Trial By Fury

I had known Peters for almost two years. I had never heard him laugh like that, with his head thrown back and mirth shaking his whole body. He had always kept himself on a tight rein. It was so good to see him having a good time that I forgot about being pissed, about it being late, and about my getting lost.

I walked up to the booth and slid into the seat across from them. "All right, you two. What's so fu

Peters managed to pull himself together. He wiped tears from his eyes. "Hi, Beau. She is." He ruffled Andi Wy

Andi Wy

That set him off again. While he was convulsed once more, Andi signaled for the bartender. "Want a beer?"

I looked at Peters, trying to assess if he was smashed or just having one hell of a good time. "No thanks," I said. "Somebody in this crowd better stay sober enough to drive."

The bartender fought his way over to us. I ordered coffee and, at Peters' insistence, a plate of the special Thursday night Roanoke spaghetti. The spaghetti was all right, but not great enough to justify Peters' rave review. I wondered once more exactly how much beer he had swallowed.

"What's going on?" Peters asked, getting serious finally. "It took you long enough."

"We found something in Joa

Peters frowned. "What was it?"

I didn't feel comfortable discussing the case in front of Andi Wy

Peters reached for the pitcher, glanced at me, and saw me watching him. "I went off duty at five o'clock," he said in answer to my unspoken comment. Leaning back, he refilled both his and Andi's glasses from the pitcher.

"We waited a long time. It got late and hungry out. We finally decided to come here. What do you think? It's a great place, isn't it?"

I wouldn't have called it great. It was nothing but a local tavern in the "Cheers" tradition, with its share of run-down booths, dingy posters, peeling paint, and loyal customers planted on concave barstools.

"I was telling Ron that we used to come here after school," Andi said. "Darwin, me, and some of the others."

When she called him Ron, it threw me for a minute. I tended to forget that Peters had a first name. And it surprised me, too, that in the time since I'd left them to go with Joa

"Is that right? When was that?" I asked, practically shouting over the noise of a new song blaring from the jukebox.

"Last year," she answered.

I swallowed the food without chewing it, gulped down the coffee, and rushed them out the door. Andi's pickup was parked outside. I got in to drive the Dodge while Peters walked Andi to her truck, opened the door for her, and gave her a quick goodnight kiss. Andi started her engine and drove away. Peters returned to our car looking lighter than air.

That kiss bugged me. I distinctly remembered Ned Browning calling her Mrs. Wy

I climbed Peters' frame about it as soon as he got in the car. "Isn't she Sadie, Sadie married lady?" I asked.

"Divorced," Peters said. And that was all he said. No explanation. Not even a lame excuse.

I stewed in my own juices over that for a while before I tackled him on the larger issue of the Roanoke I

"Wait a minute. Who's the guy who was telling me just the other day that I needed to lighten up a little, to stop being such a stickler for going by the book?"

"I didn't mean you should overreact," I told him.

I took Peters to his own place in Kirkland rather than dropping him downtown to drive his Datsun back to the east side. I didn't know how much beer he had drunk, and I wasn't willing to risk it.

When I told him I was taking him home, he gave a noncommittal shrug. "I'm not drunk, Beau, but if it'll make you feel better, do it."

On the way to his house I told him about the contents of Joa

"Yes."

"And she could tell looking through the rope that those were the clothes he wore the day he died?"

"That's right."

"Doesn't it strike you as odd?"

"Why should it?"

"It seems to me that one way of knowing what's inside a closed container is to be the one who put it there."

"Joa

He didn't talk to me much after that. I couldn't tell what was going on, if he was mad because I thought he was too smashed to drive home or if he was pissed because I wasn't buying his suspicions about Joa

As we drove into his driveway, I said, "I'll come get you in the morning if you like."

"Don't bother." His tone was gruff. "I'll catch a bus downtown. This is only the suburbs, Beau. Despite what some people think, it isn't the end of the earth."

He got out and slammed his door without bothering to thank me for the ride. I was too tired to worry about what ailed Peters. My three hours of sleep had long since fallen by the wayside. I needed to fall into bed and get some sleep.

It's hell getting old.

CHAPTER 20

My alarm went off at seven, and the phone went off exactly one minute later. It was Ames, chipper and cheerful Ames, calling me from Arizona and wondering whether or not I would pick him up at the airport at one that afternoon. I blundered my way halfway through the conversation before I remembered the real estate closing for Belltown Terrace was scheduled for three-thirty.

"Shit! I never wrote it down in my calendar."

"Wrote what down? What's the matter, Beau?"

"The closing. It's scheduled for the same time as Darwin Ridley's funeral."

"Do you have to go?"

"I ought to, but maybe I could ask Peters. He shouldn't mind."

"Good. After the closing, we need to go see the decorator, too. He's been calling me here in Phoenix. Says he can never catch you."

"Look, Ralph, I don't spend my time sitting around waiting for the phone to ring."

"You should get a machine, an answering machine with remote capability."

"Will you lay off that answering machine stuff? I'm not buying one, and that's final."

"Okay, okay. See you at one."

Even riding the bus from Kirkland, Peters beat me to the office. His unvarying promptness bugged the hell out of me at times, particularly since, no matter what, I was always ru

"What are you up to?" I asked, walking past him to get to my desk.

"Here it is," he said. He dropped the file folder, grabbed his pen, and copied some bit of information from the folder into his pocket notebook.

"Here's what?" I asked. I confess I was less interested in what he was looking for than I was with whether or not there was coffee in the pot on the table behind Margie's desk. There was-a full, freshly made pot.

"Rimbaugh. That's his name."

"Whose name? Peters, for godsake, will you tell me what you're talking about?"

"Remember Monday afternoon? We talked to all those old duffers who are part-time security guards down at Seattle Center? Dave Rimbaugh is one of them. He was assigned to the locker rooms."

"So?"