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  “Morning, Grace,” the woman said. “Did my order come in yet?” she asked, peeking sideways in our direction. “The wedding’s this weekend, you know.”

  “Yes, Maxine,” Grace Highsmith replied. “I haven’t forgotten. We had a big order come in from UPS this morning, but I’m not sure if your Denby’s in there or not. We won’t be sorting through the packing slips until Latty comes in later this afternoon. Could we get back to you on this either then or early tomorrow?”

  “Either one will be fine,” Maxine answered. “I came down for a manicure and thought I’d check in with you while I was in the neighborhood.” Turning her walker in a wide circle, she headed back for the door. I hurried over to hold it open for her. “Why thank you, young man,” she said. “That’s very kind of you.”

  When the door closed behind Maxine, I returned to Grace Highsmith. “Where were we now?” she began somewhat vaguely. “Oh, that’s right. You wanted to talk to Latty. As I said, she isn’t in right now, but that doesn’t matter. In the long run, I don’t believe talking with her will be all that necessary.”

  Grace Highsmith wasn’t a receptionist, but she had the typical gatekeeper mentality, which is to say, I wasn’t to go anywhere near her niece until she was damned good and ready to let me. “Excuse me, Miss Highsmith, I don’t believe you understand—”

  “Oh, I understand perfectly.” Unperturbed, she smiled up at me. “You and I will have a little chat first, Detective Beaumont,” she added pleasantly. “After that, you can decide whether or not you need to speak to Latty.”

  “Miss Highsmith, withholding information in a case like this—”

  She waved aside my half-uttered objection. “Oh, I know all about that,” she said. “I watch police dramas on television all the time. It’s just that there’s no reason to upset Latty with any of this. The poor girl’s suffered enough already. Excuse me, would you, Detective Beaumont? I’ll need to make a phone call and get someone in here to cover the store for the next little while. If you’ll just wait here a moment…”

  Without pausing to hear any possible objection on my part, Grace Highsmith disappeared behind a curtained doorway into a back room. I was tempted to follow her, but I didn’t. That seemed rude. Besides, what could a sweet little old lady do—run out some back door and disappear? She remained out of sight for a matter of several minutes, but I did hear her making a phone call at one point. That was followed by a long period of silence. Just as I was beginning to worry that I’d been duped after all, she reappeared, carrying a purse and a ring of keys.

  “Have you had lunch, Detective Beaumont?”

  “Breakfast,” I answered. “Just a little while ago, as a matter of fact, so I’m not very hungry…”

  “I had my Cream of Wheat at six o’clock this morning, just as I always do, so I’m really quite hungry. Let’s go up the street. I’ll have a bite of lunch, and we can talk there.”

  “But what about the store?”

  “Oh, that,” she said dismissively. “It’ll take our part-time clerk a little while to get here from Redmond, but don’t worry about the store. We’re rather informal here at times. I’ll just turn over the sign. My customers know that someone will be back eventually.”

  Occasionally, it’s better to go with the flow than to put up an argument. I would have preferred talking somewhere a little more private than a restaurant, but Grace Highsmith seemed so determined to do things her way, that I didn’t object. After all, who am I to refuse a little old lady a bite of lunch?

  On my way into the store, I had noticed a couple of restaurants in the immediate area. One—a tearoom-looking place—was almost directly across the street, while a Mexican food joint was about a block away. Instead of going into either one of those establishments, however, we walked past both to the next cross street, headed north for half a block, and turned into something that looked like a little cottage. It turned out to be a restaurant—Azalea’s Fountain Court.

  One look at the white-clothed tables inside told me this was a fine dining establishment rather than a hole-in-the-wall coffee shop. A petite blonde stepped out from behind a grand piano in the foyer and greeted my companion by name.

  “Your usual table today, Grace?” she asked.

  The older woman frowned. “No, Shelley, I think we should have a booth today. The far one in the corner if it’s available. Someone may be joining us.”

  I wondered at that. This had seemed like a spur-of-the-moment arrangement. Who could possibly be joining us?

  We were led to a green plush banquette in the far corner of the cozy, plant-lined room. After dropping off menus, the blonde named Shelley disappeared, returning almost immediately with a glass of white wine and an extra place setting. No question. Around this place, Aunt Grace was a regular.

  “Shelley,” Grace Highsmith began, observing the niceties, “this is Detective Beaumont of the Seattle Police Department.” She paused, seemingly for effect, letting the words sink in while she took a delicate sip of wine. “And this is Shelley Kuni, Detective Beaumont. She’s the owner of this fine establishment.”

  “I’m happy to meet you,” I said.

  Shelley smiled. “Would you care for a glass of wine as well? This chardonnay is particularly nice.”

  “No, thanks. Just coffee for me,” I answered. Shelley hurried off to get it.

  The room was fairly small—four or five booths and about that many tables. The service bar with both wine and coffee was in the corner of the room, close enough for the conversation to continue while Shelley poured my coffee.

  “Detective Beaumont can’t have any wine because he’s on duty, you see,” Aunt Grace announced airily. “He’s questioning me about a murder.”

  I glanced around the room. Fortunately, it was early enough in the lunch hour that we were the only patrons in the place when Grace Highsmith dropped that little bomb.

  “No!” Shelley exclaimed. “Really?”

  I nodded. The whole idea of wearing plainclothes is so that everyone you talk to won’t necessarily know you’re a cop. For everyone within hearing distance in Azalea’s Fountain Court, my cover was totally blown.

  Shelley set the cup and saucer in front of me. “Cream and sugar?” she asked smoothly as though the words murder and detective hadn’t penetrated her consciousness.

  “No, just black.”

  I suppose restaurant people have to be fairly flexible. Somehow, Shelley Kuni managed to act as though she were totally unperturbed by what Grace Highsmith was saying while at the same time seeming to hang on every word. It reminded me of a circus tightrope walker. “Whose murder?” Shelley asked.

  “Don Wolf’s,” Grace answered at once.

  “Not the one who—”

  “Don Wolf!” I exclaimed, slopping half my coffee into the saucer. “How did you—?”

  “Yes, exactly,” Grace replied with a peremptory nod, cutting both Shelley and me off in midsentence. “The very one I told you about last week.”

  As if the lunch bell had sounded somewhere, several new sets of customers arrived in the entrance lobby all at once. Shelley hurried to meet them. There were at least two other separate dining areas in the restaurant. I don’t think it was an accident that Shelley led all the new arrivals off to one of those, leaving our part of the dining room still relatively empty except for Grace and me.

  I turned an accusatory stare on Grace Highsmith. “I told you I was investigating a death,” I said. “I didn’t mention the word murder. Not once. And I never mentioned the victim’s name.”

  Grace smiled sweetly. “The murder part is strictly a matter of common sense,” she told me. “After all, you are a homicide detective, aren’t you?”

  “But how is it you happen to know the victim’s name?”

  Over the rim of her wine glass, Grace Highsmith fixed her bright-eyed stare on my face. “What kind of detective are you? Do you even have to ask?”

  I held her gaze with one of my own. “As far as I know, the victi
m’s name is being withheld pending notification of next of kin. It would indicate that you might possibly have inside knowledge—”

  “Precisely,” Grace interrupted. “I knew you’d catch on eventually. Statistically speaking, I understand that the perpetrator almost always knows his or her victim.”

  With impeccably bad timing, our waiter appeared just then, smiling cordially. “What will you have today, Miss Highsmith?” he asked. “Your usual?” She nodded. “Extra cilantro on that jalapeño grilled cheese on plain whole wheat?”

  “Of course,” Grace replied. “What’s the soup?”

  “Shelley’s tomato basil. It’s very nice.”

  “I’m sure it is,” Grace said. “Soup then.”

  “And for you, sir?” the waiter asked, turning to me.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Just coffee.”

  “Very well.”

  He went away, disappearing silently around the corner into the kitchen as more guests showed up in the lobby and filtered into the room, gradually filling the other banquettes as well as some of the freestanding tables. It was an attractive, intimate dining room—totally lacking in privacy, and absolutely wrong for conducting a homicide interview.

  Grace took another delicate sip of her wine then set down the glass. She glanced first at her watch and then at the front door as though awaiting someone’s arrival. “I suppose we could just as well get started then. What is it you want to ask me?”

  When we had first sat down, Grace Highsmith had placed her pocketbook on the table beside her napkin. Now, replacing her chain-held glasses on her nose, she opened the purse and peered inside before turning it at a fifteen-degree angle.

  To my absolute astonishment, a small, stainless-steel handgun came spilling out onto the table. The gun was a compact .32 ACP. It’s a weapon I know, but up until then, I had seen only one. The new Seecamp autos are so popular that there’s a fifteen- to eighteen-month waiting list at the factory for anyone who is interested in buying one. The .32 ACP is a small, readily concealable gun most often used by police officers as a backup weapon.

  Fortunately for everyone in the restaurant that day—yours truly included—it is also considered to be a very safe weapon in that it’s unlikely to discharge when dropped accidentally. Or even deliberately. It is designed to use only Winchester Western 60-grain Silvertip hollowpoint rounds. Which means that it’s not worth a damn for target practice, but it can be deadly at close range.

  The surprisingly loud thunk the gun made when it landed on the white linen tablecloth made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I wasn’t the only person in the dining room who noticed. At a table just across from us, a tall, fiftyish blond woman had been seated along with a gray-haired, bearded man. When the gun landed, the man rose to his feet. “A gun!” he blurted. “She’s got a gun!”

  The blonde had just raised her newly filled water glass to her lips. Choking, she dropped the glass, which bounced off the edge of the table and then plunged to the floor, where it splintered into pieces and sent a spray of icy water and glass fragments scattering three feet in all directions.

  A concerned service staff converged on the mess from every direction. The unexpected appearance of the weapon had caused a sudden burst of adrenaline to shoot through my system. The gun lay on the cloth and Grace left it there, making no effort to grab it. Realizing from the fact that she wasn’t reaching for the weapon that there was no immediate danger, I covered the offending gun with my napkin. Once it was out of sight, I pulled it over to my side of the table.

  “This thing isn’t loaded, is it?” I demanded.

  Grace Highsmith shrugged. “Probably,” she said. “It usually is. That’s how we keep it.”

  “It’s yours then?”

  She nodded.

  “Do you have a license to carry?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, not exactly means no license,” I told her. “No doubt you realize that’s a violation.” I lifted the napkin and looked down at the little .32 automatic. “Loaded or not, what are you doing with a gun in your purse?”

  “I assumed you’d want to have it,” she said. “According to the shows I see on television, that’s one of the first things the detectives go looking for—the murder weapon.”

  “You’re saying this is a murder weapon? As in Don Wolf’s murder?”

  “Of course,” Grace Highsmith replied. “What other murder would I possibly be talking about?”

  That’s when I signaled for Shelley. She came to the table looking slightly pale. “Is everything all right?” she asked. I noticed then that the blonde and her companion had been discreetly moved to another table—one nearer the door.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have a doggy bag, would you?”

  “Certainly.” Shelley disappeared into the kitchen and returned moments later with two pieces of foil. I scooted the .32 onto one piece and covered it with the other. After twisting the ends together, I slipped the foil-wrapped package into my pocket.

  Clearly happy to have the gun out of sight, Shelley nodded approvingly. “Could I interest either one of you in a complimentary glass of champagne?” she asked.

  The appearance of the gun and the shattered water glass had caused enough of a stir among her lunchtime diners. People were no longer openly staring, but Shelley seemed determined to regain the lost atmosphere and settle ruffled feathers. To that end, a waiter was passing through the room pouring out free glasses of champagne.

  “None for me,” I said.

  “I’ll have some,” Grace Highsmith said brightly. “Champagne sounds delightful.”

  Shelley left our table while Grace smiled at me beatifically. “Well then, Detective Beaumont,” she said, “this is really quite civilized, isn’t it. I can sip a glass of champagne while you read me my rights. Then we can get on with it.”

  “Get on with what?”

  “My confession, of course, although I do wish Suzanne would hurry up and get here. I know she’ll have a fit if I tell you all this while she’s not here.”

  “Your confession to what?”

  “To Don Wolf’s murder, of course.”

  I took a moment to assimilate that bit of information. “Who’s Suzanne?”

  There was a momentary pause while Shelley herself stopped by our table and poured Grace Highsmith a flute of champagne. Grace took her time tasting it before answering my question.

  “Suzanne Crenshaw,” she said finally. “She’s my attorney.”

  Just then, as if on cue, the front door blew open and a woman rushed inside. Heavyset and flushed, possibly from a combination of both cold and overexertion, she was a thirty-something, dark-haired woman dressed in a navy-blue business suit. She paused in the doorway of the dining room, searching through the diners until she caught sight of Grace at the end banquette.

  As soon as their eyes met, a look of intense relief washed over the younger woman’s face. She made a beeline for our table. “There you are,” she said, leaning down long enough to brush a glancing kiss across Grace’s parchment-skinned cheek. “I was afraid I’d be too late.”

  “Oh, no,” Grace reassured her, “you’re right on time.”

  “Is there some kind of problem?” Suzanne asked, eyeing me warily.

  “No problem,” Grace said. “Detective Beaumont is being the complete gentleman. Speaking of which, here I am, forgetting my manners. Suzanne Crenshaw, this is Detective Beaumont. Detective Beaumont, Suzanne.”

  Suzanne Crenshaw held out her hand to shake mine, but the look she turned on me was anything but friendly. “What’s this all about, Grace?” Suzanne asked. “What’s going on here?”

  “Nothing much so far,” Grace replied. “We’ve only just ordered lunch, although I did give him my gun. I didn’t like carrying it around in my purse. It could have gone off. Sit down now, Suzanne. As soon as you order your lunch, we’ll try to bring you up to speed.”

  With a single warning glare in my direction, Su
zanne Crenshaw sat. “Grace, what gun?” she demanded.

  “Don’t worry, Suzanne. Everything will be fine. I believe Detective Beaumont was about to read me my rights.”

  “Read you your rights!” Suzanne Crenshaw exclaimed. Around the restaurant heads once again swiveled in our direction.

  “Hush, Suzanne,” Grace ordered. “Don’t make such a fuss. Before we go into all that, why don’t you order lunch. And for goodness sake, have a glass of champagne. They’re giving away free samples today. It’ll settle your nerves.”

  While Suzanne Crenshaw stared at her client in what looked to me like thunderstruck amazement, an unruffled Grace motioned at the waiter, who came to our table at once. “My guest here will need to place her order,” Grace said. “And could we have another glass of champagne, please?”

  She said all this without the slightest hint of awareness that the sensation created by her dumping a gun on the table in the middle of a crowded restaurant was responsible for the presence of “sample” champagne. To his credit, the waiter didn’t bat an eyelash, either.

  “Of course,” he said. “Right away.”

  I don’t believe I’ve ever met anyone quite like Grace Highsmith. She was a living, breathing personification of the term noblesse oblige. In other people, it would have been regarded as bullying or high-handedness, but there was such an air of graciousness about her that people tended to do what she wanted regardless of their own intentions in the matter. That went for me every bit as much as it did for Suzanne Crenshaw.

  An uneasy silence existed around the table while the waiter returned with the champagne and took Suzanne’s order. As soon as he was gone, the lawyer turned her attention on me. “I suppose coming here was your idea?” she demanded, glaring at me.

  “As far as I knew, all we were doing was coming here for lunch.”

  Suzanne Crenshaw wasn’t convinced. “What’s all this about ‘reading rights’ then?” she asked.

  “The Fountain Court was my idea, not his,” Grace interjected. “I wanted to go somewhere nice so I could feel relaxed while I gave him my confession.”

  Suzanne Crenshaw’s eyes bulged. “Confession to what?”