J. Jance - Payment in kind

His eyes bulged. “You don’t really think something’s happened to her here, do you?”

“We should check.”

He nodded wordlessly and led the way to the elevator. Wide school hallways had been broken up by strategically placed walls. Polished floors had been covered over with carpet. Only an occasional bulletin board or trophy case and the broad, glassed-in stairways gave any hint that the place had once been a school.

An unopened newspaper lay on the floor in front of the door to Andrea Stovall’s unit. A clutch of worry gripped my stomach. Supposing Pete Kelsey had made good his threat against Andrea.

I glanced at Rex Pierson. Obviously concerned about the same thing, he was already reaching for the key ring at his belt. “I can’t let you in there,” he cautioned, “not without an official warrant or something, but I can go in myself and check if you want.”

He went in and came out a few moments later. “Nothin’s wrong that I can see,” he said.

For the moment, there wasn’t anything more to be done. We went back down to the entry, where I handed Pierson one of my cards. “If you see her, give her my card and ask her to call me, would you?”

“Sure thing,” he said.

I started to leave, and then thought of one more question. “Did you ever see Marcia Kelsey around here?”

With studied concentration Rex Pierson carefully fastened the last piece of garland with a five-inch tie-wrap. None of that garland was going to unravel from the spool until Rex Pierson was ready for it to unravel. Eventually he looked up at me and answered the question.

“I don’t want to say nothin‘ against somebody,” he said, “I mean nothin’ that would get anyone in trouble.”

“I’ll try to keep whatever you tell me in strictest confidence,” I said.

He nodded. “Well, sir, you see, I haven’t been here in the building all that long. When it comes to a job like this, it takes time to connect people and faces and names. Know what I mean?”

I nodded.

“Well, for a couple of months, I thought she was one of the residents.”

“Marcia Kelsey? You mean she was here that much?”

He nodded. “I recognized her from the picture in last night’s paper. And if she was married all that time, I can kinda see how her husband might be just a little bent out of shape, know what I mean?”

Indeed I did, but even so, murder is never the answer.

Thanking Pierson for his help, I left. On the way back to the department, I stopped off at the Doghouse for a quiet cup of coffee. It was after the lunch hour proper and the place wasn’t very crowded. Glad to be away from the hubbub of the fifth floor, I used the privacy of a dimly lit booth to write another report for Sergeant Watkins. This one detailed my interviews both with Freddie Petrie at Seattle Security and with Rex Pierson.

The good thing about writing reports is that it forces you to gather your thoughts, forces you to sift through what you think you know and helps clarify what you don’t.

It was time to draw the logical conclusion that Andrea Stovall and Marcia Kelsey had been lovers, with or without Pete Kelsey’s knowledge. That was an understandable triangle, an age-old pattern for trouble, but a triangle did nothing to clear up the problem of Alvin Chambers. Where did he fit in?

I was sorry I had returned Ron’s copy of the P.-I. I did my best to recall exactly what Charlotte Chambers had said in the article about those “godless” women. Those were Charlotte’s words, not Alvin’s, but clearly Alvin had known what was going on between Andrea and Marcia. He had known and didn’t approve. From the sound of it, he would have been reluctant to be associated with those kinds of people, so once more I came back to the same old question: What the hell was Alvin Chambers doing in that damn closet?

I thought about everything Rex Pierson had told me. His comments put a far different light on Pete Kelsey’s claim that he and Marcia had shared an “open marriage.” Evidently there were some things they hadn’t been so open about, some things Pete Kelsey wasn’t prepared to ignore or forgive. But if Marcia had been that unhappy with the marriage, and if Pete had been that miserable as well, what the hell had kept them together? Why hadn’t they called the whole thing off and split? Their marriage had evolved beyond the tie-that-binds stage into something more like a noose-and every bit as deadly.

The beep of my pager startled me out of this reverie. The call-back number was Peters‘. He’s probably busy tracking the bomb threats on his lunch hour, I thought with annoyance, but I went to the noisy phone booth by the cash register and called him back.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Beau, where are you?” Ron Peters sounded anxious.

“At the Doghouse, having coffee. Why do you want to know?”

“Hold on a minute. Let me check something out.”

He put me on hold while I entertained myself watching the Wednesday afternoon crush of lucky lottery players line up for their individual cracks at winning four million bucks, that week’s Lotto prize.

Eventually Peters came back on the line. “Okay,” he said. “I got hold of him and he’s on his way to see you. Wait right there.”

“Who’s on his way?”

“Maxwell Cole. He came up to me this morning right after the press briefing and asked if I knew where to find you. I told him I didn’t have a clue and that he should check with Margie, but he was adamant that he didn’t want to be seen on the fifth floor. He said it was important. He insisted that he talk to you privately. Nobody else would do. I told him I’d try to locate you, but this is the first I’ve had a spare minute.”

“He’s coming here?” I asked.

“That’s right. He said he’d be there in ten minutes or so.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll wait here.”

I went back to the booth, and Wanda brought me another cup of coffee. I had barely taken off the top layer when Maxwell Cole came steaming in the door, huffing and puffing and out of breath. Hurriedly he looked around the room. Relief showed on his face when he finally caught sight of me.

He rushed over to me, hand outstretched in greeting. “Thank God you’re still here, J.P.,” he said, easing his heavy bulk into the booth across from me. “I didn’t know if you’d wait or not.”

Wanda approached the table to offer coffee, which Max accepted with a grateful nod. He still looked sick enough that he probably shouldn’t have been out of bed. His nose was bright red, and his eyes were watery.

“What’s the matter, Max? Is something wrong?”

Nervously chewing on one end of his drooping mustache, Max glanced anxiously around the room as if checking to see if anyone was listening. When he spoke, it was in a confidential whisper. “I need your help, J.P.”

“With what?”

He swallowed hard before he answered. “With Pete.”

“With Pete Kelsey? Do you know where he is?”

Max nodded. “I do. When he saw the paper this morning, I thought he’d tear the place apart. I’ve never seen him like that.”

“Reading the paper set him off?”

“Of course it did. I mean, the things that woman said!” Max answered indignantly. “I can’t understand how they could print such terrible things about Marcia. They’re not true. They couldn’t be. If they were true, don’t you think I’d know it? I can’t imagine what those damn editors were thinking of!”

He shook his head miserably and sneezed into a wrinkled, much-used handkerchief. It was almost comic to think of Max being so offended by something printed in his own newspaper. No doubt it was the first time someone he truly cared about had been on the receiving end of hatchet-job reporting. Dishing it out is always a whole lot easier than taking it, but this was no time to revel in the irony of it all. Maxwell Cole knew where Pete Kelsey was, and I wanted him to tell me.