J. Jance - Payment in kind

“What was his first wife’s name?”

“His first wife? Why do you want to know that?”

“It might be helpful.”

“I don’t remember,” Max said. “That’s a long time ago, you know. I’m not sure I ever knew her name. I don’t think he ever told me. It was such a tragedy that he didn’t talk about it. I think it hurt him too much to think about it.”

“Or else it never happened,” I suggested grimly.

“You mean you think that was a lie as well?”

Gradually the full extent of Pete Kelsey’s betrayal was beginning to sink into Maxwell Cole’s consciousness. A friendship of twenty years’ standing was tumbling down around his ears like a house of cards.

“Why not?” I returned. “Since everything else was, why not that, too?”

“I can’t take it all in,” Max said. “I can’t understand it. ”I don’t want to understand it.“ Abruptly Max stood up. ”I hope that’s all the questions for now, because I need to hurry over to see Erin.“ He started out of the room and then paused and looked at me. ”Do you suppose she’s still at the Riggs’ place? That’s right here on Queen Anne.“

“You can check,” I said. “My guess is that no matter what Kelsey said, Erin stayed where she was last night. At home. And the grandparents probably stayed with her.”

With a sigh and a shake of his head, Max continued on into the kitchen to use the phone. I followed behind. Without having to look it up in the book, he punched in the Riggs’ phone number. He let it ring and ring, but there was no answer. He dialed another number, again from memory.

“Hello, George,” he said at once. Suspicions confirmed. The grandparents were indeed still at the house on Crockett. “Is Erin there?” Max asked, and after George responded, Max added quickly, “No, no. Don’t get her. This is Max. Maxwell Cole. I’m coming over to see her. Tell her to wait for me.” He paused and then added fiercely, “Don’t let her listen to the radio or watch television while she’s waiting.”

There was another pause while George Riggs asked a question. “Yes, there’s something wrong,” Max acknowledged reluctantly, “but I don’t want to talk about it over the phone. Just have Erin wait there. It’s very important.”

I followed Max out the door and down the walk to his waiting Volvo. He moved with a wooden, stiff-legged gait, like an aging, over-weight toy soldier. I didn’t envy him his errand. He was going to have to deliver the news that the last bastion of Erin Kelsey’s world was collapsing.

Not only was her mother dead and her father in jail, her father wasn’t who he had always claimed to be. That meant Erin wasn’t who she thought she was, either.

Both Max and Erin had been betrayed by Pete Kelsey’s web of lies and deceit. Both would be wounded by it.

Watching Maxwell Cole drive dejectedly away through the gray and suddenly overcast day, I wouldn’t have bet money either way about which one was going to be more hurt.

It was a moment after Max had driven out of sight before I realized I was standing there aching for him, and even while it was happening, I couldn’t quite believe it.

If, two days earlier, any one of a dozen people had tried to tell me that before the week was out, I’d be standing on Maxwell Cole’s doorstep feeling sorry for that poor, miserable bastard, I would have laughed in their faces and called them outright liars. Or crazy.

But they weren’t, because I was.

It was well after five by the time I got back to the department. To get to my cubicle, I had to walk directly past Captain Powell’s fishbowl. Normally his glass-enclosed office would have been deserted at that hour, but on this particular afternoon it was standing room only. Captain Powell himself was there, along with Margie and Sergeant Watkins. Detective Kramer had assumed center stage and was busy playing up-roar.

“So I get outta court,” Kramer was noisily complaining. His voice rumbled through the open door and down the hallway as I came toward them. “I get outta court, and what do I find? Without saying a word to me, Beaumont has arrested this suspect, this Pete Kelsey character, and locked him up on some ancient charge of desertion. The booking paper doesn’t say word one about what’s going on with our case.”

“And where’s Beaumont in all this? Nowhere to be found, that’s where. Can’t raise him on the radio. Can’t get him to respond to his pager. The guys who brought Kelsey in tell me they left Detective Beaumont up on Queen Anne talking to some lousy reporter. His own partner can’t find out a damn thing, but he’s got time to give some cretin reporter a goddamned blow-by-blow interview.”

No one seemed aware of my stopping in the doorway, except for Captain Powell, who looked at me with one eyebrow raised quizzically. The half smile on his face made me think he was glad to see me. He nodded and gave a brief, welcoming wave, but when he didn’t speak, I did.

“I take it somebody here’s looking for me?”

Kramer swung around, his face simmering with suppressed anger. “You’re damn right I am! Where the hell have you been? Why didn’t you answer your pager?”

“I’ve been working, Kramer. How about you?”

Casually I reached across him and passed Margie the two reports I had completed in the Doghouse earlier that afternoon. “Make two copies of those when you have time, would you please, Margie. Give one to Sergeant Watkins and the other to Detective Kramer here. He’ll want to read them too.”

“Was your pager off, Detective Beaumont?” Captain Powell asked mildly. The captain isn’t the flappable type. If he had been, I would have been bounced out of Homicide long ago.

I took the pager out of my pocket and checked it. Sure enough, the switch had been turned to off. I turned it back on.

“Sorry about that, Captain,” I said. “I don’t have any idea when that happened. I must have accidentally switched it off the last time I used it.”

Captain Powell smiled. “No problem.”

“But it is a problem,” Watty objected. “The point is, you were totally incommunicado for well over an hour while people were looking for you, Detective Beaumont. Your partner was looking for you. This squad isn’t set up to consist of several dozen lone wolves. Teamwork, remember?”

Here I was, back in the wrong with Watty one more time.

I tried to explain my actions. “Look, Watty, I was talking to Max-Maxwell Cole-trying to find out as much about Kelsey as I could before I came back down here to interview him. That’s standard procedure. The more you know before you question a suspect, the better your chances are of uncovering something important.”

Sergeant Watkins stood up with an impatient shake of his head and moved past me into the hallway, where he stopped to deliver his parting remark. “That’s all very well, Beau, and I’m sure we’ll see whatever you learned detailed in your reports, but in the meantime I want you to remember that you owe it to this department and to your fellow officers to stay in contact at all times. That’s why the city invested all that money in electronic pagers. Leave the son of a bitch on! Do we understand one another?”

“Yes.”

Watty nodded curtly to Captain Powell and the others, then he disappeared down the hall-way, with Margie trailing fast on his heels. I could feel my ears glowing hot and red in the bright fluorescent lighting. Tongue-lashings should never be a spectator sport, and Detective Kramer was enjoying my discomfort.

Captain Powell, too, must have noticed the smug look on Kramer’s face. “That’ll be enough of that, Detective Kramer. Sit down, both of you, and let me know a little of what’s been going on today. I don’t want to have to wait for written reports.”