J. Jance - Name Witheld

Looking around, I found I was somewhere in downtown Kirkland. If you're a true Seattleite, that phrase sounds like an oxymoron. The buildings along the main drag of Western Washington's "little Sausalito" are low-rises-long on art galleries and trendy restaurants and short on much of anything else. I started to look for a phone, thinking I'd have to call for a cab, but surprisingly enough, when I reached the stoplight, a Metro bus pulled up beside me. I dashed over to it and pounded on the door.

"Hey, in case you haven't noticed, this isn't a bus stop," the brown-and-gold-clad driver observed as he opened the door. "The next stop is two blocks down."

I flashed a badge in his direction.

"Where are you headed?" I asked.

"Bellevue Transit Center."

"Is that anywhere near downtown Bellevue?" I asked.

The driver shook his head, rolled his eyes, and motioned me aboard. "It's right in the middle of downtown Bellevue. Get in, will you? We're holding up traffic."

As the diesel-powered bus rumbled along, I sat there stewing over Kramer's totally unfounded accusations. What nerve, calling me a playboy cop! I was no such thing. Maybe I wasn't the world's best team player, but then again, neither was Kramer. I was absolutely offended by his thinking that I would deliberately undermine a case for any reason, whether to spite him or even just for the hell of it. I wanted closed cases every bit as much as he did. Maybe even more than he did.

I was so steamed that my hangover headache receded to a dull throb. What had seemed like possible hunger pangs in Grace Highsmith's living room faded into the background as well. Through some stroke of good fortune, the bus I had chosen at random traveled right down Bellevue Way, directly past the Grove on Twelfth, but I was so lost in thought that I missed it. I got off the bus two blocks later and walked back.

Bent on retrieving my Porsche, I headed straight for the parking garage only to be headed off at the garage door entrance by Maribeth George, the reporter from KIRO, packing her ever-ready microphone and trailed by her inevitable cameraman. As soon as I saw the devastated look on her face, I knew that she had made the connection. Maribeth's wheelchair lady from Pier 70 and the woman dead upstairs were most likely one and the same.

Maribeth ditched the cameraman and caught up with me before I made it to the elevator. "It's her, isn't it," she said.

"Probably," I agreed quietly, "although we don't know that for sure."

Maribeth closed her eyes and swayed on her feet. I caught her before she toppled over. "It's her, all right. I recognize the car. It's the same one. It's my fault," she said. "I know it is."

"How could that be?"

"I know you told me not to mention her, but I did. We weren't getting enough on the murders through official sources, and my editors wanted us to run everything we had on the two cases. You don't suppose the killer saw the tape and then went after her, do you?"

"No," I said quickly, wanting to comfort her. "I'm sure not." Although in actual fact, I wasn't nearly as certain as I tried to sound.

The cameraman showed up right then driving a van. He stopped directly beside us. "Come on, Maribeth," he said, rolling down the window. "If we're gonna make the five o'clock news, we've got to get this stuff back to the station."

Nodding wordlessly, Maribeth hurried around and climbed into the van. Glancing around the garage, I was relieved that Kramer's Seattle P.D. Caprice was nowhere in sight. If he had shown up right about then and climbed my frame about talking to a reporter, I'm not entirely sure what would have happened.

Officer Ryland of the Bellevue Police Department was still on duty in the Grove's underground garage. He nodded pleasantly as I came past.

"Any news?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Not much."

"Detective Blaine still around?"

Ryland nodded. "I think so. The victim's brother just showed up. I believe they're in the office. The crime scene techs are still working on the apartment."

"Which way?"

"Up this elevator to the first floor. If you turn right, I think it's at the far end of the hall."

On the first floor, the first door to the left of the elevator had been left ajar, but a festoon of yellow crime-scene tape had been strung across the entrance. I paused there long enough to peer inside, but I didn't try to enter. There was no sense in disturbing the techs as they went about their meticulous work. Instead, I continued on down the hallway to the office where a teary-eyed receptionist met me at the door.

"I'm sorry," she said. "There's been an emergency in the building. Our sales office is closed at the moment. If you'd like to see one of our units, could you please come back-"

"I'm a police officer," I interrupted, once again flashing my badge. "I'm looking for Detective Blaine."

"Oh, just a minute," she said. "He's meeting with someone in our conference room." She went to the closed door of an inner office and tapped timidly. Blaine himself answered her knock.

"I thought I said…" Catching sight of me, he let the rest of the sentence go. "Detective Beaumont, what's going on?"

"I've scheduled an interview this afternoon at two o'clock at Dorene's Fine China and Gifts on Main Street here in Bellevue. I think you'll want to be there."

"Why?"

"Because I'll be talking to someone named Latty Gibson, a young woman whose boyfriend-turned-rapist was being investigated by Virginia Marks."

Blaine opened his mouth as if to object, then shut it and nodded. "You're absolutely right. Two o'clock? One or the other or both of us will be there with bells on."

"Anything going on here that I should know about?" I asked.

"According to her brother, who just showed up, and to the part-time bookkeeper who found the body, the only thing missing that anybody can see so far is the laptop computer Virginia Marks used every waking minute of every day. She used it to take notes on her cases. Her calendar was in it, her database, as well as the information the bookkeeper used to do client billing. I guess when she wasn't working on the damned thing, she was using it to play solitaire."

"The computer's gone and nothing else is missing?"

"That's right," Blaine answered. "Including the jewelry in her dresser and the cash in her purse."

"I guess that lets out a random robbery or burglary, doesn't it."

Blaine nodded.

"And the computer's the only thing missing?"

"That's right."

"So maybe the computer contained some damaging piece of information, something so inflammatory that it's worth killing for."

"The same thought had occurred to me," Detective Blaine said. "All we have to do now is figure out what it was, right?"

"Right," I said. "See you at two."

"Where will you be between now and then?" Blaine asked. "Just in case something comes up."

I glanced at my watch. If I hurried, there was a slim chance I might still be on time for Lars Jenssen's AA meeting.

"Lunch," I said, without going into any more detail than that. I handed Tim Blaine a card on which I had jotted my cellular phone number. "Call me at that number if anything comes up. It's a cell phone, and I may have to leave it off for a while," I told him. "If I don't answer, keep trying until you get me."

Back in my own car and armed with a new set of Eastside driving instructions courtesy of Officer Ryland, I headed for Angelo's, which turned out to be only a couple of miles away in the middle of a light-industry area north of Bel-Red Road. The meeting, already in progress when I arrived, was in a smoky back room, tucked in behind a packed and noisy lunchtime bar. The irony of the proximity of those two back-to-back and contraindicated meetings wasn't lost on me. And that day, if I'd had my druthers, I would have opted for the MacNaughton's side of the border.