“You think they were working together, Chambers and Strickland?”
“That’s one way of looking at it. There might be another. The ranger I spoke with was convinced Strickland had help getting off the mountain and getting away. Also, two days after Kurt Schill pulled the body up in the crab pot, somebody drained Lynn Hoff’s bank accounts, which means that person had to know the bank, the account numbers, and the passwords.”
“Right, so you’re thinking this Devin Chambers helped her off the mountain and either was working with her or conned her and eventually killed her?”
Tracy wasn’t going to go that far. She wasn’t going to draw conclusions from evidence she wasn’t supposed to have on an investigation she was no longer directing. “I think she might be a person of interest you’d want to talk with.”
Fields picked up his beer and sat back, sipping it. “So how come none of this is in your reports?”
Tracy shrugged. “Like I said, we didn’t have it yet. Just came in.”
“There’s no mention of an aunt or a shrink in your file. No mention you’d put word out on the street asking if anyone was looking for a Lynn Hoff. There’s no mention of it as work in progress.”
“We were told to close the file and get it down to you guys, then finish up anything we were working on. What difference does it make? You have it now.”
Fields set down his beer and lifted his napkin from his lap, placing it on his plate, though he hadn’t finished his carne asada. He clearly wasn’t happy Tracy had stepped on his investigation. Tracy didn’t care; she didn’t give a damn about Fields’s feelings. She cared about finding a killer.
Fields spotted the waitress, made eye contact, and motioned for the check. He reengaged Tracy. “Thanks for the information, and the lunch.”
Tracy shook her head. “Your rodeo,” she said. “Your credit card.”
When Tracy arrived home after her lunch with Stan Fields, Dan was sitting outside on one of the two chaise longues on the deck. Far from baking beneath the heat of an unrelenting sun, he looked comfortable in the broad shade of a freestanding patio umbrella. As Tracy stepped out onto the deck, Dan set down a legal pleading bleeding red from the pen in his hand. Rex and Sherlock, who looked like they’d died and found heaven in the same shade, saw her approach, but only Sherlock got up to greet her, tail whipping the air. Tracy didn’t blame Rex, who gave her a sheepish eyebrow raise.
Dan looked up from behind round, wire-framed glasses that gave him a professorial look but now would forever be associated with Harry Potter. He’d gone into the office early to catch up on paperwork and make sure there were no fires burning so they could spend the afternoon together.
“When did we get that?” Tracy asked. The umbrella was not only big, but a hideous rust color, though she refrained from saying so.
“It’s great, isn’t it? I bought it on the way home from the office. I figured with the weather this nice, there was no need to spend the day working inside, plus you’re supposed to stay out of the sun.”
“I’m supposed to wear sunscreen,” she said. “Never thought I’d see the day we’d be buying umbrellas in Seattle that had nothing to do with rain.”
“Global warming,” he said. “Glaciers melting, oceans rising, drought, famine, dogs and cats living together . . .”
“Are we getting our meteorology from Bill Murray now?” she asked, fairly certain the last part of Dan’s sentence was a rip-off from a line in one of the comedian’s movies.
“Where were you? Did you go for a walk?” Dan asked.
She sipped from his glass of ice water. “No, I had a meeting.”
“On your day off?”
She sat on the edge of the adjacent chaise longue, facing him. “I met with the detective from Pierce County who took over the woman-in-the-crab-pot investigation.”
“On your day off?” he asked again. “I thought you couldn’t stand the guy.”
She turned her attention to the view. “There was some information I had to give him, off the record.”
“On your day off?” Dan said again.
“Is this going to be a discussion of my being obsessed with solving every murder involving a young woman because of what happened to my sister?”
“No.”
“Then why do you keep saying that?” she said, aggravated.
Dan set down the pleading and took a breath. “You told me the world crapped on this young woman, that she went from being the daughter of a doctor, to an orphan being molested by an uncle, to the wife of an abusive husband.”
“That’s true,” she said.
“So I’m wondering if your trip to San Bernardino has anything to do with you feeling some kind of connection to her.”
“Why, do you plan to abuse me?”
“I’m afraid of you, you know that.” He smiled to lighten the mood. “Look, I’m just saying that we both know life didn’t exactly play fair with you either, Tracy. Your dad was a doctor and you lost him and your sister very near to each other.”
“I’m not going to wallow in pity, Dan.”