And here, all these years later, I was dealing with another Frazer and another death. Leaving the VCR on pause, I once again dialed law enforcement’s special twenty-four-hour number at the Department of Motor Vehicles. This time I went straight to a human being, as opposed to a recorded message. When I told the clerk who I was and that I was looking for licensing information from 1950, I expected her to laugh her head off, but she didn’t. “One moment, please,” she said.
I heard the clatter of computer keystrokes in the background. Then, within seconds, I had my answer. Albert and Elvira Marchbank had indeed owned a 1950 Frazer-a Caribbean coral Deluxe. I had no doubt that in the eyes of an unsophisticated not-quite-five-year-old girl, coral would indeed be “sort of ” red.
I sat for some time, studying the freeze-frame likeness of Sister Mary Katherine staring back at me from the television screen. Bonnie Jean Dunleavy had been an eyewitness to Mimi Marchbank’s murder. Given that circumstance, surely the killers must have been caught, right? So I called the Records department at Seattle PD to see if Madeline Marchbank’s killer had ever been apprehended. Once again, after a surprisingly few keystrokes, I had my answer, and it wasn’t one I liked. Madeline Marchbank’s 1950 murder, perpetrated by person or persons unknown, was still listed as an open case of homicide-fifty-four years after the fact.
After checking in and letting Barbara Galvin know I’d be working outside the office all day, I spent the next hour or so researching the Marchbank Foundation. It had been created in 1972 on the occasion of Albert’s death from colon cancer. The financial arrangements weren’t spelled out in the material available to the general public through the foundation’s Web site. I had a feeling, though, that some provision had probably been made for Albert’s widow throughout her lifetime and that, upon Elvira’s subsequent death, any residual assets would revert to the trust. Creating a charitable foundation had no doubt been a way of dodging state and federal estate taxes while still allowing the family to maintain some degree of control over the disposition of assets. The Marchbank Foundation was into the fine arts in a big way. The Seattle Opera, the Seattle Symphony, and the Seattle Art Museum were all major beneficiaries of Marchbank Foundation grants, but other smaller organizations were listed as well.
Each time I went back to the Web site’s home page, I looked at the formally staged portrait of the founders taken on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary and only a short time before Albert’s death. He couldn’t have been much older than his early sixties, but he already had a gaunt and fading look about him while his wife looked robust-and immensely pleased with herself. In the photo they looked like the fine upstanding citizens the Marchbank Foundation PR flacks claimed them to be. Could these two people, smiling broadly into the camera’s lens, actually be a pair of cold-blooded killers?
I wondered about whether or not I should print a copy of the photo to take with me when I went to see Sister Mary Katherine. I had gone off to the Westin in such a hurry the night before that I hadn’t taken my copy of the Post-Intelligencer photo along with me. Finally, when it was late enough to be halfway civilized, I called Freddy Mac at home.
“What’s up?” he asked. “Did you find a record of the car?”
I said, “Albert Marchbank owned a 1949 Caribbean coral Frazer-a vehicle with no hood ornament, just like Bonnie Jean said. I’ve also located photos of Mimi Marchbank’s brother and sister-in-law. One is contemporary, taken the day of Mimi’s funeral. The other is from the early seventies, almost twenty years later.”
“And?” Fred asked.
“I’m wondering if it’s a good idea to show them to her.”
Fred took his time before answering. “Well,” he said finally, “it’ll go one of two ways-either she’ll remember or she won’t.”
“Do you want to be there when I show them to her?”
“Can’t,” he said. “I’m backed up with appointments all morning long, and I know Sister Mary Katherine is hoping to head back to Whidbey sometime this afternoon.”
“But you don’t think seeing the pictures will hurt her?” I pressed.
“In my personal opinion, not remembering is what’s hurting her,” Fred countered. “If seeing the photos happens to jar her to conscious memory of what went on back then, that should be all to the good.”
With Fred MacKinzie’s Good Housekeeping seal of approval, I printed a copy of Albert and Elvira’s official Web-site photograph as well as a photo of the Marchbank Foundation corporate headquarters, an imposing-looking two-story Georgian with an address that put the place just north of the University of Washington on Twelfth Avenue NE.
At 10:00 A.M., I stuffed everything I’d gleaned through my research efforts into my briefcase and headed for the Westin for my meeting with Sister Mary Katherine. It was raining hard when I drove the 928 out onto the street from the Belltown Terrace. Rain, especially a warm rain like this one, was good news. It meant the snow would melt that much faster and life in Seattle would soon return to normal. As I waited for the light at Second and Wall, I realized that I hadn’t heard a word from Ron or Amy Peters.
Oh, well, I told myself. Maybe no news is good news.
That was wrong, of course, but I wouldn’t find that out until much, much later.
CHAPTER 9
Sister Mary Katherine was waiting for me as I walked into the hotel cafe. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” I said. “People will talk.”
She smiled and shook her head. “People aren’t interested in nuns,” she said. “They’re a lot more interested in what some priests have been up to-and with good reason. Compared with misbehaving priests, nuns are a pretty boring lot.”
Considering what I’d learned about Sister Mary Katherine herself in the course of the last several days, I could have argued the point, but I didn’t.
“Would you like some breakfast?”
“Sure,” I said, “but only if it’s my treat.”
Sister Mary Katherine waited while I negotiated with the waitress for eggs and bacon. Once the server departed, I reached for my briefcase. “I brought along few things for show-and-tell,” I told her.
“Tell me this first,” she said. “I need to know. Were Mimi’s killers ever caught?”
“No,” I said. “They never were.”
Disappointment shrouded her face. “They probably would have been had I told the authorities what I had seen at the time.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But you need to know that it’s possible the perpetrators were very influential people in Seattle at the time of the murder.”
Her eyes widened. “You’ve actually identified suspects?”
I nodded. “Have you ever heard of the Marchbank Foundation?” I asked.
Sister Mary Katherine nodded. “I believe it was started by Madeline’s brother and his wife.”
Now it was my turn to be surprised. “You know about Albert and Elvira Marchbank then?”
Sister Mary Katherine laughed and shrugged. “I live on Whidbey Island, not on the moon,” she said. Then she grew serious. “After you and Fred left last night, I called home. Sister Therese got on the computer and tracked down some information for me on Madeline Marchbank. In the process I learned something about her brother and sister-in-law as well.”
“Have you seen pictures of them?” I asked. “There are photos posted on the Web site.”
Sister Mary Katherine shook her head. “I won’t have a chance to do that until later on this evening, when I get home.”
“You don’t have to wait that long,” I said, pulling out my file of photos. “I brought them with me. Take a look at these.”