Payment in kind jpb-9

by J. A. Jance

  Usually I don’t let Doc Baker’s penchant for public relations bother me, but for some reason this time it got me good. After all, Alvin Chambers’ job title may not have sounded as important as Marcia Louise Kelsey’s but he was sure as hell equally dead. I was working up a sarcastic rejoinder, but Kramer spoke up before I had a chance to spit it out.

  “We had to go there first, Doc. The Chambers woman was on the phone raising hell in the superintendent’s office because her husband was late getting home for his toast and eggs.”

  “Oh,” a somewhat mollified Baker replied. “I see. Well, get the hell out of here now and find Mr. Kelsey. Do it quick before somebody else does.”

  “Wait a minute. What about Charlotte Chambers?” I demanded. “After bringing her all the way down here, we can’t very well just go off and leave her like this.”

  “Don’t worry about Mrs. Chambers,” Baker replied. “I’ll get someone from my office to drive her home.”

  “But we haven’t interviewed her yet,” I objected.

  “There’ll be time enough for that later,” Baker said, herding us unceremoniously toward the door. “After you talk with Mr. Kelsey.”

  Some things aren’t worth going to the mat for, and this was one of them. I sidestepped Baker and poked my head back into the room where we had left Charlotte Chambers long enough to explain that one of Dr. Baker’s staff members would take her home. Still sitting exactly as I’d left her, she nodded gratefully. I hoped whoever Baker sent would be big enough and strong enough to handle her.

  When we got out to the car, I found that Kramer had parked with the rider’s door opening directly onto a pile of dirty sanded snow left behind by a snowplow. By the time I managed to climb inside, my shoes and socks were covered with the stuff. Disgusted, I brushed it off as best I could.

  “It’s only snow,” Kramer observed with a laugh. “It won’t kill you.”

  I had seen Kramer coming to work both winter and summer in a little blue RX 7 equipped with a permanent set of ski racks. I knew from coffee break chatter around the office that he fancied himself as something of a ski-slope expert. That in itself would have been enough to keep me away from visiting Seattle’s nearby slopes even if I could have overcome that most basic of all objections-the one against breaking your neck.

  “Just drive, would you?” I asked. “What’s the address?”

  “Thirteen fifty-two East Crockett,” Kramer replied, heading off in that direction. Considering road conditions, we were lucky that the Kelsey home was in generally the same part of town as Harborview Hospital.

  East Crockett Street, at the far north end of Capitol Hill, is one of those city planner’s nightmares that hops and skips its way east and west across town from Puget Sound to Lake Washington without ever being a through street. There are little chunks of Crockett on Magnolia Bluff, on Queen Anne Hill, and on Capitol Hill as well, but none of them connect.

  We headed east on Boston, aiming for Thirteenth, one of two tiny streets that would take us up the hill to the single, block-long section of Crockett. As we neared the intersection, however, I noticed an aging, burnt-orange Volvo parked haphazardly on the side of the snowy street. The beat-out junker looked more than vaguely familiar.

  Not Maxwell Cole, I thought with a sinking feeling in my gut. Please not Maxwell Cole, but as we came even with the car, I caught sight of a series of Seattle Post-Intelligencer parking stickers glued in the back window.

  “Damn!” I muttered.

  “What’s the matter?” Kramer asked, glancing at me as he swung the car out of the fairly well-traveled snowy tracks on Boston and shifted down for the steeply inclined and much-less-traveled Thirteenth.

  “That old Volvo parked back down there. It’s Maxwell Cole’s car,” I answered.

  “Maxwell Cole? The crime columnist for the P.-I.?”

  “One and the same.”

  “But how do you know for sure it’s his car?”

  “Believe me, I know,” I told him.

  Kramer would have recognized the Volvo too, if he’d spent as many years as I have with Max, a perpetual fraternity brother who has never grown up, dogging my every step.

  Kramer groaned. “That’s great! Just what we need, a damn reporter on the scene before we are.”

  My sentiments exactly.

  The 1300 block of Crockett consisted of a row of three originally identical and ersatz Victorians perched like so many birds looking down on the Montlake Cut, a man-made waterway connecting Lakes Union and Washington. Angular rooflines on the narrow houses seemed to grow up out of the hillside like so many gaunt plants potted in fair-sized two-car garages far below.

  Two of the houses were a faded gray, but 1352 showed every evidence of having been recently and lovingly repainted, although it must have been a killer of a job. The wooden shingles gleamed like the surrounding snow. The trim was a deep green. Two stately but snowshrouded holly trees stood guard on either side of the old-fashioned front porch, while the wide front door itself was decorated by a huge redbowed Christmas wreath. The place looked as though it might have been lifted from some old-time, gilt-lined greeting card.

  The whole effect would have been picture-perfect if it hadn’t been for the overweight man with an open, flapping coat who was clutching the handrail and gingerly working his way back down the steep steps toward the sidewalk. Seeing him confirmed my worst suspicions-mine and Doc Baker’s as well. The media had indeed beaten us to the punch. The man picking his way down the stairs was none other than my old nemesis, crime columnist Maxwell Cole himself.

  I scrambled out of the car, intent on stopping Cole before he managed to slip away. We needed to find out exactly how much damage he’d done. He blundered off the steps and was heading back down Crockett toward his car when I stopped him.

  “Hold it right there, Max. We want to talk to you.”

  At the sound of my voice, Max froze, standing knee-deep in the snow. Slowly he turned back toward me while an expression of profound dismay washed over the reporter’s face. He looked like the kid caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar.

  I didn’t waste time on polite formalities. “What are you doing here, Max?”

  He glanced anxiously from me to Kramer and back again. Max was out of shape and puffing from exertion just from walking back down to the street. “I stopped by to see Pete,” he man-aged.

  “Pete who?” I demanded.

  “Pete Kelsey,” he replied.

  “Why?” I asked.

  Max took a deep breath and tried to regain a little of his dignity. “He’s a friend of mine,” he replied, squaring his shoulders. “A very good friend.”

  That didn’t sound likely, not coming from the Maxwell Cole I knew.

  “Is he now,” I responded. “And how is it that you just happened to stop by to see him today of all days?”

  “I did, that’s all,” Max insisted petulantly, his voice lapsing into its characteristic whine. “You can believe that or not.”

  “I choose not, Max. I know you too damn well. Your stopping by here wouldn’t have anything to do with Pete Kelsey’s wife, now would it?”

  He eyed me warily. “What if it did?”

  “This is a police matter, Max. Don’t screw around with us.”

  Shrugging, Maxwell Cole caved in. “I heard about Marcia as soon as I got to work,” he said. “You know how these things get around. I stopped by to see if Pete needed anything. That’s all.”

  “Am I to understand that you know these people? As in friend of the family?”

  He nodded.

  “So tell me the truth, Max. Was this really a Good Samaritan call, or are you really out here chasing after a scoop, an exclusive interview maybe?”

  Maxwell Cole’s eyes narrowed in anger. Although there was no hint of a breeze, the drooping tips of his handlebar mustache trembled with suppressed rage. “I’m telling you, J.P., these people are friends of mine. I thought I might be able to help. Besides, Pete wasn’t home.
Nobody’s there.”

  “Any idea where we’d find him?”

  Cole glanced surreptitiously at his watch and then shook his head. “I can’t think of any place at all,” he said. “Now, let me go before I freeze to death.”

  I nodded. “Go on.”

  Without hesitation, Cole clambered on down the street toward Thirteenth, leaving a dented trail of steps in the snow.

  As soon as Max was out of earshot, Paul Kramer wheeled on me. “Wait just a goddamned minute here, Beaumont. How come you’re letting him go? You saw the way he looked at his watch. That guy knows something, and he’s not telling.”

  “Right,” I said. “And all we have to do is follow him to find out what it is.”

  Kramer looked at me speculatively for only a moment, then he nodded and got back into the car. “We’ll just see about that,” he said curtly.

  It turned out I was right.

  Although Crockett wasn’t posted as a one-way street, most of the residents seemed to treat it that way, entering on Thirteenth and exiting by way of Everett Avenue. When we got back to Boston, Maxwell Cole’s laboring Volvo was disappearing over the crest of the hill. Both Max and Kramer had their hands full negotiating their vehicles through the hazardous streets. I rode shotgun and had no trouble keeping the Volvo well in sight.

  Cole led us back down off Capitol Hill, through the bungled I-5 interchange known locally as the Mercer Mess, then north to the Fremont Bridge. Max turned off onto Phinney North and stopped on the street next to the Trolleyman Pub, a factory outlet store for one of the city’s better-known microbreweries where they make Red Hook Ale. By then we were little more than a block behind him, but Max was oblivious to our presence. Without bothering to pause and look around, Max hurried inside.

  The Trolleyman is a little too trendy for my taste. From the unexpected NO SMOKING sign on the front door to the brightly lit interior decorated with all-too-modern art, it’s hardly the kind of tavern where any self-respecting serious drinker would choose to hand out. Due to the weather, the white-formica-topped tables with their oak chairs were mostly deserted. A single couple was cuddled cozily on an old-fashioned sofa in front of the roaring corner fireplace.

  Kramer and I entered the room just as Maxwell Cole was sidling confidentially up to the bartender, a craggy-faced man in his midforties, a junior Willie Nelson type whose shoulder-length, graying hair was drawn back in a scrawny, rubber-band-held ponytail.

  As he caught sight of us, Maxwell Cole’s mouth dropped open in dumb amazement. Whatever words he had planned to say died on his lips.

  I took the bull by the horns. “Pete Kelsey?” I asked.

  The bartender looked at me appraisingly, his head cocked to one side while he absently polished the already gleaming surface of the bar.

  “That’s right,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  Pulling out my ID, I tossed it to him. He caught it in midair, looked at it, and tossed it back without comment.

  “We’re police officers,” I explained. “I’m Detective Beaumont and this is Detective Kramer. We’d like to have a word with you. In private, if you don’t mind.”

  Kelsey glanced around the almost deserted room and grinned engagingly. “It’s already pretty private in here today. I have a feeling most of the regular lunch crowd didn’t bother to come to work, and neither did my helper, so this will have to do. Besides, Max here is an old friend of mine. What do you want to talk about?”

  “This is confidential, Mr. Kelsey,” I insisted. “Really, I…”

  Kelsey shrugged impatiently. “I already told you. Max is a friend of mine. Whatever you have to say, you can say in front of him.”

  “It’s about your wife.”

  The friendly, easygoing look on his face disappeared. In its place a hardened mask slipped over his otherwise handsome features. “What about her?”

  “Two people were found dead at the school district office early this morning, Mr. Kelsey. I’m sorry to say that one of them may very well be your wife.”

  Pete seemed to stagger under the weight of the news, leaning against the bar for support. For confirmation, he glanced briefly at Maxwell Cole, who nodded wordlessly and ducked his head.

  My heart went out to Pete Kelsey. My guess was that this would prove to be one of those cases where the death itself would be only the tip of the iceberg. If he wasn’t already aware of it, by the time we finished uncovering all the sordid details surrounding the deaths of the two nearly naked people in the closet, I imagined Pete Kelsey would have a whole lot more to grieve about than a simple, unexpected death. He’d have to learn to live with betrayal as well.

  He lurched backward and settled on a stool behind the bar. “How?” he whispered hoarsely. “How did it happen?”

  “We don’t know that yet and won’t until after the autopsy.”

  At that, Pete Kelsey bent over, burying his face in his hands while his wide shoulders shook with uncontrollable sobs. The gray-flecked ponytail flopped up and down like a landed fish. He was mumbling to himself through the sobs, and I strained to hear the words.

  “I never should have…” was all I could make out.

  Kramer and I waited patiently for a break in the emotional storm. At last there was a letup.

  “What do you want me to do?” he asked hopelessly, looking up at us only after wiping his tear-stained face on the shoulders of his faded blue work shirt.

  “If you could accompany us downtown, we need to have someone make a positive identification.”

  He nodded. “It’ll take me a few minutes to close up. And I should call my manager…”

  “I’ll do that,” Maxwell Cole offered. “I can call Nancy and let her know. You do whatever else needs to be done.”

  By this time the couple in the corner had become aware of the situation. With hurried words of clumsy condolence, they paid their tab and left. Pete Kelsey seemed to have regained control of himself as he turned off coffeepots, emptied the cash register, and turned out lights.

  “Nancy said to leave the change in the bottom drawer of her desk,” Max reported when he got off the phone. “She’ll be in to reopen about four. She’s waiting for someone to come put chains on her car.” Max paused for a moment before adding, “She says to tell you she’s sorry.”

  Pete Kelsey nodded, but he went on with what he was doing, stopping by the window long enough to turn the orange and black CLOSED sign so it faced out. Then he opened the door to let us back out onto the street.

  “Me too,” he murmured fiercely under his breath. “Me too.”

  Chapter 6

  Outside, standing in the snowbound and all-but-deserted street, we suggested that Pete ride with us as far as Harborview Hospital, but he declined, saying that he didn’t want to have to come all the way back across town to pick up his car from the tavern. Considering the hazardous driving conditions, I didn’t blame him. It was time for compromise.

  “I’ll ride with you then,” I suggested. Pete nodded in agreement, pulling car keys from the pocket of a faded sheepskin-lined denim jacket as he started toward the cars.

  Meanwhile, Maxwell Cole, who was still hovering solicitously in the background, tagged along after us. “Want me to come too?” he asked hopefully.

  “No, Max,” Pete answered. “I’ll be all right.”

  Max’s heavy features sagged with disappointment at the idea of being left behind. “I’ll give you a call later then,” Max added. “Just to see if there’s anything you need me to do.”

  “Sure,” Pete said.

  His car, parked in Seattle’s peculiar BACK-IN-ANGLE-ONLY fashion near the buried curb, was a bowlegged old Eagle station wagon. Nut brown in color, it was the kind of nondescript vehicle used-car dealers call “transportation specials,” a means of getting around rather than an extension of the owner’s ego. It also had the lived-in look of a one-person car.

  I waited while Pete Kelsey sorted through the accumulated debris on the rider’s seat, which include
d several sets of blueprints, a series of empty coffee cups, and a massive old-fashioned satchel that evidently functioned as a briefcase. All this he tossed carelessly onto the floor behind the front seat. The backseat had been folded flat, and the entire rear of the car was occupied, from side to side and back to front, by an enormous old-fashioned, claw-footed tub.

  “Sorry about the mess,” Pete apologized. “I picked the tub up from the refinishing company Saturday afternoon and was supposed to drop it off at a remodeling job today, but with the weather and now this…” His voice trailed off.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  The four-wheel-drive Eagle may have looked ungainly, but properly equipped with snow tires, the station wagon was as agile and surefooted as a mountain goat, and Pete Kelsey was a capable driver. He knew the streets of the city well enough that we got to Harborview Hospital a good two minutes before Detective Kramer did.

  While we waited for Kramer to arrive, I sat there knowing what was to come and dreading it. You can’t be human and not feel some empathy for the people whose broken loved ones lie on cold, hard slabs in morgues waiting for someone to come identify them. Often the survivors’ shattered hopes and dreams lie there dead as well.

  Leading Charlotte Chambers through the process had been bad enough. Fortunately for her, the bloody wound on her husband’s chest had been mercifully concealed, hidden from view beneath the antiseptic covering of the body sheet. With Pete Kelsey it would be different. There was no way to conceal Marcia’s ugly head wound. It would be fully visible. My heart went out to her husband. So far, he was bearing up pretty well, but I couldn’t, in good conscience, allow him to walk unprepared into the medical examiner’s office. I felt a moral obligation to give him some advance warning about what was coming.

  “Have you ever seen a gunshot victim?” I asked.

  It was a moment before he replied. “Yes,” he answered dully without elaborating as to where or when. “I have.”