Dead in the Dregs by Peter Lewis Page A

with Brenneke. Our paths had first crossed in Seattle. He was the kind of cop who always made you feel he had you in his back pocket. He took pleasure in pushing people around. A little sloppy and a little angry, he evinced the arrogance of power but was crippled by his own ineptitude, a quality that had led to his dismissal from the SPD. We’d done each other a couple of favors since discovering we were both in the valley, but I doubted our friendship would count for much under the present circumstances. The cops had no idea what was about to descend on them once the news of the murder of Richard Wilson got out. They’d be under enormous pressure to solve it.
    Leaving, I stepped into the phone booth and looked up Carla Fehr’s address.
    “One more stop,” I said to Danny when we were in the truck.
    He threw me a look that suggested I was out of my mind, then turned his back on me.

    “You’re not a detective, Dad,” he said out the window.
    “True,” I acknowledged, “but bartenders and detectives have a lot in common.”
    He turned his head to look at me. Sure they do , the look said.
     
    Carla Fehr lived in a small white clapboard cottage on a back road on the other side of the highway. Lace curtains masked the windows.
    “Wait here. I’m not sure this woman’s going to talk to me,” I said. “I think it’s better if I go it alone.” Danny appeared relieved to be let off the hook. “I’ll just be a minute.”
    The geraniums on the front porch hadn’t been deadheaded in weeks. I knocked and stood there for several minutes. The cicadas’ frenzied whining made me edgy. I knocked again and saw the curtain drawn back an inch. She opened the door and turned without saying a word, retreating to the safety of the living room. She was barefoot, wearing a man’s shirt and blue jeans. Her hair was carelessly tied up.
    The room was pleasantly if sparsely furnished, a little frilly in its taste. She plopped onto the sofa and tucked one leg beneath her. I took a chair facing her.
    “Still skulking around?” She shook her head. “Don’t you believe in mourning?” she asked, her tone sarcastic.
    “I’m doing this for Richard’s sister. She asked me to.”
    “Asked you to talk to me? I doubt it.”
    “Oh? And why’s that?”
    “She doesn’t know about Richard and me.”
    The shadows cast by the lace played across her face, and the light silhouetted her body in the enormous shirt. It was a perfect body.
    “How would you describe your relationship with Richard?”
    She looked at me as if I were a child. A very stupid child.
    “We were friends. He confided in me,” she finally said.
    “I don’t know if he ever mentioned me, but he and I were friends, too. And he wanted to confide in me . There was something bothering him, something that he wanted to get off his chest. You have any notion what it might have been?”
    I could tell by the look on her face—hostile, a little sad, contemptuous—that whatever it was, he hadn’t told her about it.

    “Look, I don’t know what you’re after. Richard and I were close. I mean, he wasn’t here that much. But whenever he was . . . I just can’t believe somebody would do this to him.”
    “So, you don’t have a clue? No idea?”
    She didn’t like the fact that I was implying there was something he hadn’t told her, that their relationship was purely sexual.
    “Get a life,” she said. “And get your ass out of my house.”
     
    Danny was standing outside the truck, throwing rocks into a field. I came up beside him, bent down, and grabbed a few myself, and we stood there a minute, seeing who could throw farther.
    “Good arm,” I said.
    “Thanks.”
    “This isn’t turning out to be much fun, is it?”
    “Not really,” he said.
    “You wanna go home?”
    “I guess.”
    “Okay, let me call your mother.”
    I walked to the truck and pulled my cell phone from the glove box.
    “I need you to take Danny back,” I said. “If you really want me to