Lye In Wait: A Home Crafting Mystery Part 26

"Meghan and I think we know who killed Walter."

He glanced up at me. "Oh yeah? Who?"

I pointed at the photo he held. "The girl in that picture. Her name's Cherry. She married Walter and they had a son."

Ambrose leaned against his desk. "You're serious."

"Yes. Very." I gave him a brief version of the story Mrs. Gray had told me.

"That's sad, but I don't see how you got from there to deciding this Cherry killed Hanover."

"There's more" I pointed at Richard's baby picture, grimacing at the thought that I'd had it sitting on my dresser for two days. "Meghan says this picture isn't Walter. It's Richard."

"Richard?"

"Her ex-husband. From the other night?"

"Oh, him. Right. So, why would Hanover have a baby picture of Meghan's ex-husband?"

"Because Cherry and Richard's mother, Grace Thorson, are the same person.

Ambrose raised one eyebrow, then reached for the picture of Cherry and the Hanover boys. He squinted. Whistled. "Could be. Hard to tell from this. Might explain why Walter had a baby picture of your housemate's ex, but so might some other things."

Like what? Richard handed out his baby picture to all the neighbors? Right.

"Can you find out anything about Cherry? See what happened to her after she left Cadyville?"

"I'll see what I can do," Ambrose said. "And when you take this stuff over to Mrs. Hanover, ask if it's Cherry in the picture with her boys."

"It's her," Meghan said from behind us.

"Ms. Bly. Come sit down." He pulled over another chair for her. He perched his lanky frame on the edge of his desk.

"You sound sure," he said. And she did, more than she had with me.

"I think you should talk to Grace Thorson, see what she has to say about it."

"How long did you say she was going to be visiting your exhusband? We might want to wait until we learn a little more about this Cherry person, confirm Grace Thorson's ident.i.ty as Hanover's ex-wife."

"Last night she said she was leaving in two days. And if she leaves, I imagine it will be hard-and expensive-to talk with her once she's back in California"

"I see," he said, watching her. "Any other reason you might want me to talk with your mother-in-law?"

Meghan met his gaze.

"Well, it's okay if you don't want to go talk with her," I said. "We can do it. In fact, we'll run by there on our way home. I'll drop this stuff by Tootie's tomorrow. C'mon, Meghan." I stood up.

Ambrose laughed. "Okay, you win. Give me the address, and I'll go by tonight and talk with his mother. Leave those two pictures with me."

"I thought you worked the day shift."

He sighed. "I do. And then some."

"Can't you do it now?" I said. Meghan didn't try to shush me.

Ambrose saw our expressions and sighed again. "I guess I could."

"Good. Let's go," I said.

"Huh uh. You're not going. Or the deal's off."

"What deal? The one where you're doing your job?" I said.

"You're not coming with me."

I pasted on my sweetest smile.

For some reason, he grumbled all the way out the door.

THIRTY-THREE.

SINCE AMBROSE HAD FLAT-out refused to let us come with him, Meghan and I followed in her old Volvo. We didn't even try to be sneaky about it. All that earned us was a glare in the rearview mirror when we pulled up behind him at a stop sign. But we parked down the block when he pulled to the curb in front of d.i.c.k's and Ambrose didn't get out and bl.u.s.ter at us to go away, so I decided to interpret that as tacit approval.

He narrowed his eyes at us when Meghan shut off the car engine, but when we made no move to open the car doors, he strode up the short sidewalk and poked one long finger at Richard's doorbell.

d.i.c.k lived on the corner of Root and Tenth, in a slate-blue box divided into eight apartments: four on the first floor, four on the second. Exterior stairs on each corner of the building led to the upper units, while the lower ones had nine-by-nine-foot pads of concrete to approximate patios in front of their doors. The concrete pads met the concrete sidewalk without the bother of anything green and growing in between. His neighbor had made the most of the patio idea, outlining the cement square with pots of flowering kale and winter pansies and placing a small bistro set next to a humongous gas grill.

d.i.c.k's outdoor decor consisted of a hibachi and a doormat. Ambrose waited. We waited. He pushed the bell again and then knocked on the door. No one answered. Even though Richard had quit the job he'd been complaining about, the one where he was so abused and underpaid he had to borrow money from Meghan to take his kid to a movie, it didn't mean he'd be hanging around the apartment, especially with his mother in town. Maybe he'd taken her, or more accurately she'd taken him, to some tourist hot spot for the afternoon. I tried to imagine Grace mincing around Seattle's Pike Place Market in those G.o.dawful high heels, or d.i.c.k nodding sagely as a docent explained Caravaggio's use of light at the Seattle Art Museum. Ambrose approached and caught my grin as I rolled down the window.

"What?" he said when he saw my expression.

"Nothing. I take it they're not home."

"No. And I'm not leaving my card because I don't want to spook them."

"Yeah. It would suck to lose our only decent suspect," I said.

He gave me a look.

"I'd like to find a phone, check in on Erin," Meghan said. Neither of us carried cell phones, since we both worked out of the house and were pretty easy to track down.

Ambrose reached into his jacket pocket. "Here, use mine."

"Thanks," she said, punching in numbers and turning away from us as I began to speak.

"So how do we know when they get back?"

"I'll run by again tonight. They're probably just gone for the afternoon."

"I could stay and watch for them," I said.

"Oh, for G.o.d's sake. Will you please stop trying to play detective?"

"Hey, if it weren't for me and Meghan, you'd never know about Grace's connection to Walter."

"If there's a connection. That hasn't been established."

"Even so. You'd never know to check if it weren't for us. And having his ex-wife show up out of the blue, right when he dies, has to mean something."

"If she's his ex-wife."

"Yeah, yeah."

"Okay, you're right, it would mean something. But the connection to Meghan and her daughter I find a little hard to take, given the first connection, which isn't a bona fide connection, yet."

"You're starting to sound like me."

"Great. Just what I need. What I mean is, don't you find it odd that Walter just happened to be living right behind his granddaughter and daughter-in-law?"

"Too much coincidence?"

"Exactly."

"What if it wasn't."

"Wasn't what?"

"Coincidence. What if he knew Erin was his granddaughter?"

"I wonder how long he's lived there."

"Mrs. Gray said he moved from one of her other properties to that one right after Meghan and the d.i.c.k moved in. Erin would have been a baby, then. Walter said he liked the little cottage better than the other place he rented, and asked to move in there. Could be he knew who lived in the yellow house across the alley, don't you think?"

"Maybe," he conceded.

Meghan handed Ambrose his phone. "Erin and Zoe stayed after school to help their teacher decorate the cla.s.sroom for Halloween," she said. "They should be home soon. I'm thinking I might drop by and see if they want to go grab some ice cream."

I looked at my watch. "Kind of close to dinnertime for that, isn't it?" And the temperature had dropped in the last hour. I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered at the thought of eating anything that cold.

"We'll keep them small." The ice cream was just an excuse. Not knowing d.i.c.k and Grace's whereabouts had pushed her "Mom" b.u.t.ton, and Meghan needed to see that Erin was okay.

I turned to Ambrose. "Can you give me a ride back to my truck?"

"Sure," he said, and I followed him to his departmental car while Meghan climbed back in her Volvo and drove away.

Once we were on our way back to the station, I broached the subject of showing the picture of Cherry to Mrs. Gray.

"She's the one who told me about Cherry and Walter in the first place. I can go over as soon as I get home and see if she recognizes Grace."

Ambrose gave me a sideways look. "Really."

But when I followed him into the station and reached for the picture still in the box on his desk, he shook his head. "I don't think so."

"But-"

"It's not a bad idea to show the pictures to Walter's landlady. So that's just what I'm going to do."

"Pictures? As in more than one?"

"Before we left I asked one of the cadets to track down a copy of Grace Thorson's California driver's license. With her picture on it."

"Excellent! But you should let me go with you, and not just because I'm trying to be a pain in the a.s.s."

He raised one eyebrow.

"No, wait. Listen. Mrs. Gray knows me. She doesn't know you. She's the one who told me the story about Walter and Cherry and w.i.l.l.y, and I think she'd respond to questions about it better if I were there"

"She'll talk to me."

"I'm sure she would. But she wouldn't tell you as much, or the same things."

"The chick factor," he said.

"Something like that."

He sighed and turned toward the door. "Well, come on."