'You know, Watkins, your sergeant up there in Seattle. I talked to him just a little while ago while we were still trying to check you out.'
If Harding had talked to Sergeant Watkins, then my tail was already in a gate but good.
'Wonderful,' I said. Watty would be ripped, ready to chew me to pieces. So would Detective Paul Kramer.
I changed the subject. 'Is that when she called you for help, then, after they told her I wasn't assigned to the case?'
'She never called.'
'She didn't? But what about the deputy who showed up at the house? How'd he get there?'
'We sent him out to notify her about what had happened to her mother and her brother. Someone from the brother's job had called us and asked us to let her know. As soon as she found out, she told the deputy about you. He radioed here for help while she loaded up her kids and headed for Seattle.'
'To the hospital?' I asked.
Harding nodded. 'Harborview. The burn unit.' He cocked his head to one side and studied me. 'I wonder what she would have done to you if my deputy hadn't turned up right then.'
It was a sobering thought. 'I don't want to think about it,' I said. There was a pause. 'Did she mention any tapes to you?'
Harding sat up straight, alert, interested. 'Tapes? What kind of tapes?'
I shrugged. 'Beats me. Videotapes. Cassettes maybe. She let something slip about tapes, something about them being hidden in a safe place where no one would be able to find them.'
'So she thought you were after her or the tapes.'
'Or maybe both. Somebody must want those tapes real bad.'
Harding pulled a small notebook from his pocket and jotted something into it. 'I'll call Watkins and have him put a guard on her.'
'Good idea. On her brother, too,' I added.
'Tell me more about the tapes.'
I shrugged. 'I don't know anything else, except if they were in her mother's house, they're gone now.'
'Burned up?'
'That's right. I understand it's a total loss. Not so much as a toothpick left standing.'
I didn't want to think about the house or Leona and Jimmy Rising, especially not Jimmy, but Harding had given me an opening.
'How'd the fire start?'
'Gas hot-water heater exploded. I guess initially the fire investigators thought it was an accident, but it didn't take long for them to figure out otherwise. Not Linda, though. She knew right off.'
'Knew what?'
'That it wasn't an accident. As soon as the deputy told her, she said ‘They did it again.' And she was right. By then the arson guys in Bellevue had discovered that someone had messed around with the water-heater controls.'
'And since I had been seen in the neighborhood the day before…'
Harding nodded. 'You got it. Everybody jumped to the wrong conclusion, including Linda Decker who figured you were after her even before she heard about the fire.'
'If I'd been in her shoes, I probably would have thought the same thing,' I said.
We were quiet for several moments and then Harding stood up. Slowly. Leaning against the desk for support like a man whose back hurts if he straightens up too fast.
'Come on,' he said. 'We'll go back over to my office and get your stuff. I had your car towed into a garage here in town. No charge, of course, but we'll have to bail it out of there before you'll be able to head home.'
By eleven o'clock, I was back on I-5 heading north. It had taken time to get my car out of the impound lot and then hours more at the St. Helen's Hospital emergency room. They said my nose was broken but my shoulder wasn't. I could have told them that myself, but Harding insisted on doing it right.
As I drove, there was a dull ache in my shoulder where I'd fallen on the floor thanks to my friend Jamie. If it hurt this much already, by the next day it would be giving me fits. I was almost sorry I hadn't accepted the doc's offer of a painkiller, but I figured that and driving home to Seattle were contraindicated.
It was less than twelve hours from the time I had turned off the freeway onto Highway 6 going to Pe Ell. Twelve hours and a lifetime ago.
Those are the kind of hours that make a man old before his time. Driving home that night I was feeling downright ancient.
When the elevator door slipped open on the twenty-fifth floor of Belltown Terrace, an ocean of garlic washed over me. The garlic was thick enough that I could smell it despite my broken nose. Without opening the door I knew Ralph Ames was inside my apartment, cooking up a storm. My interior designer created a kitchen that unleashed Ames' culinary genius.
As I walked in the door, Ames glanced up from ladling a pot full of fettucini Alfredo into one of my best bowls. 'How about a midnight snack,' he grinned. 'I'll bet you're starved.'
Two places were set in the dining room. The middle of the table held a large wooden bowl of tossed salad as well as an uncorked bottle of wine.
I had kicked off my shoes and was shrugging out of my jacket when Ames came into the dining room and put the bowl of fettucini on the table. He gave me an appraising look.
'Other than a pair of shiners and a hole in your knee, how are you, Beau?'
I knew about the hole in my knee, but shiners? 'You're shitting me.'
Ames shook his head. 'Go look for yourself,' he said.
I did, he was right. I looked like hell.
'What did you do, walk into a door?'
'An eight-by-ten timber,' I answered.
'Same difference. Are you hungry?'
'You bet.' It had been some time since that long-ago breakfast Marilyn Sykes had fed me. I may not be the type to cook fettucini, but I certainly don't object to eating it. I dished up a mountain of salad and started on that while Ames poured two glasses of wine.
'By the way,' he said. 'Marilyn Sykes called here looking for you a couple of times. I told her you'd give her a call as soon as we finished eating. Hope you don't mind, but I filled her in on some of the details.'
'Things would be a hell of a lot different if I had been home alone in my own little beddy-bye,' I said. 'Marilyn's alibi was what did the trick.'
One of the things I appreciate most about Ames is that he's not above saying he told me so, but he doesn't usually rub my nose in it. He simply nodded. 'I figured as much,' he said.
'There are a few other messages as well,' he added. 'Two calls from Sergeant Watkins, and one from someone named Kramer. He sounded real upset. What's this all about?'
And so, during the course of our late-night dinner, I explained to Ralph Ames what I could about what was going on. I told him about finding Logan Tyree's body and about what I regarded as the erroneous determination of accidental death. I told him about Logan Tyree's womenfolk, his moderately grief-stricken widow and his grieving ex-fiancee. I told him about my meeting with Jimmy Rising and the subsequent fire. Sometime later, over wine, I even remembered to tell him about Angie Dixon and the news photo that had captured her fatal plunge from Masters Plaza.
Ralph Ames listened to it all, nodding from time to time, asking questions periodically. 'There does seem to be a pattern,' he observed when I finished. 'Certainly with Logan Tyree the killer or killers went to some length to make his death look like an accident. And the woman falling off the building sounds like an accident, too. Is there any connection between them?'
'Between Logan and Angie Dixon?' I shook my head. 'Other than the fact that they were in the same union, there's no connection that I know of. Logan Tyree taught a certified welding class for apprentices. Presumably Angie Dixon was in Logan's class.'
'The same one, you think?'
I shrugged. 'Maybe, or maybe a later one.'
