I HAD CROSSED LAKE WASHINGTON SO MANY TIMES IN the past few days that I was beginning to feel like a regular commuter. But this time I had plenty to think about. The phone calls back and forth between Suzanne and Lenora on the night of Petey’s death, along with the similarities in their two mothers’ deaths, certainly made it appear as if the two women might be partners in crime. When it came down to interrogations, which of them would crack first?
Suzanne was a poker player capable of bluffing with complete aplomb. On the night of Petey’s death, she had possessed both the presence of mind and the necessary contacts to finagle unloading what we suspected to be a gore-filled Lexus. In other words, she was a cool customer who was unlikely to buckle under pressure. Lenora, accustomed to a cosseted Eastside life, would be far more susceptible to accepting a plea deal.
I arrived in Medina first. Driving in, I realized that it wasn’t a good strategic move for us to show up at the house in a whole herd of vehicles. I found a nearby church and called Caldwell and Stevenson with the address, suggesting that we meet up in the parking lot there so we could arrive in one vehicle rather than three. Even though it was my bright idea, when it came time for us to clamber into Detective Stevenson’s unmarked, I was the one who ended up in the backseat. Locked in behind closed doors with no interior handles, I couldn’t help but feel as though I’d been kicked to the back of the bus. And even though I was the one who’d supplied Lenora’s address originally, when we drove up to the Harrisons’ rusty corten gate, Detective Stevenson was the one who pressed the buzzer on the intercom.
“Who is it and what do you want?” Once again the brusque voice speaking over the intercom belonged to Lenora herself.
“I’m Detective Greg Stevenson with Seattle PD. I’m here investigating the disappearance and subsequent murder of your nephew, Petey Mayfield. A representative from the Kittitas County Sheriff’s Department, Detective Lucinda Caldwell, is along for the ride, as is my former colleague at Seattle PD, a gentleman by the name of J. P. Beaumont. I believe you might already have met him.”
Without a verbal response, the gate swung open. If Lenora Harrison had suspected for a second that she herself was under investigation, I doubt she would have granted us admittance. As it was, she not only opened the gate, she once again ventured out onto the front porch to greet us. With the ceremonial display of Greg’s and Lucinda’s respective badges concluded, Lenora invited us into the house. As we followed her inside, I noticed that Lenora was dressed for an occasion of some kind—as though she expected to go somewhere as soon as she could get rid of us.
In the living room, she pointed Lucinda and me toward the chairs Mel and I had occupied on our previous visit. Then, assuming Greg was in charge, she seated him next to her on the sectional and focused her full attention on him.
“Whatever this is, you’ll need to be quick about it,” she told him. “I have a luncheon engagement, and I don’t want to be late. Now, what’s all this about Petey? I had no idea he’d disappeared, to say nothing of his having been murdered, until Mr. Beaumont here turned up over the weekend and told me what had happened. In other words, there’s not much I can tell you.”
“Still,” Greg said, “given that you’re Petey’s nearest blood relative, we really do need to hear what you have to say. To that end I’d like to ask you to come to our headquarters in downtown Seattle for an official interview.”
Lenora’s reaction to that was as understandable as it was immediate. “Go all the way into downtown Seattle in order to carry on a simple conversation over nothing?” she demanded. “Certainly not, it’s out of the question. There must be some other way to do this.”
Greg frowned and stared off into space for a moment, as if puzzling over how to deal with this seemingly insoluble problem.
“Well,” he said, at last, “I suppose if you didn’t mind our recording the conversation here—”
“By all means,” Lenora interrupted impatiently. “I’m totally in favor of that. Let’s get this over with, the sooner the better.”
Lucinda reached into her purse—a briefcase-size bag that Mel would have loved—and produced an iPad complete with an easel-backed cover that allowed the device to stand on its own.
“Is there a place where we could set this up?” she asked.
“You mean, like a table or something?”
“Exactly,” Lucinda said. “A table would be perfect.”
With that, Lenora rose to her feet and led us into an ornate dining room, complete with a massive and highly polished cherrywood table. Lucinda placed the iPad in the middle of that, closer to the near end. After turning it on, she directed Lenora to sit at the end of the table facing the iPad with Lucinda and Greg situated on one side of the table and me on the other. Once Lucinda had adjusted our positions so all our faces showed on the screen, she turned the device to record.
“You’re on, Detective Stevenson,” Lucinda said, “over to you,” leaving it to Detective Stevenson to be our master of ceremonies.
“I am Homicide Detective Greg Stevenson of the Seattle Police Department. This is an official interview with Lenora Harrison into the apparent homicide of her nephew Peter ‘Petey’ Mayfield. At Ms. Harrison’s request and convenience, we’re conducting and recording this interview on an electronic device at her residence in Bellevue, Washington, rather than in a formal interview room at Seattle PD. Present for the interview, in addition to myself and Ms. Harrison, are Homicide Detective Lucinda Caldwell of the Kittitas County Sheriff’s Department and Private Investigator, J. P. Beaumont, a civilian with some knowledge of the Mayfield case. Ms. Harrison, would you be kind enough to state your name for the record and to acknowledge that you are a willing participant in an interview conducted under these circumstances?”
Fixing a steely-eyed gaze on Stevenson alone, Lenora gave her name and delivered a clipped, “I do.” Obviously yours truly wasn’t worthy of even so much as a withering glance. Neither was Detective Caldwell.
“In addition to the four of us, are there any other people present in the residence at this time?” Stevenson asked.
“I’m here by myself. It’s spring. My husband’s out playing his first round of golf and the maid has the day off.”
“Were you close to your nephew?” Greg began.
“Not at all,” Lenora answered. “My brother, Arthur, was a bum—a complete loser. I’m sorry to say that Petey took after his father in that regard. He got into trouble and into drugs early on. He spent time in juvie as a teenager and in jail as an adult. The less I had to do with either Arthur or his son, the better I liked it.”
“You mentioned earlier that you had no idea until just recently that Petey had gone missing.”
“That is correct. Mr. Beaumont here stopped by to give me news about his disappearance sometime last week. Then, over the weekend, Mr. Beaumont and his wife came to inform my husband and me that Petey had in fact been murdered.”
“Did you know that Petey was staying on property formerly owned by your mother at the time of his disappearance?”
“I suppose I did know that,” Lenora conceded. “I’m sure she must have mentioned it, but he came and went so often I’m afraid I stopped paying attention. As I said, the less I had to do with Petey and his sort, the better I liked it.”
“His sort?” Greg repeated.
“As I mentioned earlier, Petey was a drug user—a drug abuser,” she corrected. “Is it any wonder that I didn’t want to have anything to do with him?”
“Is it true that your mother quitclaimed her various real-estate properties over to you sometime in the course of last summer?”
“That’s true,” Lenora agreed at once. “She was getting on in years and required help looking after herself as well as her financial affairs. She transferred her properties to me so I could handle the property taxes and make sure the utilities were paid on a regular basis.”
“Had she not signed the properties over to you, would Petey have been entitled to inherit a portion of their value?”
For the first time, Lenora’s veneer of being fully in charge showed the smallest hint of cracking.
“Wait,” she said, “are you trying to imply that I may have had something to do with Petey’s death?”
“Did you?” Greg asked.
“Certainly not!” Lenora replied indignantly. “I can’t imagine what would lead you to believe anything so outrageous!”
“Were you aware that at the time of his death Petey and his girlfriend were expecting a child?”
“I was not at the time, but because of Mr. Beaumont here I know about that now.”
Greg did an abrupt change of course. “Tell me about your dealings with Suzanne Nishikawa of Highline Development,” he said evenly.
“What about them?”
“Do you have a client relationship with her and her firm?”
“Yes, of course I do,” Lenora answered indignantly. “I learned through a mutual friend that her company was looking for property in West Seattle that would be suitable for development. My mother’s contiguous lots filled that bill perfectly.”
I spoke up for the first time. “If those lots were so perfect for development, it’s surprising that you sold them at prices well below the going rate.”
She glared at me and then turned back to Greg. “Does he have to be here? Since he’s obviously here only to advocate for Petey’s child, I don’t believe he has any right—”
“Did you sell the lots at below-market value?” Greg asked.
Lenora seemed momentarily flustered. “Well, yes, I suppose I did,” she admitted finally, “but the original sales price was only part of it. Suzanne and I have a side agreement, you see. Once the houses in Mayfield Glen are built, one of them will be coming to me.”
“To you alone or to you and your husband?” I asked.
“That is none of your business,” she replied.
“So you and Ms. Nishikawa have a side agreement which would give you title to one of the completed residences in that development?” Greg’s follow-up question told me that Lucinda had done an outstanding job of laying out the situation.
“Yes,” Lenora said, “but it’s not for me. It’s for my son—for Mark and his partner, Jess. Mark is gay, you see. My husband, Isaac, is a bit old-school. Once Mark came out as gay, Isaac cut off all contact with him and cut him out of his will as well. Mark and Jess are getting married next year, and I wanted to be able to give them the house as a wedding present—something that was from me alone.”
That was a biggie for me. I hadn’t realized that the Harrisons even had a son—a son who was Petey’s cousin and who would also have been in line to inherit from Agnes and Peter Mayfield’s estate. By reducing Petey’s potential share of his grandparents’ estate, Lenora had automatically guaranteed that her own son’s share would be larger.
“Are you saying your husband is unaware of these various real-estate transactions?” Greg asked.
“I suppose,” Lenora conceded.
She kept her voice even, but two angry red spots were clearly visible thought the layer of makeup covering her cheeks.
“So on the day that Petey disappeared,” Greg continued, “the calls that went back and forth between your phone and Ms. Nishikawa’s phone were strictly related to those aforementioned real-estate transactions?”
Lenora hesitated for a heartbeat. “I’m sure they were,” she said finally.
“And your business relationship is close enough that she would call you several times over the course of that weekend, even into the early hours of Monday morning?” Lucinda continued.
“I suppose,” Lenora said.
“It wouldn’t have anything to do with her telling you that Petey had come to her, threatening to expose what was going on—that you and Suzanne were trying to cheat him out of his rightful inheritance?”
“This is utterly unacceptable!” Lenora exclaimed. “I won’t sit here in my own home and have complete strangers accusing me of being involved in my nephew’s murder. I want all of you out of here.”
She was angry now, but not smart enough to shut up or ask for an attorney. In interview situations that always gives the cops a home-field advantage.
“What can you tell us about Danielle Nishikawa?” Greg asked.
“What about her?” Lenora exclaimed.
“Did you know her?”
“Yes, she and my mother were in the same nursing home for a while. In fact, Suzanne was the one who recommended that particular facility to me. So yes, I knew her.”
“And was Danielle already a patient there at the time you placed your mother there?” Lucinda continued.
“I suppose she was,” Lenora said, “but I’m not sure.”
“Did you ever meet her prior to your becoming acquainted at Memory Manor?” I asked.
“Of course not,” she said. “Why would I?”
“I believe she was the one who notarized your mother’s signatures on those quitclaim deeds.”
“I wasn’t there when those were signed,” Lenora responded, “so how would I know if she was there or not? I’m telling you, I never met Danielle Nishikawa until Suzanne introduced me to her at Memory Manor.”
“Is there a chance your mother’s signatures were forged on those documents?”
“Forged? Absolutely not!”
“Good,” Greg said, shutting down the interview. “I believe we have everything we need. Thank you so much for your cooperation, Ms. Harrison. We’ll be glad to show ourselves out.”
I gave Detective Stevenson points for having ended the interview before Lenora got around to asking for an attorney. The next time they met up in an interview room, she probably would have done so, but in the meantime we had plenty of damning circumstantial evidence on our iPad video. And if Lenora Harrison was under the impression that Suzanne Nishikawa was our sole target, she was dead wrong!
As we walked out to Greg’s unmarked, it was all I could do to contain my excitement. The investigation had reached critical mass. The pieces to the puzzle were laid out in front of us. Now we just needed to put them together. As we drove out through the Harrisons’ massive rolling gate, Greg and Lucinda were already strategizing on their next steps for doing exactly that and theorizing about which of these two bad girls, Suzanne and Lenora, would be the first to turn on the other.
The problem is, once we got back to the church parking lot, I found myself summarily thrown under the bus and tossed off the team as well. At this point in the investigation, Greg and Lucinda were the actual cops. I was an unsworn outsider—a helpful but nonessential one. They would bring in their own handwriting expert to evaluate the forged signatures. They’d have their own cyber folks examine Suzanne’s cell-phone trail and triangulate whether or not she’d been anywhere near where Petey’s body had been dumped on the night of his murder. And they were the ones who would determine whether Agnes Mayfield’s body would be exhumed in order to learn if there were ethylene glycol crystals lingering in her remains.
I was both fuming and dejected about that as I headed onto the 520 Bridge, but somewhere mid-span I came to my senses. I really wasn’t a cop anymore. Alan Dale had come to me asking that I find our mutual daughter and to protect the interests of our mutual granddaughter. I had done just that. If the signatures on the quitclaims had been forged, the transactions selling those lots to Highline could most likely be invalidated. And if Lenora was found to have been involved in her mother’s death, she would automatically be disinherited. Beneficiaries are not allowed to profit from their own misdeeds. I wondered if, in a per stirpes situation, did that same disqualification pass through to their children?
By the time I hit the perpetually snarled I-5 exit known as the Mercer Mess, I was in better spirits. Alan Dale’s request for help had been asked and answered. So yes, when it came time to cuff Suzanne and Lenora, I wouldn’t be on hand to see them loaded into squad cars, but I had the satisfaction of knowing that I was the one who’d blown the whistle on them and laid the foundation. I had gotten the ball rolling by discovering that crimes had been committed in the first place, thus putting sworn officers on the trail, so good for me.
“Not bad for an old guy,” I told myself aloud, “not bad at all.”