'Detective Beaumont,' he said, 'John Miller may not be a currently elected public official, but he still has a lot of influence in this town. And no one at Seattle P.D. is going to like it if one of our very own homicide detectives flies in the face of all that clout. Do I make myself clear?'
Sometimes I'm a very slow learner, especially when it comes to politics. 'I'll be there as soon as I can,' I said at last.
'How soon?'
'Fifteen minutes.'
'Make it ten. I'll tell her you're on your way.'
I turned back to the kitchen table, where Inge, sitting alone now, continued to sip away at her coffee. She seemed totally unaffected by the distress she had caused her grieving, middle-aged daughter.
It went against my upbringing-against everything my mother ever taught me-to think of that sweet little old lady in her crookedly buttoned housecoat as an unmitigated, cold-blooded bitch, but that's what Inge Didriksen was-that and more. In spades.
'Where's Else?' I asked.
'She said she was going back to her room to lie down,' Inge answered. 'She said she hoped you wouldn't mind showing yourself out.'
'I can manage.'
I pulled one of my business cards from my wallet and placed it on the table in front of her. 'Would you mind giving your granddaughter a message for me?' I asked.
'What kind of message?'
'That's my number at Seattle P.D. Would you please ask her to give me a call as soon as she wakes up?'
'I can do that,' Inge Didriksen agreed. 'Although I don't know when that'll be. Young people these days sleep until all hours, you know.'
Inge's cloudy blue eyes met and held mine for a very long time. It was a challenge. I think she was waiting to see if I would say anything about the way she had treated her daughter.
'I never liked him, you know,' she said with a small, almost imperceptible shrug.
'Never liked who?' I asked, playing dumb.
'Why, my son-in-law, of course,' she replied. 'Gunter. Who else did you think I was talking about?'
Who else indeed? But with Else out of the room, I was free to ask this strange old woman a few questions that might possibly serve to open up some of the darkened corners of the Gebhardt family history.
'Why did Gunter quarrel with your granddaughter?' I asked. 'And when did it happen?'
Inge dropped her gaze, as if the strain of holding my eyes was suddenly too much for her.
'You'll have to ask Kari about that,' Inge answered demurely. 'I couldn't possibly tell you. You see, I make it a practice never to interfere in my children's affairs.'
Like hell you do, I thought savagely as I stalked out of the house, closing the door behind me.
Inge Didriksen interfered, all right, but only when it happened to suit her.
15
As I left Else's house on Culpeper Court and started back downtown, the words 'wife of a former congressman' conjured up a certain picture in my mind. The image of the imagined June Miller that formed in my head was of someone as tough and cantankerous as Betty Friedan, only not nearly as pretty.
Sergeant Chuck Grayson was still on duty and fighting his way through a deskful of paperwork when I stopped in front of it.
'Where is she?' I asked, starting for my cubicle.
'Whoa, there,' Grayson said. 'You didn't think we'd stash somebody like her in your office, did you? That place is a wreck.'
I ground to a halt and glanced pointedly at the tumbled mass of scattered papers on Sergeant Grayson's desk. 'Pardon my saying so, Sarge, but when it comes to wrecks, you don't have much room to talk. Where did you stow her then?'
'Upstairs,' he answered. 'In that little conference room next door to the chief's office.'
It figured. It wouldn't have surprised me if June Miller had been granted a personal interview with the chief of police while she was waiting for me to show up. 'She didn't happen to say what all this is about, did she?'
Grayson shook his head. 'Nope. Just what I told you on the phone. It has something to do with your deal up at Fishermen's Terminal. Whatever it is, it was important enough for her to show up here at six-twenty A. M. By the way, have you ever met this woman before?'
'Never.'
Grayson grinned. 'Lucky you,' he said. 'You're in for a real treat.'
'Sure I am,' I replied. 'And no doubt the chief will give me the rest of the day off when she and I get finished.'
'I wouldn't count on that,' Grayson said.
I didn't break my neck going back to the elevators. The idea that police officers are 'public servants' tends to go to some people's heads. Maybe that was the same reason John Miller was a former congressman instead of a current one. Maybe he resented the idea of being on call twenty-four hours a day.
Right that minute, I know I did. Public servant be damned! June Miller had stopped by the department, without benefit of an appointment, a full hour and a half before the beginning of my shift. Nonetheless, she still expected me to show up, Johnny-on-the-spot, at her beck and call. And since she was far too good to wait in my humble cubicle, she had been ushered up to the more plush surroundings of SPD's 'executive' level to wait for me there.
Who the hell does she think she is? I grumbled irritably to myself as I stepped onto the Public Safety Building's crowded, slow-boat elevator. The goddamned queen of Sheba?
Fortunately, the elevator is very slow, and by the time I stepped off it almost a minute later, I had pretty much come to my senses. After all, if a citizen shows up to voluntarily help with an investigation, the least the detective involved can do is not act like a total jerk.
The chief's conference-room door comes complete with a single sliver of glass window in it that allows someone outside in the lobby area to peek inside. Presumably, that's so the person outside can tell exactly what's going on before entering the room and disrupting the proceedings.
The furnishings are Danish modern-cheap Danish modern. They consist of a credenza, a single oval-shaped oak table, and eight matching chairs. There is a ninth chair as well. The cloth and basic pattern of that one are the same as that on the other eight, but that ninth one is a captain's chair with armrests on it. Seattle's chief of police may be in favor of the common touch, but when he's involved in something that requires the use of this particular conference room, you can bet the captain's chair belongs to him and nobody else.
That Friday morning, when I paused outside the door and peeked in through the window, there was only one person in the room. Not surprisingly, June Miller had chosen the captain's chair as the one in which to sit.
To say the woman was striking would do June Miller a serious disservice. Even sitting down, I could tell she was a tall woman with chin-length white-blond hair, a lithe, slim body, a long, elegant neck, and the erect bearing of a West Point graduate. Her hands were gracefully draped over the ends of the armrests. Her long, slender fingers-one studded with a very impressive diamond-curled slightly around the wood as if she were half asleep. Yet, the moment I pushed open the door, she was on her feet and wide awake, hand outstretched. A pair of startling ice-blue eyes sought mine.
'Are you Detective Beaumont?' she asked.
'Yes. What can I do for you?'
'I came to tell you that he didn't do it.'
Mrs. Reeder, my senior English teacher at Ballard High School thirty years ago, used to be a stickler for faulty pronoun reference. I remember the speech pretty much verbatim, even after all these years, because she delivered it often-on an average of once a week.
'You hounds,' Mrs. Reeder would shriek, striking terror in our hearts and rapping her knuckles on the
