Page 98 of Water's Edge

She shakes her head. “Someone who might kill her? Nah. Everyone liked her, like I said. I don’t think anyone knew about her selling babies, though, except me and maybe Roy Martin.”

Ronnie grips my arm. I’m startled.

“Roy Martin with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office?” I ask.

Ronnie eases her grip, and we exchange a brief glance.

“Yeah,” she says. “Boat captain or something. He was in here all the time up until after Margie was gone. I asked Larry one time; I said, ‘Larry, how come that good-looking Martin don’t come in here anymore?’ He tells me that Martin was the one that found Margie’s body. It got to him pretty good, I guess.”

Ronnie probably can’t imagine her hero hanging around a bar like this in another county.

“Did Roy know Margie?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she says. “Like I said, he was in here all the time. He was one of Margie’s regulars. I don’t think he was sweet on her or anything, but she always waited on him. He’s a real jokester. Kept us all laughing.”

Superhero. Stand-up comedian. Boat captain. Roy is a deep man.

“Do you have an idea who might have done this?” I ask.

Missy goes back to wiping the bar. She lowers her voice.

“Don’t get mad,” she says. “I don’t know anything for sure.”

“But…?”

“I think it was a cop. I know you all get a bad rap lately, and I don’t mean no disrespect, but that’s what I think.”

I question her in more detail, but she really doesn’t know who. Just cops in general. She thinks that based on a few things. Like the fact that Margie’s flings were almost always with cops. Margie hinted that her first baby was adopted by a cop family, but would never say who. Margie laughed about being pregnant a second time and claimed the cops were keeping her in business. She never said who the father might be. Missy didn’t think Margie knew for certain. And she figured that if Margie was with that many married cops, she would have a lot of dirt on some of them. Margie was greedy enough to sell her own kids. Was she capable of blackmail too?

Forty-Eight

We sit quietly in the Taurus, digesting what we’ve just been told. It fits my theory. It doesn’t prove anything, but my gut is telling me to pursue it. Missy refused to name any of the cops who frequented the bar. She said Margie flirted with all of them because they were good tippers.

I believe one of them is also a killer.

Ronnie is upset.

“So Detective Gray lied to us,” she says.

“Everybody lies,” I say.

Even me.

For me, it’s survival. For Larry, it’s for personal gain. He doesn’t want his affair to be known. He didn’t want us to talk to Missy Johnson. I’m not concerned with his lying. I’m wondering if he messed with the DNA. Was he having an affair with Margie? Who better to mess the case up than the detective working it? He had access to all the evidence, records, and reports, and he knew who was interested and if the case had any chance of being solved. He’d tried to dissuade me from the get-go.

He said the symbol found at the scenes meant nothing. And why was he with the sheriff this morning? He and Tony hadn’t talked for years. Didn’t even like each other. Was he there gathering intel? Plus he offered to come with me this morning. Was it to make sure I didn’t find Missy? And he claimed Margie hadn’t worked at the bar for many years and said she worked the streets as a hooker. Missy Johnson said Margie worked the bar right up to her death. She didn’t know anything about Margie being a prostitute.

I feel slightly queasy, and it has nothing to do with lunch at Wendy’s. If Larry turns out to be the killer, how will I tell the sheriff? And even if it wasn’t Larry, this is a scandal that will stain everyone.

I have to tell the sheriff.

I start the car and head back to Port Townsend to Doc’s Marina Grill, where Dina worked. She’d given up a baby for adoption before she was murdered. But she’d done it through the hospital. There was no financial gain on her part. And there was no father listed. Did she know who the father was? Was she also seeing a cop? Was Doc’s a cop hangout like the Alibi?

“Megan?” Ronnie asks.

I’ve been deep in thought, driving on autopilot. I look at her.

“Do you think it’s a cop?”

---