Trial By Fury

"Thank you."

I was sitting looking at her, but my random access memory went straying back to Monday night, the first night I had seen her, when I brought her back from the medical examiner's office. The light in the carport had been turned off. Was that when the flour container disappeared?

I leaned forward in my chair. "Joa

She frowned and shook her head. "I don't remember at all. I might have, but I doubt it."

"Did you notice that when we came back the light wasn't on?"

"No."

"Where's the switch for the light in the carport?"

"There are two of them. One by the back door and one by the front."

"Both inside?"

"Yes."

I downed the rest of my coffee and stood up. "Come on."

"Where are we going?"

"We're going to drop the container off at the crime lab and make arrangements for them to send someone out to your house to dust it for prints."

"You think the killer was there, in my house?"

"I'm willing to bet on it."

"But how did he get in? How did he open my car without my knowing it?"

"Your husband had keys to your car, didn't he?"

She nodded.

"And the killer had Darwin 's keys."

She stood up, too. "All right," she said.

"I'm making arrangements for someone to put new locks on all your doors, both on the house and the car."

Joa

"If he got in once," I said grimly, "he could do it again."

I had no intention of unloading the container from Joa

It was rush hour by the time we were back in traffic. I-90 westbound was reduced to a single lane going into the city. It took us twenty minutes to get off the access road and onto the freeway. Rush hour is a helluva fu

Joa

"What time?"

"Four," she replied.

"I don't know if I'll make it," I said. "What about the memorial service at school. Will you be going to that?"

"No. I don't think I could face those kids. Not after what happened."

I didn't blame her for that. I would have felt the same way. "If I were you, I don't think I could, either," I told her.

The entire cheerleading squad would probably be there.

Except for one. Bambi Barker.

CHAPTER 19

Joa

I went looking for one. It took a while, but I finally found him polishing a long hallway with a machine that sounded like a Boeing 747 preparing for takeoff. I shouted to him a couple of times before he heard me and shut off the noise.

"I'm supposed to talk to you."

"Your name Beaumont?" he asked. I nodded, and he reached in his pocket and extracted the keys to the car in the parking lot. "Your partner said you should pick him up at the Roanoke."

It didn't make sense to me. If Peters had gotten a ride all the way to the Roanoke in Seattle, why hadn't he asked Andi Wy

None too graciously, I thanked the custodian for his help and set off for Seattle. Something big must have been happening at Seattle Center that night. Traffic was backed up on both the bridge and I-5. I finally got to the Roanoke Exit on the freeway and made my way to the restaurant by the same name on Eastlake at the bottom of the hill.

Andi Wy

"Can I help you?" the bartender asked.

"I'm looking for some friends of mine. Both of them have red hair. A man, thirty-five, six two. A woman about the same age. Both pretty good-looking. They were driving a red pickup."

"Nobody like that's been in here tonight," the bartender reported. "Been pretty slow as a matter of fact."

"How long have you been here? Maybe they left before you came on duty."

The bartender shook his head. "I came to work at three o'clock this afternoon."

I scratched my head. "I'm sure he said the Roanoke," I mumbled aloud to myself.

"Which one?" the bartender asked.

"Which one? You mean there's more than one?"

"Sure. This is the Roanoke Exit. There's the Roanoke I

"I'll be a son of a bitch! You got a phone I can use?"

He pointed to a pay phone by the rest room. "Don't feel like the Lone Ranger," he said. "The number's written on the top of the phone, right under the coin deposit. It happens all the time."

Sure enough, the name Roanoke I

"I'm looking for someone named Peters," I repeated for the fourth time.

"You say Peters? Okay, hang on." My ear rattled as the telephone receiver was tossed onto some hard surface. The paging system at the Roanoke was hardly upscale. "Hey," whoever had answered the phone shouted above the din, "anybody here named Peters? You got a phone call."

I waited. Eventually, the phone was picked back up. "He's coming," someone said, then promptly dropped the receiver again.

"Hey, Beau!" Peters' voice came across like Cheerful Charlie. "Where you been? We've been waitin'."

It didn't sound like Peters. "Andi and I just had spaghetti. It's great. Want us to order you some?"

Spaghetti? Vegetarian, no-red-meat Peters pushing spaghetti? I figured I was hearing things. "Are you feeling all right?" I asked.

"Me?" Peters laughed. "Never better. Where the hell are you, buddy? It's late."

Peters is always accusing me of being a downtown isolationist, of not knowing anything about what's on the other side of I-5, of regarding the suburbs as a vast wasteland. I wasn't about to 'fess up to my mistake.

"I've been delayed," I muttered. "I'll be there in a little while."

It was actually quite a bit longer than a little while. I drove and cussed and took one wrong turn after another. The thing I've learned about Mercer Island is that no address is straightforward. The Roanoke I

The building itself is actually an old house, complete with a white-railed front porch. Inside, it was wall-to-wall people. The decorations, from the plastic scenic lamp shades with holes burned in them to the ancient jukebox blaring modern, incomprehensible rock, were straight out of the forties and fifties. I had the feeling this wasn't stuff assembled by some yuppies trying to make a "fifties statement." This place was authentic. It had always been like that.

In one corner came a steady jackhammer racket that was actually a low-tech popcorn popper. I finally spotted Peters and Andi Wy