although driving conditions would probably still change for the worse once the sun went down for the evening.
When we reached the Forest Grove Apartments, I could see that someone had made a halfhearted attempt at scraping clean the driveway down into the complex. Nonetheless, I had the cabbie drop me on the street and I walked the rest of the way.
The rickety stairway and handrail leading up to the Chambers’ apartment had also been scraped clear of snow, but the layer of ice that remained on the slick wooden steps was far more treacherous than the snow would have been.
From inside, I could hear the noise of an industrial-strength vacuum cleaner. No one answered my first knock, or the second. I waited until the vacuum went off before I tried again. This time the door opened immediately, and a wizened man stood before me.
“Yes?” he asked.
I handed him my card. “I’m looking for Mrs. Chambers,” I said.
He glanced uneasily over his shoulder. “Charlotte isn’t here just now,” he said. “She’s expecting some family members to arrive from out of town, and the wife and I are waiting here in case they come before she gets back.”
“I see. Can you tell me where she is or when you expect her?”
The man looked back into the room. “I can’t say for sure,” he replied. A woman wearing an apron and carrying two bulging garbage bags appeared over his shoulder.
“Who is it, Floyd?” she asked.
“A policeman,” Floyd replied uncertainly. “He wants to know where Charlotte is and when she’ll be back.”
“Well,” the woman said impatiently. “Let him in. Don’t just stand there with the door open. It’s cold outside. And go ahead and tell him where she is. If Charlotte Chambers isn’t ashamed of herself, she certainly ought to be.”
Floyd stepped back from the door and motioned me inside. Gravely he held out his hand. “The name’s Patterson. Floyd Patterson, and this is my wife, Alva.”
“How do you do, Mr. Patterson,” I said, glancing over his shoulder into the room behind him. The curtains were open, and an almost miraculous transformation had taken place in the dingy little apartment. It was clean, almost spotlessly so. The dirty dishes were gone, as were the collection of boxes and the wads of clothes. The unmistakable back-and-forth tracks of a vacuum cleaner marched virtuously across the orange and green shag carpeting.
“Well?” Alva Patterson said expectantly to her husband. “Are you going to tell him or am I?”
“The movies,” he murmured.
“Pardon me?” I asked, not understanding.
“Charlotte’s at the movies.”
“Right down here at the Oak Tree,” Alva Patterson sniffed. “The so-called bargain matinee. She took the bus. If it weren’t for Richard, we wouldn’t be here at all, but I can’t imagine him coming home and finding this place the way it was this morning, and with his morning, and with his mother not here besides.”
She shook her head disdainfully and clicked her tongue in matronly disapproval. “Those two men deserved so much better,” she added with a sniff. “Both Richard and his father.”
“So there’s a son?” I asked. “I wasn’t aware they had any children. Mrs. Chambers didn’t mention it yesterday when we talked to her.”
Floyd Patterson nodded. “They have a son, all right. Richard’s in the Navy. Stationed in Norfolk, but he’s been on a cruise in the Mediterranean. He’s getting hardship leave and should be arriving home sometime today. Maybe not until this evening, with the way the weather’s been, but I told him we’d stay around here and come pick him up once he gets in. Charlotte doesn’t drive, you see, and it’s way too expensive for him to take a cab all the way here from Sea-Tac.”
“Driving’s not all that woman doesn’t do,” Alva Patterson remarked pointedly, and flounced off toward the kitchen with a stack of overflowing garbage bags still in hand.
Patterson motioned me toward the couch. “Won’t you have a seat, Detective Beaumont?”
I moved toward the sagging couch. It too had been thoroughly vacuumed. The stray popcorn leavings from the day before had disappeared completely. No dust rose from the cushions as I lowered myself onto them.
“I take it you and your wife are friends of the family, Mr. Patterson?”
Floyd hung his head. “Of Alvin more than Charlotte, I’m afraid. Charlotte’s, well…she’s always been difficult.”
“You can say that again,” Alva offered tartly from the kitchen, where she was furiously scrubbing the counter. The odor of undiluted bleach wafted into the living room. “You should have seen the parsonage after they moved out. I tell you it was criminal.”
“Now, Alva,” Floyd cautioned mildly. “Remember, judge not…”
“That’s easy for you to say, Floyd,” Alva snapped, cutting him off in midsentence. “You menfolks didn’t have to clean those filthy bathrooms. The women did. And the kitchen! We found roaches in some of the kitchen cupboards, can you imagine? And don’t you think for one minute that I’m here working today because of Charlotte Chambers. Absolutely not. I’m doing this for Richard so that when his friends stop by to visit, he won’t have to be embarrassed.”
“So you’re members of the church where Alvin Chambers used to be the minister?” I asked, directing my question to Floyd.
He nodded. “That’s right. The Freewill Baptist down in Algona. I’ve been deacon there for fifteen years. I was on the committee that hired Pastor Al when he first came to us ten years ago. I hated to see him go when he left, especially for a job like that. It’s such a terrible waste, but then…” Floyd left off and shrugged. “It was just one of those things, I guess.”
“Why did he leave?” I asked.
“Because of the remodeling,” Patterson answered without hesitation. “It was all because of that.”
The fall from grace of numerous televangelists as well as that of a few of the less reputable local clergy had prepared me for the worst. I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised by the recounting of any number of peccadillos, but the word “remodeling” definitely wasn’t on the list of what I expected to hear.
“Did you say remodeling?” I asked.
Patterson nodded sadly. “It was all so silly. We…” He paused. “The church had finished paying off the mortgage. In fact, we celebrated with a mortgage- burning at the annual dinner. I remember Pastor Al telling me how much he was hoping we’d be able to spend some of that extra money on a new outreach program that he had in mind. Mission work we could do in our own backyard, right there in Algona. But at the very next board of directors meeting, someone came up with the idea of remodeling the sanctuary, and that’s what the board voted to do. Remodel. I think it broke Pastor Al’s heart.”
Alva Patterson appeared in the kitchen doorway, drying her hands on the front of her apron.
“It wasn’t just that, Floyd, and don’t you sit there and say it was.”
“Now, Alva,” Floyd cautioned, holding up his hand.
“Don’t you ”Now, Alva‘ me,“ his wife returned. ”You know as well as I do that the remodeling was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. The real problem was Charlotte. She was the problem then, and she’s the problem now.“
Without warning, Alva Patterson pulled the skirt of the apron up to her wrinkled face and sobbed into it. “That poor man. Whatever did he do to deserve the likes of her for a wife! It’s not fair. He should have had better!”
At that precise moment, my pager went off. Floyd Patterson directed me to the kitchen telephone, where I dialed Margie’s number.
“Beaumont here,” I said.
“I’m glad you called right back,” Margie said. “Detective Kramer telephoned before court went into session and wanted me to get in touch with you. He said to tell you ”Bingo.“”
“Bingo? What the hell does that mean?”
“Beats me. That’s all he said.”
I wondered, had he learned something important during the course of his lunch with Jennifer Lafflyn or had the fingerprints from Pete Kelsey’s spoon shown up somewhere on the AFIS system? It was just like my friend
