“Gizzy told Zoe and Zoe told me.”
“Well, you’re right,” I said. “It’s sounding more and more like a pass all the time. I think Mel and I should have a chat with the charming young couple. Do you happen to know where they are right now?”
“At the governor’s mansion,” Monica answered. “They left the scene of the fire in Ron’s Camaro. Gizzy’s Acura was parked a few blocks away. That’s where they said they were going once they picked up her car. They’re there right now, probably having their asses chewed. Gerry was fit to be tied about the situation.”
“We’re only a mile or so away,” I said. “We’ll drop by and do a little piling on.”
“I’ll head home then,” Monica said, “but please don’t mention that I’m the one who raised this issue. If they find out I’ve been talking out of school, all hell is going to break loose. Gizzy will be furious, Sid will be furious, and so will the governor. Not Gerry, though. When it comes to Ron Miller, Gerry and I are pretty much on the same page, but we’re the stepparents. You know how that goes. I have to live with these people.”
Suspicions were all Gerry Willis had offered us about Sam Dysart, but those were looking a whole lot more viable now. In this case, Monica’s suspicions about Ron Miller coincided with my own.
“Don’t worry,” I assured her. “You go on home. We won’t give you away.”
While I had been on the phone with Monica, Mel had been in touch with Ross’s office. She had brought him up-to-date on the situation with Sam Dysart. We had been walking as we talked. By the time I got off the phone with Monica, Mel and I were buckled into the front seat of the S-550.
“Is Ross going to request search warrants?”
“Yes,” Mel said. “And what about us? I take it we’re headed for the governor’s mansion?”
“That’s the idea,” I said. “It turns out Ron Miller may have had a previous firebug involvement that wasn’t prosecuted. Try Googling Ronald Darrington Miller or a boathouse fire on Budd Inlet. The fire in question was declared accidental, but the bad boy’s parents, who also happen to be among Governor Longmire’s big-time contributors, paid for the damages.”
“And thus kept it off his record,” Mel said, working her iPhone as I drove. “Tell me it doesn’t pay to have friends in high places.”
We both knew that wasn’t true, because connections work to smooth out all kinds of little rough spots. Mel had just found an article about the fire when we pulled up at the end of the mansion’s brick-paved driveway. The last two cars parked there were a silver Acura and a shiny new blue Camaro with a temporary paper plate affixed to the back window.
“Okay,” she said. “The boathouse fire happened three years ago in July, allegedly from fireworks being shot off by an unnamed juvenile. Damage to the structure and contents was estimated to be in excess of seventy-five thousand dollars.”
“Ron would have been fourteen back then,” I said.
“He isn’t a juvenile now,” Mel said. “So what’s the plan? Are we just going to blurt out something like, ‘Hey, did you two have anything to do with the fire at Janie’s House?’ ”
“No,” I said. “We’re going to tell them that we’re interviewing everybody connected to Janie’s House. Then we’re going to divide and conquer. Most likely Ron and Gizzy cooked up some kind of story to tell their parents about where they were last night and what they did. I’ll tackle Ron; you talk to Gizzy.”
“If her mother lets me get anywhere near her,” Mel said.
“Then we compare notes. If the stories don’t stack up-and I’m willing to bet they won’t-then we come back at them with lying to a police officer.”
I parked directly behind the Camaro, close enough that I figured it wouldn’t be easy for Ron to pull out without my moving first.
The same WSP guard nodded us through. We walked up to the front door and rang the bell. A woman in her forties, one I’d never seen before, opened the door. We didn’t recognize her and she didn’t recognize us.
“May I help you?” she asked.
“We’re here to see Giselle Longmire and Ron Miller,” Mel said. “I understand they’re both here at the moment.”
“You’d need to speak to the governor first, but she’s completely occupied with a personal matter at the moment. I’m Liz Carnahan, her chief of staff. Can I help you?”
Over Liz’s shoulder I could hear the sound of raised voices coming from somewhere nearby-probably the small study just off the front entryway. Marsha seemed to be doing most of the talking.
“Staying out all night is not okay! I expect both of you to show better sense than that. And how about a little respect for what’s going on with Gerry? With all the people in town for the funeral tomorrow, the last thing we need is to have you behaving like this.”
There were some mumbled replies-a male voice and a female one-but nothing that we could understand.
“I’m sorry,” Liz Carnahan said. “This is a personal matter.”
“If the governor is busy, perhaps we could have a word with Mr. Willis,” I said, handing over a business card. “This concerns his grandson.”
The chief of staff gave me the stink eye, but she took the card with her as she turned and disappeared into the house, leaving the door ajar behind her. A moment later, the door to the study slammed open. Ron Miller strode out into the foyer. Then he pushed his way past Mel and me without even acknowledging our presence while Giselle darted upstairs.
“I’ll take him,” I said, nodding after Ron. “You go tell Gerry Willis about Sam Dysart.”
I left Mel standing on the front porch and hurried back to the driveway. Ron was in the Camaro, doing his best to get out of my deliberate automotive squeeze play. I walked up to the car and tapped on the driver’s window, held up my badge, and waited until he rolled the window down.
“Got a minute?”
He looked at me and shook his head. I was a cop. He naturally assumed that made me dumb as a stump. I didn’t want to do anything to disabuse him of that notion.
“I don’t have to talk to you without one of my parents and/or my attorney in on the discussion,” he said.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Are you invoking your Miranda rights when I haven’t even said anything to you? I just wanted to talk to you about the Janie’s House situation, but if you want to be Mirandized, then you must have reason to believe you’re under suspicion in that incident.”
“Aren’t I?” He was an arrogant piece of work. He backed up again. This time his bumper dinged the one on the Mercedes.
“Hey,” I said. “That’s my car. You bump it again, there’ll be trouble.”
“Then move it out of the way so I can go.”
He said it like he was accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed. Mel, having made short work of talking to Gerry Willis, appeared at my side and took up a position just to the left of the Camaro’s front bumper, holding up her iPhone. She didn’t have to tell me that the video app was running. I already knew.
Ron wrenched on the steering wheel, slammed the Camaro into reverse, and stepped on the gas. This time he bumped the Mercedes hard enough to set off the alarm. Then he went forward enough to ram Gizzy’s Acura too, setting off that alarm as well. In another time or two, he might have gotten loose, but by then Mel had joined me.
“If you do that again,” I warned him, “I’m placing you under arrest for assault with a deadly weapon.”
“You and who else, old man?” he demanded. Then he rammed the Mercedes one more time, just for good measure.
I reached in through the open window and tried to grab him. But the car sped back fast enough that all I got was a handful of tracksuit. He slipped out of the shirt like a snake shedding its skin. Then, leaving the Camaro still running, he slid across the seat and charged out through the door on the passenger side of the car.
As he took off, I saw him reach back to pick up something from the passenger seat. For a sick moment, I thought it might be a weapon. He paused, as if considering his options, then ran off down the driveway, loping along at a speed that would have left me in the dust twenty years ago. But not Mel Soames. She runs every day-every single day-and she can run my socks off. I’m sure Ron Miller was counting on being able to outrun me, but he never anticipated that the suit-clad, high-heeled woman standing next to the front bumper of his car would kick off her pumps and take after him like a shot in her stocking feet.
Knowing my gimpy knees would make it impossible to keep pace, I switched off the ignition in the Camaro,
