That’s something Harry Ignatius Ball counts on. He likes dealing with people who make the mistake of thinking he’s some kind of joke. He sucks them in by playing dumb when he first meets them. Later on, when the opportunity presents itself, he revels in chewing those same people to pieces. From my point of view, it’s one of Harry’s most endearing qualities.
I could have warned Max to tread warily when it came to dealing with Harry, but I didn’t. Max didn’t deserve to be warned.
“It’s no joke,” I said. “Call him up and talk to him. It should be a laugh a minute.”
“I’ll just bet,” Max returned.
Max’s check was still there on the counter, halfway between my water glass and his empty coffee cup. He may have expected me to pick it up and pay for his breakfast, but I didn’t.
Tiring of my company at last, Max sighed and slapped a meaty paw over the bill, then he got up and waddled over to the cash register. I didn’t say good riddance, not even under my breath, but that’s what I was thinking.
CHAPTER 6
I hadn’t bothered mentioning to Maxwell Cole that I was on my way to visit his digs at the
In a post-9/11 world, my SHIT squad ID was enough to get me past the guard at the front door. It took my ID, ten minutes of wheedling, and a call from someone in the attorney general’s office down in Olympia for me to gain access to the newspaper’s holy of holies, the morgue.
Over the years I’ve done my share of griping about newfangled technology. I’ve fought integrated-circuit advances all the way down the line-from cell phones to computers-until I finally admitted defeat or came to my senses, depending on your point of view. If I hadn’t already succumbed to the lure of computers, a day spent dealing with microfiche would have sent me plunging over the edge. Computers may be annoying, but microfiche is hell.
Because of Sister Mary Katherine’s age relative to mine, I knew we were dealing with a time frame that was in or near the early 1950s. Although she wasn’t sure, Mary Katherine seemed to be under the impression that her family had been living somewhere in the Seattle area.
Summer comes late in the Pacific Northwest. The rains last from late September until early July, so if Mary Katherine’s recollection of the blue dress with the yellow flowers was accurate, we were dealing with summer or possibly very late spring.
People act as though the decade of the fifties was a halcyon June-and-Ward-Cleaver age when everyone knew everyone else and no one bothered locking their doors. Maybe that was true in some places. I’m certain that there weren’t nearly the number of homicides back then as there are now. Bearing that in mind, I figured a stabbing death that had occurred in someone’s front yard would be page-one news. Even if the murder occurred outside Seattle proper, it would have made headlines in what was then and still is considered to be a statewide newspaper.
A surprisingly helpful clerk who, it turned out, was actually a student intern aided me in locating what I wanted-microfiche copies of newspapers that had been published between April and October, starting in 1949. I wasn’t actually allowed to touch the microfiche-the clerk had to load it into the machine prior to my scanning through it.
Lots of people would be amazed at how blindingly boring detective work can be-especially when you’re scrolling through page after page after page of blue-and-white microfiche print. My hunch had been right. Back then, homicide cases from all over the state had indeed been front-page fodder. One or two of them seemed promising, but once I read through the articles, the facts didn’t seem to coincide with anything Sister Mary Katherine had told us.
By two o’clock, I had finished 1949. I also had a splitting headache, but something good had happened. Headache or no, while I was concentrating on scrolling through those old stories, I most certainly hadn’t been thinking about Ron Peters and his problems. Rather than calling it a day, I asked the clerk for the next set and started in on 1950.
Halfway through May, in a newspaper dated Tuesday, May 16, 1950, I found what I was looking for: a headline that read “Seattle Woman Murdered in Her Bed.” Bed wasn’t quite right, but I continued reading anyway.
Seattle police detectives today released the name of a woman who was stabbed to death in her bed over the weekend while her bedridden mother lay helpless in a nearby room. When Ravenna area resident Madeline Marchbank was murdered, her mother, Abigail Marchbank, was left without food or water for several days. Mrs. Marchbank is hospitalized in fair condition at Columbus Hospital, where she is being treated for severe dehydration.
Madeline wasn’t quite the right name, but wasn’t Mimi a nickname for Madeline? And having the victim stabbed to death in her bed didn’t square with what Mary Katherine had reported either, but I remembered that by the time Bonnie Jeanne had ventured out of her hiding place that day, the body had disappeared. I had assumed it had been loaded into a waiting vehicle and carted off for dumping elsewhere. Was it possible that the killers had simply moved the body into the house and then arranged the room to make it look as if the crime had been committed there?
Seattle coroner Randall Mathers estimated that the crime most likely happened sometime between Friday evening and Sunday morning, although it wasn’t discovered until Miss Marchbank failed to report to work on Monday morning and arrangements were made for someone to go by the house to check on her.
So the time frame fit. Saturday afternoon was what Bonnie Jean had said-Saturday afternoon while she waited for her parents.
Seattle homicide detective Lieutenant William Winkler, lead investigator on the case, said that when Miss Marchbank’s employer was unable to raise anyone at the family home by telephone, they contacted her brother, Seattle attorney Albert P. Marchbank, at his Smith Tower office. Mr. Marchbank immediately drove to his mother’s home, where he discovered the body.
I was startled when two familiar names tumbled out at me in the same paragraph. William “Wink” Winkler had been a rough-and-tumble cop whose case-closure rates had helped him rise like a rocket through the ranks of Seattle PD. By the midfifties he had reached the exalted position of assistant chief of police. In 1950 he had been riding high and was on his way up. Five short years later he had been caught up in the web of graft and corruption that had been widespread inside the force at that time. As the pattern of payoffs and double-dealings became public, Wink Winkler had been one of the first officers forced to resign. As I remembered the story, something like twenty officers had been tried and convicted of various charges. Many of those had gone to jail. I had no idea whether or not Wink Winkler was one of them.
In a different way, Al Marchbank was also a Seattle-area legend. He was a local boy who had made good. He had been sent off to some East Coast boarding school at an early age and had just graduated from an Ivy League law school when World War II broke out. In 1943, he joined the army and spent most of the war working in Washington, D.C.
He returned to Seattle after the war. Using his well-heeled parents’ contacts, he established a successful law practice. By the midfifties he and a partner, Phil Landreth, were beginning to put together a collection of small-town radio stations that would soon become Marchbank Broadcasting, a medium-size media fish that would eventually be swallowed whole by a much larger media entity. Unlike that of Wink Winkler, who seemed to have disappeared into utter obscurity, the Marchbank name still held sway in Seattle more than half a century later in the form of the Albert P. and Elvira S. Marchbank Foundation. Likewise, Phil Landreth had gone on to make a name for himself in local and statewide politics. I couldn’t help thinking that as a child Bonnie Jean Dunleavy had encountered a collection of pretty heavy hitters.
The article continued:
Mr. Marchbank told reporters that he last saw his sister and mother on Friday afternoon, shortly before he
