"You've got yourself a deal," Peters told me. "You drive to Portland, and I'll handle the paperwork."
Talk about getting the best of the bargain! I headed for my apartment. No way was I going to drive one of the departmental crates to Portland when my bright red Porsche was longing for the open road.
By four, I was cruising down Interstate 5, headed south. Once I passed the worst of the Seattle/Tacoma traffic, I set the cruise control to a sedate sixty-two. Red Porsches draw radar guns like shit draws flies. Sergeant Watkins had given me a long lecture in community relations on the occasion of my second speeding ticket. I had slowed down some since then.
As I drove, I was conscious of springtime blossoming around me. Spindly blackberry clumps were green with a thin covering of new leaves. Here and there, hillsides were graced with farmhouses surrounded by blooming fruit trees.
Between Seattle and Portland, I-5 bypasses dozens of little western Washington towns-Lacy, Maytown, Tenino, Kelso-places travelers never see in actual life. They're nothing more than signs on the freeway and names and dots in a road atlas. Nevertheless, bits and pieces of small-town life leaked into my consciousness. There was the ever-present message from an eccentric Centralia dairy farmer whose private billboard still wanted to get us out of the UN, and the new chain-link fence surrounding the juvenile detention center in Chehalis that said we don't want our town contaminated by these kids. Further south, another billboard proclaimed the Winlock Egg Days.
I had never attended an egg festival. Or wanted to.
The day was flawlessly clear and bright. To the left across the freeway, Mount Rainier majestically reflected back fragile spring sunlight. It was too dark to catch sight of the shattered, still-steaming profile of Mount St. Helens.
I savored every moment of that drive south, from the thick papermill-flavored air of Longview to the cheerful lights on the grain elevator at Kalama. With every mile, the case receded into the far reaches of my mind. For those three quiet hours, I forgot about Darwin and Joanna Ridley, about Bambi Barker and her father, Wheeler-Dealer.
As a homicide cop, that's a luxury I don't give myself very often, but Candace Wynn and her mother had brought back memories of my own mother and her painful death. It had pulled me up short and forced me to recognize exactly how precious life is, had shocked me out of the trap of drifting through life without tasting or noticing.
I owed Candace Wynn a debt of gratitude. Sometime I'd have to call her up and thank her.
CHAPTER 13
St. Agnes of the Hills School sits well back from the road in the middle of Beaverton. It boasts an expanse of beautifully manicured, discreetly lit grounds sandwiched between business parks and new and used car lots. It was late evening when I drove up the circular driveway and parked in front of the building. Spotlights showed off the golden bricks and arches of a graceful Spanish facade on the front of the building.
In the darkness, one front window of the building glowed industriously. I climbed the circular stairway and tried the heavy, double door. It opened into a highly polished, tiled vestibule. Directly ahead, the doors to a plain chapel stood open, but the room itself was deserted. To one side of the vestibule, the fluorescent glow of a light revealed a tiny receptionist's cubbyhole. There was, however, no receptionist in sight. From a room beyond that room, through a half-opened door, I heard the hollow clacking of an old manual typewriter.
I paused in the doorway of the second room. A woman in a prim white blouse with a short blue-and-white wimple on her head sat with her profile to the door, leaning over a typewriter in absolute concentration, her fingers flying. She was a bony woman with a hawkish nose. Wisps of gray hair strayed out from under her headpiece.
She was typing at a small, movable typing table. The large wooden desk beside her was polished to a high gloss and devoid of any clutter. An equally polished brass nameplate on the desk pronounced "Sister Marie Regina O'Dea" in a way that said the lady brooked no nonsense.
As the unchurched son of a fallen-away Presbyterian, what I knew about Catholic nuns could be stacked on the head of a proverbial pin. My previous knowledge was limited to the convent scenes in The Sound of Music, which was, for many years, my daughter's favorite movie. The sum of my stereotypes went little beyond the schoolboy rumors that roly-poly equals pleasant and angular equals mean, and ugly girls become nuns when nobody makes them a better offer.
Looking at Sister Marie Regina's narrow face, I wondered if anybody had ever made her an offer of any kind.
I stood quietly, watching her type. The woman had no idea I was there. She typed copy from a neat stack of handwritten pages. When she reached the bottom of a page, she stopped, moved the top sheet to the bottom of the stack, straightened the pile with a sharp, decisive thwack on the table, and put them down neatly again.
When she stopped to change pages the second time, I decided to go ahead and interrupt her. "Excuse me, but I'm looking for the lady in charge, Sister Marie Regina, I believe," I said, nodding toward the polished brass nameplate.
Startled, she jumped, her hand knocking the stack of papers to the floor. Without a word to me, she bent down, retrieved the papers, and straightened them completely before she ever officially acknowledged my existence.
"Yes," she replied crossly, eventually, her tone saying she welcomed me about as much as someone welcomes the twenty-four-hour flu. And that was before she knew who I was or what I wanted. "What can I do for you?"
"For starters, could you tell me where to find Sister Marie Regina?"
"I'm Sister Marie Regina."
"Good. My name is J. P. Beaumont. I'm a detective with Seattle P.D. I'd like to speak to one of your students."
I held out my ID for her to look at, but her shrewd eyes never left my face, nor did she reach out to take the proffered identification.
"Which one?" she asked coldly. She knew which student I wanted, and I knew she knew. I went along with it, though, playing dumb just for the hell of it.
"A new student," I said innocuously. "One who's only been here a few days."
Sister Marie Regina O'Dea rose from the typing desk and walked to a tall, brown leather chair behind the polished wooden desk. With slow, deliberate movements, she picked up a blue blazer that was hanging there and put it on. She buttoned the front buttons with a flourish, like someone donning a full suit of Christian soldier armor.
When she spoke, her voice was crisp and peremptory. "Detective Beaumont, I'm sure you understand that the young woman you mentioned is here because she's undergone a severe emotional upheaval. Her family has no wish for her to be disturbed by you or by anyone else."
I matched my tone to hers. Two can play Winning by Intimidation. It's more fun that way.
"Sister Marie Regina, I'm here because I'm conducting a homicide investigation. Bambi Barker is a material witness. I'm afraid her family's wishes have nothing whatsoever to do with it."
She smiled, a brittle smile calculated to be totally unnerving. I'm sure it struck terror in the hearts of recalcitrant fifteen-year-olds. "If you're from Seattle P.D., aren't you somewhat outside your jurisdiction?"
Unfortunately for Sister Marie Regina, I'm a hell of a long way past fifteen. "Concealing material evidence to a capital crime is somewhat out of yours as well, wouldn't you say, Sister?"
She sat down in the high-backed chair and leaned back, clasping her hands in front of her. She regarded me thoughtfully. I don't believe Sister Marie Regina was accustomed to counterattacks.
"Exactly what is it you want, Detective Beaumont?"
"I want to talk to Bambi Barker."
"That's impossible."
"Why?"
I refused to budge under the weight of her level stare. For several long moments we remained locked in visual combat before I took the offensive and attacked her sense of order. I took a straight-backed chair from its place near the wall, moved it to a position in front of her desk, turned it around so the back faced her, and sat astride it with my arms resting on the back of the chair.