“What time does your wife come home?” Mel asked.
Tom looked at his watch and then shrugged. “Late,” he said.
“But you don’t know what time?”
“It depends.” He was wavering now-covering. Given the state of her home and husband, it seemed likely Raelene Landreth didn’t come home anymore at all.
“We’d like to speak to her again,” Mel said kindly. “It would help to clear up a few things. If you think she’ll be here soon, we could just wait until she arrives.”
“No,” Tom said. “That’s not a good idea. Wait a minute. What day is it?”
“Day?” Mel asked.
“What day of the week?”
“Friday,” Mel replied. “Why?”
“Friday is when she has her hair and nails done,” Tom declared, as if proud to be able to dredge up this little item of domestic trivia. “Three o’clock,” he added.“Gene Juarez, downtown.” He squinted at his watch-a Rolex. “If you hurry,” he said, “you might be able to catch her there.”
I stood up. “We’ll be going then, Mr. Landreth.” He started to lurch to his feet. “Don’t bother,” I told him. “We can find our way out.”
As we walked back to the car, something nagged at me, something Raelene had said. Back in the Taurus, I opened my notebook and scanned through it. And there it was. Raelene had told me about going for her “regular mani-pedi” after work. I glanced over at Mel, noticing for the first time that her nails gleamed with scarlet polish.
“What?” she asked when she caught me staring at her.
“If someone had a manicure and pedicure on Wednesday, would they need another one on Friday?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t,” Mel responded.
“Raelene Landreth told me she left work on Wednesday, the day Elvira died, and went to have her regular mani-pedi, as she put it. So either poor old Tom is out of the loop when it comes to Raelene’s schedule or she was lying through her teeth about what she did that day.”
Raelene pulled out her phone. “I have an idea,” she said. “Why don’t I call down to Gene Juarez and ask them?”
“Good idea.”
Mel was smooth as glass. Claiming to be an old chum, Mel confirmed that Raelene was finished with her pedicure and was having her manicure. “No,” Mel said, “don’t bother giving her a message. I want this to be a surprise.” Turning off her phone, Mel looked at me. “So chances are she did lie about Wednesday. Are we going to go talk to her or not?”
“I thought I was taking you back to your car.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “We’re almost to the 520 Bridge. If we leave from here right now, maybe we can catch her.”
The Landreth house was just off Eighty-fourth and close to the bridge. From there I knew it couldn’t be more than fifteen miles to downtown Seattle, but it was a rainy Friday afternoon with a Sonics game scheduled at KeyArena. In other words, traffic was a mess. As we worked our way toward the freeway entrance, Mel was silent for some time.
“How come he could remember the phone call but didn’t know Elvira and Wink were dead?” Mel asked. “Or was he lying about that?”
“I don’t think he was lying,” I said. “I think what Elvira told him pushed the man so far over the edge that he drank himself into a stupor. I know from the Seattle PD reports that the officers who came to the Landreth house that evening stated that they spoke to both Raelene and Tom.”
“They remember, but he doesn’t?” Mel asked.
“Blackout, maybe?” I suggested.
“Oh,” Mel said, nodding. “Of course.”
That was all she said, but I read in her acknowledgment that she and I both knew what we were talking about.
“Will Tom Landreth remember our talking to him today?”
“Considering how much scotch he was stowing away, he may not.”
“So why would Raelene Landreth stay with such a loser?” Mel asked. “When you first told me about Raelene Landreth, it sounded like she had something on the ball. Now I’m not so sure.”
“Raelene told me Tom and Elvira were close,” I explained. “That Tom was like a son to her. It’s possible that if Raelene had booted Tom out of the house, Elvira might have sent her packing from her job at the foundation. That would have left Raelene with no husband-however lame-no job, and no status in the community.”
“Just like someone else I know,” Mel muttered. I wondered what she meant, but before I could ask she continued. “Were Tom and Elvira close enough that he might be a beneficiary under her will?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“If he is, and as long as they’re still married, then Raelene benefits as well. So we’ll need to check that.”
“We?” I asked.
“You did ask me along, didn’t you?” she demanded.
“Well, yes, but…”
“No buts,” she said. “You may be allergic to having a partner, but I’m here and I’m not a silent partner, so get used to it.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. And then we both laughed.
We were inching our way across the bridge when my phone rang. I tossed it to Mel so she could answer. “Hi, Barbara,” she said. “He’s driving. And since he’s a man, it’s probably just as well that he doesn’t try doing two things at once. What do you have for him?”
When Barbara Galvin finished speaking, Mel held the phone away from her ear. “The phone company info on Tom Landreth’s number just came in. She wants to know if you need it right now or if it can wait until Monday?”
“Have her look at Wednesday,” I told her. “We need a list of any numbers Tom Landreth may have called after three forty-five that afternoon.”
There was silence in the car for several minutes while I drove and Mel scribbled telephone numbers into the notebook I handed her.
“Now,” I said, “check those numbers against the ones listed on the page with Raelene Landreth’s number on it.”
“Bingo,” Mel said. “At four-ten there’s a call from the Landreth residence to the one you have down as Raelene’s cell phone.”
“There you go,” I said. “Lie number two. By four-ten Raelene knows Elvira is about to pull the plug on the foundation. She told me nothing out of the ordinary happened on Wednesday afternoon, but finding out your job is about to disappear can’t be counted as nothing.”
I had barely put the phone away when it rang again. Mel answered, spoke briefly, and then handed it over to me. “Wendy Dryer,” she said. “From the crime lab. Says she’ll speak only to you.”
Wendy Dryer wasn’t nearly as cordial as she had been earlier. “I don’t like it when people play games with me,” she snarled.
“Games,” I repeated innocently. “I’m not playing any games.”
“But I’ll bet you’ve seen Elvira Marchbank’s autopsy report.”
“No,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I haven’t. It wasn’t in yet when I went by Seattle PD to pick up my material last night. Why?”
“Because there was an unexplained bruise in the middle of her back, right between her shoulder blades,” Wendy said. “They thought maybe she had landed on the newel at the bottom of the banister, but you already knew better than that, didn’t you, Beau. You just had to be cute.”
“I’m anything but cute. What are you talking about?”
“So I checked the back of the dress Elvira was wearing when she died, and what did I find? Tennis-ball fibers.
