J. Jance - Improbable cause

“Sometimes,” I said. “Did you get the license number?”

“Only the first three letters. KRE something.

That’s all I could see. He knocked me flat on my ass.“

“Three letters. Did you get any of the numbers?”

“Goddammit, I was sitting there on a pile of broken eggs, and you think I should have gotten the whole fucking license number? What do you think I am? You ready for another drink?”

Darlene got up abruptly and went to the kitchen, taking both our glasses with her. While she was gone, I managed to marshal my thoughts into some kind of reasonable order. I had asked Henry Calloway to report anything unusual. A hit-and-run in a private, secured garage right around the time of the murder was most unusual indeed. Calloway had been right-on-the-money to send Darlene Girvan in my direction.

“Did you recognize the car? Does it belong to one of the residents of the building, then?” I asked as she came back to the table.

“I wasn’t on the residential side,” she said. “What made you think I was there?”

“You live there, don’t you? As I understand it, the residential parking lot is under the residential tower.”

“I do live there, but we have an extra car. There aren’t enough parking places in the residential garage, so we lease an extra space on the commercial side.”

“Tell me exactly what happened,” I said.

“I went up the hill to the store. When I came back, I stopped on P-l, the first level, to unload the stuff into a cart. It was Saturday afternoon. I figured I was probably the only person in the place, so I stopped right beside the elevator door.

“All of a sudden, I hear a crash and then this car comes screaming up from downstairs like a bat out of hell. I mean, he was moving! I heard him coming from down below, his tires were squealing like mad. I tried to get out of the way, but as he came around the corner, he skidded. He was coming so fast, I thought he was going to hit me or the wall. I had to jump straight up to get out of his way.”

“You say it was a man wearing a hat?”

She nodded. “It’s not very well lit in the garage on weekends, but it looked to me like maybe a state patrol hat.”

“Are there any state patrol officers living or working in your building?”

Darlene shook her head. “Henry doesn’t know of any. I already asked. So anyway, I figured, since whoever it was had a garage door opener, I’d be able to go down to the garage this week and find the car. I was going to leave a nasty note for the son of a bitch. But the car never showed up. I didn’t think that much about it until today when I talked to Henry. He said maybe it had something to do with the murder.”

“He could very well be right,” I said. “You’re sure you only remember the first three letters of the license number. KRE. Was it a Washington license?”

“I’m sure of that. Not one of the new ones. An old one, green and white.”

“And the car. Can you remember anything at all about it?”

“It was dark colored. Maybe black or navy blue. I couldn’t be sure. And like I told you, it was foreign. I prefer American cars myself.”

“Was there anything at all distinctive about the car, anything that would help you identify it if you saw it again?”

“The back bumper looked like hell. He must have put it in the wrong gear when he took it out of park and smashed into the wall. That’s all I saw.”

“Can you remember anything about the man who was driving?”

“He wore glasses. I remember they caught the light as he came around the corner. That’s it.”

There was a short silence. I was trying to decide if there were any other questions I should ask. It was hard to concentrate, however. Darlene Girvan was looking at me speculatively.

“Henry’s right, isn’t he? The car does have something to do with the murder.”

“Possibly,” I answered. “And you can bet I’m going to get busy and check it out the first thing in the morning.”

“What are you going to do between now and then?” she asked.

Instantly we were back into one of Darlene Girvan’s multilayered conversations, and I was losing ground.

“Sleep,” I said. “I’m going to sleep. I’ve had a hell of a day. As a matter of fact, I’ve had a hell of a week.”

“And will you be sleeping by yourself?”

I still don’t know quite how to navigate the shoals in this modern, Women’s Lib world where women are free to ask for what they want. It catches me off guard whenever it happens.

“For the time being,” I said.

“You’re not interested?” she asked.

“I never said I wasn’t interested. Wary’s more like it. Once burned, twice shy.”

“You’ve been burned?”

“On occasion.”

“So I wasted my pork chop sandwich?”

“I wouldn’t say wasted,” I told her. “You’ve certainly got my attention.”

She set her glass down in the middle of her plate. “I’m in the market for more than attention,” she said, getting up. She took both our plates to the kitchen and put them in the sink.

“I’d better be going, then,” she said. “They’ll be looking for me.” She walked to the door and paused there, with her hand on the knob.

“I don’t seem to handle rejection very well,” she said thoughtfully. “I’m not used to being turned down.”

I’m sure she wasn’t used to it. I wasn’t used to doing it, either. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. “Don’t worry about it,” I told her. “I’m just basically shy when it comes to women.”

“Not gay?”

“Definitely not gay. Shy,” I repeated.

“So this isn’t a permanent turndown?”

“No.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, in that case, you know where to find me in case you get over it.” She left then, quickly, closing the door behind her.

More stupid than shy, I thought, standing there in the entryway, staring at the closed door.

A hell of a lot more stupid.

I didn’t sleep. I spent the whole night, tossing and turning. I remembered when, over spring break, I had dragged Karen home from school to meet my mother. Karen had been from San Diego. My mother’s comment was that I should look in my own backyard, try for the girl next door.

With our high rises just up the street from each other, Darlene Girvan was literally the girl next door, but hardly the kind my mother would have had in mind. She was bright, assertive, interesting, and available. So why the hell had I turned down her offer? What was the matter with me? Was I really getting that old? Or was I just plain old-fashioned?

I spent a long time chewing on the possibilities. I didn’t much care for any of the answers that bubbled to the surface. Before I left the subject alone, however, I finally made one decision-that I’d spend some time hanging around Darlene’s bar doing some in-depth research to see what, if anything, might come up-Having disposed of the personal as best I could, I turned to the other part of the problem-Darlene Girvan’s hit-and-run driver and what implications her story might hold for Dr. Frederick Nielsen’s murder investigation.

Garage doors are implacable. You can’t argue your way through one. They simply will not open for people without properly keyed openers. So whoever had almost run down Darlene Girvan had to be someone who belonged in Cedar Heights, someone who had a legitimate reason for being there, someone who had access to a garage door opener.

That boiled down to exactly two possibilities. Either the driver of the foreign car had something to do with Dr. Nielsen’s murder or he didn’t. That’s my job, figuring out which is which.

I spent the rest of the night working the problem, but no answers were forthcoming. It was almost four in the morning the last time I rolled over and looked at the clock.