CHAPTER 9

I could probably get away with saying that I went to Bailey's after work that day because I'm a dedicated cop who doesn't leave a single stone unturned. I could claim that once I'm on a case, I work it one hundred percent of the time. I could say it, but it wouldn't be true.

The visit to the store was necessary because I was out of coffee. And MacNaughton's. And the state liquor store is right across the street from Bailey's parking lot.

So much for dedication.

To my credit, I did have my mind on the case. In fact, I was mentally going back over Bob Payson's interview, word for word, trying to see if there were any additional bits and pieces that could be pulled from what he had told me. I was so lost in thought, that I almost ran over the poor kid.

"Would you like to buy some Girl Scout cookies?"

The girl standing in front of two cartons of cookies was around eleven or twelve years old. She had a mop of bright red curls that could have come straight from Little Orphan Annie. She also had an award-winning smile. I'm a sucker for a smile. I stopped and reached for my wallet.

"How much are they?"

"Two fifty a box."

"And what kinds do you have?"

She gave me the complete rundown. I took two boxes of Mints and handed her a twenty. She rummaged in a ragged manila envelope for change.

"Do you sell here often?" I asked.

"I'm here every day after school. My mom brings me over. I earn my way to camp by selling cookies."

I felt my heartbeat quicken. Adrenaline does that. It's got nothing to do with heart disease. "Were you here last week?"

Handing me my change, she nodded. "All last week and all this week. It's a good place."

"You're serious about this, aren't you?"

"I've signed up to sell one thousand boxes. That way my mom doesn't have to pay to send me to camp."

She finished speaking and turned away from me to ask someone else. I had already bought. She couldn't afford to waste time with me at the expense of other potential paying customers. She homed in on a little old lady coming out of the store, carrying a cloth shopping bag filled with groceries.

"Did you save me some?" the woman asked, handing over the correct change.

"Right here," the girl replied, picking up an orange box and tucking it inside the woman's shopping bag. With the transaction complete, she turned back to me.

I took a wild stab in the dark. "What's the most you've ever sold at one time?"

She never batted an eyelash. "Fifteen boxes."

My heart did another little flip. I don't believe in coincidences. It's an occupational hazard. "No kidding. When?"

"Last week. A man and a woman bought fifteen boxes. They wrote a check."

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a woman emerge from a parked car and walk in our direction. Her total focus was on me, but she spoke to the girl. "Do you need anything, Jenny?" she asked.

"More Mints and some Carmel Delights," the girl answered. "And would you take this twenty?" Jenny handed over the twenty I had just given her and the woman returned to her car.

"Is that your mother?" I asked.

Jenny nodded. "She stays with me every day while I sell cookies."

The mother returned with four boxes of cookies cradled in her arms. She eyed me warily as she put them in the cartons at Jenny's feet.

"What are you, the hidden supply line?"

The woman gave me a half smile and nodded. "It works better if people don't realize we have a full carload of cookies right here. That way they think they're buying the last Mint."

"This is quite a little entrepreneur you have here," I said.

"Jenny's a good kid, and she has a lot of spunk. I don't mind helping her. She's willing to help herself."

Jenny was no lightweight salesperson. She had just finished nailing a woman with a baby in her grocery cart for four packages of cookies. She gave her mother the ten.

There was a quiet space, with no customers coming or going. The sun had dipped behind the roof of the Coliseum, and it was suddenly chill. Jenny gave a shiver.

"How many boxes in a carton?" I asked.

"Twelve," Jenny answered.

"How would you like to sell two cartons all at once?"

"Really? You mean it? Plus the ones you already bought?"

"Sure. But it'll cost you. I'll need you to tell me everything you can remember about the man and woman who bought those fifteen boxes."

Jenny's mother stiffened. "Wait just a minute…"

I reached into my pocket and extracted my ID. "It's okay," I said. "I'm a cop, working a case. I really will buy the cookies, though, if you're willing to help me."

Jenny looked from me to her mother and back again. "Is it okay, Mom?"

Her mother shrugged. "I guess so. It's about time we left here anyway. It's starting to get cold."

Jenny packed up her supplies. I wrote the Girl Scouts a check for sixty bucks, and we transferred twenty-four assorted boxes of cookies from their trunk to the backseat of the Porsche. I made arrangements to meet them at Dick's for a milkshake and hamburger. My treat.

While Jenny mowed through her hamburger and fries, I chatted with her mother, Sue Griffith. Sue and Jenny's father were divorced. Sue had custody, and she and Jenny were living in a small apartment on Lower Queen Anne while Sue finished up her last year of law school. There was no question in my mind where Jenny got her gumption.

Showing great restraint, I waited until Jenny had slurped up the very last of a strawberry shake from the bottom of her cup before I turned on the questions. "Tell me about the man who bought the cookies," I said.

"It wasn't just a man. It was a man and a woman."

"Tell me about them."

She paused. "He was tall and black. He had a sort of purple shirt on. And high-topped shoes."

"And the woman?"

"She was black, too. Very pretty. She's the one who wrote the check."

"What was she wearing, did you notice?"

"One of those big funny sweatshirts. You know, the long kind."

"Funny? What do you mean, funny?"

"It had an arrow on it that pointed. It said Baby."

I had seen a sweatshirt just like that recently. At Darwin Ridley's house, on the back of his widow, who never went to his games, not even statewide tournaments.

"What color was her shirt?" I asked.

"Pink," Jenny told me decisively. "Bright pink."

It was all I could do to sit still. "What time was it, do you remember?"

"Sure. It was just before we left. Mom brings me over as soon as I get home from school and have a snack. We're at the store by about four-thirty or five, and we stay for a couple of hours. That way I catch people on their way home from work."

"So what time would you say, six-thirty, seven?"

She nodded. "About that."

"Jenny," I said. "If I showed you a picture of those people, would you recognize them?"

Jenny nodded. "They were nice. The nice ones are easy to remember."

Across the table from me, Sue was looking more and more apprehensive. "What's all this about?" she asked. "This isn't that case that was on the news today, I hope."

"I'm afraid so."

"I don't think I want Jenny mixed up in this."

"Jenny's already mixed up in it," I said quietly. "Aside from his basketball team, your daughter may have been one of the last people to see Darwin Ridley alive."

Jenny had watched the exchange between her mother and me like someone watching a Ping-Pong game. "Who's Darwin Ridley?" she asked.

"I believe he's the man you sold all those cookies to," I told her.

"And now he's dead?" Her question was totally matter-of-fact.

"Somebody killed him. Late Friday night or Saturday morning."

Kids have an uncanny way of going for the jugular. "Was it the woman in the pink shirt? Did she kill him?"

I've suspected for years that kids watch too much television. That question corked it for me, convinced me I was right. The problem was, it was closer to the truth than I was willing to let on. I already knew Joanna Ridley was a liar. I wondered if she was something worse.

"It's not likely it was his wife," I said, waffling for Jenny's benefit. "At this point it could be almost anybody. We don't know."

"I hope she didn't do it," Jenny said thoughtfully. "I felt sorry for her."

"What do you mean?"

"The man was in a hurry. He seemed angry. He kept looking at his watch and saying he had to go. She said he should go, that she'd pay for the cookies and leave them in his trunk."

"Did she?"

Jenny nodded, big-eyed. "I helped her carry them to the car. She started crying."

"Crying? Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure." Jenny sounded offended that her veracity had been called into question.

"What happened then?"

"After she put the cookies in one car, she got in another one."

"What kind?"

"Brown-and-white car, I think."

"And did she leave right away?"

"No. She sat there for a long time, leaning on the steering wheel, crying. She finally drove away."

I turned to Jenny's mother. "Did you see any of this?" I asked.

She shook her head. "I must have been in the car, studying. When Jenny needs something, she whistles."

"What about the check?" I asked.

Sue answered that question. "I turned it in to the cookie mother yesterday. She said she had to make a deposit this morning."

I made a note of the cookie mother's name and number. For good measure, I had Jenny go over the story one more time while I took detailed notes. "Is this going to help?" Jenny asked when we finished and I had closed my notebook.

"I certainly hope so," I said.

"And can I tell the kids at school that I'm helping solve a murder?" she asked.

"Don't tell them yet," I told her. "I'll let you know when it's okay to say something."

Jenny looked at me seriously. "Can girls be detectives when they grow up?"

"You bet they can," I told her. "You'll grow up to be anything you want to be. I'd put money on it."

Sue Griffith got up. Jenny did, too. "We'd better be going," Sue said.

"Thanks for buying all those cookies," Jenny said. "But if you run out, I'll still be selling next week. The sale lasts for three weeks."

Jenny Griffith was evidently born with selling in her blood. I had a Porsche full of Girl Scout cookies to prove it.

I never did remember to buy the coffee. The coffee or the MacNaughton's, either.

I called Peters as soon as I got home. "Guess what?" I said.

"I give up."

"Joanna Ridley was at the Coliseum on Friday."

"I thought she didn't like basketball."

"We've got a Girl Scout who says someone who looked like Joanna Ridley paid for the cookies we found in his trunk. By check."

"She wrote a check?"

"That's right."

"So what do we do now, Coach?" Peters asked.

"I'd say we take a real serious look at the Widow Ridley and find out what makes her tick."

"Starting with United Airlines?"

"That's as good a place to start as any."

"How about the neighbors?"

"Them, too."

Peters hesitated. "What would she have to gain, insurance maybe?"

"It wouldn't be the first time," I replied.

"I've never dealt with a pregnant murder suspect before. The very idea runs against the grain."

"Murder's against the grain," I reminded him. "Pregnancy's no more a legal defense for murder than Twinkies are."

Peters hung up then, but I could tell it still bothered him. To tell the truth, it bothered me. Joanna Ridley bothered me. I recalled her house, the way she had looked when she answered the door, her reactions when she finally learned what I was there for. I would have sworn she wasn't playacting, but as I get older, the things I'm sure of become fewer.

I kept coming back to the bottom line. Joanna Ridley had lied to us, more than once. In the world of murder and mayhem, liars are losers. And they're usually guilty.

Just thinking about the next day made me weary. I stripped off my clothes and crawled into bed. I wasn't quite asleep when the phone rang.

"How's it going, J. P.?"

"Maxwell Cole, you son of a bitch! It's late. Leave me alone. I've got a job to do. I don't need you on my ass."

"Look, J. P., here I am calling you up to lend a little assistance, and you give me the brush-off."

"What kind of assistance?"

"You ever heard of FURY?"

"What is this, a joke?"

"No joke. Have you ever heard of it?"

"Well, I've heard of Plymouth Furies and ‘hell hath no fury.' Which is it?"

"It's an acronym, F-U-R-Y. The initials stand for Faithful United to Rescue You."

"To rescue me? From what?"

"J. P., I'm telling you, this is no joke. These people are serious. They're having their first convention in town this week. They're up at the Tower Inn on Aurora."

"So what are they rescuing? Get to the point, Max."

"They're white supremacists. I interviewed their president today. No kidding. They want blacks to go back where they came from."

"Jesus Christ, Max. What does all this have to do with me? I need my beauty sleep."

"They said it's possible one of their members knocked off Darwin Ridley."

"Send me his name and number. I'll track him down in the morning."

"J. P…"

"Get off it, Max. You know how this works. Some kooky splinter group claims responsibility for a crime and manufactures a whole armload of free publicity. Don't fall for it. And don't complicate my life. I've got plenty to do without chasing after phony suspects who are playing the media for a bunch of fools."

"Are you saying…" he began.

"If the shoe fits!"

With that, I hung up. The phone began ringing again within seconds, but I ignored it. It rang twenty times or so before it finally stopped.

Within minutes, I was sound asleep and dreaming about Girl Scout cookies.

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