Taking the Fifth (12 page)

“Am I still making you nervous?”

“You’d better believe it.”

She laughed. “Well, I won’t for very much longer. I’m scheduled to do two talk shows today. We tape one this morning and do a live one this afternoon. I’ve got to go back to the hotel to get ready. Would it be too much trouble for you to drop me off, or are you still determined to send me home in a cab?”

I glanced at her and could see she was laughing at me. “I don’t hold grudges,” I said. “I’ll be happy to give you a ride.”

“And can I use your shower?”

“Sure. Help yourself.”

She refilled our cups, put the tray down on the foot of the bed, then got up and walked toward the bathroom. I watched with considerable interest while she gathered up her clothes. My shirt was long on her, but not quite long enough. When she bent over to pick up her purse, the view was tantalizing.

My response was classic and predictable. I lay on the bed, drinking my coffee and arguing with myself about it while I heard her turning on the water in the shower and adjusting the temperature. Finally, I made up my mind. After all, she had started it. So what if it was a case of mistaken identity? She was the one who had put the idea in my head, who had said ground rules were made to be broken.

I got up and tapped gently on the bathroom door. She opened it a crack and peered out at me through a cloud of steam.

“May I come in?”

She smiled. “That’s up to you.” She reached out a bare arm and clasped it around my neck, pulling me into the room with her.

One of the things I had marveled about when I bought the penthouse at Belltown Terrace was the massive sunken tile bathtub and shower in the master bathroom. I had wondered about it, but in the few weeks I had lived there, I’d had no chance to field test it the way Jasmine Day and I did that morning, with the needle points of hot water stinging our naked bodies and thick steam boiling up around us.

Later, as we dried off, I gave her an appreciative flick on her water-dotted rump with my damp towel. “That is undoubtedly the best shower I’ve ever taken,” I said.

“Not bad,” she replied.

As she began to rummage through her purse for makeup, I heard the phone ring. When I answered it Peters was there. He still sounded as if he was talking from the bottom of a large tin can, but he seemed cheerful, more like his old self, more like the man who had been my partner until his neck got broken.

“Look, Beau. No hands.”

“What do you mean, no hands?”

“The phone. It’s a speaker-phone with an automatic redialer. All I have to do is press one button, and it dials you up. We’ve programmed in twelve different numbers, and nobody has to hold it for me. It’s a present from Ralph Ames.”

That figured. Ames, my attorney and friend from Phoenix, is a gadget freak, particularly when it comes to phone gadgetry. He was the one who had forced me to accept an answering machine in my house, and I was well aware of his own automatic redialer. I suspected I wasn’t nearly as grateful for my answering machine as Peters and the rehabilitation floor at Harborview were for Peters’s handless phone. Ames had somehow found a way to give Peters back a small measure of independence.

“Did I wake you?” Peters asked.

“No,” I told him innocently, not mentioning Jasmine Day. “As a matter of fact, I just got out of the shower.” I glanced at the clock. It was already after eight and I was supposed to be at the Mayflower to meet with Alan Dale by ten. “I’ll have to leave in a little while though,” I said. “Got an appointment downtown.”

“I wanted to catch you before you left, to find out if you had seen the review.”

“Review? What review?”

“Of last night’s concert in this morning’sP.I .”

TheP.I . is short for Seattle’s morning paper, theSeattle Post-Intelligencer . Peters knows all about my antipathy toward the media in general and newspapers in particular. While we worked together, his daily briefings were all that had kept me informed of current events.

“So tell me about it,” I urged.

“I’ll read it to you,” he said. “‘Over the last three years, Westcoast Starlight Productions has brought some real dogs to town. Their shows have been pretentious, overdone, and undersold. So when advance publicity said Jasmine Day would be “taking the Fifth Avenue by storm,” I was one of the nonbelievers, one who said it would never happen. Not nohow. Not noway.

“‘I’m writing this to tell you I was wrong. I’m serving up a whole column of crow for breakfast this morning.

“‘There’s good news and bad news here. The bad news is that the Fifth Avenue Theater was only half full when knockout Jasmine Day strutted her stuff last night. The good news is that there still should be plenty of tickets available for tonight’s performance. It deserves to be a sellout.

“‘Miss Day is someone whose considerable talents as a vocalist and a dancer were concealed during her druggy, heavy-metal rocker days. Her versatility and dynamic voice effortlessly overcame not only Westcoast’s hokey staging but also the Fifth Avenue’s stubborn sound system. Lots bigger names in show biz have cracked their front teeth on that one.

“‘The big-band sound of Hal Gordon’s orchestra would have overwhelmed a lesser performer, but it was Jasmine Day’s show from beginning to end.

“‘They say that most rock stars cross that magic-thirty age barrier and disappear forever. Kids won’t listen to them after that. Jasmine Day is thirty-two. I, for one, am glad the teenyboppers are done with her. Now the rest of us get to have her.

“‘In the course of the concert, Miss Day stepped aside from her music long enough to give a courageous, frank talk about drugs, what they’ve done to her life, and how she’s put her life and career back together after her bout with cocaine. It’s a talk that’s timely and inspiring. Surprisingly, it doesn’t detract from the music.

“‘So if your Friday night is looking dull and dreary, go see Jasmine Day. She really has taken the Fifth Avenue by storm.’”

Peters stopped reading.

“I guess he liked it,” I said.

“I’ll say.”

“I liked it too,” I added.

“‘Too,’” Peters echoed. “You were at the concert?”

“It was terrific.”

“Oh,” he responded. There was a pause. Then he said, “Did you pick up any leads?”

“A couple. I’ll be following up on those later this morning.”

“What about the nurse? Was I right about him?”

“On the money, Peters. You called that shot one hundred percent. He’s gay as a giggle. Except I don’t think it was a triangle. The nurse is afraid he’s got AIDS too. He took care of Jonathan Thomas as a sort of penance.”

The silence on the other end of the line lengthened.

“Hey, Peters. Are you there?” I asked.

“I’m going to hang up now,” he said.

“What’s the matter? Did I say something wrong?”

In answer, I heard a click and then a dial tone. I called the hospital back and asked for Peters’s extension. The switchboard operator told me his line was busy.

I was still puzzling over what I might have said that offended him when the bathroom door opened and Jasmine Day walked into the bedroom.

“I thought I heard voices.”

“It was the phone. A friend of mine called to read me a review of your concert last night.”

She made a face. “I try not to pay any attention to reviews. It’s too hard on my ego.”

“This one wouldn’t be. The guy loved it.”

“Oh,” she said and finished cinching her belt tightly around her waist. “Is there anything here to eat? I’m famished.”

“The deli downstairs makes a reasonable breakfast, and for a sizable enough tip they’ll even deliver.”

“Do it,” she said, heading for the door leading to the living room. “Scrambled eggs, hash browns, bacon, toast, and orange juice.”

It’s no coincidence that I know the deli’s telephone number by heart. As soon as the bedroom door closed behind Jasmine, I picked up the bedside phone and dialed. I ordered breakfast. I even broke down enough to ask them to bring aP.I . along with the food.

I left the bedroom and went into the living room, where I found Jasmine curled up on the window seat looking down at the steady rain falling on Puget Sound.

“It’s really dreary out there,” she said.

“It’s not so bad. If you asked most people who live here, they’d tell you they love the sun, but they don’t mind the rain. If they did, they’d leave.”

I walked over and sat down on the window seat beside her. Something was wrong. She seemed distant, remote. The casual teasing air was gone. She took a sip of coffee without looking up at me. “How come you carry a gun?” she asked quietly.

Looking at the dining-room table and chairs, I saw my shoulder holster still hanging on the chair, exactly where I’d left it when I went to bed. When I thought I was going to bed by myself.

The jig was up. Jasmine Day had me dead to rights.

“I’m a police officer,” I said.

“Not a friend of Dan Osgood’s.”

“No. I’m with Homicide. I was there investigating a case.”

“A murder?”

I nodded, but she wasn’t looking at me. “One of the local stagehands. He died early in the morning after he finished working on the set.”

“After the load-in?”

“I guess that’s what you call it. You didn’t know anything about it? Nobody told you?”

She looked up at me then and gave a small shrug. “I’m the star. Ed tries to protect me, tries to keep those kinds of things away from me so I won’t get upset. But how did you end up with the comps? With those particular comps,” she added.

“I talked to Dan Osgood earlier in the day. He knew I planned to come to the performance to talk to people. He offered me the tickets. Said it would make it easier to come and go as I pleased.”

“And how did you get to my dressing room?”

“I went backstage during intermission, but I couldn’t talk to anyone. They were all busy, working on that band shell thing. I wandered over to your dressing room planning to ask you a question or two…”

“And I jumped to the wrong conclusion.”

I nodded. “I was about to hand you my card when you said what you did about going to dinner.”

“You don’t understand. I always go to dinner after the show with whoever has those seats. It’s been that way the whole tour.”

“But why?”

“Why? Because the people are usually friends of Ed Waverly’s, that’s why. Because I owe him. Because when nobody else would give me a break, when nobody else was willing to back the new me, Ed Waverly said yes. He got Westcoast to take me on. I’d go to dinner with the devil himself if Ed Waverly asked me to.”

I reached out and let my hand rest on her knee. “Couldn’t we pretend that my having the tickets was Ed Waverly’s idea all along?”

She sat looking down at my hand for a long moment and I thought it was going to be all right. Then she picked up my hand and removed it from her leg.

“I don’t think so,” she said, getting up. “You lied to me. I’m going to get my hair. You’d better go ahead and call me that cab.”

She stalked across the living room and down the hall.

“But, Jasmine…” I began. She didn’t answer me, didn’t even pause. “Easy come, easy go,” I said to myself as I watched her walk away.

About that time the phone rang. It was the delivery boy from the deli, calling from downstairs, asking to be let in through the security door so he could bring breakfast upstairs. I had barely put the phone down when another call came through. I recognized Watty Watkins’s voice. He’s the day-shift sergeant with Homicide.

“Sorry to bother you so early, Beau,” he said, “but I thought we should let you know we just had a call from the medical examiner. He says Jonathan Thomas died of a massive cocaine overdose. The doc who did the autopsy is screaming for us to arrest the nurse.”

“Leave Tom Riley out of this,” I said.

“Look, Beau, this is a whole new ball game. I’ve assigned a team of detectives. You’re working one case; they’re working the other. They’ve sealed off the house, and the crime-scene team is on its way over.”

“I’m telling you, Tom Riley had nothing to do with it.”

“And I’m telling you that the day-shift guys are going to conduct their own investigation and draw their own conclusions.”

The doorbell rang. “Hang on, Watty, someone’s at the door.”

I hurried to answer it, paid for the food and the newspaper, put the tray down on the table, and returned to the phone.

“I’m back,” I said.

“From your report, I see that you already notified Thomas’s parents. What about Morris’s mother? You ever get hold of her?”

“I’ll be talking to her today.”

“Good. The media has been bugging Arlo Hamilton to release his name, but we’re waiting on notification of next of kin.” Arlo is Seattle P.D.’s public information officer.

Jasmine came down the hall. The wig was firmly in place. She dropped her purse and shoes on the parquet floor near the door and then stood, one hand on her hip, regarding me from across the room.

“Look, Watty,” I said. “I’ve got an appointment at ten o’clock. I’ll stop by and talk to you after that, all right?”

Hurriedly, I put down the phone and went to the door, where Jasmine was standing on one foot, pulling on a shoe.

“Jasmine,” I blurted. “I meant to tell you—”

“Did you call me a cab or not?”

“No. Let me give you a ride.”

“I’ll walk if I have to.” She started to bend down for her other shoe. I beat her to it, picked it up, and handed it to her. In the process, I looked at the shoe, a finely crafted sandal. The manufacturer’s name was written on the instep. Cole-Haan. And the size was inked into the heel strap. Size 8½B.

With that, she slipped on the sandal, turned, and walked out the door. I didn’t try to stop her. There was no point.

I stood there, thunderstruck. I heard the elevator come and go without moving. Finally, I shook myself out of my stupor. There had to be thousands of pairs of Cole-Haan shoes in the Seattle area. Hundreds in size 8½B.

“Don’t jump to conclusions,” I told myself. I hurried out to the elevator. It was slow coming, and by the time I got down to the lobby door, she was gone.

I went back up to my apartment. The food was sitting on the table getting cold. I didn’t bother to touch it. My appetite was pretty well shot. I wondered if I’d ever get it back.