"What kind of station, Joanna?" I prompted. "Can you remember?"
"A Texaco. On Mill Plain Road."
"How did you pay? Credit card? Cash?"
"Credit card. I think I used my VISA."
"Could you give us that number?"
Joanna retrieved her purse from a table near the front door where she had left it when she first entered the house. As we had talked, there had been sounds of activity in the kitchen. Now Fannie Mae reappeared, carrying a tray of coffee cups, a pot of coffee, and a plate of homemade biscuits. Joanna dictated the number to Peters while I helped myself to coffee, biscuits, and honey. Naturally, Peters abstained. Health-food nuts piss me off sometimes.
Within minutes several other visitors showed up, and it seemed best for us to eave. I wasn't looking forward to being alone with Peters. I figured he'd land on me with all fours. I wasn't wrong.
"You've really done it this time!"
"Done what?" I made a stab at playing innocent.
"Jesus, Beau. We never even read her her rights."
"We didn't need to. She didn't do it."
"What? How can you be so sure?"
"Instinct, Peters. Pure gut instinct."
"I can quote you chapter and verse when your instincts haven't been absolutely, one hundred percent accurate."
I could, too, but I didn't tell Peters that. Instead, I said, "Ridley was too big. With the morphine, he would have been all dead weight. She couldn't have strung him up, certainly not in her condition."
"She could have had help."
"She didn't."
Peters wasn't about to give up his pet suspect. "What about her father? The two of them could have done it together. She said she got back around midnight. The coroner said he died about two A.M. Portland doesn't give her an alibi, if you ask me."
I thought about Joanna's father, the kindly, stoop-shouldered old man who had let us in the house the day before. "No way," I said. "It's got to be somebody else."
We let it go at that. Neither of us was going to change the other's mind.
Before leaving Joanna's house, we had decided to stop by Mercer Island High School in hopes of determining the identity of Darwin Ridley's cheerleader. With that in mind, I turned off Rainier Avenue onto an on-ramp for I-90. Unfortunately, I had been too busy talking to notice that traffic on the ramp was stopped cold, three car lengths from the entrance.
Unable to go forward or back, we spent the next hour stuck in traffic while workers building the new floating bridge across Lake Washington escorted traffic through the construction, one snail-paced lane at a time.
We should have phoned first. We got to the school about twelve-fifteen, only to discover that Candace Wynn wasn't there. Her mother was gravely ill, and Mrs. Wynn had taken the day off.
Ned Browning's clerk wasn't exactly cordial, but she was somewhat more helpful than she had been the previous day. She gave us Mrs. Wynn's telephone number in Seattle. We tried calling before we left the school, but there was no answer.
Back in the car, we started toward Seattle. Thinking the other bridge might be faster, we avoided I-90 and circled around through Bellevue. Unfortunately, a lot of other people had the same idea, including two drivers who managed to smack into one another head-on in the middle of the Evergreen Point span. It wasn't a serious accident, but it was enough to tie us up in traffic for another hour, along with several thousand other hapless souls.
It was a flawless spring day, without a cloud in the sky, with Lake Washington glassy and smooth beneath us, and with Mount Rainier a snow-covered vision to our left. Unfortunately, Peters was still ripped about Joanna Ridley, and I was pissed about the traffic, so we weren't particularly good company, and we didn't spend that hour admiring the scenery.
We finally got back to the department around two. I took Joanna's photograph and envelope down to the crime lab to see if they could lift prints or magnify the photo enough to read the print in the notice on the motel room door. Meanwhile, Peters settled down in our cubicle to try to track down Candace Wynn. By the time I got back to the fifth floor, he had reached her and made arrangements for us to meet her at a Greek restaurant in Fremont in half an hour.
Fremont is a Seattle neighborhood where aging hippies who've grown up and gone relatively straight try to sell goods and services to whatever brand of flower children is currently in vogue. Costas Opa, a Greek restaurant right across from the Fremont Bridge, is quite a bit more upscale than some of its funky neighbors. It was late afternoon by then. The place was long on tables and short on customers when we got there.
We sat at a corner window table where we could see traffic coming in all directions. Across the street, Seattle 's favorite piece of public art was still wearing the green two days after St. Patrick's day. Waiting For The Interurban is a homey piece of statuary made up of seven life-size figures, including a dog, whose face is rumored to bear a remarkable resemblance to one of the sculptor's sworn enemies. They stand under what seems to be a train station platform, waiting for an old Seattle/Tacoma commuter that has long since quit running.
Throughout the year, concerned citizens and frustrated artists make additions and corrections by adding seasonal touches to the statues' costumes. That day, they all wore emerald green full-length scarves.
I expected Candace Wynn to drive up in her red pickup. Instead, she arrived on foot, walking the wrong way up a one-way street. The Fremont Bridge, a drawbridge, was open. Candace darted through stopped vehicles to cross the street to the restaurant.
Her outfit wasn't well suited for visiting invalid relatives. She wore frayed jeans, a ragged sweatshirt, and holey tennis shoes. Sitting down, she ordered coffee.
"I'm in the process of moving," she explained, glancing down at her clothes. "The house is a mess, or I'd have invited you there."
"You live around here?" Peters asked.
She pointed north toward the Ship Canal. "Up there a few blocks, in an old watchman's quarters. View's not much, but I couldn't beat the rent. I'm moving back home, though, at the end of the month."
"Back home with your mother?"
She nodded.
"How is your mother?" I asked. "I understand she's very ill." Sometimes it surprises me when the niceties my own mother drilled into my head surface unconsciously in polite company.
Candace Wynn's freckled face grew serious. "So, so," she said. "It comes and goes. She's got cancer. She's back in the hospital right now. I'll be home to help her when she gets out. I was up with her all last night and couldn't face going to school this morning. Once I woke up, though, I decided to tackle packing. It was too nice a day to waste."
I had to agree with her there. If you've ever spent time with a cancer patient, you should know better than to squander a perfect day being miserable over little things like stalled traffic.
Somehow I had forgotten. I had spent the day blind to blossoming cherry trees and newly leafing trees. It took Andi Wynn's casual remark to bring me up short, to make me remember.
We had yet to ask her a single question, but already I was prepared to mark the interview down as an unqualified success. Whether or not she identified Mercer Island 's precociously amorous cheerleader.
CHAPTER 12
After the waiter set down her coffee, Candace Wynn took one demure sip and then looked expectantly from Peters to me and back again. "You said you needed to talk to me."
I gave Peters the old take-it-away high sign. After all, Candace Wynn knew Peters somewhat better than she knew me. Besides, Peters' earnest, engaging manner encouraged people to spill their guts. I had seen it happen.
"That's right; we do," Peters said. "How long have you been at Mercer Island?"
"Ten years."
"All that time as counselor?"
"No. I've only been in the counseling department for the last year and a half. Before that, I taught math."