Taking the Fifth (9780061760891)

by Jance, Judith A.

  People who send their cast-off clothing to St. Vincent de Paul or who mail checks once a year to the Salvation Army pat themselves on the back for their generosity without ever being sullied by the grim realities of poverty. The donors to that kind of sanitary, twice-removed charity never see or touch or smell the recipients. Especially smell.

  Reverend Laura, on the other hand, lives in the trenches next to her charges. At that very moment, her room reeked of the unmistakable odor of unwashed destitution.

  At first glance, I thought the windowless room was empty, that the “she” Reverend Laura had mentioned had made a break for it and disappeared. On one side of the room a narrow, neatly made cot was pushed against a bare brick wall. On the other side sat a desk, an old, metallic green office discard, covered with several stacks of books and a disorderly scatter of papers.

  In the middle of the room stood a single dilapidated chair, a small table, and an ancient floor lamp with a fringed antique shade. The dim glow of the lamp’s single bulb provided the only light in the musty, darkened room.

  Reverend Laura followed me into the room and closed the door behind her. She moved past me into the shadows beyond the glow of the lamp.

  “He’s here, Belinda,” she said gently. “The man I told you about. You must talk to him. Come on. He won’t hurt you.”

  As my eyes adjusted to the light, I noted two shapeless lumps huddled against the far wall, near a door that presumably opened into a basement corridor of the office building above us. Drawn out by Reverend Laura’s coaxing voice as well as by her guiding hand, the two lumps moved in concert, slowly emerging from the concealing shadows into the light.

  The first lump turned out to be a grocery cart stacked high with a collection of bulging plastic bags. The second figure was that of a woman, bulky and shapeless under multiple layers of clothing. I would have known her on sight, even without the ever-present grocery cart. I had seen her a hundred times before, but I had had no idea her name was Belinda.

  For years she’d been a fixture in the sheltered plaza under Seattle’s monorail station. Depending on the direction of the wind and the rain, she and her cart with its collection of treasures could be found huddled against the wall of Nordstrom’s downtown clothing store or under the monorail entrance ramp itself. The ragged woman in her shapeless brown coat and scarf had stood out in a stark contrast to the well-dressed career ladies hurrying to buy lunch-hour shoes or purses in trendy downtown department stores.

  But construction of Seattle’s new Westlake mall had temporarily closed the monorail station. A high, impenetrable chain-link construction fence now locked her out of her favorite haunt. Driving past once, I had noticed she was no longer there, but I didn’t know what had become of her, what new territory she might have staked out for herself. Now here she was, approaching me tentatively like a gun-shy dog, keeping the grocery cart strategically positioned between us.

  “This is Detective Beaumont,” Reverend Laura explained. “He’s working on that case, the one you told me about. He needs your help.”

  Belinda’s age was as indeterminate as her shape. She could have been fifty-five, she could have been seventy. Weathered, wrinkled cheeks collapsed over a dentureless mouth, but her eyes, set in grimy skin, were birdlike sharp and bright. They darted nervously from Reverend Laura’s face to mine. Had the minister’s sturdy frame not been blocking the way, I’m sure Belinda would have broken and made a dash for the door.

  As it was, I moved carefully and reassuringly toward her, holding out my hand over the cart. Belinda’s limp fingers were cold and damp to the touch.

  “Hello,” I said. “I’m Detective Beaumont. My partner, Detective Lindstrom, and I are working this case together. If you have information that would help us, we’d appreciate whatever…”

  Belinda turned away from me and fell against Reverend Laura, clutching fearfully at the younger woman’s blazer.

  “But what if he doesn’t believe me?” she wailed. Her tongue tripped over toothless gums, making what she said slurred and difficult to understand. “What if he says I’m crazy, that I’m seeing things again? I don’t want to go back to that place. Please don’t let them send me back.”

  “Shh. No one’s sending you anywhere, Belinda,” Reverend Laura reassured her. “I’ll see to it, but you must tell them what you saw night before last. Tell Detective Beaumont what you told me.”

  Taking the old woman by her shoulders, Reverend Laura turned her around bodily until she was once more facing me.

  “She was so pretty,” Belinda said.

  “Who was pretty?”

  “The woman. When I opened my eyes and saw her, it scared me. I thought she was a vision. An angel, maybe. I used to see angels all the time. That’s why they put me in the hospital.”

  “And where did you see her, this pretty woman?” I asked, trying to keep my voice gentle so I wouldn’t frighten the bag lady further.

  “I got here too late to spend the night,” Belinda went on, one hand tentatively motioning toward the redbrick wall of Reverend Laura’s monastic room. “The cots were all full, so I couldn’t stay. It wasn’t raining, so I decided to sleep down by the market.”

  She paused as though searching for words. I felt my heartbeat quicken. A pretty woman. A blonde wig. The market. I kept my voice even, but it took tremendous effort. “What time was that?” I asked.

  Belinda shrugged. “Ten. Eleven. Maybe later. I don’t know. There’s a place down there by the parking garage, near that gravel parking lot. I go there sometimes when the weather’s nice. I fell asleep. When I woke up, she was there.”

  “Who was?”

  “The lady. This pretty lady with long blonde hair and a long dress and long white gloves and high heels. She was standing there by the stairway, waving at someone who was coming up the stairs to the parking lot from the waterfront.”

  Long white gloves too. I let the air in my lungs out slowly. “Could you see who was coming up the stairs?” I asked.

  Belinda shook her head. “No, but it was a man.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I saw him when he got to the top of the stairs.”

  “Is the parking lot lit?” I didn’t remember if there had been lights there or not, and I wondered how Belinda could have seen things in so much detail.

  Belinda glared at me impatiently. “It was a full moon,” she said. “Anyway, this woman waved at him like she was waiting for him, and I could hear him coming up the steps toward her. She leaned down then. She took hold of the handrail and leaned down and reached for her shoe like she had a rock in it or something.”

  She stopped. “Then what happened?” I asked, urging her to go on.

  “So I saw him, but only for a second. When he reached the top where I could see him, the lady straightened up. She had taken both shoes off. All of a sudden she went after him, pounced on him like she was a cat and he was a mouse. For a minute I thought they were both going to fall back down the stairs, but somehow he got away from her. He tried to run, but she grabbed him by the knees and pulled him down. The next thing I knew, she was on top of him, pounding on him with the shoe. He tried to fight her off, but it was like…like…” Belinda hesitated again.

  “Like what?” I insisted.

  “You’ll think I’m making this up.”

  “No. Just tell me what happened.”

  “It was like she was too strong for him. And too quick. I thought it would never end,” Belinda added.

  “Go on,” I said.

  “All of a sudden he got real still, but she kept beating on him. Kept hitting him. I could hear it. It was awful, like somebody pounding meat to tenderize it.” She shuddered at the memory, and her whole body trembled.

  “But she didn’t know you were there?”

  “No. I held my breath. I didn’t want her to hear me, to know where I was hiding. Pretty soon she stopped and got up. She looked around like she was checking to see if anyone saw her. First she looke
d up toward the market, then back down toward the water. When she couldn’t see anybody, she started pushing him.”

  “Pushing?”

  “Rolling, I guess. Toward the fence. There’s a fence there, to keep people from falling off the cliff. It’s pretty tall, but there’s a hole under it, a hole big enough to crawl through. She shoved him under it. He rolled down the hill and kept on rolling until I couldn’t see him anymore. I don’t know why he didn’t get hung up in the fence.”

  “What happened then?”

  “The lady walked around until she found her shoes. Then she took off.”

  “Which way?”

  “Down the stairs. The same way the man came up.”

  “What did you do?”

  “For a while, I didn’t do nothing. I was scared. I was afraid she’d come back and find me.”

  “So you waited?” Belinda nodded. “How long did you wait?”

  “I don’t know. Finally, when I was sure she was gone, when I was sure she wasn’t coming back, I got my stuff and left. I went down Western. It’s easier than going back up the hill with the cart.”

  “Are you the one who called 911?” I asked.

  Belinda gave a sharp, involuntary intake of breath. She drew away from me, shrinking against Reverend Laura. “How’d you know that?” she demanded.

  “I didn’t know, I just guessed. It’s easy to get to the ferry terminal from the lower end of Western, and that’s where the 911 call came from. Why didn’t you leave your name?”

  “I was afraid.”

  “Afraid we’d think you’d done it?”

  She shook her head. “Afraid you’d think I was crazy. Delusions, that’s what they called it years ago when I used to see things. This isn’t that, is it?”

  “No,” I assured her. “The woman you saw was real enough. And the man you saw is dead. Is there anything more you can tell us about her or him?”

  “Not really. I only saw her from the back, and after he got there, it all happened too fast.”

  “Would you recognize her if you saw her again?”

  Belinda shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “Did she say anything to him?”

  “No. Not a word.”

  “What did you do after you called 911?”

  “I was still scared. I didn’t know if I did the right thing or not. I worried about it all day. Finally, last night, I came here to talk with Reverend Laura. She told me I should tell you.”

  “Reverend Laura was right, Belinda. We needed this information. It helps us know who we’re looking for. You’re sure you never caught sight of her face?”

  “Positive.”

  “What color was the dress?”

  “I don’t know. A real pretty blue or green. I couldn’t tell in the moonlight.”

  “And you say she was wearing gloves?”

  “Long ones. Old-fashioned ones. The kind that come up over the elbows.”

  “Right, I know the kind. Do you remember anything else?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  I took my pencil and notebook out of my pocket. “What’s your address, Belinda?”

  Belinda moved closer to Reverend Laura’s sheltering arm. “I don’t have one,” she said plaintively.

  Reverend Laura patted the older woman’s shoulder reassuringly. “You can use this address,” she said to the bag lady quietly. Then to me she added, “I’ll have her stay here with me for the next few days in case you have to reach her.”

  “Your last name, Belinda?” I continued.

  She shrank close to her protector. “I…I…don’t remember,” she stammered.

  I waited, but it was no use. If Belinda had a last name, she had long since forgotten it or blocked it out. I closed my notebook. It was par for the course. Every once in a blue moon, you have a real-live eyewitness to a homicide. Belinda was one of that rare eyewitness breed. I was sure that what she had told us would help me arrest Jasmine Day for the murder of Richard Dathan Morris, but I wasn’t at all sure it would help get us a conviction.

  Defense attorneys make mincemeat out of totally reliable witnesses. And Belinda was decidedly not one of those. Not if she couldn’t remember her own last name.

  CHAPTER 14

  BY THE TIME I LEFT THE PIKE STREET Mission, I was already late to see Alan Dale. Instead of going straight to the Mayflower Park Hotel though, I drove through the misting rain to my place at Second and Broad. I parked on the street and hurried up to my apartment. I found the Jasmine Day souvenir program on the kitchen counter right where I had left it.

  Turning on the fluorescent kitchen light, I held the glossy program up so I could examine the cover photo. Sure enough, what I didn’t want to see, what I dreaded seeing, was right there—Jasmine Day in a long blue dress with elbow-length white gloves. The long blonde wig was there, along with something else. Shoes. Blue high-heeled shoes. Cobalt blue shoes that matched the cobalt blue dress. Cole-Haan, size 8½B.

  “Shit,” I muttered aloud as I sank into my old recliner, my thinking chair. Forgotten, the program dropped onto the table beside me.

  One by one the ugly pieces were falling into place. Bit by bit, the puzzle was coming into focus. The only thing missing was motive. What was the deadly connection between the stagehand and the star?

  Cocaine. That had to be the answer.

  The lab had confirmed it was a brick of cocaine we’d found in Jonathan Thomas’s pillow. That was the only thing that made sense. Clearly, Jasmine Day wasn’t the squeaky-clean reformed addict she had pretended to be during her second-act inspirational chat. And I found myself doubting that anything she’d told me later that evening had been the truth either. So, if she was involved with the cocaine, was she buying or selling? Was she dealing or using? And who else was in on it with her?

  In the long run, the answers to those questions weren’t important. Her involvement with drugs was nothing but an unsavory backdrop to the rest of the story. My focus had to be on only one issue, murder, and how Jasmine Day was tied in with Richard Dathan Morris and Jonathan Thomas.

  In that regard, Jasmine Day was my prime suspect. My only suspect.

  I used to think that as I got older it would be easier to turn off personal connection, but it doesn’t work that way. I had to force myself to lock away all memory of what had gone on between Jasmine and me. I had to blot out all remembrance of what had gone before and concentrate on the job at hand.

  With a sigh, I finally dragged myself out of the chair and went into the bedroom. I knew what I had to do.

  For a time I crawled around on my hands and knees, going over the carpet inch by inch. Eventually my patient search paid off. In the bathroom, on the floor near the sink, I discovered what I needed. A hair. A single long, blonde hair. I rummaged in several jacket pockets before I found a stray glassine bag to put it in.

  That done, I headed out for my tardy appointment with Alan Dale.

  I found him drinking a solitary cup of coffee in Clippers, the Mayflower Park’s elegant little hotel restaurant. He was sitting next to the window watching a busy remodeling project in the Times Square Building just across the street on Olive.

  Clippers was a brightly lit, open room. It’s probably eminently suited to graceful dining, but it wasn’t so hot for my purposes. I needed dark, not light. I needed seclusion. I needed a place where I could ask Alan Dale some pointed questions without having to worry about whether or not someone was listening over my shoulder.

  “Sorry I’m late,” I apologized, sitting down at the marble-topped table. “I got tied up.”

  He looked up at me as I sat down across from him and nodded without humor. “I’ll bet you did,” he said.

  Before, when I had tried to talk to him, Alan had been busy, hurried. His answers had been clipped, but there had been none of the undercurrent of hostility that was distinctly present now. I put myself on guard.

  “You said you had questions,” Dale said. “Let’s get ’em over with.” />
  Obligingly, I pulled out my notebook. “How long have you worked for Westcoast Starlight Productions?” I asked.

  Dale shrugged impassively. “Two and a half years, I guess, give or take.”

  “And didn’t you tell me that Richard Morris had worked for you before?”

  “Three shows that I’ve been on and a couple of other Ray knows about.”

  “But you didn’t like him.”

  “I don’t have to like any of the local hands. I don’t get paid to like ’em. I just have to get the job done. Morris always seemed to have his head up his ass, like he was really somewhere else. I complained about him, but he had a lot of pull with the local here. Complaints or not, he still got called out every time we brought a show through town.”

  “And this time you fired him?”

  “That’s right. It was the first time I caught the little sucker red-handed. I told Ed at the time that as far as I was concerned, he’d never work for us again.”

  “You told Ed Waverly.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Would he have gone along with that?”

  “You bet.”

  “Were any of the other local hands friends of his?”

  “Probably, but I don’t know for sure. I’ve had my hands too full with tech problems to worry about my stagehands’ social lives.”

  “What about Jasmine Day?”

  “What about her?” His clipped question in answer to mine alerted me.

  “Did she have any connection with Morris?”

  “No.”

  Alan Dale had given me a categorical answer. Truth is hardly ever that absolute. I looked at Alan Dale closely, and he met my gaze without wavering.

  “Have you ever worked with her before?”

  Dale shook his head. “I was doing Broadway-bound bus-and-truck shows on the East Coast when she was into heavy-metal concerts at this end of the world. Those two lines don’t cross very often.”

  “So how long have you known her?” I asked.

  “A month and a half.”