"Starting with United Airlines?"
"That's as good a place to start as any."
"How about the neighbors?"
"Them, too."
Peters hesitated. "What would she have to gain, insurance maybe?"
"It wouldn't be the first time," I replied.
"I've never dealt with a pregnant murder suspect before. The very idea runs against the grain."
"Murder's against the grain," I reminded him. "Pregnancy's no more a legal defense for murder than Twinkies are."
Peters hung up then, but I could tell it still bothered him. To tell the truth, it bothered me. Joanna Ridley bothered me. I recalled her house, the way she had looked when she answered the door, her reactions when she finally learned what I was there for. I would have sworn she wasn't playacting, but as I get older, the things I'm sure of become fewer.
I kept coming back to the bottom line. Joanna Ridley had lied to us, more than once. In the world of murder and mayhem, liars are losers. And they're usually guilty.
Just thinking about the next day made me weary. I stripped off my clothes and crawled into bed. I wasn't quite asleep when the phone rang.
"How's it going, J. P.?"
"Maxwell Cole, you son of a bitch! It's late. Leave me alone. I've got a job to do. I don't need you on my ass."
"Look, J. P., here I am calling you up to lend a little assistance, and you give me the brush-off."
"What kind of assistance?"
"You ever heard of FURY?"
"What is this, a joke?"
"No joke. Have you ever heard of it?"
"Well, I've heard of Plymouth Furies and ‘hell hath no fury.' Which is it?"
"It's an acronym, F-U-R-Y. The initials stand for Faithful United to Rescue You."
"To rescue me? From what?"
"J. P., I'm telling you, this is no joke. These people are serious. They're having their first convention in town this week. They're up at the Tower Inn on Aurora."
"So what are they rescuing? Get to the point, Max."
"They're white supremacists. I interviewed their president today. No kidding. They want blacks to go back where they came from."
"Jesus Christ, Max. What does all this have to do with me? I need my beauty sleep."
"They said it's possible one of their members knocked off Darwin Ridley."
"Send me his name and number. I'll track him down in the morning."
"J. P…"
"Get off it, Max. You know how this works. Some kooky splinter group claims responsibility for a crime and manufactures a whole armload of free publicity. Don't fall for it. And don't complicate my life. I've got plenty to do without chasing after phony suspects who are playing the media for a bunch of fools."
"Are you saying…" he began.
"If the shoe fits!"
With that, I hung up. The phone began ringing again within seconds, but I ignored it. It rang twenty times or so before it finally stopped.
Within minutes, I was sound asleep and dreaming about Girl Scout cookies.
CHAPTER 10
There's only one thing to do with that many Girl Scout cookies-take them to the office and share the wealth. So I drove to the Public Safety Building and parked the Porsche in the bargain basement garage at the foot of Columbia. I've noticed that my 928 commands a fair amount of respect from parking garage attendants.
This one held the door open for me as I got out. Then I crawled back inside and dredged out the two cartons of cookies. When the kid handed me my parking ticket, I gave him a box of cookies.
"Hey, thanks," he said, grinning.
"Just handle my baby with care," I told him.
"We always do," he replied.
I was halfway up the block when I heard squealing tires as he jockeyed the Porsche into a parking place. There was no accompanying sound of crumpling metal, so I didn't worry about it.
Peters glanced up from his newspaper as I put the cookies on my desk. "Want one?" I asked.
"Are you kidding? That much sugar will kill you, Beau. What are you doing, peddling them for one of your neighbors?"
"Peddling, hell! I'm giving this stuff away, all in the line of duty."
"Don't tell me you bought that many cookies last night when you were talking to that little girl about the Ridleys."
"She's a terrific salesman."
"And you're an easy mark."
For the remainder of the morning, while Peters and I valiantly worked at running a check on Joanna Ridley and tried to dredge a copy of the check out of a combination of Girl Scout and bank bureaucracy, our two desks became the social hub of the department. Word of free cookies spread like wildfire, and everyone from Vice to Property managed to stop by with a cup of coffee. Including Captain Lawrence Powell.
He wasn't above taking a cookie or two before he lit into us. "Whenever you two finish socializing, how about stopping by my office for a little chat."
Larry Powell's glass-enclosed, supposedly private office offers all the privacy of a fishbowl, which is what we call it. It isn't sound-proofed, either. You don't have to be a lip-reader to know everything that's going on behind Powell's closed door.
"You're out of line, Beau," he said. "Dr. Baker has sent a formal complaint to the chief."
"That jerk," I said.
"Detective Beaumont, this is serious. Just because you can literally buy and sell city blocks in this town doesn't give you the right to run roughshod over elected public officials."
"Look, Larry, we're not talking net worth here. Baker demanded information before I had it. Then he pitched a fit because I wouldn't give it to him."
"This is a sensitive case, Beau. If you're going to go off half-cocked, I'll pull you two off it and give it to someone who isn't as hot-headed."
"It wouldn't be such a sensitive case, as you put it, if Peters and I hadn't figured out who he was. Darwin Ridley was just an unidentified corpse by a garbage dumpster until we got hold of him, remember?"
"We're making progress," Peters put in helpfully, hoping to defuse the situation a little.
Powell turned from me to Peters. "You are?"
"We've been working one possibility all morning."
"Well, get on with it, then, but don't step on any more toes. You got that?" Powell had worked himself into a real temper tantrum.
"You bet! I've got it all right." I steamed out of the fishbowl with Peters right behind me. Making a detour past our cubicle, I grabbed up our jackets, tossed Peters his, and shrugged my way into mine.
"Where are we going?" Peters asked.
"Out!" I snapped.
It took a while for the attendant to free my Porsche. It had been buried among a group of all-day cars as opposed to short-term ones. Once out of the garage, I hauled ass through Pioneer Square, driving south.
"I asked you before, where are we going?"
"Any objections to letting Joanna Ridley know we know she's a lying sack of shit?"
"None from me."
"Good. That's where we're going."
"Do you think it'll work?" he asked.
"She's no pro. She's not even a particularly good liar. It won't take much to push her over the edge, just a little nudge, especially in her condition."
Peters nodded in agreement.
By the time we got off the freeway, fast driving had pretty well boiled the venom out of my gut. It wasn't the first time I'd heard sly references to the fact that having money had somehow spoiled J. P. Beaumont. Money doesn't automatically make you an asshole. Or a prima donna, either. Damn Doc Baker anyway.
We drove across Beacon Hill, one of the glacial ridges that separates Puget Sound from Lake Washington. When we stopped in front of Joanna Ridley's house, there were no cars there at all. I was disappointed. I had geared myself up for a confrontation. Now it looked as though it wasn't going to happen.