eventually,” he said. “I did it before. I came here to school today because I didn’t know what else to do. I’ve sat here the whole day, and I haven’t done a thing. It’s like my mind’s paralyzed or something.”
“I know this is tough,” I told him. “But we need to ask you some questions about Saturday.”
“You still think I did it?” Tom asked.
“Just answer the question,” Big Al put in. “Unless you’d rather have an attorney present when you do.”
“I was here,” Rush answered quickly.
“Where, in one of the labs?”
“Yes. The same one where they paged me just now.”
“Did anyone else see you?”
“Sure. There must have been five or six of us who were here all day.”
“Are any of the others up there now? Could we talk to them?”
“Do you have to?” Tom Rush’s pride was showing, but he didn’t have any choice.
“With them you have an alibi,” I said.
“Without them you’re up shit creek.”
Without another word, Tom Rush led us up to a small dental lab on the fourth floor of the building. There were probably ten people in the room altogether. We talked to all of them, one at a time. Six of them said they had been in the lab on Saturday, and all six confirmed that Tom Rush had been there with them. He had arrived before nine-thirty and hadn’t left until after four. Three of them, including the instructor, had eaten lunch with him in the cafeteria.
When we finished talking to them, it was about three o’clock. We walked back out and got in the car. It was an oven. The steering wheel was too hot to touch.
“What do you think?” I asked, as we rolled down the windows and tried to breathe.
“Sounded like gospel to me,” Al said. “Tom Rush isn’t our man, period. You don’t get that many people to lie off the tops of their heads and do that good a job of it.”
“That’s the way it sounded to me, too,” I said.
“So where the hell does that leave us?”
“In this particular game,” I told him, “I believe we’re back to square one.”
CHAPTER 18
That night after work I finally got myself up to Bailey’s Foods on Queen Anne Hill to buy some groceries. I also made a foray across the street to the state liquor store to restock my depleted supply of MacNaughton’s. Bailey’s has installed one of those yuppie salad bars, so I treated myself to a huge taco salad-the kind my mother never used to make.
I went straight home and ate a medium-elegant dinner, served at my new glass-and-brass dining room table. I ate the salad from the chinette deli plate and drank my glass of chilled Vouvray from crystal stemware. It’s no surprise that after dinner I ended up falling asleep in my recliner. I spend more time there than I do in my bed.
I have no idea what time I fell asleep, but I know when I woke up-eleven. The phone on the table beside me was ringing its head off. I caught it just before the answering machine did.
“Hello,” I mumbled.
“So it is you,” a woman’s voice announced. I’m not sure how she recognized my voice from that one-word grunted greeting. I sure as hell didn’t know who she was, but I could hear the tiny telltale beeps that said she was calling from the security phone downstairs in the lobby.
“Who is this?” I asked.
“Darlene,” she answered.
“Darlene who?” I couldn’t recall anyone by that name. “I think maybe you’ve got the wrong apartment,” I said.
“Darlene from across the street, remember?” she asked, sounding offended. “The one who brought you your pork chop sandwich the other night. Are you going to let me in or not?”
Darlene from across the street. It finally made sense-the bartender from Girvan’s.
“I’ll buzz you in,” I said. I pressed the entry code on my phone, realizing as soon as I did so that I had failed to tell her what floor. As a security measure, Belltown Terrace has no listing of the tenants’ names and apartment numbers either on the reader-board or in the lobby.
I was sure the phone would ring again, and I wasn’t disappointed.
“Where the hell are you?” she demanded before I even had a chance to say hello.
“Twenty-fifth floor,” I replied. “Turn left as you get off the elevator.”
I pulled my jacket back on, straightened my collar, slipped shoes back on my feet, and went out to the hallway to meet her.
The twenty-fifth floor happens to be the penthouse floor. The interior design is slightly more upscale than the elevator lobbies on the other residential floors. It’s supposed to make a statement. It evidently worked. Darlene Girvan popped her head out into the elevator lobby, looked around, and whistled.
“I’ll be go-to-hell,” she said.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“You really do own a piece of this place, don’t you! I thought the other night you were just bullshitting that creep from Texas.“ Unceremoniously, she shoved a brown paper bag in my direction.
“I brought dinner,“ she said.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her I’d already eaten. Besides, it seemed like a long time ago, hours I think.
“Thank you,” I said. “How about a drink?”
“Thought you’d never ask,” she replied.
“What do you like?”
“What have you got?”
“MacNaughton’s,” I answered.
“That’ll do.” With that she marched into my apartment and took over. She went straight to the kitchen, found two plates, and laid out two gigantic, pork chop sandwiches with their fat sesame-seed-dotted buns, one for her and one for me.
“Quite a place you have here,” she commented over her shoulder as she prowled through my cupboards searching for glasses. I brought the MacNaughton’s into the kitchen from the bar and set it on the counter.
“It’ll do,” I said.
She grinned at that. “You think you’re cute, don’t you.”
“Hardly,” I told her. “It’s tough for cops to be cute. It goes against the image.”
Darlene laughed aloud and handed me my drink. As she did so, her fingers brushed against mine in a way that couldn’t have been accidental. I took a trial sip. MacNaughton’s and water, just the way I like it-heavy on the booze, light on the water.
“Actually,” she said, “that’s really why I came here to talk to you.”
I was still thinking about her fingers. My face must have been totally blank as I tried to sort out what she was really saying.
“Your job,” she said, looking at me over the rim of the glass as she sipped her own drink.
“You are that
Detective Beaumont, aren’t you? The one who works for homicide? How can a cop afford to live in a place like this?“
Before I could answer she did an abrupt change of subject that left me standing with one foot in the air. “Can these plates go in the microwave? The sandwiches should probably be zapped for thirty seconds or so.”
“Sure,” I said.
I stood there stupidly, holding my drink, while she keyed in the microwave instructions. “Nice layout,” she said.
“A real slick layout.“
