Trial by Fury Page 12

  “Get off it,” I told him before he had a chance to open his mouth. “I got back from Portland at three this morning, and I’ve been up working since six, so don’t give me any shit.”

  “My, my, we are touchy this morning,” Peters said with a grin. “So tell me what you learned in Portland.”

  I did. All of it. By the time I finished telling him about the cheerleading squad’s nasty little rite of passage, he wasn’t nearly as cheerful as he had been. In fact, he was probably wondering about the advisability of having daughters.

  “I talked to all those girls,” he said. “They seemed like nice, straight, clean-cut kids.”

  “You can’t tell a book by its cover, remember?”

  “Right, so what do we do? Tackle Wheeler-Dealer? Go have a heart-to-heart talk with Molly Blackburn? Read the writing in the locker?”

  I got up and glanced over the top of the cubicle walls to the clock at the end of the room. It was five to ten. “All of the above,” I told him, “but not necessarily in that order. We’re starting with Maxwell Cole, bless his pointed little head.”

  We dropped the Porsche off at my place and took a departmental crate to the P.I. It turned out Maxwell Cole’s pointed head was nowhere within striking distance. The same scrawny receptionist gave me an icy smile and told me Mr. Cole was out on an assignment. She had no idea when he’d be back. Lucky for him.

  We left there and drove to Mercer Island, figuring we’d make a brief visit to Wheeler-Dealer Barker’s home on our way to his dealership in Bellevue. The address jotted in Peters’ notebook led us to a stately white colonial on a lot that seemed to be several sizes too small. A multinote chime playing “The Yellow Rose of Texas” announced our arrival. A plain, small-boned woman wearing a long honey-colored robe came to the door.

  Her mousy blonde hair was still damp from a shower, and her face was devoid of makeup. Her nose was shiny, her eyes red-rimmed. This was a lady who had been having a good cry in the privacy of her own home. She looked up at us anxiously.

  “Are you Mrs. Barker?” I asked. “Mrs. Tex Barker?” I held out my identification so she could read it.

  “I’m Madeline Barker,” she returned.

  “May we come in?”

  She stepped away from the door uncertainly before finally motioning us inside. We entered a large, well-appointed vestibule, complete with a huge bouquet of fragrant spring flowers.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  I think I had expected Mrs. Wheeler-Dealer Barker to speak with a thick southern drawl. I would have thought she’d offer us coffee with chicory and maybe a mess of grits or black-eyed peas. I was dismayed to discover that all trace of her origins had been eradicated from Madeline’s manner of speech. Grits and chicory were nowhere in evidence.

  “It’s about your husband,” I told her. “Your husband and your daughter.”

  I said nothing more. A mixture of distress and confusion washed over Madeline Barker’s face. Reflexively, she clenched her fists tightly and shoved them deep into the pockets of her robe.

  “What about them?” she asked, her voice cracking as she struggled to maintain an outward show of calm.

  “Would you mind telling us exactly what went on here Friday afternoon?”

  She turned her back on us then and walked as far as the doorway into the next room. Stopping abruptly, she leaned against the wall for support, her breath coming in short panicky gasps.

  Peters moved toward her. He spoke in a gently reassuring manner. “We’re trying to resolve a homicide, Mrs. Barker. Darwin Ridley’s. As I’m sure you know, your daughter was involved to some degree. We need to find out exactly…”

  Madeline Barker suddenly found her voice and swung around to face us. “You don’t think…Bambi couldn’t have done it. She was here, in her room, all night. She never went out.”

  “We’re aware of that. You see, we’ve already talked to your daughter.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Then what are you doing here? Why are you still asking questions?”

  “Was your husband here all night, too?” I asked.

  She paled suddenly and retreated farther into the living room, instantly creating a larger physical buffer zone between my question and her.

  “What do you mean?” she demanded. “You think Tex had something to do with it?”

  “If you’d just answer the question, Mrs. Barker. Was your husband here in the house with you all night or was he gone part of the time?”

  Madeline Barker pulled herself stiffly erect. “I won’t answer that,” she said. “I don’t have to.”

  There are times when no answer speaks volumes. This was one of those times. Tex “Wheeler-Dealer” Barker had not been home all night the night Darwin Ridley died, of that we could be certain. That gave Barker two of the necessary ingredients for murder—motive and opportunity. When had he left the house and what time had he returned? Those were questions in need of answering. For right then we seemed to have taken a giant step toward getting some answers.

  Peters did what he could to soothe Madeline Barker’s ruffled feathers. “You’re absolutely right, Mrs. Barker. You don’t have to answer that question if you don’t want to,” he told her reassuringly.

  The questioning process, conducted in pairs, is a subtle game. Peters and I had learned to play it well, using one another as foils or fall guys with equal ease. The slight nod he gave me said we were shifting to Good Cop/Bad Cop, and I was the bad guy.

  “Could you tell us about the picture, then, Mrs. Barker?” I asked.

  “Picture?”

  “You know which picture, Mrs. Barker. We’ve seen it, and I’m sure you have, too.”

  I’ve learned over the years that if someone doesn’t want to talk about one thing, you give them an opportunity to talk about something else. They fall all over themselves spilling their guts. Madeline Barker was happy to oblige.

  She made no further attempt to pretend she didn’t know what we were talking about. “It came in the mail,” she admitted. “About ten o’clock that morning.”

  “Here? To the house?”

  She nodded. “It was addressed to both of us, so I opened it. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Bambi’s always been such a good girl.”

  “Was there anything else in the envelope besides the picture?” I asked. “A note maybe? A demand for money?”

  “No. Nothing. Just the picture. That awful picture.”

  “Where is it now?” Peters inquired.

  “It’s gone,” she replied.

  “Gone?”

  “Tex told me to get rid of it. I burned it.”

  “And the envelope?”

  “That, too. In the kitchen sink. I ran the ashes down the garbage disposal. That’s what it was,” she added. “Garbage.”

  “Let’s go back to when you opened the envelope,” I put in. “What happened then?”

  Madeline Barker took a deep breath. “I was so upset, I didn’t know what to do. So I called Tex. At work.”

  “And what did he do?”

  “He came right home.”

  “To look at the picture?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then what?”

  “He went to school to get Bambi. To bring her home.”

  “He was angry?”

  “Angry! He was crazy. Bambi wasn’t like Faline. Bambi was never a problem. She was always a good student, always popular, easy to get along with. And then this. I was afraid Tex would have a heart attack over it. He already has high blood pressure, you know.”

  “What happened when he brought her here?”

  “There was a fight, a terrible fight. She said she was going to the game no matter what we said, that we couldn’t stop her.”

  “And that’s when he locked her in her room?”

  Madeline nodded, then turned an appraising look on me. For the first time I think she realized that we had already heard the story once from Bambi, that we were simply verifying information we already knew.

>   “Who came up with the idea of sending her to Portland?” I asked.

  “I did,” Madeline answered firmly. “We’ve fallen away from the church, but I wanted her away from that man. I wanted her out of town. I called my sister. She’s in a convent in Texas. She helped us arrange it.”

  We didn’t stay much longer after that. Madeline Barker had told us as much as she could, or at least as much as she would. There was no need to pressure her any more than we already had.

  Once back in the car, Peters turned on the engine, then paused with his hand on the gearshift. “She still thinks Darwin Ridley seduced her daughter.” Neither one of us had bothered to mention that it was the other way around.

  I shrugged. “It won’t be long before she finds out differently, especially with the likes of Maxwell Cole hanging around.”

  Peters drove us away from the Barker house. “That raises another question, doesn’t it?”

  “What does?”

  “The picture. Why wasn’t there a note? That bothers me. Blackmail requires communication—two-way communication. According to what Joanna Ridley told us, there wasn’t a note with her picture, either. How can it be blackmail?”

  “How should I know? These are a bunch of school kids. Maybe they don’t know all the ropes yet. They’re just talented amateurs trying to break into the big time.”

  “They’ve broken into it, all right,” Peters commented grimly. “Murder’s pretty big time.”

  I allowed as how that was true.

  CHAPTER

  17

  Peters drove us to Wheeler-Dealer Barker’s Bellevue Ford, which sits on a sprawling piece of real estate smack in the middle of Bellevue’s auto row. The place was actually a total contradiction, a state-of-the-art auto dealership made up to look like an old-time, flagstone ranch house. The lot was lined with log-rail fences, and the salespeople were all decked out in cowboy boots and ten-gallon hats.

  Obviously, Tex Barker had brought along the spirit of the Lone Star state as well as his name when he migrated to Washington.

  The lady at the receptionist’s desk wore a blue gingham outfit that would have been a lot more at home in a square dance convention than in an office. “Can I help you find someone?” she asked in the thick drawl I had expected from Madeline Barker.

  “We’re looking for Mr. Barker.”

  “He’s on the phone just now, if you care to wait. Can I get you coffee, tea?”

  “No, nothing. We’re fine.”

  The waiting area had two genuine brown leather sofas with wheel spokes in the armrests. I hadn’t seen one of those since the mid-fifties. I didn’t know anybody still made them. The ashtray had a dead scorpion encased in it. I thought those were museum pieces as well.

  “You’ve never seen any of his commercials?” Peters asked as we waited in the showroom full of cars.

  “Never,” I replied.

  “It’s interesting,” Peters added.

  “What is?”

  “Now that I’ve met his wife. He’s always offering to throw her in with the deal, if what they’ve got isn’t good enough.”

  “Are you serious?” I thought about Madeline Barker. She didn’t seem like someone who would enjoy that sort of thing, especially living among some of the more rarefied Mercer Island types. With a husband and a father like that, she and Bambi both must have had a lot to live down.

  Not one but three hungry salesmen came by to pitch cars to us while we sat there. It was clear this was the good-ol’-boy, let’s-go-out-and-kick-tires school of automobile salesmanship. They were particularly interested in pitching a T-bird Turbo Coupe that they all insisted was a “hot little number.” I couldn’t help wishing we had been driving my Porsche instead of the department’s lukewarm Dodge.

  Eventually, a door opened and Old Wheeler-Dealer himself sauntered out of his private office onto the showroom floor. He was a tall, handsome man in an aging cowboy way. He wore a dove gray western-style Ultrasuede jacket with a complex pattern embroidered on the front of the shoulders in flashy silver thread and a silver and turquoise bolo tie. His huge ten-gallon hat with its snakeskin band was tipped back on his head. I’m no fashion expert, but I guessed the alligator boots were of the real, rather than imitation, variety.

  “How’do, boys. Understand y’all are waitin’ for me?” Peters and I nodded. “Interested in one of our fine automobiles, here? We’ve got some sweet deals, I’ll tell you, some really sweet deals.”

  “We’re with Seattle P.D.,” I said, handing him my identification. “Homicide. We’re investigating Darwin Ridley’s murder.”

  “What’s that got to do with me?” Barker stuck out his chin and thrust my ID back into my hand.

  “Plenty,” I told him. “Do you mind if we ask you a few questions?”

  “Mind? I most certainly do. I got a business to run here. I can’t waste my time answerin’ no-account questions.” He turned and started back into his office. I reached out and grasped the sleeve of his jacket.

  “We’ve talked to Bambi,” I said.

  He turned and swung around toward me. “You what?”

  “I said, we talked to Bambi. Down in Portland.”

  “Why, you worthless creep. I’ll beat the holy shit out of you.” He took a wild swing at me, but Peters caught his fist while it was still in transit. It was the second time that day someone had swung at me and missed. My nose was grateful. So were my front teeth.

  “I think we’d be better off discussing this privately, Mr. Barker,” Peters suggested.

  Barker shook Peters’ restraining hand off his arm. “Oh you do, do you? What makes you think I want to talk to you in private or otherwise?”

  “It’s not a matter of wanting,” I told him evenly. “We’ve seen the picture,” I added.

  A look of barely controlled fury crossed Tex Barker’s face. “Oh” was all he said. He turned away and stalked into his office. Peters and I exchanged glances before we followed him. He stopped at the door, let us into the room, then snarled at the gingham-clad receptionist outside, “I’m not to be disturbed!”

  He slammed the door and pushed his way past us into his small but sumptuous office, taking a seat behind a large, imposing desk. He made no suggestion that we be seated. We sat uninvited.

  “Bambi had nothin’ to do with that man’s death,” he declared, speaking slowly, attempting to keep his voice carefully modulated, making a visible effort to maintain control. Despite his efforts, the words virtually exploded into the room as they left his lips.

  “Did you see Darwin Ridley last Friday?” I asked. “Did you talk to him after you saw the picture that came in the mail that morning?”

  He glared at me. “I did not!”

  I knew he was lying. I can’t say for sure how I knew. I just did. Maybe it was the momentary flicker in his eyes. “Where were you Friday night, Mr. Barker?”

  “Home.”

  I shook my head. “No. Not all night. Someone came to the Coliseum and spoke to Darwin Ridley just at the end of halftime. Were you that person?”

  Tex Barker’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “And what if I was?” he demanded. “What if I stopped by long enough to tell that son of a bitch that if I ever caught him near my daughter again I’d cut his black balls off?”

  “Did you?” I asked.

  He slammed his fist on the desk, sending a coffee cup skittering dangerously close to the edge. “No, sir, God damn it! I didn’t. Never got a chance. Some SOB beat me to it. It ain’t often somebody catches Wheeler-Dealer flat-footed, but someone sure as hell outdrew me on this one.”

  “So you’re saying you’d have killed him yourself if you’d had the chance?”

  “Damn right.”

  Peters had been observing this exchange from the sidelines. “What did you say to him when you saw him?”

  “That he was a dead mother if I ever caught him within fifty miles of Bambi.”

  “I’d be willing to bet that wasn’t news to him”

&nb
sp; A self-satisfied grimace touched the corners of Barker’s mouth. “No it wasn’t. He’d gotten my message.”

  “What message? From his wife?”

  Barker nodded. “That’s right.”

  “And when did you tell him that?”

  “Just at the end of halftime. I caught up with him after the team went on the floor.”

  “Let me get this straight,” I said. “You came to the Coliseum, tracked him down during halftime, and told him that if he ever came near your daughter again, you’d kill him. Where’d you go after that?”

  “Home.”

  “Straight home?”

  Barker shrugged noncommittally.

  “What time did you get there?”

  “Ten. Eleven. I don’t know, don’t remember. I didn’t look at the clock.”

  “I’d suggest you try to remember, Mr. Barker,” I warned him. “We’re dealing with homicide here. You have motive and you have opportunity. Within hours of the time of the victim’s death you threatened to kill him. If I were you, I’d go looking for an alibi. Someone besides your wife,” I added.

  Barker glared back at me. “I don’t need no fuckin’ alibi. If I’d killed the son of a bitch, I’d be down at police headquarters braggin’ about it.”

  That could have been the truth. Wheeler-Dealer didn’t strike me as a man who would hide his light under a bushel, even if that light happened to be murder.

  We were there a while longer. When we left and were making our way back to the car, Peters asked, “What do you think?”

  “I don’t think it was him.”

  Peters sounded shocked. “You don’t? Why not?”

  “His ego’s all bound up in this. He’s pissed because someone beat him out of getting even. Believe me, had he done it, he’d be yelling it to high heaven.”

  “Beau, he’s suckering you. That’s exactly what he wants us to believe.”

  “We’ll see,” I said. “What say we drive over to the school and check out the names in the locker?”

  “Sure? Why not?”

  It was early afternoon when we got to Mercer Island High School. The clerk told us that the principal, Ned Browning, was busy. We asked for Candace Wynn instead. She was sitting at a desk in the counseling office, poring over a yellow sheet covered with writing. She stood up as we entered.