“What happened?” I insisted.
“Some guy showed up out here-right here in the yard. A tough guy-a Hispanic tough guy. I don’t know how he found us but he did. He said Marina had ripped off a friend of his. He said he knew Marina had taken off again, but he thought she might have left the money in her trailer at Silver Pines or else with us.”
“When was this?” Mel asked. She was already taking notes.
“Sometime in early November,” Tom said. “I know it was before her rent was due. The guy knew Marina lived at Silver Pines, but he didn’t know which unit. He wanted me to go into her place and look for it.”
“Did you?” I asked.
“Yes, I did. I checked it out.”
“Why?”
“Because he made it pretty clear that if I didn’t, something bad would happen to me or to Rosie.”
“Did you find anything?” I asked.
“Yes, I did,” he answered shamefacedly. “It was there in the freezer compartment of her fridge-several Ziploc bags filled with cash. Not a very original hiding place, if you ask me.”
“How much was there?” Mel asked.
“I didn’t count it all. It looked to be fifty thou or so. Maybe more. Tell me this. Where does a girl who’s waiting tables at Denny’s come up with that much moolah? I figured she was either dealing drugs or else she stole it, both of which are against Mama Rose’s rules. So I gathered it up, hauled it out of the house in a brown paper bag and gave it back to the guy who came looking for it.”
“Are you kidding?” Mel asked. “You gave away that much money just like that-because some asshole claimed it belonged to a friend of his?”
“It had to,” Tom said. “Who else’s would it have been, and how would they have known about it? Besides, in the larger scheme of things, it wasn’t that much money. Choosing between giving it back and protecting Mama Rose or calling in the long arm of the law wasn’t a big contest.”
I couldn’t help wondering if Tom was telling us the truth or if he was conning us. His cell phone rang just then. “I’m coming,” he said without bothering with a hello. “I’ll be right there.” Then, after a pause, he added, “It’ll just be the two of us. They won’t be staying.”
“And you didn’t tell Mama Rose about any of this because…?” I asked when he ended the call.
“Because Marina was supposed to be one of Mama Rose’s rising stars. She had a job and a boyfriend. The boyfriend was legitimate, as far as I can tell. I don’t think he had anything to do with the drug money. I was planning on finding a way to bring it out in the open the next time we went to collect Marina’s rent, but it turned out there never was a next time. The guy who came here was right. Marina had already taken off for good. She must have realized the bad guys were closing in on her. She bailed in such a hurry that she left the money behind.”
Mel stood with her pen poised over the paper. “Any idea about the ID of the crook who threatened you?”
Tom shook his head. “No idea. I did some checking at the time. Like I said, we’re not too popular with the city administration in town, but out here in the boonies, Mama Rose is something of a folk hero. When the guy came back to pick up the money…”
“He came here?” I asked.
“Yes. I already told you. He knew where we live. But when I handed off the money, I made a mental note of the vehicle license. You know how it goes. Once a cop, always a cop. You’re trained to remember those kinds of details, and that training never goes away. But then, just to be sure, as he was leaving, I went one step beyond that and managed to take a photo of his license plate. Later I checked with one of our local deputies. The vehicle turned out to be stolen-no surprise there. What was left of it wound up in a chop shop down in Tacoma a few days later.”
“So you don’t know who the guy was,” Mel said again.
“No, I don’t. And I’ve got to go now. Otherwise Rosie is going to start asking questions.”
My impression was that he was playing it straight, so I gave him one of my cards. “If you think of anything else, call us.”
“Right,” he said. “I will.”
He walked away, heading inside for his coffee. Mel and I got back into the Mercedes. Mel looked unhappy.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I think he was gaming us,” she told me. “I think he’s the kind of guy who could look you straight in the eye and lie through his teeth.”
Which only goes to show that we’re not always on the same wavelength.
“We were gaming him,” I pointed out. “We didn’t tell him we’re pretty sure she’s dead.”
“So?” Mel asked.
I sighed. “Where to now?” I asked.
She picked up her phone. “I’ll call into the office and see if Barbara has any marching orders for us. And it’s Lola, by the way,” she added, waiting for Barbara Galvin to pick up.
All of a sudden I was lost. I had no idea what we were talking about.
“It’s ‘Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets…’ Not Rosie. It’s a song from Damn Yankees. The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant.”
It annoyed me to think that Mel felt it necessary to repeat the title like that. I mean, I understood Damn Yankees the first time. And I didn’t understand why, just because Tom had misquoted a song lyric, that somehow made him more suspect than he was before.
As we drove back toward Federal Way, I couldn’t help wondering how Mel and I had ended up being mad at each other. How had that happened? But then I remembered another very useful quote: “Men are from Mars; women are from Venus.”
Based on my slim experience with the opposite sex, that’s a good rule of thumb. Right that minute, however, Mel was looking and sounding a lot like Mars.
Because Joanna had spent so much time out of the office the previous two days and because she knew she’d be leaving early that afternoon to help get ready for the bachelor party, she had brought along a sandwich for lunch. She ate it at her desk, accompanied by some coffee Kristin brought in from the break room. She had just tossed the wrapper in the wastebasket and was about to go back to work when Ernie Carpenter stalked into the office.
“What the hell’s going on with Jaime?” he wanted to know, dropping heavily into one of Joanna’s chairs. “I stopped by the bull pen on the way in. I was about to tell him what I’d found out in Benson. He about took my head off. I know his nephew’s been giving him all kinds of hell, but still…”
The “bull pen” was home to Joanna’s homicide unit. It had been crowded when only two investigating officers, the Double C’s, as Ernie Carpenter and Jaime Carbajal were called, had been the occupants. Now that there were three detectives, including one female, the bull pen was not only misnamed, it was also beyond overcrowded. Joanna’s suggestion that they steal some space from Patrol had met with adamant resistance. Her best bet in this situation was to try to placate Ernie.
“You’re right,” Joanna said. “I’m sure Jaime has his hands full of family issues at the moment.”
“Don’t we all?” Ernie asked.
“Tell me what you found out.”
Shaking his head, Ernie pulled out a notebook and opened it. He leaned back in the chair, crossed his legs, and scanned a page covered with cursive writing that was tiny when you considered it came from a man of his size and girth.
“Deb was on the money when she said we should track down the girlfriend. Believe me, LaVerne Hartley is a piece of work.”
“From what Margie Savage told us,” Joanna replied, “I thought LaVerne was Lester’s ex-girlfriend.”
“She was ex up until a month or so ago, but once the guy had some spending money again, she was ready to let bygones be bygones. They were back to being an item before he turned up dead.”
“He ended up with money?” Joanna asked. “How much money?”
Ernie nodded. “Enough that he was able to buy her a slick little turquoise ring. To hear her tell it, they were practically engaged.”
Joanna realized that squared with what Lester Attwood’s sister had told them at the crime scene-that LaVerne was a good-time girl. According to her, if Lester had no money, there was no LaVerne.