J. Jance - Payment in kind

“Wait just a goddamned minute here, Watty. Did he tell you…”

“No, you wait a minute, Detective Beaumont, and don’t interrupt. Just because Kramer’s a dedicated cop, and just because he’s low man on the totem pole here in Homicide, doesn’t mean you old-timers get to take advantage of him and stick him with all the shit work. Do I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly,” I responded bleakly.

From Watty’s tone of voice, I could tell it was useless to object or offer any excuses or to suggest that things Kramer had done were things he had appointed himself to do without any kind of request or consultation from me.

“I want to see results, Beau,” Watty continued. “I want to see reports on my desk with your signature on them. I want to know who you’ve interviewed and what was said. I want to know what kind of contribution you’re making, because this is now, and always has been, a team effort, Detective, and don’t you forget it.”

With that, Watty hung up. It was a good thing Kramer was long gone, because if he hadn’t been, I probably would have wrapped the phone cord right around his damn ass-kissing neck. I felt like one of those poor schmucks in the comics who suddenly has a lightbulb click on over his head.

So that was how Kramer was playing the game, and I’d walked right into the trap like a lamb to the slaughter.

For several minutes, I stood there seething, my hands shaking with rage, while the blood pounded in my ears. Eventually I got a grip on both myself and my anger. If Watty wanted interviews, then by God, I’d give him interviews, and after a moment’s thought, I knew exactly where I’d start.

My mother was always one to do the worst things first and get them over with. Talking to Maxwell Cole was very low on my list of wonderful things to do. Unfortunately, other than talking to Charlotte Chambers, Maxwell Cole seemed like the next logical interview step.

But Charlotte Chambers didn’t live on Queen Anne Hill, and Maxwell Cole did.

I knew Max lived only a few blocks away from the school district office. If he happened to be home, it would take only a few minutes to trudge on up there to see him. If not, if he was already at work, then the Post-Intelligencer office was located at the very bottom of Queen Anne, and I could maybe catch him there on my way back downtown.

I tried calling his office first. No luck. I was told he was ill, out for the day. I looked in the book, but as a public personage, Max naturally has an unlisted phone number. Since I’m hardly on a best-buddy basis with him, I’m not privy to his number any more than he is to mine. That left me only one viable alternative-to show up unannounced.

In the long run, it was probably just as well that I didn’t call in advance. If I had warned him I was coming, chances are Maxwell Cole wouldn’t have answered the door.

On my way past her desk, Doris Walker flagged me down, signaling for me to wait until she finished a phone call. “Dr. Savage wanted to know how to get in touch with you, in case anything comes up that he needs to talk with you about.”

“Didn’t I leave a card?” I asked.

“Not that I know of.”

It was an oversight. As a penance, I scrawled both my home and cellular number on it in addition to the office one. After all, if the super-intendent of schools couldn’t be trusted with an unlisted phone number, who could?

Max Cole lives on Bigelow Avenue North, a gracious, gently winding, tree-lined street that curves around the base of what’s known as Upper Queen Anne Hill. I used several sets of steep stairway sidewalks to make my way up to Bigelow from the school district office on the lower part of the hill. The cold but invigorating climb left me feeling a little winded but quite virtuous by the time I topped the last set of stairs and came out on the snow-covered street.

Max’s house, which I learned had once belonged to his parents, was a stately old Victorian set back behind a pair of towering, winter-bare chestnut trees. I walked up onto the covered porch and rang the bell. A miserable-looking Maxwell Cole, wearing a flannel robe and carrying a huge red hanky, answered the door. His unwaxed handlebar mustache drooped feebly, his eyes were red and runny. Obviously he had caught himself a dandy of a cold.

“Hi, Max,” I said cheerfully. “I just happened to be in the neighborhood. How’re the sick, the lame, and the lazy?”

He wasn’t exactly overjoyed to see me. “What are you doing here, J. P.? Can’t you see I’m sick?”

Actually, I could. There was only a frail hint of the old mutual antagonism in his voice. Feverish and haggard, he was too sick to carry off his customary obnoxiousness with any kind of believability.

“Just doing my job, Max, that’s all. I’d like to talk to you about Marcia and Pete Kelsey, if you have a minute. May I come in?”

“Suit yourself,” he said gruffly, pulling open the door with one hand while he used the other to stifle a sudden fit of sneezing. As I walked past him, the thought passed briefly through my mind that he was probably contagious as hell right then and I’d most likely end up with a case of pneumonia for my trouble. I accepted his reluctant invitation in the manner in which it was given and went on inside.

Max led the way into a spacious but overly furnished living room. The place was full of things that looked to me like genuine antiques, quality antiques. The only problem was there were far too many of them. And the room was boiling hot. Max had the thermostat set so high that it was sweltering in there.

He took a seat in an easy chair in front of a huge empty fireplace. Dropping my coat and gloves at one end of a chintz couch, I put as much distance between us as I reasonably could, settling at the far end of it and facing him across the wide expanse of an ornate, marble-topped coffee table.

“Wanted to have a fire in the fireplace this morning,” he grumbled, “but wouldn’t you know burning restrictions are in effect today? This is the kind of weather when you want to have a fire in the fireplace.”

That was true. I didn’t mention to him that this was exactly the kind of weather when everyone wanted a fire in his respective fireplace and that was precisely why it was a problem. Besides, had the room been any warmer, I would have died of heat prostration. I said a silent prayer of thanks for all those busy little environmentalists who had made burning restrictions possible.

“I’m sorry to disturb you when you’re sick, Max,” I began, “but I really do need to get some background information from you regarding this case. You’re pretty much the only one I can turn to so far. I understand you’ve known Pete and Marcia Kelsey for some time.”

Much to my surprise, Maxwell Cole slapped the sodden hanky over his face and burst into great lurching, choking sobs. It was several long, noisy minutes before he was able to speak.

“It finally hit home this morning that she’s really gone,” he mumbled miserably at last. “Yesterday, I was like in a dream, a fog. It wasn’t real somehow, but today…”

The day before when I had encountered him in front of the Kelseys’ house, I had very much doubted the veracity of his claim of family friendship, but there in that suffocatingly hot living room, with unchecked tears rolling down his pudgy cheeks and dripping from the ends of his sagging mustache, the depth of Maxwell Cole’s grief was undeniable. As Max’s story spilled out, I found myself missing the old familiar antagonism. His friend’s death had taken all the fight out of him, and in spite of myself, I felt a certain grudging sympathy toward the man.

“From fifth grade,” he added brokenly. “That’s how long we were friends. Her family came to Seattle from southern Utah, someplace around St. George, I believe. They moved to the Hill the summer Marcia and I were between fourth and fifth grades. She liked to read and so did I. We met at the library branch up on Garfield Street. We both had permission to check books out of the adult section. All summer long we passed books back and forth. Marcia always turned down the corners of the sexy parts. She was a lot better at finding them than I was.”