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As to why the woman hadn’t reported for jury duty, the answer, or excuse, was that her car wouldn’t start that day. She claimed she didn’t know what was wrong with the car because it started the following day and still ran fine. She gave no answer to Greta’s question of why hadn’t she called the Tillamook Courthouse to report that she couldn’t make it? The woman stared at Greta as if the question were in Swahili. Greta started off polite, patiently explaining the laws about jury duty. When the woman obviously seemed to blow off the lecture, Greta switched from “good cop” to “bad cop” and went over the penalties for shirking civic duty. She also assured the now sullen women that those laws would be enforced, by Greta personally, if she heard of another failure to report for jury duty. Greta said she would also see to it that the woman’s name appeared on the next available juror list.
As she exited the house, Greta thought she heard “big ugly bitch” murmured behind her, but it didn’t affect her mood. Opportunities to quit being polite always refreshed her.
She drove home, took Doris’s box into the house, and set it on the floor of the breakfast nook. She didn’t feel like dealing with it that evening or the next three nights, leaving very few days before the Christmas trip. Greta had committed to getting back to Missouri this year. To reserve the vacation time slot, she’d traded favors with other patrol officers, either responding to calls in their districts or taking office duty. Department policy was to always have at least one deputy on duty at the main office. Her time swaps meant that the coming week, she’d work her own shifts plus extras.
The longer hours at work made for a tiring week. Seventy hours on duty and no overtime pay because of trading shifts. The following Monday, she took a sick day to rest up and get ready for the trip home. She slept late, until almost ten, then did a long run and the weight room. Next, she joined in on the Cloverdale High School girls basketball team practice. When Emily Sievers called an end to the practice at five o’clock, there was daylight for another forty-five minutes. The leading edge of fog rolling in off the ocean appeared as she exited the gym.
She still had time and enough light to practice throwing. She took her discuses and hammers out to the playing field behind the school and used flour in a small bag to mock up a throwing circle. Greta spent five minutes stretching, then five minutes dry running the discus throw to refresh her muscle memory. She owned three each, discus and hammer, so every three throws she trotted out to retrieve them in order to continue. With twenty-one discus tosses, she started easy and worked up to full speed for the last six. Then she repeated the procedure with the hammer. She didn’t bother with any measurements. This was only to keep her form from lapsing.
When she got home, she was tired. Not the exhaustion that comes from unwanted exertion, but the pleasant tiredness brought on by an enjoyable activity or having relaxed. She stripped down and took a long, hot shower. Then she toweled dry and donned her pink terry-cloth robe and matching socks because the floor was too cold to go barefoot.
She opened a bottle of Columbia River gewürztraminer. The hint of sweetness and the floral bouquet matched her mood. She warmed up a can of clam chowder and cut up several slices of Tillamook Monterey Jack onto a plate with whole-grain crackers. She would have preferred sourdough bread, but she’d had some for lunch at Doris’s.
The soup and the regret at missing the sourdough jogged her memory about looking through Doris’s receipts. She took the wine, soup, cheese, and crackers to the table, then picked up the box of receipts off the floor and set it on the adjacent dining chair. The chowder and the gewürztraminer seemed a perfect match. While sipping the soup and nibbling the cheese and crackers, she pulled out a handful of receipts and started on them. In her thinking, Toompas’s $15.31 receipt indicated he got the bill no more than a day or two before his death.
She finished the bowl of soup and returned to the stove for the rest of it. She cut more cheese, poured another glass of wine, and continued the slow meal and her absentminded examination of the box’s contents. Raindrops pattered on the skylights, so she cracked open the back door. A steady rain drummed on the patio. Along with hearing the rain, she liked watching it. This was hard in the dark, so she turned on an outside light and swiveled the light outward, instead of down. Now the raindrops were illuminated as they passed through the cone of light. She went back inside and continued with the receipts, while occasionally glancing outside at the rain.
Without realizing it, she drifted into a semi-conscious state: pick out a receipt, glance at it, and put it aside in a pile. The motions became automatic and almost mesmerizing. Abruptly, she stopped. Something got through to the higher centers of her brain. She frowned, set down the wine glass, and went back to the pile of receipts she’d already looked at. At the sixth one from the top, she stopped and stared. A receipt for $15.31 on October 9th of this year. The time stamp was 9:22 p.m. The medical examiner had put Toompas’s death most likely at sometime between October eighth and tenth.
You gotta be shittin’ me! she almost said out loud. Toompas ate at Doris’s in Pacific City the night he was killed! Get outta here!
Her pulse raced. It was the first new lead in weeks. She took several deep breaths. It could just end up being a coincidence and go nowhere near solving the murder, she told herself. Just like the abalone lead. Nevertheless, it was something.
She refilled her wine glass, put a blanket around her shoulders, and sat on the back porch. The fresh, brisk air and the rain were exhilarating when combined with her find. They also helped tamp down the flush that colored her face. She sat there for half an hour, sipping the wine and experiencing the rain, pushing the case aside for the moment. With a final sip, she went indoors, put away the remaining food and wine, and climbed into bed.
The next morning, she awoke with an inexplicable feeling of eagerness. Then she remembered . . . the receipt. The night’s rest had cooled her original excitement, though only slightly.
If Toompas had been in Pacific City a few hours before being killed, why? Was he killed in Pacific City and the body dumped south? For what reason? To confuse an investigation? Then how did his car get to Lincoln City? Questions. Finding a thread led to more questions than she had before.
She paced around the house, going over what she knew of the case for the umpteenth time, with the addition of the receipt breakthrough. Nothing further was obvious, with the major exception that now she thought she could place Toompas closer to the time of his death.
Should she tell Connors? He was the lead in the investigation. If she told him, what if it turned out to be another dead end? She still didn’t have any suspects or motives. And what if she did tell him? What would that accomplish unless she had somewhere to go next?
Then another thought popped into her head.
Oh, great! If I tell Connors, it’s likely to get back to Wallace. Talk about getting on his shit list if there’s even a hint that the murder occurred in Tillamook County, instead of Lincoln. Wallace will have a cow. From what I hear, every talk he gives boasts that the low crime rate in the county is due to his tenure as sheriff.
She continued pacing.
No. She wouldn’t tell Connors until she had something more. If it turned out that the murder did occur in Tillamook County, then Wallace could go fuck himself.
Having come to a decision, she rewarded herself by making pancakes slathered with butter and drowned in real maple syrup.
By the last bite, she knew her next step. Doris. See whether Doris or any of the other workers recognized Toompas’s picture and knew anything more.
She also wondered if she should call Bruce to run all this by him. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember how early he rose in the morning. She usually met him for breakfast around seven-thirty or eight. She decided not to call until later and then see if he could meet her the next day.
At 7:41 a.m., she walked into Doris’s, carrying the box of receipts minus one.
“In for breakfast or just returning my filing system?” said Doris, holding a coffee pot in one hand and a towel in the other.
“Both. It’s a busy week. I’ll be heading home to Missouri for Christmas, and to get enough days off, I switched schedules with some of the other deputies.”
“Good for you. One always needs to keep up family contact,” said Doris, who then took possession of the cardboard box Greta had set on the checkout counter.
“Let’s see. I figured that’s either my receipts or a litter of puppies I have no intention of taking.”
“Relax. It’s the receipts.”
