Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder

he had been at his store continually from the time Dorothy stopped in in midafternoon on Monday, and until after the fire was reported. His employees would substantiate this. He also agreed to a lie-detector test about his relationship with Dorothy Jones.
    The next step for Jim Reed was to locate “the shoe man” whom Dorothy planned to visit on the afternoon she died. He found a dealer who sold shoes from his home, located a few blocks from Dorothy’s house. The man verified that she had been there sometime around three-thirty on Monday afternoon to pick up some shoes for her husband’s Christmas present. She had told him she was leaving for Texas on December 23 and would be gone for a week.
    So the timetable tightened up. According to statements of those who had seen Dorothy Jones, it went like this:
    Noon: She visited Felicia Brown in her beauty shop, and then left the shop to pick up a Christmas present.
    2:30: She visited her lover at his store and left to buy shoes.
    3:00: She called to leave a message for Lita Bowen, but didn’t talk to her.
    3:30: She picked up shoes for her husband.
    3:00-4:30: She bought fried chicken for one, and the evening paper.
    5:00: She was seen entering the driveway of her home.
    5:00-5:10: She called her lover and talked a few minutes.
    5:18-5:20: Her aunt in-law called Dorothy’s home; someone answered without speaking and then hung up.
    6:24: The fire was reported. Dorothy was declared dead fifteen minutes later.
    Sometime during Monday afternoon, Dorothy Jones had engaged in an act of sexual intercourse, either willingly or by force. This could have occurred between noon and three, or even after she arrived home. Her schedule left little time for an assignation—unless her partner was lurking in her home when she arrived there or was someone she knew well enough to admit willingly.
    Still, it seemed doubtful that Dorothy Jones had been a willing partner for a sexual assignation; if she had been, she surely would have turned off food cooking on the stove before she walked upstairs to the bedroom.
    In any homicide case, detectives look first at those closest to the victim. In this baffling case, they learned that her husband had been distraught over Dorothy’s free-spending shopping and her obsession with gambling, but he had never been known to make any threatening statements about her. Carl Jones apparently had had no knowledge that his wife was seeing another man. He found that out only after her death.
    Further, a check with his employer, a cross-country moving company, elicited records that verified that Jones had been on the road constantly in the past thirty days—and when she died. There was simply no way he could have detoured to Seattle at the time Dorothy died in their house fire. Carl Jones had been en route from Alexandria, Virginia, to Dallas, Texas.
    On February 8, Jones gave a taped statement to Inspector Jim Reed about his marriage. He wanted to be frank. He said he hadn’t seen Dorothy since before Thanksgiving. He admitted now that things had gone very wrong in his marriage. In fact, the last time he’d been in Seattle, he’d stayed at a friend’s house due to their strained relationship.
    “ I was the one who filed for divorce—and that was before Thanksgiving ,” he said with a sigh. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that before, but I guess I thought all along that we’d make up.”
    Asked if his wife’s life had been insured, Jones shook his head. “She only had about $1,100 worth of insurance—not even enough to pay for her funeral.”
    On February 11, Jones passed a lie-detector test.
    Reed verified that Dorothy Jones had only minimal insurance. She had had a couple of savings accounts. Her husband was unaware of these accounts; their balances totaled a few thousand dollars. Still, she hadn’t made the payments she was supposed to make on Carl Jones’s semi rig.
    Dorothy had had numerous charge accounts, and she apparently had plenty of money available to her to buy clothes, go to the horse track, and to dance clubs. Dante Blackwell had given her money; maybe someone else had.
    Carl Jones told the investigators that he had uncovered some rumors that his wife had been a “pickup” girl for marijuana sales, but he hadn’t learned any names of the people she had allegedly dealt with in illegal drug sales. No one else who knew her had linked her to drug trafficking, and she herself certainly had not been a drug user.
    It seemed like a