Breach of Duty (9780061739637)

by Jance, Judith A.

  As I stepped out of my car, the young blonde I had last seen at Boeing Field came darting from the house. Dressed in a show-all spandex top and shorts, she carried a workout bag in one hand and a set of car keys in the other. She shot past me without bothering to wave or say hello and bounded into the Mark VIII. Watching her haul ass out of the compound, I wondered if young Mrs. Considine had not been invited to the coming conference, was not interested, or both of the above.

  When I rang the bell, Frederick himself answered the door. “I’m sorry about your partner,” he said. Those were certainly not the first words I expected from a possible murder suspect who, in the presence of an attorney, was meeting with a homicide detective.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Considering what you must have been through in the last twenty-four hours, I probably should have let this ride for a while—until next week even—but once I’d made up my mind about this, I wanted to get it over with as soon as possible.”

  “That’s all right, Mr. Considine. I went in to work today because working helps.”

  “This way then,” he said. “Since it’s such nice weather today, Mr. Drachman and I decided to sit on the front deck.”

  I followed him through the spectacularly appointed house and out onto an open-air deck overlooking the Puget Sound shipping lanes. I estimated the difference between this view home and Sue’s humble rental duplex several miles away would have been a few million dollars, give or take. The contrast was made all the more striking by my still too-vivid remembrance of the needless wreckage, human and otherwise, Richie Danielson had left in his wake.

  “I didn’t know if you’d eaten or not, so I had the cook make up a platter of sandwiches,” Frederick Considine was saying. “And there are sodas, iced tea, lemonade, wine…”

  I’d eaten nothing all day, not since those few bites of Ron Peters’ leftover vegetarian pizza the night before. Nonetheless, at three o’clock the following afternoon I still wasn’t hungry. “Nothing for me, thanks.”

  Caleb Drachman was seated at a graceful wrought-iron table. On it was a platter heaped high with sandwiches as well as a silver tray set with pitchers of beverages, an ice bucket, and a collection of crystal glasses. Dressed in a spiffy bow tie, crisply pressed trousers, and wing-tip shoes, the impeccable Mr. Drachman looked like someone ready for a courtroom appearance rather than a deckside picnic.

  Seeing him there, out of place and yet totally at ease, I couldn’t help comparing him to Ralph. As long as I’ve known Ralph Ames, I’ve never seen him in a bow tie. As long as I’ve known Caleb Drachman, I’ve never seen him without one. That small difference aside, however, the two of them could just as well be twins. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that they patronize the same brand of upscale clothiers. And, regardless of the circumstances, they both come across as totally together.

  While I was feeling tired and worn and frayed around the edges, Drachman was anything but. The jacket of his expensive suit was carefully folded over the back of a nearby Adirondack chair. Despite the warmth of the afternoon sun, the defense attorney’s crisp white shirt barely showed a wrinkle. Not even the stiff breeze blowing in off the water succeeded in ruffling his thinning reddish blond hair.

  “Good of you to come, Detective Beaumont,” he said, polishing off one sandwich and reaching for another. “I hope you’ll excuse me for eating. The only way for me to make this work was to skip lunch.”

  “You made it sound reasonably urgent,” I said, easing myself into a chair.

  He nodded. “It is. I’m assuming, of course, that despite what happened to Detective Danielson you’re still assigned to the Agnes Ferman murder?”

  “Yes.”

  Drachman looked at Considine. “In that case, my client has some information that could be of assistance. He has some concerns in that regard, however. Because of his family’s position in the community, he’s worried about unnecessary publicity. He’s also worried about prosecution.”

  “You know I can’t make any guarantees…”

  Drachman held up his hand. “From what he’s told me, I believe his worries are groundless, but I’m here to make sure your investigation doesn’t end up targeting the wrong individual.”

  “Does it have something to do with blackmail?” I asked.

  Caleb Drachman raised one eyebrow and nodded. Frederick Considine blanched visibly. “You already knew?” he asked.

  “We figured it had to be something like that,” I said.

  “Go ahead and tell him,” Drachman urged.

  “It’s true,” Frederick Considine admitted. “Agnes Ferman was a blackmailer. She blackmailed my parents, both of them. And she tried to blackmail me.”

  “Over what?”

  “It’s a long story,” he said. “I had a brother once, an older brother, named Lucas. I barely remember him, but he must have been something special—a great kid, right up until he took a spill on his bike out on the road. His brand-new two-wheeler skidded and he somersaulted headfirst into an oncoming car. They brought him home finally, but he was severely brain damaged, in a wheelchair. He was fed through a tube and had no idea who any of us were. My father couldn’t stand it, couldn’t bear the thought of him living out his life that way. So he took care of it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “One day, Lucas was sitting in a wheelchair out here in the yard. Right over there.” Considine pointed to an expanse of sloping lawn far beneath us. “There wasn’t a fence here then,” he said. “Something happened to the brake on the wheelchair. Lucas went over the edge. His death was ruled an accident. Agnes Ferman said she saw my father fiddling with the brake a few minutes before the chair went over the edge.”

  “I take it she didn’t tell the police that part of the story?”

  Considine nodded in answer to my question. “She didn’t tell them, but she must have told my mother. I believe she must have threatened to turn him in.”

  “You’re saying your mother was the one who was actually the blackmail target? Why not your father?”

  “I’m not sure,” Frederick answered. “Mother had money in her own right, and she paid. Growing up I remember that sometimes my father would hint around that we should let Agnes go, but Mother always insisted we keep her on. Mother’s health was bad then, too. She developed MS. No matter what else Agnes Ferman may have done, I have to admit she took good care of Mother. She was paid wages, of course, but my mother also provided for Agnes in her will. She inherited my mother’s old Continental which wasn’t surprising since she was the one who did most of the driving in that car. There was also a sizable bequest left in Agnes Ferman’s name with the understanding that the money be used to buy an annuity so Agnes would have an income in retirement.

  “I was executor of Mother’s estate. I handled all the arrangements, but at the time there was one thing I never quite figured out. Going over the bank records, I could see that my mother had gone through a good deal of unexplained cash. It’s only in the last few weeks that I finally figured out the money must have gone to Agnes.”

  “What made you draw that conclusion?” I asked.

  “About a month ago, Pacific magazine did a big article on the bankers behind downtown Seattle’s well-known developers. The developers are the guys out front. Bankers, on the other hand, are behind-the-scenes kind of guys. They’re the ones who put the deal together. If it hadn’t been for Forrest Considine, the Seattle skyline would be far different than it is today. Somebody at the Times must have figured that out. My dad was prominently featured in the article. Did you happen to see it?”

  I shook my head. Pacific is a Sunday supplement to the Seattle Times, but it’s not something I necessarily read. My interest in newspapers still doesn’t stretch much beyond glancing at the headlines and doing the crossword puzzle.

  “Agnes must have read it, though. A few days later, she sent me two badly typed chapters of a manuscript she claimed to be working on. I was just going to glance at a page or two,
but as soon as I started reading, I realized she was writing about us—about our family, about Mother, Father, Lucas, and me. I learned several things from reading that manuscript. Number one—for several years after Agnes first came to work for my parents, she and my father were lovers. That was how things stood when my brother died.”

  “That’s all in the manuscript?” I asked.

  “That and more,” he answered grimly. “I went to see her right away. Dad had just had a stroke. I was afraid of what bringing all this up again might do to him in his fragile state, so I went to see her. Father’s ninety-three now and in a nursing home with round-the-clock care. I wanted to bring him home here, but he and Katherine don’t exactly get along. He’s old, bedridden, and virtually helpless. I tried to explain to Agnes that it wouldn’t be fair to bring this all up now when he can’t even defend himself. He’s lost the ability to speak or read. He knows what’s going on and there’s nothing wrong with his ability to think. But he can’t verbalize, can’t form a response.”

  “What happened when you went to see Agnes?”

  “She hinted around that she might stop writing—for a price. I told her I’d think it over. And I did—for about two seconds. What I really thought about was turning her in to the cops so you could deal with her. But then, for all the same reasons I didn’t want any of the story published, I didn’t want to bring the authorities in on it, either. I couldn’t see my father being dragged through all this, not when he’s practically on his deathbed.

  “What I did do was some detective work on my own. My father was always worried about losing records, so early on he had all the business financial records placed on microfiche. While he was at it, he had someone copy the personal ones as well. I went back through and checked. Sure enough, there was an unexplained lump-sum withdrawal that came out of my mother’s personal resources within two months of my brother’s death. The smaller cash withdrawals started then and continued until my mother was no longer able to handle her own affairs.”

  “That was about the same time Agnes quit to go home and take care of her own husband?” I asked.

  “No,” Considine replied. “They went on for a period of time even after that. Agnes used to come over and take Mother out for rides, ostensibly for lunch, every month or so. My guess is they stopped by the bank and my mother made the withdrawals in person.”

  “When did the payments stop?”

  “After we checked my mother into a nursing home.”

  I glanced around the spacious house. Knowing that the Considines could well have afforded a whole coterie of servants and private nurses, it didn’t make sense to me that first Frederick’s mother and now his father had been shipped off to nursing homes for their final illnesses.

  “I take it your wife didn’t like your mother, either?” I asked.

  “Katherine isn’t much for clucking and caring.”

  There didn’t seem to be any point in debating that issue. “Go ahead,” I urged. “What happened next?”

  “A week ago Sunday I went to see Agnes again. I called in the afternoon, hoping for an early evening appointment. She said she was having company earlier and wanted me to drop by later, sometime after nine. I ended up getting tied up myself. It was almost eleven when I called from the car to ask if it was too late for me to stop by, or if we should reschedule. She said no, for me to come on over.

  “When I finally showed up, I got the impression that she expected me to open my wallet and hand over money which wasn’t at all what I had in mind. We ended up getting into a hell of a row over it. It was the principle of the thing, you see. I have no idea how much she thought her keeping quiet was worth. Whatever it was, I have plenty of money. I probably could have paid the fare without even breaking a sweat, but the point is, this woman—this trusted ‘insider’—had betrayed my family six ways to Sunday. I wasn’t about to give her another damned dime.”

  With Considine spouting those kinds of self-incriminating admissions, I glanced in Caleb Drachman’s direction expecting some kind of reaction. While he was observing the proceedings with interest, he showed no visible concern.

  I said, “With more than three hundred thousand stashed in her garage, I’d say money wasn’t the issue for Agnes, either. Why do you suppose she did it?”

  Considine shrugged. “For the hell of it, maybe? She had gotten away with it for so long, maybe she thought it was her due. Or maybe she just wanted to press the envelope and see how far she could take things.”

  I suddenly remembered something Hilda Smathers had said about her half sister—that Agnes Ferman was mean. Maybe that’s what this was, just plain meanness.

  “Unfortunately, Mr. Considine,” I said, “what you’re telling me makes you more of a suspect rather than…”

  “Just wait,” he said. “Let me finish. Agnes and I had this big argument. Finally, I told her to go ahead and write whatever the hell she wanted, that after all this time people would just take it for the ravings of some crazy old lady. That’s when I left, but when I stepped onto the front porch, I almost broke my neck. There was a dog there, lying right in front of the door. It was dark and the dog was one of those stupid little wiener dogs. I never even saw him. It’s a wonder I didn’t pitch off the porch onto the sidewalk.”

  “A wiener dog?”

  “Not one, but two. And they both started barking at once. I was sure they were going to wake the whole godforsaken neighborhood. And then I saw this old guy. He was sitting off to the side and he looked…”

  “Just like George Burns,” I finished for him.

  “Right,” Considine said. “How did you know that?”

  “His name’s Malcolm Lawrence. He lives across the street from Agnes. He’s the one who reported the fire.”

  I had a fairly clear remembrance of what Malcolm Lawrence had said. He had told Sue and me that he had seen only one car at Agnes Ferman’s house that night—Hilda Smathers’ Camry, early in the evening. He had also claimed that he had gone to bed early without waiting up for the eleven o’clock news. If Considine was telling the truth, that meant Malcolm Lawrence had lied to us. Twice.

  “After I caught my balance and untangled my foot from the leash, I took off,” Considine continued.

  “Did you say anything to Mr. Lawrence?” I asked. “Or did he say anything to you?”

  “No. I was shocked to find someone there listening where I didn’t expect…” Frederick stopped talking because I was already standing up. “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” I said. “I believe I need to see a man about a dog.”

  Caleb Drachman smiled and nodded. “I thought you would,” he said.

  Twenty

  For me, hindsight is always twenty-twenty. As I roared out of Frederick Considine’s Lincoln-littered backyard, my thoughts were entirely on Malcolm Lawrence and his two obnoxious dogs. And on what would have prompted him to lie to me.

  If I’d still had a partner, I would have wanted that partner along. But I didn’t have one. Given my track record, as well as the weight of squad-room superstition, I knew that none of my fellow detectives would be jumping at the chance to team up with me. The word was out on the fifth floor: As far as partners are concerned, J. P. Beaumont is bad news.Besides, I told myself,Malcolm Lawrence is a little old guy whose bones would probably fly apart if anyone gave him a hard shake. I was pretty sure I could handle anything Lawrence dished out.

  Furthermore, and this was the real deciding factor, Wingard Court North was only a matter of blocks away from where I was at that moment. Why fool around?

  In actual fact, I didn’t even make it all the way to Wingard Court before I ran into Malcolm Lawrence himself, accompanied by the two dogs. The three of them were hobbling along on North 137th when I turned in off Greenwood. I parked the car about a block ahead of them and waited until they caught up.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Lawrence,” I said, fighting to be heard over the yapping of the dogs.

  He
yanked on the two leashes. Eventually the dogs quieted and sat. Lawrence looked at me in seemingly embarrassed befuddlement. “Detective…”

  “Detective Beaumont,” I supplied.

  “That’s right. What can I do for you?”

  I didn’t beat around the bush. “You can tell me why you lied to me, Mr. Lawrence.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, you do. You told my partner and me that you went to bed before eleven the night Agnes Ferman died. You also said that you didn’t see any vehicles at Agnes Ferman’s house that Sunday night other than her sister’s Camry. The problem is, Mr. Lawrence, I have a witness who places you on the porch of Agnes Ferman’s house well after eleven.”

  “I didn’t really lie to you,” Lawrence said quickly. “I was actually lying to Becky. You just got caught up in the middle of it.”

  “You were lying to your wife?”

  “I told you,” he said. “She’s the jealous type. Most men my age probably would be complimented, but Becky goes to bed so dang early. And after she does, there’s nobody to talk to or nothin’. It just gets kinda lonesome, is all.”

  “Lonesome?”

  He nodded. “So me and the puppies here took to going over to Aggie’s house of an evening, just to visit and have ourselves a little nightcap sometimes. Just one, mind you. Never had two drinks in a row. Just one to sorta relax you, if you know what I mean. And over the months, Aggie and I just got to be…well, you know…friends.”

  “Friends?”

  “Well, maybe a bit more than friends,” he admitted. “She was lonesome, too, and one thing more or less led to another. Believe me, Detective Beaumont, for her age, she was a good-looking woman. Good bones, you know. And sexy as all get out.”