“Two years,” Kins said.
Kins had grown out his hair and a wispy goatee, and someone in narcotics had christened him “Sparrow” after the Johnny Depp character in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. The nickname stuck. Unlike Fields, however, Kins had been eager to cut his hair and shave when he left narcotics.
“When did you move to Tacoma?” Kins asked, running a finger along the condensation on the outside of his glass. Tracy sensed he was giving them all a chance to settle in, while also getting a feel for Fields. Fields was likely doing the same.
“Just about a year ago. I lost my wife and needed a change of scenery. I was tired of the heat and the sun. I was looking for rain and fog. Seattle wasn’t hiring detectives but Tacoma was.”
“Sorry about your wife,” Tracy said.
Fields gave a curt nod. “She was undercover too, got too close. Someone ratted her out. They shot her and left her in the desert.”
The news gave Tracy a different perspective of Fields, who at first impression didn’t evoke much sympathy. Losing a spouse was horrific under any circumstances, but losing a spouse in the line of duty, and in that manner, could eat at a person. No wonder Fields had left Arizona.
“Did they get the people who did it?” Kins asked.
Fields gave them a sidelong glance, intended to convey they’d done more than arrest the killers. “Yeah. We got ’em.”
The waitress appeared and Fields shifted his gaze, grinning at the tall young woman like she was on the appetizer menu. “You got the company card?” he asked Tracy, meaning the ability to expense the meal.
“Yeah,” Kins said.
“Then I’ll take a sixteen-ounce pale ale and your linguini and clams,” Fields said without considering a menu. “Tell the chef I like enough garlic so my cat won’t love me for a week.” He gave the waitress a wink. The young woman responded with an uncomfortable smile and quickly looked to Tracy and Kins’s side of the table.
“Diet Coke,” Kins said. “And a bucket of water I can throw over my head.”
The waitress smiled.
Tracy said she was good with the glass of water.
Fields gave the waitress’s backside a lingering once-over when she turned and walked off, which was not only disrespectful but ridiculous. He was old enough to be the young woman’s father, but in Tracy’s experience that didn’t stop some men from thinking they had a chance.
Fields reengaged Tracy. If he was self-conscious Tracy had busted him, he didn’t show it. In fact, she got the impression he enjoyed getting caught. Pathetic.
“Nothing to eat?” Fields said. “Best perk of the job.”
“We stopped for a late lunch,” Tracy said, feeling nauseated.
Fields draped an arm over the back of the booth. “So, Andrea Strickland is dead . . . again.”
“Apparently so,” Tracy said.
The mustache twitched. “I’d have bet my badge the husband gave her a little shove off the mountain. I was sure he killed her.”
“Maybe he still did,” Kins said.
“Maybe,” Fields said.
“Can you fill us in on your investigation?” Kins asked.
The waitress set Fields’s beer and Kins’s Diet Coke on coasters. Fields took more than a sip and wiped foam from his mustache with the paper napkin. “His story didn’t add up.” He set down his beer and sat back, again draping one arm over the back of the booth. “It stunk. Wife gets up to take a pee and he doesn’t get up with her? Or wonder where she is? You talk to people who climb that mountain and they’ll tell you they don’t sleep well, if at all, the night before they summit. They lay down when it’s still light out and the adrenaline and anxiety are pumping, but this guy says he slept so soundly he didn’t even know she was gone? Come on. So my radar was already pinging before I ever met the guy.” He looked at Tracy and his eyes took a quick dive to her cleavage. “And my radar is rarely wrong.”
“What’d you find?” Tracy asked, her skin now crawling for reasons that had nothing to do with the heat.
“Turns out the wife took out an insurance policy naming him the beneficiary shortly before they climbed. Quarter of a million bucks. That was the first red flag.”
“Did he take out a policy naming her?” Kins asked.
“Nope,” Fields said. “He said she had some kind of trust fund from her parents and, according to him, he and the wife figured if anything happened to him she’d be fine. That was his story, anyway. Me? I’m thinking that he’s thinking: Why pay a second premium?”
“We understand they’d climbed before,” Tracy said.
“Once, and didn’t take out policies,” Fields said, finishing her thought. “And the wife worked for an insurance company before they opened the marijuana shop.”
“So she knew the ins and outs of the business?” Tracy asked.
“She was a flunky, but according to her boss, she was smart, picked up things quick.”
“You consider they could have been in on something together?” Kins asked.
“I was working under the strong premise he killed her, but yeah, I was open to that possibility.”