Lye in Wait (28 page)

"Yes. Very." I gave him a brief version of the story Mrs. Gray
had told me.

"That's sad, but I don't see how you got from there to deciding
this Cherry killed Hanover."

"There's more" I pointed at Richard's baby picture, grimacing
at the thought that I'd had it sitting on my dresser for two days.
"Meghan says this picture isn't Walter. It's Richard."

"Richard?"

"Her ex-husband. From the other night?"

"Oh, him. Right. So, why would Hanover have a baby picture
of Meghan's ex-husband?"

"Because Cherry and Richard's mother, Grace Thorson, are the
same person.

Ambrose raised one eyebrow, then reached for the picture of
Cherry and the Hanover boys. He squinted. Whistled. "Could be.
Hard to tell from this. Might explain why Walter had a baby picture of your housemate's ex, but so might some other things."

Like what? Richard handed out his baby picture to all the
neighbors? Right.

"Can you find out anything about Cherry? See what happened
to her after she left Cadyville?"

"I'll see what I can do," Ambrose said. "And when you take this
stuff over to Mrs. Hanover, ask if it's Cherry in the picture with
her boys."

"It's her," Meghan said from behind us.

"Ms. Bly. Come sit down." He pulled over another chair for her.
He perched his lanky frame on the edge of his desk.

"You sound sure," he said. And she did, more than she had with
me.

"I think you should talk to Grace Thorson, see what she has to
say about it."

"How long did you say she was going to be visiting your exhusband? We might want to wait until we learn a little more about
this Cherry person, confirm Grace Thorson's identity as Hanover's
ex-wife."

"Last night she said she was leaving in two days. And if she
leaves, I imagine it will be hard-and expensive-to talk with her
once she's back in California"

"I see," he said, watching her. "Any other reason you might
want me to talk with your mother-in-law?"

Meghan met his gaze.

"Well, it's okay if you don't want to go talk with her," I said. "We
can do it. In fact, we'll run by there on our way home. I'll drop this
stuff by Tootie's tomorrow. C'mon, Meghan." I stood up.

Ambrose laughed. "Okay, you win. Give me the address, and
I'll go by tonight and talk with his mother. Leave those two pictures with me."

"I thought you worked the day shift."

He sighed. "I do. And then some."

"Can't you do it now?" I said. Meghan didn't try to shush me.

Ambrose saw our expressions and sighed again. "I guess I could."

"Good. Let's go," I said.

"Huh uh. You're not going. Or the deal's off."

"What deal? The one where you're doing your job?" I said.

"You're not coming with me."

I pasted on my sweetest smile.

For some reason, he grumbled all the way out the door.

SINCE AMBROSE HAD FLAT-out refused to let us come with him,
Meghan and I followed in her old Volvo. We didn't even try to be
sneaky about it. All that earned us was a glare in the rearview mirror when we pulled up behind him at a stop sign. But we parked
down the block when he pulled to the curb in front of Dick's and
Ambrose didn't get out and bluster at us to go away, so I decided
to interpret that as tacit approval.

He narrowed his eyes at us when Meghan shut off the car engine, but when we made no move to open the car doors, he strode
up the short sidewalk and poked one long finger at Richard's
doorbell.

Dick lived on the corner of Root and Tenth, in a slate-blue box
divided into eight apartments: four on the first floor, four on the second. Exterior stairs on each corner of the building led to the upper
units, while the lower ones had nine-by-nine-foot pads of concrete
to approximate patios in front of their doors. The concrete pads met
the concrete sidewalk without the bother of anything green and growing in between. His neighbor had made the most of the patio
idea, outlining the cement square with pots of flowering kale and
winter pansies and placing a small bistro set next to a humongous
gas grill.

Dick's outdoor decor consisted of a hibachi and a doormat.
Ambrose waited. We waited. He pushed the bell again and then
knocked on the door. No one answered. Even though Richard had
quit the job he'd been complaining about, the one where he was
so abused and underpaid he had to borrow money from Meghan
to take his kid to a movie, it didn't mean he'd be hanging around
the apartment, especially with his mother in town. Maybe he'd
taken her, or more accurately she'd taken him, to some tourist hot
spot for the afternoon. I tried to imagine Grace mincing around
Seattle's Pike Place Market in those godawful high heels, or Dick
nodding sagely as a docent explained Caravaggio's use of light at
the Seattle Art Museum. Ambrose approached and caught my grin
as I rolled down the window.

"What?" he said when he saw my expression.

"Nothing. I take it they're not home."

"No. And I'm not leaving my card because I don't want to
spook them."

"Yeah. It would suck to lose our only decent suspect," I said.

He gave me a look.

"I'd like to find a phone, check in on Erin," Meghan said. Neither of us carried cell phones, since we both worked out of the
house and were pretty easy to track down.

Ambrose reached into his jacket pocket. "Here, use mine."

"Thanks," she said, punching in numbers and turning away
from us as I began to speak.

"So how do we know when they get back?"

"I'll run by again tonight. They're probably just gone for the
afternoon."

"I could stay and watch for them," I said.

"Oh, for God's sake. Will you please stop trying to play
detective?"

"Hey, if it weren't for me and Meghan, you'd never know about
Grace's connection to Walter."

"If there's a connection. That hasn't been established."

"Even so. You'd never know to check if it weren't for us. And
having his ex-wife show up out of the blue, right when he dies, has
to mean something."

"If she's his ex-wife."

"Yeah, yeah."

"Okay, you're right, it would mean something. But the connection to Meghan and her daughter I find a little hard to take, given
the first connection, which isn't a bona fide connection, yet."

"You're starting to sound like me."

"Great. Just what I need. What I mean is, don't you find it odd
that Walter just happened to be living right behind his granddaughter and daughter-in-law?"

"Too much coincidence?"

"Exactly."

"What if it wasn't."

"Wasn't what?"

"Coincidence. What if he knew Erin was his granddaughter?"

"I wonder how long he's lived there."

"Mrs. Gray said he moved from one of her other properties to
that one right after Meghan and the Dick moved in. Erin would have been a baby, then. Walter said he liked the little cottage better
than the other place he rented, and asked to move in there. Could
be he knew who lived in the yellow house across the alley, don't
you think?"

"Maybe," he conceded.

Meghan handed Ambrose his phone. "Erin and Zoe stayed after
school to help their teacher decorate the classroom for Halloween,"
she said. "They should be home soon. I'm thinking I might drop
by and see if they want to go grab some ice cream."

I looked at my watch. "Kind of close to dinnertime for that,
isn't it?" And the temperature had dropped in the last hour. I
wrapped my arms around myself and shivered at the thought of
eating anything that cold.

"We'll keep them small." The ice cream was just an excuse. Not
knowing Dick and Grace's whereabouts had pushed her "Mom"
button, and Meghan needed to see that Erin was okay.

I turned to Ambrose. "Can you give me a ride back to my
truck?"

"Sure," he said, and I followed him to his departmental car
while Meghan climbed back in her Volvo and drove away.

Once we were on our way back to the station, I broached the
subject of showing the picture of Cherry to Mrs. Gray.

"She's the one who told me about Cherry and Walter in the
first place. I can go over as soon as I get home and see if she recognizes Grace."

Ambrose gave me a sideways look. "Really."

But when I followed him into the station and reached for the
picture still in the box on his desk, he shook his head. "I don't
think so."

"But-"

"It's not a bad idea to show the pictures to Walter's landlady. So
that's just what I'm going to do."

"Pictures? As in more than one?"

"Before we left I asked one of the cadets to track down a copy
of Grace Thorson's California driver's license. With her picture on
it."

"Excellent! But you should let me go with you, and not just
because I'm trying to be a pain in the ass."

He raised one eyebrow.

"No, wait. Listen. Mrs. Gray knows me. She doesn't know you.
She's the one who told me the story about Walter and Cherry and
Willy, and I think she'd respond to questions about it better if I
were there"

"She'll talk to me."

"I'm sure she would. But she wouldn't tell you as much, or the
same things."

"The chick factor," he said.

"Something like that."

He sighed and turned toward the door. "Well, come on."

AMBROSE RETRIEVED AN ENLARGED printout of Grace Thorson's
driver's license photo. She looked awful; the harsh lighting revealed every meretricious skin-pull, gob of makeup, and strand
of brassy red hair. I swore I'd never complain about my driver's
license photo again.

Ambrose followed my little truck down Mrs. Gray's street and
pulled to the curb behind me in front of her house. She answered
the door wearing her usual gray sweatsuit and a black baseball cap
that had "Girl Power" embroidered in royal purple across the front.
I introduced Ambrose and asked if we could come in and ask her
some questions about Walter. She agreed and offered tea. Ambrose
accepted for both of us.

"We have some pictures we'd like you to look at," I said as I slid
onto a red kitchen chair. Ambrose pursed his lips, and I shut up,
mentally drumming my fingers as he chatted a bit about Walter
in general. Mrs. Gray assembled cups and waited for the water to
boil, and he asked questions about how long Walter had lived in the cottage and how long she'd known him, most of which elicited
information I'd already told him. But Mrs. Gray seemed more at
ease when the tea had brewed, and she sat down at the table with
us, smiling at Ambrose in an almost flirtatious way. It felt more
like a few old friends gossiping than an interrogation. I had to give
the man credit.

"So what's this about pictures?" she asked.

"We have-"

Ambrose cut me off. "I'd like you to take a look at a couple of
photos, just to see if you recognize anyone"

He moved the teapot to one side and opened his briefcase. First
he laid the still-framed picture of Cherry and the Hanover boys
on the table. Mrs. Gray drew it toward her, then shook her head.
She got up and went to the kitchen counter to retrieve her reading
glasses and perched them on the end of her nose. The half-moon
frames matched the purple embroidery on her hat.

"That's better. Let's see what we can see, then." She cocked her
head to one side, perusing the faces. Pointing, she said, "That's
Walter, there. And that's Willy, and there on the end, Wayne."

I realized I hadn't known the name of Walter's other brother.
"Is he the one who died of cancer?"

"Yes, and Willy died when a crane down at the mill dropped a
huge log on him."

Eeew.

She pointed at the picture again. "And that's probably that girl I
told you about, Sophie Mae."

"Cherry?" I said.