She swallowed. “That’s right.”
“And he’s your apartment manager, right? How did he get dragged into this?”
“He offered me a ride, and I accepted.”
“In the middle of a snowy night? To come check on someone you didn’t know for sure would be here?”
Andrea nodded.
“Why?”
Suddenly Andrea Stovall dissolved into tears. “Because I was worried about her. Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“That something might happen to her. And I was right, goddamn it! I was right to be afraid.”
Some women cry daintily and prettily. Andrea Stovall wasn’t one of them. Her nose and eyes turned red while her face puffed up instantly.
There was a gentle knock on the door just then, and Doris Walker poked her head into the room, looking questioningly from one face to another. “Sorry to interrupt,” she said apologetically, “but Dr. Savage and the others are waiting. Would it be possible for you to finish this later?”
Without waiting for us to answer, Andrea Stovall reached down and scooped up both a purse and a briefcase that had been sitting on the floor beside her. “Tell them I’ll be there in a minute. I’ve got to fix my face.”
With that, she bolted from the room and Doris closed the door behind her, leaving Kramer and me alone. I’m sure we could have stopped her, told Doris Walker that Andrea Stovall was unavoidably detained and kept the interview going, but the interview had raised some interesting questions, disturbing questions.
What exactly was the relationship between Marcia Louise Kelsey and Andrea Stovall? More than Andrea had let on, of that I was sure. She had said she was “afraid” for Marcia. Why? It hadn’t been just a general fear of someone working late and alone in an otherwise deserted office building. The fear had been more specific than that, and strong enough to make Andrea enlist her apartment manager’s help when she went to check.
We’d be talking to Andrea Stovall again, but before we did, we’d need to do some checking on our own. When homicide detectives ask questions, it’s always a good idea to have some idea in advance what the real answers ought to be. It keeps you from being suckered quite so badly.
“What’s with her?” Kramer asked, still staring at the closed door.
“She’s hiding something,” I said. “Something that happened the night of the murders, and she’s scared to death we’re going to find out what it is, which we’d by God better do before we talk to her again.”
Kramer nodded and we both rose to go. At least we had found one point we could agree on, and in this case, that counted for progress.
Chapter 12
On the way back down the hall, I stopped off long enough to use the rest room. I had thought Kramer was joking about taking Jennifer Lafflyn back downtown with us. By the time I reached the receptionist’s desk, she was wearing her coat, and a substitute receptionist had been pressed into service.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “As long as we’re here, shouldn’t we talk to Kendra Meadows?”
“Suit yourself,” Kramer replied. “Now’s when Ms. Lafflyn can go, and I offered to take her.”
Which gave me a clear choice of taking it or leaving it. “See you later,” I said. I turned to the substitute receptionist. “Is Kendra Meadows in?”
“One moment. I’ll check. What did you say your name was?”
Unlike Jennifer Lafflyn, the formidable lady who appeared at the top of the stairs a few moments later was dressed for a very respectable funeral. Kendra Meadows was a middle-aged black lady whose thick, wavy hair was turning gunmetal gray. She was large, in every sense of the word, what the purveyors of women’s clothing call “queen-size.” Almost as tall as I was and thickly built, she was attractively dressed in a generously cut wool suit, the skirt of which covered her legs halfway down her calves.
Moving with ponderous grace, she came down the stairs while her undergarments whispered in that peculiarly feminine rustle of nylon on nylon.
“Detective Beaumont, is it?”
Kendra Meadows’ welcoming smile revealed a wide gap between her two front teeth. No doubt the school district’s dental insurance would have covered a set of braces for the middle-aged lady had Kendra Meadows ever stopped to consider such vain nonsense desirable.
She held out her hand. When I gripped it, her handshake was firm enough to make me wince.
“Sorry about that,” she apologized, catching what must have been a pained expression on my face.
“It’s nothing,” I told her quickly. “I hurt my fingers a few months back. They still give me problems every once in a while.”
“Too bad,” she said with a sympathetic click of her tongue. “Well then, come along. I was just going back to my office.” I followed her back up the stairs and down a long, narrow corridor into a large but nonetheless crowded and messy office. Like Marcia Kelsey, Kendra Meadows seemed to thrive in an environment with the appearance of total chaos. Not only the desk but the credenza, chairs, and several extra tables were piled high with stacks of file folders and loose pieces of paper. She cleaned off one of the chairs and motioned me into it.
Once Kendra Meadows had seated herself at the desk, she extricated a stack of papers from the general clutter and sat holding it, regarding me with yet another warm smile. Kendra Meadows’ natural charm, so obvious in person, hadn’t been at all apparent in her abrupt telephone manner.
“I took the liberty of making a preliminary list for you, Detective Beaumont,” she explained, reaching across the desk and handing me several 8?-by-11-inch pieces of paper with neat handwritten lists of names, telephone numbers, and addresses on them.
“The first list is of the people who were here at the office on the morning in question, after the bodies were found. You’ll find Mr. Jacobs there, but it would probably be better if you didn’t try to contact Martin until I get a clear go-ahead from his doctor. You’ll notice Jennifer Lafflyn is on that list as well. She’s usually on the desk downstairs in the mornings, but she wasn’t there just now.”
“Right,” I said. Under Jennifer Lafflyn’s name were five more names I didn’t recognize. “Who are the others?”
“The next few are on our substitute teacher scheduling crew. They come in every morning at five. Even though we already knew school was going to be canceled on Monday, those five you see there are the ones who still managed to make it in. They were here to help handle the extra volume of calls from anxious parents. I thought you’d be interested in talking to them. After all, one of them might have seen something without realizing it.”
Kendra Meadows should have been a cop. She paused and waited while I ran my finger down the list of names and telephone numbers.
“Is this the kind of thing you had in mind?” she asked.
“Absolutely, Mrs. Meadows. This is great.”
“Kendra,” she said. “Call me Kendra. Now, where was I? Oh, yes. The next list includes the names of most of the people here in the building who worked closely with Marcia Kelsey. Her secretary and the staff members who reported directly to her. That list also contains the names of those she reported to.”
“Good,” I said. “Having them broken down into groups like this will be a big help when we start the interviewing process. What’s the next page?”
“That’s a list of district employees from outside the building who probably worked with Marcia on a regular basis. Some are certified employees, some are noncertified. As director of Labor Relations, she wasn’t just responsible for our dealings with the teachers’ union. There are several other unionized entities as well. I’ve put the names of the unions as well as their addresses and phone numbers right there at the bottom of the page.”
Halfway down this list I discovered the name, address, and telephone number of Andrea Stovall. I’m not sure how Kendra Meadows did it, but it struck me that her sources of information were very thorough. In all my years of doing homicide investigations, I had never before started a case with that kind of comprehensive background material on a victim.
I turned to the last page. On that one there was only one entry. Seattle Security. Poor dead Alvin Chambers. His death kept being short-changed at every corner of the investigation.
