Taking the Fifth (9780061760891)

by Jance, Judith A.

  Then there was Ray Holman, the guy on the truss high above the theater stage whom Osgood had called the flyman. I had seen him working, but I had heard very little from him. He had seemed to be a taciturn man with his head always buried in some piece of equipment or other, someone who was always around but who blended into the woodwork. What was going on behind that silent, workaholic mask of his?

  And then there was Ed Waverly. What about him? He was the one Jasmine credited with giving her a chance when nobody else would, the one who had been willing and able to put together a tour for her when she came out of treatment and wanted to change career directions. Waverly didn’t seem like such a hot prospect to me, but I couldn’t afford to ignore anyone.

  That left Bertha, Big Bertha the costume lady, as the only other permanent member of the company I had spoken to directly. Big Bertha had been formidable enough when she had chased me out of Jasmine’s dressing room during intermission the night before, but it looked to me like she spent a hell of a lot more time pushing food than pushing drugs.

  The upshot was that when I hit Greenwood Avenue North some fifteen minutes later, I had made zero progress. I still had way more questions than I had answers.

  My two backup detectives were already in place and waiting for me. So was Sergeant Lowell James. In one hand he held a bona fide search warrant with Dan Osgood’s address filled in in the appropriate blank. James never told me how he managed to get a search warrant that fast, and I never asked.

  The sky had cleared, although the ground was still wet. It was one of those early summer Seattle evenings when it seems like afternoon will go on forever. Greenwood Avenue is enough of an arterial so that no one paid any attention to the extra two or three cars parked here and there along the street within a block or two of 6886.

  Detectives Hawkins and Maynard, the backup team, circled the block to cut off any chance of an exit through the rear door, while Sergeant James and I cautiously approached the front. It was a modest white frame house with a small front porch. There was no fence and no shrubbery, only a narrow patch of grass badly in need of cutting.

  Sergeant James stood to one side while I moved to the door. With my hand raised to knock, I paused. From inside the house came the sound of a woman weeping. I listened for a moment or two, then tried the old-fashioned bell button next to the door. Nothing happened. There was no ring, and the sound of weeping continued unabated. After waiting a moment or two longer, I gave a sharp rap on the wooden door frame. The weeping ceased abruptly, and the hardwood floor creaked as someone came to the door.

  The woman who swung open the door was in her late twenties or early thirties. Her appearance was disheveled. She wore a pair of faded jeans and a paint-splattered sweatshirt. Her nose and eyes were red, her face was wet, and her shirt showed damp spots where tears had dripped off her face onto her clothing.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “Police,” I answered, peering over her shoulder to see if there was anyone behind her in the room. There didn’t seem to be. “We’re looking for Daniel Osgood.” I handed her the search warrant.

  Her hand clutched it. She crumpled it without bothering to look at it and backed away from me into the room.

  “He’s not here,” she answered.

  “Do you know where he is?”

  She shook her head from side to side. New tears coursed down the wet paths on her cheeks. “He’s gone. He left me for good.”

  “You mean he moved out?” I asked.

  I motioned Sergeant James into the house. He came through the door cautiously. He, too, glanced warily around the room before moving forward. While he crept from room to room making sure there was no one else in the house, I turned to the weeping woman.

  “I begged him not to go,” she said. “I told him that I forgave him, but he said he was going all the same.”

  “Forgave him for what?”

  She looked down at her hands, and her lower lip trembled. “There’s another woman,” she said. “I suspected for a long time, but the other night I knew for sure. He came home late. I could tell he had showered. His hair was still damp. He had used some other kind of soap, and he smelled of perfume.”

  I couldn’t help feeling some compassion for her. This was a woman with blinders on. If she was devastated by the idea that her husband was messing around with another woman, I wondered what would happen to her when she figured out he was a drug-dealing murderer to boot.

  “Do you have any idea where he would have gone?” I asked. “Relatives? Friends?”

  She shook her head. “I suppose he went to work. There’s a show down at the Fifth Avenue Theater. He couldn’t afford to lose his job.”

  “What did he take with him?”

  “Just a suitcase.”

  “Only one?”

  “That’s all I saw.”

  “What was in it?”

  “I don’t know. He was just zipping it up when I came into the bedroom. He didn’t expect me home from work that early. He was going to leave me a note. He wasn’t even going to tell me good-bye.” She burst into tears again.

  “How long ago was this?”

  “Two hours ago, about.”

  Just then Sergeant James came back into the living room. He was shaking his head. Hawkins and Maynard trailed behind him. “There’s nobody here,” James said.

  Hawkins was carrying a crumpled paper sack. “Have a look at this, Beau.” He held it up and I looked inside. I caught a glimpse of blue material.

  “The dress?” I asked.

  Hawkins nodded. “And a pair of white gloves,” he added. “He didn’t even bother to ditch them in somebody else’s dumpster.”

  “He didn’t think we’d follow him home,” I said.

  I turned to the woman again. She was blowing her nose, attempting to regain her composure. She seemed oblivious to what Hawkins had said.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Julia,” she whispered. “Julia Osgood.” Her answer was almost inaudible.

  “I’m correct in assuming you’re his wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you had quarreled?” I asked.

  Julia Osgood nodded slowly. “I told him I was sick and tired of him coming and going at strange times. I told him I wanted a husband who was a real husband. I wanted to wake up in bed at night and find him there.”

  “He was out late often?”

  “He works nights whenever a show’s in town, but the night before last he didn’t come in until it was almost light.” Julia Osgood looked down at her hands. Her lower lip trembled. “I didn’t worry about the partying, but knowing he had been with someone else…” Her voice trailed off.

  It wasn’t so much that Dan Osgood had been with someone else. He had actually been someone else. But I wasn’t prepared to go into that with Julia Osgood. Not right then.

  “And you think he may have gone to work, even though he packed a suitcase and was leaving home?”

  “Dan doesn’t miss work,” Julia declared. “He prides himself on that.”

  “What kind of car does he drive?”

  “A Honda Accord. But it’s in the garage; it broke down. The transmission went.”

  “So when he left, how did he go?”

  “He called a cab.”

  “Do you know what kind?”

  She nodded. “I watched him from the window. It was a Yellow Cab.”

  I turned to Sergeant James. He was shaking his head. “I’ll bet he skipped,” I said to him. “We’d better check with the theater. If he’s not there, we’ll issue an APB.”

  Something seemed to click in Julia Osgood’s head. She looked quickly back and forth between Sergeant James and me. “An APB? An all-points bulletin? For Dan? Why?”

  “Mrs. Osgood,” I said. “We’re conducting a homicide investigation here. We have to ask your husband some questions.”

  “Homicide?” Her eyes widened. She groped behind her for a chair and lowered herself into it. �
�You think Dan’s involved in a murder?”

  “Possibly. And drugs too.”

  She looked at me directly. “Oh,” she said. It was an acknowledgment, not a denial. “He told me he was getting out of it. He promised.”

  “Out of what?”

  “Cocaine. He used it sometimes.”

  “Did he sell it?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  There was a pause, a long pause, and then a much smaller “No.”

  Sergeant James was standing near the door. “Come on, Beau. We’d better go.”

  I nodded. If Osgood was trying to make it out of the country, there wasn’t a moment to lose. I turned back to his wife. “Would you be willing to give us a statement?” I asked.

  “I suppose so,” she answered.

  “Then you’d better come with us. Sergeant James can take you down to our office. You shouldn’t be here by yourself.”

  “Dan wouldn’t hurt me,” she said.

  There was a good possibility she was wrong about that, but I didn’t argue the point. “Maybe your husband wouldn’t hurt you, Mrs. Osgood, but some of his associates might. I’d rather you went along with Sergeant James. I’d feel better.”

  Julia Osgood nodded slowly, got up, and picked up a purse from a small table near the front door. On her way out she paused as she passed by me.

  “I love him, you know,” she said quietly. “I’m glad you caught him. Even when I knew he was using, I couldn’t bring myself to turn him in. Do you understand that?”

  I nodded. I did indeed understand.

  Julia Osgood turned away from me and followed Sergeant James out of the house. Maynard and Hawkins were standing by the door, awaiting instructions.

  I looked around the room. A gold-framed wedding picture of a smiling Julia and Daniel Osgood sat on a wooden mantel over the fireplace. The picture was several years old. The happy, smiling people in it were a few years younger, but neither one of them had changed very much. I plucked the picture off the mantel and handed it to Detective Maynard.

  “That’s him,” I said. “I know what he looks like; you don’t. Get copies made of that and paper the airport with them.”

  They headed out. I took the opportunity to use the phone. First, I called the Port of Seattle office, to let the port police know what was up. Next, I called the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab and requested a crime-scene team to come to the Greenwood North house and go through Dan Osgood’s home with a fine-tooth comb. My next call was to Larry at the Far West Cab Company. For the third time that day, I put him on the trail of a fare. I think he was getting tired of playing that game. So was I.

  It didn’t take long, since we knew both the company and the time and point of origin. I waited on hold until Larry came back to me. “They dropped him off at the back entrance of the Fifth Avenue Theater at five thirty-seven. Does that help?”

  “You bet it does.”

  My last call was to the Fifth Avenue. I asked to speak to the house manager.

  “This is Detective Beaumont,” I told him when he came on the line. “I don’t know if you remember me from last night or not.”

  “Sure, I remember. What can I do for you?”

  “I’m looking for Dan Osgood. Is he around?”

  “I don’t know. Let me check.” He was away from the phone for several minutes. Finally he came back. “Nobody’s seen him today. He must not have showed up for work. Is there a message, if I see him?”

  “No,” I said. “No message.”

  Julia Osgood had left the search warrant lying on the table by the door. I handed it over to the crime-scene investigators as soon as they got there. Since we were going by the book for a change, I had to flaunt it. I think it took the crime-lab guys by surprise.

  By the time I got to the airport, the port police had already made copies of the wedding picture. They, along with Detectives Maynard and Hawkins, were working their way through the ticket counters and gates, handing out copies of the picture to all ticketing agents and to the security guards at the various concourse entrances.

  They had done a hell of a job of coordinating. If Dan Osgood had been there, I’m sure we would have found him. But he wasn’t. No one had seen him. We all compared notes. The consensus was that, if Dan Osgood was flying out of Seattle, he hadn’t gotten to the airport yet.

  Leaving Maynard and Hawkins to work with the port police, I drove back to Seattle alone. So near and yet so far. I was frustrated. Instinct and logic said Osgood would try to make a break for it, and with his car out of commission, the airport was our best bet.

  I wanted to be there when the net closed in on him. I wanted to make the arrest personally. It’s an occupational disease with detectives. We all want that, to be on hand when the quarry’s brought to ground.

  But in this case, there was another overriding consideration: Dan Osgood hadn’t been working alone. And whoever his accomplice was, it had to be someone connected with Westcoast Starlight Productions, someone who, at that very moment, was down at the Fifth Avenue Theater working Jasmine Day’s concert.

  I glanced at my watch. The search at the airport had taken longer than I realized. It was nearly nine. The first act would be nearly over. Almost time for intermission. Almost time for Jasmine Day to meet whoever might be sitting in those two front-and-center seats.

  I felt a little stab of jealously then, an unreasonable pang because I wasn’t sitting there and somebody else was, somebody else who would be going out with Jasmine Day after the show, and later…

  I didn’t let myself think about later. There wasn’t any point in it.

  CHAPTER 20

  THE MARQUEE LIGHTS OUTSIDE THE THEATER were brightly lit. I pulled over beside the curb and stopped, leaving the car, with its emergency flashers blinking, sitting in a passenger load-only zone.

  An usher stopped me cold at the door. I flashed my ID in her face, but she was adamant. It isn’t often someone earning minimum wage gets to wield any kind of power. She was getting a real bang out of it.

  Finally, alerted by the disturbance we were making at the entrance, the house manager showed up to shush the noise. He told her to let me in.

  “I still haven’t seen Dan,” he said, once we were inside the lobby.

  “I’ve got to talk to some of the other people backstage, then,” I said.

  He glanced at his watch. “Intermission is in about three minutes. Why don’t you wait here until the lights come up?” He led me to a door that opened onto one of the aisles. When I stepped inside, the sudden darkness was disorienting. I stopped a step or two inside the door and waited.

  The stage seemed far away from me. On it, bathed in a brilliant spotlight, Jasmine Day stood singing. She was wearing the blue dress and the white gloves and the blue shoes.

  As she sang, she threw her head back. One hand held the microphone, but the other arm was outstretched as if to embrace the audience. The mane of blonde hair shimmered and gleamed in the spotlight. I wondered how many people besides me knew that under that wig was a little girl named Mary Lou Gibbon whose hair was practically shaved off because of a sick kid she had known twenty years earlier in seventh grade. And I wondered, too, how many people besides Ed Waverly, Jasmine, and J. P. Beaumont knew that the tour would end with that night’s performance.

  I brought myself up sharply. I couldn’t afford to have my concentration diluted. I was impatient, anxious for the song to be over, ready to get on with the task at hand. Somebody was trying to pin a double homicide on the lady on stage, somebody who was probably in the theater at that very moment. I had to lay hands on that sucker, find him and nail him.

  Jasmine’s song ended. The audience broke into tumultuous applause. A red velvet curtain rang down briefly and then sailed back up, allowing Jasmine to take another bow. After a third curtain call, the house lights came up and I looked around.

  The huge auditorium was nearly full. People had taken the newspaper critic’s advice. They had come t
o the show, and they were enjoying it enormously. When the clapping ended, the audience was still energized, buzzing with enthusiastic anticipation for the second act.

  As people began streaming up the aisle toward the lobby, I took a deep breath and started in the other direction. A lady stepped heavily on my toe, her foot reminding me of my last encounter with a foot—with Jasmine Day’s foot. I wondered if she’d let me get close enough to talk with her.

  It was the same old story. I had to fight my way past the same security guard to get backstage, only this time I didn’t have Dan Osgood to help me. When I pitched a fit and brandished my ID under his nose, the guard finally relented and allowed me up the stairs and onto the stage.

  I had just entered the dressing-room area when the door to Jasmine’s room swung open and Ed Waverly came out. His face was grimly set. Without seeing me, he strode to the back of the stage, where Alan Dale and several others were shifting the band shell into position.

  I stopped at the door with my hand poised to knock, but at the last minute I changed my mind. There was no sense in giving Jasmine a chance to refuse to let me in. So without knocking, I tried the knob, half expecting the door to be locked. It wasn’t. The door swung open.

  Jasmine stood with her back to the door, shrugging her way out of the blue gown and letting it fall carelessly to the floor. She was naked except for a brief, lacy bra. She swung around as the door opened. Her mouth tightened when she saw who I was; her face registered equal parts of disdain and disgust.

  “It’s you,” she muttered.

  She turned away from me as though I wasn’t there and reached for her black satin jumpsuit. It wasn’t done out of modesty. It was more like I was invisible, nonexistent, beneath contempt or notice, and she was busy with her costume change.