More Perfect Union (9780061760228) (11 page)

“What's that?”

“I told you it's a benefit dinner, but I didn't tell you what kind.”

“Don't worry about it,” I said. “As long as it's not my own cooking, I'll eat anything.”

She smiled. “It's a murder mystery dinner.”

I stopped in my tracks. “A what?”

“You know, one of those dinners where they hire actors to do a fake murder and the guests try to figure out who did it. I was afraid if I told you, you might not want to come.”

“You're right about that,” I said. “But we're
here now. We could just as well go on in.”

The host and hostess met us at the door. Mercifully, when she introduced us, Marilyn kept quiet about my profession. When they ushered us inside, I could see we were more than a little late. The huge living room was already full of people. I guess it was a nice enough place, but I didn't have a whole lot of opportunity to check it out.

We had barely gotten inside the door when an elegant blonde made a move on me and started bending my ear about buying some real estate, something about the house next door. What did I think? Would it be a good investment or not? Totally without an opinion on the subject, I glanced around looking for Marilyn, hoping she'd rescue me. Instead, she made a beeline for the food and left me to handle the blonde on my own. I had about convinced myself the lady was a mental case when a man came striding up to us carrying two drinks, one of which he shoved in the woman's direction.

“You just can't do it, can you,” he commented snidely to the woman. “You can't be trusted alone long enough for me to go order a drink.”

“Wait a minute,” I began, “we were just…”

“You stay out of this,” he snarled at me. “This is between us. After all, she
is
my wife.”

The blonde began twisting her wedding ring nervously. “Come on, Carl. It wasn't anything like that. I was only telling him about buying the house next door.”

“Like hell you were! I saw the way you looked at him when he walked in the room. He's your type, isn't he. Tall—” He paused long enough to look at me. “Tall, gray, and handsome.”

“Please, Carl, don't do this. Not here in front of all these people.”

Carl shook his head. “I'd stay away from her if I were you. She collects men the way some people collect bowling trophies. They don't mean much afterwards, do they, my dear.”

A deep flush began creeping up the back of my neck. Everyone in the room was staring at us, overhearing every word. On the far edge of the crowd, there was Marilyn holding a plate of hors d'oeuvres. She wasn't going to be any help at all.

Carl turned to me and gave me a companionable whack on one shoulder. “No hard feelings, of course, old boy!” he said. With that, he walked away.

At a loss for words, I turned back to the blonde just as she took a tentative sip of her drink. “I'm so sorry,” she apologized. “He's been like that more and more lately, and the doctors can't tell me what's wrong.”

“Try a shrink,” I suggested. “I think he's off his rocker.”

Suddenly, the blonde's eyes got big. She sputtered and choked.

“What's the matter?” I asked.

She looked at me helplessly, shook her head,
and clutched at her throat. Staggering away from me, she fell facedown on the carpet and lay there without moving.

Carl raced to her side and turned her over. He placed his ear against her breast.

“Get an ambulance,” someone shouted.

Carl sat up, gravely shaking his head. “It's too late for an ambulance,” he said. “She's dead.”

I glanced over at the spot where I had last seen Marilyn. She was almost doubled over with laughter. That's when I finally realized what was going on, that these were the actors and they had suckered me into their script as a reluctant leading man.

When I finally pushed my way through the crowd to Marilyn, she was still laughing.

“What's so funny? Did you know they were going to do that?” I demanded.

She shook her head. “I had no idea, but you were perfect. I didn't know you could act.”

“I can't,” I answered grimly.

Marilyn handed me a plate of food—smoked salmon, fruit and vegetables with dip. “Try this,” she said. “After all that hard work, you should at least get something to eat.”

Much as I hate to admit it, the evening turned out to be fun. The rest of the party was occupied with trying to figure out who had murdered the blonde. Some even suspected me which I found hilarious. Most suspected Carl. When all was said and done, though, the killer turned out to be Carl's gay lover.

It was late when I finally took Marilyn home, but she invited me up to her apartment for a nightcap. We sat there for some time, laughing and comparing notes on the evening. I was about to get up and leave when she put her hand on my leg.

“You wouldn't be interested in spending the night, would you?” she asked casually.

I slid my hand over hers. “I could probably be persuaded,” I replied.

And so she set about persuading me.

M
arilyn Sykes fixed breakfast for us the next morning. It was the kind of breakfast that made me think I'd died and gone to heaven—crisp bacon, over-easy eggs, toasted English muffins, black coffee, fresh orange juice. When she stopped beside me long enough to pour a second cup of coffee, I gave her a playful pat on the rump.

“You're my kind of woman,” I said. “Your breakfast ranks right up there with the Doghouse.”

She laughed. “Just don't let anybody around my department hear you say that. After all, I have a certain professional image to maintain, you know.”

“You mean the chief's not supposed to cook great over-easy eggs.”

She smiled. “Among other things.”

“Don't worry. Your secret's safe with me.”

When it was time to leave, Marilyn walked me to the door. By then she had put on her dress-for-success costume as well as her sensible shoes. The transformation seemed complete, but at the door she took hold of the two loose ends of my tie, pulled me close to her, and tied it for me. A perfect four-in-hand.

It was an awkward moment. I didn't know what to say, so I leaned over and kissed her. “I had a wonderful time,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Me too,” she murmured. “We'll have to do it again sometime.”

Marilyn's condominium complex has a guard shack with twenty-four-hour coverage. A young security guard had noted down my license number the night before when I brought Marilyn home, and now another beardless youth waved and checked off something on a clipboard as I drove past. I admit to feeling a little guilty, which was silly since Marilyn Sykes and I are both well past the age of consent. Nevertheless, it's one thing to do a sleep-over. It's something else to have a security guard taking down your vehicle license number while you do it.

I was soon too immersed in traffic to worry about the security guard. Living downtown, I seldom had occasion to drive from Mercer Island back into the city during morning rush-hour traffic. I hope I never have to again. It was a mess. Despite years of work, that section of I-90 still wasn't complete, and I soon discovered what Mercer Island commuters have been say
ing all along, that there aren't nearly enough onramps to allow island residents adequate access to the roadway.

I inched forward, one car length at a time. It wasn't as though there was a tangible reason for the problem on the bridge, not even so much as a flat tire or a fender-bender. I guess rush-hour traffic moves like that every day of the week. It would drive me crazy. It makes me glad I can walk to work.

Back home in Belltown Terrace finally, I had just time enough to change clothes before my scheduled interview with Martin Green. To reach his office, all I had to do was go downstairs and cut through the garage entrance on Clay. That's my idea of commuting. It was evidently Martin Green's as well.

The Labor Temple has been at First and Broad for as long as I can remember. It's a low-rise, two-story building that occupies the entire half-block. My only previous visits had been on election day when I went there to vote. The building directory told me Ironworkers Local 165 was located on the second floor.

There were a few men lingering in the gray marble hallway outside the ironworkers' office, burly men in plaid flannel shirts and work boots with telltale faded circles of tobacco cans marking their hip pockets. On the door was a typed notice announcing that the office would be closed the next day from 1 to 4
P.M
. so office
staff members could attend the funeral of deceased member Angie Dixon.

I stepped inside and announced myself to a female clerk who was seated behind a counter. She glanced uneasily over her shoulder in the direction of a closed door. “Is Mr. Green expecting you?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “My name's Beaumont. I have an appointment at nine-thirty.”

She looked slightly hesitant. “He has someone with him just now, if you don't mind waiting.”

I sat down on a surly, swaybacked vinyl couch that squatted against the outside wall. Next to it sat a scarred end table with a few dog-eared magazines and a smelly, overflowing ashtray. If ironworkers had heard anything about the Surgeon General's warning on cigarettes, they weren't paying attention.

At the far end of the room, a second woman finished running an exceptionally noisy copy machine and returned to her desk. In the newly silent office, I became aware of the sound of raised voices coming from behind the closed door I assumed led to Martin Green's private office. I was looking at it when the door flew open and a man stormed out.

“I quit, goddamnit! If all I'm fit for is to sit in a tool shack and make up bolts, that's what I'll do, but I'll be goddamned if I'll do this son of a bitch of a job one more minute.”

Saying that, he slammed the door to Green's office with such force that the frosted glass win
dow shattered and slipped to the floor. As he rushed past, I realized it was Don Kaplan, the man I'd met on Martin Green's balcony the night before. He strode by me without any sign of recognition. I don't think he noticed anyone was there.

The two women working in the outer office exchanged guarded looks, then one of them rose and stepped gingerly toward the broken door. Instead of speaking to Martin Green through the jagged hole in the glass, she carefully opened the door.

“There's a Mr. Beaumont here to see you,” she said. Green must have said something in return because she motioned to me. “You can come in now, Mr. Beaumont.”

Martin Green came to the door to greet me. “You'll have to forgive the mess,” he apologized. “We've had a little problem here this morning.”

“I noticed.”

He ushered me into the room. “We've got a hell of a union here, Mr. Beaumont, almost perfect. But it's like anything else. There are always people who don't like the way things are going.”

“People who want it to be more perfect?” I asked.

Green nodded. “You could say that,” he said with a laugh. “A more perfect union.”

He directed me to one of the two chairs facing his desk. Perfect or not, Martin Green's union
work space was a far cry from his private living quarters in Belltown Terrace. His apartment was definitely upscale, first-class cabin all the way and spare no expense. In contrast, Ironworkers Local 165 had him in lowbrow digs. The chair he offered me was one of the gray-metal/green-plastic variety. I recognized it instantly as a littermate of chairs we still use down at the department. You don't often see relics like that anywhere outside the confines of municipal police departments and old county courthouses.

Martin Green seated himself in a creaking chair behind a battered wooden desk and smiled cordially. “Now what can I do for you, Mr. Beaumont?” Under his outward show of easy congeniality, I sensed that he was still deeply disturbed by whatever had gone on between him and Don Kaplan.

“The Bentley, remember?” I reminded him.

“Oh, yes, that's right. In all the hubbub it slipped my mind. Is it going to be fixed soon?”

“Within a matter of days, we hope. In the meantime, we have the Cadillac. I know it's not quite in the same class…”

“Oh, the Cadillac's fine,” he interrupted, waving aside my explanation. “As long as there's something available. Forgive me. I never should have gone ahead and mailed that letter to you. I was just so irritated. My mother would have been thrilled to be picked up at the airport in something as exotic as a Bentley. You know how mothers are.”

I was a little taken aback by Green's total about-face, but I wasn't going to argue the point. If he was happy, I was happy.

“Does that mean you won't be taking us to the Better Business Bureau?”

“Of course not. There's no call to do that, none at all. As I said, I was upset at the time, but I'm not an unreasonable man, Mr. Beaumont. Surely you can see that.”

“Indeed I can.” I hadn't anticipated that the interview would go quite so smoothly. Martin Green was already getting ready to show me out of his office and I hadn't had time to mention my other reason for coming. “By the way, I noticed on the front door that one of your members passed away. That wasn't the woman who died in the accident at Masters Plaza on Monday, was it?”

He rose and came around the desk, stopping in front of me with his arms crossed, nodding his head sadly. “I'm afraid it was. Angie Dixon was one of our newer apprentices. A most unfortunate circumstance, but then nobody ever said working iron wasn't dangerous.”

Green motioned toward the broken window. “Actually, the guy who was in here just a few minutes ago, Don Kaplan, I think maybe you met him last night. He's the one who's in charge of our apprenticeship program. He's taking Angie's death real hard. Personally, I guess you could say.”

Martin Green moved away from the desk and
led me to the door. “Watch your step,” he cautioned as I started across the jagged shards of glass. “I wouldn't want you to slip and fall. Kim, is someone going to clean this mess up?”

The woman who had let me into his office nodded. “I've called maintenance, Mr. Green,” she answered. “A janitor is on the way.” Something about the speed of her response, her quick retreat to the safety of her typewriter made me suspect Martin Green wasn't an altogether easy man to work for.

I stopped beside the counter and turned back to where he was still standing in the layer of broken glass. “By the way,” I said. “Thanks for the champagne last night. I didn't mean to crash your party.”

He waved. “Think nothing of it,” he replied absently. With that, he turned and disappeared back into his office, closing the shattered door behind him while the two secretaries exchanged discreet looks of undisguised relief.

I left the Labor Temple with the feeling that my mission had been totally successful from a property management point of view. I had gotten Martin Green off the backs of the Belltown Terrace management group and made sure the Bentley wouldn't cause us any more adverse publicity. Green was willing to let bygones be bygones, and so were we.

In addition, I had discovered that Don Kaplan, someone I knew, if only slightly, was a person I could talk to in order to learn more about
the ironworker apprenticeship program. How I'd go about it and under what pretext were details I hadn't quite handled yet, but at least I knew who to ask.

When I got back home there was a message on the answering machine from Margie, my clerk down at the department. The message said to give her a call.

“What are you doing, working on your vacation?” Margie asked.

“What makes you think that?”

She laughed. “Easy. I've got a message here for you from Gloria over at the phone company. She says the address you need is 24 Pe Ell Star Route. Where's that?”

“Beats me. Down around Raymond somewhere, I think.”

“That's a little outside the city limits, isn't it?” Margie asked.

She was teasing me, and I knew what she was thinking. Cops do it all the time, use official channels to get the address or phone number of someone they've met and want to see again. It isn't legal, but it does happen.

“Leave me alone,” I said. “Anything else?”

“As a matter of fact, there is one more message. It's from Big Al. He wants to know when you're going to stop farting around and come back to work.”

“Tell him Tuesday, and not a minute before.”

“Will do,” she answered with a barely suppressed giggle. “He misses you.”

Once I was off the phone, I dragged my worn
Rand McNally Road Atlas
off the bookshelf. It was several years out of date, but I suspected the only real difference would be in a few freeway interchanges. The rural roads, especially ones running through little burgs like Pe Ell, would be essentially unchanged.

The town was right where I thought it would be, about twenty-five miles off Interstate 5 between Chehalis and Raymond on Highway 6. I had never been there, had never wanted to go there, but I was going nevertheless.

By noon, I was on the freeway, headed south. Traffic was fairly heavy as out-of-state recreational vehicles lumbered home toward Oregon, California, and points south and east. There weren't any log trucks, though. The lack of rain had turned Washington's lush forests tinder-dry and shut down the woods to logging and camping both.

As I drove, I tried tuning in the radio. I heard a snippet of news reporting a fatal fire somewhere on the east side of Lake Washington. I switched the dial. I wanted music, not news. I was on vacation, out of town. Whatever was on the news wasn't my problem.

Highway 6 turned off at Chehalis and meandered west through wooded hills. Sometimes it ran under trees so thick they formed an impenetrable green canopy over the roadway. Other times it moved along near the bed of the shallow headwaters of the Chehalis River. I stopped at a
wide spot in the road, a hamlet called Doty, to buy a soda and ask directions.

“Where does Pe Ell Star Route start?” I asked the woman clerk as she gave me my change.

“Just the other side of town,” she answered, eyeing me suspiciously. “How come you wanna know? Lookin' for somebody in partic'lar?”

“A friend of mine from Seattle,” I said. “She just moved down here.”

“You must mean that crazy lady with the two little kids. Yeah, she's up the road here apiece—five, six miles or so. It's a blue house on the left. You can't miss it. Looks more like a jail than the real one does over in Chehalis.”

I puzzled over that remark, but only until I saw the house. It was easy to find. The house, just across the road from the river, was nestled back against the bottom of a steep, timber-covered bluff. It was small, as two-story houses go. All the windows and doors on the lower floor had been covered with ornamental iron bars. It did indeed look like a jail.

A beat-up Datsun station wagon was parked near the house. On one side, two children were playing under a towering apple tree. A little girl sat in a swing with her hair flying behind her, while a boy, somewhat older, pushed her high enough to run underneath the swing when it reached its highest point.