“I didn’t meet with both of them,” I corrected. “Jack Lawrence wasn’t home at the time. I only spoke to Mrs. Lawrence, but of course I’ll be glad to meet with you. Just tell me where and when. I’m in Seattle right now. Where are you?”
“Redmond,” Lander answered. “Talking with DeAnn Cosgrove and her husband at their house.”
“I could meet you at the Special Homicide offices in Eastgate, if you like.”
“Where’s that?” Lander asked. “And how soon can you be there?”
I glanced at my watch. “Depending on traffic, half an hour to forty-five,” I said. Then I gave him Special Homicide’s street address as well as driving directions. When I returned to the restaurant, Iris Rassmussen was still holding forth. The only other person paying any attention to my phone call was Mel, who was giving me what I’ve sometimes heard my son-in-law refer to as “the stink eye.”
“What’s up?” she asked.
“Work,” I said, flagging down our harried waitress. “I’m going to have to go into the office.”
“Good,” she returned. “I’m coming along.”
I had been hoping to have a chance to confer with Ralph Ames in relative privacy, but telling Mel she wasn’t welcome to ride along would have caused an immediate uproar, especially since we had arrived at the restaurant in the same vehicle. We made our way out to the parking lot and said our good-byes to Iris and Lars and to Scott and Cherisse as well.
“What’s wrong?” Mel asked as soon as the Mercedes’s doors shut behind us.
“What makes you think something’s wrong?”
She rolled her eyes. “Something’s bothering you,” she said. “And don’t try blaming it on whoever called you just now. You were wound tight long before the call came in.”
That’s one of the most disconcerting things about Mel. I sometimes think she understands me better than I understand myself. Or that she can read my mind. But she was absolutely right-I had been wound very tight. I screwed my courage to the sticking place and tackled the issue head-on. Well, more or less head-on.
“Where did you go when you went to Mexico last fall?” I asked.
“Cancun,” she said, sounding surprised.
Cancun. Bad answer. There it was-out in the open. My heart did a flip-flop at the very sound.
“Why do you want to know about that?”
I ignored her question. “When were you there?” I asked.
“The end of October through the first week in November,” she said. “But I don’t understand. What’s this all about?”
The dates she mentioned hit me like a second blow to the gut. The end of October coincided exactly with the time when Richard Matthews had reportedly disappeared from his early-morning beachside walk. In Cancun. Having launched this disturbing conversation without waiting for any kind of confirmation from Ralph Ames, I realized there was no turning back.
“Remember your dead friend’s father?” I asked. “The one you told me about yesterday?”
“Richard Matthews, Sarah’s father?” Mel asked. “Of course I remember him. Why?”
“He disappeared in Cancun on the first of November.”
“Disappeared?” she asked.
“His body was found later. He died from a single gunshot wound.”
She chewed on that one for a while. “And you think I had something to do with what happened to him?”
“Did you?” I asked.
We were on Mercer by then, headed for I-5. “Why don’t you stop the car and let me out,” she said. “I’ll walk back to the house.”
“We need to talk about this,” I said.
“It sounds like I’m a suspect here,” she said. “Like maybe you need to read me my rights. Maybe I should have an attorney present. Or do you want to pick up my weapons and turn them over to ballistics?”
“Mel, please,” I said. “It’s not like this hasn’t happened to me before.”
“So that’s what this is all about?” Mel demanded after a pause. “It’s all about Anne Corley, isn’t it? Since she went off the rails and killed somebody, you automatically assume I must have done the same thing. Is that what you think?”
Of course she had me dead to rights on that one, and the similarities between the two cases in terms of motivation and deadly results was far too close to ignore. I didn’t answer her question immediately, not aloud, and that in itself was answer enough. A glance in Mel’s direction showed me that she was sitting on the far side of the car with her arms folded across her chest. When Melissa Soames folds her arms, it is not a good sign.
“What happened to Richard Matthews?” she wanted to know.
“I’ve told you everything I know. He went for a walk on the beach on the morning of November first and never returned. His wife filed a missing person’s report right after he disappeared. His badly decomposed body was found sometime later, and an autopsy revealed he had died of what I believe was a single gunshot wound. I’m not sure whether or not a bullet was recovered.”
“I may have been in Cancun at the time he was shot,” Mel said, “but I had no idea that’s where he lived. And no matter what you think, I’m not responsible for what happened to him.” She paused briefly and then added, “When did you learn all this?”
“This morning,” I said. “I stumbled across it on the Internet while you were showering.”
“And you immediately leaped to the conclusion that since Richard Matthews was dead, I had to be the one who killed him?” Mel shook her head. “That doesn’t speak very highly for whatever it is I thought the two of us had going.”
“Mel,” I began. “It’s just…”
“Don’t bother with the apology bit,” she said. “I don’t want to hear it.”
My phone rang then, right in the middle of the I-90 bridge. The way my luck was going, there was no need to check the caller ID readout. I knew it had to be Ralph as soon as the phone rang and before I answered.
“Mel flew in and out of Cancun along with seven other women on board a private jet that belongs to someone named Anita Bowdin,” Ralph said. “They stayed at a beachfront home called Casa del Sol owned by Ms. Bowdin. They arrived on Thursday, October twenty-eighth, and returned to Seattle on Wednesday, November third.”
“Thanks,” I said, hoping to cut short the conversation. “I appreciate it.”
But Ralph was just tuning up. “If the guy disappeared on November first, she would have been there at the time. So we’re definitely talking opportunity. I’m printing out whatever I can find on the guy on the Web. Is there anything else I can do to help right now?”
“No,” I said. “Thanks for the invite, but I don’t think we’ll be able to make it to dinner tonight.”
“She’s with you, then?” Ralph asked. For a guy, Ralph Ames is remarkably perceptive.
“Right,” I said. “Maybe later this week. I’ll have to get back to you on that.”
“Okay then,” he finished. “Give me a call when you can.”
“What was that all about?” Mel wanted to know as soon as I hung up.
“Ralph and Mary were inviting us over to dinner tonight,” I lied. “It didn’t seem like such a good idea.”
“I’ll say,” Mel said. And that was the last thing she said to me for the remainder of the trip. It was a very long and quiet six miles.
When we reached Eastgate, Detective Tim Lander’s unmarked Chelan County patrol car was parked in a visitor’s spot in the garage. While I went to greet him, Mel bailed out of my car without a word or a backward glance and headed for the elevator. I let her go on ahead.
“Mr. Beaumont?” Lander asked, exiting his vehicle.
I nodded. We shook hands and I led him onto the elevator and then upstairs to the SHIT squad offices on the third floor. He paused at the hallway door where the offending acronym was emblazoned in large gold letters on the glass. The sign guy had wanted to spell out the words in full. Harry I. Ball, for perverse reasons all his own, had insisted on putting the more objectionable shorthand version there for all to see.
Lander stopped in his tracks. “Are you shitting me?” he wanted to know.
“Special Homicide Investigation Team,” I explained. “We never close. Our official motto is: ‘All shit all the time.’”