Without saying good-bye to Ralph I pressed the call-ending button. “Tell Lars I’m in the shower. I’ll call him back when I get out.”
Still disturbed by the staggering possibilities, I was disgusted to find that my right hand shook uncontrollably. In the process of shaving I nicked my neck twice and the bottom of my ear once, and I emerged from the bathroom with tiny scraps of toilet paper stanching the flow of blood to keep it from ruining my collar.
Once I was dressed I stood for a few minutes looking at my cell phone on the bathroom’s granite countertop. Part of me wanted to have it with me at all times so I’d be able to hear from Ralph the moment he learned anything. But I didn’t want to have to take a call like that—regardless of his news—in Mel’s presence. She was a cop. She’d be too curious. She’d want to know what the call was about. She’d want to know exactly what was going on.
But I had spent a lifetime living on call. It was too late to change that now. After a wavering moment of indecision I brought the phone along with me. Leaving it behind really wasn’t an option.
Out in the living room I found Mel dressed and ready to go. “Lars was calling to double-check on who was picking him up for breakfast—Scott and Cherisse or the two of us. He also wanted to know if you thought Scott and Cherisse would mind if he brought a friend along to breakfast.”
“A friend?” I asked. “What kind of friend?”
“Her name is Iris,” Mel answered. “Iris Rassmussen. According to Lars she was a good friend of Beverly’s.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Are you telling me that we buried Beverly on Thursday and Lars wants to bring someone else along to brunch on Sunday?”
“I don’t think he meant it like that,” Mel returned. “I’m sure it’s nothing romantic.”
I wasn’t convinced. I thought about Lars’s protestations earlier in the week about how all the single ladies in Queen Anne Gardens were camped out at his front door and jockeying for position before Beverly was even cool to the touch. And now this?
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him that as far as I knew, Scott and Cherisse were supposed to pick him up,” Mel answered. “As for the rest of it, I said I was sure it would be fine but that you’d call him back as soon as you could.”
“It isn’t fine,” I grumbled.
“Come on,” she said. “He probably just wants to have someone along who’s his age, someone who’s on the same page he is.”
“I’ll bet Iris is on the same page, all right,” I told her. “Let’s go.”
“But I thought you were going to call him back,” Mel objected.
“Why bother?” I said. “You already told him he could bring her. He doesn’t need to hear it from me.” Even I was aware enough to see the irony of the situation. Kelly didn’t have a thing on her old man.
Mel shot me an exasperated look. “What’s the matter with you this morning? Did you get up on the wrong side of the bed, or what?”
The wrong side of the universe is more like it, I thought. “Nothing’s the matter,” I said. “What are we waiting for? We could just as well see what that randy old coot is up to.”
CHAPTER 16
Breakfast wasn’t nearly the disaster it could have been. Despite my misgivings about her, Iris Rassmussen turned out to be the life of the party. She was full of one off-color Sven and Ole joke after another, and she told them with all the verve and style of an aging stand-up comedienne. She kept all of us in stitches, me included, and that was pretty remarkable in view of the fact I wasn’t in much of a joking mood. Lars laughed along with the rest of us, and chowed down on his oyster omelet with his customary enthusiasm. Laughing seemed to do wonders for his appetite.
Iris was tuning up to deliver yet another punch line and the waitress had yet to drop off the check when my phone rang. The Fisherman’s Restaurant is low on six-tops, and I was stuck in a corner with my back to the window, which meant I couldn’t very well leave the table to take the call. I was relieved when a glance at the readout displayed an unfamiliar number. At least it wasn’t Ralph.
“Mr. Beaumont?” a woman asked. The voice wasn’t one I could place, but she sounded upset. I excused myself and made my way outside.
“Yes.”
“It’s me—DeAnn Cosgrove,” she said. “There’s someone here who needs to talk to you.”
I heard her passing the receiver to someone else. “Mr. Beaumont? I’m Detective Tim Lander of the Chelan County Sheriff ’s Department. I understand from Ms. Cosgrove here that you intended to go see Jack and Carol Lawrence in Leavenworth yesterday.”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s right, and I did go there. Why?”