Concerned that Mel’s womanly wiles might somehow allow her to see into the workings of my computer and divine what I had been doing prior to typing in Dortman’s name, I immediately capitulated.
“Great idea,” I said, slapping shut the laptop’s lid. “It’s the weekend. Let’s forget about work for a while. It’ll do us both a world of good.”
Mel disappeared into the kitchen and returned with my replenished coffee cup, which she handed over to me. As she did so her forehead knotted into a puzzled frown. “You look upset,” she said. “Is something the matter?”
“No, nothing,” I said, probably a tad too quickly. “I’ll go shower—if you’ve left me any hot water, that is.”
The last was a joke. My condo is equipped with an instant hot water heating system that can replenish itself almost as fast as someone can use it. And Mel joked right back.
“A cold shower might be good for you now and then.” She grinned.
The shower wasn’t cold, but it could just as well have been. I stood in the powerful flow that cascaded down from a ceiling-mounted showerhead while my body was pounded with spray from a collection of wall-mounted showerheads as well. Steam may have been circling upward toward the ceiling, but I felt chilled.
Surely she wasn’t involved in the death of Richard Matthews, I told myself. Surely not. It was probably a robbery gone bad, a fatal but otherwise ordinary mugging. Or maybe Matthews got involved in the drug trade to supplement his retirement income.
But there was a part of me that held otherwise—part of me that was afraid my worst nightmare was about to happen all over again.
The easiest thing and probably the best thing would have been to come straight out and ask Mel about it right then. But cops don’t ask questions unless they have a fairly good idea of what the real answers should be. Anne Corley had lied to me with utter impunity, and I was determined not to be that stupid again. So before I asked Mel any questions I needed to find out some of the answers. To do that, I’d be operating solo. Mel may have been my partner in every sense of the word, but if she had somehow stepped onto the wrong side of the thin blue line, I was the one who would have to figure it out—and do something about it.
Standing there with the punishing water pummeling my body, I was suddenly struck by an idea. There was one other person in the world who had been betrayed by Anne Corley in much the same way I had been; one other sucker who, if I told him my suspicions, would immediately grasp all possible ramifications. After all, my friend and attorney, Ralph Ames, had been Anne Corley’s friend and attorney long before he became mine, and she had suckered him, too.
Leaving the shower running full blast, I stepped out onto the bath mat, hotfooted it into the bedroom, retrieved my cell phone, and took it back into the bathroom, where I dialed Ralph’s number.
“Where are you calling from?” Ralph asked once he was on the line. “You sound like you’re standing in the middle of a torrential downpour.”
“I am,” I said. “That’s the shower.”
“Here’s an idea,” he said. “How about if you call me back after you finish your shower.”
“Please, Ralph,” I said. “There’s a problem. Listen to me.”
And he did. I explained it all while the shower continued to roar. “So what do you want me to do?” he asked when I finished. “Try to find out whether or not the remains really do belong to Richard Matthews?”
“That would be a big help,” I said. “And what, if any, progress has been made in finding out who killed him.”
“Anything else?” Ralph asked.
One of the good things about Ralph Ames is that he doesn’t require a lot of explanation. He gets things. And then he goes to work and gets things done. And since he doesn’t necessarily have to concern himself about maintaining chains of evidence and fruit of poisoned trees and all that jazz, he has avenues of investigation that aren’t necessarily open to sworn police officers.
“Mel’s full name is Melissa Katherine Majors Soames,” I replied. “I’m pretty sure she went to Mexico sometime last November. I don’t know for sure when she went or where she traveled, but I think it was sometime before Thanksgiving.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Ralph said. “Meantime, watch yourself.”
That was another thing I appreciated about Ralph. He didn’t stand around jawing or dishing out a bunch of phony platitudes. Since I was worried, he was worried, and he would simply shut up and go to work. That meant a lot.
Mel knocked on the closed bathroom door. I was so startled it’s a miracle I didn’t drop the cell phone into the toilet. “Lars is on the phone,” she said. “Do you want to take it?”