“Okay. Call if you need me. The state detectives want us to pass over all we have on the Ted Severson murder case, and I said I’d oblige.”
After getting the address from Chief Ireland, I drove north to Kennewick Beach, passing Cooley’s, the bar that Brad had supposedly been in with this Polly last Friday afternoon. From the beach road I turned inland onto Sea Mist Road, going about a mile, the houses getting smaller, the woods getting thicker. Polly Greenier lived down a dead-end street called York Court in a small single-story gray house situated on a yard that hadn’t been mowed all summer. I double-checked the number on the mailbox. The house, blinds pulled down in all the windows, looked unlived in.
I waded across the foot-high grass to the front door. The doorbell produced an echoey bong from within the house, and almost immediately, a blond woman with a phone tucked between her shoulder and her chin swung open the door. I had my badge out.
“Jan, I gotta go,” she said into the phone. She kicked the screen door open a half inch and gestured me in. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll call you back. I gotta go, the police are here.”
“What’s going on?” she said to me after I’d scraped my feet on the welcome mat and entered the messy living area.
“I’m here to ask you some questions about the last time you saw Brad Daggett. Would that be okay?”
“Oh God, yeah, of course,” she said. She still held the phone in her hand. In her other was an unlit cigarette. She wore a long pink nubby robe, hanging loose in the front, the side of one of her heavy breasts visible. I kept my eyes on her face. She invited me in, bunching up her robe in the hand that held the cigarette, then pointed me toward a living area that contained a matching couch and recliner. A cocker spaniel in a dog bed turned his wet eyes toward me. Polly excused herself for a moment and I sat down on the corduroy recliner. The house smelled of cigarettes and Febreze.
When Polly came back into the living room, she was still wearing the robe, but had knotted it tightly around herself. Her blond hair was pulled back, and it looked like she might have put a little bit of makeup on but I couldn’t be sure.
“Can I get you anything? Coffee?”
“If you’re having some, sure. If not, I’m fine.”
She went and got us both a cup of coffee, adding milk and sugar to mine without asking. While I waited I bent down and scratched the dog on the back of his head. He was old, I realized, his big eyes filmed with cataracts. “That’s Jack,” she said, when she handed me my coffee. I took a sip as Polly settled herself across from me on the couch. She crossed her legs and the robe fell away from her legs. She was heavy in the middle, her stomach bulging against the robe, but Polly Greenier had lovely legs, lightly tanned and beautifully shaped. Her toenails were painted an iridescent blue.
I had wondered before coming here if Polly would have heard yet about the body in the Severson house, but I now knew that she had. I could tell as soon as she’d opened the door, the phone against her ear. She’d probably been talking about it all morning.
“You’ve heard?” I said. “About the body that was found this morning?”
“Oh, yeah. It’s all over town. Is it really Miranda Severson?”
“She hasn’t been ID’d, but, yes, we believe it’s Miranda. But I’m here because of Brad Daggett.”
“I don’t know where he is. I swear to God. I told the police chief everything last night.”
“No, I know,” I said. “I didn’t come here because I thought you might know where he is. I came here because I wanted to hear more about the last time you saw him. I heard from Chief Ireland that it was last Friday night.”
“That’s right.”
“Can you tell me about it? I know you’ve been through it already, but I’d like to hear it as well.”
She told me how she and Brad had had an on-again, off-again romance since practically forever, all the way back to Kennewick High, and that they both still hung out at Cooley’s, and occasionally hooked up, and that the last time this happened was Friday. “I’m not proud of it, but we go way back, you know. Sometimes I thought we were destined to wind up together.”
“You sure it was Friday?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said, leaning forward and plucking her pack of Marlboro Menthols off the table. “You don’t mind if I smoke, do you?” she asked.
“No, of course not.”
“You want one?”
“Sure,” I said and leaned across to pull one of the cigarettes from the hard pack. I usually only smoked hand-rolled cigarettes, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to bond a little with Polly Greenier. She lit her cigarette first, then passed the Bic lighter over to me. I hadn’t had a menthol in years, and the first minty drag punched me in the throat. “How are you positive it was Friday?” I asked.