I had forgotten all about Ralph Ames and his plans for the evening until I walked up to the door of my apartment and smelled the garlic. Ralph Ames is one of those people who never met a garlic clove he didn’t like. He claims that the real secret behind every successful barbecue is layering it on-ground, minced, pressed, or chopped, it doesn’t matter. That initial savory whiff was followed by the sound of female laughter coming from behind the still-closed door.
She was there all right. The lunchtime lady had returned for a dinnertime engagement when all I wanted to do was eat a square meal, hit the sack, and let them do the same. I stuck an idiotic grin on my face and opened the door.
Ralph Ames is never so happy as when he’s busy demolishing my kitchen. The edible results are always masterful, but the kitchen usually resembles a war zone afterward. This particular meal was no exception.
While Ralph held sway over a smoking Jenn-Air grill with a pasta pot bubbling near his elbow, a woman with a dish towel tied around her waist stood at the far end of the counter breaking up handfuls of romaine.
“Why, Beau,” Ralph said heartily. “You’re just in time. Let me introduce you to Alexis Downey, Alex for short. Alex, this is my friend J. P. Beaumont. Everyone calls him Beau.”
I held out my hand. She dried one hand on the towel and then shook mine. She was in her mid-to-late thirties probably, medium tall with short, auburn hair, a bit of gray around the temples, and a pair of amazingly blue eyes.
She smiled. “Glad to meet you, Beau. Ralph has told me so much about you.”
“Alex is the director of development for the Seattle Repertory Theater,” Ralph announced, flopping the steaks over on the grill.
“Glad to make your acquaintance, Alex,” I returned politely, but secretly I was wondering how much of a donation she had hit him up for. Which only goes to show how naive I still am.
I mistakenly thought Ralph Ames was the target.
CHAPTER 11
I made it through dinner without falling asleep in my food, but only just barely. Alexis Downey went out of her way to be cordial and include me in the general conversation, but it was all I could do to concentrate on what she and Ralph were saying.
For some reason, Alex was inordinately interested in Belltown Terrace’s Bentley which I, along with the rest of my partners, regard as a royal pain in the ass. Intended to be one of the condominium’s distinctive amenities, the limo actually had spent far more time in the shop than it had on the street. Finally, sick of repairs and complaints from periodically stranded riders/residents, we leased a new Cadillac for the building and left the aging Bentley covered and more or less permanently parked on the P-1 level of the garage.
“Is it running now?” Alex Downey asked.
“Hard to say,” I told her. “It has what mechanics call an intermittent ignition problem. That means sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.”
“Would I be able to go for a ride in it? I’ve never ridden in a Bentley, and I’ve always wanted to.”
“Call down to the concierge,” I told her. “If the driver isn’t all booked up, and if he can get it started, maybe he can take you and Ralph for a spin later on tonight after dinner.”
“Wouldn’t you like to come along?” Alex Downey enthused. “We could ride over to West Seattle and watch the city lights from Alki Point.”
“No thanks. I’m on my way to bed. I was up working all last night.”
“Oh really? What do you do?”
Obviously in the “so much” Ralph had told her about me, he had neglected to include anything so basic as information about my work. “I’m a cop,” I told her. “A detective down at Seattle PD.”
“How exciting.”
“It’s a job,” I returned.
Alex glanced meaningfully around my penthouse apartment, suddenly seeing it with new eyes. “Yours must pay better than most,” she said.
“Not that much better,” I told her gruffly.
I didn’t feel like going into any detailed personal explanations about how I managed to live in Belltown Terrace’s penthouse on an ordinary cop’s salary. It was none of Alex Downey’s business.
During all this repartee, Ralph sat at the far end of the table, grinning from ear to ear. His eyes shifted between Alex and me as though watching a conversational tennis ball being lobbed back and forth. He was up to something, but I couldn’t quite figure out what, and I didn’t want to.
Halfway through my steak, I gave out completely. “You two are going to have to excuse me,” I said, abandoning my plate. “I just hit the wall. If I don’t go to bed soon, you’ll have to carry me.”
Alex Downey stood up and offered her hand. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Beau. Can I call and talk to you about the Bentley Monday or Tuesday of next week?”
Back to the Bentley again. “You can talk to me about it anytime you please, just not tonight.”
With that, I staggered off to bed. I was asleep within seconds, but my last waking thought was something about Ralph Ames’s strange taste in women.
I slept for twelve solid hours. The clock radio evidently came on and went off again without my hearing a thing. Big Al called at ten to eight. “Aren’t you supposed to be down here for a task force meeting in ten minutes?”
“Holy shit! I overslept.”
With no time to shower, I bounded out of bed and started rummaging for clothes. I was slipping on my shoes when Ralph knocked on the bedroom door.
“Coffee?” he asked. He was already dressed. In his hand he held a steaming mug of coffee which I accepted gratefully.
“I’m late,” I told him. “Do you mind dropping me off at the department?”
“Not at all. I’ll go get my wallet.”
The lights on Second and Fourth Avenues are timed so that, if you hit them just right, you can make it all the way from Denny to Jackson or the other way around without being stopped. Ralph guided my newly repaired Porsche down Second without the slightest hitch, and I dashed into the building at three minutes after. The real traffic jam of the morning was inside the building, where the lobby was crowded with people waiting for elevators. The door of one was plastered with a hand-painted OUT OF ORDER sign, making a critical problem out of a chronic one. I bypassed the elevators and ran, puffing, up the seemingly endless flights of stairs.
After jostling my way through another lobby, this one crowded with media types, I edged my way into the eighth floor conference room. Sergeant Watkins, standing in front of a chalkboard, fixed me with a hard-edged stare as I tried to slip unobtrusively into the last row of seats.
“Glad you could make it this morning, Detective Beaumont,” he said, meaning, of course, that everyone else had managed to arrive on time. “Hope this meeting isn’t inconveniencing you.” Properly chastised, I stared down at my feet. Only then, in the brilliant glow of fluorescent lights, did I realize I was wearing one brown and one black sock.
Up front, Watty continued his chalk talk. While he spoke, I listened to what he was saying, but my eyes kept straying back to the black ribbon, the department’s traditional symbol of mourning, that had been taped over part of his badge. Looking at the badge was a constant reminder that, no matter what Ben Weston may or may not have done, the business at hand was really about a dead cop.
“As I was saying, this task force is a team effort, and I do mean T-E-A-M. Each of you will have focused responsibilities on one aspect of the case or another, but every one of you will be sharing all pertinent information with everyone else. Is that clear?”
Nods of agreement spread through the room. Detective Kramer, seated next to a small table in the front of the room, nodded so hard I’m surprised his teeth didn’t fall out-the ass-kissing son of a bitch.