J. Jance - Name Witheld

Using Grimes as a diversion, I headed for my car. I was almost there and thinking I had made a clean getaway when I heard someone calling me. "Detective Beaumont."

I stopped and looked back. Behind me, missing her cameraman, was the same television reporter I'd encountered twice the previous day, both at Pier 70 and out in front of Belltown Terrace during the soapsuds debacle. High heels clicking on the cement, she came hurrying after me. She was surprisingly old for a female television reporter-forty at least-but her makeup and clothing certainly made the most of what was there.

"Maribeth George," she said, holding out her hand. "Could I talk to you for a minute?"

Knowing who she was and what she did, I didn't exactly fall all over myself in my eagerness for a private chat. Years of being a cop have bred in me an instinctive distrust for the media-any kind of media. Even good-looking women in nice clothing. Maybe especially good-looking women.

"Miss George," I said coolly. "No doubt you've been in the news game long enough to know that detectives aren't supposed to talk to reporters."

My rebuff didn't seem to faze her. "Not even off the record?" she asked. "I left Stan and his camera over there," she added, jerking her head back toward the noisy group of reporters still eddying around Phil Grimes. "It's just the two of us. No recording devices of any kind."

"What do you want to talk about?" I asked.

Maribeth George had short brunette hair with a vivid streak of white that started just over her left eyebrow. Her dark-gray eyes, fringed by long, thick lashes, were made darker still by the carefully applied makeup that surrounded them.

"Somebody's dead in there, right?"

I nodded. With Audrey's van emblazoned with a KING COUNTY MEDICAL EXAMINER logo parked in the driveway, there wasn't much point in denying the obvious.

"Is this victim related to…" Maribeth George paused, "to yesterday's shooting victim down by Pier Seventy?"

I crossed my arms. The response was absolutely instinctive. So far, all that should have been internal law enforcement information only, including the fact that Don Wolf had died of a gunshot wound rather than drowning. As soon as I made the defensive, giveaway gesture, I could have kicked myself for it. Instead, I tried to cover up the instinctive faux pas.

"Shooting victim?" I asked, feigning innocence.

The reporter's somber gray eyes grew troubled and darker still. "The man they fished out of the water yesterday. Is that case related to this one? And if so, who are these people?"

"With regard to the second question, we're withholding names pending notification of next of kin. As for the first one, now that you mention it, maybe you'd like to explain to me exactly what makes you think that the man in the water was shot."

"A woman in a wheelchair told me," Maribeth George answered at once.

"What woman in what wheelchair?"

"The one down at Pier Seventy yesterday morning. She wasn't actually on the pier when I got there, but she said she had been. She claimed she was one of the people who found the body, but she didn't give me her name. In fact, she refused to give me her name. And now…" Maribeth's voice trailed off into nothing.

"Now what?" I prodded.

"I know you were working on that other case yesterday. I saw you there. And I know that homicide cases get passed around in rotation, so you most likely wouldn't be working on a new one unless it was somehow related to the one you were already working on. Right?"

I suppose one of the reasons detectives and journalists are always at one another's throats is that we're so much alike. We're all in the business of finding out what happened and who did what to whom, and we all want to be first in nailing down that information. An observant Maribeth George had put two and two together. Reporters, especially good-looking ones who are smart enough to come up with the correct answer of four, are definitely bad company for the likes of me.

"I trust you'll forgive me if right this minute I can't say yes or no," I said, reaching into my pocket and pulling out a card. "But I would most definitely be interested in whether or not this wheelchair lady of yours calls again."

Maribeth studied my face for a moment before she took the card. "I see," she said. "So that's how it is."

I nodded. She shrugged and stuffed my card into the pocket of her blazer. "I doubt I'll hear from her again," Maribeth said.

"But if you do, you can reach me at any one of those numbers," I said helpfully.

Maribeth George smiled. "Or I could just come across the street from the station and buzz you on your security phone. By the way, whatever happened with that soapsuds thing? The manager told me he thought little girls who live in the building were responsible for making the mess."

Talking to women can be mind-boggling at times. Maribeth George skipped effortlessly from murder to soapsuds in less than a heartbeat. "The girls didn't have anything to do with it," I answered shortly.

"You know them then?" Maribeth asked. "The little girls, I mean."

"Yes." I didn't add that I had supposedly been in charge of the girls at the time in question. Had I been doing my child-care job properly, the finger of suspicion never would have been pointed in their direction in the first place.

"The girls aren't yours, are they?"

"No. They're the daughters of a friend of mine."

"Well," she said, giving me one of her cards in exchange for mine. "Whoever did it," she said, "it doesn't seem like that big a deal."

"Right," I said. "It isn't. Now back to your wheelchair lady. You aren't planning to write anything about her, are you?"

Our conversation was like a fast-moving game of Ping-Pong with first one player on the offensive and then the other. It was my turn to spike the ball over the net. That comment immediately put Maribeth George on the defensive.

"I was," Maribeth said after a pause.

"Please don't," I said. "Not right away. If you run it prematurely, there's a chance it could jeopardize the investigation."

"Which one?" she asked.

I shook my head and didn't answer. "Maybe both?" she asked. The woman was downright dangerous. "What about after you make an arrest?"

"At that point," I said, "you're welcome to broadcast anything you want. You'll wait then?"

She nodded. "I suppose," she said.

I started to walk away, then turned back to her with one last question. "There were a lot of people down at Pier Seventy yesterday morning. Why do you think the wheelchair lady picked you out of the crowd as the person to talk to-or did she talk to lots of people and you're the only one who's bothered to come forward?"

Maribeth shrugged and laughed a surprisingly self-deprecating laugh. "You know how it is when you're a media babe," she said with a grin. "Lots of people feel like they know you even though you don't know them. I've been a frequent and almost daily guest in thousands of homes since I came back to Seattle last summer. She probably thinks of me as a friend of the family."

"Media babe?" I repeated, not quite believing my ears. "I would have thought…"

Maribeth laughed aloud. When she did, I noticed that her teeth were white and straight. "That the words media babe aren't exactly politically correct," I added.

"You're right," she agreed. "They aren't, and I'd strongly recommend against you using them in public, especially if there are female reporters anywhere within hearing distance. It's like African Americans and the N word. When blacks use it on other blacks, they usually do so with impunity. If you or I were to use it, all hell would break loose."

"What would happen if I called you a media babe?"

She grinned again. "You know about hell, fury, and women, don't you?"