more ready than I am.”
My cell phone rang. “Beau?” Mel Soames asked. “I thought you said you’d be home all evening. I’m at your place, but the doorman said you took off.”
“Sorry. Something came up, but I’m only a few minutes away. I’ll be there shortly.”
I ended the call and turned back to Sister Mary Katherine. “I have to get back home. Give me until midmorning to gather information, then I’ll call you and we can figure out what to do next.” As I stood up, so did Fred. “You don’t have to leave,” I told him. “I’m sure I can catch a cab.”
“No, I said I’d take you home,” he insisted, “and I will.”
“I didn’t expect her to be so hard on herself for not telling someone what she had seen,” I said to Fred as we waited for the valet to return Fred’s Lexus. “She couldn’t have been more than four years old when the murder happened.”
“She’s spent forty years as a Catholic nun,” Fred said. “I suspect you don’t do that without having a well- developed sense of responsibility for the state of humanity.”
“I suppose you’re right,” I told him.
With the lift from Fred, I was back at Belltown Terrace within ten minutes of Mel Soames’s phone call and found her waiting in the lobby. She was bundled in a long black leather coat complete with scarf, gloves, and boots. She surveyed my sweater and loafers with visible disdain. “You did take off in a hurry.”
“As I said on the phone, something unexpected came up.”
“How unexpected?” she asked. Her tone of voice was sharper than it should have been, and it put me on edge. So did the icy look on her face. I’ve finally learned that seeing an expression like that on a woman’s face usually means bad news for any man dumb enough to remain in close proximity.
The front door opened and a group of people, sharing a laugh, tumbled into the lobby. They were all drenched in snow, having just been through some kind of killer snowball fight. All of them seemed to be having a very good time. Their high spirts and easygoing banter stood in stark contrast to Melissa Soames’s dour expression.
“Maybe we should talk about this upstairs,” I suggested. “In private.”
She nodded. “You’re right,” she agreed stiffly. “Privacy is probably a very good idea.”
CHAPTER 8
Most of the time when people walk into my twenty-fifth-floor penthouse apartment, they are so agog at the wall-to-wall windows and amazing views that they’re momentarily struck dumb. I doubt Mel Soames even noticed the view. Blue eyes blazing, she rounded on me the moment I shut the door.
“What the hell were you thinking?” she demanded.
Seeing Melissa Soames that angry was a daunting sight. I was pretty sure I knew what she meant, but I decided to play dumb anyway. “What are you talking about?”
“About your going to Ron Peters’s place this afternoon, as if you didn’t know!” she exclaimed. “Didn’t Harry give you strict orders to keep your nose out of it?”
“Tracy called me,” I said in my defense. “She’s seventeen. Her dad had just been hauled off for questioning in handcuffs, her mother had gone to meet with a lawyer. She called me asking for help. Do you have any idea what it feels like to be a teenager in circumstances like that?”
“You’d be surprised,” Mel returned.
“Well, what was I supposed to do?”
“Obey orders, for starters,” Mel shot back.
“Who told you I had been there?” I asked the question more to get her off track than because I wanted an answer.
“Does it matter?”
My first guess was easy. Based on my latest meeting with Amy’s sharp-tongued sister and her obvious low opinion of me, I assumed Molly Wright to be the probable squealer. “It doesn’t matter at all,” I said. “Now, are you going to stay awhile? Would you like me to take your coat?”
Mel seemed to consider. With a resigned shrug, she removed her gloves, stuffed them into a pocket, and then slipped out of the coat, folded it and laid it down beside her.
“Something to drink?”
This was a bluff, of course. I don’t keep booze in the house and only a limited supply of sodas.
“Coffee,” she said. “I’m working.”
Fortunately, I do keep a supply of Seattle’s Best Saturday Blend beans in my freezer. “I’ll be right back,” I said. “Make yourself comfortable.”
Once the coffee was started, I came back into the living room. By then some of Mel’s temper had worn off. Like everyone else, she had gravitated toward the expanse of western-exposure windows and had settled on the window seat.
“If you’re working, where’s Brad?” I asked.
“His wife called. Their pipes are frozen. She needed him to come home.”
“One of the joys of home ownership,” I said.
“You know how it’s going to look, don’t you?” she asked.
“Your being out working on your own?”
“No, your going by Ron Peters’s place. It’s going to look like you went there to give Ron inside information on what’s going on in our investigation-information that you can then hand over to that slick attorney of his who, as I understand it, also happens to be your attorney of record.”
“Look, Mel,” I said patiently. “I tried to explain this to Harry this morning. Ron and I have been friends for years. Ditto Ralph Ames. The three of us have shared a lot of ups and downs over that time. It’s only natural that Ron would turn to Ralph when he was in need of legal representation. Besides, how could I give Ron information I don’t have? I know Rosemary Peters died over the weekend, but Ron himself told me that. I know blood was found in Ron’s car. Amy told me that. And I heard there had been some kind of family altercation that caused suspicion to point at Ron.”
“Where did that come from?”
Maxwell Cole was the one who had provided that last little tidbit, but I knew if I told Melissa Soames that, she’d go ballistic on me again-something I wanted to avoid if at all possible.
“Ron told me that, too,” I hedged. “And so did Tracy. Ron and Rosemary were in a legal wrangle over custody of his younger daughter, Heather.”
From the kitchen, I heard the last of the water burble into the pot. “I hope you don’t take cream,” I said. “I’m out of cream.”
“No. Black is fine.”
Minutes later, I returned to the living room with two mugs of coffee. I knew that meant I probably wouldn’t sleep very well for the second night in a row, but I wanted to appear hospitable enough to keep Mel from lighting into me again.
“You’re sure you don’t know anything more than that?” she asked as I handed over her cup.
“I understand that you and Brad took Ron someplace for questioning-to the office, presumably.”
Mel pursed her lips as if considering what, if anything, she should say. After a pause she said, “Rosemary Peters was the on-prem manager of a soup kitchen run by an organization called Bread of Life Mission at Fifth and Puyallup in downtown Tacoma, not far from the Tacoma Dome. The place is closed over the weekend. On Monday morning, when her two cooks came in to start breakfast, the back door was unlocked, with no sign of forced entry, but Rosemary was nowhere to be found. Tacoma PD was summoned to the scene. They found a few blood spatters in the parking lot, along with a single shoe. Nothing else. No brass. No usable footprints. And, since the area is paved, no tire tracks, either.
“Michael Lujan is on the Bread of Life board of directors. He’s also an attorney. He was doing pro bono work for Rosemary Peters in regard to the custody matter. She called him late Friday evening and said that after Ron Peters was served with the papers, he came roaring down to Tacoma and bitched her out. Said he’d-”
“See her in hell before he’d hand Heather over,” I supplied.
