HIS PARTNER'S WIFE

by Janice Kay Johnson

  The end result was that he'd quit noticing her looks. He liked talking to her. He'd call just to see how things were going, stop by casually to do small jobs around the house he figured she wouldn't get to. She seemed to enjoy his kids. As far as he knew, she hadn't begun to date. No possessive man had taken to hanging around questioning John's presence. He and Natalie had an easy relationship that he savored. He didn't know when—if ever—he'd been able to relax around a woman.

  But she wasn't going to like having new reason to be grateful, he reflected.

  The damn ferry traffic was still bumper-to-bumper up the main drag. Drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, John strove for patience.

  His mother had been just the right medicine tonight, he decided. Strong herself, Ivy McLean expected everyone else to be as well.

  He'd left Natalie in his mother's competent but not tender hands. Her brand of coddling, he suspected, would suit Natalie Reed fine.

  Ivy McLean hadn't been the most sympathetic of mothers when her three sons took turns being heartbroken by high school femmes fatales or suffering knee injuries on the football field. Get over it was her sometimes impatient message. Stand up tall, focus on what's important. Football was not. Neither were teenage romances.

  Swearing when he didn't make it through an intersection before the light turned red, John grimaced. Come to think of it, not much that had mattered to seventeen-year-old boys had been truly important in Ivy MacLean's eyes. Grades, she cared about. Living honestly and with integrity. Accepting the duty their father's murder had laid on all three boys.

  In Natalie Reed's case, Mom would understand a degree of shock and would respect outrage. She would be kind in her brisk way, without encouraging an excess of tears or self-pity or fear. Hell, John thought ruefully, most likely Mom would buck Natalie up and have her ready to rip down the crime scene tape and move home tomorrow morning, to hell with the murderer on the loose.

  Maybe this hadn't been such a good idea.

  Earlier, when Ivy had seen her son out, they'd left Natalie listening to Maddie chatter about a roller-skating party.

  "You'll find out what happened and why," Mom said, chin set and gaze steady. It wasn't a question. This was what counted. She'd raised her sons to believe that any one man could make the world a safer place and now she was expecting him to get on with it.

  She hadn't said, Make an arrest tonight, but she might as well have.

  A frown stayed on his brow until he reached Natalie Reed's tri-level house. The crime scene techs were here, he was glad to see. A flash popped upstairs. The coroner hadn't yet arrived. She was probably stuck in ferry traffic. Every time one of the giant ferries docked, hundreds of cars poured out, clogging Port Dare's narrow streets.

  After parking behind the Investigations unit van, John got out of his car and stood on the sidewalk, making no move to go up to the door. He tried to put himself in the shoes of a stranger and see her house and this neighborhood with fresh eyes.

  The paint job—forest-green with cream trim, his doing—didn't look half-bad. All the same, 2308 Meadow Drive

  was not a showplace. It was an average house in an average neighborhood, one of many developments that had sprung up around the nineteenth-century port town. In this middle-income neighborhood, yards were generally well cared for but standard issue. Most of these were single family homes, owner occupied, not rentals. Bikes with pink tassels on the handlebars lay on their sides in driveways. Gardening was carried out in traditional flower beds mulched with bark, edging lawns that varied from the Porters' velvet green to the shaggy, brown-spotted grass surrounding the corner house. The Porters, John was willing to bet, wouldn't like those fluffy dandelion heads. Or the neighborhood eyesore that sat out in front of the same house, a rusting junker resting on blocks instead of wheels. Nonetheless, even at that house, a tricycle listed half off the driveway, and in the backyard a swing set shared pride of place with a barbecue grill. The lawn got mowed, just not often enough. Ordinary people.

  A neighborhood like this wouldn't have crack houses or marijuana-growing operations in the spare bedroom. Nor did these houses suggest real wealth. The cops would get called here when a mountain bike was stolen out of an open garage. Teenagers committed the few break-ins. Maybe a car prowl from time to time. Serious burglaries would be few and far between. Murder? Never.

  So why was there a dead man in Stuart's den? Why had two people broken in, and why had one of them been killed? A quarrel mid-crime was the obvious answer, but then again, why Natalie's house? Why hadn't two burglars carried the obviously expensive electronic equipment out before they risked taking the time to check out the upstairs? Had they parked right in the driveway, a truck backed up to receive stolen goods?

  Or were they after something else? Something small?

  What? he wondered in frustration. He'd have to ask Natalie whether Stuart had any collections that might be valuable. Coins? Stamps? Hell, he'd collected enough junk to have lucked out and hit on something worth taking. Or did Natalie have jewelry? She hadn't said, and John thought she would have. He remembered seeing her at the Policeman's Ball, drop-dead gorgeous in a simple green velvet sheath, but the only jewelry he could picture were sparkly earrings. Diamond, maybe, but tiny, not ones worth killing over.

  Figure out why murderer and victim were in this house and not the neighbor's, and he could as good as snap those handcuffs on. Unfortunately, the why was the true mystery here. Murders happened all the time, even in Port Dare. Just not this kind.

  He sighed. Better find out what the neighborhood canvass had turned up. Too bad the Porters hadn't seen anything. According to Natalie, they were the only near neighbors who were stay-at-homes and nosy to boot.

  Geoff shook his head when John tracked him down a block away.

  "Nada. Zip. Nobody was home. Not even latchkey kids."

  "Why am I not surprised?" John rocked on his heels and looked back. Meadow Drive curved, and this was the last house from which anyone could have seen Natalie's. "You get everybody?"

  "A few haven't come home yet." Geoff glanced down at his notebook. "Four. No, three. The place down there is for sale, and empty right now."

  "What about the houses behind hers?"

  "I sent Jackson. But what are the odds?"

  Nada. Zip. Of course. But they had to try.

  "Looks like the coroner is here. Shall we go hear what she thinks?"

  Elected in this rural county, Dr. Jennifer Koltes was a pathologist at St. Mary's, serving in addition as part-time public servant. Hereabouts they didn't need a full-time coroner yet. John was counting on it staying that way.

  A tall skinny redhead, Dr. Koltes was in her mid-thirties, married to a cardiologist. Currently, she was pregnant, easily six or seven months along. Maybe John was old-fashioned—okay, he undoubtedly was—but the sight of a pregnant woman checking the body temp of a corpse with a smashed skull struck him as jarring.

  Hearing their arrival, she glanced up with a pleasant smile also at odds with the scene. "Detectives. Haven't seen either of you for a whole day or two."

  The last body had been the result of a bar shootout. Neither victim nor shooter, both tattooed, black-leather-garbed motorcyclists, had been locals.

  "Busy days," John said laconically.

  "Well." She was already closing her bag. "Cause of death looks obvious from here, although you never know. We might be surprised when we get him on the table."

  "Weapon?"

  "Something darned heavy. Probably smooth and rounded." She pursed her lips. "A metal pipe, maybe. There are a few flakes caught in his hair that might be rust."

  "Time of death?"

  "I'm guessing morning." She groaned and pressed a hand to her lower back as she straightened from her crouch over the body. "Say, ten, eleven o'clock."

  Both men had both taken involuntary steps forward when she began to heave herself to her feet. Now they exchanged a glance.

  "That's consistent with what the home owne
r says."

  "Which is?"

  Geoff told her about the cat that had napped on the fabric. "And the old couple down the street, the neighborhood snoops, would have been grocery shopping about then."

  "I wonder," John said thoughtfully, "whether the Porters go grocery shopping every morning. Or the same morning every week."

  Geoff made a note. "Easy to ask."

  Dr. Koltes left after conferring with the uniforms who had been delegated to bag the body. "I can do the autopsy tonight," she said, promising. "You'll have my report tomorrow."

  Gazing with distaste at the corpse, John said, "Time to have a look."

  He checked back pockets—no wallet. Ditto for the pockets of the crumpled linen jacket. The jacket interested him. Men in Port Dare leaned more to denim or heavy flannel, maybe a dark suit if you worked in a bank or law office. This looked … hell, like Miami Vice.

  He called for the paramedics, who put a collar on the neck to protect the bashed skull for Dr. Koltes's benefit, and then rolled the body onto a gurney. Faceup, a man who could have been mid-thirties to forty tops stared sightlessly at the ceiling. Longish brown hair, brown eyes, a stubble of beard—this guy had stumbled out of TV land, John thought again. On a wrist that had been under the body was an obviously expensive watch, the kind that probably told you the time in Paris, the altitude and your heart rate.

  Sinking back on his heels, John contemplated the face.

  "Damn it, Baxter, he looks familiar."

  His partner nodded. "I was thinking the same."

  "If we know him, he's probably not a realtor or the manager of the Rite Aid pharmacy."

  Geoff gestured toward the watch. "Drugs?"

  "Could be."

  They stood back and let the photographer get full frontal pictures as well as close-ups of the face.

  "I want those as soon as possible," John said, and was answered with brisk nods.

  "Fingerprints?" he asked.

  "The victim's," he was told. "Half a dozen others. Mrs. Reed's, presumably. We'll need to get hers tomorrow."

  Feeling uncomfortable admitting it for reasons he didn't like to examine, John said, "Mine will be here, too. I used that bathroom just last week when I was treating the back deck."

  To his relief, nobody gave sly or knowing glances. Nobody made an off-color joke about widows—one that would have been deeply regretted.

  It helped when Baxter said, "Hell, mine'll be here, too. Natalie had Linda and me to dinner Friday night."

  He and Baxter took their time studying the den once the body was carted out. It was a room that could have used Natalie's lighter touch. John guessed that she stayed out of it.

  Stuart had smoked cigars, or at least liked to have one clenched between his teeth curling noxious smoke into the air. The smell, faded with time, nonetheless still lingered in here. Walls were papered in a masculine navy-and-tan-striped paper. Bookshelves held Stuart's favorite bedtime reading: Ken Follett, John Le Carre and the ilk.

  A monster, the desk was one of those huge oak ones that had probably graced the office of a CEO in the 1920s. The finish was yellowing, the top covered with a blotter. In its own way, the computer that sat atop it was as much an antique, a 385, maybe a 485. Forget Pentium. No telephone line to it, which meant no internet access. No CD drive. In fact, the floppy drives were for the outmoded bigger disks. The keyboard was covered, the monitor screen a little dusty.

  Using a handkerchief, John carefully opened drawers. The top one held nothing but paper clips, pencils that needed sharpening, a staple remover, markers and packing tape. The big drawer was set up with hanging files, all labeled: 1986 tax return. Ditto '87, '88, and so on through the year before last. MasterCard statements. Appliance warranties. Household receipts.

  On the face of it, nothing of any interest to anyone but the IRS doing a back audit. And, damn, was Stuart ready. No midnight scrabbling for torn receipts for him. It was almost a shame the IRS had never, to the best of John's knowledge, chosen to audit Reed.

  The closet held boxes and plastic-wrapped clothes on hangers. A cracked leather aviator jacket, ski pants and parka, a high school letterman's jacket. Some of the boxes were labeled: check stubs, photo albums, records. His turntable had probably given up the ghost, but he wouldn't have given up the records. A faint musty odor lingered in here.

  Baxter muttered a profanity. "Did Reed ever throw anything away?"

  "Not so's I can tell." John eased the closet door shut again. "Nothing unusual in here, though. We all have crap like this."

  "We'd better look in those boxes." He grunted agreement, however much he disliked the idea. Mining every detail was their job, but usually what he learned about people's lives was of academic interest. He made a mental jigsaw puzzle, slotting pieces in until every one fit. This time was different. Stuart Reed had been not just a fellow cop but John's partner and friend. Even more, he hated the idea of intruding on Natalie's privacy. "Tomorrow," he said.

  They tried the remaining houses on the street. One was still dark; at the two places where someone came to the door, shakes of the head were their answers. They'd been gone all day. Neither knew Natalie or, quite frankly, would have noticed a truck in her driveway if they had been home.

  "I say we go back to the station and look for that face," John said at last. "Even odds we have his picture in our books."

  "No point in waiting for fingerprint ID," his partner agreed. "Tomorrow is soon enough to look hard at the house."

  Mug shots were arranged into books by theme: drug arrests, rape, B and E, and so on. That way, if a store owner was held up, say, he didn't have to gaze at the face of every rapist or marijuana grower who had ever been arrested. He could concentrate on likely perps. This worked fine normally. In this case, however, the face could have been familiar for dozens of reasons.

  John's money was on drugs.

  The next hour and a half was punctuated only by the slap of a cover closing, the abrupt departure of one man or the other for another cup of coffee, and a couple of trips down memory lane.

  "Ha!" Baxter crowed once. "Remember our friend Jerry Canfield? Sending him to the pen in Walla Walla was one of the greater pleasures of this job."

  It was Geoff Baxter who found their victim. "Bingo," he said softly. "I knew we'd met."

  John rotated his shoulders and waited until his partner shoved the book across the table. From the rows of mug shots, the sullen face jumped out at him.

  "He was better looking alive," Baxter said.

  "Who isn't? No, don't answer that."

  Ronald Floyd had a lengthy rap sheet, starting with possession of cocaine when he was seventeen in Tacoma. Thirty-four the day he died, Floyd had stuck to his chosen career of dealing drugs and slowly risen on the ladder. The part that always amazed John was how little time a guy like Floyd ever served despite multiple arrests. The system was overwhelmed; he'd walked a couple of times because prosecutors had shrugged and decided he wasn't worth the bother. John knew how the arresting officers had felt; after all, they'd bothered.

  Memory nudged by the photo, he recalled being involved in Ronald Floyd's last arrest, which had led to four years in the Monroe State Penitentiary. Acting on a tip, officers had been waiting when a cabin cruiser docked at the marina. The hold had been packed with plastic bags full of white powder. It had been a pretty good haul, by Port Dare standards.

  Unfortunately, those standards were rising by the day. Half the border between Washington State and Canada was water: the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Puget Sound. The rocky, wooded Canadian Gulf Islands and American San Juan Islands made the waters a maze of spectacular channels and inlets. Pods of orcas tried to elude the ubiquitous whale-watching ships. Sailors and boaters were in paradise, with every island offering hidden coves. Green-and-white Washington State ferries plied the waters between islands and Canada and the USA, while the blue-and-white Canadian ferries carried traffic between Vancouver Island and the mainland.

  Paradise for sa
ilors was a nightmare for Coast Guard and law enforcement. Boaters didn't respect customs laws or international boundaries. Smuggling was a breeze—literally, as it filled gaudy sails on blue waters. Officers couldn't search every boat that docked at one of the marinas or anchored in the bay, even when they knew damn well some of them were here on business. Luck and tips led to the few big busts.

  Ronald Floyd must have made an enemy, because a muffled voice on the telephone had set him up. Officers had waited in the nighttime shadows at the marina while the pretty white boat eased slowly in, water lapping against the pilings. Floyd himself had bounded from the bow to the dock with the first line. The Port Dare P.D. waited until the boat was tied bow and stern and the engine snuffed. Two other men joined Floyd, all wearing jeans, deck shoes and wind-breakers. They'd talked briefly, laughed. Then the spotlight froze them as a dozen police officers packing guns and a warrant surrounded them.

  "Stuart cuffed Floyd," John said slowly, remembering. "I got one of the others."

  "I didn't make any of the arrests, but I was there." Baxter ran a hand over his thinning hair. "So Stuart booked the guy. That's not much of a connection."

  "But it's something. I've been asking myself, why Natalie Reed's house? Why not the one two doors down with the new sunroom?"

  Baxter shrugged. "Chance."

  "Or maybe not." Suddenly energized, John shoved back his chair. "What do you say we have a chat with some of our stiff's buddies?"

  * * *

  Chapter 3

  « ^ »

  Natalie came downstairs in the morning to the sound of a girl's laugh and a man's deep voice.

  She felt like the walking dead. She'd been able to snatch only bits and pieces of sleep from endless wide-eyed hours. She supposed she'd dreamed, but it was hard to separate unsettling scenes supplied by her unconscious mind from the gruesome images that played behind closed eyelids when she was awake. Last night, sleepless and still in shock, she had wished that today was a working day so that she would have something to do. This morning she was intensely grateful that she didn't have to go into the office. Coaxing bad-tempered advertisers into agreeing that a check written to the Sentinel was money worth spending was beyond her in her current exhausted state. Maybe she could take Evan and Maddie down to the spit. If she found a warm, sandy spot, she could lean against a log and watch them build castles or splash in the water.