I nodded, and that was all Erin was willing to hear. She stood up abruptly. “Did you say you’d give me a ride?”
“Yes.”
“Take me home then, Detective Beaumont. I can’t listen anymore.”
I stopped briefly at the cashier’s desk before following Erin outside, where I found her waiting for me on the sidewalk. She seemed to be listening to the muted city noises around her. Just then, far away from us, the chill night air was split by the haunting wail of a distant siren.
“My car’s right over here,” I said.
I led her around the mounds of ice and snow that still littered the parking lot. Once on the street, I headed the 928 for Denny Way and Capitol Hill. Erin was silent now, huddled miserably against the door. I knew that no matter how much it hurt, I had to ask her one more question.
“Did you talk to your Auntie Andy today?” I asked.
“Don’t call her that!” Erin hissed. “She’s not my aunt. I thought she and my mother were friends. And no, I didn’t call her. I’ll never speak to her again.”
Once more, Erin Kelsey began to cry, weeping silently, her face covered with her hands. “I feel like such a fool,” she mumbled through her tears. “Such a stupid, stupid fool!”
We drove on in silence. If Erin hadn’t called Andrea Stovall, who had?
As we made our way down Broadway, I had to pull over to the side to wait for a blaring fire engine to rush past. Several blocks away from Boston, we began to encounter a whole phalanx of emergency vehicles-aid cars and fire trucks as well as police patrol cars. By then, looking up the side of the hill, we could see the eerily leaping flames of a house fire surging into the air. Although the flickering glow was visible, the house itself was still hidden from view.
“It’s my house, isn’t it?” Erin Kelsey breathed with despairing certainty.
“No,” I said. “Don’t be silly.”
When we reached the intersection of Tenth and Boston, a uniformed officer was diverting traffic away from the area. I stopped and hopped out of the car. I flashed my badge in his face and asked him if he knew the address of the burning house.
“Thirteen fifty-two East Crockett, I believe that’s the address,” he said.
Shock must have registered on my face.
“You know the house?” he asked.
I nodded.
“There’s not much more I can tell you,” the patrolman said sympathetically. “One of the guys from the fire department came by a few minutes ago and told me it’s a total loss. No victims so far, but they’re still looking.”
“Arson?” I asked.
“Probably, but that’s not official yet.”
“I know.”
I turned away from him and went back to the car to give Erin Kelsey the rest of the bad news. At least she hadn’t been there when the fire started, although I felt sure that whoever did it had meant her to be.
Realizing that gave me pause. If Erin hadn’t been meeting with me at the Doghouse when the fire broke out, she too could be dead, joining her mother as a youthful statistic in the realm of violent crime.
Suddenly I knew, knew in my gut, that whoever had called Pete Kelsey with the lie about Marcia and Andrea moving in together, whoever had called Erin and told her about the phony birth certificate, and whoever had called Andrea to say Pete Kelsey was gunning for her-those three separate, sadistic phone callers were all one and the same person.
Whoever it was, this laughing Cassandra had predicted that Pete Kelsey would lose everything, that it would be payment in kind for something, some crime he had committed in the past.
So far, Pete Kelsey hadn’t lost everything. Not yet. Not quite, but he had come close-very, very close-and at this rate, he still might.
Chapter 26
At one o’clock Thursday morning, I delivered a stunned and ashen version of Erin Kelsey to her grandparents’ condo on Queen Anne Hill. The mounting losses left Erin numb, speechless, and beyond tears. She fell into LaDonna Riggs’ comforting arms, but her grandmother’s murmurs of sympathy and outrage fell on seemingly deaf ears.
Belle Riggs led Erin back into the apartment while George, hands stuffed deep in his pockets, walked me back to my car. He seemed to want to say something, and I stood with the door open waiting for him to get around to it.
“Marcia wasn’t perfect,” he said at last, clearing his throat. “I mean, the things they said about her in the paper…” He paused awkwardly, and shook his head.
“Well, we didn’t know for sure, although I guess I always suspected. Maybe Belle didn’t-she’s always been naive about those kinds of things-but I did.”
He sighed, and walked away a foot or two, looking off over the side of the hill at a lighted grain ship being loaded at the terminal below us. The night was still, and the noisy clatter from the grain elevator conveyor belts filtered up the hill to where we stood. The air was noticeably warmer now compared to the arctic deep freeze we’d been locked into for the better part of the week, but it was still chilly to be outside dressed in nothing but shirtsleeves, as George was. The old man, however, seemed totally oblivious to the weather.
“But Pete now,” he said thoughtfully, “Pete’s all wool and a yard wide. I couldn’t have asked for a better son- in-law. He’s always been real steady-a good provider, a good worker, an old-fashioned family man-things that my daughter didn’t necessarily appreciate. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying he’s perfect, and I didn’t approve of him working in that bar off and on the way he did, but Pete’s not Mormon, and I made it a point to stay out of his business. That’s probably one reason why we always got along.”
George Riggs’ voice cracked with emotion, and he aimed a swift kick at a chunk of hardened snow and ice that had been pushed to the edge of the driveway.
“What are you telling me, Mr. Riggs?” I asked.
“I don’t care what his real name is, Detective Beaumont. No matter who he is really or what he may have done in the past, no matter how it looks, I know Pete Kelsey never killed my daughter. He may have been provoked, but he didn’t do it. He wouldn’t. Do you understand?”
“Mr. Riggs…” I began, but he ignored me.
“What about the fire?”
“What about it?”
“You haven’t said, but it wasn’t an accident, now was it? It had to be deliberate. Pete replaced every inch of wiring in that house and brought it up to code. It was all old knob-and-tube stuff, and fixing it was one heck of a job. So now he’s lost his wife and he’s lost his house. What’s next, and who’s doing this? who’s got it in for Pete Kelsey?”
“I don’t know.”
“But it does look like somebody’s out to get him?”
“Yes, Mr. Riggs, it is beginning to look that way, and I’m on my way down to the jail to find out what I can from Pete Kelsey himself. In the meantime, how about if I get the Patrol Division to send a unit up here, just to keep an eye on things.”
“You mean a police guard?”
“Listen, Mr. Riggs, I don’t want to alarm you unnecessarily, but there’s already been one attempt on Erin’s life tonight, and there could as easily as not be another.”
“No,” George said, shaking his head stubbornly. “No way. I believe I can handle it myself. The women are already upset enough as it is. Having police guarding the house would upset them that much more.”
I left him then, but on my way down to the King County Jail, I called the Patrol Division anyway. Just to be on the safe side. They told me they’d handle it and be discreet.
