Practice to Deceive

Plumberg persisted.
    “We joked about it sometimes because Russ put together the Mukilteo City Adult Entertainment Ordinance.”
    “You seem very nervous about something,” Plumberg said.
    “I am nervous.”
    “If you want to tell me something, I can put my pen away and stop taking notes—”
    “No, I can’t really think of anything to tell you.”
    Mark Plumberg’s sense was that Randolph was simply a very agitated man most of the time, acutely self-conscious, and possibly had cop paranoia. The more Randolph explained his eye problem, his sinus problems, and his tendency to blush, the redder he got.
    Maybe the FBI probe had frightened him; maybe he was just a nervous Nellie, but Plumberg would check him out.
    He thought he knew a red herring when he saw one, and speculated that he had just spent a long time talking to one.
    As it turned out, he was right. Randolph proved to have nothing at all to do with Russel Douglas’s death.

PART SIX
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Peggy Sue Stackhouse

C HAPTER F IFTEEN
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    A S JULY MOVED TOWARD August, Mark Plumberg thought of the many times he’d thought he’d struck gold in his investigation—only to have it disintegrate into dust. He had no way of knowing that there was someone far away from Washington State who was wrestling with his conscience. Should he call the sheriff on Whidbey Island, Washington? Or would that be a devastating act of disloyalty to someone he considered his close—perhaps closest —friend?
    Had Plumberg known, he would have been considerably cheered to know there was a witness detectives only dream of.
    For the moment, he continued retracing the steps he and Mike Birchfield had taken early in the game. He moved along Admiralty Way and Wahl Road, talking with residents there. It wasn’t rainy or snowing now, and the deciduous trees had leaves, while flowers bloomed in most yards. But July 26 was a discouraging day. Plumberg wasn’t finding any relevant information. He had talked to dozens and dozens of people who should have known something, some of them twice or more.
    And then he received a call on his cell phone that took him in a whole different direction.
    Island County Detective Sue Quandt told him that she had answered a phone call from a man who asked if the Island County Sheriff’s Office had an unsolved homicide that had supposedly happened around Christmas 2003! She couldn’t get the caller to give his name—or where he was calling from—but it certainly sounded as though this was something that should be followed up.
    Quandt had confirmed to the caller that indeed there was an open case of a murder on the island—on December 26, 2003.
    There was silence on the line and she wondered if the man had hung up.
    “I have information,” he finally said. “But I’m scared to talk about it.”
    Sue Quandt then transferred the call to the detectives’ commander, Mike Beech.
    The caller was frightened, but he sounded as if he was compelled to tell what he knew. Beech was able to establish some rapport with the man and felt he had gained his trust—or at least some of it. The informant said that the “shooter” was a friend of his.
    “He told me about what he had learned in February,” Beech said.
    Mark Plumberg wasn’t present during that first phone conversation, but he went to the Coupeville office as fast as he could get there.
    “Have you found any connection with anyone who used to work at the Just B’s salon and then she moved to Las Vegas with her boyfriend?” Beech asked.
    “Yes!” Plumberg said. “I’ve contacted a woman who told me she was friends with both Brenna and Russel Douglas. She drives a limousine in Las Vegas. I don’t know anything about her boyfriend, but I do know she used to work for Brenna in her salon.”
    “That meshes with what this guy—whoever he is—told me,” Beech said. “Evidently, the boyfriend has—or had—a wife in Florida and they owned a business together. He said that the guy has a girlfriend who worked in Brenna’s salon, and then the two of them moved to Las Vegas.”
    So far, Mark Plumberg and Mike Beech had validated everything the informant told them. But Plumberg had been through that scenario before. After so many detours, it almost seemed too easy. He kept waiting for this, too, to blow up in his face.
    He wasn’t ready yet to ask Brenna about her connection to Peggy Sue Thomas, but there was a woman Mike Birchfield had talked to who was a former hairdresser at Just B’s.