“You’ll keep us posted?”
Janice glowered at me. “Of course not. Everything we find out we’re marking top secret and burying in a file drawer! What do you think?”
“Just checking, just checking.” I told her.
Big Al and I drove down to the waterfront and elbowed our way through the tourists to Ivar’s Clam Bar. We both ordered clam chowder and coffee. We took our food to the outdoor tables and ate while watching ferry traffic come and go.
“Storm’s blowing up,” Al commented, sniffing the air.
“How can you tell?”
“Can’t you smell it?”
I sniffed, filling my nostrils with creosote-laden salty air that told me nothing. Looking up, I could see both the moon and winking stars.
“You wait and see,” Al said. “It’ll be raining by morning.”
Back at the department there was a call waiting for us from Bellingham. Their officers had been unable to locate Mrs. Grace Simms Morris. Through talking with neighbors, particularly the one who was feeding her parakeet, they had determined that she was out of town. She had taken a short trip down the Oregon coast and was expected to return to Bellingham by Sunday evening at the latest. The neighbor had added that Mrs. Morris would probably stop off in Seattle for a day or two to visit with her son.
That information didn’t leave Big Al and me much option but to go back to the house on Bellevue Avenue East. As far as we could tell, it was undisturbed. There were no lights, no open doors or windows, nothing to indicate anyone had been there since Tom Riley had taken the cat and abandoned ship late that morning.
“You got any bright ideas?” Big Al asked.
“Let’s leave a note for her to call us,” I suggested.
Al reached for one of his business cards, but I stopped him. “Don’t use that. It says Homicide on it.” I rummaged through my wallet and found a bank deposit slip with my name and telephone number on it. “We can leave this. If she calls my number and I’m not there, she’ll get an answering machine, not the department.”
Big Al nodded in agreement. We left a note on the door asking her to call me, nothing more.
We were on our way back down the hill headed for the Fifth Avenue Theater when dispatch came through with an urgent summons for Al. Molly, his wife, wanted him to go with her to Children’s Hospital, where their four-year-old grandson had been taken by ambulance for an emergency appendectomy.
Al dropped me off at the theater entrance. The doors were just opening. I flashed one of the complimentary tickets Dan Osgood, the P.R. man, had given me and was one of the first people inside the lobby. A program hawker was busy unwrapping a stack of programs. I bought one, thinking it might give me a little more in-depth information about the people connected with the show than I would find in the free program provided by the theater.
I tracked down the house manager and told him I wanted to talk with Alan Dale, Ed Waverly, or Dan Osgood. He took my name and ticket location and told me he’d pass along the message. He said he doubted that any of them would have time to see me before the curtain, but that he’d see what he could do. I had no choice but to settle into my front-row center seat, read my programs, and wait for the theater to fill up around me.
The glossy color program consisted mainly of action shots of Jasmine Day, singing and dancing in front of a series of lavish sets and backdrops. The color photos did more to show her vitality than the black-and-whites I had seen earlier outside the theater. Those had been sexy, sultry, inviting. These were also sexy and inviting, but there was a subtle addition, an exuberance and enthusiasm that was somehow lacking in the others.
I read all the bios carefully, particularly those of people whose names I recognized. Alan Dale came from Sarasota, Florida. His credits were primarily in drama, both off and on Broadway. This was his fifth show with Westcoast Starlight Productions.
Ed Waverly, the director and road-show manager, had been with Westcoast for a number of years. He originally had been with the New York City Ballet as a dancer, choreographer and director before signing on with the Westcoast company.
I read Jasmine Day’s bio with special interest. She had been born in Jasper, Texas, a town only some fifty miles from Beaumont, where my own father was born. For years I had threatened to go to Texas and track down my father’s people and let them know of my existence, but I had never gotten beyond the map-studying stage. That was how I knew about Jasper, Texas, and that was all I knew about Jasper, Texas.
The article said Jasmine had begun her career by singing in church and Sunday school and had gone on to become a rock star. Now she had moved away from her rock background and was hitting the big time again, only this time in an adult, easy-listening format. I thumbed through the book again, studying the pictures closely. I didn’t know about the easy-listening part, but she sure as hell was easy on the eyes.