screen was from the Seattle P.D. Homicide Squad. Sergeant Watty Watkins's extension, to be specific. I recognized the number. Normally, I ignore my pager until the second or third try. This time I welcomed the interruption.

  I don't like being a party to petty domestic disputes. Witnessing Inge Didricksen pick away at her daughter reminded me of a crow I once saw snap the head off a helpless baby sparrow that had fallen out of its nest. But the crow was only doing what came naturally. There was something almost malevolent about Inge Didricksen.

  "Could I use a phone for a moment?" I asked.

  Else nodded curtly toward the built-in desk across the kitchen. "You can use the one here if you want. Otherwise, if you need some privacy, there's one in the family room and another in the bedroom."

  "This one will be fine."

  Hurrying across the kitchen, I picked up the phone and dialed Watty's number. The phone was answered by Chuck Grayson, Sergeant Watkins's counterpart on the night shift. I was surprised when Grayson answered the phone, but I went ahead and asked for Watty.

  "What've you been smoking, Beau?" Grayson replied with a laugh. "Watty isn't here yet. It's only seven o'clock. He won't show up for at least another half hour. Longer if traffic's backed up on I-Five."

  I glanced at my watch and was startled to see it was only seven o'clock. I had been up and around for hours. It didn't seem possible that shift change hadn't happened yet.

  "Somebody paged me," I answered, without bothering to attempt an explanation.

  "It was me," Chuck returned. "I tried your home number first. When no one answered, I tried the pager. And it worked like a charm. You're calling back, aren't you?"

  "Right. What's up?"

  "First off, there have been three calls so far from someone named Maxwell Cole. Isn't he that columnist…?"

  "That's the one," I said, cutting Grayson off before he could finish asking. "Maxwell Cole can wait. Anything else?"

  "That's about what I figured. More important, there's somebody here waiting to see you."

  "Already? Who?"

  "She says her name's June Miller."

  "Doesn't ring a bell. What does she want?"

  "Try the name John Miller. Does that one sound familiar?"

  "Sergeant Grayson, could we please stop playing games and cut to the chase?"

  "How about former congressman John Miller? June Miller, as in Mrs. John."

  "Okay, okay. Mrs. John Miller, married to a former congressman. What does she want?"

  "To talk to you. Now."

  "What about? I'm working a case. I'm trying…"

  "Which case? Fisherman's Terminal?"

  "That's right."

  "According to Mrs. Miller, that's the one she wants to talk to you about."

  "What about Sue Danielson? She's my partner on this. Couldn't this Miller woman talk to Sue?"

  "She says Maxwell Cole directed her to see you and no one else." Maxwell Cole strikes again. "Sergeant Grayson…" I began, but he never let me finish.

  "Detective Beaumont," he said, "John Miller may not be a currently elected public official, but he still has a lot of influence in this town. And no one at Seattle P.D. is going to like it if one of our very own homicide detectives flies in the face of all that clout. Do I make myself clear?"

  Sometimes I'm a very slow learner, especially when it comes to politics. "I'll be there as soon as I can," I said at last.

  "How soon?"

  "Fifteen minutes."

  "Make it ten. I'll tell her you're on your way."

  I turned back to the kitchen table, where Inge, sitting alone now, continued to sip away at her coffee. She seemed totally unaffected by the distress she had caused her grieving, middle-aged daughter.

  It went against my upbringing-against everything my mother ever taught me-to think of that sweet little old lady in her crookedly buttoned housecoat as an unmitigated, cold-blooded bitch, but that's what Inge Didriksen was-that and more. In spades.

  "Where's Else?" I asked.

  "She said she was going back to her room to lie down," Inge answered. "She said she hoped you wouldn't mind showing yourself out."

  "I can manage."

  I pulled one of my business cards from my wallet and placed it on the table in front of her. "Would you mind giving your granddaughter a message for me?" I asked.

  "What kind of message?"

  "That's my number at Seattle P.D. Would you please ask her to give me a call as soon as she wakes up?"

  "I can do that," Inge Didriksen agreed. "Although I don't know when that'll be. Young people these days sleep until all hours, you know."

  Inge's cloudy blue eyes met and held mine for a very long time. It was a challenge. I think she was waiting to see if I would say anything about the way she had treated her daughter.

  "I never liked him, you know," she said with a small, almost imperceptible shrug.

  "Never liked who?" I asked, playing dumb.

  "Why, my son-in-law, of course," she replied. "Gunter. Who else did you think I was talking about?"

  Who else indeed? But with Else out of the room, I was free to ask this strange old woman a few questions that might possibly serve to open up some of the darkened corners of the Gebhardt family history.

  "Why did Gunter quarrel with your granddaughter?" I asked. "And when did it happen?"

  Inge dropped her gaze, as if the strain of holding my eyes was suddenly too much for her.

  "You'll have to ask Kari about that," Inge answered demurely. "I couldn't possibly tell you. You see, I make it a practice never to interfere in my children's affairs."

  Like hell you do, I thought savagely as I stalked out of the house, closing the door behind me.

  Inge Didriksen interfered, all right, but only when it happened to suit her.

  15

  As I left Else's house on Culpeper Court and started back downtown, the words "wife of a former congressman" conjured up a certain picture in my mind. The image of the imagined June Miller that formed in my head was of someone as tough and cantankerous as Betty Friedan, only not nearly as pretty.

  Sergeant Chuck Grayson was still on duty and fighting his way through a deskful of paperwork when I stopped in front of it.

  "Where is she?" I asked, starting for my cubicle.

  "Whoa, there," Grayson said. "You didn't think we'd stash somebody like her in your office, did you? That place is a
wreck."

  I ground to a halt and glanced pointedly at the tumbled mass of scattered papers on Sergeant Grayson's desk. "Pardon my saying so, Sarge, but when it comes to wrecks, you don't have much room to talk. Where did you stow her then?"

  "Upstairs," he answered. "In that little conference room next door to the chief's office."

  It figured. It wouldn't have surprised me if June Miller had been granted a personal interview with the chief of police while she was waiting for me to show up. "She didn't happen to say what all this is about, did she?"

  Grayson shook his head. "Nope. Just what I told you on the phone. It has something to do with your deal up at Fishermen's Terminal. Whatever it is, it was important enough for her to show up here at six-twenty A. M. By the way, have you ever met this woman before?"

  "Never."

  Grayson grinned. "Lucky you," he said. "You're in for a real treat."

  "Sure I am," I replied. "And no doubt the chief will give me the rest of the day off when she and I get finished."

  "I wouldn't count on that," Grayson said.

  I didn't break my neck going back to the elevators. The idea that police officers are "public servants" tends to go to some people's heads. Maybe that was the same reason John Miller was a former congressman instead of a current one. Maybe he resented the idea of being on call twenty-four hours a day.

  Right that minute, I know I did. Public servant be damned! June Miller had stopped by the department, without benefit of an appointment, a full hour and a half before the beginning of my shift. Nonetheless, she still expected me to show up, Johnny-on-the-spot, at her beck and call. And since she was far too good to wait in my humble cubicle, she had been ushered up to the more plush surroundings of SPD's "executive" level to wait for me there.

  Who the hell does she think she is? I grumbled irritably to myself as I stepped onto the Public Safety Building's crowded, slow-boat elevator. The goddamned queen of Sheba?

  Fortunately, the elevator is very slow, and by the time I stepped off it almost a minute later, I had pretty much come to my senses. After all, if a citizen shows up to voluntarily help with an investigation, the least the detective involved can do is not act like a total jerk.

  The chief's conference-room door comes complete with a single sliver of glass window in it that allows someone outside in the lobby area to peek inside. Presumably, that's so the person outside can tell exactly what's going on before entering the room and disrupting the proceedings.

  The furnishings are Danish modern-cheap Danish modern. They consist of a credenza, a single oval-shaped oak table, and eight matching chairs. There is a ninth chair as well. The cloth and basic pattern of that one are the same as that on the other eight, but that ninth one is a captain's chair with armrests on it. Seattle's chief of police may be in favor of the common touch, but when he's involved in something that requires the use of this particular conference room, you can bet the captain's chair belongs to him and nobody else.

  That Friday morning, when I paused outside the door and peeked in through the window, there was only one person in the room. Not surprisingly, June Miller had chosen the captain's chair as the one in which to sit.

  To say the woman was striking would do June Miller a serious disservice. Even sitting down, I could tell she was a tall woman with chin-length white-blond hair, a lithe, slim body, a long, elegant neck, and the erect bearing of a West Point graduate. Her hands were gracefully draped over the ends of the armrests. Her long, slender fingers-one studded with a very impressive diamond-curled slightly around the wood as if she were half asleep. Yet, the moment I pushed open the door, she was on her feet and wide awake, hand outstretched. A pair of startling ice-blue eyes sought mine.

  "Are you Detective Beaumont?" she asked.

  "Yes. What can I do for you?"

  "I came to tell you that he didn't do it."

  Mrs. Reeder, my senior English teacher at Ballard High School thirty years ago, used to be a stickler for faulty pronoun reference. I remember the speech pretty much verbatim, even after all these years, because she delivered it often-on an average of once a week.

  "You hounds," Mrs. Reeder would shriek, striking terror in our hearts and rapping her knuckles on the chalkboard for emphasis. "You must not use a pronoun unless a noun clearly precedes it. Unless one naturally follows the other, what you write becomes so much babble. People can't make heads nor tails of it."

  In this case, that same edict should have applied to speaking as well as writing. I had no idea what June Miller was trying to tell me. "Who didn't do what?" I asked.

  "The man you're looking for," she returned with an exasperated furrowing of her smooth brow. "The one whose sketch is in the newspaper this morning. I'm telling you he didn't do it-didn't do any of the things the article hints he did."

  I motioned June Miller back into the seat she had vacated and then settled into an adjoining one myself.

  "You make that statement as if you know it for a fact," I said.

  "Oh, yes," she agreed, nodding. "I do know it."

  "How?" I asked.

  "Because he told me," June Miller answered staunchly, as though the matter were already settled once and for all. "Because he said he didn't do it, and I believe him."

  "Does this person have a name?" I asked.

  June Miller nodded. "His name's Lorenzo," she said. "He happens to be a friend of mine."

  "Lorenzo what?"

  "Do I have to tell you that? His last name, I mean."

  The truth is, she did. It's a felony to withhold information in a homicide case, but I sensed that this was no time to play scare tactics.

  "It would be helpful," I said, leaning back in the chair. "What brought you here so early this morning, Mrs. Miller?"

  She glanced at the floor, chewing on her lip. "Maxwell Cole gave me your name," she said. "John and I know him. I guess you know John is my husband?"

  I nodded but didn't comment.

  "We met Max years ago at a campaign function, and we've more or less stayed in touch. I called him last night to ask his advice. He told me you had some connection to all this-that you were the person I should talk to."

  It was funny that June Miller could slice through the "special assignment" bullshit and reach Maxwell Cole in Olympia when J. P. Beaumont couldn't. Of course, I had a feeling that there were any number of bureaucratic, red-tape tangles that June Miller could cut her way through without ever having to resort to use of her husband's political prestige.

  "And how does Maxwell Cole happen to know so damn much about my case assignments these days?" I asked, attempting to control my irritation. It wasn't right for me to allow fallout from his and my longstanding animosity to land on an innocent downwinder named June Miller.

  "He said he was at a party given by Ron and Bonnie Elgin. Something about a charity auction. From the way he talked, I thought you were there, too."

  Thanks to June Miller, I now had a name to attach to the leak Captain Powell wanted plugged. Unfortunately, the name was mine. And when the good captain came around looking to lop off heads, mine would be first to roll. The fact that the leak was inadvertent wouldn't help my cause in the least. Bonnie Elgin must have mentioned it to some of her party guests when she got off the phone from talking with me. It was my fault for not cautioning her to silence.

  It was not yet eight o'clock in the morning, but already this was feeling like a very long day. "I wasn't at the party in person," I said, "but go on."

  "Of course, I already knew about Gunter Gebhardt's murder," June Miller continued. "In fact, I more or less expected someone to come talk to me about it before now, but according to Max, I guess you've been too busy following other leads to get around to interviewing the neighbors."

  "Neighbors?" I sat up straighter. "Wait just a minute. Where do you live?"

  "On Culpeper Court. Right across from the Gebhardts' house. We just had our house remodeled."

  "So you knew Gunter and Else Gebhardt?"

  Jun
e Miller dropped her gaze and pursed her lips before replying. "We aren't exactly best friends," she said.

  "What does that mean?"

  Raising her chin, June Miller's eyes met and held mine without flinching. "Gunter Gebhardt was a…" She paused, searching for the right words, then shook her head. "He wasn't a very nice neighbor," she said lamely, leaving me with the impression that she had backed away from saying something much stronger.

  "I'm not all that grief-stricken that he's dead, either. Of course, I'm sorry for Else and Kari."

  "You know them fairly well then?"

  June nodded. "Before she left home, Kari used to baby-sit for my son, Brett. I know this will be hard on Kari and her mother, but don't expect me to shed any tears for that unpleasant man. I won't, not at all."

  Every time she mentioned Gunter, June spoke with such carefully controlled vehemence that it made me wonder what was behind it. "I take it you and Gunter had some difficulties?" I suggested.

  She ran her hand over her already smooth hair, then took a deep breath before she answered. "He threatened to hurt Barney, to get rid of him."

  I was sure she had just told me her son's name was Brett. "Who's Barney?" I asked.

  "Our dog. A terrier. We named him Barney as a joke. You know, after the guy who used to be on TV-Barney Miller?"

  "I see," I said.

  "Threatening Barney would have been bad enough all by itself, but Brett and the dog were right there together. You see, Barney's batteries had run down…"

  "His batteries?"

  Had I missed something? At first I had thought we were discussing a real dog, but the only ones I know that require batteries are the little stuffed ones toy stores sometimes set to yapping in shopping malls.

  "For his collar," June Miller explained. "We have one of those invisible fences. There's a battery on Barney's collar. If he crosses a certain line in the yard, the collar zaps him with a little shock. But it only works as long as the batteries are charged. We're supposed to replace them every four months, but every once in a while, I'll get a pair that runs down sooner than the four months.

  "Barney's a smart dog. I don't know how he knows when the batteries are running low, but he does. As soon as they quit, he's out of there. Once I found him all the way up on top of Greenbrier, headed downtown.