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A worried Greta looked closely at Plummer. “Will you be telling all this to Wallace?”
“Why would I do that? Then you might tell him Jimbo thinks he’s a piece of shit and that I’ve fooled him these last few years into thinking I’m a half retard. Weak-kneed and lacking self-respect I might be, but not a retard.”
“So, this is MAD? Mutual Assured Destruction?”
“Not quite. Wallace is more likely to believe me than you because his perceptions would be confirmed that way. Let’s just say it’s best if we don’t bother him with too many details.”
“So, where do we go from here?”
“We do the obvious. I’ll tell Wallace the Lincoln people seem to have found out some new information and are committed to one more week of intensive investigation. If nothing shows up, it’ll be put aside again. Nice work those Lincoln people did in getting these new leads, and Tillamook deputy Greta Havorsford was very helpful, which the Lincoln people appreciate. Then you and I start the Pacific City canvassing first thing tomorrow. If we only have one week, we need to press on hard.”
Greta looked quizzically at Plummer. “Why are you so interested in this case?”
“Let’s just say that once in a while I like to pretend I’m James Plummer, a real detective trying to bring bad guys to justice. Once in a while.”
“Tomorrow then. I’ll start on my side of Cape Kiwanda Drive. Do we want to touch base each day?”
“Let’s meet at six o’clock tomorrow at La Fiesta. By then, I expect I could use a beer. We can swap tales and plan the next day.”
Greta called Bruce Penderman as soon as she got home and arranged to meet for breakfast. Then she called Robert Simpson, or whoever he was, to ask him to lunch at La Fiesta.
Twice in one day, she thought. First Simpson and then Plummer. I wonder if the La Fiesta gives out Frequent-Eater Coupons?
For once, she got to Doris’s café the next morning before Bruce did. Doris brought her a cup of real coffee, and she sipped it, thinking over the case while she waited. Penderman arrived wearing his usual plaid wool shirt, heavy jacket, and hunter’s hat. The jacket and the hat went on the rack by the front door, and he slid into the booth bench opposite her.
“How’s it goin’, Greta?”
“Interesting times, as they
say, Bruce. Interesting times. I’ve got some stuff I’d like to run by you. The Toompas case.”
“Toompas?” he said, surprised. “I thought you’d closed that case as a dead end.”
“It’s been formally on the back burner for a while, though I’ve kept looking into it. There’s been some new information.” She filled him in. When she finished, he smiled fondly.
“My, my. Little Greta is turning into a real Colombo. Isn’t that your favorite old series?”
She smiled back. “One of my favorites, along with Murder She Wrote and Angela Lansbury.”
“So . . . is it just you working on this now?”
She shook her head. “The two sheriffs agree it’s worth a second look. However, we’ve only got a week to show any lead developing, or they’ll pull the plug again. It’s four of us again. Connors and Boylan from Lincoln County. Tomasek porked out. ‘Not enough new to divert me from more important cases’ was his comment.”
“Sounds like him. He’s not a bad cop; it’s getting him active that’s the problem. And just you from Tillamook?”
“No. Wallace assigned Jimbo Plummer for the next week.”
“James Plummer, huh? I’ll give you a couple of clues about him. If you haven’t figured it out already, he’s a lot smarter than most think. Problem is, he’s been under Wallace so long and gotten so used to keeping his head down that it rarely comes out. If you want to get the best out of him, call him James, not that stupid Jimbo nonsense. That’s a pure Wallace-ism. Plummer hates it but goes along as part of the act. Maybe back at the main office you could use Jimbo, but when working with him, use James.”
“Thanks for the heads-up. I suspected there was more to him.”
“Now, as for the case, what are you doing next? A week is a pretty short timeline.”
She described their initial plans to revisit all previous work based on the new information about Toompas’s last day, as well as hers and Plummer’s plan to canvass as much of Pacific City as possible.
Penderman shook his head. “Sounds pretty long shot to me, though I don’t know what else I’d do. One piece of advice: avoid making assumptions. That’s hard to do because we all start with unconscious pictures of what we expect. Also, in homicides it’s not like your TV shows where there are complicated plots and clue trails. Most often, the solution is obvious—the killer being the most likely suspect. In addition to what you’re doing, I’d make a short list of the most likely suspects and give them another hard look right at the start. In Philadelphia I only had two, maybe three cases out of close to a hundred where it wasn’t either a close associate of the victim or a more random killing. Convoluted cases were rare.”
Greta listened carefully. Although most of what Bruce said he had told her before, it didn’t hurt to hear it again.
