Trial By Fury

CHAPTER 12

After the waiter set down her coffee, Candace Wynn took one demure sip and then looked expectantly from Peters to me and back again. "You said you needed to talk to me."

I gave Peters the old take-it-away high sign. After all, Candace Wynn knew Peters somewhat better than she knew me. Besides, Peters' earnest, engaging manner encouraged people to spill their guts. I had seen it happen.

"That's right; we do," Peters said. "How long have you been at Mercer Island?"

"Ten years."

"All that time as counselor?"

"No. I've only been in the counseling department for the last year and a half. Before that, I taught math."

"And what about the cheerleaders?"

"I've had them the whole time. I was a cheerleader at Washington State in Pullman." She stopped and gave Peters an inquiring look. "I thought this was going to be about Darwin."

"It is, really, in a roundabout way," Peters said. "You told us yesterday that you were a friend of his. How good a friend, Mrs. Wynn?"

"Andi," she reminded him. She shrugged. "Fairly good friends. When I started teaching there, a bunch of us used to play crazy eights in the teachers' lounge in the morning-Coach Altman, Darwin, and a couple of others. You get to be friends that way."

"Playing cards?"

"That's right. And in the afternoons, some of us would stop by the Roanoke and play a few games of pool."

"Including Darwin Ridley and yourself?" Peters asked.

Andi nodded. "Yes."

"Did you know anything about his personal life?" Peters continued.

"Some, but not very much."

"Have you ever met his wife, Joanna?"

"No. I never even saw her. She didn't come to school, and she never showed up at any of the faculty functions, at least not any of the ones I went to."

"And she never came to the Roanoke?"

"No."

"Did you know she's pregnant?"

Andi looked at Peters. She seemed a little surprised. "Is she? I didn't know. That's too bad," she said.

Peters nodded in agreement. "Yes, it is. Did Darwin ever indicate to you that his marriage was in trouble?"

Andi Wynn sipped her coffee and considered the question before she answered. "I remember him mentioning that they were going for marriage counseling. That was some time back. A year ago, maybe a year and a half. He never said anything more about it. Whatever the problem was, they must have straightened it out."

I was growing restless, sitting on the sidelines. "Tell us about your cheerleading squad," I said.

"The cheerleaders? What about them?"

"Give us an idea of who they are, what they're like."

"They're mostly juniors and seniors…" she began. Then she stopped and looked at Peters. "You talked to most of them yesterday. What more do you need to know?"

"Most?" Peters focused in on the important issue. "I only met most of them? Where were the others?"

"Two were missing. One was home sick. She has mono. The other quit, transferred to a different school."

Peters had gotten out his notebook and flipped through several pages. "What are their names?" he asked, his pen poised above the paper.

"Those who weren't there yesterday?" Peters nodded in reply. "Amy Kendrick and Bambi Barker."

"Bambi? As in Walt Disney?"

"That's right."

"Which one has mono?" Peters asked.

"Amy."

"So Bambi transferred to another school," I said. "Recently?"

"Monday of this week."

"What is she, a junior?"

Andi Wynn shook her head. "A senior."

"And she's transferring this late in her last year? What's her problem? Flunking out? Having trouble with grades?"

"No, nothing like that. Her father just up and shipped her off to a private school in Portland, a boarding school."

"Which one?" Peters asked, still holding his pen.

Andi frowned. "St. Agnes of the Hills. I think that's the name of it."

Peters wrote it down. "Do you have any idea why she was sent away?" he asked.

"Not really. Her father's Tex Barker, though."

Peters dropped his pen on the table. The name meant nothing to me, but I saw the spark of recognition flash in Peters' eyes. "Wheeler-Dealer Barker?"

"That's the one."

I was tired of sitting on my hands. "Who the hell is Wheeler-Dealer Barker?"

"Beau here doesn't watch TV, Andi," Peters explained with a smile. Andi Wynn smiled back.

"Okay, you two. Stop making fun of me. Who's this Barker character?"

"He runs Tex Barker Ford in Bellevue," Peters told me. "His commercials are reputed to be some of the worst in the country."

"That bad?"

Peters and Andi nodded in unison. "Somebody gives out awards for the worst television commercials. It's like Mr. Blackwell's worstdressed list. Barker won one last year, hands down."

"What else do you know about him?" I asked. Because of Peters' voracious reading, he always seemed to know something about practically everything. Wheeler-Dealer Barker was no exception.

"He came up here from Texas four, maybe five, years ago and bought up a failing Ford dealership on auto row in Bellevue. Within months, he had moved it from the bottom of the heap to one of the top dealerships."

"So the commercials haven't hurt him."

"Are you kidding? He's like that character with his dog Spot, one of those guys people love to hate, but they do business with him right and left. I understand he's made offers on two more dealerships, one in Lynnwood and the other down in Burien."

"And he lives on Mercer Island?" I asked, turning once more to Candace Wynn. "How did the daughter of someone like that fit in on Mercer Island?"

"Bambi landed in the in-crowd and stayed there. She never had any problem."

The picture Joanna Ridley had handed me passed through my mind. Bambi Barker had problems, all right, I thought to myself. Lots of them. They just didn't show. "When did you find out Bambi was being transferred?" I asked.

"She was at school Friday morning. I saw her. Then, right about noon, her father came to pick her up. I didn't see it, but I understand there was quite a scene in the office. Yesterday, her mother officially checked her out of school. You know, got the withdrawal forms signed, turned in her books, cleaned out her lockers, that kind of thing."

"Did you talk to her, the mother?"

Andi nodded. "Briefly. Tried to anyway. I tried to explain how tough it would be for Bambi to change schools this close to graduation, but she said it was too late, that they had taken Bambi down to Portland over the weekend."

"And this school…" Peters paused and consulted his notes. "St. Agnes of the Hills, you said. Where is it?"

"Somewhere in Beaverton, I guess." Andi paused, thoughtfully. "I still don't understand. What exactly does all this have to do with Darwin? I thought he was the main reason you wanted to talk to me."

I took the plunge. Peters would have walked around it all day. "Did you ever hear any rumors about Bambi Barker and Darwin Ridley?" It was the most delicate way I could think of to phrase a most indelicate question.

For a moment or two Andi Wynn looked at me as though she didn't quite grasp what I was saying. "Rumors?" she asked. "What kind of rumors?"

Peters cleared his throat. "We've been informed by a reliable source that there's a possibility that Bambi and Darwin Ridley were having an affair."

Shock waves registered on Andi's face. "That's a lie!"

"It's not a lie, unfortunately," I said. "We've seen proof. We just didn't know who the girl was. Now we do."

Candace Wynn drew herself up sharply and looked me right in the eye. "You don't expect me to believe that, do you? Darwin Ridley was a fine man. His memory deserves to be treated with respect."

"Andi, it's not a matter of disrespect…" I began, but she didn't wait long enough to hear me out. Instead, Candace Wynn angrily shoved her chair back from the table, rattling the silverware and glasses on the table next to us. She bounded to her feet.

"I won't listen to this! Not a word of it!" With that, she turned on her heel and stamped out of the restaurant.

"Nice going, Beau," Peters said. "What do you do for an encore?"

I watched Candace Wynn storm across the street and out of sight behind a wall of buildings. I shrugged. "After all, she's the cheer-leading advisor. If she'd been doing her job right, maybe she would have noticed something funny was going on."

Peters leaped to Candace Wynn's defense. "You expect her to be psychic? Ridley wasn't exactly advertising the fact that he was screwing around. His wife didn't know about it. The girl's parents apparently didn't know. Why should a teacher? From the sound of it, she's got her hands full with a dying mother."

I have to confess, I didn't have a pat answer for that question. Why should Candace Wynn have known? I said nothing, and my mind went wandering down another track.

"What else do you know about this what's-his-name, Wheeler-Dealer? Would he really mail a copy of that picture to Joanna? A picture of his own daughter? I'm a father. It doesn't sound to me like something a father would do, not even a shitty father."

Peters agreed and offered an alternate suggestion. "Maybe somebody else sent pictures to both of them."

I gave that idea some thought. It seemed somewhat more plausible. "But who?" I asked.

Peters shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine. What now?"

"We'd better drag our butts down to Portland and talk to Bambi Barker."

"Today?" Peters asked in surprise, glancing at his watch. It was already well after three.

"Why not today? If we left right now, we could just beat the traffic out of town. Besides, we wouldn't have to cross any bridges."

Peters shook his head. "It would be midnight before we got back. I don't like to come home that late. Heather and Tracie still get upset if I'm not home before they go to bed."

After the divorce, Peters' two girls had spent some time in a flaky religious commune with their equally flaky mother. With the help of my attorney, Ralph Ames, we had managed to get them back home and in Peters' custody late the previous fall. Kids are pretty resilient, but the two girls still hadn't adjusted to all the abrupt changes that had disrupted their young lives. They were still basically insecure. So was Peters.

"Why don't I drive down by myself, then?" I suggested. "It's no big deal for me to come home late. Nobody's there waiting. Besides, it's important that we talk to Bambi before her dear old dad has any idea we know what's been going on."

"You've got yourself a deal," Peters told me. "You drive to Portland, and I'll handle the paperwork."

Talk about getting the best of the bargain! I headed for my apartment. No way was I going to drive one of the departmental crates to Portland when my bright red Porsche was longing for the open road.

By four, I was cruising down Interstate 5, headed south. Once I passed the worst of the Seattle/Tacoma traffic, I set the cruise control to a sedate sixty-two. Red Porsches draw radar guns like shit draws flies. Sergeant Watkins had given me a long lecture in community relations on the occasion of my second speeding ticket. I had slowed down some since then.

As I drove, I was conscious of springtime blossoming around me. Spindly blackberry clumps were green with a thin covering of new leaves. Here and there, hillsides were graced with farmhouses surrounded by blooming fruit trees.

Between Seattle and Portland, I-5 bypasses dozens of little western Washington towns-Lacy, Maytown, Tenino, Kelso-places travelers never see in actual life. They're nothing more than signs on the freeway and names and dots in a road atlas. Nevertheless, bits and pieces of small-town life leaked into my consciousness. There was the ever-present message from an eccentric Centralia dairy farmer whose private billboard still wanted to get us out of the UN, and the new chain-link fence surrounding the juvenile detention center in Chehalis that said we don't want our town contaminated by these kids. Further south, another billboard proclaimed the Winlock Egg Days.

I had never attended an egg festival. Or wanted to.

The day was flawlessly clear and bright. To the left across the freeway, Mount Rainier majestically reflected back fragile spring sunlight. It was too dark to catch sight of the shattered, still-steaming profile of Mount St. Helens.

I savored every moment of that drive south, from the thick papermill-flavored air of Longview to the cheerful lights on the grain elevator at Kalama. With every mile, the case receded into the far reaches of my mind. For those three quiet hours, I forgot about Darwin and Joanna Ridley, about Bambi Barker and her father, Wheeler-Dealer.

As a homicide cop, that's a luxury I don't give myself very often, but Candace Wynn and her mother had brought back memories of my own mother and her painful death. It had pulled me up short and forced me to recognize exactly how precious life is, had shocked me out of the trap of drifting through life without tasting or noticing.

I owed Candace Wynn a debt of gratitude. Sometime I'd have to call her up and thank her.