Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder

where Raoul might be. She was a lovely-looking woman, and it was hard to understand why her bridegroom would have deliberately left her alone so soon after their wedding. The reporters who interviewed her tended to think something dire must have happened to him.
    On the evening after the articles appeared, Sergeant Herb Swindler got another call from Jeffrey Heiman. Heiman sounded as if he had suffered a severe shock. Raoul’s attorney had believed he knew his client well. Now, he wasn’t nearly so sure.
    “I just got the strangest phone call,” Heiman told Swindler, “and I don’t know what to think of it. It was from this woman who lives on Queen Anne Hill—her name’s Blake Rossler*—I’ve seen her picture on the society pages often.”
    “And?” Swindler asked impatiently.
    “And she’s telling me that she flew to San Francisco with Raoul Rockwell on August 4th, and he abandoned her there and disappeared.”
    “She’s sure it was Rockwell?”
    “She’s positive. She’s known him for a long time.”
    “That is strange,” Swindler agreed.
    “She’s willing to talk further to me, but she wants me to bring a detective from your unit with me when I go to her house.”
    Herb Swindler was busy tracking down more flight lists—this time to San Francisco—so Homicide detective Gail Leonard was assigned to accompany Rockwell’s attorney to Blake Rossler’s upscale home. Despite his name, Gail Leonard was male, and a veteran Homicide investigator.
    Blake Rossler was an absolutely beautiful woman, and Heiman and Leonard believed her when she told them that she and Raoul Guy Rockwell had been enjoying an affair for some time, even though she was still “technically” married. She said she had known “Raoul Guy” for five years, and they had become very close friends, sometimes meeting at his gallery, but more often arranging for discreet time alone. She wasn’t embarrassed in the least to admit her infidelity; rather, she was seething over the way Rockwell had tricked her and then abandoned her.
    “We were having lunch on the sixteenth of July,” she recalled, “at a restaurant downtown. It was after Manzanita left him. And suddenly Raoul asked me to go to Portugal with him. At first I thought he was joking, but he said he was serious. He asked me to take some time to think about it, and then give him my answer.
    “Several days later we went swimming together, and he asked me again about Portugal. I realized then he was very anxious for me to leave my husband and go with him, and I did think about it. When we met for lunch a few days later, I gave him my answer. I was about to leave on a vacation in Palm Springs, but I had decided to go away with him to Portugal if he would agree to wait for me to get back.”
    Rockwell had assured her he would wait.
    Blake Rossler had returned from her vacation at the end of July.
    “I called Raoul to tell him I was back, and we spoke of our plans for the Portugal trip. He told me he would stay in close touch with me.”
    Asked about Evelyn Emerson, Blake said that as far as she knew, Evelyn was just another antiques dealer in Seattle, and Raoul had no romantic interest in her. He had been so ardent and persuasive that she couldn’t imagine he might be interested in any other woman.
    “You didn’t know they were engaged?” Gail Leonard asked. “That they were married last week?”
    Blake looked astounded. “No!” she said. “Of course not. He barely knew Evelyn.”
    “When did you hear from Raoul again?” Jeffrey Heiman asked. Neither he nor Leonard had relished telling Blake that Raoul and Evelyn had gotten married on July 29.
    “He called me on August 2nd,” Blake said, her voice trembling with shock. “He had the plane tickets for us to fly to San Francisco. He also called me on August 3rd. We were going to California, where we would pick up his yacht, and we were scheduled to leave the next day.”
    “Where was he calling from?”
    “Tacoma. I would imagine he had moved out of his place on Lake Union. I’m not sure, though. Everything was happening so fast.”
    It certainly was. The men who were questioning her were incredulous that the missing Raoul Guy Rockwell had managed to convince at least two women that he adored them—all within the same time frame. He’d been divorced for only four days, had married Evelyn Emerson, and had obviously been prepared to take Blake Rossler to Portugal with him, by way of San Francisco. But he’d