Captain Powell frowned. "Are you kidding? Coffee with a cop?"
"It would probably sell like hotcakes."
Powell picked up his pen and held it at the ready. "All right," he said. "Who is she? What's her name?"
"Bonnie Elgin," I answered triumphantly, dragging my ragged notepad out of my pocket. "I have her number right here. You can tell her I suggested that you call."
It must have sounded do-able, because Captain Powell was looking almost cheerful when I left his office. As for me, I was still grinning when I made it back to my cubicle.
There were two messages on the voice mail-one from Kari Gebhardt and one from Sue Danielson telling me she was on her way down to the crime lab. I returned Kari's call first. Sounding young and uncertain, she was the one who answered the phone.
"This is Detective Beaumont," I told her.
"Oh, right," she said. "My grandmother told me to call you. What do you want?"
"I'm a member of the team investigating this incident with your father. Is there a time when my partner and I could get together with you to talk?"
"I don't know. I'm awfully busy. And I don't know how much help I could be, either," Kari answered evasively. "I wasn't even in town when it happened."
"It's just routine," I assured her. "And it shouldn't take too long. We're gathering background information-that kind of thing."
"I can't do it this morning," Kari said. "Mother and I are leaving in a few minutes to go to the mortuary."
"Early this afternoon is fine, if that would be more convenient."
"Where?" Kari Gebhardt asked.
"Detective Danielson and I could come there to the house, if you'd like," I offered.
"No. Not here," Kari said quickly. "I'd rather meet you somewhere away from the house. And not in Ballard, either. Everyone here knows…"
"Would you like to come to my office down here at the department?"
"No," Kari said. "Not that. How about Caffe Minnie's at First and Denny up in the Regrade. Michael and I go there sometimes when we're in town. Michael's my boyfriend."
I didn't tell her that I had already heard about Michael from Else. "What time?" I asked. "Say, one-thirty?"
"Yes," she replied. "Mother and I should be done making arrangements by then."
"Good. I'll see you there."
"One more thing, Detective Beaumont. Would it be all right if Michael came along?"
My first choice was naturally to speak to her without the presence of a support system. For a twenty-year-old whose father had been murdered, she was surprisingly under control. Over the phone, there was no hint of the inconsolable grief her mother had worried so about the night before. On the other hand, seeing both Kari and her boyfriend together might give me some insight into what had gone on between Kari and her father.
"That'll be fine," I told her. "Bring him along. Detective Danielson and I will meet you there."
As soon as I got off the phone with Kari Gebhardt, I called down to the crime lab looking for Sue Danielson.
"She's still here," the crime-lab receptionist told me. "Do you want me to put her on the phone?"
"Don't bother," I said. "This is Detective Beaumont. Tell her to wait there. I'll be right down."
I found Sue and Janice Morraine in one of the back labs standing in front of a table examining several unrecognizable pieces of metal, some of which were covered with what looked like charred charcoal.
"What's that?" I asked, looking at Janice. "Have you been trying to cook again?"
Janice Morraine's lack of culinary skill is almost as legendary as my own. My quip provoked a glare from Janice and a quick hoot of laughter from Sue Danielson.
"It's a melted pruning shears," Janice Morraine replied stiffly. "From the basement of the house up on Camano Island. Tim Riddle, the arson investigator, found it."
Camano Island. Melted pruning shears. Putting the two together, I didn't much like the answer those two items combined to make. "And why would a melted pruning shears be so interesting?"
Janice looked at me as though I were hopelessly stupid. "What if I could prove someone used them to whack off a few fingers and toes?" she asked. "Would you be interested in them then?"
"Yes," I said. "I suppose I would." I didn't add that June Miller had just told me that her friend Lorenzo was a part-time gardener. But before I could go into any of that, Sue took off on another tack.
"Tell him about what you found in the truck," she said.
"What truck?"
"Mr. Gebhardt's truck," Janice Morraine answered. "I don't know if you remember, but it was at the scene of the fire, and we impounded it, just in case. What we found turns out to be very interesting."
Janice moved back to the first table and picked up a copy of an evidence inventory-control sheet. "For starters, airplane tickets for two to Rio de Janeiro in the names of Denise Whitney and Hans Gebhardt."
"You mean Gunter."
"I mean Hans." She shrugged. "At least that's what it says here. According to his widow, the dead man's legal name was H. Gunter Gebhardt, so Hans may very well be his real given name. In addition to the tickets, we found fifty thousand dollars' worth of those slick, new two-person, either/or traveler's checks. There were also two fully packed, brand-new suitcases."
"It sounds as though he and the side dish were on their way out of town at the first available opportunity."
"That's the way it looks to me," Janice answered.
"What were the times and dates on the plane tickets?"
"The afternoon of the day he died."
I shook my head. Poor Else, I thought sadly. Poor, poor Else.
A few minutes later, Sue and I were trudging up the stairwell to the fifth floor. On the way, I told her about our afternoon appointment with Kari Gebhardt before going into my meeting with June Miller.
"By the way," I said casually, as we started through the fifth-floor maze of cubicles. "What do you know about salsa dancing?"
Sue stopped dead in her tracks. "Don't tell me you're into salsa dancing, too. I've never seen you there."
Hello. Did everyone in the world know about salsa dancing except me?
"You mean this is something you know about?" I asked in dismay. "You actually go to these places and do it?"
"Sure. I can't go very often because of the boys. But it's great fun. Some of those Latino guys are great dancers."
"Have you ever seen a tall, willowy blond there?"
"Almost every time I go," Sue sighed. "She always makes me feel like a total frump. Do you know her? Is she a friend of yours?"
"Actually, her name is June Miller. I just spent an hour talking with her upstairs. She lives across the street from Else and Gunter Gebhardt, who-incidentally-offered to shoot her dog last summer when Barney-the dog-left a pile of doggy doo in Gunter's front yard. Furthermore, June Miller happens to know our hit-and-run victim, who turns out to be a part-time gardener named Lorenzo."
Sue is quick. She never missed a trick. "A gardener?" she repeated. "You mean like someone who might be missing a pruning shears? Where do we find him?"
"That's where the salsa dancing comes in," I explained. "June Miller has offered to introduce us tonight at the Ballard Fire House."
"Of course," Sue said. "Today's Friday, isn't it?"
"What does Friday have to do with anything?"
"On Fridays salsa dancing is at the Ballard Fire House. But why talk to this Lorenzo guy at a dance?"
"June said he's terrified of cops. She claims that's why he ran away from the accident. I told her we'd meet her there around nine-thirty or ten."
"You think it's on the up-and-up?"
"Enough so that I agreed to go. Not enough for me to do it without a backup handy."