Cold Case (4 page)

It was after eleven when she pulled into the driveway in Eugene again. It looked as if every light in the house was on and she didn't want to talk to anyone, not right now. She had stopped for a coffee, and carried it and her purse inside with her, leaving everything else for later. She was very tired, she had realized driving back down on I-5. Emotional fatigue, she thought, dredging up the phrase from a long-ago class in psychology. As enervating as strenuous physical activity. More, she decided. She continued through the house to the deck.

She had intended to sit beyond the house lights, in the chair her mother had used the night of Robert's graduation party, but she saw light streaming from the apartment and, on the deck there, she could see David seated. Slowly she walked over to join him.

“I never did thank you for taking charge last week,” she said in a low voice. “I'm grateful you were here and that you knew what to do. Thanks.”

“It's been a tough week,” he said. “Sit down, Amy. How are you holding up?”

“I'm okay. Mother and Travis will both leave tomorrow, Lawrence will go back to Salem, I hope, and things will quiet down. I'll hang around for a week or two.”

Lawrence Tellman was chief of staff at Robert's Salem office. He had arrived on Monday evening and he and Nick Aaronson had assumed command of publicity, appointed a spokesman and, as soon as the police gave them the go-ahead, had taken charge of Robert's study, packing up official papers, doing whatever they needed to do. Lawrence had said he would take care of the Salem office and the apartment, and he had assured her that anything of a personal nature would be packed up and shipped to them.

Amy sipped her coffee. “David, do you know why Robert had that old police file? Jill Storey's murder?”

“No,” he said quietly.

She waited, but he left it at that. Slowly, feeling she was on shaky ground, she said, “You know what they're saying, that because you turned up now, Robert was reminded about something he had overlooked before, something concerning you, and that he might have wanted the case reopened.”

It seemed a long time before he responded. “I read the newspapers, too. I know what they're saying.”

“Have you considered a lawyer? I think you need someone to intercede before this gets even worse.”

David laughed. “What's your job? What do you do these days?”

“I work for a company that does computer-assisted architectural plans. I do family houses.”

“Ah. You draw the lines that connect the joists and such, but sometimes the lines can lead you off the page. I had nothing to do with Jill's death, and nothing to do with Robert's,” he stated.

“I hope the police will accept that,” she said in a low voice.

“We'll see.”

“I was talking to Travis earlier, and I realized he's just about the age you were then—you, Robert, Jill, all of you, twenty-one, twenty-two. You all seemed so grown-up to me, so sophisticated. Now, looking at Travis, I see a kid, uncertain, awkward in ways, groping for something. My point is that you could really be in trouble. Robert was about the age that Travis is now, and he could have been as confused as Travis is now. He could have seen or heard something that he misinterpreted. Or something else made him go after that file. Whatever it was, just by bringing it home when you turned up again puts you in danger.”

They both remained silent as she drank her coffee. Then she rose. “I'd better go put my gear away. Good night, David.”

I
t was twenty minutes before five on Monday when Barbara escorted her last client at Martin's to the door. It was time to take down her
Barbara Is In
sign, wrap things up and go for a walk. She wanted to check out the Rose Garden, which she had not visited all spring.

She patted Rosita Marcos on the shoulder and reassured her again that her landlord couldn't force her and her three children to move in ten days. “A letter is all it will take,” she said. “Take your time to find another apartment, and don't worry about it.”

As Rosita walked out, and before Barbara could close the door, a tall man reached past Rosita to hold it open.

“I have to talk to you,” he said. “Now.” His tone made it a demand, not a request, and his hold on the door was firm.

Rosita looked as if she would come to Barbara's defense if necessary, but Barbara waved her away. “It's all right,” she said. “I'll be in touch with you.” Then coolly she said to the man holding the door, “I don't intend to talk to you on the doorstep. Come on in.” She was well aware that Martin would be keeping an eye out, the way he did every time the door opened when she was in the restaurant. She glanced at the kitchen door and, as expected, Martin was standing there. She nodded to him, and he withdrew.

She led the way to her table and motioned to a chair across from hers. “Five minutes,” she said, “then I'm out of here.”

The man was sharp faced with prominent bones. Dressed in faded chinos, a worn T-shirt, deck shoes without socks, he wore the almost uniform summer outfit for a lot of guys, she thought, with nothing at all distinctive about him, except for a handsome watch on his wrist that looked expensive, like the kind she had seen advertised in
The New Yorker
magazine. His hair was thick and dark and he could use a haircut, she thought.

“I don't need more than five minutes,” he said in the same clipped tone he had used before. “One question. Is that legitimate? Can they do that?” He pulled a folded paper from his pocket, flattened it and tossed it down in front of her.

She picked it up. It was a court order. He was enjoined not to leave the immediate area pending a police investigation. “Mr. Etheridge? You're David Etheridge?”

“Yes. Can they do that?”

She nodded. “They can, and they have done it. Mr. Etheridge, I suggest that we have a little talk back in my office. We have to clear out of here by five, and I think you may need more than five minutes to consider your options.”

He looked murderous, furious. A pulse was throbbing in his temple and his lips had become a tight line. “One more question before we go anywhere. What happens if I just ignore that?”

She closed her laptop and picked up her purse, fished out her keys, then said, “Probably a bench warrant, arrest, jail time. Do you want to call it quits here and now, or follow me to my office?” She stood, and he jumped to his feet and snatched up the court order.

He swore in a low savage voice. “Let's go. I'll follow you.”

David Etheridge was at her heels when she unlocked the outer office door and entered, motioning for him to follow. The office was empty, as Barbara had known it would be. She had told Maria she would not be back after she finished at Martin's, and Shelley was either still in court, or on her way home.

Inside her own office, she took her seat behind her desk, and he sat opposite her, still tight faced but no longer appearing ready to erupt.

“Sorry I snapped like that,” he said. “The situation is that I'm due in San Francisco next weekend. I leave here on Saturday to give a talk Sunday afternoon at a conference, and I intend to make that conference. The following week, Wednesday, I have a reservation to fly to Britain, but they demanded that I surrender my passport.”

“How long are you planning to be in Britain?” Barbara asked.

His answer was in the same clipped manner as before when he said, “I have a one-year appointment as a teaching fellow at Oxford.”

Barbara leaned back in her chair. “It's possible that I might get a temporary stay for a trip to San Francisco of a limited duration. You might have to post a bond, however.” She regarded him for a moment, then said, “Mr. Etheridge, I think we might as well discuss the murder of Robert McCrutchen, and the reason why they are focusing on you, as apparently they are doing.”

“There is no reason,” he said. “The night he was shot, I had dinner with two acquaintances who were passing through town, and returned to my apartment after ten. Robert was the last person in the world on my mind that night. I had no quarrel with him, no words of any kind with him, and absolutely no cause to want him dead or alive. Ms. Holloway, he was insignificant, a nothing in my world, a two-bit small-town politician whose life or death meant nothing to me. The last time I saw him before this trip was twenty-two years ago, and in the intervening years I never heard a word from him. Since I've been back this time, I never spoke a word to him, and he never spoke a word to me. There is no reason.”

“Isn't it a bit strange that you were in his house for weeks without exchanging a word with him?” Barbara asked.

“I think he decided it was politically expedient for him to keep his distance from me,” he said after a moment. “And the apartment is not part of his house in the way you suggest. It is a totally separate unit, self-contained. I ended up in it as the result of a storm that wiped out the one I was supposed to have occupied.”

“Okay,” she said. “Let's back up a little. You knew him twenty-two years ago. Mr. Etheridge, I've been reading about this case in the newspapers, and there are hints that you and he were on bad terms years ago. Was there an unresolved quarrel, an ongoing argument?”

When he hesitated, she said impatiently, “I can't argue your case for a stay unless I know why the police thought it necessary to get that court order.”

He told her about Jill Storey and her friend taking over his half of the apartment years before. “I was going to leave on Monday morning. Jill and her roommate planned to move into the apartment on Tuesday. Robert had been making a play for Jill and he thought she was moving in with me and got sore. He was drinking that night, and Jill told him to get lost. She left the party soon after that, and the next morning she was found dead. Strangled. The case was never solved. I have no idea why he had that old police file.”

It all depends on how you slant it, Barbara thought, but she didn't press him about the past. Instead she asked him to tell her something about the trip he had planned for the coming weekend.

An international historical society conference, he said, was attended by historians from around the world, an annual event. “It goes on for a week. We give papers, talk, debate, argue, and quite possibly we take home a new perspective. In the eyes of the world at large, it's unimportant, of course, but these are the people who write the history books.”

“I assume it's considered an honor to be invited to speak at the conference. Is that correct?”

“Yes. The fellowship is also an honor.”

She nodded. “Of course. Mr. Etheridge, tell me exactly what you are asking me to do.”

“Get that damn court order rescinded,” he said coldly. “I thought I had made that plain.”

“What I can agree to do at this time is try to get a temporary stay on the order, long enough for you to participate at the conference. When do you have to be in England?”

“Early September. But I want to go in time to find an apartment, to meet people there, and to have a little vacation time,” he said.

“I advise you to cancel that flight for now. I don't believe a stay that far in advance is possible. By late August, if not sooner, the case of McCrutchen's murder may well have been closed, and the matter will become moot and you can reschedule your trip,” Barbara said.

“Are you going to argue it, as well as next week's plan?”

“No. I believe I would lose both arguments if I overreached, as that would be doing.”

A muscle in his jaw was working, and the temple vein was throbbing again. His voice was steady and tightly controlled, like an icicle dripping, when he said, “I'll write a check for your expenses.” He took his checkbook and wallet from his pocket, and handed her two cards. “My cell phone number. The address is my New York apartment, but I've sublet it. This is a mail-forwarding service I'll be using. I don't have an address for the moment.” He wrote a check and passed it across the desk to her, then stood. “If it isn't enough, I'll send you another check. If there's a refund, send it to my mail-service address. Call me when you know something. I have two more seminars, Tuesday and Thursday, seven until nine, but they run later than that. And one more public address for Friday night. Saturday morning I'll be out of the McCrutchen apartment and on my way to San Francisco, one way or the other.” With that he turned and went to the door. “I need to hear something as soon as you can arrange it.”

Barbara left her desk and followed him, but he was already closing the outside door by the time she reached Maria's desk.

On Tuesday Barbara got in the walk she had put off the previous day. It felt good to walk a long, long time, she was thinking as she headed back to her car. She had driven over from the office and, hot and sweaty from her walk, decided to head for Frank's house, just a few blocks away. He was following the Etheridge story, and he would find this new development interesting, she suspected. Also, he might invite her to dinner.

Frank had been working in the garden and was just out of the shower when she arrived. “Iced tea on the porch, or help yourself to wine,” he said by way of greeting. “That watering system is great, by the way. Exactly right.”

She took wine, and he took a glass of tea, and they sat on the back porch. The two cats eyed them, but apparently were too comfortable in the shade of a rosebush to do more than acknowledge their presence.

“You'll never guess who tracked me down at Martin's yesterday,” Barbara said.

“So I won't try. Who?”

She told him about the visit and the follow-up research she had done. “That's a pretty impressive bunch, the historical society. People like Barbara Tuchman and Arnold Toynbee were regulars, and now Jared Diamond, and others like that. Big names, Pulitzer prize winners. I never heard of most of them.”

“So, you going to get to what the judge said, or sit and tease awhile?” Frank asked.

She laughed. “He'll have a decision tomorrow. I left a message on Etheridge's machine to that effect. I'm glad he didn't take the call. He tends to seethe and drip ice. He called McCrutchen a two-bit small-town politician, and no doubt, in his eyes, I'm a two-bit small-town shyster ambulance chaser, and he can't wait to shake the dust of this berg.”

“It's fifty-fifty whether they'll let him go for even a few days,” Frank said. “And out of the country? Not by a long shot, unless they have the case sewed up tight and he isn't it.”

“If I have to tell him that, maybe I'll get lucky and just leave another message,” she said. “And if my luck really holds out, I'll never have another face-to-face meeting with him. I'm afraid he could be in for a bad time. The D.A.'s assistant, Allen Durand, called him a person of interest in the McCrutchen murder investigation.”

Frank nodded, apparently not surprised. “If the judge rejects his plea, and he goes anyway, they'll arrest him and he'll be in jail, and if they then charge him with murder, bail will be out of the question. He'll sit in jail until a trial. You may not be out of it altogether yet.”

“He doesn't know me from a Sunday-school teacher. I'd bet that he was going down a list hunting for someone who would see him yesterday and he came across me, holding open house at Martin's and accessible. Simple as that.”

“Maybe,” Frank said. “I'm going to his talk on Friday night. Want to come along?”

She looked at him in surprise. “You really have taken to his writing, haven't you?”

He nodded. “Brilliant work. I want to hear him expound on it. If that's what he does in these talks. I finished his book, and I recommend it highly. Friday night?”

“Can't,” she said. “I have a date with a couple of friends for dinner and then a movie, or maybe dancing.”

She thought of the newscasts she had seen in the past weeks and said, “Dad, you realize that those demonstrations have gotten worse and worse? Near riots, in fact.”

“I'll wear armor,” he said.

On Wednesday Barbara called David Etheridge and was sorry when he picked up. Crisply she said, “You have a limited leave of absence from the court order, beginning on Saturday. On Tuesday morning you are to check in personally to Judge Carlyle's clerk no later than 10:00 a.m. It was the best I could do.”

There was a prolonged silence, then he said, “Ms. Holloway, I'd like to stop by for a minute or two. Is there a time I could do that?”

“Of course,” she said. “I'll be in the office from three until five.”

That afternoon, she braced herself when David Etheridge arrived.