Part 19 (2/2)

”What's wrong with her?” Harry asked.

”Beats me,” I said.

”And what have you been up to?” he asked slyly. ”I haven't seen you in several days, but I hear tell you're going around town rattling chains and pus.h.i.+ng b.u.t.tons. And a little bird told me that you're supposed to have a report on my desk first thing this morning.”

”It's in my laptop,” I told him. ”You'll have it as soon as it's printed and signed.”

”So stop standing around jawing about it and get it done,” Harry said.

I went into my own office and shut the door. I booted up my laptop, located the doc.u.ment, and revised it enough to add in what I had learned about the apparent payoffs to both Wink Winkler and Sean Dunleavy. I was about to press ”print” when my phone rang.

”So you went back to the evidence room again,” Paul Kramer said. ”What the h.e.l.l do you think you're up to?”

Obviously the evidence-room tattletale was still in Kramer's corner. ”Just doing my job,” I said.

”I won't have you messing around in my cases or second-guessing my decisions.”

”Kramer,” I said. ”What you will or won't have is irrelevant to me. I don't answer to you. I've got a mandate from the attorney general to look into a cold case, and I'm going to do just that.”

”I already told you. We've reopened that old Marchbank case.”

”Where's the case log, then?” I interrupted. ”Was it there the other day when you grabbed the evidence box out from under me?”

”Are you implying that I removed it?”

”I'm not implying anything. I'm straight-out asking.”

”The log wasn't there,” he said. ”I have no idea what happened to it, but whatever did happen is none of your business, Beaumont.”

”Ross Connors is making it my business, Kramer. And the same holds true for the Elvira Marchbank and Wink Winkler cases. You want to write 'em off? So be it, but I'm not going to. Timely case closures may count for something when it comes to promotions at Seattle PD, but Ross takes a longer view of things. He's interested in solving cases right however long it takes rather than solving them fast and wrong.”

For a moment Kramer said nothing. I couldn't see his face, but I could imagine it. Once again I was thankful I wouldn't be anywhere near his office when he started cutting loose.

”You stay out of my way and out of my people's way, understand?” he said at last.

”I hear you, Kramer,” I told him. ”But I'm not listening.” I put the phone down and finished printing my doc.u.ment. When I delivered it to Harry's office, he was just hanging up his telephone.

”Paul Kramer?” I asked.

”How did you know?” Harry returned with a grin. ”He wants me to take you off the Marchbank case. He feels your presence is disruptive to the investigation.”

”What investigation?” I demanded. ”He refuses to interview Sister Mary Katherine about what happened to Mimi Marchbank, and he's as good as washed his hands of both Elvira Marchbank and Wink Winkler.”

”Well, then,” Harry said, leaning back in his chair. ”I guess you'd better see what you can do about it.”

”I guess I'd better.”

I went back to my office and sat there for a time, thinking. My early-morning revelation about the payoff Fords had convinced me that someone else was involved in this mess, someone who was well aware of everything that had gone on in May of 1950. The challenge was finding out that person's ident.i.ty.

And then I remembered. Once, when I was a boy, my mother lost her purse. In those pre-credit-card days, losing your purse or wallet was a serious crisis, especially for someone of my mother's limited means. She finally found it-in the refrigerator, tucked in with the vegetables in what used to be called a humidrawer. She told me afterward, ”I found it in the very last place I looked.” And that was true on any number of levels. Of course it was the last place she looked, because as soon as she found it, she stopped looking. But the refrigerator was also the very last place she would have thought to look.

In this case, I decided to take a page from my mother's book and to go looking in the least likely of places-somewhere most cops, including Paul Kramer, would be loath to look. My reasoning was simple. Whatever had happened to Wink Winkler and Elvira Marchbank had its genesis in what had happened to Madeline Marchbank. The answer, if it actually existed, might well be found in old newspaper files. Paul Kramer wouldn't go through those on a bet, and he wouldn't let his people do so, either.

I drove straight to the offices of the Post-Intelligencer, sweet-talked my way down to the morgue, and threw myself on the mercy of Linda Carter, the same helpful intern who had worked with me days earlier.

”Good to see you again, Mr. Beaumont,” she said with a cordial smile. ”How can I help you?”

”I need you to take me back to the fifties one more time,” I told her. ”The big difference now is, I know more or less what I'm looking for. The files are indexed, aren't they?”

”Pretty much,” Linda agreed. ”Why?”

”I want to see all references to people named Marchbank-Elvira, Abigail, Albert, and Madeline-along with anybody else named Marchbank that I may not happen to know about. I'd also like to see anything on Albert's partner, Phil Landreth.”

”Starting when?”

”Let's say the late forties and early fifties.”

Soon I was again scrolling through the blue-and-white pages. Once I located the articles, I went ahead and printed them without necessarily reading them all the way through. More from sheer boredom than anything else, Linda joined me in tracking down articles.

”I'm not sure this is something you want,” she said. ”It's a wedding announcement from the society section.”

”Go ahead and print it,” I said. ”I'll read it later.” I didn't add, ”When I'm wearing my reading gla.s.ses so I can see the d.a.m.ned print,” but that's what I meant.

Two hours later, after thanking Linda profusely, I left the P.-I. morgue with a stack of reading material. It was noon by then, so I picked up a sandwich on the way and went back up the hill to Belltown Terrace to read the articles.

The first batch from the archives I had brought home-the ones on Madeline Marchbank's murder-had been relatively interesting. As expected, the articles in this one were incredibly boring. Most of them concerned Albert Marchbank's business dealings. Each time he and his partner, Phil Landreth, added another radio station or two to their growing media empire, the purchase was duly reported in the newspaper. The first time I saw the name Landreth, it leaped out at me. I remembered seeing that name on one of the police reports I hadn't gotten around to reading completely before I fell asleep. So I stopped right then and dug the report in question out of my briefcase.

There wasn't much to it. After giving her name, address, and phone numbers to investigating officers, Raelene Landreth had reported that she was the executive director of the Marchbank Foundation. She had last seen Elvira Marchbank about noon on the day in question, when she went from her office to Elvira's next-door residence with some papers to be signed. She heard and saw nothing more until late that evening, when a police officer came to her home in Medina to tell Raelene and her husband that Elvira was dead. End of story.

Having learned little, I turned back to the unstintingly boring articles that recorded the growth of the Marchbank-Landreth media empire. In their enthusiasm to tell the local-boys-make-good saga, the writers took the position that bigger was better without ever once mentioning how the local radio stations-the small outlets in Bellingham and Chehalis and Ellensburg-regarded being swallowed up by Seattle's neophyte media moguls.

One story in particular struck me as significant. On June 16, 1950, Phil and Albert had closed on the purchase of a total of five separate stations. This particular transaction, the largest one so far, was the only one that listed Abigail Marchbank as a partner. Was that why Albert had come to see his mother that day? Had he come to Mimi's house in order to ask his mother for funds to complete this purchase? If so, Mimi's standing on her back porch and telling him no might have been what sealed her fate.

The last article I picked up happened to be the one Linda Carter had found for me, a wedding announcement from the June 4 issue of the paper. It was something less than a paragraph in a column called ”Comings and Goings.”

On May 13, Seattle residents Faye Darlene Downs and Thomas Kincade Landreth were united in marriage at a small private ceremony in Harrison Hot Springs, B.C. Faye is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Acton Downs. Thomas is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Philip Landreth.

The day leaped out at me-May 13, the Sat.u.r.day Mimi Marchbank was murdered. Hadn't there been some mention of a wedding in one of the previous articles I had read? I retrieved my first set of duplicated P.-I. articles and rummaged through it. It didn't take long to find what I was looking for: Mr. Marchbank told reporters that he last saw his sister and mother on Friday afternoon, shortly before he and his wife left for Harrison Hot Springs in British Columbia, where they attended a wedding.

Attending that wedding had provided Albert and Elvira Marchbank with an airtight alibi at the time of Mimi's murder. I wondered if Wink Winkler had ever bothered to check to see if they'd actually been there.

I went back to the paltry announcement. Usually the weddings of offspring of local luminaries are given the full journalistic treatment. Mr. and Mrs. Downs may have been social n.o.bodies, but Mr. and Mrs. Landreth certainly weren't. I recognized at once what most likely wasn't being said about this ”small private ceremony.”

How small and how private? I wondered. And is there anyone around who would still remember the guest list of a shotgun wedding that happened back in 1950?

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