Amateur Night

by K. K. Beck

  “How do I get in touch with Mr. Cox?” she said.

  “I'll ask him to contact you. If he wants to,” said Mike. “You can leave a card.”

  Jane took one of Calvin's cards out of her purse and placed it up on the counter. She didn't think they'd hear from him. She'd probably have to go after the grieving widower herself, and she didn't relish the task.

  Chapter 3

  The next morning it only took a minute, in the periodicals room of the downtown public library, to read the account of the crime in the Seattle Times. The murder of Betty Cox wasn't front-page news. FLORIDA CRASH KILLS SEVENTY read the headline. FIRST HILL PHARMACIST SLAIN had been on page one of the local news section, and there wasn't much here Jane didn't know. She skimmed the highlights. “An apparently bungled robbery attempt...suspect in custody.” At the end, though, there were a few personal comments about the victim.

  “The whole building's in shock,” ran a quote from a Carol Vandermeer, a receptionist in the medical center, who had talked to a reporter from the paper. “All our patients knew Betty. She was a permanent fixture.” And Mike Nguyen, described as “a recent University of Washington pharmacy graduate,” was quoted too. “I can't believe this. Mrs. Cox was a real help to me when I was in school. This is a horrible thing.” Nguyen had apparently showed up for work only to find the police carrying out Mrs. Cox's dead body. He hadn't mentioned that when they'd talked.

  Yes, it was horrible. Someone just snuffed out so randomly, and to no purpose. The whole thing seemed so open-and-shut. And it seemed as if earthly justice, in its rough, lumbering way, had been done. The only loose end was a magazine on the floor.

  Jane returned the microfiche to the desk and went up onto the library's outdoor terrace. It was a little chilly for May, but the view was good. Water and boats, and hanging baskets of geraniums and lobelia. And, as everywhere else in Seattle, there was good espresso. Jane had a double tall latte.

  Drinking her coffee, looking over at the seagull who sat on the balcony railing and eyed her beadily, Jane decided she had better throw herself into this full-time. After all, if there was something in it, she may as well have a running start. If there wasn't, she would have shown God or Uncle Harold or whoever was monitoring her that she was acting in good faith. Then, maybe, a genuine hopeless case would be sent her way. Having made this tentative deal with fate, she approached her task with some relish. She realized she wanted this case to work out, not just so she could get her hands on Uncle Harold's lovely money, but also so she could have something to do.

  During the trial, Calvin Mason's attempts to cast suspicion on Kevin's shadowy companions, Sean and Dorothy, seemed reasonable. The only trouble was, no one had ever found them. Jane figured now was as good a time as any to start looking.

  Finishing up her coffee, she went back into the library and found a pay phone. She called Calvin Mason.

  “How hard did you look for Sean and Dorothy?” she said.

  “There wasn't too much I could do,” he answered. “It's a little tough without last names, dates of birth or good descriptions.”

  “Of course,” said Jane sympathetically, trying to indicate she hadn't meant he'd been slack. “What exactly do we know about them?”

  She could hear Calvin sigh over the phone. “Just that they were in their teens. Kevin couldn't describe them too well. Just average everything. But they do exist. Mrs. Shea saw them. They came by her house earlier that day, looking for Kevin.”

  “So they aren't just figments of Kevin's imagination?”

  “Oh, no,” said Calvin, “Mrs. Shea is credible. Two people named Sean and Dorothy exist. Whether they had anything to do with this crime is debatable. Criminals always cast around for someone else to blame. Why not a couple of untraceable people, maybe the last people you saw before you did the crime, and the first people on your mind when you got caught?”

  An irritable-looking man was waiting for the phone. Jane gave him an apologetic smile and a wide-eyed gesture of helplessness, as if she wanted to get off the phone but couldn't. He gave her a begrudging smile back.

  To Calvin she said, “Mind if I talk to Mrs. Shea?”

  He thought for a second. “I suppose not. You are trying to help her son. But Jane, don't be shocked if she's less than supportive. The poor woman has been through the mill with that kid. Don't bother trying to provide any false hope. She's past all that.”

  Jane turned around so she didn't have to face the man who was waiting for the phone. “You mean some mothers give up?”

  “Some mothers have to,” said Calvin. “I'll get you her number. She works nights, for a janitorial service, so don't bug her too early in the morning.” There was a click on the line. “Hang on,” said Calvin. “I've got another call.”

  After what seemed like two minutes, during which Jane suffered an attack of anxiety and guilt about the man waiting for the phone, and just as she was about to hang up and give it to him, Calvin came back on.

  “Guess who that was?” he said. “Mr. Cox. And he wasn't too happy with us. Said some woman was snooping around the pharmacy, and he didn't like it, and he wanted to make sure Kevin never got out.”

  This sounded less than promising. “I suppose he doesn't want to see me,” she said.

  “No. I suggested that, but he said if it was so goddamned important, why wasn't I speaking to him personally. I made an appointment to see him tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Can I come?”

  “Not a good idea. To tell you the truth, all he wants is an opportunity to ream me out. As far as working out his grief goes, he's still in the anger stage. Can you blame him?”

  Jane sighed. “Give me Mrs. Shea's number, will you?” In this sordid drama, Jane was just as glad she was dealing with the participant who had become resigned to her tragedy.

  * * *

  Jane called from home that afternoon, and identified herself as being with Calvin Mason's office. She paused nervously. She hoped that despite what Calvin had said about her giving up on Kevin, the boy's mother didn't still harbor some resentment that he'd lost the case.

  “I've been paying him regularly,” said Mrs. Shea firmly.

  “Oh, it's not that at all,” said Jane. “It's just that he, well, I, um, we're thinking maybe there's still something that can be done for Kevin. I wondered if I could come and talk to you about Sean and Dorothy.”

  “How come?” There wasn't suspicion in her voice, so much as honest surprise.

  “Well, it looks like there might have been a witness. It's a very slim chance.”

  “You got that right,” said Mrs. Shea.

  “Would you mind talking to me? It shouldn't take long.” Jane reflected on the absurdity of her pleading with this woman to try and do something for her son.

  The woman sighed heavily. “What the heck,” she said. “Why not?”

  Her house was in a scruffy but honest-looking neighborhood in the South End—a small white bungalow with peeling white paint and turquoise trim. A row of Christmas lights was tacked along the roof line. If Mrs. Shea waited just a little while longer, it would be closer to next Christmas than last. Although, who knows, maybe they'd been there for years.

  A less depressing touch was the line of marigolds in the front flower bed. There were also some tomato plants, small and vulnerable-looking, sitting hopefully inside huge wire tomato cages. Jane made a wish that by August the cages would be smothered in vines heavy with fruit. Mrs. Shea, she had decided, deserved at least that.

  Kevin's mother was a well-worn fifty or so, with a thick head of dyed red hair in the opulent style of a country and western singer. Her face was the face of a woman who was tired but tough and undefeated—lined and jowly, with shrewd, sensible eyes and a firm little no-nonsense mouth.

  She had one of those bodies that are all shoulders and bosom and stomach, tapering off into squarish hips and skinny legs, and she wore a big pink sweatshirt with butterflies on it over shiny black stirrup pants and black flats.


  “Well, come on in,” she said philosophically. “Let's hear what you've got to say.”

  Very briefly, Jane told her about the possibility there had been a witness at the drugstore a year and a half ago when Kevin had come in and tried to rob the place.

  “So you think maybe he did just drop that gun and get out of there like he said at first,” she said flatly.

  “I don't know,” said Jane. “But I want to find out.”

  Mrs. Shea led Jane into a living room and gestured toward a big reclining chair in gold plush.

  There were little crocheted doilies everywhere—on the maple coffee table, and the side tables with spiral legs, on the backs and arms of the chairs and the sofa, on a big sideboard with glass doors revealing rows of bone china teacups in various floral patterns.

  “This isn't going to cost me anything, is it?” Mrs. Shea sat on the matching gold plush sofa and fiddled with one of the doilies, smoothing it out with big, capable hands.

  “No,” said Jane. “Don't worry about that. This is strictly voluntary on my part.”

  Mrs. Shea looked a little puzzled. “Well, okay,” she said. Jane was sorry she'd said “strictly voluntary.” She hoped it didn't sound patronizing.

  “You said 'at first' just now,” Jane began. “Talking about what Kevin said happened. I'm sorry, I wasn't around during the trial. Did his story change? What did he say later?”

  “Later, after he was incarcerated and got his head cleared up from all the drugs, he said he couldn't remember. That he was too messed up to know what happened. He thought maybe he did kill that woman.”

  She said it unflinchingly, as if challenging Jane. Jane didn't flinch either.

  “I understand you met these two people Kevin claims were with him. Sean and Dorothy.”

  “That's right.”

  “Could you describe them?”

  “Well the boy was real slick. A real good-looking kid, real well spoken. About seventeen or eighteen maybe. I didn't like the looks of him at all. Dark hair. Can't remember much else. He had good teeth, though. Movie star teeth. Like they'd been fixed. And he had a real nice leather jacket on. Not like a biker's jacket, more like one of those aviator jackets, you know. Brown. I figure he stole it somewhere from some guy who worked hard to make a few bucks to buy himself that jacket.”

  “I can just imagine the type,” said Jane. “Sounds like a creep, all right.” Letting someone know you agreed with their impressions always kept the confidences flowing freely, Jane knew.

  Mrs. Shea nodded. “Definitely. I'm pretty sure he knocked up that girl that was with him, and he acted like he didn't give a shit.”

  “She was pregnant?”

  “That's right. Just starting to show. She looked bad. Kind of rough skin, long light brown hair that looked damaged, you know.” Mrs. Shea fluffed up her own luxuriant hair. Jane wondered if it was a wig, inspected the part that revealed real-looking scalp, and decided it was her own.

  “I asked the girl about it. I said, 'Honey, are you taking care of yourself and that baby?' cause I figured she might be on drugs or something.” Mrs. Shea shook her head in disgust. “She looked ashamed, but the boy just kind of smirked.”

  “How far along do you think she was?” said Jane.

  “Three, maybe four months. Just starting to show, like I said, but there was something about the eyes. Pregnant women have a special look in their eyes—kind of steely.”

  “I know what you mean. Do you remember what they were driving?” Jane doubted they could be traced from a sketchy description of a car, but she wanted all the detail she could get.

  “No. I stood there at the door talking to them. I didn't want them inside. They'd probably try to rip me off if they were friends of Kevin's. That's who they rip off, you know. People they know. Their parents' friends, their friends' parents.”

  Jane nodded. It made sense. Why would kids out of control bother to do their marauding far away?

  “I just told them he wasn't home. But I kind of wanted the girl to stay. I would have called her mother for her, or whatever. She looked like she'd been running wild. She seemed younger. Maybe fifteen or sixteen.”

  “Do you think they were good friends of Kevin's?”

  Mrs. Shea waved her hand disparagingly. “No. He hardly knew their names. They told me to tell him Sean and Dorothy came by, and when I did, later, he seemed kind of vague. He didn't have any real friends. When you're an addict, you only have one friend and that's drugs. And that's no real friend either.”

  She leaned across the coffee table intently. “If you haven't lived with it, you can't possibly understand,” she said with finality. “You can't even love that person anymore. Because that person is gone. Buried, like under a thick, heavy veil.” She sat back and looked stubborn, as if expecting Jane to argue for never giving up hope, for holding out forever for redemption.

  Jane just nodded solemnly.

  “I blamed myself,” continued Mrs. Shea. “I blamed the fact that his dad took off years ago. I blamed the fact that I raised three other kids, and when it came around to Kevin, who was the youngest, I was just plain tired. I blamed the fact that I worked nights and I was asleep when he came home from school even though I needed the shift differential.”

  She sighed. “Finally, my other kids told me, 'Mom, just let it go.'” Her big hands rose from her lap like two birds released from a cage. “He was stealing me blind. I had to hide my purse in my own house. Then he got ahold of my checks and forged my signature. I found out when my own checks started to bounce. It was just one damn thing after another. Finally he got my bank machine card, and he twisted my arm behind my back until I told him the number. Then he totally cleaned me out.” She shook her head, as if disbelieving that this horrible thing had actually happened to her, that a child had turned on her.

  Jane nodded to let the woman know she was with her, and made sure she didn't look shocked. She wanted her to keep going.

  Mrs. Shea obliged. “You see, what keeps you hanging in there is little pieces of the real kid show through once in a while. You think you see what he's like underneath it all. In the way he smiles or if he helps you carry in a bag of groceries or something. Or you remember him when he was a little kid or a baby—you look at his face and you remember how he looked when he was three or four. But what's left, it's not the real kid. That kid is gone.”

  “I'm so sorry,” said Jane. “I really am. You seem like a nice person. You didn't deserve this.”

  “Knowing he's in prison, I can relax for the first time in years,” said Mrs. Shea. “I can go to sleep at night, knowing he isn't going to get into some kind of trouble. Kevin killed that woman. And he probably could have killed me, just as easy. It's a horrible thing to say, but it's the truth.” She stopped and shook her head. “I still pray for him once in a while,” she said. “But I'm doing it for myself. It's just a way of putting it out of my hands.”

  Jane got up and went over to a row of highly colored portraits of people in their twenties, all looking vaguely alike with dark hair and blue eyes. There was a baby picture tucked into the corner of one of the frames. “Are these your other kids?”

  Mrs. Shea beamed. The mood in the room changed. “That's right.” She went over to Jane's side and wiped some dust off the tops of the frames. “Here's Lisa and Dennis and Mark.” She held up the frames one by one and set them back down on their doilies. “And this is my grandson. Joshua.

  “Lisa's at home with her baby now. Her husband's got a real good job at Boeing, and they got a house near here. Dennis is in the service. He's married but they don't have kids yet. And Mark's working at Pizza Hut, and he's learning refrigeration.”

  “They look real nice,” said Jane.

  “That baby is a real joy,” said Mrs. Shea. “All the fun, and none of the worries. It gives you a real shot in the arm, a new person like that, coming into your life.”

  “How old is he?” said Jane.

  “Eighteen months,” said Mrs. Shea
. Which meant, Jane reflected, after she'd thanked Mrs. Shea and walked out to the car, he'd been born about the time his uncle Kevin had been arrested. She counted on her fingers. And made him about six months older than Dorothy's baby was about now. There had to be a record of its birth somewhere.

  And something else Mrs. Shea had said had given Jane an idea. She had to get the name of the dentist who'd owned that gun.

  Chapter 4

  When George Cox had called, Calvin had treated him gently and respectfully, just as he had in court when the widower had described discovering his wife's blood-soaked body. In court, Cox had seemed rather numb, answering monosyllabically. Calvin had asked him only a few questions to establish that he hadn't been an eyewitness, and in fact had never seen Kevin until that day in court. His main goal had been to get him off the stand and out of sight of the jury as soon as possible.