Who met his end in a volley of lead.
It was clear he was rich— And his wife was a bitch—
So it’s not a surprise that he’s dead.
There once was a girl named Miranda,
It was clear that no one could stand her.
But beneath all that crass
Was an excellent ass,
So the rich men all lined up to land her.
To the same page, I added the following:
There once was a novelist’s daughter
Whose eyes were the green of seawater.
I hoped to remove
Her clothing to prove
That naked she’d look even hotter.
I wondered, not for the first time, why my limericks always turned out dirty. I tried to come up with one about Brad Daggett but failed. Instead I got up, made a full pot of coffee, and began to get ready to go to work.
I reached my desk at just past seven, calling up and checking in with the Kennewick chief of police, and finding out that Brad Daggett never returned to his house.
“I’m not surprised,” I said, half to myself. “Keep a patrol car there, though, just in case. Even though he’s obviously made a run for it.”
“We talked with a girlfriend of his last night,” said Chief Ireland, his voice raspy, like he was fighting a cold. “Polly Greenier. She’s kind of a fixture at Cooley’s, the bar where Brad Daggett liked to hang out. They were an on-and-off thing. Years and years, actually. They went to high school together.”
“She know anything?”
“She didn’t know anything ’bout where he might be. I asked her when she last saw him, though, and she told me she was with him Friday night.”
“Last Friday night?”
“That’s what she said. They were drinking at Cooley’s and wound up back at his place. She says she spent the night there.”
“You sure she had the day right?”
“No, not sure, but we can check it. If they were at Cooley’s and left together folks in the bar will remember. It’s a small town, and people notice stuff like that.”
“You’ll check it out for me?”
“Sure will.”
“And one more thing,” I said. “Have one of your patrols swing back to the Severson house that Daggett was building. And any other houses that Daggett might have the keys for. If he’s still in the area, it makes sense he might be hiding out in one of them. Check all the cottages, too, that he owns on the beach.”
“We checked them.”
“Okay. Thanks, Chief Ireland.”
“Call me Jim, okay?”
“Will do,” I said.
I sat at my desk for a while after the phone call, worrying about Daggett’s alibi, and how solid it might be. It couldn’t be real, that much I knew. He must have gotten this girlfriend of his to agree that they were together on Friday night. If that was the case, then the alibi would crack faster than a window in a hurricane. I wrote her name down on the notebook in front of me, circling it several times. Then my partner, Roberta James, swung by, depositing an Egg McMuffin on my desk (“Two-for-one menu item, so I thought of you”), and I caught her up on what I’d heard that morning. After she left, I wrote a few more lines under Polly Greenier’s name in the notebook. Why would she lie for Brad? Why did Ted have a key for Brad’s house? Why did Lily Kintner lie to me?
I was about to call Police Chief Jim Ireland back, tell him I wanted to come up and talk with this Polly Greenier, when he called me instead. “You better come up here,” he said. “There’s a body. At the house Daggett was building.”
“Is it him?” I asked, already standing, pulling on my jacket, checking my pocket for my car keys.
“No, it’s not a him at all. It’s a woman. I haven’t seen her yet, but they’re pretty sure it’s Miranda Severson. Her head’s bashed in.”
“I’ll be right there,” I said and hung up the phone. I grabbed James, who had just settled at her desk, and told her we were heading back up to Maine.
CHAPTER 28
LILY
After making sure that Brad was dead I removed the coat hanger wire from around his neck. I grasped him by his denim coat and managed to drag him across the truck’s front seat onto the passenger’s side, where I strapped him in with the seat belt. I tilted the seat a little bit back so that he tilted with it, then zipped his coat all the way up, turning up the sheepskin-lined collar so that it covered the ligature marks on his neck. If someone saw us in the car, he’d look like a dozing passenger. At least that’s what I hoped he’d look like.