Name Withheld : A J.p. Beaumont Mystery (9780061760907) (25 page)

Turning his attention from the Chair Topper, Ron stared at the Cadillac. “That can't be Grace Highsmith, can it?” he asked.

“Who else?” I returned.

Who else, indeed!

Walking after her, intent on turning her around, I wasn't in any particular hurry. After all,
the road where Grace was headed was chock full of official police vehicles. Not only was she not going anywhere, she also wasn't going anywhere fast.

That was the thought that crossed my mind at the time, anyway. Which shows how much I know.

As the Cadillac lumbered toward the command-post van, a uniformed officer broke away from the group. Waving his arms and gesturing madly, his message to the Cadillac's driver should have been perfectly clear:
Go back!
To my absolute astonishment, the Caddy stopped at once, exactly as directed.

Grace Highsmith would never do that, I thought. Somebody else must be driving her car.

I was curious to see what the driver would do next. At that point, what would have been sensible and easy would have been to reverse course, return to the garage, and repeat the whole process over from scratch, turning into the opposite lane. Instead, with the squeal of a fluid-starved power-steering pump, the Cadillac's wheels turned sharply to the right. She began to turn around on the spot right where it was, in a place just beyond the top landing of the stairs, where there was almost no shoulder on either side of the road.

That's when I realized for sure that Grace Highsmith was at the wheel.

Instantly, I flashed back to the parking ordeal on Main Street a few hours earlier. I remembered
the whole series of bumper-bashing backing and filling maneuvers it had taken for Grace to wedge the Cadillac into a regular parking space. Compared to this, that was simple. Here, if she misjudged the distance, it wasn't matter of creasing somebody else's chrome. There was no bumper to stop her if she went too far. Only a straight drop, with nothing at all to break the fall—other than the possibility of tumbling into the arms of the gun-toting maniac who was waiting in the house at the bottom of the cliff.

The other cop—the one who was officially charged with stopping her—and I reached opposite sides of the Cadillac at pretty much the same time. By then, Grace had wrenched the car around so she had it perpendicular to the roadway, sitting squarely astraddle both lanes of traffic. The Kirkland officer pounded on the driver's window with his flashlight, then aimed the beam into the vehicle.

“Lady!” he yelled. “Turn off the engine and get out of the car.”

There was no sign from the driver that she so much as heard him, so I took a crack at it. “Grace,” I called, bending down and peering in the window. “You've got to—”

That was as far as I went. Suddenly, the Cadillac's powerful engine surged from a simple idle to a full roar. In the beam of the flashlight I caught a glimpse of the car's interior. As she shifted the car out of reverse and into high, both Grace Highsmith's feet were planted on the ped
als—one on the brake and one on the gas. There was only a split second to react. The other cop and I both dodged back while the Cadillac shot forward in a spray of gravel.

The first casualties of the speeding car were the handrails at the top of the stairs. The Caddy plowed through the one-inch pipes as if they were made out of so many straws. And then, in the best tradition of Evel Knievel, the vehicle sailed out into space. For several slow-motion moments it seemed to stay level, as though a ribbon of invisible pavement were still holding it up. Then, ever so slowly, it began to arc downward.

The other cop and I stood paralyzed with only the suddenly empty width of the Cadillac between us, then we turned as one and headed for the stairway. We arrived just in time to see Grace Highsmith's Cadillac plunge nose-first onto the steep roof, directly between the two dormers.

The blow sent a storm of glass shards and flying wood splashing out from the windows. For a moment, the car stood poised on its nose. It seemed for a second or two that the roof might actually hold, but then the whole house trembled. The air came alive with the screams of twisting nails, shattering glass, and breaking wood. Ever so slowly, with a cloud of debris mushrooming up around it, a hole opened up in the roof, and the car disappeared inside.

The house quivered again, almost as if it were made of Jell-O, then as the car crashed through from the second floor to the first—taking a bear
ing wall with it—the front of the house seemed to pucker and wrinkle as the upper rafters fell over into one another. It reminded me of the collapse of a house of cards.

The other cop and I stood transfixed. When the dust cleared, I think I expected the whole house to be flat, but it wasn't. It was crooked and out of focus, but the outer walls were still standing while smoke curled from the tilting fireplace.

I was still standing there dumbstruck when the other cop found his voice. “I'll tell you what,” he said wonderingly, “they don't build 'em like that anymore!”

His words and the sudden wailing of a car horn functioned like a pistol shot at the beginning of a race. We both headed for the stairs. I must have looked like a brown-caped superman with Grace Highsmith's blanket billowing out behind me as I started down. On the second step, I lost my balance when I tripped over a tangle of twisted pipe from a demolished section of handrail. If the guy pounding down the stairs behind me hadn't managed to grab me by one flailing arm, I might have broken my neck.

The only reality for me, right then, was the honking horn—the hauntingly god-awful wail of it. Anyone who has ever witnessed an auto accident and heard that terrible sound knows all too well what it means. Those old horn rings don't work unless something is pressing on them. In the aftermath of a serious accident, that
something
is usually someone's body—someone's
broken
body.

When we reached the bottom of the stairs, I looked around for a way to get into the house. Head-high debris spilled out the ground-floor windows and doors.

For a moment, we stood indecisively on what was left of the wraparound front porch and looked at one another. The cop, who had managed to remain focused on the armed standoff part of the problem, was still carrying his drawn gun. Mine was put away.

“Let's try the other side,” he suggested. “I'll cover you.”

Until that moment, my only thoughts had been of Grace Highsmith and the infernal horn. Now, as we picked our way along the uneven, broken porch, I, too, remembered Bill Whitten. Was it hours earlier or only minutes when Grace Highsmith had referred to him as a vicious dog? What had made her decide to take the law into her own hands and attempt to put him out of his misery herself?

For some reason, the window over the kitchen sink was relatively clear. I climbed in.

“What if something blows up?” the other guy asked me, as I reached back and helped pull him in. For the first time, I caught a glimpse of his name tag—Officer Smith. Hell of a name for a hero.

“Good point,” I said. “The living room's that way. There's a fire in the fireplace. We'd better
try to put it out, especially if there's gasoline leaking from that Cadillac.”

There was no sense in thinking about it any further. We were already in the house. Backing down then would have been unthinkable, especially with the horn still honking.

“You look for the woman,” Officer Smith said. “I'll handle the fire. Here's a flashlight.”

“Grace!” I shouted, pointing the frail beam off into the dark and dusty interior of the house. “Grace Highsmith! Can you hear me?”

Tripping and stumbling, we fought our way through the darkened kitchen. We scrambled up and over a huge pile of unidentifiable crap that reached almost to a nonexistent ceiling. And just on the other side of the mountain of debris, nose-down into the floor of what had once been the front entry, sat the remains of Grace Highsmith's Cadillac. With Grace still belted inside.

“Grace?” I shouted again. I braced myself against the crumpled flank of the car and climbed the jumbled wreckage of shattered plaster, lath, shingle, and demolished furniture. “Grace?”

I landed on something soft, a mattress or some kind of cushion, and aimed the flashlight in through the destroyed driver's-side window. I saw Grace Highsmith then, bloodied and broken. Her glasses were gone and so were her teeth. Until that very moment, I don't think I had realized that she wore false teeth.

The force of the crash had pushed the whole engine block back through the fire wall and into
the passenger compartment. Grace sat there upright, crushed into a tiny corner of what had once been a spacious front seat. Small as she was, I knew that corner of the car was far too small to hold a human body; too small for that body to come out alive.

The horn was still screeching. Guided by some kind of higher power, I reached into the incredible tangle of metal and wire and pulled for all I was worth. It was a miracle. My first yank shut down that infernal noise.

In the eerie silence that followed, I became aware of the steady drip of leaking gas, but by then, Officer Smith had found water somewhere and was already dousing the remains of the flames which, amazingly, were still confined to the fireplace.

“Grace,” I said, “can you hear me?”

She opened her eyes at once and squinted at me. “Detective Beaumont,” she said, more lucidly than seemed possible. “Thank you…for thut-ting off…that awful racket.”

Without teeth, she was hard to understand. “Be quiet,” I said. “Don't waste your strength.”

But this was Grace Highsmith I was talking to. Even on the point of death, why would she bother to listen to anyone else, most especially me?

“Did…I get…him?” she asked. Her voice was fainter now.

I looked around. There were other cops and other flashlights scrambling into the wreckage
now. I could see no sign of Bill Whitten, but that didn't mean he was dead. I didn't want to tell Grace that, though.

“Yes,” I said. “You got him.”

“Good.” When she smiled a toothless smile, an ugly streak of bloody spittle dribbled out of the corner of her mouth. I took out my handkerchief and did my best to wipe it away.

“Tell Latty…” Grace paused. For a moment, I didn't think she'd be able to go on.

“Tell her what?” I urged. “Tell Latty what?”

“To take…”

She said something unintelligible then.

“Take what?”

“Duthty,” she repeated. “Duthty, Duthty, Duthty.”

“Oh, you mean
Dusty
. The statue.”

Relieved, she nodded. “And tell her that my foot…”

Again she stopped. I waited to see if she would speak again.

“What about your foot?”

“It mutht have thlipped.”

And that was it. She was gone. I reached for something to cover her with, but of course, the blanket had long since disappeared. All I had to offer was my own ragged jacket.

Some minutes later—I don't have any idea how many—I was still crouched there beside her with tears streaming down my face when Officer Smith came to get me.

“Come on, fella,” he said. “There's nothing more you can do for her here.”

T
he aftermath of something like that is almost as nightmarish as the event itself. Officer Smith—everybody else called him Smitty—along with another flashlight-wielding Kirkland cop, found Bill Whitten, what was left of him, sticking out from under what had once been the front door. He had evidently been hiding in the entryway. Without knowing it, I had told Grace Highsmith the truth. Her chosen trajectory through the middle of the house had scored a direct hit.

Smitty and I were up by the van, debriefing the unit commander when another uniformed young patrol officer came hurrying up to us. “The canine unit just found a woman, hiding down along the beach. They're bringing her up through a neighbor's yard.”

Moments later, a scratched, bleeding, and handcuffed Deanna Compton was led into the
command-post circle. “Mrs. Compton!” I said.

Captain Miller, the emergency response team commander, looked at me sharply. “You know this woman?”

“She was Bill Whitten's secretary.”

“For a secretary, she put up a hell of a fight,” the officer with her said. “If we hadn't had the dog, she might have gotten away.”

“What do you have to do with all this?” Captain Miller asked.

“I want an attorney,” Deanna Compton said.

“We'll see if we can't get you one,” the captain replied. “Just as soon as we finish cleaning up some of the mess. Lock her in a patrol car until we're ready to deal with the paperwork.”

“Sir?” another officer said, speaking from outside the tight little circle.

Captain Miller turned to face him. “What now?”

“There's a Bellevue cop just up the road. He wants to come down. He has a woman with him. He says she's the dead woman's niece.”

“That's most likely Detective Blaine,” I said quickly. “The niece is Latty Gibson.”

“You know them?” Miller asked me.

“Blaine's been working this case with me. It's a joint operation.”

Miller shook his head. “Sounds like everybody and his uncle knew what was going on,” he grumbled. “Everyone but us, that is. Let 'em through.”

A few minutes later, Latty Gibson came stum
bling into the light, followed by Tim Blaine. She came straight to me. “Aunt Grace?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I'm sorry.”

Without another word, Latty collapsed sobbing in Tim Blaine's willing arms. And as he stood there, holding her and patting her shoulder in that useless way men do when they don't know what the hell else to do with their hands, I had a sudden flash of insight.

Latty didn't know it yet, because she had no idea Grace Highsmith had revised her will. And Tim Blaine didn't know it yet, because the men involved are always the last ones to figure it out. But I had a very strong suspicion that the number of independently wealthy homicide detectives in King County was about to increase 100 percent.

I turned to Captain Miller. “There's an important piece of artwork down in the house,” I said. “A statue. We've got to move it out tonight.”

“The hell we do. It can stay there until morning.”

“No,” I said. “This is a very valuable piece. I don't think you want to be legally responsible for it. Grace was talking about it just before she died.”

Miller glowered at me. “Is the damned thing even still there?”

“Yes,” I said. “I saw it while we were looking for Bill Whitten's body.”

“Well, take somebody with you and go get it then.”

I ended up taking Smitty and another Kirkland
cop. Armed with flashlights, we made our way back into the building. Dusty was heavy enough that it took both of them to lift it. As soon as they did, several pieces of paper, taped to the base of the statue, waved like flags in the wind.

The papers turned out to be Virginia Marks' fax to Grace Highsmith. I tore them loose and read the first few sentences by flashlight, standing in the wreckage of Grace's demolished home.

“Hey, Beaumont,” Smitty growled. “Bring that flashlight and come on. This thing is heavy as all hell.”

Folding the papers, I stuffed them in my pocket. Virginia Marks had been one hell of a detective after all. This was information we would all need as we unraveled the strings of our several interconnected cases—starting with Captain Miller of the Kirkland police and working our way back across Lake Washington.

“I'm coming,” I said.

I followed Dusty's slow progress as the two laboring officers carried the heavy bronze up the debris-littered stairs. When they reached the top, they set
The End of the Trail
down. “Where to now?” one of them asked.

“I'll take it,” Tim Blaine said, lifting it single-handedly and looking to Latty to see where she wanted him to carry it. “It belongs to the little lady here.”

And so do you, you dimwit
, I thought.
And so do you
.