Name Witheld

Eighteen

By the time I made it back to Old Bellevue, I had pretty well gotten a grip on things. Ralph was right, of course. If Karen was dying down in California, who was I to hang around Seattle finishing up a case? How much arrogance does it take to decide you're indispensable? Seattle P.D. wasn't that short of homicide detectives. Besides, it wasn't as though I owned the Don and Lizbeth Wolf cases. Captain Powell had already assigned both Paul Kramer and Sam Arnold to help out, and my opinion of their respective capabilities was much less telling in the scheme of things than the captain's was.

In case you haven't noticed, I lectured myself silently as I jockeyed the Guards Red Porsche into a particularly small parallel parking place directly across the street from Dorene's Fine China and Gifts, the S.P.D. homicide squad was there long before you showed up, and it'll still be there long after you're gone.

Glancing around the immediate neighborhood, I searched for a glimpse of Detective Kramer's ugly Caprice-to no avail. Tim Blaine's unmarked and empty Ford Taurus was parked across the street directly in front of the shop, but the Seattle P.D. Chevy was nowhere in sight.

By that time, it was ten to two. I settled back in my seat to wait. As the seconds and minutes ticked away, I found myself growing irritated. If I was the one who was such a lousy team player, if I was the one so damn uninterested in solving the case, why the hell was I present and accounted for when Paul Kramer wasn't? Where did he get off throwing stones?

A few minutes later, right at two, an enormous white Cadillac-one that suspiciously resembled the '61 I had seen overhanging the end of Grace Highsmith's garage-slowly nosed its way down Main Street. As the car drove past me, all I could see of the driver was a fringe of silver hair visible over the sill of the Caddy's left-hand window. I marveled that whoever was driving could see over the steering wheel, to say nothing of down that vast expanse of hood.

Maneuvering more by sound than sight, the Caddy's driver eventually wedged the car into a parking space, but only after a long sequence of backing and filling and after bumping both cars on either end of her chosen spot. As soon as the Cadillac came to rest, Suzanne Crenshaw appeared out of nowhere. She rushed up, opened the car door, and helped Grace Highsmith out onto the sidewalk. So much for my telling her not to show up for our interview with Latty.

Shaking my head at the old lady's stubbornness, I picked up the phone and dialed Watty. "Where's Detective Kramer?" I asked. "It's two o'clock. We're supposed to be interviewing a suspect over here in Bellevue right about now, and he's nowhere to be found."

"We had a call from Anna Dorn up at the medical examiner's office," Watty said. "She wanted to talk to you before she went back to her hotel out by the airport, but since Kramer is assigned to the case every bit as much as you are, and since he was here and you weren't, I decided to send him instead."

"What about Sam Arnold?" I asked.

"He's busy with Johnny Bickford," Watty replied. "I believe he left here to take her back home. She showed up on the fifth floor about an hour ago in a state of absolute panic."

"Not Johnny Bickford again. What does he want?"

"He?" Watty repeated dubiously. "I thought it was a she. According to Nell out front, she was pitching a fit all over the reception area."

"What about?"

"That dead woman over in Bellevue. The homicide Bellevue P.D. is currently investigating."

"Virginia Marks?"

"That's right," Watty answered. "That's the one. Johnny Bickford saw a story about her on the noon news and recognized the picture. She says-"

"He," I corrected. "Johnny Bickford is a he."

"All right, all right. He, then," Watty agreed. "He said the woman on the news was the same woman he saw down on Pier Seventy about the same time he discovered Don Wolf's body and reported it. The woman was in a wheelchair. Bickford is convinced that since somebody went to the trouble of killing the Marks woman, that they'll come after him next. He's demanding police protection. He really wanted to talk to you, but I suggested-"

"When it comes to dealing with Johnny Bickford, better Sam Arnold than me," I said. "And if Kramer calls in anytime soon, tell him the interview in Bellevue is going on without him."

I got out of the Porsche and walked across the street. When the door to the shop opened, the bell overhead tinkled merrily just as it had the day before. The cheerful ringing of the bell was followed immediately by a series of raised voices.

"No, Aunt Grace. Absolutely not!"

"But, Latty, dear, you must listen to reason…"

"No!" Sybil Latona Gibson repeated furiously, her voice rising in pitch. "I will not do it. I don't care what you say, I simply won't."

The door fell shut behind me and I found myself on the sidelines of a fierce family scrimmage. An uncomfortable Tim Blaine stood in front of the cash register holding a small, gift-wrapped package as gingerly as if it were a live grenade. Behind the cash wrap stood a highly incensed young woman-Latty Gibson, the Marilyn Monroe look-alike I had seen on Bill Whitten's security tape. Except the video recording hadn't done her justice. Even with her face flushed with anger and her blue eyes flashing outrage, she was lovely.

"How dare you bring people here in front of my customers to…to…"

She stopped, unable to continue, and glared at her aunt. Looking down at the two comparatively pint-size combatants, Tim Blaine shifted his massive weight uneasily from foot to foot. He looked as though he would have gladly been anywhere else on earth right about then.

Next to Detective Blaine, and with the crown of her head a full six inches short of his shoulder, stood Grace Highsmith. Backed by the solid presence of Suzanne Crenshaw, the old woman refused to give way to her niece's anger.

"Now, Latty," Grace crooned soothingly. "You really must understand. I couldn't possibly allow you to speak to any police investigators without your being properly represented by an attorney."

Latty Gibson spun around and turned the full force of her fury on me. "I suppose you're the detective?" she demanded.

Nodding, I eased myself one more step into the room. "One of them," I said. "My name is Detective Beaumont. J. P. Beaumont. I'm with the Seattle Police Department."

Latty reached down and plucked something out of a drawer under the counter, then she came around the cash wrap carrying a purse. "You'll have to watch the store for a while, Aunt Grace," she said. "I'll talk to him upstairs. In my apartment."

"That's fine," Aunt Grace said. "I'll be happy to look after things for a while. Suzanne, you go along with them, would you?"

"No!" Latty said again. "I don't want anyone with me, not anyone at all. I'll talk to the detective alone."

"But Latty…" Suzanne Crenshaw began, but she gave up when Latty stormed past her without a backward glance.

Clearing his throat, Tim Blaine sprang to the door and held it open. "Detectives, actually," he said apologetically. "I'm one, too, Miss Gibson. Detective Tim Blaine with the Bellevue Police Department."

"You!" Latty exclaimed. "I thought you told me you came in to buy your mother a birthday present."

Now it was Detective Blaine's turn to flush with embarrassment. "I was early," he mumbled. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

"You came into my store and talked to me under false pretenses."

"I'm sorry…" Blaine began, but Latty Gibson didn't stay around to listen. Tossing her head, she stalked out of the store with Detective Blaine and me trailing along behind.

"Detective Beaumont," Grace called behind me, catching the door before it had time to close. "Wait a minute. You can't do this. You know very well that Latty shouldn't talk to you alone like this, without Suzanne or someone else being present to advise her."

"It appears to me your niece has made up her own mind about that," I said. "I don't think she's likely to change it."

"But-"

"I'm sorry, Miss Highsmith. Latty has the right to make her own decisions."

"Even bad ones?"

"We all make bad decisions sometimes," I said.

Outside and around the side of the building, I found Detective Blaine waiting for me, holding an unmarked door that opened on a steep wooden stairway. "She went up there," he said.

By the time Tim Blaine and I made our way up the steep, creaking stairway, Latty Gibson had already disappeared through a doorway on the upper landing. After the gloomy darkness of the stairway, I was surprised when we stepped inside an airy but sparsely furnished apartment. Bright sunlight splashed into the room through sheer white curtains and from an overhead skylight. The living room was totally lined with fully laden bookshelves, but actual furniture in that room consisted of only a single couch, coffee table, and lamp. The dining room-with its small plastic patio table and four matching chairs-wasn't much better.

Several paperback books lay scattered on the table-all of them of the bodice-ripper school of literature. With a baleful glare in our direction, Latty swept the books into a pile and banished them from sight on one of the already overfull bookshelves.

"Miss Gibson," Tim Blaine was saying. "I didn't mean to mislead you, I-"

"I hope your mother enjoys her napkin rings," Latty said coldly. "You have excellent taste-for a cop." She looked over at me. "I suppose the only place we'll all be able to sit is at the dining room table."

Tim Blaine hurriedly subsided into one of the four chairs. I followed his lead. Latty Gibson didn't sit. Instead, she walked over to a window, pulled the dainty curtains aside, and looked out.

I cleared my throat. "As you are no doubt aware by now, Miss Gibson, there has been a series of homicides in the Seattle/Bellevue area in the last few days."

Still peering out the window, Latty nodded. "I know," she said. "Aunt Grace told me."

"A number of different circumstances have led us to the conclusion that you might possibly be a suspect in one or more of them."

At that point, she turned to face me. "Why?" she asked. "I haven't done anything."

"But we still need to talk to you," I said. "And before we start, I'm required to read you your rights."

"Go ahead," she said. "I want to get this over with as soon as possible."

While I Mirandized her, Tim Blaine kept his mouth shut, and when it was time to start the questioning, he still didn't seem willing to say much. "I understand you knew Don Wolf?" I said for openers.

Latty took a deep breath. "Yes," she answered, almost in a whisper. "We had been going out, but we had broken up."

"Why was that?" I asked. I was reasonably sure I knew the answer to that question, but Tim Blaine didn't, and he needed to hear it.

Latty turned toward us from the window. "He raped me," she said.

Homicide cops aren't supposed to be taken unawares, but Tim Blaine was. His broad shoulders sagged under the weight of her words. The skin across his jawline tightened into a hard, grim line.

"But you shouldn't blame him," Latty was saying. "It wasn't his fault."

"Not his fault!" I responded. "How could that be?"

Latty shrugged. "We had both been drinking and dancing and having a good time that night. I don't remember a lot of what happened after we left the dance to go to his office." She looked at me with a momentary trace of defiance. When it melted away, she turned back to the window.

"I guess I was…well…drunk. I was probably teasing him before it happened, flirting and leading him on. I don't know. I don't remember."

Latty may have forgotten, but the scene in Don Wolf's office was indelibly etched in my memory. Yes, they had both been obviously tipsy. But she was dead wrong about her leading him on. She had done everything possible to prevent the attack. When he had started trying to go further than she wanted, she had begged him to take her home.

"That's why this is all so silly, you see," Latty said.

"Silly?" I asked.

"Stupid, then," she returned. "Aunt Grace thinks I killed him because of it, because he hurt me. But since I don't really blame him for what happened, why would I kill him?" She turned from the window and focused her troubled eyes on me. "You do understand that, don't you?"

"Not exactly," I said, in a reply which was, in fact, a gross understatement. I didn't understand at all.

"It happened at his office downtown," Latty continued in an oddly dispassionate voice. "We went there late in the evening because he wanted to show me the lights. What I didn't know at the time was that Aunt Grace had me followed that the night. The detective was evidently parked right outside the building when we came downstairs after it happened. My dress was torn. I lost my coat. I had to wear his jacket home. The detective must have figured out what had happened. She reported it to Aunt Grace, and the next morning, Aunt Grace came after me.

"I wasn't going to tell her or anybody else anything about it, but she seemed to know everything anyway. My lip was cut. I'm sure I looked awful. I had barely slept, and I had cried most of the night. She wanted me to go straight to the police to turn him in, but I wouldn't. Aunt Grace and I had a big fight over it. She couldn't understand why I was mad at her for spying on me when I wasn't mad at Don for what he had done."

"Why weren't you?" Detective Blaine asked.

"Because I loved him," she said. "Or at least I thought I did. Even when she told me he was already married."

"Is that when you first found out about his wife?"

Latty nodded. "Aunt Grace gave me all the dirt that detective of hers-that Virginia Marks-had dug up. She warned me that a man like that was trouble and that I shouldn't see him again. I told her she was only my aunt, not my mother, and that if I wanted to keep on seeing him, nobody was going to stop me."

"And did you?" I asked. "Keep on seeing him?"

"Not right away," Latty answered. "I was hurt. I wanted to see if he'd call me first. When he didn't, I finally broke down and called him at work on New Year's Eve. I asked if I could see him later that night."

"New Year's Eve was Sunday, but he was working?"

"Yes."

"Doing what?"

"I don't know. We never talked much about what he did. It had something to do with finances, I guess. Something to do with raising investment capital for the company he worked for. He didn't seem to like his boss very much."

"So you arranged to meet him that night? On New Year's Eve?"

"Yes."

"What time?"

"He was busy earlier. Eleven o'clock was the earliest he could get away."

"Busy with what?"

"He didn't say, and I didn't ask."

"When you arranged this date, did you know his wife was in town?"

"No. I had no idea she was here."

"And what did the two of you talk about when you finally got together?" I asked.

The room grew suddenly quiet. In the stillness, I gradually became aware of the stark ticking of a hand-wound clock that sat on the kitchen counter. Latty turned back to the window. Her answer, when it came, was almost inaudible. "I asked him if he would marry me."

"You what?" Detective Blaine and I both demanded in unison.

"To marry me," she repeated. "I knew about his wife, but since he was up here without her, I thought maybe, if they weren't, you know, getting along, that he might divorce her and marry me."

There's a book that's supposed to be a very big asset to male/female communications, something like Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. Or maybe it's the other way around. Since I haven't read it, I wouldn't know. But at that precise moment, it would have made more sense if the title had been Women Are from Outer Space. That would have been closer to the truth, at least as far as Latty Gibson was concerned.

"So you're saying you didn't go there armed and ready to kill him?"

"No," Latty said. "I never did. I can't imagine why Aunt Grace and that lawyer of hers would even think such a thing."

"And what did he say when you asked him?" Tim Blaine asked.

When she answered, Latty Gibson turned her fathomless blue eyes full on him. "He said he couldn't. That he and his wife had decided to get back together."

Tim's eyes widened slightly at that. He opened his mouth and then closed it again and waved for me to pick up the ball and run with it.

"How long had you known him before all this happened?"

"Three weeks is all. It was love at first sight, at least for me."

"What about him?"

"I thought he loved me," she answered.

"Did he fall in love with you before or after he knew about your Aunt Grace's little family home on the shores of Lake Washington?"

"Detective Beaumont," Latty said, "my aunt's home-wherever it is-has nothing to do with me. And it wouldn't have had anything to do with Don, either. I told him that. Aunt Grace is leaving everything to charity. And why shouldn't she? It's hers to do with as she likes."

I tried changing the subject. "Are you aware that yesterday at noon your aunt tried to confess to Don Wolf's murder? She wanted me to arrest her?"

"Yes. How could I help but? The phone rang here constantly yesterday afternoon and evening. I'm sure she was only doing it to protect me-because she thought I had done it. What I can't imagine, though, is how anyone could have believed she was serious."

"For one thing," I said quietly, "she just happened to have the murder weapon that killed Don Wolf in her purse."

Latty frowned. "What murder weapon?"

"It's a handgun," I answered. "A Seecamp thirty-two auto."

"Oh, no," Latty murmured. Leaving the window, Latty stumbled toward the table where Tim Blaine and I were seated. She dropped heavily into one of the two empty chairs. "Please, God. Not that one."

"Which one are you talking about?" I asked.

"Ours. The one we keep in the shop is a Seecamp. It must be the same one. I thought I had just misplaced it, along with my coat, but Aunt Grace must have had it all along," Latty breathed. "Maybe she did kill him, after all. What if she did?"

Since Grace Highsmith had no idea what kind of gunshot wound had killed Don Wolf, I was reasonably sure that wasn't the case. "What makes you say that?" I asked.

"If I didn't kill him, and if Aunt Grace's gun is the murder weapon, who else is there?"

"Tell us about the gun," I urged. "Where did it come from?"

"One of Aunt Grace's boyfriends got it for her when she asked him to. Most of the time, we keep it in a drawer under the counter downstairs, the same place where we store our purses."

"You keep the gun loaded?" I asked.

Latty nodded again. "Just before Aunt Grace bought the store, her friend Dorene Lowell, the lady who owned it before, was robbed on her way to the bank. It was dumb for anyone to bother, because-in a store like ours-very little cash changes hands. Most of our business is transacted either by check or credit card. Dorene wasn't in very good health to begin with, and that incident scared her to death. In fact, I think it's one of the reasons she sold out. So ever since we opened, Aunt Grace has insisted that I take the gun with me whenever I go to make a deposit, especially if it's after dark. I usually did, although sometimes I forget."

"I see," I said. "And when you took it along, where did you carry it?"

"Sometimes, just on the seat of my car. Sometimes, if I'm wearing a coat or a jacket with a pocket, I slip the gun into that. It isn't very heavy."

"I don't suppose you have a license to carry a concealed weapon, do you?" I asked wearily. The idea of having multitudes of untrained people walking around loose with loaded guns in their pockets is enough to make every cop in the country turn prematurely gray.

"Aunt Grace said that since the gun was just for protection, we probably didn't need one. She says it isn't ladylike for a woman to have to have a license for that kind of thing."

"Aunt Grace needs to have her head examined," I put in. "For your information, ladylike or not, having a permit to carry a concealed weapon happens to be a law around here. That goes for you as well as your aunt."

"I didn't know," Latty said.

"No, I'm sure you didn't. Go on."

"Last Saturday night, when I went to make the night deposit, the gun was missing from the drawer. I tore my car apart looking for it, but it wasn't there. I even went upstairs and checked in the pockets of all my clothes. That's when I found out my coat was missing as well."

"What coat?"

"My good winter coat."

"When's the last time you remember having it?" I asked.

"That night," Latty said.

"What night?"

She paused, her eyes clouding. "The night I went dancing with Don. I must have left it there somewhere." She stopped.

Again I recalled the scene on the tape. Latty hadn't been wearing a coat when she first appeared in Don Wolf's office, but she might have dropped it in the reception area before she entered camera range.

"So you think the gun might have been in the pocket of the coat?" I asked.

"That's the only place I can think of."

I felt a catch of excitement in my throat. If the coat had been left in the D.G.I. offices, then the guy who had called himself prime suspect number one also had access to the murder weapon. And if Bill Whitten had been screening Don Wolf's activities, he might have had inside knowledge of when and where Latty and Don had scheduled their New Year's Eve meeting. That would give him access and opportunity. By his own admission, Bill Whitten had plenty of motivation. Thinking about the Whitten connection, I dropped out of the interview for a while and let Tim Blaine ask questions about Latty's connection to and knowledge of Virginia Marks. Other than the fact that Latty knew Grace Highsmith had hired someone to investigate Don Wolf, Latty seemed to know very little about the dead detective. Finally, when we stood up to go, Latty started toward the door, then she stopped. "Wait a minute. I need to give it to someone," she said. "I could just as well give it to you."

"Give us what?" I asked.

"Don's coat," she answered. "The one I wore home that night. Ever since I heard he was dead, I've felt weird about having it here in the house-almost like I had stolen it or something. But I didn't know what to do about it."

She disappeared into what was evidently a bedroom and came back carrying a double-breasted wool blazer. I took it, thanked her, and headed toward the door. Blaine was behind me, but at the top of the stairway he stopped and turned back.

"By the way, Miss Gibson," he said, "if you decide to get a replacement for that Seecamp, I can probably help out with the permit process."

When he said that, I'm sure my jaw dropped. Dumbfounded, I looked first at him and then back to Latty. For the first time since I had been in their presence, Latty Gibson gave Tim Blaine the benefit of an actual smile.

"Thank you, Detective Blaine," she said. "I'll remember that."

"Are you crazy?" I demanded after the apartment door closed and as we continued down the stairs. "That woman's still an active suspect in at least one homicide case."

"She didn't do it," Blaine declared. "I'm convinced she didn't."

He stepped out onto the sidewalk carrying the gift Latty Gibson had wrapped for his mother as if it were the most precious cargo in the world.

"She's gorgeous, isn't she," he marveled. "She really does look just like Marilyn Monroe. I wonder if she's ever entered any of those Marilyn look-alike contests. She'd win, hands down."

Which only goes to prove, once and for all, that women aren't the only ones who come from outer space. Men do, too.

At least some of them do.

Nineteen

W hen Tim Blaine and I came around the front of the building, I was eager to tell him where Latty's story about the missing coat might lead us, but Suzanne Crenshaw was waiting for us by the shop's front door.

"Miss Highsmith would like to see you before you go," she said.

That was fine with me, because I wanted to see her, too. And because group gropes are never a good idea in homicide investigations, I wanted to do it before Latty came back down to the shop from her apartment.

Folding Don Wolf's jacket over my arm, I stepped into the shop, with both Tim and Suzanne Crenshaw following behind. The door's bell gave three distinctly separate jangles. If I had been forced to listen to that thing day in and day out, I'm sure it would have driven me bonkers.

We found Grace Highsmith seated on a tall stool behind the counter. "Well?" she asked, assuming a certain regal air that implied we were lowly petitioners who had been admitted into her august presence to beg a royal favor, rather than police officers going about their sworn duties.

"Well what?" I returned.

"Are you going to arrest her or not?"

So we were off on the arrest tangent again. Yesterday, Grace had been focused on my arresting her. Today, her focal point was the probability of our arresting her niece.

"Miss Highsmith," I said patiently, "I think you have a slightly exaggerated idea of how we work. There's a lot more to our job than meets the eye-a lot of behind-the-scenes questioning-before an arrest ever takes place."

"I see," Grace said, but I wasn't at all sure she did.

"To that end, however, we do need to ask you a few questions about Virginia Marks, and about the work she was doing for you. Would that be all right?"

Grace glanced at her attorney, and Suzanne Crenshaw nodded her assent. "Of course," Grace said agreeably. "What do you want to know?"

"How did she come to work for you in the first place?"

Grace shrugged. "I've known Virginia since she was a child, but I had no idea what had happened to her or what she was doing until I saw her on television a few months ago."

"Television?"

"Yes, one of those television features they do from time to time on interesting or unusual people. They evidently chose Virginia because she was the only licensed private detective in Washington working out of a wheelchair. Later, when this thing with Latty and Don Wolf came up and I wanted someone to look into his background, Virginia was the one I called. There were things about Virginia that bothered me. I worried a little that she wasn't entirely honest with me from time to time, but still, she did a good enough job as far as Don Wolf was concerned. She's how I found out he was married."

"Did you know that before or after the night Latty was attacked?"

"Before," Grace answered. "Virginia dug that up in just a matter of hours after she went to work on the case."

"But you didn't mention it to your niece?"

"I was hoping she'd come to her senses on her own, you see," Grace said. "That's how one learns things in the real world, through experience. And, I thought he'd probably do something to give himself away, although I certainly never anticipated that he would…" Her voice trailed off and didn't continue.

"Tell us about Virginia Marks' connection to what went on that night."

"Just as I asked, Virginia had placed Don Wolf under surveillance. She followed them, first to the night club and later to Don's office."

I had a clear memory of Virginia Marks' car pulling away from the curb just as the elevator door opened and Don Wolf and Latty reentered the lobby from the elevator. "How did she know about the rape?" I asked.

"How?" Grace repeated with a frown. "What do you mean?"

"Did she somehow see what happened?"

"Oh, no. She was waiting on the street. When they came back downstairs, she drove away. Not wanting them to see her, she waited around the block. When Latty left in a cab a few minutes later, Virginia followed. From the state Latty was in-she was crying, her clothes were in tatters-Virginia more or less assumed what had happened, and, of course, she was right."

"What about New Year's Eve?" I asked. "Did you know Latty was going to meet him that night?"

"Yes," Grace said.

"How did you know?"

Grace stole a sidelong glance at Suzanne Crenshaw, who was vigorously shaking her head. Grace looked back at me.

"Because I heard her on the phone. Virginia had fixed it, you see."

"Fixed it?"

"The phone. She made tapes so I could listen."

"In other words, she put a tap on the line?"

"Yes. I suppose that's what it's called."

"A legal tap?" I don't know why I even bothered to ask. As far as Grace Highsmith was concerned, I was a long way from being a virgin.

Suzanne Crenshaw was still shaking her head, but Grace Highsmith was not dissuaded. "I don't know what's illegal about it, Detective Beaumont. After all, it is my phone. It's in my name, and I write the check that pays the bill each month."

Great, I thought, another key piece of information gleaned from an illegal wiretap.

"So," I said, "you knew Latty planned to meet Don Wolf. Did you have any idea she was going to ask him to marry her?"

For the first time, Grace seemed indecisive. She hesitated. "I didn't know, but I was afraid she might. She's been reading all of Dorene's old romance novels, you see, the books Dorene couldn't take with her when she moved into smaller quarters. You know what they're like."

"No," I said, quite honestly. "I have no idea."

"They're the kind of story where no matter how awful the man seems to be at first glance-no matter how repulsive or obnoxious, or unreasonable-he always turns out to be all right in the end. True love triumphs. He and the heroine get married and live happily ever after and all that sort of thing. Very unrealistic, if you ask me."

"What does any of this have to do with Latty?"

"She's rebelling against her mother, you see," Grace answered. "Her mother is so impossibly unconventional-she never married, believes wholeheartedly in free sex, thinks marriage is the inevitable outcome of a patriarchal society, and all that other feminist nonsense. Naturally, Latty wants to do just the opposite-including wanting to marry the first man she became seriously involved with."

"She might have been rebelling against you, too, Miss Highsmith," I suggested.

"Heavens, no," Grace said immediately, underlining her objection with a definitive shake of her head. "Not against me certainly. I may not read all those books, but in my own way, I'm every bit as much of a hopeless romantic as Latty is or as her grandmother was. I'm sure I would have married and settled down myself, if I'd ever met just the right sort of man."

Not bloody likely, I thought. "Let's go back to New Year's Eve," I said, bringing the discussion back to the subject at hand.

"What about it?"

"Virginia Marks followed Latty to Myrtle Edwards Park?"

"No. Since we knew that's where they were meeting, I asked her to wait there for them."

"And what happened?"

"Don Wolf showed up first. When Latty got there, they walked off down by the water. A few minutes later, just after the fireworks started, Latty came running back alone. On the way to her car, she ran right past Virginia's. Virginia said she could see Latty was upset, that she was crying."

"And then what happened?"

"I had asked Virginia to speak to Don Wolf. She waited for a while for him to come back through the parking lot. When he didn't, she finally went to check, thinking he might have left the park somewhere north of where she was waiting. That's when she found the gun. It was right there just off the jogging path, near where Latty stood for a moment or two when she came back alone. Virginia picked up the gun, realized it had been fired, and assumed the worst."

"That Latty had shot him?"

Grace closed her eyes and nodded.

"What happened then?"

"She went back to her car, called me on her car phone, and asked me what I wanted her to do."

"Grace," Suzanne Crenshaw interjected urgently. "I really think…"

"Now, Suzanne," Grace Highsmith said, as stubborn in her own way as Latty Gibson was in hers. "Now that I've started, I'm going to finish. Damn the torpedoes, if you'll excuse the expression. As soon as Virginia told me what kind of gun it was, I knew it was ours-mine. At least I was afraid it was. I needed time to think, to decide what to do. I asked Virginia to hold on to the gun and to call me again as soon as she found out for sure whether or not Don Wolf was dead. She did just exactly what I asked. She was back there on the pier when the body was found the next morning."

"Miss Highsmith," I said, "willfully concealing evidence in a homicide investigation constitutes a felony."

"Oh, I know all that," she replied airily. "That's what I have you for, isn't it, Suzanne?"

The attorney nodded grimly but said nothing.

"Wait a minute," Tim Blaine said, opening his mouth for the first time in the course of the interview. "When Latty left, why didn't Virginia Marks follow her?"

It was a good observation-one I wished I had made myself.

"I already told you. Because Virginia's assignment that night was to talk to Don Wolf, to conclude my negotiations with him."

"Negotiations for what?"

"To present him with my offer."

"What offer?"

"A payoff," Grace Highsmith said. "Or maybe it's called a bribe. I'm not sure which is which. Whatever you want to call it, I was prepared to give the man money if he would promise to get out of Latty's life and stay there."

"How much money?" Tim Blaine asked.

"One hundred g's," Grace Highsmith said. "I believe that's how the tough guys always say it in the movies. I've never been quite sure why they use that term. What does the letter g have to do with a thousand dollars?"

By then, I was a grizzled veteran of Grace Highsmith's little surprises. Tim Blaine wasn't. When she said that, the stunned look on his face probably wasn't all that different from the look on mine the day before when she had dumped the. 32 auto out of her purse onto the linen tablecloth in Azalea's Fountain Court.

I could have told Grace that g refers to grand as in thousand, but I didn't feel like making any more contributions toward her growing criminal vocabulary.

"Back to Virginia Marks for a moment," I said. "Even after you knew Don Wolf was dead, Virginia kept working for you. Why was that?"

Grace shrugged. "By then, I assumed we needed to know everything we could about him in case Suzanne needed information on him to mount Latty's defense. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem as though there was much to find out."

"That's what Virginia's trip to California was all about?"

Grace nodded.

"Did she learn anything important?"

"Not really. I only talked to her briefly on the telephone. She said she had learned a few things, but that she'd get back to me later on today with the details. I wasn't all that excited about it because it sounded to me as though it was mostly more of the same."

"The same what?"

"The same old nothing," Grace answered. "At least, nothing much. She never did have any luck tracing his background prior to his going to work for D.G.I. last June. She said it was almost like he was dropped onto this planet, fully grown and fully educated, at age thirty-two. Virginia thought maybe he might be part of the federal witness protection program."

The slight discrepancy was so small that it almost sailed right past me without my noticing. "Wait a minute," I said, "did you say last June?"

Grace nodded, "Yes."

"But I thought…" The people in the shop stayed quiet while I thumbed through my notebook, looking for the notes from my interview with Bill Whitten. And once I found them, I spent more time searching through and deciphering my hasty scribbles until I found the exact reference.

"Here it is. According to what Bill Whitten told me, Don Wolf went to work for D.G.I. in early October."

"No," Grace said. "You're wrong about that. I'm sure Virginia told me he started working for D.G.I. much earlier than that, way back last summer sometime. Virginia didn't say exactly, but it sounded as though it was a consulting job of some kind. I'm sure she would have addressed that issue in her report if she'd ever had a chance to deliver it. She usually faxed me a written copy a little in advance of our face-to-face. That gave me a chance to think about it beforehand and to make note of any questions."

Tim and I exchanged glances. Most likely, he was thinking about Virginia Marks' missing computer. I know I was.

"But she didn't fax you anything last night after she got back to town?"

"No. Not as far as I know. She might have. There was a whole stack of paper in the tray this morning. It looked to me like it mostly had to do with shipments to and from the shop."

The bell over the door jangled noisily, and in walked Latty Gibson. She paused just inside the door and looked questioningly from face to face.

"Why are you still here?" she demanded, settling her gaze on me. "What's going on?"

"We were just talking to your Aunt Grace," I said. "We had to ask her some questions as well."

"Are you done now?"

Tim was already on his way to the door. "Yes," he said. "Now that you mention it, I think we are pretty much finished, aren't we, Detective Beaumont?"

"Evidently," I said dryly.

Nodding to each of the ladies in turn, I followed Detective Blaine out into the street. "Isn't she something!" Tim Blaine was saying as I caught up with him.

"I'll say," I agreed. "I've only known her for two days, but I can tell you that Grace Highsmith is full of surprises."

"I wasn't talking about Grace," he said. "I mean Latty. She's the most beautiful woman I've ever met. How could that son of a bitch do that to her! I swear, if he weren't dead already…"

As I said before, the late Don Wolf was amazingly unlamented. Even people who never met him were glad he was dead. It should have been enough to give the guy a complex. "You and everybody else," I said.

"I believe somebody's out to get her," Tim continued. "They're trying to frame her. Maybe Virginia Marks was even in on it. That business with her finding the gun is just too much of a coincidence."

Cops aren't ever supposed to mix business with pleasure. With good reason. The people who turn up involved in homicide cases-suspects and witnesses alike-are supposed to be off limits, especially when it comes to romantic entanglements. The prohibition makes perfect sense. Once an investigator has a personal connection to someone involved in the case, his perspective and judgment both become clouded, and his impartiality flies right out the window.

Assuming the mantle of wise old man, I made a futile attempt to give Tim Blaine the benefit of my own hard-won experience. When I set out to pop his romantic bubble, I was speaking from the unenviable position of first-hand experience. Of being able to say, "Do as I say, not as I do." After all, years ago, when I fell for one of my own prime suspects, that relationship had come within inches of being fatal-for both of us.

"Tim," I said, "would you mind if I gave you a word of advice?"

"What's that?" he asked.

"Forget about Latty Gibson, at least for the time being."

"Forget about her? Are you kidding?"

"No," I said. "I'm not kidding at all. I'm as serious as I can be. And I'm telling you this for your own good."

Our eyes met for a moment as we stood there on that sunlit sidewalk. "I'll take it under advisement," he agreed grudgingly. "But I'm not making any promises."

He turned toward his Ford, reached down, and wrenched open the door. "See you around," he added, before climbing in and slamming the door shut behind him.

In other words, "Screw you!" As I watched him drive away, I realized I had never told him about the real implications of Latty leaving her coat with the gun in it somewhere on the premises of D.G.I. That was all right, though. Blaine was a Bellevue police officer, and Bill Whitten was in Seattle.

The day before, Captain Powell had threatened to add more personnel to the case if, after twenty-four hours, Kramer, Arnold, and I weren't making measurable progress. As far as I could tell, we weren't. That meant that if Powell had carried through on his promise to increase the body count, we'd be able to draft someone to go to D.G.I. and collect the missing coat.

Tossing Don Wolf's jacket over my shoulder, I crossed the street to my own car. At three o'clock in the afternoon, there was already a traffic jam on Main Street in Old Bellevue. With the interview over, I reached down to check my pager. I wasn't particularly concerned when I realized it wasn't there on my belt where it belonged. I reasoned that I had probably left it on the bathroom counter earlier when I stripped out of my clothes for that quick shower. But that was no great loss. If people who knew me were trying to reach me, they were probably used to the idea that I didn't return calls instantly.

As I waited for my turn to go play in the gridlock, I checked the recall button on my cell phone. Naturally, there was a call.

At first, I thought my caller might be Ralph, but when I tried reaching him at Belltown Terrace, there was no answer. Next, I checked in with the department.

"Sergeant Watkins here," Watty said, answering his phone.

"Did Kramer ever show up?" I asked.

"As a matter of fact, he did. But before I put him through to you, I've got a bone to pick with you, Detective Beaumont. Where's your pager?"

"Oops," I said, hoping this sounded like news to me. "It's not here. I must have misplaced it."

"Right," Watty answered. "You win the booby prize. And I just happen to know where you left it."

"Where?"

"A housekeeper found it at the Silver Cloud Motel over there in Bellevue. I told her to leave it at the desk, that you'd come by and pick it up. At least it was on. I checked with the person who called."

"Look, Watty," I said, hoping to mollify the man. "I'm just a couple of minutes from there right now. I'll go straight over and pick it up."

"And if I were you, in the future, I'd be a whole lot less careless with departmental equipment. Now, do you still want to talk to Detective Kramer?"

"No, thanks," I said. "Not necessary. I'll see him when I get back down there. Tell him I'm on my way."

"Oh, one more thing," Watty said, before I could hang up. "Lori's looking for you."

"Lori?"

"You know, Lori Yamaguchi, who works in the latent fingerprint lab. She didn't say what she wanted, but she said to have you come see her as soon as you're back downtown."

"I'll go right away," I said.

"But not until after you retrieve your pager."

"I wouldn't think of it," I said.

I gave a generous tip to the desk clerk at the Silver Cloud who handed over the pager, and I left an equally hefty one for the housekeeper who had found it. Unwittingly, those two people had saved my life. If I had lost the pager for good, both Sergeant Watkins and Captain Powell would have had my ass.

Twenty-five minutes later, with Don Wolf's jacket still slung over my arm, I was standing leaning against the counter in the reception area of King County's Fingerprint Lab. When the receptionist told me Lori was on the phone, I told her I'd wait, and helped myself to a chair. Sitting there waiting and with nothing in particular to do, I picked up the jacket and started going through the pockets.

One pocket after another yielded nothing but pocket lint. Until I reached the last one, the lower inside pocket. There, tucked into smooth lining, was a single tiny scrap of paper that had been folded once, twice, and yet again into a tiny square no bigger than a respectable spitwad. When I unfolded it, the resulting piece of paper was no bigger than an inch square. The printed message on the paper was equally tiny.

"Donnie," it said, "see you at the apartment at six." It was signed with the initials, "D.C." A heart had been drawn around the outside of the two letters and a whimsical pair of happy faces had been made of the insides of both letters.

I studied the note for sometime. D.C. Who's D.C.? I wondered. And then it hit me. D.C.-Deanna Compton. Bill Whitten's secretary!

"Detective Beaumont?"

I looked up. Lori Yamaguchi was smiling at me in a way that said she had spoken to me more than once without my hearing.

"Yes? Oh, hello, Lori. Sorry I didn't hear you. I was thinking about something else." Carefully, I refolded the piece of paper and dropped it inside my shirt pocket. "What's up?"

"We got a hit on those fingerprints of yours, the ones Audrey Cummings sent over."

I stood up and tried to seem less disorganized and distracted than I felt. "Really? That was just a shot in the dark. What kind of hit?" I asked.

"Not just one," Lori added. "There are seven in all."

"Seven," I echoed.

"That's right," she said. "It turns out, your dead guy is a probable serial rapist with a trail of unsolved attacks in jurisdictions all over California. Same M.O. each time. He'd make an appointment with a real estate agent to go look at houses, and then…"

"Rape them?"

"Right. There might very well be more than just the seven," Lori said. "It could be the same thing happened in other places and that one way or another they didn't end up in the data bank."

"But who is he?" I asked.

Lori looked at me blankly. "What do you mean, who is he?" she asked. "Don Wolf, of course. Since you were the detective on the case, I figured you already knew his name. Audrey Cummings said-"

"That's all you have on him then?" I interrupted. "No arrests, no prior convictions?"

Right that minute, I didn't attempt to explain to Lori Yamaguchi that as far as anyone else had been able to discover, the guy named Don Wolf had no known history prior to his sudden appearance in Lizbeth Dorn's life down in California some months earlier.

"Nothing. If there had been, I should have been able to find some record of it. I suppose it's possible that he fell through a crack somewhere along the line and his prints just didn't get entered into the AFIS computer. That automated fingerprints identification system is expensive and time-consuming, you know."

Lori was justifiably proud of her work, of having made the vital connection. No doubt she expected me to be either more grateful or else more impressed. Maybe both. But at the moment, that folded piece of paper with Deanna Compton's damning initials on it was burning a hole in my shirt pocket. Somebody else besides Latty Gibson had maybe been messing around with Don Wolf, and I wanted to pay her a visit.

"Look, Lori," I said. "Thanks a whole bunch. Don't think I'm not appreciative, because I am. I owe you lunch. No, more than that, I owe you dinner. But right now, I've got to go. Send me a detailed report on all this, would you?"

"You don't owe me anything, Detective Beaumont," she said, as I gathered up Don Wolf's jacket and headed for the door. "I was just doing my job."

With a quick wave over my shoulder, I darted out the door, realizing as I went that it's people like Lori Yamaguchi who, as opposed to the Hilda Chisholms of the world, give a whole different meaning to the word bureaucrat.