"Wait here," I said. "We'll go somewhere we can talk."
I left her there and went in search of Peters. I found him and Candace Wynn standing right where we'd left them. They were laughing and talking.
"I'm going to be gone for a while," I told Peters abruptly.
Puzzled, he looked at me. "Want me to go along?" he asked.
I shook my head. "No need. I'll be back in half an hour or so."
To this day, I'm not sure why I didn't have Peters come along with us. Joanna's Mustang was small, but there would have been room enough for the three of us.
Peters shrugged. "Okay. Suit yourself. I'll wait here. Besides, I should get the camera from the car and take some pictures of that list. Even if it's not admissible, doesn't mean it isn't usable."
I nodded in agreement. Leaving them, I hustled back to Joanna Ridley. She was still standing beside the Mustang, where I'd left her, as if glued to the spot. She jumped like a startled deer when I returned.
"Would you like me to drive?"
Wordlessly, she handed me her keys. I helped her into the car and shut the door. I got in and put the key in the ignition.
Joanna seemed dazed, unable to grasp what had happened. "Why are those things in my trunk?"
"That's what we're going to find out," I told her. I started the car and backed it out of the parking place. The only restaurant I knew on Mercer Island was a Denny's down near I-90. I fought my way through the maze of highway construction and found the restaurant on only the second try. For most of the drive, Joanna sat next to me in stricken silence.
Once in Denny's, we went to a booth in the far corner of the room and ordered coffee. "Tell me again where you kept the flour container," I demanded.
"In the storeroom at the end of the carport."
"Locked or unlocked?"
"Locked. Always."
"When was the last you saw it?"
"I don't know. A couple of weeks, I guess. I don't keep track."
"And you haven't noticed if the storeroom has been unlocked at any time?"
"No."
"When were you out there last?"
She shrugged. "Sometime last week."
"And the flour container was there?"
"As far as I know, but I don't remember for sure." She paused. "What are you going to do?"
"Take the container to the crime lab. See what they can find out."
"Why was it there?"
"In your car?"
She nodded.
"Someone wanted it found there."
"So you'd think I killed him?"
"Yes."
"Do you?"
"No."
There was another long pause. The waitress came and refilled both our coffee cups. While she did it, Joanna's eyes never left my face.
"Is that smart?"
"For me not to suspect you? Probably not, but I don't just the same."
"Thank you."
I was sitting looking at her, but my random access memory went straying back to Monday night, the first night I had seen her, when I brought her back from the medical examiner's office. The light in the carport had been turned off. Was that when the flour container disappeared?
I leaned forward in my chair. "Joanna, do you remember when we left your house that night to go to the medical examiner's office? Do you remember if you turned off the light in the carport before we drove away?"
She frowned and shook her head. "I don't remember at all. I might have, but I doubt it."
"Did you notice that when we came back the light wasn't on?"
"No."
"Where's the switch for the light in the carport?"
"There are two of them. One by the back door and one by the front."
"Both inside?"
"Yes."
I downed the rest of my coffee and stood up. "Come on."
"Where are we going?"
"We're going to drop the container off at the crime lab and make arrangements for them to send someone out to your house to dust it for prints."
"You think the killer was there, in my house?"
"I'm willing to bet on it."
"But how did he get in? How did he open my car without my knowing it?"
"Your husband had keys to your car, didn't he?"
She nodded.
"And the killer had Darwin 's keys."
She stood up, too. "All right," she said.
"I'm making arrangements for someone to put new locks on all your doors, both on the house and the car."
Joanna looked puzzled. "Why?"
"If he got in once," I said grimly, "he could do it again."
I had no intention of unloading the container from Joanna's car into ours to take it to the crime lab. Janice Morraine, my friend at the crime lab, tells me evidence is like pie dough-fragile. The less handling the better.
It was rush hour by the time we were back in traffic. I-90 westbound was reduced to a single lane going into the city. It took us twenty minutes to get off the access road and onto the freeway. Rush hour is a helluva funny word for it. We spent most of the next hour parked on the bridge. I would make a poor commuter. I don't have the patience for it anymore.
Joanna was subdued as we drove. "The funeral's tomorrow," she said finally. "Will you be there?"
"What time?"
"Four," she replied.
"I don't know if I'll make it," I said. "What about the memorial service at school. Will you be going to that?"
"No. I don't think I could face those kids. Not after what happened."
I didn't blame her for that. I would have felt the same way. "If I were you, I don't think I could, either," I told her.
The entire cheerleading squad would probably be there.
Except for one. Bambi Barker.
CHAPTER 19
Joanna Ridley dropped me back at Mercer Island High School a little after seven. It wasn't quite dusk. The only car visible in the school lot was our departmental Dodge. A note from Peters was stuck under the windshield wiper. "See the custodian."
I went looking for one. It took a while, but I finally found him polishing a long hallway with a machine that sounded like a Boeing 747 preparing for takeoff. I shouted to him a couple of times before he heard me and shut off the noise.
"I'm supposed to talk to you."
"Your name Beaumont?" he asked. I nodded, and he reached in his pocket and extracted the keys to the car in the parking lot. "Your partner said you should pick him up at the Roanoke."
It didn't make sense to me. If Peters had gotten a ride all the way to the Roanoke in Seattle, why hadn't he asked Andi Wynn to drop him off at the department so he could have picked up his own car? I was operating on too little sleep to want to play cab driver, but I grudgingly convinced myself it had been thoughtful of him to leave the car. At least that way I'd have access to transportation back downtown.
None too graciously, I thanked the custodian for his help and set off for Seattle. Something big must have been happening at Seattle Center that night. Traffic was backed up on both the bridge and I-5. I finally got to the Roanoke Exit on the freeway and made my way to the restaurant by the same name on Eastlake at the bottom of the hill.
Andi Wynn's red pickup wasn't outside, and when I went into the bar, there was no trace of Peters and Andi inside, either.
"Can I help you?" the bartender asked.
"I'm looking for some friends of mine. Both of them have red hair. A man, thirty-five, six two. A woman about the same age. Both pretty good-looking. They were driving a red pickup."
"Nobody like that's been in here tonight," the bartender reported. "Been pretty slow as a matter of fact."