Beaumont. Of course, I had no relationship with that…' She paused, groping for a word. 'That…slimeball…is that the proper term, Suzanne?'
Chewing her salad greens, Suzanne Crenshaw simply nodded.
'Slimeball of a man,' Grace finished.
'How did you know him then?'
'I didn't know him,' Grace corrected firmly. 'I knew of him. I only saw him in person that one time down near Pier Seventy, and that was certainly enough.'
'What about his wife?' I asked.
'Once again,' Grace Highsmith replied. 'I know about Lizbeth Wolf, but of course, I've never met her in person.'
'Never?'
'Never.'
'Let's go back to what you said about seeing Don Wolf.'
Grace's unblinking gaze met and held mine. 'What about it?'
'When was that exactly?'
'Why, when I killed him, of course,' Grace Highsmith snapped. 'Don't be coy, Detective Beaumont. It doesn't become you.'
Convinced that every ear in the room had to be trained on the conversation at our table and wondering how all this would play in local newspapers, I backed off a little. 'Maybe you could tell me what brought Don Wolf to your attention.'
'Latty, of course. My niece.'
'What's Latty's full name?'
Grace glanced at Suzanne. 'Do I have to answer that?'
Suzanne Crenshaw grimaced and then nodded her head. 'Look,' she said. 'As you know, this entire meeting is in direct opposition to my best advice. But since you're obviously determined to go through with it, Grace, you'd better go ahead and answer.'
'Sibyl Latona,' Grace said. 'I think you'll agree that's a perfectly awful name! Her mother-my actual niece, and a disagreeable one at that-was a Greek and Roman mythology major at the University of Washington back in the late sixties before she dropped out of school. She's the one who stuck that poor little baby girl with such a ridiculous handle. Sibyl alone would have been bad enough. Latona has to do with a goddess who changed men into frogs or some such women's lib nonsense. Latty's grandmother-my sister-and I were the ones who shortened it to Latty. That's unusual, too, but at least it's something a person can live with. Life can be very tough on children with unusual names.'
Having grown up bearing the onus of an unusual name myself-Jonas Piedmont Beaumont-I felt more sympathy for somebody stuck with a name like Sybil Latona than Grace Highsmith could possibly have realized.
'What's Latty's last name?' I asked.
'Gibson,' Grace answered.
'And where does she live?'
'Over the shop,' Grace said. 'There's a little apartment up there. It's not very posh, but after all those years of living in a bus, Latty is very appreciative of even the most primitive accommodations. At least this has indoor plumbing, which is more than you can say about what she lived in before.'
'A bus?' I asked.
'Abigail Gibson, Latty's mother, is something of a free spirit,' Suzanne Crenshaw put in helpfully. 'Latty's younger years were spent as a vagabond. She grew up being shuttled all over North America in a converted school bus which Abby insisted on driving back and forth from Alaska to Mexico City.'
'Where did Latty go to school?' I asked.
'She didn't,' Grace answered shortly. 'Abby home-schooled the poor child. My niece was a very early advocate of that, although the term home schooling would seem to imply having a proper home in which to do it. For my money, a converted school bus doesn't qualify.'
'I see,' I said.
Grace eyed me speculatively. 'Do you, Detective Beaumont?' Then she shook her head. 'No, I don't believe you do. You can't possibly. Schooling requires a whole lot more than just learning vocabulary words and rules of punctuation. Real education is far more complicated than that. It's where children hone their communication skills. It's where they learn the rules of socialization. It introduces them to the real world. My niece, Abigail, tripped out early and hasn't touched down on the real world in years.'
'Drugs?'
'I'm sure there were drugs early on, of course. Now Abby's just evolved into one of those permanent kooks. She's totally irresponsible. She's never worked a day in her life. She lives off her trust fund, and still has friends with one-word names like Moonbeam or Rainbow.'
Suddenly, reflected in Grace Highsmith's straight-backed disapproval, I caught a glimpse of generations of Highsmith familial warfare in which rebellious daughters were evidently the rule rather than the exception. If Grace and her sister's generation had given rise to permanent hippies, Latty Gibson would turn against her own upbringing and evolve into an ultra-right-wing, conservative, card-carrying Republican.
'As I said,' Grace continued, 'Latty never attended a regular school. As a consequence, she's grown up lacking the most rudimentary skills for getting along with other people. Not surprisingly, she sees herself as the consummate outsider. Now that she's older, I've been trying, in some small way, to give her the opportunity to see and experience how normal people live. Have you ever met my niece, Detective Beaumont? Latty, I mean.'
I shook my head. Seeing Latty Gibson in Bill Whitten's surveillance video didn't count as an official introduction.
'She's a very beautiful young woman,' Grace said. 'And I'm not just saying that because she's my niece. She's lovely, but I don't think that fact has ever dawned on her. When Abby became pregnant with Latty, back in the early seventies, she absolutely refused to marry the young man who was the baby's father. Why she found him so repugnant, I'll never know. He's done all right for himself. He went on to become a very successful lawyer down in California. Now he's a judge on the California State Court of Appeals. And he paid child support the whole time, although Abby never told Latty any of that. She made him out to be a complete monster which, I suppose, is typical.
'Anyway, growing up in that kind of an atmosphere, with only sporadic influence from sensible people like her grandmother-Florence died several years ago-or me, you can imagine that Latty is quite confused when it comes to members of the opposite sex.'
'And that's where Don Wolf comes in?'
'It certainly is,' Grace said.
Raising a discreet finger, she signaled for yet another flute of champagne. In all my years of being a cop, I don't think I've ever conducted an interview in quite such elegant surroundings or with quite so much bubbly. Champagne and homicide interrogations don't generally go hand in hand.
'Latty met him at one of those dance clubs downtown someplace just a few weeks ago. Right before Thanksgiving. As soon as she told me about him-you have to understand that Latty tells me things that she'd never dream of telling her mother-as soon as she told me about him, I knew it was serious. There are telltale signs you see, if you just know what to look for. A funny little glow young women get about them when they're falling in love for the first or second time. I noticed it right away-the glow, I mean. The upturned corners of her mouth. And, of course, he was all she could talk about for days on end. She told me that he was as serious about her as she was about him, that he wanted a relationship.
'I understand that word-relationship-is very big now,' Grace added with a thoughtful frown. 'In my day, girls didn't want a relationship; they wanted a wedding band. The really sensible ones still do.'
'Let's go back to Don Wolf for a minute,' I interjected, but I could just as well have saved my breath. Once Grace Highsmith launched herself into her story, nothing anyone else said could sidetrack her.
'Years ago, I told Abby that I was leaving everything I own to charity-to Children's Hospital. That is no longer true, of course. Since Latty came back to Seattle late last summer, I've reconsidered that position. The poor girl wasn't born with a silver spoon in her mouth, although she certainly could have been. And due to the haphazard way she's been raised, she didn't have the advantage of a real education, either. I've been encouraging her to take
