"What do you mean, I can't go on board?"
"I'm sorry, ma'am," Officer Tamaguchi insisted placatingly, keeping his voice calm, reasonable, and businesslike. "This is a police matter. No one at all is allowed on board."
"A police matter!" the woman repeated indignantly. "You don't understand. The Isolde is my husband's boat. My boat. I want to see what's happened to it. You have no right…"
I walked over to the barricade. "Mrs. Gebhardt?" I asked uncertainly.
A tall, thick-waisted woman with fierce, bright blue eyes and a long woolen coat to match looked angrily away from Tamaguchi and zeroed in on me.
"I want to know exactly what's going on here," she declared. "I understand there's been a fire. I can see that. But why won't this policeman let me see what's happened to my own boat? And where's Gunter? He has to be here somewhere. His truck was out front in the lot."
Behind the woman's heavy, angry features, there was a hint of someone I recognized, the shadow of someone I knew but couldn't quite place.
"And who are you?" she demanded shrilly. "Are you in charge, or should I talk to someone else? One way or the other, I'm going to find out what's happened."
Two distinct red splotches of irritation and anger spread out from both prominent cheekbones. With nostrils flaring and both hands glued to her hips, she looked fully prepared to take on all comers. She glowered at me, waiting for me to let her have her own way.
"I'm afraid I have some bad news for you, Mrs. Gebhardt," I said quietly, moving toward her, reaching in my pocket, pulling out my I.D. I held it up to her, but she stared across it without ever allowing her eyes to leave my face.
"What kind of bad news?"
"A dead man was found on board your boat about an hour ago now. It's possible he's your husband."
One hand flew unconsciously to her breast. "His heart," she murmured, eyes wide. "It must have been Gunter's heart. I've told him time and again that he had to lose weight. I tried to tell him it was bad for him to go on living the way he always had with all that butter on his bread and all those mashed potatoes. I tried to tell him he needed to go to the doctor to be checked out, get some exercise…"
"I'm afraid it wasn't like that at all," I said.
"Wasn't like what?"
"The man on the boat didn't die of a heart attack, Mrs. Gebhardt. We believe he was murdered."
"Murdered!" she echoed in shocked disbelief. "That can't be."
"But it is. The investigators are down there now-taking photographs, gathering evidence."
"Else…" someone said tentatively behind her.
Mrs. Gebhardt spun around. A man stepped up out of the clutch of fishermen behind her. He was tall and lean and wearing a blue baseball-style cap with a Ballard Oil Company logo on the front. Worn Levis were held in place by a pair of wide red suspenders. The arms of his faded, still vaguely plaid flannel shirt were cut off halfway between the elbows and wrist.
"Alan?" she wailed in despair, moving toward him as she spoke. "Did you hear what he said? This man says Gunter may be dead. It isn't true, is it? It can't be true!"
"I didn't say we knew for sure," I corrected. "It is her husband's boat, though, and there is a dead man on board."
Else Gebhardt fell against the newcomer's chest. He gathered her to him with one hand and whipped off the cap with the other. As soon as he did so, I recognized him, even after all the intervening years. Alan Torvoldsen's ducktail was missing. In fact, only the smallest fringe of russet-colored hair remained in a two-inch-wide border from just over his ears and around the base of his skull.
"Al?" I said doubtfully. "Alan Torvoldsen? Is that you?"
He cocked his head momentarily, then a broad grin creased his face. "Beaumont? I'll be damned if it isn't J. P. Beaumont! Damned if it isn't!" He slapped the cap back on his balding head and then reached out to pump my hand. "What the hell are you doing here?"
I held out my I.D. close enough so he could see it, and he nodded. "That's it," he said. "You're a cop. I remember seeing the name in the papers. I kinda wondered if it wasn't you."
"It's me, all right," I said.
And then I looked at Else Gebhardt, sobbing brokenheartedly on Alan Torvoldsen's shoulder. I remembered Else Didricksen then; remembered her from years gone by as a tall, slender girl-a talented athlete in the days long before there had been any collegiate basketball programs for girls. There were few girl players back then, and even fewer scholarships.
I remembered that Else had started school at the U-Dub, as locals affectionately call the University of Washington, two years ahead of me, but I didn't remember ever seeing her on campus once I arrived there, nor did I remember hearing that she had finished.
"Else?" I asked. "Is this Else Didricksen?"
"Yeah," Alan murmured. "Look who it is, Else," he said, taking the weeping woman by the shoulders and bodily turning her around to face me.
"You remember this guy, don't you, Else?" Alan continued. "Jonas Beaumont. He was just a little pipsqueak of a sophomore the year we were seniors, but he was already a damn fine basketball player. Give him the ball, and he could run and jump like a damn jackrabbit."
Else Gebhardt looked up at me. "BoBo?" she said uncertainly.
It was the name that one year's batch of cheerleaders had stuck me with-a relic I had thought buried in my past right along with my given name of Jonas.
"That's right," I admitted reluctantly. "BoBo Beaumont. It's me, all right."
Although her bright blue eyes were wild with grief, Else Gebhardt smiled at me through her tears. Her hands sought mine. "Please, BoBo," she pleaded. "Just let me on the boat long enough to see if it's Gunter. I have to know."
"I'm not sure you should go anywhere near it," I answered dubiously. "The man on board-if he is your husband-has been burned very badly. You may not even be able to recognize him."
"I'll recognize him all right," she said determinedly.
In the end, we compromised. At my direction, the two uniformed officers reluctantly allowed both Else Gebhardt and Alan Torvoldsen past the crime-scene perimeter and onto the dock. I figured there wasn't that much of a problem. It didn't seem the least bit likely that Janice Morraine would allow Gunter Gebhardt's widow access to the burned-out boat, and I was right about that. Janice didn't.
While Else waited on the dock, Janice Morraine brought one of Nancy Gresham's police photos over to the side of the boat. The grisly Polaroid close-up she handed over to Else showed nothing but the dead man's face. For a long moment after Janice placed the small color photo in Else's hand, she didn't look down at it. Once she was actually holding the proof she had demanded, it seemed as though she couldn't quite summon the courage to look at it.
At last, though, she dropped her gaze and held the picture out far enough from her so she could see it clearly. Time seemed to stand still on the dock. There was no sound at all and no movement. Then Else Gebhardt's features seemed to fall out of focus, and she fainted dead away.
Luckily, Alan Torvoldsen was there to catch her. I'm not sure anyone of the rest of us could have managed. None of the rest of us were strong enough-with the possible exception of Marian Rockwell.
3
Women don't seem to faint as much as they used to, at least not as much as they did in the old black-and-white movies my mother watched on TV once she was too sick to sew anymore. She spent countless sleepless nights in the company of one late movie after another.
And in those old thirties movies, when one of those pencil-thin female stars keeled over, there was always a strong leading man to catch her on the way down and deposit her on the nearest bed or couch, depending upon whether or not they were married at the time. My guess, though, is that none of those silver-screen beauties weighed nearly as much as Else Gebhardt.