“Hey, Beau, what’s the hurry?” Sergeant Watkins asked as I rushed past them. “What’s happening? I hear Detective Lindstrom’s on his way to Olympia to pick up a partial license printout.”
“Right,” I answered.
“You seem to be in quite a hurry, Detective Beaumont,” Captain Powell observed. “Are you two on to something?”
“Maybe,” I said. “I just talked to Dorothy Nielsen’s doctor.”
“What for?”
“Look, Captain, I’m in a hurry. I need to check out a car. Can’t we talk about this later?”
“We’ll talk about it now,” Captain Powell said. “I want to know what’s going on.”
“I’ve got one detail to verify, but I’m checking into his aunts.”
Captain Powell shook his head in shocked disbelief. “His aunts? Those two nice ladies? Come now, Beaumont. I’ve had several dealings with Dr. Nielsen’s aunts in the past few days. In fact, one of them called me just this morning about the memorial service on Saturday. She sounded reasonable enough to me. They both did. Neither one of them strikes me as a cold-blooded killer, someone capable of using a dental pick as a hole punch on somebody else’s throat.”
“Perfectly reasonable or not,” I replied, “we’re within a hair of having probable cause to arrest them.”
“Improbable cause is a hell of a lot more like it,“ Powell returned derisively. ”We’ve got a perfectly good ex-con in custody, but you’d rather pin the murder on a couple of sweet little old ladies. You’re slipping, Beaumont. You are really slipping.“
Their car arrived just then. The two of them got in and drove away, leaving me standing there in the garage with smoke pouring out both my ears. So far the evidence I had may have been strictly circumstantial, but I knew in my bones we were finally on the right track.
My car came eventually, and I drove straight to the Edinburgh Arms. Instead of entering the driveway, I went around to the back of the complex and parked on the street near the long row of neat, brick garages. The doors all had a thick coat of fresh cream-colored paint, and the windows at the top of each door were uniformly clean and polished.
There were no numbers on the garages, no identification of any kind to tell which garage belonged to which unit, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to go ask.
I started at one end of the building and worked my way to the other, stopping at each door and standing on tiptoe to peer through the glass. I was about two-thirds down the row when I hit pay dirt.
Parked inside one of the garage stalls was an older model black BMW with a mangled rear bumper. The first two letters, the K and the R, were plainly visible, but the rest of the license plate was obscured by twisted chrome. No wonder Darlene could only remember the first three letters on the plate. That was all she could see.
I raced back to my car and headed downtown. As I drove, pieces of the puzzle swooped around and around in my head like airplanes waiting to land. The BMW had to be one of Dr. Nielsen’s cars. Whoever was driving it would have had the garage door opener for sure and possibly access to the office as well. Office keys and car keys often share the same key ring. That would explain how the killer had unlocked the dead bolt to get inside.
But Darlene had said the driver of the foreign car was a man. What about that? Suddenly I remembered how Daisy and Rachel had looked once they donned their khaki Woodland Park Zoo docent uniforms. The matching pith helmets had totally concealed their hair. From a distance, especially if they had been seated in a fast-moving car, either one of them could have been mistaken for a man. For that matter, in the dim light of the garage, a pith helmet could have passed for a Washington State Patrol trooper’s campaign hat.
After all, when the car had sped past her, Darlene Girvan was damn lucky just to be alive. I could hardly fault her powers of observation at a time like that.
I parked in the Public Safety Building garage and pushed my way into an already crowded elevator. I was headed for my cubicle, but Margie stopped me as I sprinted past her desk.
“Hey, have you heard the news?”
“What news?”
“Detective Lindstrom called in from Olympia. He was all excited. One of the license numbers belongs to Dr. Nielsen. He had stopped for coffee and spotted the name on the list while he was waiting for his food.”
“I know,” I said.
Margie’s face fell. “Somebody already told you? I thought I’d get to you first.”
I shook my head. “You did, but I’m a detective, remember? How long ago did you talk to him? Where is he now?”
“Only about fifteen minutes ago. I’m sure he’s on his way back.”
“All right. Get somebody to patch you back through to him. Tell him to get here on the double. I’ll have the search warrant ready by the time he gets here.”
The search warrant was signed and sitting on my desk long before Big Al showed his face. As I sat there waiting for him, I had some time to think. They weren’t good thoughts.
Detectives usually get a real rush when they close a case. It’s like an addictive drug, a high that we live for. But the rush was missing this time.
Every scrap of information we had gathered showed Dr. Frederick Nielsen to be something less than your basic, all-around nice guy. In fact, our victim was a wholesale son of a bitch who had learned what he knew about life at his father’s knee. He had damaged and abused all those whose lives had touched his.
And now someone was going to have to track down his two LOL aunties, arrest them, and charge them with homicide.
It wasn’t a task I relished.
CHAPTER 21
There’s something almost un-American about reading someone their rights when they’re wearing a red-checked gingham apron and kneading bread dough. Remembering Rachel’s trick from the previous time, however, Al and I decided to cover both entrances to the Edinburgh Arms apartment. He went to the front door while I went around to the back.
Rachel was in the kitchen with her hands covered with flour. Tiny white specks dusted her eyebrows and eyelashes. Buddy was confined to a cage in one corner of the kitchen.
“Freeze, sucker!” I heard through the screen door as soon as I knocked.
“Why, hello, Detective Beaumont,” Rachel said, smiling in greeting and holding the door open to let me in. “How are you today? Cool weather like this always makes me want to bake, even in the summertime.”
“This isn’t a social visit, Rachel. Detective Lindstrom’s at the front door.” Through the dining room I heard Dorothy Nielsen call for Big Al to let himself in.
“Why, whatever is he doing there?” Rachel asked.
“What’s your name? What’s your name?” Buddy wanted to know.
I ignored him and focused all my attention on Rachel. “You gave us the slip the last time, remember? We’re taking precautions.”
Smiling again, she shrugged and returned to the counter, where she picked up a smooth round cushion of bread dough that had been sitting on a floured breadboard. “I explained all about that,” she said. “I wanted to be the one to tell Dotty.”
“I think it’s time we stopped the charade, Rachel. We’re here with a search warrant.”
She stood there holding the dough, looking at me. “A search warrant?” she repeated, frowning. “What for?”
There were voices coming from the other room. Dorothy Nielsen had evidently captured Al and drawn him into conversation. Without waiting for him to show up in the kitchen, I pulled my plastic-covered copy of the Miranda warning from my pocket and began to recite it. After all these years I don’t really need the cue card, but I keep it in my hand, just in case.
When I finished, Rachel was still holding the dough. She hadn’t moved. “Why did you do that?”
“Because you and your sister are under investigation for the murder of your nephew.”
The bread dough dropped unnoticed onto the breadboard.
“No!” she said.