Breach of Duty (9780061739637)

by Jance, Judith A.

  “It looks that way,” I agreed.

  One cup of Sleepytime was more than enough for me. We shot the breeze for a little longer and then I headed back home to Belltown Terrace. It was past midnight when I slipped off my shoes and settled into the recliner to try to gain some perspective on what had been a deceptively tough day. Nothing much had happened and yet so much had changed—and not for the better, either.

  Had I been gifted with Henry Leaping Deer’s ability to see through the mists, I might have realized that I was a man standing at the bottom of a mountain peak, totally unaware that far above me a chunk of ice and snow had broken free from a cliff and started downward. Silent and deadly, an avalanche was headed my way and I had yet to figure it out.

  Lulled by the Sleepytime, I soon fell sound asleep. The next thing I knew, it was four o’clock in the morning, I was still in the recliner, and my back was killing me. That’s one of the things I miss most now that I’m not married. There’s nobody around to wake me up and tell me it’s time to go to bed.

  Ten

  I woke up the next morning determined to do my job, the job the City of Seattle pays me to do, which is to say, find killers. I went to the office intending to stop off only long enough to collect my partner and a white charger—in this case a Chevy Caprice. After that, my game plan consisted of going straight to Marysville, interviewing Hilda Smathers, and then doing whatever was necessary to track down whoever had killed poor old Agnes Ferman.

  As soon as those words crossed my mind, I had to revise them. Agnes may have been relatively old and unfortunate, but she certainly wasn’t poor. She was, however, most certainly dead.

  Getting into the office worked fine. Getting out again didn’t. On the first day of a new assignment, most middle managers are smart enough to let things ride. Maintaining things as is gives the new guy an opportunity to see what works and what doesn’t before he sets out to reinvent the wheel. Kramer was the exception that proves the rule.

  His briefing that first morning—a meeting that in Powell’s day would have taken ten minutes at the outside—lasted an interminable hour and a half. By the time Sue and I headed for the garage, I was fuming, but Sue Danielson was on a tear.

  “If I’d had to listen to that arrogant asshole for one more minute, I think I would have puked,” she said once we were finally alone in the car. “What does he think we are, a bunch of little kids? And why should we write up our goals and objectives? Our job is to catch killers, what’s so mysterious about that? And which is finding Agnes Ferman’s killer? Is that a goal or is it an objective?”

  “Don’t worry,” I told her. “This isn’t going to last.” I said, “I think Kramer was a little nervous. The goals-and-objectives bit is just to let us know it’s the start of a new regime.”

  “New regime, my ass!” Sue returned. “He was just throwing his weight around.”

  “Forget it,” I said. “Now that we’re finally out of there, let’s get on with the job. Read me back everything we know about Hilda Smathers.”

  Sue opened the notebook and was reading back some of our interview with Mildred George when she stopped. “Do you know what I just realized? We still don’t know the name or address of the family Agnes Ferman worked for all those years. Help me remember to ask Hilda Smathers about them when we see her.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  For a change there was no big traffic tie-up along the I-5 corridor. Forty minutes after leaving the Public Safety Building, we stopped that day’s bulgemobile in front of Hilda Smathers’ somewhat derelict mobile home in Green Mountain Vista. An old, rusted-out Toyota Camry that had once been bronze was parked under an awning off to the side. Sue knocked several times, however, before there was any sign of life from inside the trailer. Eventually, after a series of squeaking floorboards, a woman’s voice came from the other side of the door.

  “Who are you?” she demanded. “What do you want?”

  “We’re police officers,” Sue returned. “We’re here to talk to you about Agnes Ferman.”

  “Just a minute,” the woman said. “Let me make myself presentable.”

  We waited outside for several minutes before squeaks approached the door once more. When it opened, the woman standing there might have been Mildred George’s age, but she looked much older. Her face was lined with the deep crevices that come from a lifetime of sucking on burning tobacco. Her voice, too, had the unmistakable and deep-throated growl of a long-term smoker. Her hair, dye-job blond with dark roots showing, had been haphazardly pulled back into a bun at the nape of her neck. She wore a loose-fitting pair of sweats. The hurriedly applied lipstick took a sudden dip on one corner of her lower lip. In her estimation, Hilda Smathers might have been more presentable, but she was a long way from put-together.

  “You must be the two detectives Millie told me about yesterday.”

  Sue nodded. “That’s right. I’m Detective Danielson and this is Detective Beaumont.”

  “Come in,” Hilda said. “You’ll have to forgive me. Things are in a bit of a mess around here.”

  That was actually a gross understatement. The place was a pit. Hilda Smathers’ house reminded me of one or two crack houses I’ve seen over the years—places where the alleged adults have been so spaced out on drugs and/or booze that whatever children resided there had been left to fend for themselves through spoiled, rotten food and unimaginable filth. Fortunately for the rest of the world, Hilda Smathers appeared to live alone.

  While she went to clear a spot on the couch, I tried to remember exactly what it was we knew about Hilda in advance of this interview. The only thing I could remember was that she worked in a bakery or deli somewhere. If her home was any demonstration of her idea of cleanliness, I hoped she wasn’t in charge of keeping the bakery clean.

  “Here,” she said, indicating a spot on the sagging, soiled sofa where she had swept a mound of debris onto the floor. “You can both sit here.”

  The spot wasn’t nearly big enough for both Sue and me. “Go ahead,” I said to Sue taking refuge in that old standby—gentlemanly behavior. “I don’t mind standing.”

  Sue gave me a wan smile that I took to mean she, too, would have preferred to stand. Nevertheless, she took the proffered seat. Hilda Smathers reached down to pluck an already burning cigarette from an ashtray on the coffee table, then she plopped down on a worn armchair in the far corner of the room.

  “What is it you want?” she asked.

  “When’s the last time you saw your sister?” Sue asked.

  “Agnes was my half sister, not my full sister,” Hilda corrected. “But Sunday was the day I saw her—the day before they found her dead. I saw her that evening. It was around six, I think, although it could have been later.”

  “Why did you go to see her?” Sue asked.

  Hilda didn’t answer right away. Instead, she took a long, thoughtful drag on her cigarette. “It wasn’t social,” she said at last. “Not your usual Sunday night visit if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “What was it then?” Sue persisted.

  “I went to ask her for money—to fix my car.”

  “Your car wasn’t working?”

  Hilda’s eyes narrowed. “That’s what I told her,” she said. “But it wasn’t true. Agnes could always understand if it was car trouble, but if I had told her the real reason I needed the money, she would have told me to take a hike.”

  “What was the real reason?” I asked.

  “To pay the rent,” Hilda responded. “I own the mobile, you see, but I rent the space. I was two months behind. I was afraid the manager was going to start eviction procedures if I didn’t give ’em something pretty soon.”

  “And did Agnes give it to you?” Sue asked. “The money, I mean?”

  Hilda shook her head. “No, she said she’d have it for me the next day, but then you know what happened. She died before she ever had a chance to give it to me.”

  “How much money did you ask for?” Sue asked.
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  “I told her it was a transmission problem. That it would probably end up costing twelve hundred bucks or so. That way, after I paid the rent, I’d have a little extra—a cushion. What I don’t understand is if Agnes had all the money Millie says she did out in her garage, why didn’t she just go ahead and give it to me right then? Here she’s dead. I’ll probably end up with a whole bunch of money eventually, but in the meantime, I still have the landlord breathing down my neck.”

  There are things about being in the homicide business that still surprise me. Hilda Smathers’ aggrieved reply was one of those. Her whole attitude implied that Agnes Ferman had a hell of a lot of nerve to up and die without giving Hilda the money she wanted even though she had lied about her reasons for needing it. This was another one of those cases where that handy term “unbelievable” barely did the situation justice.

  “You don’t sound particularly sorry that she’s dead,” I observed.

  Blowing a long plume of smoke, Hilda Smathers turned to study me for some time before she replied. “I’m not,” she said. “Agnes was mean as they come. To almost everybody—her husband, her brother, Millie. I tried to get along with her. She liked me, you see, but only because I was the baby. Because she thought she could boss me around.”

  “Did she?” Sue asked. “Boss you around?”

  “I let her think she did,” Hilda replied. “But I still did pretty much what I damn well pleased. That’s what you have to do with people like that—humor them, but go around them, too.”

  In my pants pocket, my silent pager vibrated against my leg. Choosing to ignore it, I continued with the interview. “What can you tell us about Mildred?” I asked.

  Hilda blinked. “Millie? What about her? We’re sisters-in-law, but friends, too.”

  “You also knew Andy’s first wife, Betty?” I asked.

  Hilda nodded. “Once, a long time ago, I lived with Betty and Andy for a few months,” she said. “Agnes never believed it, but Betty was a mess. The best thing that ever happened to Andrew was when he dumped Betty in favor of Millie. She’s an absolute gem.”

  “Mildred George seems to have the same high regard for you as you have for her,” Sue said. “She told us that you’ve been a real lifesaver in the past year or two since her husband has been so sick.”

  Hilda ducked her head at the unexpected compliment. “I try,” she said. “Andy and Millie have been good to me and my girls over the years. Helping them out a little now is the least I could do.”

  I noticed, however, that we’d strayed off the subject a bit. “Tell us about Mildred,” I urged again.

  “What about her?”

  “Is she the kind of woman who might cheat on her husband?”

  “Cheat?” Hilda repeated, as her eyes met and held mine. “What’s there to cheat on? Half the time Andy doesn’t even know who she is. She keeps a roof over his head and sees to it that he eats. She makes sure there’s someone there to take care of him twenty-four hours a day. At night she has to keep him tied in his bed to keep him from wandering around loose or burning the house down. When a man’s that far gone, who’s to say what’s cheating and what isn’t?”

  “I take it you know about her boyfriend, then?” No one had told us for sure that Mildred’s boss, Lonnie Olson, was also her boyfriend. Hilda’s response, however, went a long way toward confirming it.

  Her eyes narrowed. She stubbed out the cigarette and turned to face me with her arms folded stubbornly across her chest. “What I know is this,” she said. “After what Millie’s been through these past few years, she’s entitled to whatever happiness she can find wherever she can find it.”

  “On the Sunday night in question, she claims she was home all evening long. You wouldn’t by any chance be able to confirm that, would you?” I asked.

  Hilda glared at me. “If Millie says she was home, she was home, and that’s that,” Hilda said. “You’re not trying to say that she had something to do with what happened to Agnes, are you?”

  “It’s our job to eliminate all possibilities,” I said. “We need to verify her whereabouts at the time in question. Your whereabouts as well, for that matter.”

  “Mine!” Hilda blurted.

  “Yes. After you left Agnes Ferman’s house that Sunday night, where did you go?”

  Hilda bit her lip. “The reservation.” She said the words so softly I could barely make them out.

  “The reservation?”

  “The Tulalip,” she said. “To the casino. I go there sometimes on my time off. When I’m not helping Millie with Andy, that is.”

  “Was there anyone there that night who would remember seeing you?”

  “I doubt it,” she said. “A week ago Sunday is a long time back for people in a place like that. They don’t remember who’s there from one night to the next. Over a week later, I’m sure no one would remember. I did win a jackpot that night, though. It happened just before closing. I won three hundred and fifty bucks at electronic blackjack. I don’t know how those things work, but there might be some record of that.”

  As Sue jotted the information into her notebook, I considered our next move. In the course of talking to her, Hilda Smathers hadn’t made a very good impression on me. And knowing she’d had enough money to go gambling after trying to dupe her sister out of more than a thousand dollars for bogus car repairs, I couldn’t help tweaking her ever so slightly.

  “So then, after winning that much money, I assume you went ahead and paid off at least one of those months of back rent, right?”

  “That wasn’t rent money,” Hilda replied indignantly. “That was gambling money.”

  “I see,” I said, although I didn’t see at all.

  Meanwhile, Sue veered off onto another topic. “From what you said, I assume you know all about the fortune in cash hidden in Agnes Ferman’s garage.”

  Hilda nodded.

  “Would you have any idea where the money came from?”

  Hilda Smathers shook her head. “None at all. Agnes always said she had money. How much was it again?”

  “Just over three hundred thousand dollars.”

  Hilda shook her head. “I never would have dreamed she’d have that much. The Considines were well-off but they weren’t that well-off.”

  “The who?”

  “The Considines. The people Agnes worked for all those years. She started out as a nurse to the older son, Lucas. There was something the matter with him, with Lucas, but I never really knew what it was. Freddy came along a few years later. I’m not exactly sure what happened. Something went wrong after that second pregnancy. Regina, the mother, was pretty much an invalid from then on. Agnes took care of the boys as long as they needed her. Later on she was Mrs. Considine’s full-time nurse.”

  “Trained nurse?”

  “Well, companion, then. She looked after Mrs. Considine. Did whatever needed to be done.”

  “Any relation to Forrest Considine?” I asked, thinking of the man who had started one of the local Washington state banks—a bank that had long since been merged into oblivion with one of the large multistate conglomerates.

  Hilda Smathers nodded. “Forrest. I’m pretty sure that’s the father’s name,” she said. “I think they started out originally in timber—both his family and Regina’s—somewhere up around Stanwood. At any rate, Regina had money in her own right. Rumor had it that during Prohibition Forrest had some involvement in bootlegging. All I know is, by the end of the Depression when everybody else was flat broke, the Considines had plenty of money. That’s when Forrest made his move into banking. From what Agnes told me, the two boys never wanted for anything except good sense, maybe.”

  “And the Considines were the only people Agnes ever worked for?”

  “As far as I know,” Hilda responded. “They treated her very well, too—almost like family. Still, she might have done work on the side for someone else that I never knew anything about.”

  “Do you know where the Considines are now?” Sue was ask
ing.

  “The mother and one of the boys—Lucas, I believe—are both dead now,” Hilda answered. “The last I heard, Forrest was in a nursing home somewhere in Seattle or maybe Shoreline. I don’t know anything at all about Freddy.”

  We stayed a little while longer. When we finally got back in the Caprice, Sue leaned back against the headrest and closed her eyes. “I guess that answers at least one of your questions from yesterday,” she said.

  “What question is that?”

  “About why there weren’t any services scheduled in the aftermath of Agnes Ferman’s death. Nobody gave a damn about her one way or the other. Where to?”

  “Sounds like time to visit the reservation.” Sue nodded.

  Heading toward the casino, I thought about Sue’s previous statement for some time. “That’s not true,” I said finally.

  “What’s not true?”

  “By actual count,” I said, “we’ve interviewed a total of four people so far. Three of those definitely fit in the ‘don’t care’ category, but I’m not so sure about number four.”

  “Who’s that?” Sue asked.

  “Malcolm Lawrence,” I said. “Somehow, I picked up the impression that he actually liked the old bat.”

  “Really?” Sue said. “It didn’t seem that way to me, but then…”

  Before she could finish that thought, the voice of one of the dispatch operators came over the radio. “Where are you?” he asked, when Sue responded.

  “Everett,” she said. “We’re up here interviewing a next of kin. We’re on our way to the Tulalip Casino in an attempt to verify an alibi.”

  “You’d better put that on the back burner for the time being. Sergeant Watkins has been looking all over for you.” Remembering the page, I checked the display. Sure enough, there was the number for Watty’s extension.

  “Put me through to him then,” Sue said impatiently.

  “Sergeant Watkins,” she said a few seconds later. “This is Detective Danielson. Dispatch said you wanted us. What’s up?”

  “Is Beaumont with you?”