J. Jance - Improbable cause

“Darlene from across the street, remember?” she asked, sounding offended. “The one who brought you your pork chop sandwich the other night. Are you going to let me in or not?”

Darlene from across the street. It finally made sense-the bartender from Girvan’s.

“I’ll buzz you in,” I said. I pressed the entry code on my phone, realizing as soon as I did so that I had failed to tell her what floor. As a security measure, Belltown Terrace has no listing of the tenants’ names and apartment numbers either on the reader-board or in the lobby.

I was sure the phone would ring again, and I wasn’t disappointed.

“Where the hell are you?” she demanded before I even had a chance to say hello.

“Twenty-fifth floor,” I replied. “Turn left as you get off the elevator.”

I pulled my jacket back on, straightened my collar, slipped shoes back on my feet, and went out to the hallway to meet her.

The twenty-fifth floor happens to be the penthouse floor. The interior design is slightly more upscale than the elevator lobbies on the other residential floors. It’s supposed to make a statement. It evidently worked. Darlene Girvan popped her head out into the elevator lobby, looked around, and whistled.

“I’ll be go-to-hell,” she said.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“You really do own a piece of this place, don’t you! I thought the other night you were just bullshitting that creep from Texas.“ Unceremoniously, she shoved a brown paper bag in my direction.

“I brought dinner,“ she said.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her I’d already eaten. Besides, it seemed like a long time ago, hours I think.

“Thank you,” I said. “How about a drink?”

“Thought you’d never ask,” she replied.

“What do you like?”

“What have you got?”

“MacNaughton’s,” I answered.

“That’ll do.” With that she marched into my apartment and took over. She went straight to the kitchen, found two plates, and laid out two gigantic, pork chop sandwiches with their fat sesame-seed-dotted buns, one for her and one for me.

“Quite a place you have here,” she commented over her shoulder as she prowled through my cupboards searching for glasses. I brought the MacNaughton’s into the kitchen from the bar and set it on the counter.

“It’ll do,” I said.

She grinned at that. “You think you’re cute, don’t you.”

“Hardly,” I told her. “It’s tough for cops to be cute. It goes against the image.”

Darlene laughed aloud and handed me my drink. As she did so, her fingers brushed against mine in a way that couldn’t have been accidental. I took a trial sip. MacNaughton’s and water, just the way I like it-heavy on the booze, light on the water.

“Actually,” she said, “that’s really why I came here to talk to you.”

I was still thinking about her fingers. My face must have been totally blank as I tried to sort out what she was really saying.

“Your job,” she said, looking at me over the rim of the glass as she sipped her own drink.

“You are that

Detective Beaumont, aren’t you? The one who works for homicide? How can a cop afford to live in a place like this?“

Before I could answer she did an abrupt change of subject that left me standing with one foot in the air. “Can these plates go in the microwave? The sandwiches should probably be zapped for thirty seconds or so.”

“Sure,” I said.

I stood there stupidly, holding my drink, while she keyed in the microwave instructions. “Nice layout,” she said.

“A real slick layout.“

The way she said it, she could have been talking about the kitchen, but I don’t believe that’s what she meant. There was another whole level to Darlene Girvan’s conversation, one that had nothing to do with kitchens-or pork chop sandwiches either, for that matter. When the sandwiches came out of the microwave, she carried them to the table while I trailed along behind, carrying the drinks.

“You said you wanted to talk to me about homicide?” I asked after we were seated.

She took a bite out of her sandwich and nodded. “Sure,” she said. “Henry told me you wanted to talk to me.”

“Henry?”

She shook her head impatiently, making me feel like a first-class dummy. “Henry Calloway, the manager at Cedar Heights. That’s where I live.”

“Oh, him,” I said. “So we’re neighbors.”

“That’s right. Come on over and borrow a cup of sugar anytime.”

If we were going to play double entendre, I was definitely out of my league. I went searching for solid ground.

“I don’t remember seeing you when we went through the building.”

“I work at night and sleep during the day. I’d have killed Calloway if he’d let you guys wake me up early.”

“But he told you I wanted to talk to you?”

She nodded. “That’s right. He said you wanted to talk to anyone who might have seen something out of the ordinary on Saturday afternoon. Here I am.”

“I gave him my phone number at the department. How’d you find me here?”

She grinned. “Easy. When he told me your name, I remembered it from the other night. I wondered if maybe you two were related or something. I tried calling the department, but you weren’t in. Then I tried looking you up in the phone book. You weren’t listed. Nobody named Beaumont was. That’s what made me figure you really were a cop. I mean, cops don’t usually put their phone numbers out there in front of God and everybody. Maybe I should give up tending bar and become a detective. What do you think?”

“We’ll take it under advisement,” I said.

“So that’s when I came over here looking for you,” she continued. “I tried first this afternoon right after I woke up, but you weren’t home.”

“Tried what?”

“I came over here to talk to you. I called on the phone from downstairs, but you weren’t home. When the answering machine came on, I hung up. I don’t talk to answering machines. I hate answering machines. They piss me off.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, trying to pull the threads of her story into some understandable, cohesive whole. “Start over again from the beginning. Why did Calloway tell you to get in touch with me?”

“Because I asked him when he was going to get off his ass and post speed-limit signs in the parking garage like he’s supposed to.”

Maybe that answered my question for her, but it didn’t help me at all.

“I don’t understand what speed-limit signs and Henry Calloway have to do with me.”

“Because he almost ran me down, goddammit.”

“Who did?”

“Some little asshole wearing a brown hat almost ran me down in the parking garage about one-thirty Saturday afternoon. I mean, I almost died. I was carrying two bags of groceries. You know, bread and eggs and cigarettes, and I dropped one of the bags trying to get out of the way. Broke most of the eggs. Bruised my hip, too. Want me to show you?”

“No thanks. Later maybe.”

I could feel the quick catch of excitement in my throat. It was the right time. And the Cedar Heights garage was the right place. “Go on,” I urged.

“Anyway, he must have opened the garage door from the second or third level, because it was already open when he came around the corner. He didn’t have to wait for it. Otherwise, I’d have caught up with that sucker, dragged him out of his fancy little car, and beaten the holy crap out of him.”

“What kind of car?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Beats me. Some kind of foreign job. Not cheap, I don’t think, but I can’t say for sure. We never had any of those in Butte, Montana, when I was growing up, I can tell you that. I know Fords from Chevys from Buicks, but I can’t tell one foreign car from another. Can you?”