“We’re police officers, ma’am, and we’re here about your husband.”
“What about him?”
“Mrs. Chambers,” I said quietly. “There’s been a serious incident down at the school district office. I’m afraid we have some bad news for you.”
She had just stuffed another handful of popcorn into her mouth. At least she stopped chewing. “What kind of bad news?” she asked.
“A man has been murdered,” I said, unable to find any less damaging way to give her the news. “We have reason to believe that man is your husband.”
Charlotte Chambers looked from me to Kramer and back again. “This is some kind of joke, isn’t it?” she said.
I pulled my ID from my pocket and waved it in front of her, but she didn’t bother to look at it.
“It’s like some sort of newfangled Candid Camera, isn’t it? I’ve heard about this program. You’re waiting to see what I’m going to do.”
I wasn’t making much progress. I took another shot at it.
“Mrs. Chambers, I can assure you, this is no joke, and it’s not a television program either. A man has been killed. He’s been tentatively identified as your husband. We’ve been sent to notify you and to bring someone along down to Harborview who can positively identify the body.”
Charlotte Chambers shoved another deliberate handful of popcorn into her mouth. She chewed thoughtfully, shaking her head all the while. “You’re mistaken,” she said at last. “Alvin is at work. I’m sure he’s on his way home by now.”
I looked at Kramer, appealing for help, but he shrugged his shoulders and left it for me to handle. Clearly Charlotte Chambers’ ironclad denial wasn’t any of his concern. I probably could have pounded my way through her defenses, but that didn’t seem like a reasonable thing to do. Instead, I tried yet another tack.
“Perhaps you’re right,” I conceded. “Maybe he isn’t your husband. He was found in a janitor’s closet down at the school district office along with a woman.”
“You say this man was with another woman? That settles it then,” Charlotte Chambers responded triumphantly. “My husband’s a happily married man, a man of the cloth, at least he was until he quit. He’s not like those despicable men on television and in the movies. Alvin wouldn’t be caught dead with another woman.”
It was an unfortunate choice of words. The ghost of a smile appeared in the corners of Detective Kramer’s lips, but I managed to keep a straight face. After all, this was no laughing matter. One way or the other, I had to get Charlotte Chambers to agree to accompany us to the medical examiner’s office. We needed her verification.
“Then you’ll come along with us down-town?” I asked. “That’s the only way we can be sure it’s not your husband.”
She nodded and heaved herself off the couch. “Sure. I’ll have to get dressed first,” she said. “We’ll leave a note for Alvin so if he comes home while we’re gone, he’ll know where I am.”
“Right,” I said.
She grabbed up the pile of unfolded clothes Kramer had removed from the chair and carried it into a bedroom, closing the door behind her.
Kramer clicked his tongue. “This dame’s a real Loony Tunes,” he said. “Even if he is her old man, who’s to say she’ll recognize him?”
“She’ll recognize him, all right,” I replied grimly, “but only if we get her down there in the first place.”
We fell silent and waited until the bedroom door opened again and Charlotte Chambers emerged. She was wearing the standard fat lady uniform of black polyester stretch pants expanded to their absolute maximum under a tent-like red blouse that came almost to her knees. She moved away from us, hiking the pants up and smoothing the top down as she went.
Stopping by her chair, she pulled a pair of snow boots out from under a stack of yellowing discarded newspapers and sat down to pull them on, wheezing with effort at the physical exertion. Once she had the boots on her feet, she made no attempt to fasten them. I could see the fasteners would never close around her wide calves.
“There,” she announced. “I’m ready.”
She waddled to an entryway closet and dragged out a knit cap. Putting it on, she stuffed her stringy hair inside it, wrapped a matching scarf around her neck, and then pulled on an enormous coat that reached all the way down to her ankles.
I held out my arm. “This way, Mrs. Chambers. Let me help you. It’s slippery out there.”
She clung to my arm with a deathlike grip all the way down the stairs. I took it slow and easy. I sure as hell didn’t want her to fall. If she had landed on top of me, Charlotte Chambers would have mashed me flat.
It took both Kramer and me to help her up the steeply graded drive that led out of the parking lot. By the time we reached the car, she was panting and out of breath. So were we. Rolling his eyes in relief as I handed her into the back-seat of the car, Kramer hurried around to the driver’s door, climbed in, and started the engine.
The trip downtown was made in almost complete silence. Since Charlotte Chambers had not yet conceded that the dead man was her husband, there wasn’t much sense in launching into any kind of questioning process. That would have to come later.
Halfway downtown, I heard the rustle of paper and looked back to see that Charlotte Chambers had pulled a Snickers bar from her cavernous purse and was starting to unwrap it. She caught me watching.
“Would you like one?” she asked guiltily. “I’ve got two more just like it in my purse.”
“No, thanks,” I said. “I’m not very hungry right now.”
“Me either,” Kramer added.
When we finally managed to creep up the snowbound hillside to Harborview Hospital and the medical examiner’s office, the two parking spots reserved for police vehicles were both occupied by nonpolice cars.
“Take her on inside,” Kramer said, pausing near the door. “I’ll drop you two off here and then go find a parking place.”
“Thanks,” I muttered to him once Charlotte Chambers was safely on her feet and standing outside the car. “You’re all heart,” I added.
Naturally the receptionist was Johnny-on-the-spot. Naturally there was no wait for an available technician. We were ushered directly into the morgue. Kramer managed to stall his entrance long enough so that by the time he came into the room, a slack Charlotte Chambers had collapsed weeping into my arms. It was all I could do to hold her up.
Despite his widow’s lofty claims to the contrary, Alvin Chambers had indeed been caught dead with another woman.
My job now was to find out why.
Chapter 5
Kramer entered the room and impatiently motioned me aside with a jerk of his head.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Doc Baker wants to talk to both of us. Outside. On the double.”
Put that way, it sounded like an invitation to a beheading, but then, Doc Baker’s corpse-side manner has never won any prizes for tact.
Nodding, I led the still-sobbing Charlotte to a nearby chair and eased her into it.
“You wait right here, Mrs. Chambers,” I said gently when she looked up at me in tearful dismay. “We’ll be back just as soon as we can.”
Howard Baker was waiting for us outside. We found him pacing back and forth in the highly polished corridor, pacing and fuming, with his mane of unruly white hair almost standing on end and his hands shoved deep in his pockets. He barely waited long enough for the heavy swinging door to whisper shut behind us before he lit into us full bore.
“Why for God’s sake did you go after the damn security guard’s family first? I thought you’d have better sense. I told you earlier. Marcia Louise Kelsey was highly thought of down at the school district. If you don’t get to her family pretty damn soon, word’s bound to leak out. What the hell are you two guys using for brains these days?”
Despite what the Constitution says, all men are not created equal-not in life and not in death either. Rank hath its privilege, even in the medical examiner’s wagon. In the world of social standing, labor relations specialists may not count for much up against the likes of, say, Lee Iacocca, but they do if it’s a contest between them and a lowly security guard. According to Doc Baker’s rules of order and propriety, Marcia Louise Kelsey’s death demanded a prior claim on the homicide squad’s time and attention. The death of a mere peon like poor old Alvin Chambers didn’t count for much.