J. Jance - Payment in kind

Jennifer shook her head. “I don’t think so. He told me he quit. Just like that, but he was real religious all the same. Sometimes I thought maybe he was trying to convert me, but mostly we just talked.”

“Did you ever see him with Mrs. Kelsey?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean did you ever see them together, talking together, coming and going at the same time?”

“No,” she said firmly. “Never. Why?”

It was my turn to shrug, surprised that she hadn’t put two and two together on her own.

“If you find two people dead in the same closet, it’s not too far-fetched to think that there might be some kind of connection between them.”

During interviews, detectives are trained to watch for every nuance of expression. The twitch of an eyelid can be vital. A sudden anxiety exhibited by fluttering hands may indicate that questions are probing too near some painful truth. In answer to my comment, I saw a flicker of something blaze briefly in Jennifer’s eyes before she blinked and sent a curtain of disdain over her face.

She struggled to her feet. “No,” she said. “Absolutely not! There was never anything like that between them. You have a really nasty mind, Detective Beaumont. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go to the rest room and wash my face.”

I watched her flounce off across the reception area, tottering a little in her high-heeled boots. She disappeared into a ladies’ washroom. From her reaction, there could be no doubt that my suggestion of a relationship between the two dead people had sent Jennifer Lafflyn running for cover.

I wondered why that was, because if Alvin Chambers and Marcia Louise Kelsey hadn’t had a relationship before they died, they sure as hell had one now.

I was on my way to the door to join Doc Baker and Detective Kramer when I almost collided with a lady who came rushing down the stairway into the reception area. She was a horsefaced woman wearing a severe suit that matched her iron gray hair. She stopped directly in front of me, pausing uncertainly and looking anxiously around the room.

“May I help you?” I asked.

“Oh, my, yes. Are you with the police?”

“Yes. My name’s Detective Beaumont. What can I do for you?”

“I’m Doris, Doris Walker, Dr. Savage’s secretary.”

Dr. Kenneth Savage, the superintendent of schools, was the one employee of the school district whose name I recognized without any prompting. He had come to Seattle from Boston several years earlier and was trying to help the district cope with its twin perennial problems of decreasing enrollment and decreasing revenues. The fact that Savage had lasted for five whole years in a mostly thankless position not known for job security probably meant he was doing a reasonably good job.

“I just don’t know what to do,” Doris continued distractedly. “With all that’s happened here this morning, Dr. Savage is having all the calls routed through us upstairs, and…” She stopped in midsentence, seemingly overcome by indecision.

“And what, Doris?” I prodded. “We can’t help you if you don’t tell us exactly what the problem is.”

“Mrs. Chambers is on the phone,” she blurted suddenly, nodding toward the janitor’s closet without actually looking at it. “You know. His wife.”

Although she seemed close to tears, she kept her voice discreetly low. I glanced cautiously around the room to make sure I was the only one listening to what she said.

“She told me that she has his breakfast on the table ready for him to eat it but that her husband still isn’t home. He’s more than an hour late, and she wanted to know if he had left here. That means she doesn’t know anything at all yet, and I don’t want to be the one to tell her. I mean what can you say when something this terrible has happened?”

I could have told Doris Walker that years of doing it, years of bringing people that kind of devastating news, doesn’t make it any easier.

Instead I said, “Get the phone number and address of wherever she is right now. Tell her there’s been a problem here at the office, and that you’ll have someone check and get back to her as soon as possible. All right?”

Doris Walker nodded gratefully, heaving an immense sigh of relief. “So you don’t want me to tell her. I don’t have to?”

“Absolutely not!”

“Oh, good. I was afraid it was going to be up to me.”

“Go back and talk to her now,” I urged. “And when you get the information I asked for, come straight back here and give it to me. We’ll handle it from there.”

“Of course. Right away.” Doris Walker hurried toward the stairs with the step of someone whose shoulders had just been relieved of the weight of the world. I in turn joined Kramer and Doc Baker near the door.

“Where’ve you been?” Kramer asked. “We don’t have all day, you know.”

Behind Kramer’s back, Doc Baker gave an almost imperceptible shake to his head. The blatantly sympathetic look told me he found Detective Paul Kramer almost as tiresome as I did.

“What have we got, Doc?” I asked.

“Looks like homicide/suicide so far, although we haven’t found a suicide note yet,” Baker replied. “My guess is she got him first and then turned the gun on herself. She died right away. He took his time.”

“IDs?”

Baker nodded. “Tentative. We’ll have to have them confirmed by relatives as soon as possible. The male was wearing a name badge.”

“I saw that,” I said.

“People here say his whole name was Alvin Chambers. He worked for Seattle Security. They’re the company with the security contract for the school district. The woman’s name is Marcia Louise Kelsey. She was head of Labor Relations for the district here. We noticed her purse wasn’t here. You may want to see if it’s upstairs in her office when you go up to secure it.”

I nodded. “Thanks for letting us know.”

Baker waved and started away. “No problem.”

“By the way,” I added. “Those are the same names we were given by the receptionist.”

Baker stopped and turned, raising one bushy eyebrow. “Who’s that? Jennifer Lafflyn, the young woman who found the bodies?”

“That’s right.”

The medical examiner nodded his massive head. “I see, but we still have to regard the identification as tentative for right now. Did she have any idea about what kind of links might exist between these two people?”

“As a matter of fact, I asked her that very question just a few minutes ago,” I replied. “According to her, there was no connection whatsoever.”

I could have added that Jennifer’s exaggerated nonresponse to my question had made me wonder, but it was such a tenuous hunch on my part that I didn’t bother. I wouldn’t have minded passing the idea along to Doc Baker, but I wasn’t in favor of giving Kramer the benefit of my theory. Sharing hunches with people you neither like nor respect can be lots tougher in the long run than simply keeping your mouth shut.

“Well,” said Baker, “I was just giving your partner here what we assume to be the victims’ names and addresses. After you finish up, you may want to track down next-of-kin, notify them officially, and bring them by my office for the positive ID. Just give us an hour or so to get the bodies back downtown.”

At that point, one of the medical examiner’s technicians came over and waited patiently to be acknowledged. “What is it, Stevens?” Baker asked.

“There was something under one of the stiffs. Thought you and the dicks ought to take a look.”

We walked back over to the closet. Marcia Kelsey’s body had been removed altogether. Alvin Chambers’ body-bagged corpse had been hefted onto a gurney nearby.