minute to wonder how he happened to be in possession of that stray bit of information.
“Hold on. You say Junior remembered that a little while ago? That means you’ve been over to his grandfather’s house talking to him?”
Big Al sounded offended. “Why shouldn’t I go there? I’m a friend of the family, remember? I can talk to Junior Weston any damned time I want to, and nobody’s going to tell me I can’t.”
“But how’d you get permission? I got the distinct impression this morning that Harmon Weston isn’t exactly wild about cops. Are you telling me he actually let you in to talk to the kid?”
There was a slight pause. “Well, maybe he didn’t,” Big Al admitted. “Not exactly. The old man was sound asleep, taking a nap. When I showed up at the door, Junior let me in. Why wouldn’t he? He knows me. Besides, I had a Nintendo along for him. I figured he’d be better off with one of those instead of a potful of flowers.”
“Wait a minute, you went over there while the grandfather was asleep, essentially broke into the house, gave Junior a game, talked to him, and the old man was never any wiser?”
“I didn’t break in. Junior let me in,” Big Al insisted. “I just wanted to visit with him for a little while to see if there was anything else he remembered. And there was. Like I told you, the gloves.”
A dozen alarm bells went off in my head. “Hell with the gloves, Al! Forget about them. Junior’s a witness for Christ’s sake. He actually saw Bonnie’s killer. If you got in and out that easily, so could somebody else!”
For a moment the phone was so quiet I was afraid it had gone dead. “Al, are you there?”
“I’m here,” he said, “and I get your drift. If the killer bothered to read this afternoon’s newspaper, he knows for sure that he screwed up and missed one kid who is also the only living eyewitness. Shit! They could get to him in a minute. What the hell are we going to do?”
Just as doctors don’t practice medicine on their own family members, police officers aren’t allowed to work on cases that come too close to them personally. They lose their professional detachment, take unnecessary risks.
“You stay out of it, Al. If Watty finds out you’ve been within a mile of Junior Weston, your tail will be in a gate for sure. Tell me, would the grandfather hold still for protective custody or a police guard?”
“Not likely. Old man Weston hates cops-all cops-his own son included.”
“Then I’d better come up with some better idea.”
“Like what? We’d best get on the stick. It’ll be dark soon.”
“Goddamnit, Lindstrom, you hardheaded lug. I told you we aren’t doing a thing. You stay the hell out of it, you hear?”
For an answer, he banged the receiver down in my ear. I hung up too and sat there staring at the phone trying to imagine a solution. Who could I call in to deal with Harmon Weston? From what Al Lindstrom had told me, I knew instinctively that I could haul the mayor or the police chief himself into the melee, and it wouldn’t do a damn bit of good.
What I needed was a higher authority, an ultimate authority. When the answer came to me, it was like a bolt out of the blue. It even made me smile. I grabbed the nearest phone book and looked up the number of the Mount Zion Baptist Church. Reverend Homer Walters himself didn’t answer the phone, but I was put through to him with only a minimal delay.
“This is Detective Beaumont,” I said. “We met briefly earlier this afternoon at Dr. Jackson’s place.”
“Yes, Detective Beaumont. I remember. What can I do for you? I hope you’re not calling to ask me to change the funeral time.”
“Oh no,” I said. “Nothing like that. I was actually calling to ask for your help. I’m concerned for the safety of Junior Weston, especially since he qualifies as an eyewitness.”
Briefly I went on to explain what had happened earlier that afternoon, how Big Al had come and gone from Harmon Weston’s place without the old man ever hearing a thing. If I expected my tattling to be news to Reverend Walters, I was wrong.
“That’s true,” Reverend Walters said when I finished. “Harmon Weston sleeps like a rock, and that includes sleeping in church. If I happen to run on too long of a Sunday morning, he turns off his hearing aid and doesn’t hear a thing. Sometimes one of the deacons has to go back and wake him up after the service is over. I can see we’re going to have to do something about this.”
“What do you suggest?”
“Bring Junior over to our house, of course,” Reverend Walters said decisively. “And we’ll bring that new Nintendo game along as well. Francine and I can look after him with no trouble, but he’ll need games and things to help occupy his time.”
When I finally came back home to Belltown Terrace at five forty-five, my tail feathers were dragging, but I was feeling a real sense of accomplishment. Through my intervention, Homer Walters had picked Junior up and taken him, along with his new teddy bear, to the Walterses’ gracious home on the back side of Beacon Hill. I stopped by briefly to check on the boy and found him deeply engrossed in a game called Super Mario Brothers, whatever that is. His Teddy Bear Patrol teddy bear sat on the couch nearby, well within safe touching distance.
I had forgotten all about Ralph Ames and his plans for the evening until I walked up to the door of my apartment and smelled the garlic. Ralph Ames is one of those people who never met a garlic clove he didn’t like. He claims that the real secret behind every successful barbecue is layering it on-ground, minced, pressed, or chopped, it doesn’t matter. That initial savory whiff was followed by the sound of female laughter coming from behind the still-closed door.
She was there all right. The lunchtime lady had returned for a dinnertime engagement when all I wanted to do was eat a square meal, hit the sack, and let them do the same. I stuck an idiotic grin on my face and opened the door.
Ralph Ames is never so happy as when he’s busy demolishing my kitchen. The edible results are always masterful, but the kitchen usually resembles a war zone afterward. This particular meal was no exception.
While Ralph held sway over a smoking Jenn-Air grill with a pasta pot bubbling near his elbow, a woman with a dish towel tied around her waist stood at the far end of the counter breaking up handfuls of romaine.
“Why, Beau,” Ralph said heartily. “You’re just in time. Let me introduce you to Alexis Downey, Alex for short. Alex, this is my friend J. P. Beaumont. Everyone calls him Beau.”
I held out my hand. She dried one hand on the towel and then shook mine. She was in her mid-to-late thirties probably, medium tall with short, auburn hair, a bit of gray around the temples, and a pair of amazingly blue eyes.
She smiled. “Glad to meet you, Beau. Ralph has told me so much about you.”
“Alex is the director of development for the Seattle Repertory Theater,” Ralph announced, flopping the steaks over on the grill.
“Glad to make your acquaintance, Alex,” I returned politely, but secretly I was wondering how much of a donation she had hit him up for. Which only goes to show how naive I still am.
I mistakenly thought Ralph Ames was the target.
CHAPTER 11
I made it through dinner without falling asleep in my food, but only just barely. Alexis Downey went out of her way to be cordial and include me in the general conversation, but it was all I could do to concentrate on what she and Ralph were saying.
For some reason, Alex was inordinately interested in Belltown Terrace’s Bentley which I, along with the rest of my partners, regard as a royal pain in the ass. Intended to be one of the condominium’s distinctive amenities, the limo actually had spent far more time in the shop than it had on the street. Finally, sick of repairs and complaints from periodically stranded riders/residents, we leased a new Cadillac for the building and left the aging Bentley covered and more or less permanently parked on the P-1 level of the garage.
“Is it running now?” Alex Downey asked.
“Hard to say,” I told her. “It has what mechanics call an intermittent ignition problem. That means sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.”
