“At this point I’d settle for just about anything that made sense,” Kins said.
“Well, we now know for certain that Andrea Strickland is not the woman in the crab pot,” she said. “It’s Devin Chambers.”
“No doubt about that,” Kins said.
“We know Andrea and Graham Strickland were having marital problems and financial problems. The business was a massive failure, and the bank, the landlord, and other creditors were banging on their door with personal guarantees that Strickland couldn’t begin to pay off. We also know Andrea was sitting on a pile of money she wouldn’t let him touch and that she was afraid he’d somehow put at risk with the creditors.”
“All true,” Kins said.
“We also know he cheated on her and, if you believe what Andrea told her boss, that he was continuing to cheat on her—maybe with her best friend.”
“Was he, or did she just want people to believe he was still cheating on her because it fits the profile of a man who’d have reason to kill his wife? Like the insurance policy he claims he knew nothing about.”
“Let’s say he was cheating on her,” Tracy said. “What if the person he was cheating with was Devin Chambers? It gives him a motivation to kill Chambers.”
“It gives Andrea a motivation to kill her also,” Kins said. “If Andrea’s still alive, and I’m thinking she is—somebody moved that money.” He pulled out of the parking space. “Let’s get something to eat. Maybe food will help us think through this.”
“I know a place,” Tracy said. “My academy class used to go there.”
She directed him to the Tin Room Bar on Southwest 152nd Street in downtown Burien. A tin shop when the street had been lined with industrial businesses, the building was bought by a local entrepreneur who turned half of it into a movie theater and the other half into an eclectic bar and restaurant. The tools from the tin shop were mounted on the walls and the workbenches cut into tables. The renovation had started a revival on the street, which now included half a dozen other restaurants and bars.
Tracy and Kins took a table beneath an Impressionist painting of Mick Jagger, the Rolling Stones’ front man. She ordered the fish tacos and an iced tea. Kins ordered a hamburger and Diet Coke. “Modern Love,” one of the late, great David Bowie’s best-known songs, filtered down from the overhead speakers, and several men and women sat at the bar watching a Mariners game on the flat-screen televisions.
“We’ve come full circle, haven’t we?” Kins said. “We’re looking at three options. Either Strickland did kill his wife and staged it to look like an accident. She died on the mountain and it was an accident. Or, she outsmarted him, walked off the mountain, and tried to frame him for her murder—and is still alive.”
“Let’s start with the first scenario,” Tracy said. She sipped iced tea, set it aside, and used a paper napkin and a pen to diagram her thoughts. “On the brink of financial disaster, he pushes his wife off the mountain thinking he’ll recover the insurance money and get access to the trust money she’s been keeping from him. But the Pierce County DA names him a person of interest, the insurance company won’t pay the life insurance benefits, and the wife’s money disappears. In that scenario, the obvious person who took the trust money is Devin Chambers, right?”
“That would appear to be the case. She paid cash to have her face reconstructed and took over Strickland’s alias.”
“Okay, so in that scenario, the husband hires the skip tracer,” Tracy said. “The skip tracer finds Devin Chambers, the husband hunts her down, kills her, and drains the bank account.”
“So far, I agree,” Kins said.
“Scenario two,” Tracy said. “He’s intending to kill Andrea, or maybe he isn’t, but in any event she somehow dies in an accident.”
“My opinion is that’s the most unlikely of the three scenarios, but just for argument’s sake, everything else would remain the same,” Kins said.
“Agreed,” Tracy said. “So that leaves scenario three.”
“She outsmarted him. She figured out he was going to kill her on the mountain, staged her own death, walked off the mountain, took her trust, and is still alive somewhere,” Kins said. “So when does the husband realize he’s been set up—when he wakes up the next morning in the tent?” Kins said.
“Maybe, but probably more likely when Fields comes knocking on his door asking about insurance policies he’s the supposed beneficiary of but knows nothing about, and telling him his wife was meeting with a divorce attorney and making allegations he was cheating on her again.”
The waitress returned with Tracy’s tacos and Kins’s burger. Tracy slid the napkin to the side to make room. Kins grabbed the bottle of ketchup and doctored his hamburger.