I didn’t remember the exact amount of LaShawn Tompkins’s wrongful-imprisonment settlement. I wondered how much of it was left, and was it enough to provide a motive for murder?
“If your son had no money, what did he do for food and clothing?” I asked.
“He ate his meals at the mission. As for clothing? I don’t know nothing about that. You’ll have to ask Pastor Mark.”
I’ll do that, I thought, just as soon as I get a chance.
I said, “You and the good pastor seemed to be having a slight difference of opinion when I first got here. What was that all about?”
“Oh, that,” Etta Mae said. “Pastor Mark is under the impression that just because Shawny worked for him, it was like he owned him or something, and that he could say how and where the funeral was gonna be and all that. I had to set him straight on that score, and I did.”
Yes, Pastor Mark and the King Street Mission would bear some scrutiny. It would have been nice to think that LaShawn Tompkins and Pastor Mark had both seen the light and that the two of them subsequently had devoted themselves to lives of selfless service to others. But I just didn’t happen to think that was true. It was likely there was something else at work here. If I ever managed to figure out exactly what that was, I’d most likely know who had gunned down LaShawn Tompkins and why.
CHAPTER 5
I left Etta Mae’s house about midafternoon. Before leaving I had been introduced to Etta Mae’s neighbor, Janie Griswold, who had eventually emerged from the kitchen and resumed her thankless task of trying to clean up the blood-spattered entryway.
Walking back to the car, I felt frustrated. What should have been an uncomplicated, straight-up interview had ended up being more of a prayer meeting, one in which I had been on the defensive far more than I should have been. I came away knowing that Etta Mae’s belief in her son’s miraculous transformation was utterly unshakable. I, on the other hand, had my doubts.
When I had first pulled up in front of the house on Church Street, I had turned off my cell phone. It would have been more than a little awkward if Mel had called and asked what I was doing when I was in the midst of interviewing an important witness in a supposedly nonexistent case. As soon as I turned the phone back on, it was bristling with a collection of messages and missed calls.
I dialed Mel immediately. “Where are you?” she wanted to know.
“Headed home,” I hedged. I was in fact driving back toward downtown Seattle at that very moment-just not from the direction she might have anticipated.
“How’s Lars?” she asked.
“Medium,” I said.
“Did you invite him to dinner?” she said.
“Did,” I said. “He turned me down.”
“He probably shouldn’t be alone right now,” Mel said. “He should have people with him.”
I thought about the gaggle of unattached Queen Anne Gardens dames Lars had claimed were hovering around him, all of them circling for a premature landing. “I doubt he’ll be all that alone,” I said.
“Still,” Mel said. “He should be with family at a time like this. Do you think I should call and ask him?” she wanted to know.
Mel probably could have talked Lars into coming out for dinner, but if she did, we might end up having a discussion of exactly when I had dropped him off and what I’d been doing in the meantime, et cetera, et cetera. What was it my mother always used to say? “Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”
“He seemed pretty tired,” I said. “Let’s leave well enough alone.”
I gave her the arrangement details for Beverly’s services so she could pass them along to Barbara Galvin and Harry. She extracted a promise that I’d order more flowers. She also told me that she’d made arrangements for the kids to stay at the Homewood Suites a few blocks away from Belltown Terrace at the bottom of Queen Anne Hill. Once again I appreciated Mel’s attention to detail. Making room reservations was something I probably wouldn’t have remembered-until it was too late.
“What are you going to do now?” Mel asked.
“Go home and put my feet up,” I said. “It was a pretty short night.”
On the way, I listened through a string of condolence calls-from Ron Peters, a former partner and a good friend; from Ralph Ames, my attorney; from Ross Connors along with several other members of the SHIT squad. In other words, Mel had put out the word.
When I got as far as downtown, I thought briefly about stopping by Seattle PD, but decided against it. It would create far less of a stir if I phoned Kendall Jackson than it would if I showed up on the premises in person asking questions. And since Ross seemed to want deniability, less of a stir would be far preferable to more of one.
Back at the condo I settled into the recliner, picked up the phone, and dialed that old familiar number that took me straight to the heart of Homicide. In the old days I couldn’t have made such a call without spending several minutes chewing the fat with Watty Watson, who was, for many years, the telephone-answering nerve center for Seattle PD’s homicide squad. But now Watty had moved on-either up or out. The phone was answered by someone whose name I neither caught nor recognized. I was put through to Detective Jackson with no chitchat and no questions asked.
“Hey, Beau-Beau,” Kendall boomed into the phone. “How’re you doing these days? Did they finally get all that glass out of your face?”
Jackson had been first on the scene after I went through the shattered wall of that greenhouse. The last time he had seen me I had been a bloody mess on my way to the ER.
“Pretty much,” I said. “Although I still find shards of it now and then.”
“You’re doing better than Captain Kramer,” he said. “You know he’s still out on disability? Everyone says he’s coming back soon now, though, probably sometime in the next couple of weeks.”
Mel and I might have saved Paul Kramer’s sorry butt, but that didn’t mean I liked him any better. “Glad to hear it,” I lied.
The words came to my lips almost effortlessly. Maybe I was starting to get the hang of it. After all, I had managed to lie to Mel. Now it looked as though I might be able to spin believable whoppers at the drop of a hat for anybody at all, no exceptions.
“What can I do for you?” Jackson asked.
“I understand you’re working the LaShawn Tompkins case.”
“Yup,” Jackson said. “Hank and I drew that one.”
Hank was Detective Henry Ramsdahl, Jackson’s partner.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
“Is that an official ‘how’s it going’ or an unofficial?” he returned.
“Unofficial,” I replied. “After the state made that payout in the Tompkins case, Ross Connors wants to be sure everything is on the up-and-up, but he also doesn’t want to make a big fuss about it, if you know what I mean.”
“We’re not making much progress so far,” Jackson admitted. “From everything we’ve been able to learn, Tompkins had been keeping his nose clean. We’ve turned up no sign that he was involved in any illegal activities. According to what we’ve been told, LaShawn found God while he was in prison. Once he got out, he straightened up and flew right-right up until somebody shot him dead, which, if you ask me, sounds pretty iffy,” Jackson concluded. “Old bad guys mostly don’t go straight.”
We were on the same wavelength on that score.
“With the possible exception of the girlfriend angle, though,” he added, “we haven’t found anyone with a beef against him.”
“What girlfriend?” I asked. The fact that LaShawn might have a girlfriend was news to me, and it would no doubt be news to Etta Mae as well.
“Name’s Elaine-Elaine Manning. That would be Sister Elaine Manning.”