Improbable Cause (24 page)

Their car arrived just then. The two of them got in and drove away, leaving me standing there in the garage with smoke pouring out both my ears. So far the evidence I had may have been strictly circumstantial, but I knew in my bones we were finally on the right track.

My car came eventually, and I drove straight to the Edinburgh Arms. Instead of entering the driveway, I went around to the back of the complex and parked on the street near the long row of neat, brick garages. The doors all had a thick coat of fresh cream-colored paint, and the windows at the top of each door were uniformly clean and polished.

There were no numbers on the garages, no identification of any kind to tell which garage belonged to which unit, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to go ask.

I started at one end of the building and worked my way to the other, stopping at each door and standing on tiptoe to peer through the glass. I was about two-thirds down the row when I hit pay dirt.

Parked inside one of the garage stalls was an older model black BMW with a mangled rear bumper. The first two letters, the K and the R, were plainly visible, but the rest of the license plate was obscured by twisted chrome. No wonder Darlene could only remember the first three letters on the plate. That was all she could see.

I raced back to my car and headed downtown. As I drove, pieces of the puzzle swooped around and around in my head like airplanes waiting to land. The BMW had to be one of Dr. Nielsen’s cars. Whoever was driving it

would

have had the

garage door

opener for sure and possibly access to the office as well. Office keys and car keys often share the same key ring. That would explain how the killer had unlocked the dead bolt to get inside.

But Darlene had said the driver of the foreign car was a man. What about that? Suddenly I remembered how Daisy and Rachel had looked once they donned their khaki Woodland Park Zoo docent uniforms. The matching pith helmets had totally concealed their hair. From a distance, especially if they had been seated in a fast-moving car, either one of them could have been mistaken for a man. For that matter, in the dim light of the garage, a pith helmet could have passed for a Washington State Patrol trooper’s campaign hat.

After all, when the car had sped past her, Darlene Girvan was damn lucky just to be alive. I could hardly fault her powers of observation at a time like that.

I parked in the Public Safety Building garage and pushed my way into an already crowded elevator. I was headed for my cubicle, but Margie stopped me as I sprinted past her desk.

“Hey, have you heard the news?”

“What news?”

“Detective Lindstrom called in from Olympia. He was all excited. One of the license numbers belongs to Dr. Nielsen. He had stopped for coffee and spotted the name on the list while he was waiting for his food.”

“I know,” I said.

Margie’s face fell. “Somebody already told you? I thought I’d get to you first.”

I shook my head. “You did, but I’m a detective, remember? How long ago did you talk to him? Where is he now?”

“Only about fifteen minutes ago. I’m sure he’s on his way back.”

“All right. Get somebody to patch you back through to him. Tell him to get here on the double. I’ll have the search warrant ready by the time he gets here.”

The search warrant was signed and sitting on my desk long before Big Al showed his face. As I sat there waiting for him, I had some time to think. They weren’t good thoughts.

Detectives usually get a real rush when they close a case. It’s like an addictive drug, a high that we live for. But the rush was missing this time.

Every scrap of information we had gathered showed Dr. Frederick Nielsen to be something less than your basic, all-around nice guy. In fact, our victim was a wholesale son of a bitch who had learned what he knew about life at his father’s knee. He had damaged and abused all those whose lives had touched his.

And now someone was going to have to track down his two LOL aunties, arrest them, and charge them with homicide.

It wasn’t a task I relished.

There’s something almost un-American about reading someone their rights when they’re wearing a red-checked gingham apron and kneading bread dough. Remembering Rachel’s trick from the previous time, however, Al and I decided to cover both entrances to the Edinburgh Arms apartment. He went to the front door while I went around to the back.

Rachel was in the kitchen with her hands covered with flour. Tiny white specks dusted her eyebrows and eyelashes. Buddy was confined to a cage in one corner of the kitchen.

“Freeze, sucker!” I heard through the screen door as soon as I knocked.

“Why, hello, Detective Beaumont,” Rachel said, smiling in greeting and holding the door open to let me in. “How are you today? Cool weather like this always makes me want to bake, even in the summertime.”

“This isn’t a social visit, Rachel. Detective Lindstrom’s at the front door.” Through the dining room I heard Dorothy Nielsen call for Big Al to let himself in.

“Why, whatever is he doing there?” Rachel asked.

“What’s your name? What’s your name?” Buddy wanted to know.

I ignored him and focused all my attention on Rachel. “You gave us the slip the last time, remember? We’re taking precautions.”

Smiling again, she shrugged and returned to the counter, where she picked up a smooth round cushion of bread dough that had been sitting on a floured breadboard. “I explained all about that,” she said. “I wanted to be the one to tell Dotty.”

“I think it’s time we stopped the charade, Rachel. We’re here with a search warrant.”

She stood there holding the dough, looking at me. “A search warrant?” she repeated, frowning. “What for?”

There were voices coming from the other room. Dorothy Nielsen had evidently captured Al and drawn him into conversation. Without waiting for him to show up in the kitchen, I pulled my plastic-covered copy of the Miranda warning from my pocket and began to recite it. After all these years I don’t really need the cue card, but I keep it in my hand, just in case.

When I finished, Rachel was still holding the dough. She hadn’t moved. “Why did you do that?”

“Because you and your sister are under investigation for the murder of your nephew.”

The bread dough dropped unnoticed onto the breadboard.

“No!” she said.

“Yes,” I responded. “Where were you on Saturday afternoon?”

“I was at the hospital, with Dotty.”

“All afternoon?”

“From noon until four or so.”

“Will anyone remember seeing you there?”

“I don’t know. Dotty surely. I don’t know about anybody else. The nurses perhaps.”

Big Al appeared in the dining room doorway and was greeted by Buddy’s usual salutation. Al made a face, but he spoke directly to Rachel. “Good afternoon, ma’am,” he said. She didn’t seem to notice him. Her eyes were glued on me.

“Tell us about your visit to Dr. Leonard’s office that morning.”

“What about it?”

“What happened?”

“She told us that Dotty refused to go into a nursing home. She asked if we could have her here with us for a while.”

For some reason, Rachel was still shying away from giving us totally straight answers. Verbally I forced her into a corner. “Why did she need a nursing home? Why couldn’t she just go back home with her son?”

“She couldn’t because he—” Rachel blurted, then she stopped.

“Because he what?”

She lifted the hem of the apron and wiped her hands with it. “He beat her,” she said hopelessly, keeping her voice hushed and leveling a meaningful glance at the open doorway behind Big Al. “Freddie beat his own mother. I still can’t believe it. The doctor said that’s how her hip got broken.”

“You never knew about it before Dr. Leonard told you?”

She shrugged. “We may have had our suspicions off and on over the years. I knew he ruled LeAnn with an iron fist, but I never thought he’d stoop to physical violence—not with LeAnn and certainly not with Dotty. She’s his mother, for heaven’s sake!”

“Is Saturday the first Daisy learned about it, too?”

“As far as I know. If Daze knew otherwise, she never mentioned it to me.”

“Where was Daisy Saturday afternoon?” Big Al asked.

“The zoo, of course. Some of the time she works as an aide in animal health, but this week we’ve been busy getting ready for the Jungle Party. It’s tonight, you know.”

Al arched an eyebrow. “Animal health?” he asked. “Would she know how to run an autoclave?”

“Probably,” Rachel said. “Why?”

“Never mind about that right now,” I said. “What you’re telling us is that Daisy wasn’t with you at the hospital?”

“That’s correct. She dropped me off on her way. I caught a bus home after visiting hours.”

“Dr. Leonard told us you and Daisy were arguing as you left her office. What about?”

Rachel sighed. “It was something I said.”

“What?”

“That Freddie was a worthless son of a bitch. That I wished he would die.”

“Daisy disagreed with that?”

“She said someone needed to talk with him, to convince him that he needed help.”

“Do you remember what Daisy was wearing that afternoon?”

“Her uniform. We had the appointment with Dr. Leonard, and then she had to get right over to the zoo. She had a tour scheduled for one o’clock. We all have to work a certain number of public contact hours, you see.”

“So she was driving?”

Rachel nodded.

“Which car?”

“Freddie’s. The one he gave Dotty. He told us we should drive it at least once a week to keep the battery charged.”

“And what kind of car is it?”

“A nice one. A BMW. It’s out in our garage. It’s not that new, but it’s a whole lot newer than our Buick. We thought we should try to keep it in out of the weather to protect the finish.”

“Had it been in an accident the last time you saw it?”

Her eyes grew wide. “The BMW in an accident? No.”

“It wasn’t damaged when you saw it last?”

“Certainly not. It was fine. Daisy may drive fast on occasion, but she’s not careless.”

“Would you mind showing us the car.”

“Of course not. Why would I mind?” She opened a drawer beside the kitchen door and removed a single key as well as another key ring; then she led us out to the garage. We went in by way of a door at the courtyard end of the garage.

“See there?” Rachel said triumphantly, pointing at the undamaged front end of the BMW. “What did I tell you?”

“You’d better take a look at the back,” I said.

When she did, her jaw dropped. “When did this happen? It wasn’t like this Saturday. Why didn’t Daisy tell me about it?”

“Rachel,” I said quietly, “would you mind doing us a favor?”

“What?” she asked.

“Is there any kind of check-in procedure at the zoo?”

“For docents, you mean?”

I nodded.

She looked at me for a long moment, then she nodded slowly. “So that’s what you’re thinking. That she didn’t go to the zoo at all. We’ll just see about that. I’ll call and check. Once I do, you’ll see you’re making a terrible mistake.” She turned and started briskly for the door.

“May I have the keys?” Al asked.

She whirled and glared back at us. “What for?”

“We have a search warrant to search your premises,” I explained. “Including any vehicles.”

I took the official document from my coat pocket and handed it to her. Without bothering to look at it, she flung the warrant and the keys on the floor of the garage and marched off toward the apartment with me on her heels.

We went back inside through the kitchen door. While Rachel dialed the zoo on the kitchen phone, Buddy tried desperately to draw me into conversation. “What’s your name?” he whined plaintively. In his lonely kitchen exile, he was evidently quite miserable.

Rachel finally got through to the zoo and asked for someone to check the sign-in sheet. For several minutes she waited on hold, without speaking to me or acknowledging my presence. When the other person returned and began speaking, Rachel’s head bobbed up and down in vigorous agreement.

“See there?” she said to me, holding the phone away from her mouth and covering the mouthpiece. “I told you she was there. Her signature is on the sheet right where it’s supposed to be. In at twelve-thirty and out at three-thirty.”

“How can that be? It doesn’t make sense,” I commented.

“Of course it makes sense,” Rachel snapped. “I tried to tell you this was all a mistake.”

“Did you say she was conducting tours?”

Rachel nodded.

“Who’s in charge of them?”

“The tours? Madge,” she answered. “She arranges the scheduling.”

“Check with her and find out if Daisy actually appeared for her one o’clock tour.”

Although Rachel clearly thought me unreasonable, she removed her hand from the receiver and asked to speak with Madge. It was a minute or so before she was connected.

“This is Rachel,” she said into the phone. “Rachel Miller, Daisy’s sister. I wanted to check on the tour Daze did on Saturday.” There was a long pause and Rachel began to frown. “She didn’t?” Her tone was incredulous. “You’re sure?”

She listened to the answer, then hung up the phone. With a sigh she turned to face me. “Madge says Daisy never showed up. They held the tour for a while, but they finally had to send it out with somebody else. I don’t understand. Why would she sign in and then not go on her tour?”

“Maybe she signed in and out later, hoping to give herself an alibi,” I suggested.

Just then Al reappeared at the kitchen door. “You should come look at this, Beau.” He nodded curtly in Rachel’s direction. “You’d better come along, too.”

“Rachel, what’s happening in there?” Dorothy called from the living room. “I thought you were going to make us a pot of coffee.”

“In a minute,” Rachel replied. “I’m busy-right now.”

Big Al led the way back to the garage and around the car to the BMW’s open trunk. “Look at that,” he said.

A rumpled docent’s uniform lay on the floor of the trunk. There had been some attempt to rinse the clothing out, but a splatter of brownish stains was still plainly evident on the material.