“Would you recognize her if you saw her again?”
Belinda shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“Did she say anything to him?”
“No. Not a word.”
“What did you do after you called 911?”
“I was still scared. I didn’t know if I did the right thing or not. I worried about it all day. Finally, last night, I came here to talk with Reverend Laura. She told me I should tell you.”
“Reverend Laura was right, Belinda. We needed this information. It helps us know who we’re looking for. You’re sure you never caught sight of her face?”
“Positive.”
“What color was the dress?”
“I don’t know. A real pretty blue or green. I couldn’t tell in the moonlight.”
“And you say she was wearing gloves?”
“Long ones. Old-fashioned ones. The kind that come up over the elbows.”
“Right, I know the kind. Do you remember anything else?”
“No. Nothing.”
I took my pencil and notebook out of my pocket. “What’s your address, Belinda?”
Belinda moved closer to Reverend Laura’s sheltering arm. “I don’t have one,” she said plaintively.
Reverend Laura patted the older woman’s shoulder reassuringly. “You can use this address,” she said to the bag lady quietly. Then to me she added, “I’ll have her stay here with me for the next few days in case you have to reach her.”
“Your last name, Belinda?” I continued.
She shrank close to her protector. “I…I…don’t remember,” she stammered.
I waited, but it was no use. If Belinda had a last name, she had long since forgotten it or blocked it out. I closed my notebook. It was par for the course. Every once in a blue moon, you have a real-live eyewitness to a homicide. Belinda was one of that rare eyewitness breed. I was sure that what she had told us would help me arrest Jasmine Day for the murder of Richard Dathan Morris, but I wasn’t at all sure it would help get us a conviction.
Defense attorneys make mincemeat out of totally reliable witnesses. And Belinda was decidedly not one of those. Not if she couldn’t remember her own last name.
CHAPTER 14
BY THE TIME I LEFT THE PIKE STREET Mission, I was already late to see Alan Dale. Instead of going straight to the Mayflower Park Hotel though, I drove through the misting rain to my place at Second and Broad. I parked on the street and hurried up to my apartment. I found the Jasmine Day souvenir program on the kitchen counter right where I had left it.
Turning on the fluorescent kitchen light, I held the glossy program up so I could examine the cover photo. Sure enough, what I didn’t want to see, what I dreaded seeing, was right there—Jasmine Day in a long blue dress with elbow-length white gloves. The long blonde wig was there, along with something else. Shoes. Blue high-heeled shoes. Cobalt blue shoes that matched the cobalt blue dress. Cole-Haan, size 8½B.
“Shit,” I muttered aloud as I sank into my old recliner, my thinking chair. Forgotten, the program dropped onto the table beside me.
One by one the ugly pieces were falling into place. Bit by bit, the puzzle was coming into focus. The only thing missing was motive. What was the deadly connection between the stagehand and the star?
Cocaine. That had to be the answer.
The lab had confirmed it was a brick of cocaine we’d found in Jonathan Thomas’s pillow. That was the only thing that made sense. Clearly, Jasmine Day wasn’t the squeaky-clean reformed addict she had pretended to be during her second-act inspirational chat. And I found myself doubting that anything she’d told me later that evening had been the truth either. So, if she was involved with the cocaine, was she buying or selling? Was she dealing or using? And who else was in on it with her?
In the long run, the answers to those questions weren’t important. Her involvement with drugs was nothing but an unsavory backdrop to the rest of the story. My focus had to be on only one issue, murder, and how Jasmine Day was tied in with Richard Dathan Morris and Jonathan Thomas.
In that regard, Jasmine Day was my prime suspect. My only suspect.
I used to think that as I got older it would be easier to turn off personal connection, but it doesn’t work that way. I had to force myself to lock away all memory of what had gone on between Jasmine and me. I had to blot out all remembrance of what had gone before and concentrate on the job at hand.
With a sigh, I finally dragged myself out of the chair and went into the bedroom. I knew what I had to do.
For a time I crawled around on my hands and knees, going over the carpet inch by inch. Eventually my patient search paid off. In the bathroom, on the floor near the sink, I discovered what I needed. A hair. A single long, blonde hair. I rummaged in several jacket pockets before I found a stray glassine bag to put it in.