knock on the door, and she pushed me away.
“Hurry,” she said.
When I walked into the living room a few minutes later, a man with a trench coat draped over one arm stood with his back to the room, gazing out at the city. I felt a twinge of jealousy when he turned. He was younger than I by a good ten years, well built, handsome in a dapper sort of way. He was wearing a natty three-piece pinstripe. He extended his hand, and his grip was unexpectedly firm.
“Beau,” Anne said, “I’d like you to meet Ralph Ames, my attorney.”
I managed a polite enough greeting. “Care for some coffee?” I asked.
Ralph’s eyes swung from Anne back to me. “Do we have time? You said we’d grab some breakfast on our way to the courthouse. Then I have a plane to catch.”
Seeing my look of consternation, Ames glanced quickly at Anne, who smiled brightly. “We have time.”
“But you did say we’re going to get the marriage license this morning, didn’t you?”
She nodded. “Ralph has agreed to be our witness down at the courthouse.”
That brought me up short. When had Ralph Ames been scheduled to serve as a witness? Before Anne had popped the question? Before I had accepted? Or had she called him that morning while I was still asleep?
“Great,” I said, trying to sound casual.
Anne handed Ames a cup of coffee and motioned him into my leather recliner. “We’ve got time,” she said, returning to the kitchen for two more cups. I settled grudgingly on the couch, determined to be civil. My first halting attempt at conversation wasn’t much help.
“What brings you up here, Ralph?” I asked.
His eyes flicked from me to Anne, who curled up on the couch beside me. She shook her head slightly in his direction, and Ames turned back to me. “Anne had some legal matters she wanted me to straighten out for her before the weekend. When she calls, I drop everything and go. I got here yesterday afternoon.”
“It must be nice.” A trace of sarcasm leaked into my voice. It offended me that Ralph Ames and Anne Corley shared secrets to which J. P. Beaumont was not privy. Theirs was obviously a long-standing relationship, although I could detect nothing overt to indicate it was anything other than one between a client and a trusted attorney. Trusted retainer, actually. Ames asked a series of pointed, proprietary questions that gave me the distinct impression he was doing a quick background check to see if I measured up.
When it was time to go to breakfast, I led them to the Doghouse. That was pure cussedness on my part. I wanted to drag Ralph Ames someplace where his pinstripe suit would be just a tad out of place. Ames, however, continued to be absolutely amiable. Good-naturedly, he wolfed down the Doghouse’s plain breakfast fare.
Throughout the meal, I couldn’t shake the sense that I was being examined by some sort of future in-law. It irked me to realize that Ralph Ames knew far more about Anne Corley than I did — that she liked her bacon crisp, for example, or that she preferred hotcakes to toast. J. P. Beaumont was very much the outsider, but I decided I could afford to play catch-up ball.
After breakfast we caught a cab down to the courthouse. I guess I should have been nervous or had some sense of being railroaded, but I didn’t. Anne’s hand found mine and squeezed it. The radiant happiness on her face was directed at me alone, and it made my heart swell with pride.
We were first in line when the licensing bureau doors opened. I had no idea King County wouldn’t take a check for the twenty-six-dollar marriage license fee. Luckily, Ralph had enough cash on him, and he came up with the money. That, combined with his picking up the check for breakfast, made me more than a little testy. As far as I was concerned, he was being far too accommodating.
Ames took a cab to the airport from the courthouse. “Will you be here for the wedding?” Anne asked, as he climbed into the cab.
“That depends on how much work I get done tomorrow,” he replied.
Once again the little snippet of private conversation between them made me feel like an interloper. When the cab pulled away, Anne turned back to me. “What are you frowning about?”
“Who, me?” I asked stupidly.
“Yes, you. Who else would I mean?”
“How long have you known him?”
“A long time,” she answered. “You’re not jealous of him, are you?”
“Maybe a little.”
She laughed aloud. “Don’t be silly. Ralph is the last person you should be jealous of. He’s a good friend, that’s all. I wanted him to meet you.”
“To check me out? Did I pass inspection?” Even I could hear the annoyance in my voice.
“You wouldn’t have a marriage license in your pocket if you hadn’t passed. What’s the matter with you?”
I shrugged, unwilling to invite further teasing about my jealousy, but making a mental note to remember crisp bacon and pancakes. Anne walked me as far as the department, then struck off on her own up Third Avenue, while I headed for my desk on the fifth floor. There was a note on my desk saying that Peters was in the interview room with Andrew Carstogi, that I should follow suit.
I guess his fellow inmates convinced Carstogi of the error of his ways and had him run up the flag to the public defender’s office. By the time I got into the interview room on the fifth floor, Peters and Watkins were there along with a tough-looking female defense attorney. She nodded or shook her head whenever we asked Carstogi a question. Usually I look at this process as a game where we try to get at the truth and the lawyers try to hide it.
Sitting in jail overnight, Carstogi had come up with one additional detail that he had forgotten before. He said he thought the cab company had something to do with the Civil War. After we sent Carstogi back to his cell, we returned to our desks, and I hauled out the yellow pages.
“What’s with you today?” Peters asked, thumping into his own chair. “You were late.”
I decided to put all my cards on the table at once and get it over with. There’s something to be said for shock value. I tossed him the envelope with the marriage license in it. He removed the license, read it, then looked at me incredulously. “You’ve got to be kidding!”
“Why?”
“Beau, for Chrissakes, what do you know about her? You only met last Sunday.”
“She wants me; I want her. What’s to know?”
“This is crazy.”
“We’re getting married Sunday.”
“In one week? What’s the big hurry? Is she pregnant or something?”
“Look, if you want to come, you’re invited. Otherwise, lay off.”
Peters was still shaking his head when I turned back to the yellow pages. Halfway through the taxi listings, I found it — the General Grant Cab Company.
We checked out a car from the motor pool and went looking. We found the faded blue cab in a lineup waiting for passengers at Sea-Tac Airport. The driver was chewing a wad of gum when we showed him our badges. His hair looked like he still used Brylcreem. He rolled down the window. “What’s up?” he asked.
He didn’t want to lose his place in line, so we sat in the cab to ask him our questions. He knew nothing about some hooker named Gloria. He’d never seen Carstogi. We showed him Carstogi’s mug shot. Well, maybe he had seen someone like him, but he couldn’t remember where or when. We made a note to check out his trip sheets later, but I had an idea that if the driver had been the one who gave Carstogi a ride, it was as a sideline the cab company knew nothing about.
Carstogi’s flimsy alibi had just gotten a whole lot flimsier. Peters and I headed back into town. “Where do you want to go? The office?” Peters asked.
“No. Let’s go back to my place. I want to listen to that tape.”
“Why? Because you still don’t think Carstogi did it?”
“Why do you think he did?” I answered Peters’ question with a question of my own.
Peters looked thoughtful. “Maybe because I think I would have in his place,” he said solemnly. From his tone of voice, it was readily apparent that he wasn’t making a joke.
“So you’re layering in your own motivations and convicting him? He’s innocent until proven guilty, you asshole. That’s the way the law works, remember?”
“Who did it, then?” Peters asked. “If Carstogi didn’t, who did? The tape shows that whoever the guy was,
