Old Chaos (9781564747136) Page 19

  “Buy me dinner,” Meg said in fade-away tones. “I won’t have the energy to cook.”

  “Six-thirty at the Red Hat?”

  “No need to get fancy. I’m in the mood for Mona’s hamburgers.

  “Nature red in tooth and claw,” Rob said admiringly. “You’ll wipe the floor with Jackman.”

  Meg sighed. “Probably, but I hate close combat. Oops, incoming call. See you at Mona’s.” She hung up.

  Rob replaced his own receiver, smiling, and drew the list of names closer.

  Meg liked to cook. She had raised her daughter on the salary of a librarian, so she didn’t have the habit of eating out, and she didn’t waste money on fast food either. Rob knew he took advantage of that. He was a fairly good cook himself but a little apt to eat Cheerios when he was dining alone. Pure laziness.

  Cooking for one was no fun. Meg didn’t cook for one. She cooked for four and froze the leftovers. She had one of those devices that suck the air from heavy-weight plastic bags and seal them. When she was in a hurry she could toss the bag with the frozen meal in it into a pot of boiling water, whip up a salad, and have a decent meal in half an hour. She saved bundles of money and the food was tasty. Sometimes she wanted a break from cooking, though.

  He resigned himself to dinner at Mona’s and began to sift through the list of names. Jeff had annotated it with whatever information he could come up with from police records, the Internet, and Sgt. Howell, equally informative sources, but unlike Jeff, Rob had lived in Klalo most of his life, so he brought that perspective to the list. For what it was worth.

  There were few surprises. The day before the mudslide, Drink-water had spoken at length with his ex-wife, with his banker briefly, with Darla Auclare, Inger Swets, Matt Akers, and half a dozen people who were just names. Immediately after the slide, however, the calls flooded in, including a large number from media representatives. Rob had called Drinkwater himself during the rescue, trying in vain to get through to him about the layout of the development, the names of owners, and the number of people living there.

  Drinkwater had put both phones on voice mail almost at once, returning very few calls. It was to those that Rob turned his attention. Who had Fred been willing to talk to in the aftermath of the disaster? He had probably gone out twice. The patrol cars had missed him both times. Rob wondered where he’d gone. So far no one claimed to have seen him, and his Lexus was not distinctive enough to be immediately noticeable, unlike Inger’s green Volvo.

  Somewhere around six in the afternoon Drinkwater had stopped returning calls entirely. The ME thought he had died after seven, but it was not clear when he had returned to the house at Tyee Lake. He had eaten very little but corn chips all day and drunk quite a lot—vodka and orange juice, an odd choice. Whether or not Drinkwater had been at home, the calls had continued to flood in.

  Exasperated, Rob culled the list, removing police numbers and the media, and asked Jeff to come in.

  When Jeff had settled into the comfortable chair, Rob shoved the amended list toward him. “Let’s brainstorm. He talked to most of our suspects the day before the slide, notably Matt and Inger, but what are these other names?”

  “I called all of them and left messages, got two return calls. One of them is a plumber Drinkwater owed for repairs to the hot tub. We can eliminate him. The other is an insurance agent. He said he and Drinkwater talked about car insurance. The rest haven’t got back to me yet. This Maury Schwenk has a couple of unpaid parking tickets in Portland. Otherwise they’re clean.” He meant they had no police records. Jeff was thorough.

  Rob nodded. “Good work.” There were two unidentified names. “I don’t recognize them. They’re probably innocent bystanders, like the plumber.”

  “Well, these two he talked to twice for longer than usual.”

  “Hmm. Reo and Olsen. Okay, let’s see if we can eliminate them, too. That’ll leave us clear to pull in Matt and Darla for a little sweat session.”

  “Akers is out on bail?”

  “Yes, and he’s lawyered up. I doubt that Darla will have much to say, either, but I could be wrong.” He picked up the phone and asked Sgt. Howell to reach Darla.

  Jeff rubbed his neck. “This Schwenk guy, the name’s unusual around here. I thought it sounded like somebody I’d maybe met once. Keiko and I don’t socialize much outside the soccer league parents, so I called her.” Jeff’s wife, a physician’s assistant, worked at the county hospital. “She said Schwenk sometimes worked at the hospital. He’s free-lance, not with the agency.”

  A two-county agency supplied care-givers to health care facilities and private patients. Some care-givers preferred not to pay the agency its hefty cut of their wages. They developed their own lists of clients, and the hospital called on the reliable ones in emergencies. For the most part, these free-lancers were licensed practical nurses or nurses’ aides. There were also a couple of medical assistants and a few RNs and technicians who were new to the area.

  A care-giver. Drinkwater had spoken with him twice. Maybe Fred had had a medical problem. No, the ME said he was healthy as a horse. A puzzle. Rob was tired of puzzles. He was even more tired when the hospital personnel director told him the two people Drinkwater had talked to twice were also free-lance care-givers.

  At that point the phone rang.

  “Undersheriff Neill.” He was finally getting his new rank right.

  “Hi, Rob, it’s Darla. You wanted to talk to me?”

  “Thanks for calling. Jeff Fong is here with me. Is it okay to turn on the speaker phone?”

  “Sure. I guess.” She sounded doubtful. “Hello, Sergeant Fong.”

  “Ms. Auclare.”

  “You know I’m investigating Fred Drinkwater’s death,” Rob said when he had recited the usual interview formula.

  “Yes.”

  “I understand you knew him fairly well.”

  “We had an ongoing relationship. I was fond of him.” Darla cleared her throat. “It was cooling down, though. He had somebody else.”

  “Who?”

  She gave a short laugh, half sob. “I don’t know.”

  “Inger Swets?”

  She sniffed. “No, of course not. That was over last summer. It was just a fling anyway. Have you found Inger? Larry called me. I’ve been worried about her. It’s not like her to just take off without a word to anybody.”

  “You’re friends?”

  “Sure. We run together a couple of times a week.”

  Rob drew a breath. “Where do you run? Out in the country?”

  “Around the high school track usually. Once in a while we take a jog in the country—when the weather’s good. It hasn’t been lately.”

  “Did you ever run out beyond Two Falls on County Road 3?”

  “Never,” she said promptly. “Why?”

  He supposed the location of Inger’s car would be public property fairly soon. “We found her car there.”

  “Her car but not her?”

  “Not so far. Maybe she went for a run alone.”

  “I doubt it. Neither of us likes to run alone.”

  “Okay. That’s good information. What does she wear when she goes for a run?”

  Darla described Inger’s running suits and her shoes—not the fragile kind used on indoor tracks but sturdier sneakers. Rob decided he’d better have Search and Rescue check along the road, too, in case Inger had been hit by a passing car while running on the shoulder.

  He shifted gears and went back to the murder of Fred Drink-water. Darla knew nothing about Fred’s finances. He talked about money but she never listened, she admitted with a disarming laugh. Apparently she had spent the afternoon and evening of the day Drinkwater was killed on a shopping-and-dinner expedition to Portland with a girlfriend. She gave the friend’s name and phone number.

  When Rob hung up, he sent Jeff off to check what sounded like a decent alibi and called Jake to widen the search for Inger. Then he went back to brooding over his puzzle. It was a two-parter. Why were
the callers medical workers, and why had they called Fred? No, there were three parts. Why had Fred returned their calls on a day when his financial world was crashing around his ears?

  A sharp rap on the door. Jake Sorenson stuck his head in. “Busy?”

  “Busy running in circles. Come in, Jake. Did you find her?”

  “No. No sign of Inger. I left the second team of searchers combing the shoulder of the road upstream from the turnaround, the way you suggested. We did find this downstream, along with plastic grocery bags and assorted pop bottles.” He held out a damp paper evidence bag.

  Rob shook its contents onto the desk—a white sneaker, not new, with fluorescent green laces. “Looks like it’s been in the water awhile.”

  “Probably leftover from last summer.”

  “No, I’m afraid it’s Inger’s. I just had a description of the shoes she ran in.” He tapped the lace with the cap end of his pen. “Green laces. Darla thinks she wears size nine or ten.” He peered inside the shoe. “Nine and a half wide. Okay, let’s show it to Larry.” He thought of Meg. “Do you have time to show it to Larry? I’ve got a dinner date in fifteen minutes.”

  “Meg making chili these days?” Jake was a connoisseur of Meg’s chili. “Sure, I’ll run it by him. Should I give you a call on your cell?”

  Rob grinned. “Better just leave a message. I am taking the lady out on the town.”

  “Wow. Is that a wise precedent?”

  Rob thanked Jake and left, reflecting that it was pretty bad when his friends thought he was too cheap to take Meg out to dinner. His momentary amusement faded. Inger Swets was probably dead.

  ON FRIDAY BETH made herself enter the courthouse for the first time since Mack’s death. Because John had gone back to Portland, Rob took her in his pickup. At the door to Mack’s office in the annex, he made a vague offer of help, which she declined. She also thanked Mack’s longtime secretary, Ramona Flynn, for her offer of help and shook her head no. With massive tact, Ramona brought her a roll of plastic garbage bags and went off. Beth had to deal with the sorting herself.

  Nobody had touched Mack’s office since his death, except to dust and retrieve necessary files, so the experience was wonderful and horrible, and ultimately, because Mack had been a packrat, exhausting. Beth was torn between tossing everything into a Dump-ster and keeping everything, including random scraps of paper with incomprehensible scribbles and half-used rolls of antacid mints. Grimly determined, she set about cleaning out the clutter. She would have to make Mack’s office her own, as she had made Mack’s work.

  She salvaged all the photographs, whether framed or curling at the corners, from the walls and the desktop, because most of them were of family. She’d lost the best of her photos in the mudslide. She was looking through the pile, tears pricking her eyes, when Ramona announced, “Commissioner Bjork” from the doorway and stood aside for Cate Bjork.

  Beth blinked hard and shoved the stack of snapshots away along with the memories they provoked. She didn’t try to rise. Her cast rested on an upended drawer, her walker in a corner of the room. “How nice to see you, Commissioner. Have a chair.”

  Cate smiled and sat. She wore a Donna Karan suit, unusual but not too pretentious for Klalo, and carried a huge pistachio handbag. “I came to apologize for my absence from your husband’s funeral.”

  Beth murmured something forgiving. She hadn’t noticed the Bjorks’ absence.

  “It’s Lars, you see. He has Alzheimer’s.”

  Beth made a polite sound of sympathy.

  “We were hoping to keep his condition to ourselves, but it had to come out sooner or later, I suppose. Some days he’s quiet and calm, as he was the night of your dinner, and other times he’s… difficult.”

  “That must be stressful.”

  “Oh, I have plenty of help, but I don’t like to go out when he’s in that state. Who knows what might happen? He used to wander off—”

  “How frightening for you, Cate. Do you have competent care-givers? It’s hard to find good people.”

  “I’ve been lucky so far.”

  “You’re younger than he is.”

  “Twenty-five years,” Cate murmured. “He was so vigorous and interesting when we met. Old age is a terrible thing.”

  But so much better than the alternative, Beth thought and was instantly ashamed of herself.

  “And how is your daughter?”

  “Conscious,” Beth said. “She’s weak, though, and she doesn’t remember anything about the mudslide.” She cleared her throat. “The doctors are worried that she may suffer grand mal seizures. There was brain damage.”

  “I am so sorry,” Cate murmured, polite and correct.

  Beth wondered why she couldn’t warm to the woman. “We may be able to bring Peggy home next week, but of course we’ll need professional help.”

  “There’s an agency—”

  “Yes, we called them, and Skip will be interviewing people over the weekend. They’re expensive, though. Skip and Peggy are graduate students, for heaven’s sake.” Something else to worry about.

  Cate rose. “Let me know if I can help.” She held out her hand, and Beth shook it.

  When Beth was growing up, women never shook hands. The custom came from back East or maybe from Europe. Handshaking revealed whether a man was carrying a weapon, according to Beth’s father. She had pointed out that women could carry weapons, too, but her father had just laughed.

  Rob intruded as Beth was sorting through a file marked personal. It was quite large. It included every school photograph of Beth since she began teaching, as well as pictures of all the children and most of the grandchildren. She cried a little over Mack’s secret stash, until she saw the ominous bank statements, a row of well-thumbed envelopes. Her heart sank. When Rob’s knock came, she shoved the drawer of the file cabinet closed with a smack.

  “Come in.”

  He slid into the chair Cate had vacated. “How’s it going?”

  “Slowly.”

  “I can imagine.” He handed her a fax sheet. “The toxicology report just came in on Fred Drinkwater. There’s not much doubt he was murdered. That’s a copy. I gave one to the prosecutor, too. We can go into high gear now.”

  “You don’t sound enthusiastic.”

  He shoved his good hand through his forelock. He needed a haircut. “I can’t say I’m burning to avenge Drinkwater’s death, and I’m distracted by Inger’s disappearance.” He told her about the sneaker that had washed up.

  She nodded, trying to look wise, which was hard with her thoughts on what might be hidden in Mack’s bank records. So she told Rob about the commissioner’s visit in more detail than he probably wanted to hear. He had the knack of looking as if he were interested in what you said, a major asset in interrogation, Beth reflected.

  “We’ll probably bring Peggy home to your house next week,” she finished. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “No. It’s a pity I took the wheelchair ramp down when Gran died. If Skip wants to resurrect it, I stashed the lumber from it in the garage.”

  “That’s a good idea, if you don’t mind—”

  “Beth,” he interrupted, smiling, “I really really don’t mind. And if you need good LPNs, I can give you several names.” He had been responsible for his grandmother’s care in her last years.

  She thanked him warmly and took down the names. They were all on the agency list, he said.

  He stood up. “The drug that was used on Drinkwater, quetiapine, is not a common street drug. It was found in the glass beside him as well as in his bloodstream.” He gave her the proprietary name, which she didn’t recognize and wouldn’t remember. “An anti-psychotic medication, sometimes used for anxiety or insomnia.”

  “That’s weird. Did Fred have a prescription for it?”

  “Not from his primary care physician.” He made a face. “I’m getting old. I can remember when a doctor was called doctor.”

  Beth smiled. “Or Doc.”

  “Or that.�
� Rob sighed. “If it weren’t for the state’s HIPPA Act, we could start asking pharmacists who on our suspect list is taking the stuff. Unfortunately, we’ll need more evidence before we can get a court order.”

  “Frustrating,” Beth said.

  “Yes. Almost as frustrating as financial stuff.” Rob glanced at her and at his watch. “You look tired. Do you want to go home?”

  “I…uh, yes. Give me half an hour and I’ll have most of the personal things sorted.”

  “No problem.”

  When he left, Beth locked the door and began stuffing the bank records into a garbage bag. She set the stack of photos on top of them and, for good measure, Mack’s awards, of which there were many. She twisted the wire tape in place and felt safer. Then she unlocked the door and waited for Rob, busying herself by tossing out the paper scraps, the indigestion remedies, and a hideous artificial poinsettia that no one had removed after Christmas.

  Towser bounced beside Meg’s Accord as she set the brake. Because the garage door had not yet been repaired, she had taken to parking in the short concrete driveway. Towser treated it like a trampoline. She cracked the car door, grabbed her briefcase, and looked around for Tammy, who trotted up, smiling.

  “Towser, sit!” He did that.

  Meg slid out and locked her door. “A miracle,” she murmured. “What’s happening, Tammy?” She held her hand low, palm down, for the dog to sniff. He did that, too.

  “I’m back at work. Well, I got a lot done through the Internet while I was in Las Vegas, but I’m back at work in my office. Feels good.” She worked from home.

  “Did you lose clients?” Meg scratched Towser behind the ears, and he gave a small, ecstatic bounce.

  “Not a single one,” Tammy said with justifiable pride. She was a bookkeeper/accountant and had worried about leaving town in the run-up to tax day, but here she was, back in time for frantic last-minute filers.

  They talked awhile about the heartwarming loyalty of Tammy’s clients, and Tammy reported that her son was going to graduate from cooking school at the end of April. He already had a job lined up.