"Why did they send you here? Why this school?"
"My mother's sister is a member of the Order of St. Agnes in Texas. She's the one who suggested it."
I changed the subject abruptly, hoping to throw her off guard. "Tell me about Coach Ridley."
"What about him?"
"How long had it been going on, between the two of you?"
"There was nothing going on, really. I, like, pretended, but it was just a game. I already told you."
"But when did it happen?"
"You mean when did we take the picture?" I nodded, and she shrugged. "Only last week."
"Where?"
"It's a place up on Aurora, in Seattle. A motel."
"How come he didn't see the flash?"
"Molly was outside, using her dad's camera. It doesn't need a flash."
I didn't have nerve enough to look at Sister Eunice right then. I probably could have, though. She deals with teenage kids all the time. She's probably used to it. Me, I'm just a homicide cop. Right then, homicide seemed a hell of a lot more straightforward. The whole scenario of Darwin Ridley being led like a lamb to the slaughter because of some stupid adolescent game shocked me, offended me.
And I thought I'd seen everything.
"Who's Molly?" I asked.
"A friend of mine. My best friend. Molly Blackburn."
"Also a cheerleader?"
Bambi nodded. "She lives right up the street from us. Will she get in trouble, too?"
I made a note of Molly Blackburn's name and address. Molly Blackburn, the budding photographer. Or maybe Molly Blackburn, the budding blackmailer-whichever.
"I can't say one way or the other," I told her.
It was almost midnight when Sister Eunice led Bambi Barker back to her room. Bambi had started down the hall when Sister Eunice poked her head back in the door of the visiting room and asked me to wait long enough for her to return.
When she did, she ushered me out of the visiting room and down the long, empty corridor to a tiny kitchen and lounge. There she poured me a cup of acrid coffee that tasted like it had been in the pot for three weeks.
"Will you be returning to Seattle tonight, Detective Beaumont?" she asked.
I scratched my head and glanced at the movable cat's-eye clock above an equally dated turquoise refrigerator. It was well after eleven. We had spent a long, long evening with Bambi Barker. "It's late, but I suppose so."
"And you're a man of honor?" she asked.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, you won't be talking to The Oregonian before you leave Portland, will you?"
"I told Sister Marie Regina that as long as you helped me, I'd keep my mouth shut."
Sister Eunice looked enormously relieved. "Good," she said. "I'm very happy to hear it."
So much for Bambi Barker's immortal soul. Sister Eunice had become my ally for far more worldly reasons than to keep Bambi's soul safe from hell and damnation. She had done it to keep Sister Marie Regina's Taurus station wagon off the editorial page. Situational ethics in action.
I took the rest of the coffee to drink in the car, remembering the old Bible verse about judging not and being without sin and all that jazz. After all, I had fired the first shot. And I couldn't argue with the results. I had gotten what I wanted from Bambi Barker.
As I started the Porsche, I realized how hungry I was. When I reached downtown Portland, I stopped off at a little joint on S.W. First, a place called the Veritable Quandary. I remembered it from the mid-seventies as a little tavern where they made great roast beef sandwiches and you could play pickup chess while you ate. Unfortunately, the eighties had caught up with it. The easygoing tavern atmosphere had evolved into a full-scale bar scene. The chessboards and magazines had long since disappeared. The sandwich was good, though, and it helped counteract Sister Eunice's bitter coffee.
It was only as I sat there in solitary silence, chewing on my roast beef, that I realized I had never asked Bambi Barker how much her prize was for screwing Darwin Ridley. On second thought, I was probably better off not knowing.
Thinking about it spoiled my appetite. I didn't finish the sandwich.
CHAPTER 15
There was a lot to think about on the way home. Bambi Barker had shaken me. I couldn't help wondering how I would have felt if I had discovered that my own daughter, Kelly, had been pulling something like that when she was in high school. Would I have taken the time to find out that the girls had been playing the teacher for a fool, or would I have jumped to the opposite conclusion?
There could be little doubt of the answer to that one. J. P. Beaumont has been known to jump to conclusions on occasion. Somebody by the name of Wheeler-Dealer Barker could very well suffer from the same malady.
In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I figured there was a better-than-even-money chance that Bambi's old man had jumped to his own erroneous and lethal conclusions. We needed to know his whereabouts on Friday night and Saturday morning, while Bambi was locked in her room at home and her mother was standing guard.
Knowing of Molly Blackburn's existence helped answer one puzzling question. The idea that a father would have mailed out such a compromising picture of his own daughter had never made sense to me. I couldn't imagine any father doing such a thing, not even in the heat of anger. I had gone along with that suggestion when no other possibilities had presented themselves, but it made far more sense that the picture might have been part of a blackmail scheme, a complicated, two-sided deal aimed at wresting money from both families involved, the Barkers and the Ridleys.
It seemed likely that a copy of the picture had arrived at the Barker home sometime Friday morning. That was probably what had tipped off old Wheeler-Dealer. Joanna's had arrived days later. That was somewhat puzzling. Why the delay? If you're going to blackmail two different sets of people, why not do it simultaneously? Or maybe they had been mailed at the same time and the postal service had screwed up.
My questions defied any attempt to find answers, but they served to fill up the long straight stretches of interstate. There was hardly any traffic on the freeway at that time of night. Just me and a bunch of eighteen-wheelers tearing up the road. I made it back to Seattle in a good deal less time than the three hours it should have taken.
I dropped into bed the minute I got to my apartment. It was three A.M. when I turned out the light and fell asleep.
Fifteen minutes later the phone rang, jarring me out of a sound sleep. "Please stay on the line," a tinny, computerized female voice told me. Within moments, Ralph Ames' voice sputtered into the receiver. He sounded like somebody had just kicked him awake, too.
"What do you want?" he demanded in a groggy grumble.
"What do you mean, ‘What do I want'? You called me, remember?"
"Oh, I must have forgotten to turn that damn thing off when I went to bed."
"What damn thing?" I wasn't playing with a full deck in this conversation.
"My automatic redialer."
An automatic redialer! Ralph Ames' ongoing love affair with gadgets was gradually becoming clear to me. If my phone had been ringing off and on all night, it was probably quite clear to Ida Newell, my next-door neighbor, as well.
"That's just great," I fumed. "I went to bed fifteen minutes ago, Ralph. What's so goddamned important that you woke us both up?"
"Your closing on Belltown Terrace. It's reset for Friday, three-thirty. Can you make it?"
I took a deep breath. "Sometimes you really piss me off. It's three o'clock in the morning. You expect me to have a calendar in my hand?"
"If you had an answering machine…"
"I don't want an answering machine." I rummaged through the nightstand drawer for pen and paper and wrote down the time and place for the real estate closing. "There," I said. "Is that all? Mind if I get some sleep now?"