Long Time Gone Part 15

"Sorry. No buts allowed," I returned. "If you had gone by the book, you would have had the info. Aren't you the guy who's always such a stickler for going through channels and across desks? As I told you before, I don't work for you or Seattle PD anymore. If you've got questions about my case, talk to Harry I. Ball or, better yet, talk to Ross Connors himself. Once they give the okay, I'll be glad to talk to you or your investigators about this. Just have them drop by. Obviously you know where I live."

Kramer turned and stalked back down the hallway. "Why didn't you tell him about Sister Mary Katherine?" Mel asked, once the elevator door shut behind him.

"He's a jerk," I replied.

"That's true," she said, "and readily apparent. But I still don't know why you shut him down like that."

"Because Paul Kramer and I have a history," I replied.

I expected her to argue the point or to ask for more details, but she didn't.

"Okay," Mel said. "Makes sense to me."

With that she went back over to the window seat, plugged her feet back into her shoes, and picked up her coat. "It's late," she said. "I need to be going." She paused by the door. "See you tomorrow. At the office?"

"Probably."

She left then. As I took the last of the Sister Katherine tapes out of the VCR, I asked myself Mel Soames's question. Why hadn't I told Kramer? Wasn't I being as territorial as he had been in the evidence room? And I would be talking to him or at least to the detectives a.s.signed to investigate Elvira Marchbank's death. All I was doing was putting him off for a few hours-until the AG's office was open for business the next morning.

But the really troubling part was a question raised by Kramer himself. Had my refusal to give him the information contributed to what had happened to Elvira? She had been found at the bottom of a flight of stairs. Had she fallen or had she been pushed? By being stubborn, I had put myself out of the loop. Paul Kramer didn't know about Sister Mary Katherine, but I didn't know about Elvira. In the game of t.i.t for tat I was as much of a jerk as he was. That was not high praise.

So what was I going to do about it? I worried about it for a while. Finally I picked up the phone and dialed a number I knew by heart, one that brought me to the homicide desk at Seattle PD. Sergeant Angie Jerrold answered the phone. I was relieved to hear a familiar voice, and she seemed happy to hear from me as well.

"What can I do for you?"

"Who's a.s.signed to the Marchbank case?" I asked.

"Which one?" she asked. "As of tonight, there are two of them on the board," she said. "Madeline and Elvira."

I was stunned to learn that based on Elvira's death, Kramer had reopened Madeline's long cold case. I was stunned and a little relieved.

"Either," I said. "Whoever's available."

Which is how I ended up talking to Detective Kendall Jackson. "What can I do for you, Mr. Beaumont?"

Jackson had been a uniformed officer and still working the cars when I left the department. Having him call me Mr. Beaumont made me feel slightly ancient.

"Which Marchbank belongs to you?" I asked.

"Elvira," he said. "Hank and I just got back from the crime scene."

Hank was Detective Henry Ramsdahl.

"I'm working Madeline," I said. "For the AG's office. Captain Kramer was here a little while ago. He suggested it might be a good idea if we compared notes."

"Sure thing," Jackson said. "Sounds good to me. What do you have?"

"An eyewitness."

"To Madeline's murder?" He sounded incredulous. "From 1950?"

"Yup."

"When can we talk to this witness?"

"That's a little tougher," I said. "She's a nun. Lives in a convent up on Whidbey Island."

"Can I call her up?"

That was when I realized that in all my transactions with Sister Mary Katherine, no one-not Sister Mary Katherine and not Freddy Mac-had given me her phone number. I knew the convent had to have a telephone. Hadn't she told me someone named Sister Therese had surfed the Net for information on Alfred and Elvira Marchbank?

"I don't have that number right now," I said. "Once I get it, I can have her call you. Or better yet, maybe I can convince her to come talk to you."

"If you can talk a nun out of a convent, you must be some kind of guy."

"We'll see," I said. "If I can get her to come to town, how hard will it be to meet up with you?"

"Not hard at all," Jackson returned. "You tell us when and where, and Hank and I will be there. Captain Kramer gave us our marching orders. Both cases are highest priority."

Captain Kramer! Just hearing the word captain used in conjunction with Kramer's name rankled, but I was going to have to get used to it.

"All right, then," I said. "Let's see what we can do."

Good to my word, I was up and on the phone to Freddy Mac bright and early the next morning, asking for Sister Mary Katherine's phone number.

"Is it too early to call?" I asked after he gave me what I needed.

"Hardly," Fred said with a laugh. "You won't be waking her. She tells me morning devotionals start at five A.M."

So I dialed Saint Benedict's and was put through to Sister Mary Katherine. "Beaumont here," I said. "I'm wondering if you can come back to Seattle today to meet with some Seattle PD detectives."

"This evening, perhaps," she said. "Sister Therese and Sister Margaret just left in the van to run some errands. They won't be back until around lunchtime. I could leave after that."

I didn't want the meeting with the Seattle PD homicide detectives to conflict with Rosemary Peters's funeral. I needed it to be earlier instead of later. "What if I came out to Whidbey and picked you up?"

"That seems dreadfully inconvenient for you. Does it really have to be today?" Sister Mary Katherine asked. "I've been away for several days, and I just got home late yesterday."

"Elvira Marchbank is dead," I told her.

"Oh, no," Mary Katherine murmured. Her regretful tone surprised me. "She was fine when I saw her. What happened?"

"When you saw her?" I repeated. "When was that?"

"Yesterday afternoon," Sister Mary Katherine said. "After our lunch. I decided to drive back to the old neighborhood just to look around. I stopped outside the foundation office and wondered what to do. Finally I worked up my courage and went inside. When I asked to see Mrs. Marchbank, the woman there told me Elvira wasn't available. But as I was leaving, a limo drove up to the house next door-the place where my parents and I used to live. It turns out that's where Elvira lives now. The limo was bringing her home from a doctor's appointment. Even after all these years, I recognized her the moment she stepped out of the car."

I was thunderstruck. "You didn't talk to her, did you?"

"Of course I did," Sister Mary Katherine said. "After all these years, it seemed like the right thing to do, and I'm glad I did, too. She was old and frail and she told me she was sorry."

"Sorry?" I asked.

"Sorry about the part she played in Mimi's death. She said she'd always known I'd come back someday and that she was finally ready to 'do the right thing.' I took that to mean that she was prepared to turn herself in and accept responsibility for her actions. What happened to her?"

"She fell down a flight of stairs. The detectives working the case seem to think she was pushed."

"That's terrible," Sister Katherine said. "I'm so sorry."

From my point of view, terrible just about covered it. Sister Mary Katherine had just gone from being a homicide eyewitness to being a possible homicide suspect.

"I'm on my way to pick you up," I said. "I'll be there as soon as I can."

CHAPTER 13.

IT TOOK TIME TO MAKE Enterprise shape up and come through with the rental car the insurance company had ordered for me. Once it appeared, I headed north on I-5. After the 928, the Ford Taurus was a bit of a letdown. As the ads say about Porsches: There is no subst.i.tute. I had been told that the adjuster would be getting back to me either that day or the next with the verdict as to whether or not the 928 was totaled. In the meantime, the Taurus was my ride.

I lucked out and caught the Mukilteo Ferry and headed for Useless Bay on Whidbey Island. Useless Bay is useless because it's so shallow that at low tide it's little more than a glorified mudflat. On the way I called into the office to let people know what I was up to.

"Keeping a low profile, I see," Barbara Galvin observed.

"No, I'm working," I told her. "If you like, I'll be glad to talk to Harry."

"Wouldn't recommend it," she returned. "He's still on the warpath about your five o'clock news appearance. If I were you, I'd give him more time to cool off-unless he calls you, that is."

It seemed like a good idea to take Barbara's advice as far as Harry was concerned. "What about Mel?"

"She and Brad are in Seattle doing interviews," Barbara said.

If one of the people they were interviewing was Heather Peters, that meant I didn't want to talk to Mel, and I certainly didn't want to talk to Ron or Amy. I put my phone back in my pocket and hoped it wouldn't ring.

Once on Whidbey, I left the Clinton Ferry Dock behind and drove north, past the turnoff to Useless Bay Country Club and onto Double Bluff Road. Evidence of downed trees was everywhere. The entrance to Saint Benedict's was barred with an imposing iron gate. Alongside were a keypad and an intercom.

When the invisible gatekeeper allowed me entrance, I was amazed. The convent grounds had been lovingly landscaped into something that rivaled Victoria's famed Buchart Gardens. On this midwinter day, nothing was in bloom, but the snow was mostly gone, and the carefully tended beds were clean and empty and ready for planting. A coveralls-clad woman with a noisy leaf blower was herding the last few fallen leaves off the manicured and graveled pathways. She looked up and nodded as I drove past, but she didn't stop what she was doing.

The convent's several buildings, nestled in a slight hollow, looked old and European. Thick hay-bale walls were covered with whitewashed stucco. The roofs were covered with red clay tiles. The centerpiece of the place was a tiny chapel, no bigger than a two-car garage.

As I stopped beside what appeared to be the main building, the door to the chapel opened and Sister Mary Katherine stepped out. She was dressed in an old-fashioned flowing habit.

"I was saying prayers for Elvira Marchbank," she said. "If you'll come in and wait for a few minutes, I'll change into civilian clothing for our drive into town."

She led me into the main building and left me seated on a couch in front of a cheerfully crackling fire. The fire may have been cheerful, but I wasn't. Not telling Sister Mary Katherine to stay away from Elvira Marchbank had been a serious error on my part. I hadn't mentioned it because it hadn't seemed necessary. It never occurred to me that Sister Mary Katherine would want to have anything to do with the woman who had helped murder her friend, Mimi. I understood that my refusing to give Paul Kramer information about the cold case I was working hadn't caused Elvira's death, but it was likely that she had been killed because I was working the Mimi Marchbank case.

One way or the other, that made what had happened my fault. But even with all that free-floating guilt, somehow the warmth of the fire got to me. I was dozing in front of it when Sister Mary Katherine opened a heavy wooden door and reentered the room. She was wearing the same skirt, blouse, and cardigan she had worn the first time I saw her. "Ready?" she said.

I nodded and stood.

"It'll be a long time before the next ferry," she announced. "We could just as well drive around."

"How long will it take us to get to downtown Seattle from here?"

"Two hours or so. Maybe more, depending on traffic."

I called Detective Jackson and gave him our ETA. Then, once we were in the Taurus, I waited until we had left the convent grounds before I lit into her. "What were you thinking?" I demanded. "Why on earth did you go see Elvira?"

Sister Mary Katherine seemed totally unperturbed by my question. "I didn't do the right thing when I was a girl," she returned. "I wanted to talk to Elvira about it. I wanted to know if she was sorry for what she'd done-and she was."

I could just imagine how hearing that would go over with the Seattle PD detectives. "So you actually spoke to her about Mimi's murder?"

"Yes, of course I did. I already told you that. I went up to the door and knocked. When she opened it and I told her who I was, she invited me in and we had tea."

"How civilized. You sip tea and talk murder."

"We sipped tea, and I prayed with her," Sister Mary Katherine corrected. "I believe Elvira was glad to see me-glad to have a way to put what she and Albert had done behind her."

This was not going to go over at all well with my fellow detectives. "When did you leave?" I asked.

"About three-thirty," Sister Mary Katherine said, "but I didn't kill her, if that's what you're thinking."

"I may not be thinking that," I grumbled back at her, "but other people will be. Like the Seattle homicide detectives working the case, for instance. I don't know about the time of death, but if you were one of the last people to see her-"

"I'm not a detective," she interrupted. "I'm a woman of G.o.d. Once I remembered what had happened, I admit, my first reaction-my very human reaction-was to want to see Elvira Marchbank punished for what she did. But after I left you at the Westin, I came to my senses. My real purpose in life is saving souls, not in seeing that the guilty go to prison. In the case of Elvira's soul, I think I may have been of some help."

"She confessed to you, then?" I asked.

"Certainly not," Sister Mary Katherine responded. "I'm a nun, not a priest. She's an Episcopalian, you know."

"So she didn't come right out and admit to you that she helped murder Madeline Marchbank, but she said she was sorry?"

"She didn't have to say she did it. I know she did it," Sister Mary Katherine said, verbally underscoring the word know. "I saw her do it, remember?"

We rode for some time in silence. I tended to believe that Sister Mary Katherine was telling the truth, that she had gone to Elvira's house in hopes of saving the woman's soul. I doubted my former colleagues in the homicide section of Seattle PD would see things in that same light.

"I'm sorry if what I did disappointed you," she added finally. "We seem to be working at cross-purposes here. Tell me, who exactly are we meeting with once we get to town?"

"We're meeting with four Seattle PD homicide detectives. Two of them are a.s.signed to Elvira's case. The other two are working Madeline's."

"They've reopened it?"

"Yes."

Sister Mary Katherine sighed. "But Elvira's dead. So that will finally be the end of it."

"Probably," I agreed. "For Madeline's homicide, anyway. Closing a case with a dead defendant isn't nearly as difficult as convicting a live one. Detectives don't have to develop evidence that will hold up in court, and they don't have to prove culpability 'beyond a reasonable doubt.' In Elvira's case, however, it seems likely that you may have been one of the last people to see her alive. That means you may be considered a person of interest, if not a possible suspect. You probably shouldn't go to this meeting without counsel."