Amateur Night

by K. K. Beck

  Jane fell backward against a brick wall in the alley and caught her breath. “I used a tequila bottle too,” she said.

  Chapter 36

  There they sat. On the seventieth floor of a large black glass tower in Seattle, in the conference room of the law firm of Carlson, Throckmorton, Osgood, Stubbins and Montcrieff, arranged around a long rosewood table. Six white-haired gentlemen who rose courteously as she entered the room.

  The Bishop smiled his encouragement, and Commander Kincaid, the retired navy man, twinkled at her. But the lawyer, Montcrieff, Judge Potter and Professor Gruenwald all looked scrupulously neutral. Franklin Glendinning, the retired banker, looked slightly hostile, but that seemed to be his habitual expression.

  “Thank you for waiting outside,” said Mr. Montcrieff, “while we discussed your report.” He touched the document in front of him, which she had scrupulously typed up at an all-night Kinko's copier store and had Xeroxed on high-quality rag paper. “Your verbal presentation was also very concise, and we think we have all the facts in our possession.”

  It had been humiliating to sit there in the lobby while Montcrieff's unctuous and overperfumed nephew Bucky had chatted her up. She couldn't imagine they ever kept Uncle Harold cooling his heels. If they didn't come through for her this time, she was going to sue them. First she'd threaten to expose how flaky Uncle Harold's whole foundation was in the first place. It wasn't for nothing they kept hammering at her to avoid publicity.

  “We just had a few questions, my dear. More for curiosity's sake than anything else, and to make sure we all—”

  “Get it?” she finished impatiently. Horrified at her impertinence, she smiled and added, “I hope I've made myself clear.”

  “Yes, yes,” said the Bishop. “Now as we understand it, Mr. Shea is now a free man.”

  “That's right,” she said. “There was no need for a new trial.” How many times did they have to hear it? “Mr. Cox confessed when confronted with the fact that he had in his possession two items taken from Jennifer Gilbert's apartment: a photograph of Brenda MacPherson and an address book with an out-of-date address for her in Victoria. They were found in the room he rented under a false name above the Tip Top Club. It was an old fleabag hotel, and he rented a room down the hall. But they kept the strippers' section locked up, so he had to come around the fire escape.

  “In addition,” she added, “Brenda MacPherson was able to come up with the corroborating evidence that cleared Kevin. She saw him drop the gun and leave.”

  “And you got the powder burn thing sorted out?” said the Judge.

  “Mr. Nguyen, the present owner of the pharmacy, remembered that Mr. Cox had been working with a harsh chemical used in cancer therapy in the back room.” Just to impress them with her thoroughness, she threw in the name. “It is called doxorubicin. He was wearing gloves when he rushed into the front.”

  “So your work resulted in an innocent man's being freed, and a guilty one placed behind bars,” said Commander Kincaid with just a trace of impatience. “It's clear to me.”

  “What I want to know,” said Professor Grunewald, “is what Cox said about killing his wife. What went through his mind?”

  “He was very frank about it,” said Jane. “He said when he stood there in front of her, holding a weapon, a good suspect conveniently vanished out the door, and wearing gloves, the temptation was too much for him. He said he hadn't realized until just that moment that he wanted her dead. He'd only known he hated his life and she wouldn't let them retire or spend any money and enjoy themselves. He had the nerve to kill her, but he'd never have the nerve to stand up to her.”

  “What I want to know,” said Kincaid, “is whether this striptease artist is in any kind of trouble because of what she did. With the insurance company, I mean.”

  Jane cleared her throat. “I omitted that from my report, because I didn't think it was strictly relevant. The fact is, I was able to negotiate a deal with the insurance company. It turns out the parent company held the life insurance policy on Mrs. Cox. They were willing to forget about the fraud perpetrated by Jennifer Gilbert, who is, in any case, deceased, and Brenda MacPherson in exchange for Miss MacPherson's cooperation.”

  Glendinning nodded his head. “Makes sense. Getting the money back on the life insurance payoff more than canceled out the medical insurance fraud.”

  “Well young lady,” said Mr. Montcrieff, “I guess you pulled it off. Uncle Harold was right about you. We had our doubts,” he said waggishly. “A nice young lady like you. We weren't sure you had it in you.”

  “I am,” said Jane with dignity, “my uncle's niece.”

  “And,” said the Bishop, “the work suits you.”

  “Yes,” she said. “It does. It is hard, but as Uncle Harold so wisely said, 'There is no real satisfaction in anything that is too easy.'” Did this mean she had the money? He'd said I pulled it off, she thought.

  “You have brought yourself,” said the Bishop thoughtfully, “very close to evil.”

  “I've thought about that,” she said. “It strikes me that a minor evil, something a lot of people would consider victimless, like cheating the insurance company, led to greater evil. If Jennifer and Brenda hadn't lied, a lot of this wouldn't have happened.” She kept to herself the fact that she had lied plenty during her pursuit of the case. She'd managed to keep all her own lies out of her report. Another lie, perhaps?

  “Cheating the insurance carrier is not a victimless crime,” snapped Glendinning. “Everyone's premiums go up when people cheat.”

  She'd had enough. It was time for the close. “I take it,” she said, “you are satisfied with my work, and I can expect the income that goes with the trust.”

  “Yes of course,” said Montcrieff vaguely. “Come by tomorrow and we'll have the first check for you. Six months' worth of income.”

  “What are your plans now?” said Commander Kincaid.

  “I'm going to start looking for another case,” she said. Actually, she planned to go shopping—somewhere decent this time—do some major redecorating, get her Jaguar out of storage and get herself a really good haircut.

  “Thank you very much for everything,” she said, rising. Thanks for nothing, and see you old darlings in six months, she added silently. And I won't be wearing this fifteen-year-old Chanel suit, either.

  As she left the conference room, Bucky came up to her. “Well?” he said.

  “They gave it to me,” she said, allowing a smile to pull up one corner of her mouth.

  “All right!” he said, folding her into his Armani'd arms. “Let's celebrate. I want to hear all about how you're going to spend it.”

  “Oh, that would be terrific, but it'll have to be some other time. I've got lunch plans,” she said, trying to look disappointed. After all, Bucky, as George Montcrieff's nephew and a member of the firm that administered the trust, could screw her over sometime in the future. She had better be as nice to him as she could.

  He walked her to the elevator. “I'll call you. I'd like to show you around town. You need to meet some quality people.”

  “Well I already know you, Bucky, that's a start,” she said as the elevator doors glided together in front of his handsome face. Crass old Bucky. What he meant was “You need to meet some quality people now that you're rich.”

  Calvin was waiting for her in the lobby polishing his glasses and examining a large modern sculpture.

  She touched him on the shoulder and he turned around. “Well?” he said, replacing his glasses. “Where's lunch? Do we read the menu on the wall and take a number, or do we wait to be seated by someone with an expensive haircut?”

  She smiled. “I got it. Help me celebrate. I want you to pick the best place in walking distance from this spot.”

  He smiled back. “Let's try Fuller's. About six blocks. I made a reservation just in case. Cutting-edge cuisine and great Northwest art.”

  “That's more than they've got in the art museum in this town,” said Jane. “I
t seems to be full of totem poles.”

  “Don't be a snob about your hometown. Sounds like you'll be here for a while,” he said. “And remember, the coffee here in Seattle is superb. And that's something you use every day.”

  “I'm glad I'll be able to pay you back,” she said.

  He cleared his throat. “I've got an invoice all prepared. I gave you a pretty good rate. I figure you'll be using me a lot and you get a quantity discount.”

  They walked out into the street.

  “I called juror number ten. Miss Marquardt is thrilled. And she's even more thrilled you're going to have lunch with her and tell her all about it.”

  “I'm kind of numb,” said Jane. “I worked so hard, and I still can't quite believe it's real. I get the check tomorrow. Then I'm going shopping. And I think I'll forget about rescuing that old klunker of Uncle Harold's.”

  “Hope you'll remember the little people who helped you on the way up,” he said.

  She stopped in the street and embraced him, kissing him on the cheek. “You've been wonderful. Make sure there's a finder's fee in that invoice. For this case, and for the last one that didn't turn out so well.”

  “I'll throw that one in for free,” he said.

  Later, after a fabulous lunch in a little niche decorated with a painting by Mark Tobey, and a few glasses of wine, Calvin leaned across the table. “There's one thing I wondered,” he said. “That deal you were able to cook up with the insurance company? Was it because of any personal—” He pulled himself back. “Never mind. It's none of my business.”

  She laughed. “No it's not, but what the hell. I'll tell you anyway. We had a little romantic interlude there before he went back to San Francisco.”

  She told him, she thought, because she thought he saw her as someone alone, and she didn't want him to feel sorry for her. But she wasn't telling him anything. She made it sound low-key and civilized.

  It had begun with a long kiss in the room at the Empress Hotel— a wonderful long kiss of relief after all those hours with the RCMP, after everything that had happened over the past days, after days of driving and adrenaline flooding her body. It felt wonderful to surrender completely to mindless pleasure and stop thinking.

  She remembered it in flickers—his hands reaching under her shirt while the kiss went on, and his saying, “I want my clothes back right now.” He took them off slowly, kissing her skin softly as it appeared, inch by inch.

  They came up for air the next day, Jane in a semipassion-drugged state, long enough to take the float plane back from Victoria Harbor and a taxi to Uncle Harold's house, where they went right back to bed and talked in low voices and made noisy love in the big quiet house for two more days.

  He'd called since, and she still ached for him physically, but she figured the longing would clear up in two or three rough weeks.

  “I don't think it'll develop into anything major,” she told Calvin. Their frenzy seemed based mostly on the exhilaration of having struggled together.

  Calvin looked engagingly sympathetic. “I'm sorry,” he said. She felt very fond of him just now.

  “Don't be,” she said. “I think it goes with the job.” After all, they had started out by lying to each other. Could they trust each other again? “Only amateurs at this can fall in love, and as soon as I get that check tomorrow, I'll be entering the ranks of a very peculiar profession.”

  “What are you doing after you spend some money?” he said. “You're staying in Seattle, right?”

  “I think so. Close to those old men on the board who control my fate. And I'll have to start scratching around for another wrong to right. After all, you're only as good as your last hopeless case.”

  K. K. BECK is the author of eight previous mysteries as well as the first novel in the Jane da Silva series, A Hopeless Case. As a magazine editor, she has won acclaim for her articles on the Pacific Northwest as well as for her fiction, particularly Death in a Deck Chair, Unwanted Attentions, and The Body in the Volvo. She lives in Seattle with her three children.