Until Proven Guilty - J. A. Jance [30]
We drove back to Seattle in a subdued mood. I wanted to redeem the evening, but it was obviously beyond recall. She had moved away from me, was grieving for a child she’d never met. No banter, no small talk could bring her back. I congratulated myself for being a social failure. Who goes to dinner with a gorgeous woman and squanders the conversation on murder, child abuse, and other such scintillating stuff? J. P. Beaumont, that’s who.
When Anne stopped to let me out in front of the Royal Crest, I halfheartedly asked her up for a drink. She gave me a wilted smile and said, “Some other time,” in a voice totally empty of enthusiasm. Dejectedly I watched her drive away. It was clear that whatever interest I had held for her was gone. There was no sense in calling the Four Seasons. I had had one shot at her, and missed. Whatever it was I had lost, it was something I suspected I wanted.
Chapter 8
The phone was ringing as I stepped off the elevator. I didn’t rush to answer it. I figured whoever it was would call back later. It was still yelling at me after I unlocked the door and turned on the lights.
“Where the hell have you been?” Peters growled before I had a chance to say hello.
“It’s none of your goddamned business, actually. It is Sunday, you know.”
“I’ve been trying to get you for a couple of hours. I’ll pick you up in ten minutes.”
“I don’t want to be picked up. I want to go to bed and sulk.”
“You’re going to the airport. We’re meeting someone.”
“All right, Peters. Cut the crap. Who are we meeting?”
“A fellow by the name of Andrew Carstogi.”
“You mean Barstogi.”
“Barstogi is an alias. Andrew Carstogi is Angela’s father.”
“I’ll meet you downstairs,” I said.
Peters picked me up in a departmental car, explaining to me as we drove that Carstogi had called in during the funeral. No one could find me, but they had finally located Peters after he came home from watching the Yankees strangle the Mariners.
“How was the funeral?” Peters asked.
The funeral was light-years away. I had gone to the funeral without knowing Anne Corley, and now, five hours later, I had met her and lost her. It had to be some kind of indoor world record for short-lived romance. I shrugged. “Michael Brodie gave quite a performance,” I said.
“Faith Tabernacle people were out in force?”
I nodded. “They arrived as a group and left as a group.”
“The inquiry came back from Illinois. Drew a blank on everybody—except Brodie and Jason. They show that old license on Clinton Jason, but that’s all. I asked them to check him further and to keep looking for the others.”
We drove down the Alaskan Way Viaduct, along the waterfront with its trundling ferries and acres of container shipyards punctuated by the red skeletons of upraised cranes. We sped down a canyon of railroad freight cars that towered on either side of the road. The long springtime evening of gray sky and gray sea matched my own dreary outlook. I tried to get Anne Corley off my mind, to focus on Angela Barstogi, the case, anything but a lady driving out of my life in a bright red Porsche.
“Tell me about Angela’s father,” I said. “What brought him out of the woodwork?”
“There’s not much to tell so far. He called the department between two-thirty and three. He had just heard. I don’t know how. He raised hell with whoever answered the phone. Said he knew it would happen, that he had tried to stop it. When he said he was catching the next plane out, it sounded like he intended to do bodily harm to Brodie and Suzanne as well. The brass thought we ought to intercept him. Powell wants us to park him someplace downtown where we can keep an eye on him. I had to beat up the airlines to find out what flight he’s on.”
“I think doing bodily harm to Pastor Michael Brodie is a wonderful idea. What say we miss the plane?”
“Orders are orders,” Peters replied.
We rode the automated underground people mover to the United Airlines terminal. We didn’t have to wonder who Andrew Carstogi was. An angry young man stumbled through the gate, shedding flight attendants like a wet dog