J. Jance - Long Time Gone

So what was I going to do about it? I worried about it for a while. Finally I picked up the phone and dialed a number I knew by heart, one that brought me to the homicide desk at Seattle PD. Sergeant Angie Jerrold answered the phone. I was relieved to hear a familiar voice, and she seemed happy to hear from me as well.

“What can I do for you?”

“Who’s assigned to the Marchbank case?” I asked.

“Which one?” she asked. “As of tonight, there are two of them on the board,” she said. “Madeline and Elvira.”

I was stunned to learn that based on Elvira’s death, Kramer had reopened Madeline’s long cold case. I was stunned and a little relieved.

“Either,” I said. “Whoever’s available.”

Which is how I ended up talking to Detective Kendall Jackson. “What can I do for you, Mr. Beaumont?”

Jackson had been a uniformed officer and still working the cars when I left the department. Having him call me Mr. Beaumont made me feel slightly ancient.

“Which Marchbank belongs to you?” I asked.

“Elvira,” he said. “Hank and I just got back from the crime scene.”

Hank was Detective Henry Ramsdahl.

“I’m working Madeline,” I said. “For the AG’s office. Captain Kramer was here a little while ago. He suggested it might be a good idea if we compared notes.”

“Sure thing,” Jackson said. “Sounds good to me. What do you have?”

“An eyewitness.”

“To Madeline’s murder?” He sounded incredulous. “From 1950?”

“Yup.”

“When can we talk to this witness?”

“That’s a little tougher,” I said. “She’s a nun. Lives in a convent up on Whidbey Island.”

“Can I call her up?”

That was when I realized that in all my transactions with Sister Mary Katherine, no one-not Sister Mary Katherine and not Freddy Mac-had given me her phone number. I knew the convent had to have a telephone. Hadn’t she told me someone named Sister Therese had surfed the Net for information on Alfred and Elvira Marchbank?

“I don’t have that number right now,” I said. “Once I get it, I can have her call you. Or better yet, maybe I can convince her to come talk to you.”

“If you can talk a nun out of a convent, you must be some kind of guy.”

“We’ll see,” I said. “If I can get her to come to town, how hard will it be to meet up with you?”

“Not hard at all,” Jackson returned. “You tell us when and where, and Hank and I will be there. Captain Kramer gave us our marching orders. Both cases are highest priority.”

Captain Kramer! Just hearing the word captain used in conjunction with Kramer’s name rankled, but I was going to have to get used to it.

“All right, then,” I said. “Let’s see what we can do.”

Good to my word, I was up and on the phone to Freddy Mac bright and early the next morning, asking for Sister Mary Katherine’s phone number.

“Is it too early to call?” I asked after he gave me what I needed.

“Hardly,” Fred said with a laugh. “You won’t be waking her. She tells me morning devotionals start at five A.M.”

So I dialed Saint Benedict’s and was put through to Sister Mary Katherine. “Beaumont here,” I said. “I’m wondering if you can come back to Seattle today to meet with some Seattle PD detectives.”

“This evening, perhaps,” she said. “Sister Therese and Sister Margaret just left in the van to run some errands. They won’t be back until around lunchtime. I could leave after that.”

I didn’t want the meeting with the Seattle PD homicide detectives to conflict with Rosemary Peters’s funeral. I needed it to be earlier instead of later. “What if I came out to Whidbey and picked you up?”

“That seems dreadfully inconvenient for you. Does it really have to be today?” Sister Mary Katherine asked. “I’ve been away for several days, and I just got home late yesterday.”

“Elvira Marchbank is dead,” I told her.

“Oh, no,” Mary Katherine murmured. Her regretful tone surprised me. “She was fine when I saw her. What happened?”

“When you saw her?” I repeated. “When was that?”

“Yesterday afternoon,” Sister Mary Katherine said. “After our lunch. I decided to drive back to the old neighborhood just to look around. I stopped outside the foundation office and wondered what to do. Finally I worked up my courage and went inside. When I asked to see Mrs. Marchbank, the woman there told me Elvira wasn’t available. But as I was leaving, a limo drove up to the house next door-the place where my parents and I used to live. It turns out that’s where Elvira lives now. The limo was bringing her home from a doctor’s appointment. Even after all these years, I recognized her the moment she stepped out of the car.”

I was thunderstruck. “You didn’t talk to her, did you?”

“Of course I did,” Sister Mary Katherine said. “After all these years, it seemed like the right thing to do, and I’m glad I did, too. She was old and frail and she told me she was sorry.”

“Sorry?” I asked.

“Sorry about the part she played in Mimi’s death. She said she’d always known I’d come back someday and that she was finally ready to ‘do the right thing.’ I took that to mean that she was prepared to turn herself in and accept responsibility for her actions. What happened to her?”

“She fell down a flight of stairs. The detectives working the case seem to think she was pushed.”

“That’s terrible,” Sister Katherine said. “I’m so sorry.”

From my point of view, terrible just about covered it. Sister Mary Katherine had just gone from being a homicide eyewitness to being a possible homicide suspect.

“I’m on my way to pick you up,” I said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

It took time to make Enterprise shape up and come through with the rental car the insurance company had ordered for me. Once it appeared, I headed north on I-5. After the 928, the Ford Taurus was a bit of a letdown. As the ads say about Porsches: There is no substitute. I had been told that the adjuster would be getting back to me either that day or the next with the verdict as to whether or not the 928 was totaled. In the meantime, the Taurus was my ride.

I lucked out and caught the Mukilteo Ferry and headed for Useless Bay on Whidbey Island. Useless Bay is useless because it’s so shallow that at low tide it’s little more than a glorified mudflat. On the way I called into the office to let people know what I was up to.

“Keeping a low profile, I see,” Barbara Galvin observed.

“No, I’m working,” I told her. “If you like, I’ll be glad to talk to Harry.”

“Wouldn’t recommend it,” she returned. “He’s still on the warpath about your five o’clock news appearance. If I were you, I’d give him more time to cool off-unless he calls you, that is.”

It seemed like a good idea to take Barbara’s advice as far as Harry was concerned. “What about Mel?”

“She and Brad are in Seattle doing interviews,” Barbara said.

If one of the people they were interviewing was Heather Peters, that meant I didn’t want to talk to Mel, and I certainly didn’t want to talk to Ron or Amy. I put my phone back in my pocket and hoped it wouldn’t ring.

Once on Whidbey, I left the Clinton Ferry Dock behind and drove north, past the turnoff to Useless Bay Country Club and onto Double Bluff Road. Evidence of downed trees was everywhere. The entrance to Saint Benedict’s was barred with an imposing iron gate. Alongside were a keypad and an intercom.

When the invisible gatekeeper allowed me entrance, I was amazed. The convent grounds had been lovingly landscaped into something that rivaled Victoria’s famed Buchart Gardens. On this midwinter day, nothing was in bloom, but the snow was mostly gone, and the carefully tended beds were clean and empty and ready for planting. A coveralls-clad woman with a noisy leaf blower was herding the last few fallen leaves off the manicured and graveled pathways. She looked up and nodded as I drove past, but she didn’t stop what she was doing.