Letting it go, I returned to the issue of two guns. That didn’t make sense. “I still don’t understand why we have two separate weapons.”
“Who knows? Maybe the killer thought that if one gun was good, two were better.”
Convinced there was nothing more to be gained right then by rereading either one of the two official reports, I turned to the third batch of papers. These turned out to be surprisingly good copies of the Seattle Security logbook pages for December thirtieth and thirty-first and January first.
I glanced down at the second page, the one for the first of January. It had been a holiday after all, and there were only two entries on the entire page: Marcia Kelsey had checked in at eight P.M. There was no check-out time following her name. Andrea Stovall had signed in at eleven and out again at eleven-fifteen.
That certainly answered one question. No wonder we were on our way to see Andrea Stovall. The presence of her name in the register on the same day at around the time of the killings made her a person of interest, someone we needed to interview.
Without further comment, I gathered the pieces of paper together and shoved them back in the envelope. We rode in silence for several blocks, with Kramer driving and me steaming. The pattern behind his behavior was beginning to emerge. He had known about the logbook sheets being ready when he called me the night before. He had known about the logbook sheets being ready when he called me the night before. He had known the autopsy reports were ready as well and had lied to me about them on the phone. He had picked them up on the way home and must have spent much of the night studying them. Fortunately for me and unfortunately for him, the vital information he’d been searching for, details that would have given him a crack at being a Lone Ranger hero, hadn’t been there.
I was learning the nature of the beast. Look to thy butt, Beaumont, I warned myself firmly. This guy’s a weasel who’ll kick ass and take names later if you give him half a chance. I didn’t like the idea of being pitted against both a murderous crook and an untrustworthy partner at the same time. That didn’t make for very good odds. The only way to win in a situation like that is to be smarter than everybody else, cagier, so I bit back any number of caustic comments and got back to the job at hand.
“So tell me. Who’s this Andrea Stovall?”
A self-satisfied smirk lit up Kramer’s face before he answered, and I wanted to backhand him. “The head of the SFTA,” he answered.
“What’s that?”
“The Seattle Federated Teachers’ Association.”
“The union? She’s head of the teachers’ union.”
Kramer smiled. “I thought you’d like that touch.”
“So why are we meeting her at the school district office?” In fact, we were just then pulling into the parking lot on Lower Queen Anne.
Detective Kramer glanced at his watch. “You’re right. Her office is up in Greenwood, but her secretary told me she has a meeting here at nine-thirty. We’re supposed to see her before that.”
As we got out of the car, I could see I was dealing with another instance of Detective Kramer’s behind-the-scenes machinations. The district office was probably a whole lot more convenient meeting place for all concerned, but it had taken a hell of a lot of arranging. I said, “You must have been one busy little beaver this morning.”
Everywhere I turned, I could see Kramer was deliberately holding out on me, keeping me in the dark, but if I complained about it to Sergeant Watkins or Captain Powell, they would laugh themselves silly. How could I complain about a partner so willing to work, so eager to take on extra jobs and lessen my burden, right? Right. I didn’t give Kramer the satisfaction of saying a word about it. Instead, I went along with the program and acted as though everything was on the up and up.
“Were they here together? And if so, why would the head of the teachers’ union be cozying up to the district’s head of labor relations in a secret midnight meeting?”
“Why don’t we ask her?” Kramer responded.
Jennifer Lafflyn-Ms. Lafflyn, if you will-the previous day’s miniskirted number, was seated demurely at the large reception desk in the school district office. A thick cloud of flowery perfume tainted the atmosphere ten feet in any direction from her desk. She seemed totally recovered from the previous day’s emotional roller coaster.
“Good morning, Ms. Lafflyn,” Kramer said with oily deference when she looked up from her switchboard and saw us standing there. “We’re here to see Mrs. Stovall. Her secretary said that you’d know where to find her.”
I don’t know if Kramer actually remembered Jennifer Lafflyn’s name and preferred salutation or if he had taken his cue from the nameplate on her desk, but his underscored use of the word “Ms.” earned him a warm smile from the lady in question. The guy walking three feet behind him, me, that is, was totally invisible.
Jennifer rose quickly to her feet. “Of course,” she said. “One moment. Please wait right here.”
She turned and disappeared down a long hallway. Her slight but well-built figure was poured into a tightly belted, short black sheath over black panty hose. She may have thought of her basic black getup as appropriate mourning attire, but it was short, exceedingly short.
Kramer leered after her, watching her every move. “Maybe when we’re done here, I’ll offer to give her a lift downtown so we can get those fingerprints we need. And I’ll throw in an early lunch.”
He wasn’t just talking about lunch, either. “You’d better watch that stuff, Kramer,” I warned him. “She looks like she could blow all your fuses and never turn a hair.”
Ms. Lafflyn came tripping back down the hallway right then. “They’ll be meeting in the conference room. Mrs. Stovall’s in the room next door, fourth door on your left.”
I’ve always had this image of union presidents as tough-talking, cigar-chewing guys in baggy pants and rolled-up shirtsleeves who negotiate heavy-duty secret deals in smoke-filled rooms. With my introduction to Andrea Stovall, that particular stereotype was about to be pleasantly shattered.
The woman sitting in the small office was a tiny, immaculately dressed blonde with her hair cut in the short, free-falling style preferred by figure skaters. She had pixielike features combined with the solid handshake of a born politician. She would have been pretty had it not been for the deep shadows under her eyes, ravages of sleeplessness that even the most deftly applied makeup couldn’t entirely obliterate.
“Sorry we’re so late,” Kramer said as she motioned us into chairs. “We had trouble getting transportation.”
She shrugged. “That’s all right, but we’d better get started right away. What can I do for you?”
“This won’t take long,” Kramer assured her. “It’s about Sunday night. We noticed that you were signed in and out on the logbook.”
Andrea Stovall nodded. “That’s correct. You said as much on the telephone. What about it?”
“The only other person we have any record of working that night, other than the security guard, the only other person who signed in, was Marcia Louise Kelsey, a woman who died under mysterious circumstances that same night.”
“I know all about that,” Andrea said wearily. Her whole body sagged and the smooth veneer of her face contorted with grief. “Marcia Kelsey and I were friends. I can’t get over what happened. It’s such a terrible tragedy.”
“Actually, Mrs. Stovall,” Kramer said, “that friendship is one of the things we wanted to ask you about, as well as what you were doing at the district office the night before last. Isn’t it odd for the head of the union and the head of labor relations to be buddies, as it were?”
“We started out teaching together years ago, and we became friends then. Through the years our jobs grew in different directions, but the friendship stayed.”
“What about Sunday night?” I asked.
“I came down to check on her.”
“You knew she was going to be working that night?”
“Not really, but…”