Leaving the crime lab folks to continue their painstaking search of the vehicle, I dashed up to my cubicle, intent on obtaining those two separate but equally critical samples.
My first call went to the Seattle Federated Teachers’ Association office in Greenwood. The secretary there told me that Mrs. Stovall had called in sick and probably wouldn’t be in for the remainder of the week. My second call, to Andrea’s home phone number, went unanswered. She may have been home sick, but she wasn’t taking calls, not even after fifteen rings.
I put down the phone and thumbed through my notebook until I came to the name of Andrea Stovall’s apartment manager, Rex Pierson, the man who had so kindly consented to give her a ride down to the school office the night of the murder. It was possible that this Pierson guy might have a sample of her handwriting on a note or lease agreement in his office.
Andrea hadn’t given me a phone number, but telephone books work far more often than they don’t. I flipped through the pages-Q, R, P, Pe…I turned to the next page, the Pi’s, and glanced at the boldfaced heading at the top of the page to make sure I had the right one.
And that’s when I saw it. The name was printed in heavy capital letters across the top of the column indicating the beginning and ending words on the page: Piedmont-Pioneer. And just below the column heading was the first name: Piedmont, Jonas A., 8445 Dayton Avenue North.
I felt like someone had splashed a bucket of icy water down my entire body.
The phone book was eight months old, and the bold-faced name had been lying in wait for me all that time like a coiled but invisible snake waiting to strike. In all those months, I had never before had occasion to use that particular page, had never stumbled over that unwanted and unlooked-for piece of my personal history. Seeing my grandfather’s name there in black and white hit me with the same power as a fist plowing into my gut.
Against my will, I sat there staring at the line while the name, address, and phone number seared themselves indelibly into my brain.
“What’s the matter, Beau?”
Guiltily I looked up first and then back down, like someone caught doing something he shouldn’t. I had been so stunned by seeing my grandfather’s name that I hadn’t heard Ron Peters’ wheelchair whisper up to the doorway of the cubicle.
I closed the phone book with a decided snap-I didn’t want Peters to see which page it was open to-and tried to brush off the incident with a casual laugh. “I think I just saw a ghost,” I told him.
“Really? How’s that?”
“My grandfather. I just stumbled across his name here in the phone book when I was looking for something else. I didn’t even know he was still alive.”
Peters seemed surprised. “I didn’t realize you had any relatives still living here in the city.”
“Me neither,” I told him.
“Well, that’s great. You two should get together. I’ll bet you’d have a great time.”
“Sure,” I said, but I didn’t mean it. “What brings you here?” I asked, changing the subject.
“I figured I’d better bring you the paper,” Peters said. “I know good and well you won’t buy one yourself.”
He handed me a neatly folded copy of the local section of the Post-Intelligencer. “Take a look at this.”
“ Husband Sought in Double Homicide,” the banner headline read.
“Wait a minute,” I objected. “We just want him for questioning at this point. There’s some circumstantial evidence, but the way this lead is written, it makes it sound like we know for sure Pete Kelsey did it.”
“That’s not all, either,” Ron Peters answered grimly. “I think maybe you’d better read the whole article.”
And so I did:
“Late last night city and state authorities continued to search for a Puget Sound area man who disappeared in the aftermath of a double homicide that took the life of his forty-four-year-old wife and that of a fifty-year-old school district security guard. The brutal murders have left Seattle’s educational community stunned and grieving.
“Peter Kelsey, forty-four, a freelance contractor and sometime bartender, is being sought in connection with the slayings of his wife, Marcia Louise Kelsey, head of Seattle Public School District’s Labor Relations department, and of Alvin Chambers, a night watchman employed by Seattle Security. The killings occurred in the district’s Lower Queen Anne area office building late Sunday night.
“Unconfirmed reports from unnamed sources both inside and outside the school district have indicated that Mr. Kelsey became irrational upon hearing rumors that his wife was conducting an illicit relationship with another female member of the school district staff.”
That one stopped me cold. “A female? As in AC/DC?” I remembered Pete Kelsey’s startling reaction when Kramer had told him about Alvin Chambers. He had said Marcia was always full of surprises, and she continued to be so. Maybe he was surprised to hear that his wife had been with a man rather than another woman.
“Read on,” Peters said.
“”I know all about those godless women,“ Mrs. Charlotte Chambers, widow of the slain security guard, stated in an airport interview late last night, where she had gone to meet her son, who is on emergency leave from the U.S. Navy. The younger Chambers flew home to attend his father’s funeral.
“”Alvin told me all about them. He was a man of God, you see, even if he left the ministry. He was burdened seeing the way those two women carried on. It’s a sin and goes against all the teachings of the Bible. It troubled him-he wanted to bring them God’s love and forgiveness, but they weren’t interested. I tried to get him to report them, but he wouldn’t. Alvin was a great one for judging not, you see. So he just prayed about it, is all, and now he’s dead and so is she.“
“Alvin Chambers spent fifteen years as pastor of the Algona Freewill Baptist Church before leaving the ministry to accept a position with Seattle Security.
“Mrs. Kelsey, a longtime employee of the Seattle Public School district…” The article continued with a rehash of the murders themselves as well as capsule biographies of both Marcia Kelsey and Alvin Chambers.
“Do you think it’s true?” Peters asked when I finished reading and looked up. “About the other woman, I mean. That’s going to be pretty rough on the family, especially if they didn’t know about it before.”
“I think they knew,” I said quietly. “At least one of them did.”
I remembered the stark warning scrawled on the Post-it found in Marcia Kelsey’s Volvo. I handed the folded newspaper back to Ron Peters. “I think somebody spilled the beans, just before the murders. I don’t think he approved.”
I went on to tell Peters about the warning message on the note found in Marcia Kelsey’s smashed car. I had just finished when Margie poked her head around the doorway and peeked into my cubicle. “There you are, Beau. Good to see you, Ron. How’s it going?”
She rushed on without waiting for Peters to give a real answer to her pro forma question.
“Detective Kramer was looking for you a little while ago, Beau. He picked up the search warrant early and said to tell you that he was going on up to the Kelsey’s house, that you could meet him there if you want to. He said he had to hurry because he’s due back in court at ten again.”
“Fine,” I said.
Margie frowned. “Are you going to meet him there or not?”
“I’ve got my own stuff to handle. Tell him he’s a big boy and he can take care of the search warrant all by himself.”
“Where will you be?”
Margie’s sometimes as bad as a dormitory housemother.
“I’ll be dropping by Seattle Security and going up to Queen Anne Hill to see a lady named Andrea Stovall.”
Margie started away, then stopped. “She called, by the way. Did Detective Kramer tell you?”
“Andrea Stovall called here?”
“Neither you nor Kramer were in yet. I had nearly finished taking her message when Detective Kramer came in, and I turned her over to him. He probably rushed out and forgot to give it to you.”