by J. A. Jance
I didn't tell her that I had already heard about Michael from Else. "What time?" I asked. "Say, one-thirty?"
"Yes," she replied. "Mother and I should be done making arrangements by then."
"Good. I'll see you there."
"One more thing, Detective Beaumont. Would it be all right if Michael came along?"
My first choice was naturally to speak to her without the presence of a support system. For a twenty-year-old whose father had been murdered, she was surprisingly under control. Over the phone, there was no hint of the inconsolable grief her mother had worried so about the night before. On the other hand, seeing both Kari and her boyfriend together might give me some insight into what had gone on between Kari and her father.
"That'll be fine," I told her. "Bring him along. Detective Danielson and I will meet you there."
As soon as I got off the phone with Kari Gebhardt, I called down to the crime lab looking for Sue Danielson.
"She's still here," the crime-lab receptionist told me. "Do you want me to put her on the phone?"
"Don't bother," I said. "This is Detective Beaumont. Tell her to wait there. I'll be right down."
I found Sue and Janice Morraine in one of the back labs standing in front of a table examining several unrecognizable pieces of metal, some of which were covered with what looked like charred charcoal.
"What's that?" I asked, looking at Janice. "Have you been trying to cook again?"
Janice Morraine's lack of culinary skill is almost as legendary as my own. My quip provoked a glare from Janice and a quick hoot of laughter from Sue Danielson.
"It's a melted pruning shears," Janice Morraine replied stiffly. "From the basement of the house up on Camano Island. Tim Riddle, the arson investigator, found it."
Camano Island. Melted pruning shears. Putting the two together, I didn't much like the answer those two items combined to make. "And why would a melted pruning shears be so interesting?"
Janice looked at me as though I were hopelessly stupid. "What if I could prove someone used them to whack off a few fingers and toes?" she asked. "Would you be interested in them then?"
"Yes," I said. "I suppose I would." I didn't add that June Miller had just told me that her friend Lorenzo was a part-time gardener. But before I could go into any of that, Sue took off on another tack.
"Tell him about what you found in the truck," she said.
"What truck?"
"Mr. Gebhardt's truck," Janice Morraine answered. "I don't know if you remember, but it was at the scene of the fire, and we impounded it, just in case. What we found turns out to be very interesting."
Janice moved back to the first table and picked up a copy of an evidence inventory-control sheet. "For starters, airplane tickets for two to Rio de Janeiro in the names of Denise Whitney and Hans Gebhardt."
"You mean Gunter."
"I mean Hans." She shrugged. "At least that's what it says here. According to his widow, the dead man's legal name was H. Gunter Gebhardt, so Hans may very well be his real given name. In addition to the tickets, we found fifty thousand dollars' worth of those slick, new two-person, either/or traveler's checks. There were also two fully packed, brand-new suitcases."
"It sounds as though he and the side dish were on their way out of town at the first available opportunity."
"That's the way it looks to me," Janice answered.
"What were the times and dates on the plane tickets?"
"The afternoon of the day he died."
I shook my head. Poor Else, I thought sadly. Poor, poor Else.
A few minutes later, Sue and I were trudging up the stairwell to the fifth floor. On the way, I told her about our afternoon appointment with Kari Gebhardt before going into my meeting with June Miller.
"By the way," I said casually, as we started through the fifth-floor maze of cubicles. "What do you know about salsa dancing?"
Sue stopped dead in her tracks. "Don't tell me you're into salsa dancing, too. I've never seen you there."
Hello. Did everyone in the world know about salsa dancing except me?
"You mean this is something you know about?" I asked in dismay. "You actually go to these places and do it?"
"Sure. I can't go very often because of the boys. But it's great fun. Some of those Latino guys are great dancers."
"Have you ever seen a tall, willowy blond there?"
"Almost every time I go," Sue sighed. "She always makes me feel like a total frump. Do you know her? Is she a friend of yours?"
"Actually, her name is June Miller. I just spent an hour talking with her upstairs. She lives across the street from Else and Gunter Gebhardt, who-incidentally-offered to shoot her dog last summer when Barney-the dog-left a pile of doggy doo in Gunter's front yard. Furthermore, June Miller happens to know our hit-and-run victim, who turns out to be a part-time gardener named Lorenzo."
Sue is quick. She never missed a trick. "A gardener?" she repeated. "You mean like someone who might be missing a pruning shears? Where do we find him?"
"That's where the salsa dancing comes in," I explained. "June Miller has offered to introduce us tonight at the Ballard Fire House."
"Of course," Sue said. "Today's Friday, isn't it?"
"What does Friday have to do with anything?"
"On Fridays salsa dancing is at the Ballard Fire House. But why talk to this Lorenzo guy at a dance?"
"June said he's terrified of cops. She claims that's why he ran away from the accident. I told her we'd meet her there around nine-thirty or ten."
"You think it's on the up-and-up?"
"Enough so that I agreed to go. Not enough for me to do it without a backup handy."
Sue started into her own cubicle, but she stopped again just inside the doorway. "By the way, Beau, do you know how to dance?"
"Not very well."
"You'll learn," Sue said. "It's easy. You'll pick it up in no time."
I left her and headed for the relative safety of my own cubicle and desk. I hoped she wouldn't slip and tell her son Jared about where she was going that night and with whom.
If he once heard about us going salsa dancing together, that lippy kid would never again believe that his mother's and my relationship was strictly professional.
17
I told Sue Danielson I was going home for lunch. We're not in the kind of business where it's fashionable to "do" lunch. The implication behind what I said, of course, was that I'd be dining on a homemade sandwich of my own making. The last part was a little white lie. There wasn't a scrap of bread in the house, and nothing to put on it if there had been. I solved the lunch problem by grabbing a sandwich from the downstairs deli, the one on the ground-floor level of Belltown Terrace.
Famished, I inhaled the sandwich, then turned my attention to my real reason-my shameful, nonmacho, secret reason for coming home at lunchtime. To take a nap. Even I could see the folly of getting up at three o'clock in the morning and following that with a late-evening stab at salsa dancing. There was a time when I would have thought nothing of such an arrangement, but age begets wisdom. Now I have better sense.
I set an alarm for one-fifteen and stretched out full-length in the window seat. The fog had burned off early that day. With the sun headed south for the winter, the southwestern exposure of the building as well as my living-room window seat were both drenched in a splash of warm sunlight. Within moments I fell sound asleep.
Sue had agreed to pick me up in a departmental car. I hoped it wouldn't be the Mustang again. So when I woke up at one-fifteen, there was plenty of time between then and our one-thirty appointment for me to check for messages. The only new one was from Ralph Ames, my attorney, calling from Phoenix to say that he would be in town on Sunday afternoon to work on our quarterly trust report. Did we want to get together? He'd call back later to try setting something up.
In addition to the call from Ames, there was one saved message as well-the call from my grandmother, Beverly Piedmont. Guilt-ridden again, I dialed her up righ
t away.
"Sorry. I didn't get your message until late last night when it was too late to call back."
"Oh, that's all right," she replied. "Don't worry about it. I was just feeling sorry for myself. I shouldn't have bothered you."
"It's no bother. What about dinner tonight? I'll have to go back to work later on in the evening, sometime after nine. But I could take a break earlier than that-say, around five-thirty or so."
"I don't want to be in the way, Jonas. Are you sure it isn't too much trouble?"
"I'm sure."
"Where shall we go?" she asked. "The King's Table? It's a buffet. There's one right down here on Market."
"No," I said. "It'll be a surprise. And it's also my treat."
"But…"
I stopped her in midobjection. "No buts, now. Just be ready by the time I get there."
I had to break the connection, then, because my call-waiting buzzed. When I switched over to the other line, Sue Danielson was calling to let me know that she and the Mustang were both waiting downstairs.
Caffe Minnie is barely three blocks from Belltown Terrace. It was still crowded with late-lunch customers, so the only available four-top table was located in the triangular, window-lined front dining room-not the best place for conducting any kind of confidential conversation. By one-thirty Sue and I were settled at the table and sipping coffee out of clear glass cups. Kari Gebhardt and her boyfriend arrived ten minutes later.
Even without an introduction, I would have recognized Kari anywhere. Six feet tall, blond, and blue-eyed, she seemed a carbon copy of her mother as I remembered her back when Else Didriksen was a senior at Ballard High School. The only real difference was a ranginess and muscle tone in Kari that pointed more to participating directly in athletics rather than sticking to the sidelines and serving on a cheerleading squad.
The young man she introduced to us as Michael Morris was a good five inches shorter than she was. My initial impression of him was that he was a handsome little shit with light brown, wildly curly hair, chiseled features, and an attitude. Tight-lipped, he sat down, crossed his arms, grunted his order for coffee, and then glowered at me while Kari ordered hers. I wondered what his beef was and was it with me or with Kari?
The uncomfortable tension between the two young people was immediately obvious. Kari seemed near tears, which wasn't all that surprising. Considering what was going on in her life, God knows there was plenty of reason for her to cry. But still, from the way she and Michael sat at the table-not touching; avoiding one another's gaze-I wondered if they hadn't quarreled on their way to the restaurant. If so, I had the distinct impression that the fight was far from over-only postponed for the time being.
"I don't know why she has to come see you like this," Michael said huffily, glancing around the noisy room once our waiter had delivered two more cups of coffee. "What do you want to talk to Kari for? She wasn't even in town when her father died. She was home in Bellingham with me."
"This interview is strictly routine," I explained. "When someone is murdered, the only way homicide detectives can get to know the victim is through talking to people who knew him."
My explanation wasn't enough to mollify Kari Gebhardt's self-appointed defender. "Why now?" Michael demanded. "And why today? Hasn't Kari been through enough? I mean, she and her mother just finished making funeral arrangements."
"I know it's a difficult time for you right now. For all of you," I added, letting my gaze linger on Michael's defiant face. "And I realize how painful it must be to have to endure this kind of interview along with everything else, but you must understand we can't afford to wait until later. With every hour of delay, the killer's trail grows that much colder, and we're that much less likely to catch him."
"Please, Michael," Kari said. "You know we have to help. For Mother's sake if nothing else."
Kari's appeal caused Michael's expression to soften a little, but his arms remained folded across his chest. "Go ahead and ask your damn questions then," he said. "Let's get this over with."
Sue started off with the basics-names, telephone numbers, addresses, that kind of thing. When she asked for their addresses and phone numbers in Bellingham, Kari flushed before she answered. "You won't give that information to our families, will you? About where we're living, I mean."
Neither Sue nor I made a comment, and Kari rushed on. "Michael and I share an apartment up at school. I had a female roommate to begin with, but she moved out at the end of last semester. I never quite got around to telling my grandmother that Michael and I were living together. Sharing expenses cuts down on costs for both of us, but I don't think Granny would approve. And I know Mother wouldn't.
"When we've been here in Seattle, Michael stays on Mercer Island with his folks, and I've stayed with a girlfriend. This time…" She broke off.
"I can see how this time things are different," Sue finished, and Kari nodded gratefully, relieved that she didn't have to continue. She seemed to be having difficulty making her voice work without dissolving into tears.
From the looks of them, I guessed that expenses weren't all Kari Gebhardt and Michael Morris were sharing. I remembered what it was like back when I was a horny young man. And it isn't so long ago that I've forgotten how such men think. For a sexually active young adult, it's a real comedown to go from living together to being split up into separate celibate sleeping arrangements in disapproving parental households. It's like a hotshot shift boss being booted back to the gang.
I wondered if Michael's role as Kari's surly defender wasn't a guise used to cover a more general distress that stemmed from the fact that Michael Morris currently wasn't getting any. He probably expected to die soon of pure sexual deprivation. I felt like telling him that doing without isn't fatal. In the long run, it's all part of the educational process.
"What are you two studying up in Bellingham?" I asked. I thought but didn't add, "besides the obvious."
It was an icebreaker-type inquiry, designed to bridge the necessary gap between presumably easy questions and tough ones. To my surprise, my supposedly innocuous question wasn't innocuous at all. The quick warning glance that passed from Michael to Kari put me on instant alert.
Kari was the one who answered. "We're history majors," she said. "When we graduate, we both plan to go for advanced degrees."
"What kind of history?" I asked.
"Twentieth-century," Michael Morris replied.
Kari looked at him, one eyebrow raised and questioning. "I told you on the way here, Michael," she said. "I'm going to tell them everything." She ignored the almost imperceptible shake of his head and forged on.
"We're both interested in World War Two, Detective Beaumont. Particularly the European front. We're doing a joint independent study project on the Holocaust that may eventually evolve into a joint Master's project as well."
I'm not a golfer, so I've never hit a hole in one. The feeling, however, has to be similar. With that one effortless question and without even having to dig for it, we suddenly had a pretty good idea of what it was that had gone wrong between Kari Gebhardt and her father.
Closing my eyes, I could visualize the rank upon rank of Nazi toy soldiers standing on the shelves in Gunter Gebhardt's locked basement. A lover of Nazis would be prone to think of what had happened to Jews in Hitler's Europe more in terms of "Final Solution" than as "Holocaust." Justification rather than horror. Rationalization rather than responsibility.
For some inexplicable reason, Kari, the Nazi-lover's very own daughter, had opted to identify with the slaughtered victims rather than with the perpetrators who were her father's heroes.
This was nothing short of a fundamental disagreement, but then that's how generation gaps usually work. Often, American children in particular seem to be programmed to oppose their parents' most cherished beliefs. I figured Kari was just keeping up her end of the bargain.
"Did your father know anything about this study project of yours?" I asked.
Kari shook her h
ead. "Since he wasn't paying a dime for my schooling, I didn't think it was any of his business. I'm not a dependent, you know. I'm on a scholarship, although when I need help, Granny usually slips me a little something."
That figured. Inge Didriksen strikes again. Everyone should have such a noninterfering mother-in-law.
"Tell us," Sue Danielson said, "what was your father like?"
For the first time, tears sprang to Kari Gebhardt's eyes. "He was a liar and a cheat," she answered.
Kari's tears proved to be too much for Michael. Frowning, he uncrossed his arms, leaned forward, and took her hand. "You don't have to do this, Kari," he whispered urgently. "You don't have to put yourself through this. Let's just go." He stood up.
I sensed that Kari was about to tell us something important, while Michael was ready to cut and run. "She does have to, Michael," I said. "Willingly withholding information in a homicide investigation is a felony. Now sit back down."
He sat, and I turned my attention back to Kari.
When detectives ask questions, they usually have some notion of what the answers will be. We had spent two days nosing around in what had turned out to be Gunter Gebhardt's very unsavory recent past. What we had learned pretty much agreed with Kari's simple assessment. Her father had indeed been a liar and cheat. I half expected her to tell us that years earlier she had somehow stumbled across irrefutable evidence of her father's womanizing-with some distant predecessor of Denise Whitney. I thought that would be the real basis of her feud with her father. I would have missed the mark by a country mile.
"He lied to us," Kari Gebhardt murmured. "He lied to Mother and me about everything."
"Everything?" Sue asked. "What do you mean?"
Kari paused, as if uncertain whether or not to continue. The noisy clatter of a nearby table being cleared of dishes by a green-haired busboy filled Kari's sudden silence. I was afraid she'd quit on us altogether, but she didn't.
"My father was born in a town in Bavaria, a place called Kempten. He always told us that his father was a pilot in the Luftwaffe, and that he was killed during World War Two."
