Embarrassed, I realized I was staring. I knew LaShawn Tompkins had been thirty years old. Human biology being what it is, his age gave me a rough idea of how old his mother would be—probably close to my age or younger. This woman was much older than that.
“You think I’m too old to be Shawny’s mama?” she asked. “Is that it?”
I was reminded yet again why it is that I don’t play poker.
“My daughter died a few days after Shawny was born,” Etta Mae explained without my having asked. “He was a breach baby, and they had to do a cesarean. She ended up dying of an infection—sepsis, they called it. I’m the one who brought Shawny home, and I’m the one who raised him. I’m the only mother he ever knew. You got a problem with that?”
“No, ma’am,” I told her.
She reached over to the table and picked up a folded copy of the front section of Sunday’s Seattle Times. “That’s what this here man, this Mr. Cole, thought, too!” She sniffed. “Elderly! Where does he get off calling me elderly?”
I realized then that Max was losing his touch—that he must have phoned in his interview rather than actually meeting with Etta Mae. If he had seen her in person, he would have noticed the same thing I had and he certainly would have mentioned it, but if Etta Mae wanted the world to think LaShawn was her son, far be it from me to say otherwise.
“So what do you want then, Mr. Policeman? Why are you here?”
I was the one who was supposed to be asking the questions.
By then my fellow visitor, Mr. Meals-on-Wheels, had off-loaded his food. He stood in the kitchen doorway observing the proceedings between Etta Mae and me with a good deal of satisfaction and no small amount of amusement. As soon as she sent one of her fearsome glances in his direction, however, Dawson seemed to think better of hanging around.
“I’ll be going then, Mrs. Tompkins,” he said hastily. “See you tomorrow.”
“I want to find out who murdered your son,” I said.
She nodded. “You and me both,” she said. “So sit down then. Take a load off.”
I sat.
“What’s your name again?”
“Beaumont,” I said. “J. P. Beaumont.”
“Your mama didn’t give you no first name?”
“Jonas,” I said.
Etta Mae nodded sagely. “A good Bible name,” she observed. “Like in the whale.”
Not exactly, but close enough that mean-spirited boys plagued me with that from the time my mother signed me up for kindergarten. It was due to a bellyful of whale jokes, if you’ll pardon the expression, that I pretty much abandoned my given name by the time I hit junior high.
“So are you saved, Mr. Beaumont?”
I thought about the blood-spattered picture of Jesus by the front door and realized that the interview wasn’t going at all the way I had intended. Where was Mel Soames when I could have used her to run interference?
My grandfather’s moral superiority, supposedly based on religious principles, had driven his daughter, my mother, away in disgrace. It was also the main reason I had grown up largely unchurched. Faced with Etta Mae Tompkins’s piercing stare, I decided that an honest answer was better than attempting to dodge the issue.
“Probably not according to your lights,” I said.
“You might be surprised about my lights,” she replied. “But I’ll tell you this: My son was saved. He went into prison one way, and, praise Jesus, he came out another. He wasn’t doing drugs,” she added. “And he wasn’t selling drugs, neither. Shawny wasn’t doing nothin’ wrong. He was here fixing my supper, looking after me. Why would someone want to kill him like that?”
“I have no idea.”
“And who did you say you work for again?”
“Ross Connors. The Washington State attorney general.”
“And why’s this Mr. Ross interested in who killed my Shawny?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Maybe he thinks those detectives from Seattle PD won’t do a good job?” she suggested.
That was, of course, a distinct possibility.
“That Detective Jackson seemed nice enough,” Etta Mae added.
I was happy to have that piece of information. Detective Kendall Jackson, who is probably as tired of wine jokes as I am of whales, is one of the newer guys in Homicide, but he’s also someone I know and respect. I was glad to hear he was on the case. I figured he was someone I could go to with a few discreet questions.
“What do you want from me?” Etta Mae asked.
“Maybe you know something,” I said. “Maybe your son said something to you that would have some bearing on what happened. For instance, did he mention anything to you about having any difficulties with people at work?”
Etta Mae shook her head. “If he had any troubles like that, he never said nothin’ to me about ’em.”
“What about friends from around here?” I asked. “Did he take up with any of his old pals from the neighborhood once he came home?”