Thicker Than Water (A Leo Waterman Mystery) Read Free Page A

those old-time Magic Fingers motel beds, and was lying there waiting for my fillings to shake loose.
    I did what people do in moments like that. I tried to come up with a scenario that would explain the unexplainable. Maybe she did this. Maybe she did that. Perhaps this, perhaps that. I led a rather rich fantasy life, but nothing whatsoever came to mind.
    A day seldom passed when Rebecca didn’t speak with her mother. Usually more than once. A week was impossible. The family mythos depended upon it. The promises of deferred gratification demanded it. As the saga went, Iris had sacrificed everything for her daughter. Held down three jobs. Scrimped and saved, and then scrimped and saved some more. The undisputed queen of the single momdom, trudging onward and upward after the death of her shiftless, alcoholic husband. Putting her daughter through the University of Washington, through med school, through a pathology residency. All of it, and I mean all of it, a tribute to grit and steely feminist determination.
    “What’s Brett got to say?” I asked.
    Brett Ward. The guy Rebecca married a couple of years back. A seriously handsome rake of a guy who drove a Porsche and sold yachts for a living. Snappy dresser. Fast talker.
    Iris’s glare went halogen. “He says they had a fight. Says she walked out on him. Just packed a suitcase and left. Said she needed to get away and think. Brett says he doesn’t know where she is.” She started to add something but stopped herself.
    “You believe him?”
    “No.”
    “What else?” I prodded.
    “He came to my house looking for her. Drunk.” She made it plain that she was holding something back. I went along for the ride.
    “And?”
    “He had a gun.”
    “Really?”
    “I saw it in the waistband of his pants.”
    “What else?”
    She met my gaze. “He said he thought she’d probably come running back to you. Said he was going to come over here and find her. Drag her back home.”
    “Haven’t seen him,” I said with a glum shrug.
    “Of course you haven’t,” she scoffed. “You whipped him like a dog. He wouldn’t dare come over here and bother you.”
    I winced. Knocking Brett Ward stiff wasn’t something I was proud of. First off, it was too easy. He was drunk; I wasn’t. I was big; he wasn’t. Secondly, it was childish on both our parts. He made it a point to invite me to his bachelorparty, just so he could tell his friends he had. “Hell, Bob, I even invited the big idiot.” He’d already won the girl, but just had to rub it in. Wanted to show his buddies how thoroughly he’d defeated his rival.
    Oh, I admit it. I should never have taken him up on it. I was being just as childish as he was. Worse yet, I saw trouble coming, right from the start. I could have nipped it in the bud and stopped him while he was working up the nerve. I could have walked right out of the Waterfront Restaurant and taken a cab home. But I didn’t. I let him paddle all the way up Stupid Creek. Let him get his blood in a boil to the point where he felt confident enough to take a poke at me and then walk off. I coldcocked him right in front of his friends and family. Party’s over. Thanks for coming, folks.
    Not one of my finer moments.
    I asked Iris the obvious question. “What about the people at work? Vaughn…Sandy…” Rebecca was the chief forensic pathologist for King County and, although nobody was truly indispensable, she came pretty close. As far as Rebecca was concerned, the only excuse for not showing up at work was death in the family…your own. Another integral part of the Iris-as-hard-working-heroine myth. That was subplot 3-B, about how Iris instilled proper values in the girl.
    “She took an indefinite leave of absence,” Iris said.
    My mouth hung open. “When?”
    “Two weeks this Thursday.”
    “Did you know she was going to do that? Was she planning something?”
    “Never said a word to me.”
    A strange situation was getting stranger by the moment. The idea