Joanna shifted Old Blue out of park and thought about the scene she’d just left at Tallulah’s Closet. What had the witch meant by “crossroads”? Sure, she was asking a few questions about Bradley Stroden’s death. She wasn’t anywhere near action that could lead to trouble. Then there was Gene’s situation. There, she was definitely taking action that might lead to trouble. She was about to make it worse.
Foster Crisp lived in Portland’s Sellwood neighborhood, not far from Joanna. Somehow that surprised her, although there was no reason she should know anything about his personal life—despite what he knew about hers, having seen her through a number of harrowing situations over the past few years. He’d told her he’d been raised on a ranch in Eastern Oregon, and he dressed the part in cowboy boots and bolo ties. He’d mentioned his wife. He’d been well respected in the police force up through his retirement the spring before. That was really all she knew.
She parked in front of a modest bungalow fringed with azaleas and rhododendrons that must have fired up a postcard-worthy display in spring. The porch was freshly swept. She rang the doorbell.
A woman in stretchy pants and a Portland Camellia Association T-shirt answered the door. “You must be Joanna. Foster’s expecting you.” She turned toward the rear of the house. “Honey? She’s here.”
His and hers tan recliners with afghans over their backs faced a television set. Family photos rested on side tables. The only note of color was a vase of garden roses on the coffee table.
“Good to see you.” Crisp had emerged from the hall and offered his hand. No cowboy boots or western shirt today. Just stockinged feet and a red Pendleton Rodeo T-shirt. “Come on back.”
Crisp had taken over one of the rear bedrooms as his office. Here, too, decor was spare, but the window let out to a view of a soft lawn and flower beds in orange and pink. A scrub jay splashed in the birdbath.
Joanna sat in what she suspected was a chair left over from a dinette set donated to Goodwill long ago. “Thanks for meeting with me.”
“My pleasure.” He sat at the office chair at his desk and waited for her to continue.
“It’s about Paul’s Uncle Gene.”
No raised eyebrow, no dropped jaw. “You want to turn him in?”
“No.” The word came out more loudly than she’d expected. “No, that’s not it. I want to help him. You’re a private investigator now. I want to hire you.”
He leaned back in his chair. “This is an interesting turn of events. You know I helped put him away the first time he went to prison, right?”
“I know. But you’re also fair.”
Crisp clasped hands over his belt buckle. “Tell me more.”
She wasn’t that stupid. “I won’t tell you anything until you’ve agreed to work for me. Once I’m your client, you’re bound by confidentiality, right?”
“Does this have to do with the Greffulhe jewels?”
Joanna pressed her lips together and stared at him.
He let out his breath. “Okay. Give me a dollar.”
“What?”
“If you want to be my client, you have to pay me.”
Joanna fumbled through her purse—this one a red leather bag tooled with an Aztec motif—for her wallet. “I have a five.”
Crisp snatched the bill and tucked it under his keyboard. “There. You’re my client. It doesn’t mean I can actually do anything for you until I hear what’s going on. What’s the story?”
“If I tell you something that might implicate someone else, too, is that person protected?”
“Like, for instance, Gene?”
“Answer me, please.” Outside, the scrub jay squawked at a sparrow, then fluttered out of the birdbath to a tree studded with plums.
“If it has to do with a crime you might be accused of, then yes.”
Her shoulders relaxed. “Then, sure, it’s about the jewels. And, yes, Gene hid them in our basement.”
“I knew it. I knew he heisted those jewels.” Crisp shook his head, then laughed and slapped his knee. “That S.O.B. I wonder how he finagled his alibi?” He shook his head again. “Why do you need my help? I assume he’s planning to fence the jewels now, or do it when his parole is over and take off for Mexico. I’m not sure how a private investigator figures in.”
“According to him, he wants to return the jewels. Says this is the last thing he has to do before his old life is completely behind him. I believe him. He can’t figure out how to do it without getting into trouble. That’s why I need your help.” Not only would Gene then have moved on from crime, maybe he’d even get his own apartment—or move in with the baker.
“Well, we could package them up and give them to the police. Let them take care of it.” Joanna was about to speak, but he cut in. “I know what you’re going to say, and you’re right. They might reopen the investigation, and it wouldn’t be too hard to draw a line from me to you to Gene.”
“Could we return them anonymously to the woman they were stolen from?”
“That has risks, too. Besides, I don’t even know if she’s alive. It’s a possibility, though.” He drummed his fingers on the chair’s arm. “Let me think about it and get back to you. I’ll do some poking around.”
“There’s one more thing.”
“About Gene?”
“No. This actually has to do with your old career in homicide. It’s about Bradley Stroden.” Joanna clasped her purse, then released it. “I was wondering if you could give me an idea of how the investigation would go. You know, in general.”
For the first time today, a hint of Crisp’s old presence as a detective came back. His body seemed to come to full attention. “Why do you want to know?”
“I was there when he died. Naturally, I’m curious.”
“Naturally. Naturally, you’re more curious than most. But there’s something more, isn’t there?”
She didn’t know herself why it was so important to her to figure out who murdered Stroden. Sure, part of it was because she was there when he died. Part of it was the possibility of getting her hands on an Edith Head-designed movie wardrobe. And some of it was to refute his sister’s accusation that she was the killer. Joanna had learned she had a knack for pulling out the emotional threads of a murder case. The police and their labs and databases could uncover a lot, but she had a nose for figuring out the “why.” And she’d discovered she liked it.
“Like you said, I’m curious,” she said.
Sounds of cupboard doors opening came from the kitchen. It would be time for dinner soon.
“The Stroden case. Well, the results of the autopsy should be in by now.”
“Poisoning. I’m sure. He’d just eaten a violet candy from a tin that had come in the mail.”
“They will have tested that, then, and traced the package.”
“That’s the thing. The package disappeared. If the pastille Stroden had just given me hadn’t fallen on the floor, they wouldn’t have had anything to test.” She tapped a finger on her purse. “But what about the thought process? How would they decide what leads to follow?”
“If it were my case, and I was sure the crime was premeditated, I’d want to know why he was killed. I’d look for a motive.”
“That was my thought, too,” Joanna said. “The detective on the case, Roscoe, pooh-poohed that approach. He says he looks at means and opportunity.”
“Roscoe’s new in homicide. He has his own methods. You’ve been thinking about motive, though. What have you come up with?”
“Stroden was writing his memoir.” Joanna had already been through this. “Maybe someone thought he was planning to reveal something in particular. Something incriminating.”
“Then, if it were my case, I’d want to see the memoir, and I’d want to know who knew he was writing it.”
“That makes sense. Connected to that, I wonder…could he have been blackmailing someone?”
“You mean, threatening he’d tell a story unless he was paid off? That would answer the other question I’d ask, which would be ‘why now’?”
“So, for motive we have” —Joanna raised her index finger— “one, Stroden was planning to reveal a story; and, two” —her middle finger joined the first— “he threatened to reveal a story unless the subject of the story paid him.”
“Blackmail is always a strong motive, but I’d look first at who inherits,” Crisp said.
“His sister, Mary Pat. Stroden’s secretary says they’re broke.”
“This dovetails with the question I always ask, which is, why now? Why kill Stroden now, instead of next year or ten years ago?”
Joanna nodded. “The memoir. What else could it be?”
“Then I’d ask, what’s in the memoir that is so juicy that someone would kill if it were released?”
“I talked with him about the memoir for only a few minutes. He mentioned a movie he’d worked on—Starlit Wonder—and how he was going to shake up Hollywood with the story.”
Crisp tapped his desk with a pencil. “If Stroden was blackmailing someone, he was making money. Did he have any outstanding bills? You say he’d borrowed against his house. Had he made any large purchases?”
“Unless he’d made the blackmail request but hadn’t been paid off yet,” she pointed out. “As a P.I., can you investigate his finances?”
“I thought you were hiring me to return the Greffulhe jewels.”
Joanna pressed her lips together a moment. “Just asking. Like I said, Luke, Stroden’s secretary, said he was broke. A peek at his bank balance would clear it up.”
“There’s your motivation.” Through the window beyond Crisp, a second bird splashed in the birdbath. “To answer your question, no. I don’t have that kind of access. But, this secretary. Just how much does he know about this memoir?”
She shrugged. “Presumably, everything. He took dictation and typed it up.”
Crisp leaned back and folded his arms. “Then he has plenty of information to send letters of his own. You might have your blackmailer right there.”