Ritter sighed sadly. 'Marie was a call girl, Judge. A prostitute.'
Quinn should have been shocked, but he wasn't. If you wanted to hire a woman to seduce a man, seeking the services of a professional made sense.
'Did Marie work in Seattle?'
'Yes.'
'Did she ever work in Portland?'
'I don't know. She never told me she did, but I disapproved of Marie's . . . lifestyle and she knew it, so it was rare for her to discuss her profession with me.'
'I want you to know that before today I did not know that Marie was a prostitute,' Quinn said firmly. 'She told me that she designed belts. I thought she worked in the fashion industry. Did she ever do anything like that?'
'Marie! Not that I knew of.'
'Would you mind talking about your sister?'
Ritter brushed at her eyes. Her lower lip trembled.
'Marie was two years younger than me. She was always rebellious. I was a good student. Marie was at least as intelligent as I am, but she barely passed. She was into drugs, boys. My parents tried everything. Eventually, they gave up. When she was eighteen, Marie was arrested for prostitution and my parents kicked her out of the house. She wasn't really living at home then, anyway. After that, they wouldn't have anything to do with her.'
'Do your parents know that Marie is dead?'
'No. I haven't told them. I don't know what to say. They wrote Marie off years ago.'
'How close were you to your sister?'
'That's hard to answer. We saw very little of each other when I was at college and graduate school. After I moved back to Seattle to take a teaching job we started meeting a little more, but there wasn't any plan to it. Sometimes she would just drop by or she'd call on the spur of the moment and we'd go out for dinner. A lot of the times when she called I thought it was because she was lonely, but, if I asked her, she would always pretend to be upbeat and tell me how great her life was.'
Ritter paused and took a sip of her latte. When she looked up, there were tears in her eyes.
'There were other times when she would show up out of the blue, strung out or just needing a place to stay. I knew she wanted help when she came to me like that. I even got her to go into a rehab program once. The last few times I saw her I think she was clean, but I'm so naive I don't think I could really tell if she was using.'
Quinn handed Ritter his handkerchief.
'I'm sorry,' she apologized. 'I guess we really weren't that close. We were so different. But she was my sister and she was so lost. The last time we were together I tried to talk her into getting a straight job. She just laughed. She said she was doing great and was going to do better. She looked like she was, too. She was wearing expensive clothes and jewelry I hadn't seen before.'
'Where was she getting her money? I know you said that she was a call girl. Was that her only job? Did she have a pimp?'
'No, not a pimp. From what I could figure out, she worked for an escort service. But it was a front for a call girl operation.'
Denise paused. She suddenly looked very thoughtful.
'That last time I saw Marie, the time I told you about, when she was dressed in the expensive clothes, that was in mid-February. She was very up, very excited, and that was strange, because I knew she didn't enjoy earning her money the way she did. She'd told me that much.'
Quinn had been in St. Jerome in late February. He was sure that Marie Ritter's sudden, mid-February good fortune was connected to the blackmail plot.
'Did Marie tell you why she was excited or how she got the money for the clothes?'
'Not specifically. She did talk about making a lot of money and I had the impression that the money she was going to make wasn't connected to the escort service.
That it was something that she had going on the side. But I can't be certain of that.'
'Did your sister have any friends I might talk to?'
'Marie mentioned someone named Christy a few times and another woman named Robin, but all I know about them is their first names.'
'Did your sister ever talk about her customers?'
'I didn't encourage Marie to talk about what she did. It was very distasteful to me, that kind of life.' Ritter shuddered. 'I can't even imagine it.
'When she did speak about the men she'd been with, it was usually with contempt, but she never mentioned their names and I didn't ask. She thought most of them were pathetic. There were a few she said were okay, but generally she would laugh about them. As I said, I didn't enjoy discussing what she did, except to try to get her to stop.'
'Denise, did your sister ever mention any customers from Portland?'
'Not that I can recall.' Ritter paused. 'She did tell me that there was a man she had seen more than once who lived in Oregon. He had some kind of business in Seattle. It was something odd.'
'Can you remember what it was?'
Ritter brightened. 'She said he was an undertaker. Marie thought that was funny.'
Quinn felt a surge of excitement. 'Denise, this is important. Did she describe this man? Can you remember anything she said about him?'
Ritter frowned, then shook her head.
'All I remember was his business.'
'She never said how old he was?'
'She said he didn't dress or act like she thought an undertaker would. I think he was a flashy dresser and he liked to dance all night, so I assumed that he was young, but she never told me his age.'
' Do you have any idea how I can get in touch with Marie's escort service?'
'No. I don't even know where Marie was living these past few months.'
Ritter paused. Then she looked directly at Quinn.
'I've been trying to build up the courage to ask you something since you walked in, Judge.'
'Go ahead and ask your question.'
'What was your connection with my sister?'
'I met her on a plane when I flew to the Caribbean to speak at a legal conference. We spent the next day on the beach you saw in the picture. I think Marie was hired to make friends with me, then seduce me. When the police searched the hotel room where Marie was murdered, they found those pictures in her suitcase and they brought me to the hotel room. They thought that I might have killed her, but I didn't. I could never hurt someone the way your sister was hurt.'
Ritter digested this information. Then she took a deep breath and looked directly at Quinn.
'The detectives . . . They only pulled back the sheet enough to show me Marie's face and I was too upset to ask. Was she . . . ? Did she feel much pain?'
Quinn flashed back to the room. For a brief moment, he saw Marie Ritter's savaged body.
'I'm afraid she did,' the judge answered gendy.
Ritter's eyes watered. She bit her lip.
'Please tell me what happened.'
'Marie, you don't want to know that. That isn't going to do you any good.'
'Please,' Ritter pleaded.
Quinn sighed and described what he had seen in the hotel room as delicately as was possible. When he was through, Ritter spaced out for a moment.
'I knew this would happen if she stayed in that life. I tried to talk to her, but she wouldn't listen to me.'
'You can only do so much. Don't make the mistake of thinking that this was your fault or that there was some way that you could have saved her. Some people don't want to be saved. Promise me that you're not going to take this burden on your shoulders.'
Ritter sighed. 'No, I won't make that mistake.'
'Good. That's good. The killer took your sister. Don't you let him take you, too.'
[3]
