I glanced up at the sky. It was almost afternoon. Over the past few months, I had made a habit of spending Sunday afternoons with Peters' two daughters, taking them to visit their father at the hospital and then messing around with them for the rest of the day. Our Sunday outings gave their baby-sitter, Maxine Edwards, a much- needed break. It was good for her, good for the girls, and good for me too.
I wondered briefly if I should go back to Lake Union Drydock and see how things were going, but even thinking about Cassie Young and her moviemaking cohorts filled me with a flood of resentment. It only took a moment to make up my mind. The day was an unauthorized day off, but it was still a day off, a jewel to be treasured. I hadn't had a break in over two weeks, and neither had Mrs. Edwards.
Maxine wasn't just relieved when I offered to take the girls off her hands. She was downright overjoyed. Less than forty minutes from the time I called downstairs to extend the invitation, the girls were at my door ringing the bell-freshly showered, shampooed, and dressed to go visit their father.
I looked them up and down and gave a low whistle. 'Why so dressed up?' I asked.
Tracie's answer was serious. 'Amy said she has our dresses ready to try on, so if we came over today we should wear our good shoes and stuff.'
Amy Fitzgerald, Peters' fiancee, had been busy sewing wedding clothes for herself and for both of the girls as well. With the wedding less than a month away, activity was definitely switching into high gear. Women are like that. If men know what's good for them, they keep their heads low and go along with the program.
'So that's how it is. If Amy wants you dressed up, dressed up you'll be,' I told them.
I traded my two-seat Porsche for Peters' rusty blue Toyota sedan. It was a considerable sacrifice on my part, but I believed in kids using seat belts long before the State of Washington made it a law. Once the girls were securely belted in, we headed for Harborview Hospital on First Hill-Pill Hill according to long-term Seattlites.
Peters' room was on the fourth floor, the rehabilitation wing. Over the months the hospital had become far less strange and forbidding for all of us. In the beginning, Peters had been totally immobilized, his back and neck held in rigid traction, but now he had finally worked his way into a wheelchair. Part of every visit included the girls wheeling him around the floor to call on some of the other patients. When they took off on their little jaunt, Amy Fitzgerald and I were left to chew the fat.
'You sure lit a fire under Ron this morning,' Amy said with a fond laugh.
'What do you mean?'
'When I got here, all he could talk about was some boat that burned up out on Lake Union last week. I'm glad you let him help with your cases, Beau. It's good for him. It makes me feel like he's still making a contribution.'
Of course, Logan Tyree and his burning boat weren't my cases at all, but I didn't tell Amy that. After all, why muddy the water with departmental nitpicking?
'He is making a contribution,' I said. 'Just because his legs don't work doesn't mean there's anything the matter with his brain.'
Amy Fitzgerald laughed again, the sound of it bubbling to the surface like an irrepressible spring.
Peters and the girls came back from their trek around the floor with Tracie pushing the chair and Heather walking dejectedly alongside, her hand resting on her father's knee. She was weeping silently. Peters was doing his best to console her.
'Don't worry about it, Heather,' he was saying. 'It wasn't that big a deal.'
'What's the matter?' I asked.
Heather looked up at me with two huge tears still glistening on her cheeks. 'I didn't do it on purpose, Unca Beau,' she lisped.
She was totally crushed, and my heart went out to her. 'What happened?' I asked.
Peters chuckled in spite of himself as he answered. 'Heather couldn't see where we were going. She ran my chair into a garbage can. It wasn't that serious, but one of the nurses climbed all over us.'
Amy stood up quickly. 'I'll bet I know which one, too,' she said. Then she knelt down in front of Heather and wiped the tears from her face. 'It's all right, hon,' she said. 'Let's go down to the car and get the dresses. Would you like that?'
Heather's broken heart was mended almost instantly. She nodded quickly and went racing off to call the elevator. Tracie, always the more reserved of the two, walked sedately down the hallway with her hand in Amy's.
Peters watched the three of them step into the elevator with a happy grin on his face. 'They really like her,' he said wonderingly.
That was obvious to even the most casual observer. 'You lucked out, Peters,' I said. 'That's some girls' trio you have there.'
I had watched from the sidelines as Peters' and Amy's romance blossomed. Amy Fitzgerald had never been married before, and she didn't have any children of her own. At first I had some serious misgivings about whether or not it would all work, but now, as the elevator door closed on a sudden gale of laughter, I could see it was going to be fine. Amy Fitzgerald was a born mother, and both girls seemed to accept her without question or reservation.
'They're okay,' Peters agreed quietly. He turned back to me. 'So did you finish the movie then? From what you said this morning, I thought you'd be busy all day.'
'The movie's not finished, but I am,' I said.
'So that's the way it is.' Of all the people around me, Peters was the only one who really understood my frustration and boredom with the moviemaking assignment. Neither one of us was any good at enforced idleness although Peters was learning to deal with it better than I was.
I nodded. 'For today anyway.' I changed the subject. 'Amy tells me you've been tracking after the boat fire.'
'The explosion happened last Tuesday, just before midnight. A forty-two-foot fiberglass cruiser named Boomer. The missing man's name is Logan Tyree.'
'I know.'
'How do you know that?' Peters demanded.
'I stopped by Harbor Station before I came over here.'
'Has anybody besides us made the connection yet?'
'Jim Harrison said Kramer and Davis are tracking after it. They had already been to the marina by the time I stopped there this morning.'
'Oh,' Peters said. He sounded disappointed. 'I thought maybe we'd beat them on this one.'
'We may have,' I said. 'I talked to Tyree's neighbor, an old codger named Red Corbett. He says Davis and Kramer are calling it an accident-faulty equipment. Corbett says that doesn't jibe with the Logan Tyree he knew.'
'How's that?' Peters' curiosity was aroused the same as mine had been. I told him briefly everything Red Corbett had told me. He listened in silence. When I finished, he nodded slowly.
'It sounds like Kramer's up to his old tricks again.'
'What do you mean?'
'Doesn't it seem a little odd to you that they've already decided it was an accident?'
'Corbett didn't tell them everything he told me.'
'Because they didn't ask. Kramer's in the market for quick fixes, Beau. That's how he made such a name for himself in robbery, how he got on a fast track for promotion. He's left behind a trail of cases that got closed on paper, whether the close was for real or not.'
'I thought maybe this was just a mistake.'
'Mistake my ass!' Peters flared. 'There's no mistake. Believe me, I've seen it before. You could wallpaper your house with his paper clears. They don't mean a goddamned thing but they look real good in the record books.'
'But what about Manny?'
'You know Manny. He's easygoing. He'll take the line of least resistance, and that doesn't include standing up to Kramer's constant pushing.'
'So what do you suggest we do?' I asked.
There was a long silence. Finally Peters looked over at me. 'Would you consider checking this out on your own without anyone being the wiser?' he asked.
