“Ask Janice Morraine,” I said. “The last I saw, there was a Day-Timer with Ben Weston’s initials on it lying on the floor of his bedroom.”
“I can’t ask Janice Morraine for the time of day,” Ron Peters replied. “I’m not a detective, remember? How about if one of you ask her?”
“No can do, either,” Big Al grumbled morosely. “I’m aced out of it completely-Captain Powell’s orders.” He glanced at me. “You’re not much better off yourself. You’re supposed to be doing Adam Jackson. Maybe you’d better pass it along to Kramer.”
“Like hell!” I said. The three of us stared at one another. In our own way, we were all benched second stringers. We had a perfectly good piece of information, but no above-board way of acting on it.
My telephone rang just then, and the caller was none other than Sue Danielson. “Hi, Beau. I wanted to get back to you. I talked to that kid, the one down at Garfield. He really is a witness, at least to your part of the incident, and I thought you’d like to know about it.”
“Any information at all is welcome,” I said. “Want me to come to you or do you want to come to me?”
“Neither. Not here on the floor, anyway. Detective Kramer would have a fit if he saw us together. I missed lunch today. How about if you meet me at that little Mexican joint on Marion, Mexico Lindo, I think it’s called.”
After my Little Cheerful threshing-crew-type breakfast, I wasn’t quite up to dos tocos or even uno for that matter, but the offer of information was irresistible.
“See you there in ten minutes,” I told her, hanging up and standing up, all in the same motion.
“So where are you going?”
“That was Sue Danielson on the phone. She wants to meet so she can tell me what some kid told her about the guy who took the shot at me.” As I said the words, the glimmer of an idea came into my head. “Who knows? Maybe we can arrange some kind of trade on this computer thing.”
Big Al looked surprised. “Are you sure? She’s Paul Kramer’s partner.”
“It’s not a social disease,” I countered. “You were stuck with him once for a case or two, and so was I. Remember how it felt?”
Allen Lindstrom nodded. “Coulda killed him myself.”
“I rest my case,” I returned. “I’m off to meet the lady for lunch. Wish me luck. The rest of us may be benched, but she’s not, at least not yet.”
CHAPTER 14
It was drizzling lightly as I set out up a crowded Third Avenue sidewalk on my way to Marion and the quaint, upstairs Mexican restaurant frequented by downtown-type Mexican food freaks.
As I walked, I couldn’t help feeling a little guilty. Sue had called out of courtesy offering to volunteer information she was under no obligation to share with me. In return, here I was planning to use her for my own underhanded ends. That didn’t seem quite fair, but I wanted to be part of learning whatever could be learned from Ben Weston’s computer file. Given a choice, Paul Kramer sure as hell wouldn’t clue me in. Because she’s a straightforward woman, Sue Danielson was the weak link in Kramer’s chain of command. By the time I reached the restaurant I had more or less convinced myself that in this case, the ends really did justify the means.
I made good time, but Sue was already there, seated in the smoking section of the restaurant and puffing away like a chimney long before I arrived. A hostess with an authentically thick Mexican accent led me to the table and tried to tempt me with a margarita. Fortunately, I was wearing my margarita repellent.
“So are we having a secret rendezvous?” I asked Sue teasingly, with what I hoped passed for a mischievous grin. “Do you think Detective Kramer had either one of us tailed?”
She didn’t laugh. In fact, she never even cracked a smile. “This is no joke, Beau. What’s with you two guys, anyway? When I mentioned to him that I intended to tell you what I’d learned from the paperboy, Kramer pitched a fit all over that brand-new private office of his.”
“It’s just a little personality conflict,” I assured her. “Nothing serious, but the animosity cuts both ways, if that’s any consolation. I don’t like him any better than he likes me.”
“Great!” she said, shaking her head in disgust. “Some men never grow up, do they. Is this another one of those locker room mine’s-bigger-than-yours situations?”
It pains me to admit that she was probably fairly close to the mark, but I refrained from dignifying her comment with a reply, and she left it at that.
“By the way, I hope you like Mexican food,” she added.
“You go right ahead,” I told her. “I’ll just have coffee. What’s up?”
The waitress came by. Sue ordered a combination plate and a Coke. Although close to my limit, I ordered more black coffee. “Tell me about the paperboy,” I said. “I want to hear all about him.”
“Have you ever had a paper route?” she asked.
It was a typically female way of starting a conversation from way out in left field without directly tackling the issue at hand. Over the years, however, I’ve managed to develop considerable patience, and I played right along.
“Not me. I worked in a movie theater as a kid-hawking tickets and popcorn and jujubes. I’ve been a night owl all my life. I never could have roused myself at some ungodly hour to go deliver morning papers, and an evening route would have screwed up my extracurricular activities. How about you?”
“I had one,” she replied, “back in Cincinnati. A city’s funny at that hour of the morning. It’s so still and peaceful when you’re the only person out and around. You wander up and down streets and through neighborhoods while cars are still parked wherever people happen to leave them overnight. You know who gets up first, who will already be up and waiting for a paper by the time you drop it on the porch. You see all kinds of things, including some things you shouldn’t. Just before the sun comes up, I used to pretend I was invisible.”
She paused and studied me with a searching look. “Am I making sense?”
I bit back the temptation to tell her to hurry up and get to the point. “More or less,” I said.
“Anyway, this kid from Garfield-Bob Case is his name-has had the same Seattle Post-Intelligencer route for three years. He says he used to see Ben Weston out running every morning at the same time, rain or shine. He claims to know most of the cars and drivers that belong in the neighborhood and what times they come and go. He says that in the past few weeks there’s been a lot of extra traffic in the early-morning hours.”
“What kind of traffic?”
“He mentioned three in particular. One is a late-model Lexus with a cellular radio antenna.”
“That doesn’t help much. I don’t remember the last time I saw a Lexus without a cellular phone, do you? All the ones I’ve seen do.”
Sue glowered at me. “Let me finish. He says he got a real close look at it the morning after the murders. Too close, actually. It almost ran him down just half a minute or so after whoever it was took a potshot at you. He heard the noise and thought it was a backfire until the guy almost ran him and his bicycle off the street three blocks away from Ben Weston’s house.”
“How come it took him until now to come forward?” I asked.
“He’s scared, Beau. He’s out on that paper route by himself every single morning. He’s afraid if whoever it was hears he’s gone to the cops, they’ll come back looking for him next. He made the mistake of telling his mother about it, and she called us.”
From a strictly survival standpoint, I had to admit the kid had the right idea. Paperboys on bicycles are sitting ducks for drive-by shootings. I took out my notebook. “What’s his name again?”
“Bob. Robert actually. Robert Case.”
“Well, Bob Case is probably right to be scared. I don’t hold it against him. Did he get a look at the driver?”
“Not really. He said it was a young black man, but he claims he didn’t get a good enough look to give us a positive ID.”
“That figures. My guess is even if he did, he wouldn’t tell us. License number?”
“Negative on that too.”
“So we have what is commonly known as a semi-eyewitness. What about the rest of the unexplained traffic
