“Hello, J.P.,” he said somberly. “I didn’t know you were back.”
“I came straight here. I’m so sorry about Francine…”
“I know, I know,” he said impatiently, brushing aside my condolences. “Sit down.” He motioned me toward a sagging, butt-sprung leather recliner that could have been a brother to the re-covered wreck in my own living room. “Who told you about it?”
“Your mother. I talked to her yesterday afternoon.”
“Oh,” he said.
Not knowing what to say next, I waited for him to continue.
“She left me a note,” Ross Connors said finally, his voice brittle with emotion. “She said she listened in the other night when you and I spoke on the phone. She was sure that once the FBI got involved, the whole thing would come out. She said she couldn’t face it.”
He paused. I knew what it was – knew what he couldn’t bring himself to say, so I helped him along.
“I know she was involved with Louis Maddern,” I said quietly. “It’s all in the telephone logs. I can show you…”
“That no-good son of a bitch!” Connors muttered fiercely. “It must have been going on behind my back for years, and I never figured it out. How could I have been so stupid that I never had a clue? But somebody else must have figured it out – someone who works for UPPI. Maddern, Maddern, and Peek didn’t get that big piece of UPPI’s business by random selection, J.P. They figured out that that worm Louis Maddern might be able to deliver something more valuable than legal representation and, God help me, he did!”
“Latisha’s whereabouts,” I supplied.
Ross nodded miserably. “I didn’t even realize I had said anything. It must have slipped out. Francine and I didn’t have any secrets from each other, at least…” We both saw heartbreak where that sentence was going. He broke off and didn’t finish.
Half a minute later, he continued. “One way or another, Louis must have weaseled the information out of Francine. Once she put it all together and realized it was her fault that Latisha Wall was dead, Francine couldn’t live with herself. She was Louis Maddern’s lover. She was also his partner in crime, but until Sunday night, I don’t think she had any idea. Then yesterday, at lunch…”
Again he broke off and couldn’t go on.
“Ross, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know she was with you at lunch.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s not your fault. You didn’t say anything out of line. Francine knew me very well. She must have read it in my face.”
He fell silent. We sat without speaking for more than a minute. “It’s such a shock. I’m still ragged around the edges,” he said at last. “All those nice people downstairs. They want to tell me how sorry they are – how much they care – but it hurts too much to hear it. That’s why I’m hiding out up here, where no one can find me.”
I wondered if changing the subject would help. “There’s something I don’t understand,” I said. “Why did UPPI need Latisha Wall dead? What made her so important? You told me yourself there’s enough evidence available in the form of depositions that even if she weren’t here to testify at the trial…”
It turned out I was right. Bracing anger flooded across Ross Connors’s face.
“Latisha Wall was supposedly under our protection!” he growled, sounding more like himself again. “My protection! She was a single protected witness in a single case. Right now UPPI has lots of other cases hanging fire, and there are lots of other witnesses who are expected to testify against them. How many of them will still be tough enough to stand up and speak out if they know they’re in mortal danger? How many other employees or ex-employees will be willing to put their lives on the line and come forward to testify?”
The man’s anger and anguish were both palpable. “I’m sorry,” I said.
He nodded. “So am I.”
I had been told no official report was expected on my trip to Arizona. And Ross Connors had plenty of reasons to bury what I had found out right along with his wife.
“Should I write a formal report?” I asked.
He took a deep breath, straightened his shoulders, and looked me straight in the eye. “You bet,” he said. “Type it up and send it through the regular chain of command. If it gets leaked, too bad. My first instinct was to cover up this whole thing, but I’m not going to. Francine is dead, by God! I want the world to know who did this to her and why.”
And in that moment, I realized I was glad Ross Alan Connors was my boss and proud that my name had been added to the roster of his Special Homicide Investigation Team. He may have been a politician, but he was also a good man who wasn’t afraid to make a tough call when the situation required it.
“There’s something else,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“What do you know about sodium azide?”
He frowned. “Never heard of it. Why, should I have?”
“Yes,” I told him. “And here’s why.”
AS I DROVE TO SEATTLE FROM OLYMPIA, I called Harry I. Ball on my now-working cell phone. He told me to take the rest of the day off.
“That’s big of you,” I said. “Especially considering I’ve been working my butt off almost round the clock for the last three days.”
“Don’t start,” he warned. “I don’t wanna hear it.”
I returned the rental car to the airport and climbed into the Belltown Terrace limo I had summoned to drag me home. By 2 P.M. I was in my recliner, thinking.
I had told Ross Connors about the dangers of sodium azide, but what about the dangers of love? Latisha Wall and Bobo Jenkins had fallen in love, and he had unwittingly poisoned her. After years of playing the field, Dee Canfield had gone for a guy she thought was finally the love of her life, and Warren Gibson had snuffed her out of existence. Francine Connors had betrayed her husband for a fling with Louis Maddern, and now a widowed Ross Connors was imprisoned in his turret, nursing a broken heart.
And then there was me. J.P. Beaumont and Anne Corley. J.P. Beaumont and Joanna Brady. Anne had been a case of fatal attraction, and Joanna might have been.
Without realizing it, I drifted off, and all too soon the dream came again.
At first it was the same as it’s always been, and I tried to fight it off. Anne Corley was striding toward me across a grassy hill in Mount Pleasant Cemetery. But then I noticed something different about her. This particular Anne Corley had bright red hair and amazingly green eyes.
Once I realized that, I didn’t bother trying to wake myself up. For the first time ever, I just lay back and enjoyed it.
Afterword
Roots of Mystery: Sodium Azide and Learning
to Believe the Unbelievable
Editor’s note: Be advised all who wish to relish Partner in Crime with its many surprises unspoiled: The text below is, as advertised, an Afterword, and it and the material it introduces should be read following your reading of the novel itself.
People often ask writers, “Where do you get your ideas?” It makes me wonder if they think we go to the supermarket, to the Idea section, and look over what’s there, hoping to find something that isn’t past its sell-by date. Some readers I meet hint around that perhaps I “dream up” ideas. I have yet to experience a “dream” that I’d be willing to devote six months of my life to.
The truth is, ideas are out there, but – like wily wild game – they hide out in the forest of everyday life and have to be tracked down and captured before they can be brought back and tamed into being part of a book.