“Why don’t you three toddle off sometime soon and let me get some sleep?” Luther yawned again, his capacity for company apparently worn thin. “How am I supposed to pick up any cute boys with all you women hanging around?”
“Pop, you’re the straightest mean old black man on the Hill.” Pam stretched and rose smoothly to her feet. “I think the cute boys are safe.”
“Not if they’re rich enough.” Luther’s chin settled into his chest, and he twined his fingers again over his belly. “Good-bye, Becca. Good-bye, other one. Take good care. I am retired.”
Pam walked with them up the gentle slope away from the reservoir, though Jo didn’t see a particular need for an escort. She glanced past Becca and saw the way the muscles in Pam’s arms gleamed in the sun, her easy athletic stride. Police officers who walked a beat had to be fit, and Pam obviously worked out a dozen times a day. Jo sighed.
“He means it, you know, the good-bye bit.” Pam stuck her hands in the pockets of her denim shorts. “He won’t want to talk with you again. He’s really told you all he remembers about the case, anyway.”
“Oh, I think he cleared things up for us nicely.” Becca gave her a wan smile. “My aunt shot my parents. Unless it was my uncle. Or my father. But that was an incredibly good doughnut, and I like your dad.”
“I like him, too,” Pam said, and Jo began to feel that the two of them were walking alone together. “But you do get some take away from this, Becca. My dad was open to the prospect of an outside shooter. And you’re trying to prove your mom didn’t do it, right?”
“We’re trying to find out the truth.” Becca sighed. She looked up at Jo and slid her arm through hers, and the beauty of the sunny day hit Jo at last.
“Yo, Emerson!” One of a group of three women lounging on the steps of the Asian Art Museum hailed Pam. “Seven o’clock!”
Pam and the three women broke into a rapid, rhythmic sequence of claps that mystified Jo. They unleashed a raucous cheer.
Becca grinned up at her. “That was the Storm clap. There must be a game tonight.”
“Must be a game? Y’all don’t follow the Storm?” Pam eyed them, askance. “My missus and I get season tickets every damn year.”
Hearing Pam had a missus warmed Jo toward her considerably, as did Becca’s light hold on her arm.
“So I’ll check in with the station before tip-off, see if there’s any developments.” Pam lifted her chin at Jo. “We dusted your place for prints, Jo. No catches yet. The dude or dudes wore gloves. Most of your block’s retail, so there weren’t neighbors nearby late at night to hear anything. We’re still digging, though.”
“Pam, I’m not crazy about the timing of this.” Becca looked pensive again. “What if whoever did this is trying to threaten Jo? Warn her off? That break-in was really violent.”
“I think that’s a possibility we have to keep in mind.” Pam regarded Jo soberly. “Any guesses as to who might not like the questions you’ve been asking lately?”
“Someone with a stake in hiding the truth about what happened.” Jo realized her answer was so generic as to be useless. She wanted to erase the new shadow that had filled Becca’s eyes.
“Well, you keep your eyes and your ears sharp. It’s just as well you two are together most of the time, right now.” Pam was watching them with an odd smile. “Safety in numbers. Okay, I’ll check in with you peeps later on. You’ve got my numbers; you can call me any time.”
“Thank you, Pam.” Jo tried to summon a sufficiently butch tone for Becca. “The bastard who did it is lucky, you know. If he’d touched my Xena DVDs, he’d be dead meat.”
“Xena?” Pam turned back to them, her face dawning with light. “I knew there was something I liked about you guys!” She raised one fist and gave a cracking good rendition of Xena’s trilling war cry.
Chapter Thirteen
An hour later, it was Becca’s turn to wait beside the Bentley, drumming her fingers on its glossy hood while Jo closed the clasps on her shoulder bag with meticulous care. Jo glanced up and seemed startled by her glare.
“Something?”
“Cut tulips require something like water, Jo. They don’t thrive if they’re left on a bookshelf.”
“Becca, I’ve explained I did not deliberately leave Rachel Perry’s cut tulips languishing on a bookshelf. And I’ve apologized. Not sure what more I can offer at this point.”
Jo sounded as impatient as Becca felt, and she curbed a snappish response as she slid into the Bentley. Neither of them was sleeping well. She knew that. Becca was comforted by Jo’s presence in that sad house, but Jo had to be even more exhausted than she was, after three straight nights in that damn armchair. Becca would insist she log some hours in a real bed soon. She looked out the window and sighed inwardly, feeling the blood rushing to her face. Hot flash, it had to be. She was much too tired to feel this sudden arousal, simply picturing Jo’s lithe length stretched out on a bed.
She studied Jo’s profile as she turned the powerful car smoothly onto Fifteenth, her weary features more chiseled today. “Can we stop on the way and slap my Aunt Patricia around? Make her talk?”
“Of course.” Jo seemed relieved by the lightness in Becca’s tone. “May I pound on your uncle? Of all our suspects so far, he’s the easiest to dislike. Well, short of Mr. Voakes.”
Becca nodded, her gaze drifting to the window again. Marty and Khadijah had disliked her Uncle Mitchell from their first meeting. Her best friends had been polite to Patricia, who treated them with the same puzzled, distant benevolence she showed Becca, most of the time. Patricia could be brittle, and she was fiercely loyal to Mitchell. But Becca could not, for the life of her, picture her pulling a gun on her parents.
“Luther Emerson said Mitchell was running for a state senate seat back when the shootings occurred.” Jo sounded thoughtful as they took the interstate south. “Do you know what happened to his political aspirations?”
“I’m clueless there. I never knew he’d had any.” Becca remem-bered that revelation in the park. “No one’s ever talked about any kind of political campaign. But there was a lot going on with my family at the time. That newsflash might have gotten lost in the drama.”
She fell silent to drink in Mount Rainier as they crossed the West Seattle Bridge. The mountain was still resplendent in the afternoon sunlight, and she appreciated Jo’s companionable quiet. The Bentley’s tires glided soundlessly across the expansive bridge, the blue waters of Puget Sound and the rising orange cranes of the docks to their right. They were bound for Tukwila, a small suburb south of downtown Seattle, a neighborhood Becca had never had cause to explore much.
“What can you tell me about Horizons?” Jo asked. “Surely it’s a secure facility, right, if it’s housing John William Voakes?”
“You know, I don’t think it’s a lockup program.” Becca had heard of Horizons at one or more distant staff meetings, but she remembered little about it. “I know they’re contracted through DSHS with Western State to house people who don’t need hospitalization any more, but aren’t ready for independent living. I had no idea they accepted ex-patients with a history like Voakes.”