“That’s what we think, but because of the nature of your son’s illness, the medical examiner is reluctant to do an autopsy. You or someone in your family will have to request it.”
Forgotten, the Bible slipped to the floor as the old man used the crook of his cane to pull a telephone within reach. “Who do I call?” he demanded. “I’ll do it now. This very minute.”
I read him Dr. Wendell Johnson’s number. His hand shook violently as he punched the numbers. He sat impatiently, drumming his fingers on the table, as he waited for the call to be answered. “This is Jonathan Thomas’s father,” he said into the phone.
Evidently, in the space of a minute, Jonathan Thomas was no longer disowned.
“I want to talk to the doctor,” William Thomas continued. There was a pause. “That’s all right. I’ll wait,” he said.
While William Thomas sat on hold, an oppressive silence settled over the room. I looked around at the expensive, tasteful furnishings—the gleaming wooden tables; the burnished brocade of the sofa and chairs; the elegant pieces of crystal set here and there; the lustrous, broad-leafed plants.
It struck me as ironic that Jonathan Thomas, shut out of this house while he lived, was being welcomed back as a prodigal son only after he was dead. It was a hell of a price to pay. I wondered where, in the Good Book, it said that murder was more acceptable than AIDS.
Maybe it wasn’t in the Good Book at all, but it certainly was in William B. Thomas’s mind. More macho, maybe, and less dishonorable.
“This is Jonathan Thomas’s father,” he said again into the phone. “I understand you were treating my son. Yes, yes. I know. Two detectives are here with me now. They said they need an autopsy, that I should call you to request it.”
Again there was a pause. “What do you mean, it isn’t necessary? It is if I say so, and I want one.”
Dr. Johnson used every means at his disposal to attempt to dissuade the old man, but Jonathan’s father held on like a bull terrier. From hearing his side of the conversation, it was clear we were offering a cause of death that wasn’t AIDS, and William Thomas wasn’t letting it out of his grasp.
At last the doctor agreed, and Thomas turned to us in triumph. By then I understood why Jonathan had preferred to spend his last days in a squalid little house on Bellevue Avenue rather than in this sumptuous mansion.
His father was a bigot of the first water.
“They’ll do it,” Thomas said to us. “Tomorrow morning, probably. Is that soon enough?”
I nodded. “That’s plenty of time.”
Big Al cleared his throat. “When did you disown your son?” he asked.
William Thomas’s eyes shot from me to Al. “Why do you ask that?”
“We’re trying to put together a background profile.”
The answer evidently satisfied him. “A year and a half ago,” he replied. “On Christmas Eve. He said he had something to tell us, that he had to be honest with us. It almost killed his mother. We were better off not knowing.”
“Did you know his…” I stopped and rearranged what I was going to say. “Did you know his roommate?”
“Richard? Sure, we knew him. They had been friends, we thought, since college. We didn’t have any idea…”
“You didn’t understand the real nature of their friendship?”
“Absolutely not. Not until that night.”
“And what happened?”
“I threw him out of the house, right then.”
“This house?”
He shook his head. “A different house. Over in Sahalee. We got rid of it. I couldn’t stand to stay there afterward.”
“You said you knew about his illness.”
“That’s why he told us.”
“Because he was dying?”
Just then the front door opened and closed. Moments later a middle-aged woman wearing lime green sweats and trendy Reebock running shoes entered the room. Carrying an armload of dry cleaning, she stopped cold when she saw us.
“I didn’t know you were expecting anybody,” she said.
“I wasn’t, Dorothy. Come sit here by me.”
He patted the seat next to him. Obediently she came to his side. Dorothy Thomas was a good twenty years younger than her husband. I put her age at about fifty-five, although if she’d had the help of a good plastic surgeon, she might have been older.
“These men are policemen,” William Thomas was saying. “They’ve come to talk to us about Jonathan.”
“Jonathan?” Unconsciously, her left hand went to her throat, the huge diamond on her ring finger glittering in the sunlight. “Is something the matter?”
“He’s dead,” Thomas told her.
She looked into her husband’s face, her eyes wide, but she didn’t fall apart. She didn’t give way to whatever it was she was feeling.
“May God have mercy on his soul,” she whispered.
I suspected that God would probably come across with a hell of a lot more Christian charity than either one of Jonathan Thomas’s pious parents could muster.
When we finally left, I was relieved to be outside that heartless shell of a house, happy that we had to walk some distance to the car. It gave me a chance to let off steam.
“Could you do that?” Al asked me as we walked.
“Do what? Throw my kid out of the house when I knew he was dying?”
Al nodded.
“I don’t think so,” I told him. “Not even if he was as queer as a three-dollar bill.”
CHAPTER 9
WHEN WE GOT BACK TO THE DEPARTMENT, we contacted the Bellingham police and asked them to dispatch officers and notify Richard Dathan Morris’s mother. Back in our cubicle, I finished my part of the paperwork and rested my head on my hands while I waited for Al to complete his.
I closed my eyes for a moment, hoping the fatigue would somehow magically disappear. It didn’t, and for good reason. A glance at the clock on the wall told me I was well into a second twenty-four-hour period with no sleep.
“Let’s go get some coffee and some food,” I told Al. “In that order. I’m ready to drop.”
On the way back downstairs, we stopped off at the Washington State Patrol crime lab to see what, if any, progress they were making. My old friend, Janice Morraine, had been assigned the high-heeled shoe.
“My preliminary analysis says the blood and hair we found on the shoe match that of the victim. We’ve taken some prints off the shoe, but no prints with blood on them. The blood has been smeared though.”
“The killer was wearing gloves?” I asked.
“Probably. It’s a fairly expensive shoe, by the way. Cole-Haan, size 8½B. And it’s seen some real hard use.”
“Cole what?” I asked.
“Cole H-a-a-n. They’re manufactured in Italy. I’ve got people tracking the batch number.”
“Think you’ll have any luck?”
Janice shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine, but the color is so unusual that I’m hopeful. My source over at Nordstrom’s says it’s possible they’re custom-made.”
“Anything else?”
“Doc Baker says he discovered some trace evidence on the victim. Some hair. We’ll have that tomorrow morning. We also sent investigators back up to the parking lot above where the body was found. They picked up some material, but we don’t know yet whether or not it’s related.”
“You’ll keep us posted?”
Janice glowered at me. “Of course not. Everything we find out we’re marking top secret and burying in a file drawer! What do you think?”
“Just checking, just checking.” I told her.
Big Al and I drove down to the waterfront and elbowed our way through the tourists to Ivar’s Clam Bar. We both ordered clam chowder and coffee. We took our food to the outdoor tables and ate while watching ferry traffic come and go.
“Storm’s blowing up,” Al commented, sniffing the air.
“How can you tell?”
“Can’t you smell it?”
/> I sniffed, filling my nostrils with creosote-laden salty air that told me nothing. Looking up, I could see both the moon and winking stars.
“You wait and see,” Al said. “It’ll be raining by morning.”
Back at the department there was a call waiting for us from Bellingham. Their officers had been unable to locate Mrs. Grace Simms Morris. Through talking with neighbors, particularly the one who was feeding her parakeet, they had determined that she was out of town. She had taken a short trip down the Oregon coast and was expected to return to Bellingham by Sunday evening at the latest. The neighbor had added that Mrs. Morris would probably stop off in Seattle for a day or two to visit with her son.
That information didn’t leave Big Al and me much option but to go back to the house on Bellevue Avenue East. As far as we could tell, it was undisturbed. There were no lights, no open doors or windows, nothing to indicate anyone had been there since Tom Riley had taken the cat and abandoned ship late that morning.
“You got any bright ideas?” Big Al asked.
“Let’s leave a note for her to call us,” I suggested.
Al reached for one of his business cards, but I stopped him. “Don’t use that. It says Homicide on it.” I rummaged through my wallet and found a bank deposit slip with my name and telephone number on it. “We can leave this. If she calls my number and I’m not there, she’ll get an answering machine, not the department.”
Big Al nodded in agreement. We left a note on the door asking her to call me, nothing more.
We were on our way back down the hill headed for the Fifth Avenue Theater when dispatch came through with an urgent summons for Al. Molly, his wife, wanted him to go with her to Children’s Hospital, where their four-year-old grandson had been taken by ambulance for an emergency appendectomy.
Al dropped me off at the theater entrance. The doors were just opening. I flashed one of the complimentary tickets Dan Osgood, the P.R. man, had given me and was one of the first people inside the lobby. A program hawker was busy unwrapping a stack of programs. I bought one, thinking it might give me a little more in-depth information about the people connected with the show than I would find in the free program provided by the theater.
I tracked down the house manager and told him I wanted to talk with Alan Dale, Ed Waverly, or Dan Osgood. He took my name and ticket location and told me he’d pass along the message. He said he doubted that any of them would have time to see me before the curtain, but that he’d see what he could do. I had no choice but to settle into my front-row center seat, read my programs, and wait for the theater to fill up around me.
The glossy color program consisted mainly of action shots of Jasmine Day, singing and dancing in front of a series of lavish sets and backdrops. The color photos did more to show her vitality than the black-and-whites I had seen earlier outside the theater. Those had been sexy, sultry, inviting. These were also sexy and inviting, but there was a subtle addition, an exuberance and enthusiasm that was somehow lacking in the others.
I read all the bios carefully, particularly those of people whose names I recognized. Alan Dale came from Sarasota, Florida. His credits were primarily in drama, both off and on Broadway. This was his fifth show with Westcoast Starlight Productions.
Ed Waverly, the director and road-show manager, had been with Westcoast for a number of years. He originally had been with the New York City Ballet as a dancer, choreographer and director before signing on with the Westcoast company.
I read Jasmine Day’s bio with special interest. She had been born in Jasper, Texas, a town only some fifty miles from Beaumont, where my own father was born. For years I had threatened to go to Texas and track down my father’s people and let them know of my existence, but I had never gotten beyond the map-studying stage. That was how I knew about Jasper, Texas, and that was all I knew about Jasper, Texas.
The article said Jasmine had begun her career by singing in church and Sunday school and had gone on to become a rock star. Now she had moved away from her rock background and was hitting the big time again, only this time in an adult, easy-listening format. I thumbed through the book again, studying the pictures closely. I didn’t know about the easy-listening part, but she sure as hell was easy on the eyes.
The theater was gradually filling up and the house manager still hadn’t come back with a message for me. I finally got up and went looking for him, entering the plush lobby just as the lights blinked their five-minute curtain warning. When I found him, he was behind a counter, busy passing out hearing-aid equipment to a group of blue-haired little old ladies. I waited in line impatiently until he finished with the LOLs.
“Remember me?” I asked when I finally reached the counter.
“Of course I remember you, Mr. Beaumont. I took your message backstage, but they’re all up to their eyeballs right now. They said they’d try to see you during intermission, after the show, or tomorrow sometime.”
They could stall me, they could put me off, but they wouldn’t get rid of me. “I’ll try intermission,” I told him, but he didn’t hear me. He was already turned to the next person in line and was reaching down to lift the equipment to the counter.
I hurried back to my seat. To my surprise, the cavernous theater was only a little over half full, but the audience was far different from what I expected. Dan Osgood’s and the bio’s descriptions of Jasmine Day as a rock-star-gone-pop had led me to believe I’d be rubbing shoulders with black-clad, spike-haired, rock-loving punks. Instead, I found myself seated among well-dressed, lavender-haired ladies, some of them escorted by dutiful but mostly bored husbands, with nary a black leather jacket in sight.
The curtain was just going up as I sat down. The opening act was an impressionist who billed himself as PeeWee Latham. He did a creditable job of imitating all the presidents from FDR to Reagan. His material was good enough to tickle the funny bones and occupy the interest of his over-the-hill audience, but when he started wandering through Hollywood personalities, he lost me. Sitting still in the warm theater combined with my loss of sleep to put me under. I faded into a nodding stupor.
I was too far gone to force myself awake as applause escorted PeeWee off the stage. I continued to doze, dimly aware that the orchestra I couldn’t see had struck up an enthusiastic overture. The music was a comfortable mixture, made up of bits and snatches of old, familiar tunes. It lulled me further down into my restful slumber.
A crash of cymbals at the end of the overture made my eyes snap open abruptly.
Around me, the theater was completely dark, with only the green exit signs glowing dimly near the doors. Suddenly, a splash of blinding spotlight illuminated the center of the stage.
The cityscape scrim I had seen earlier in the day covered the stage, and in front of it, captured in a brilliant circle of spotlight, stood a woman with her back to the audience, a woman in a long satin, nearly backless, dress. A vivid, vibrantly blue, dynamite dress.
Long blonde hair fell in casual ripples across bare shoulders. She stood there in a provocative, sway-hipped stance, her body undulating gently in tune to the music. A microphone was cradled lightly in one hand, and her arms hung loosely at her sides.
She was wearing gloves—long, white gloves that ended well above her elbows. One slim, well-formed leg was thrust out from a long slit up the side of the satin skirt, and her toes were tapping in time to the beat. She was wearing heels, incredibly high, shiny black spike heels.
Jasmine Day had yet to turn to face her audience, but already I, along with every other red-blooded male in the audience, grasped that she was a very beautiful woman. There was an almost palpable sucking in of middle-aged paunches and a visible straightening of shoulders as the men in the audience came to full attention.
The orchestra’s introduction ended. With cat-like grace, Jasmine Day swung around to face us, her motions fluid and easy. Raising the microphone to her lips, she began a sultry rendition of Frank Sinatra’s hit “My Way.” She sang with the mike almost against her
lips, yet there was no fuzzing of the consonants. Her voice had a bell-like clarity and a resonance that made every word, every syllable fully understandable, even in that cavernous auditorium.
As she sang, the mane of her blonde hair framed her face, shifting and shimmering under the stage lights. Her eyes, a wide, opaque blue, never seemed to blink. The dress, a wonder of engineering, clung to every curve of her body, with no visible means of support except those shapely curves themselves. I was close enough to the stage to note that the golden tan on her legs was smooth, bare skin, not nylon. There was no hint of panty line under the sleek material of her dress.
She stood on the stage with her legs spread as far as the taut material of her skirt allowed, belting out the song as though her very life depended on it, pouring herself into the music until she and it were one. When that song finished, it was as though the audience had been holding its collective breath. Around me people broke into ecstatic applause. This was the kind of music they had paid good money to hear, and Jasmine Day was giving them their money’s worth.
The performance was electrifying. Jasmine Day danced and sang, her voice swelling over the sixteen-piece band that backed her. Each song was accompanied by sets that, through Alan Dale’s technical wizardry, flowed on and off stage without a pause or hitch.
The first act was pure pleasure for me. Unfortunately, pleasure isn’t my business. When the curtain came down for intermission, it was time for me to go to work.
I headed backstage. A security guard stopped me before I even made it to the top of the steps.
“No one’s allowed back here.”
I was attempting to talk my way around him when Dan Osgood appeared behind the security guard’s shoulder.
“It’s all right,” Osgood said. “You can let him through.”
Grudgingly, the guard let me pass.
“Thanks,” I said to Osgood.
I had spotted Alan Dale and several other people near the band shell. As I started in that direction, Osgood fell into step beside me.
“Enjoying the show?” he asked. I nodded. “She’s something else, isn’t she?” he continued. “Better than I expected.”
Taking the Fifth (9780061760891) Page 7
