Cold Case (18 page)

Barbara entered the Art Colony art supply shop and gallery that afternoon to be greeted warmly by the two partners, Lou Granville and Sal Wellman. Lou, in her early fifties, had lived in Eugene all her life, Sal, several years younger, for the past fifteen years. They chatted for a minute or two about business, a coming art show, the hot weather, and then, feeling the civilities had been observed, Barbara asked the questions that had brought her to the shop.

“Have you read anything about the McCrutchen case?” They both nodded.

“Okay, then you probably know that there could be a link to a woman named Jill Storey, who was also murdered twenty-two years ago. Lou, you were around here at that time, did you know her?”

“Nope. Never met her,” Lou said. “Why?”

“She wasn't part of the gay community then?”

“Honey, there wasn't much of a community in those days, but the answer's the same, no. Did she belong?”

“That's what I'm trying to find out,” Barbara said. “I've heard hints, but nothing conclusive, and it could make a difference.”

“Was she from here? Into art in any way?” Sal asked.

“From Gresham,” Barbara said. “She was going to the U of O, majoring in business, and probably had nothing to do with the art crowd.”

Sal and Lou exchanged looks, then shook their heads. “Business students weren't likely to come out, not in those days, probably not now, either,” Lou said. “My field? Who gives a damn? But business?” She shook her head again.

“I was afraid that was the case,” Barbara said. “Do you know if Marli is in town? I called and left a message, but she hasn't called back.”

“She's in Chicago,” Sal said. “Her brother's wedding. But you might as well forget her. Lou knew everyone then, and still does, unless they're hiding deep, deep in the closet.” She laughed a bitter little laugh, then said angrily, “That's the real problem. If they'd all just admit who they are, it would make it easier for everyone. Folks would have to take notice if ten percent of the goddamn population all stood up together.”

Lou put her hand on Sal's arm and she subsided.

“How about a partner when she was at the university?” Lou asked.

“I'm sure there was one, but she's hiding, too, I'm afraid. She teaches in Richland, in Washington State, not too far from the Walla Walla area,” Barbara said.

“Probably hiding. I know a couple of people in Walla Walla,” Lou replied.

“I wouldn't out her,” Barbara said quickly. “If she's in hiding, there's probably a reason.”

“In that part of the country?” Lou laughed, but her laughter came from real amusement. “But at least you'd know. Want to give me a name?”

Barbara hesitated only a moment. She had known Lou for many years, and she knew Lou would never do anything to hurt another lesbian. She gave her Olga's name. Even if she never used any information Lou might give her, at least she would know if she was on the right track.

F
riday afternoon Barbara stood in the broad, bright corridor of the courthouse talking to her client, a middle-aged, gray-haired, stocky Hispanic man. His eyes were wide with bewilderment.

“When do I have to come back? How many times?” Roberto asked.

“Never,” Barbara said. “The judge dismissed the case. It's over.”

Roberto blinked, and spoke in rapid Spanish to his wife. She looked from him to Barbara, her eyes filled with tears. “It's true? It's over?” Her voice was little more than a whisper.

Barbara assured them both that indeed it was over, they were free to go home.

Their outpouring of gratitude made Barbara shift uncomfortably until, behind Roberto's head, she spotted Hoggarth watching with an impatient expression. She excused herself, and escaped before Roberto could embrace her and his wife do something even more embarrassing, like kiss her hand.

Hoggarth walked toward her as she extracted herself from her client. Drawing near, without preliminaries, he said, “I want a formal statement from your client on Wednesday morning. Ten. And let's start at ten this time.” As if it were an afterthought, he handed her a thick manila envelope. He turned and walked back the way he had come.

She called after him, “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

He did not acknowledge it.

Back to the office and blessed air-conditioning, she decided, although she had told Maria she would go home after court. It was too hot in her house to do any serious reading, and she suspected that she had some to do. She drove straight to the office.

Maria had left and Shelley was gone, had been gone much of the week, tracking down the people on the list Barbara had provided. Darren would not leave the clinic until seven and Todd was hanging out at a pal's house where there was a swimming pool. She would order Chinese food, pick it up close to seven and head for home then. She settled down to read the file.

For several hours that day Frank had been working on his edited book, now and then cursing when he came across more of the asinine comments made by a for-hire copy editor. He had called his regular editor, who shared his anger and apologized profusely. Not mollified, Frank made the necessary corrections, while Patsy struggled with the footnotes and index. At four he called it quits for the day.

“We'll both lose our minds if we don't take a nice weekend break,” he said at Patsy's office door.

“Are you leaving?” Patsy asked, taking off her glasses, rubbing her eyes.

“You bet I am. Want to give me a lift home? Is your house intolerably hot?”

She shook her head. “Closed up all day, window fans at night to blow out what hot air gets in, it doesn't stay too bad.”

They put everything away until Monday and left.

At seven he walked into the Ambrosia Restaurant. His house was too hot to think about cooking, he had decided, and made the reservation for himself. He was surprised to see Lucy McCrutchen at the restaurant door, apparently on her way out.

“Good evening, Mr. Holloway,” she said. “I hope you have a reservation. If you don't, I'm afraid you're out of luck, as I just found out.”

“Please,” he said. “Share my table. I did call. One, two, same table. I don't think they make tables for just one, do they?”

She hesitated a moment, then nodded. “Thank you. That would be nice. Actually I don't like eating alone in a restaurant. Do you?”

“I rarely do it,” he said. “And no, I don't like it, either.”

Minutes later they were seated at one of the upstairs tables. The restaurant was cool and dimly lit, enhancing the coolness, a welcome relief.

“I'm glad I ran into you,” Lucy said after they ordered. “You remember those pink poppies you admired? They are finished blooming and soon they'll go dormant. I plan to divide them in mid-August, if you'd like a start.”

“You don't intend to dig those roots out, do you? Do you know how long they are?” Frank asked.

Amused, she said, “Of course. It won't be the first time.”

“Make a deal,” Frank said. “I'll provide the labor in exchange for one.”

They chatted easily and Lucy thought how nice it was to share a table with a charming man whose interests coincided with hers. If Henry had not wandered over late that afternoon, she reflected, she would be in her house eating alone and reading a book. This was better. Poor Henry. He had asked, practically begged her to have dinner with him in his house, where the central air-conditioning was on, the house cool enough for a sweater, he had said. They could listen to music, or watch a movie, order dinner in. She had long thought his house was more like a crypt than a home and she had begged off, plans with other friends, she had said vaguely.

Their conversation drifted from topic to topic effortlessly, and it seemed very soon that they had finished with coffee and were ready to leave. Frank walked to her car with her.

“Lucy, this has been one of the most pleasant evenings I've had in a long time. Thank you for joining me,” he said.

“Thank you for letting me,” she said. “I've enjoyed it, too. I'll call you when the poppies are ready.”

He waited until she started her car and was ready to back out of the lot, then turned to retrieve his own car and drive home. She had insisted on paying for her own dinner. He didn't know why he had found that pleasing, that she insisted on paying for her meal. They had talked about Amy, Travis, gardening practices, gardens they had visited on trips, food, many things, but not about her late husband, or his dead wife. She had not mentioned Chloe, had not talked about Robert. They had not talked about murder.

At the same time that Frank was saying good-night to Lucy, Barbara was regarding Darren, who had stretched out on the futon in the basement den, just to rest a minute he had said. He was sound asleep. The den was degrees cooler than the upstairs, and she decided not to disturb him, but leave him alone to sleep there that night. He was so tired, more tired than she had ever seen him. When she asked how his new interns were doing, he had said, “If I had them in a high school class, I'd send them back to middle school. I've got them both studying Physiology 101.”

She brought a light blanket down and put it within reach for later. It would cool off before morning. After turning out the lights, she went back upstairs to clear away the remains of the Chinese dinner, and finally to consider the police file she had read once and brought home for a closer reading. Knowing that her office over the garage would be even hotter than the house, she rejected it.

Her office in town, she decided at last. Cool, quiet, good light, space to spread papers. Without further thought, she jotted a note for Darren, just in case he woke up, gathered her things and went back to the office.

What Hoggarth had given her was not the same copy Robert had had, she thought later. A copy of a copy, it was not great, and in places it looked smudged; in other places it seemed that someone had covered margin notes before making a new copy. Under a strong light it was possible to tell where notes had been hidden. And the smudges, she felt certain, after examining them closely, had been highlighted on the other copy. The lines looked darker, dirtier, more smudged than other parts of the documents. She made margin arrows to indicate them, then started to read again at the beginning.

Later, Barbara leaned back in her chair, frowning. The highlighted sections had to do with the key, and the margin notes had accompanied those passages. Probably Post-it notes had been used, leaving an outline, hiding the note itself. To all appearances that key had caught Robert's attention as nothing else had, and that was understandable. Nothing else was worth notice. Who had known? David and Jill, Olga and David's roommate. Robert had known. Who had called in the tip? An anonymous tip. Her frown deepened. Jill could have mentioned the key to someone, of course, but it seemed unlikely. And when? She had been napping when Olga left for work, and didn't even have the key until David arrived close to seven-thirty. By then the party was in full gear and noisy.

Who else had known? Barbara went to her desk and found the copy of the paper with
x
's carefully drawn in, then sorted through the folder until she found her list of the last few to leave that night. She turned it over and compared the
x
's to what Amy had drawn—the sketch of the family room, deck, kitchen. She had not included people, just the sites. Robert had populated the sites, she thought looking from one to the other. His
x
's were as nearly proportional to the distances as Amy's more-precise drawing indicated.

He must have been working on it when he was interrupted, she thought. Possibly, he had been trying to figure out who could have overheard what was said on the deck. Interrupted, he carried the paper with him on his way to being shot.

Who had called in the tip about the key in what appeared to be an obvious attempt to incriminate David? Probably none of those represented by an
x.
She remembered what Frank had told her of his conversation with Dr. Elders. He had assumed that David and Jill were intimate because he had seen the item in the newspaper concerning the key. Probably most people had assumed the same thing, since none of the newspaper accounts had explained why she'd had the key.

Barbara returned to the police report and this time made notes as she read. Who had gloves in the summer? Cotton fibers on Jill's neck, in her nails. Frank kept cotton gloves for light gardening. He bought two or three pairs at a time, he had said long ago, because he wore them out fast, and he kept heavy gloves for serious pruning, roses, tough jobs. She visualized Lucy's hat and gloves on the table on the deck at her house. Cotton, she was certain. Extra pairs? No garden dirt had been found on or near the wound, at least none reported, and it would have been. Clean cotton gloves. No transient lurking in the bushes at Jill's apartment house would have had clean cotton gloves. An ambush, like the attack on David? Or someone Jill had with her? Someone who had been at the party and had stolen Lucy's gloves?

The police had interviewed many of the partygoers, but only David had held their attention for any length of time, and as soon as the mystery about the key was resolved, they had turned to the alternate theory of a homeless hanger-on around the campus.

They botched it, she thought. No hard questions for those nice middle-class young people having a respectable party in the home of a much-loved local surgeon and his wife, who would not have tolerated any misbehavior. The party had not been a wild student kegger with fights breaking out, windows broken, a few cars dented, any arrests.

A few genteel questions had been asked of Lucy about the behavior of the party guests, which she'd described as above reproach, exemplary. The same kind of treatment for Dr. Elders. It was not reported that he had observed David acting possessively, jealously toward Jill. Was his recollection now a correction due to careful thought? Revisionist history? Rationalizing? If Jill had David's key, Elders probably had cause to believe he was jealous. Impossible to tell, she decided, and moved on.

Lingering a moment over Chloe's statement, Barbara wondered how much of it was true, how much a cover-up for her fiancé. She claimed he had stumbled and fallen in the shrubs and she went upstairs with him to make sure he got to bed safely. When she returned downstairs, almost everyone had left, and she drove herself home. No mention of a fight on the deck, trouble between Robert and David. Had she known, suspected?

If they'd all signed a pact, Barbara thought in disgust, they could not have done a better job at keeping the murder of Jill Storey distant, removed from the McCrutchen house and everyone who had been there that night.

There were several photographs of Jill taken from different angles. She had been dragged behind bushes, out of sight from passersby on the sidewalk. A sweater was partly under her, her keys near the walk to the apartment. These weren't the autopsy pictures, but of the crime scene, showing her facedown on grass. Her shoulders were bare. They appeared extremely bony. A small dark purse was near the keys in plain sight. It would not have been left behind by a transient. Barbara knew that much, and felt as if that much was all she knew about the death of Jill Storey.