“Thus the concept of a murder board. Don’t cops have them all over the station? I’ve seen probably thirty years’ worth of Law and Order, and I swear—it’s like you work in these little rooms that are just one murder board after another. A veritable labyrinth of murder boards, from wall to wall.”
“You watch too much TV. Seattle isn’t New York City, and nobody has that many murder boards.” He pulled into a driveway in front of an impeccably kept craftsman home, and he pulled the parking brake. “Anyway, we’re here. You know the drill, right? Please, before we knock on this man’s door, I’m begging you: Assure me that you know the drill.”
“Keep my mouth shut and don’t volunteer any information. If I get a flash, I keep it to myself until we make it back to the car.”
“Attagirl.”
“I’m not in middle school. I know how to behave like an adult.”
He opened his door and climbed out. Leda did the same.
Once she was free, and they looked at each other across the top of the car, he said, “I know you’re an adult. But there are so many fiddly police rules, even though we’re doing this on our own time.”
“You don’t want me to jeopardize the case. Either case. Both cases. Whatever.”
“Right. It’s not personal. Let me do the talking, and everything will be fine. Beckmeyer is expecting us.”
They climbed a paver path up to the house, then a short stack of stairs to the front door. A curtain that covered one of the sidelight windows fluttered.
“Detective Merritt.” He greeted the cop with a smile and a handshake. “Good to see you again.”
“This is my associate, Ms. Foley,” said Grady. “I hope you don’t mind her joining us.”
“Not at all,” Beckmeyer said brightly. He was a tall pink fellow with a vivid shock of snow-white hair and the healthy glow of a man who can’t see himself retiring anytime soon, even though he was free to do so a decade ago. Was this the silver fox from the photo she’d briefly glimpsed? Maybe. Probably. He reached for Leda’s hand to shake it, but she hesitated.
“I’m sorry, it’s very nice to meet you—but I’m recovering from a bit of the flu. Best to play it safe.”
“Absolutely, absolutely,” he said with a short, shallow bow. He held the door open wide for them to come inside. “Thank you for your consideration. Please, come on in.”
The house was as lovely inside as outside, with high tray ceilings and antique decor that was tasteful without being dull. All in all, Leda gave the place two thumbs up, and she said so out loud. Richard politely gave all the credit to his wife, who was presently at work.
“She’s on the board of directors at Swedish,” he said, meaning the medical center. “She’s the designer, and the shopper. Always, she’s had such an eye for quality, and for bargains. So many people have antiques and simply don’t know what they’re worth, or how to take care of them—but not Sheila. Once in a while I raise an eyebrow, like the time she shipped that thing home.” He pointed at a lovely art deco buffet with a bar setup on top. “It only cost her a hundred dollars, and she paid three times that to ship it here. Then we had a fellow who specializes in these things appraise it at three times the total, so I was forced to eat my words.”
He led them to a seating area that once might have been a parlor and offered them drinks.
“I never partake during the day,” Leda lied through her teeth.
“And I have to head back to work after this,” Grady said. “But thanks for the offer. We’re here as part of the… let’s say ‘ongoing conversation’ about the Gilman deaths.”
“It’s been ages, and we don’t have any resolution yet.”
“Oh, it hasn’t been that long—and plenty of murders go even longer without being solved,” Leda noted. “Some of them never are, right? A lot of them, probably.”
Grady gave her a look that said he’d happily, swiftly elbow her if he were sitting any closer. “But we do our best with every case, and yes—even after this vast epoch of eighteen months, we’re still working on this one. They don’t always come together neatly.”
“Ain’t that the truth.” Richard Beckmeyer poured himself a bit of Scotch and took a swallow. “Nothing much ever went neatly when it came to the Gilmans. Why should their deaths be any different?”
“I have no idea,” Leda answered, and Grady gave her another look. She remembered she had agreed to stay quiet.
He pulled out a little notebook and returned his attention to Beckmeyer. “I know we’ve been over some of this before, but I hope you don’t mind refreshing my memory. How long had you worked at Digital Scaffolding when Chris and Kevin died?”
“I was never really an employee,” Beckmeyer said. “Sheila does a bit of angel investing, here and there. She put up some money and managed the books. They let me hang around and help them with their in-house digital tools, mostly as a courtesy to her, I think.”
Leda opened her mouth to ask what that meant, but a sharp side-eye from Grady stopped her.
“What kind of in-house tools?” he asked.
The older man hesitated, holding up his hands like he was trying to describe the shape of something—and words weren’t quite cutting it. “Digital Scaffolding helped smaller companies interface with larger companies, like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. They had a number of in-house tools that made it easier for these corporate systems to talk to one another, help them sell one another’s products and hire consultants and monitor their money. I did some of the design, fiddling with the user interfaces and making them more”—he hunted for a word, his long fingers still swaying, like he could pluck one from the air—“user-friendly. I was really a consultant, more than anything.”
Leda piped up, “Same here.” And offered him a fist-bump.
He returned it with a grin. “But to answer your question,” he continued, “I’d only been with them a few months—and at the time, I didn’t see myself staying much longer. It was a toxic work environment, let me put it that way. Usually Sheila’s nose is on point, and she sniffs out the creeps before getting involved… but Christopher Gilman was a hell of a salesman. I’d give him that, if nothing else. He was a grade A asshole, but it took people a little time to figure that out.”
Grady nodded and jotted something down. “Yes, I seem to recall that you didn’t like him much.”
“Nobody who worked with him longer than a month liked him. But Kevin was all right. I think the young man honestly wanted to do something good with his father’s money. He saw the same potential that Sheila did, and the two of them got along smashingly. But Christopher… well, he was a bit of a con man.”
“Do you think he was actually involved in any illegal activities, or was he just an asshole?”
Richard held out his hands, palms up as if he were weighing something in each one. “Eh… a little of column A, little of column B. Wait, he’s dead, right? It’s not like he can sue me for slander.”
“Correct.”
“Then I’m confident that the man was a full-blown crook. Couldn’t prove it, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest. He was a terrible fellow, with terrible impulses and terrible attitudes. Honestly, his death is the only reason I stayed on as long as I did with that company. I’d been on the verge of quitting when he died. Oh my, wait—that doesn’t make me a suspect, does it? I’m sure I have an alibi.”