Payment in kind jpb-9

by J. A. Jance

  Moving with ponderous grace, she came down the stairs while her undergarments whispered in that peculiarly feminine rustle of nylon on nylon.

  “Detective Beaumont, is it?”

  Kendra Meadows’ welcoming smile revealed a wide gap between her two front teeth. No doubt the school district’s dental insurance would have covered a set of braces for the middle-aged lady had Kendra Meadows ever stopped to consider such vain nonsense desirable.

  She held out her hand. When I gripped it, her handshake was firm enough to make me wince.

  “Sorry about that,” she apologized, catching what must have been a pained expression on my face.

  “It’s nothing,” I told her quickly. “I hurt my fingers a few months back. They still give me problems every once in a while.”

  “Too bad,” she said with a sympathetic click of her tongue. “Well then, come along. I was just going back to my office.” I followed her back up the stairs and down a long, narrow corridor into a large but nonetheless crowded and messy office. Like Marcia Kelsey, Kendra Meadows seemed to thrive in an environment with the appearance of total chaos. Not only the desk but the credenza, chairs, and several extra tables were piled high with stacks of file folders and loose pieces of paper. She cleaned off one of the chairs and motioned me into it.

  Once Kendra Meadows had seated herself at the desk, she extricated a stack of papers from the general clutter and sat holding it, regarding me with yet another warm smile. Kendra Meadows’ natural charm, so obvious in person, hadn’t been at all apparent in her abrupt telephone manner.

  “I took the liberty of making a preliminary list for you, Detective Beaumont,” she explained, reaching across the desk and handing me several 8?-by-11-inch pieces of paper with neat handwritten lists of names, telephone numbers, and addresses on them.

  “The first list is of the people who were here at the office on the morning in question, after the bodies were found. You’ll find Mr. Jacobs there, but it would probably be better if you didn’t try to contact Martin until I get a clear go-ahead from his doctor. You’ll notice Jennifer Lafflyn is on that list as well. She’s usually on the desk downstairs in the mornings, but she wasn’t there just now.”

  “Right,” I said. Under Jennifer Lafflyn’s name were five more names I didn’t recognize. “Who are the others?”

  “The next few are on our substitute teacher scheduling crew. They come in every morning at five. Even though we already knew school was going to be canceled on Monday, those five you see there are the ones who still managed to make it in. They were here to help handle the extra volume of calls from anxious parents. I thought you’d be interested in talking to them. After all, one of them might have seen something without realizing it.”

  Kendra Meadows should have been a cop. She paused and waited while I ran my finger down the list of names and telephone numbers.

  “Is this the kind of thing you had in mind?” she asked.

  “Absolutely, Mrs. Meadows. This is great.”

  “Kendra,” she said. “Call me Kendra. Now, where was I? Oh, yes. The next list includes the names of most of the people here in the building who worked closely with Marcia Kelsey. Her secretary and the staff members who reported directly to her. That list also contains the names of those she reported to.”

  “Good,” I said. “Having them broken down into groups like this will be a big help when we start the interviewing process. What’s the next page?”

  “That’s a list of district employees from outside the building who probably worked with Marcia on a regular basis. Some are certified employees, some are noncertified. As director of Labor Relations, she wasn’t just responsible for our dealings with the teachers’ union. There are several other unionized entities as well. I’ve put the names of the unions as well as their addresses and phone numbers right there at the bottom of the page.”

  Halfway down this list I discovered the name, address, and telephone number of Andrea Stovall. I’m not sure how Kendra Meadows did it, but it struck me that her sources of information were very thorough. In all my years of doing homicide investigations, I had never before started a case with that kind of comprehensive background material on a victim.

  I turned to the last page. On that one there was only one entry. Seattle Security. Poor dead Alvin Chambers. His death kept being short-changed at every corner of the investigation.

  “This is all you had on the security guard?” I asked.

  “Since he worked for a subcontractor, we don’t have any specific information on him. I’m sure you can get that from Seattle Security.”

  Once more I paged through the extensive list. On further examination it proved to be even more impressive than I had at first thought.

  “How did you manage to get all this pulled together in such a short time?”

  Kendra Meadows laughed. “Of course, I had some help from the computer,” she said, “but there are some things people do best, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I certainly would,” I told her. “I can see it was a good deal of work. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, Detective Beaumont.” Kendra Meadows’ dark eyes were suddenly serious. The good humor disappeared from her face and the laughter from her voice.

  “You’re right. It was work, hard work. I was here half the night, pulling it all together, but I’m glad to be of use. You see, I knew Marcia Kelsey. We weren’t close, but I’ve known her for years. Something terrible must have gone wrong in her life. I can’t imagine what it would have been. Do you know?”

  I shook my head. “We’re working on it, Mrs. Meadows. That’s all I can say for right now.”

  “You must find out what happened, and quickly too, so we can all put it behind us and go on with the real job of educating children. It’s impossible for children to learn to live non-violent lives when they see well-respected adults behaving this way.”

  “That’s true, Mrs. Meadows,” I said, rising to go. “I couldn’t agree with you more.”

  At the door to her office, I turned back. “One other thing. Do you happen to have a key to this building?”

  She frowned. “Yes. Of course. Why?”

  “Do many other people?”

  “A few. Not many. It’s bad for security.”

  “Did Marcia Kelsey have a key?”

  “Probably. I could check the list. It won’t take a moment.”

  Kendra Meadows heaved herself out of the chair, hurried over to a file cabinet in the far corner of the room, and extracted a file folder. She moved her finger down a piece of paper inside.

  “That’s right. Marcia had a key. It says so right here. And the locks were changed as of the first of October.”

  “Are all the people with keys on that list?”

  “As far as I know.”

  “May I see it?”

  She passed it to me without a murmur and I scanned down it to the S’s Andrea Stovall may have had a key, but her name did not appear on the master list.

  “Thanks,” I said. “That tells me exactly what I need to know. May I have a copy of this?”

  Kendra Meadows smiled her gap-toothed smile and shrugged her broad shoulders. “Certainly. I don’t see why not.”

  I left Kendra Meadows’ office with wonderfully comprehensive lists of people to interview and with one real additional bonus-the sure knowledge that, for whatever reason, Andrea Stovall was a liar.

  It was a lead. Maybe only a small one, but in this business, a small lead is a hell of a lot better than no lead at all.

  I wanted to make a series of phone calls, fairly private calls, so instead of returning to the reception area, I went to the superintendent’s suite of offices and threw myself on Doris Walker’s mercy. She politely showed me into a small private office and then left me to use the phone, discreetly closing the door behind her. In view of what happened next, I was tremendously grateful for that closed door.

  I called down to the department to check in and got hold of Margie. She sounded r
elieved to hear from me.

  “It’s a good thing you called in,” she said quietly. “Watty’s on the warpath. He’s looking for you. And where’s Detective Kramer? The prosecutor needs him in court this afternoon.”

  “Kramer’s on his way downtown; in fact, he should be there by now. What’s Watty pissed about?”

  “How should I know? I’ll connect you and let him tell you himself.”

  Sergeant Watkins came on the phone a moment later. “Where the hell are you, Beau?”

  “At the school district office. I just finished interviewing Kendra Meadows, the lady in charge of Personnel. We also talked to the president of the teachers’ organization.” I was still operating under the faint hope that this could end up as a friendly conversation.

  “Well, I’m glad to hear that you’re finally working.”

  The word “finally,” said with that peculiar emphasis, gave me the first hint that I was in deep trouble.

  “Did you say ”finally‘? What’s that supposed to mean?“

  “It means get cracking, Beau. It means stop playing around at this and get to work. I saw the reports. Paul Kramer wrote every damn one of them. You stuck him doing the reports; I know that for a fact. You also left him here working long after you went home. Where the hell do you get off treating him like some junior errand boy, sending him around picking up lab reports and autopsies? You think you’re too good to do some of the grunt work, Beaumont? Detective Kramer’s supposed to be your partner, a full-fledged goddamned investigator, not your personal gofer.”

  “Wait just a goddamned minute here, Watty. Did he tell you…”

  “No, you wait a minute, Detective Beaumont, and don’t interrupt. Just because Kramer’s a dedicated cop, and just because he’s low man on the totem pole here in Homicide, doesn’t mean you old-timers get to take advantage of him and stick him with all the shit work. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Perfectly,” I responded bleakly.

  From Watty’s tone of voice, I could tell it was useless to object or offer any excuses or to suggest that things Kramer had done were things he had appointed himself to do without any kind of request or consultation from me.

  “I want to see results, Beau,” Watty continued. “I want to see reports on my desk with your signature on them. I want to know who you’ve interviewed and what was said. I want to know what kind of contribution you’re making, because this is now, and always has been, a team effort, Detective, and don’t you forget it.”

  With that, Watty hung up. It was a good thing Kramer was long gone, because if he hadn’t been, I probably would have wrapped the phone cord right around his damn ass-kissing neck. I felt like one of those poor schmucks in the comics who suddenly has a lightbulb click on over his head.

  So that was how Kramer was playing the game, and I’d walked right into the trap like a lamb to the slaughter.

  For several minutes, I stood there seething, my hands shaking with rage, while the blood pounded in my ears. Eventually I got a grip on both myself and my anger. If Watty wanted interviews, then by God, I’d give him interviews, and after a moment’s thought, I knew exactly where I’d start.

  My mother was always one to do the worst things first and get them over with. Talking to Maxwell Cole was very low on my list of wonderful things to do. Unfortunately, other than talking to Charlotte Chambers, Maxwell Cole seemed like the next logical interview step.

  But Charlotte Chambers didn’t live on Queen Anne Hill, and Maxwell Cole did.

  I knew Max lived only a few blocks away from the school district office. If he happened to be home, it would take only a few minutes to trudge on up there to see him. If not, if he was already at work, then the Post-Intelligencer office was located at the very bottom of Queen Anne, and I could maybe catch him there on my way back downtown.

  I tried calling his office first. No luck. I was told he was ill, out for the day. I looked in the book, but as a public personage, Max naturally has an unlisted phone number. Since I’m hardly on a best-buddy basis with him, I’m not privy to his number any more than he is to mine. That left me only one viable alternative-to show up unannounced.

  In the long run, it was probably just as well that I didn’t call in advance. If I had warned him I was coming, chances are Maxwell Cole wouldn’t have answered the door.

  On my way past her desk, Doris Walker flagged me down, signaling for me to wait until she finished a phone call. “Dr. Savage wanted to know how to get in touch with you, in case anything comes up that he needs to talk with you about.”

  “Didn’t I leave a card?” I asked.

  “Not that I know of.”

  It was an oversight. As a penance, I scrawled both my home and cellular number on it in addition to the office one. After all, if the super-intendent of schools couldn’t be trusted with an unlisted phone number, who could?

  Chapter 13

  Max Cole lives on Bigelow Avenue North, a gracious, gently winding, tree-lined street that curves around the base of what’s known as Upper Queen Anne Hill. I used several sets of steep stairway sidewalks to make my way up to Bigelow from the school district office on the lower part of the hill. The cold but invigorating climb left me feeling a little winded but quite virtuous by the time I topped the last set of stairs and came out on the snow-covered street.

  Max’s house, which I learned had once belonged to his parents, was a stately old Victorian set back behind a pair of towering, winter-bare chestnut trees. I walked up onto the covered porch and rang the bell. A miserable-looking Maxwell Cole, wearing a flannel robe and carrying a huge red hanky, answered the door. His unwaxed handlebar mustache drooped feebly, his eyes were red and runny. Obviously he had caught himself a dandy of a cold.

  “Hi, Max,” I said cheerfully. “I just happened to be in the neighborhood. How’re the sick, the lame, and the lazy?”

  He wasn’t exactly overjoyed to see me. “What are you doing here, J. P.? Can’t you see I’m sick?”

  Actually, I could. There was only a frail hint of the old mutual antagonism in his voice. Feverish and haggard, he was too sick to carry off his customary obnoxiousness with any kind of believability.

  “Just doing my job, Max, that’s all. I’d like to talk to you about Marcia and Pete Kelsey, if you have a minute. May I come in?”

  “Suit yourself,” he said gruffly, pulling open the door with one hand while he used the other to stifle a sudden fit of sneezing. As I walked past him, the thought passed briefly through my mind that he was probably contagious as hell right then and I’d most likely end up with a case of pneumonia for my trouble. I accepted his reluctant invitation in the manner in which it was given and went on inside.

  Max led the way into a spacious but overly furnished living room. The place was full of things that looked to me like genuine antiques, quality antiques. The only problem was there were far too many of them. And the room was boiling hot. Max had the thermostat set so high that it was sweltering in there.

  He took a seat in an easy chair in front of a huge empty fireplace. Dropping my coat and gloves at one end of a chintz couch, I put as much distance between us as I reasonably could, settling at the far end of it and facing him across the wide expanse of an ornate, marble-topped coffee table.

  “Wanted to have a fire in the fireplace this morning,” he grumbled, “but wouldn’t you know burning restrictions are in effect today? This is the kind of weather when you want to have a fire in the fireplace.”

  That was true. I didn’t mention to him that this was exactly the kind of weather when everyone wanted a fire in his respective fireplace and that was precisely why it was a problem. Besides, had the room been any warmer, I would have died of heat prostration. I said a silent prayer of thanks for all those busy little environmentalists who had made burning restrictions possible.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you when you’re sick, Max,” I began, “but I really do need to get some background information from you regarding this case. You’re pretty much
the only one I can turn to so far. I understand you’ve known Pete and Marcia Kelsey for some time.”

  Much to my surprise, Maxwell Cole slapped the sodden hanky over his face and burst into great lurching, choking sobs. It was several long, noisy minutes before he was able to speak.

  “It finally hit home this morning that she’s really gone,” he mumbled miserably at last. “Yesterday, I was like in a dream, a fog. It wasn’t real somehow, but today…”

  The day before when I had encountered him in front of the Kelseys’ house, I had very much doubted the veracity of his claim of family friendship, but there in that suffocatingly hot living room, with unchecked tears rolling down his pudgy cheeks and dripping from the ends of his sagging mustache, the depth of Maxwell Cole’s grief was undeniable. As Max’s story spilled out, I found myself missing the old familiar antagonism. His friend’s death had taken all the fight out of him, and in spite of myself, I felt a certain grudging sympathy toward the man.

  “From fifth grade,” he added brokenly. “That’s how long we were friends. Her family came to Seattle from southern Utah, someplace around St. George, I believe. They moved to the Hill the summer Marcia and I were between fourth and fifth grades. She liked to read and so did I. We met at the library branch up on Garfield Street. We both had permission to check books out of the adult section. All summer long we passed books back and forth. Marcia always turned down the corners of the sexy parts. She was a lot better at finding them than I was.”

  He smiled sadly, tugging with both hands on the wispy ends of his drooping mustache as though hoping to massage them into some kind of order. It didn’t work.

  “We were like that,” he went on. Max crossed two fingers and held them out in front of him for a moment to show me what he meant before letting them fall limply back into his lap.