J. Jance - Payment in kind

“Who’s Rex?” I asked.

“Rex Pierson, the manager of my building.”

“What building is that?”

“I live at the Queen Anne. It’s just up the hill from here.”

The Queen Anne wasn’t a building I recognized by name. Next to me, Detective Kramer shifted uncomfortably in his chair. There was a good deal the two of us didn’t agree on, but he was getting the same reading from Andrea Stovall that I was.

“How exactly did you get into the building, Mrs. Stovall?” I asked. “You said you couldn’t find anyone, not even the security guard. Weren’t the doors locked?”

Andrea Stovall clasped her hands and placed them on the desk in front of her, but not before I noticed a sudden, uncontrolled trembling.

“Are you cold, Mrs. Stovall?” I asked, feigning sympathy. “Your hands are shaking.”

“No,” she said quickly, “I’m fine.” But under her makeup, the color of her skin had paled.

“You still haven’t told us how you got into the building,” I prodded.

She swallowed. “I have a key,” she said in almost a whisper. “I used that to let myself in.”

Detective Kramer’s jaw dropped, and so did mine. Giving the head of the teachers’ union a key to the district offices sounded downright crazy, like giving the Big Bad Wolf his own private key to the henhouse.

“You mean the head of the teachers’ union has a key to the building?” Kramer demanded.

“I probably shouldn’t have,” Andrea Stovall conceded, “but I do. I’ve had one for years. I still sign in and out, the way I’m supposed to. Remember, that’s how you found me, from the sign-in sheet. Besides, I was sure Marcia was still here, because her car was parked in the lot outside, but when I couldn’t raise the guard with the bell, I let myself in.”

“There’s a bell?” Kramer asked.

“A night bell, so that if the guard is in some other part of the building, he can still hear that someone’s at the door.”

“Tell us about the car,” I said, switching gears. “You said it was still parked in the lot?”

“She drove a Volvo, a green Volvo station wagon,” Andrea Stovall answered gratefully, relieved to move away from any more questions about her unauthorized possession of a building key. “It was right there in the lot when we drove up.”

“We? You mean you and this Rex person?” Kramer asked.

She swallowed. “That’s right.”

“And he’s your apartment manager, right? How did he get dragged into this?”

“He offered me a ride, and I accepted.”

“In the middle of a snowy night? To come check on someone you didn’t know for sure would be here?”

Andrea nodded.

“Why?”

Suddenly Andrea Stovall dissolved into tears. “Because I was worried about her. Because I was afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“That something might happen to her. And I was right, goddamn it! I was right to be afraid.”

Some women cry daintily and prettily. Andrea Stovall wasn’t one of them. Her nose and eyes turned red while her face puffed up instantly.

There was a gentle knock on the door just then, and Doris Walker poked her head into the room, looking questioningly from one face to another. “Sorry to interrupt,” she said apologetically, “but Dr. Savage and the others are waiting. Would it be possible for you to finish this later?”

Without waiting for us to answer, Andrea Stovall reached down and scooped up both a purse and a briefcase that had been sitting on the floor beside her. “Tell them I’ll be there in a minute. I’ve got to fix my face.”

With that, she bolted from the room and Doris closed the door behind her, leaving Kramer and me alone. I’m sure we could have stopped her, told Doris Walker that Andrea Stovall was unavoidably detained and kept the interview going, but the interview had raised some interesting questions, disturbing questions.

What exactly was the relationship between Marcia Louise Kelsey and Andrea Stovall? More than Andrea had let on, of that I was sure. She had said she was “afraid” for Marcia. Why? It hadn’t been just a general fear of someone working late and alone in an otherwise deserted office building. The fear had been more specific than that, and strong enough to make Andrea enlist her apartment manager’s help when she went to check.

We’d be talking to Andrea Stovall again, but before we did, we’d need to do some checking on our own. When homicide detectives ask questions, it’s always a good idea to have some idea in advance what the real answers ought to be. It keeps you from being suckered quite so badly.

“What’s with her?” Kramer asked, still staring at the closed door.

“She’s hiding something,” I said. “Something that happened the night of the murders, and she’s scared to death we’re going to find out what it is, which we’d by God better do before we talk to her again.”

Kramer nodded and we both rose to go. At least we had found one point we could agree on, and in this case, that counted for progress.

On the way back down the hall, I stopped off long enough to use the rest room. I had thought Kramer was joking about taking Jennifer Lafflyn back downtown with us. By the time I reached the receptionist’s desk, she was wearing her coat, and a substitute receptionist had been pressed into service.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “As long as we’re here, shouldn’t we talk to Kendra Meadows?”

“Suit yourself,” Kramer replied. “Now’s when Ms. Lafflyn can go, and I offered to take her.”

Which gave me a clear choice of taking it or leaving it. “See you later,” I said. I turned to the substitute receptionist. “Is Kendra Meadows in?”

“One moment. I’ll check. What did you say your name was?”

Unlike Jennifer Lafflyn, the formidable lady who appeared at the top of the stairs a few moments later was dressed for a very respectable funeral. Kendra Meadows was a middle-aged black lady whose thick, wavy hair was turning gunmetal gray. She was large, in every sense of the word, what the purveyors of women’s clothing call “queen-size.” Almost as tall as I was and thickly built, she was attractively dressed in a generously cut wool suit, the skirt of which covered her legs halfway down her calves.

Moving with ponderous grace, she came down the stairs while her undergarments whispered in that peculiarly feminine rustle of nylon on nylon.

“Detective Beaumont, is it?”

Kendra Meadows’ welcoming smile revealed a wide gap between her two front teeth. No doubt the school district’s dental insurance would have covered a set of braces for the middle-aged lady had Kendra Meadows ever stopped to consider such vain nonsense desirable.

She held out her hand. When I gripped it, her handshake was firm enough to make me wince.

“Sorry about that,” she apologized, catching what must have been a pained expression on my face.

“It’s nothing,” I told her quickly. “I hurt my fingers a few months back. They still give me problems every once in a while.”

“Too bad,” she said with a sympathetic click of her tongue. “Well then, come along. I was just going back to my office.” I followed her back up the stairs and down a long, narrow corridor into a large but nonetheless crowded and messy office. Like Marcia Kelsey, Kendra Meadows seemed to thrive in an environment with the appearance of total chaos. Not only the desk but the credenza, chairs, and several extra tables were piled high with stacks of file folders and loose pieces of paper. She cleaned off one of the chairs and motioned me into it.

Once Kendra Meadows had seated herself at the desk, she extricated a stack of papers from the general clutter and sat holding it, regarding me with yet another warm smile. Kendra Meadows’ natural charm, so obvious in person, hadn’t been at all apparent in her abrupt telephone manner.