Free Dismissed With Prejudice (9780061760631) by Judith A. Jance Page B

she’s the rightful owner, of course. And you’ll have to handle that through the police department. They’re the ones who are in charge of physical evidence. I understand you know Mr. Yamamoto over at the Crime Lab.”
    â€œYes,” she replied. “He was a friend of my father’s.”
    â€œI see. Talk to him about it then. He can help you work your way through the bureaucracy, but you can plan on it taking quite a while. The wheels grind wondrous slow around here at times.” He paused long enough to check through the papers before placing them in a manila file folder.
    â€œThis is all in order, then,” he continued. “We’ll release the body directly to the mortuary when the time comes. You should stop by and see them too, as long as you’re over here. They may require full payment in advance, but I suppose you already knew that.”
    Kimi shook her head. “I didn’t know, but I’ll take care of it,” she said, rising. The muscle in her cheek tightened over her narrow jawline. “Is that all?”
    â€œYes, Miss Kurobashi.”
    â€œAnd will we hear from you about what you find—in the autopsy, I mean?”
    â€œThe detectives here will keep in touch. You can ask them.”
    â€œAll right,” she said. Kimi walked out of the room with Big Al following her. I waited long enough for the door to close behind them.
    â€œWould you mind giving George a message when he shows up here this afternoon? He is still coming, isn’t he?”
    Doc Baker nodded. “What kind of message?”
    â€œTell him that I think the sword was made by a student of Masamune.”
    â€œBy who?”
    I repeated the name Kimiko had given us and spelled it out for him while Baker wrote it down on a notepad.
    â€œWhat’s that supposed to mean?” Baker asked impatiently.
    â€œAccording to the daughter, it’s probably very valuable.”
    â€œThat pretty much clinches it, then, doesn’t it?” the medical examiner said.
    â€œClinches what?”
    â€œThat it was suicide instead of murder.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause if you had just offed somebody and had a clear shot at stealing a very valuable sword which also happened to be the murder weapon, would you be so stupid as to walk off and leave the damn thing lying there on the floor?”
    â€œNo,” I answered. “I suppose not. Unless you wanted it to look like suicide.”
    Baker pushed his reading glasses up on his nose and glowered at me. “Get the hell out of here, Beaumont, and let me go back to work.”
    When I came out of Baker’s office, Kimiko was using the phone at the receptionist’s desk. She was speaking in low tones, but two bright red flush marks showed prominently on the otherwise pale skin of her slender cheeks.
    Putting the phone down, she turned to me. “I’ll need to go to a bank,” she said.
    â€œA bank?”
    â€œI just talked to the mortuary. Since there isn’t going to be a service of any kind, I’ll have to pay with a cashier’s check before they’ll agree to do anything, and I’ll have to pay for it myself. As far as I know, my mother doesn’t have any money or even access to a checkbook. Besides, they told me they won’t take an out of town check anyway.”
    Big Al drove her to a Seafirst branch on First Hill, and we waited in the car while she went inside.
    â€œThat’s pretty shitty of the mortuary, if you ask me,” he said as the glass door of the bank closedbehind her. “Making her pay in advance like that. You think there is some insurance?”
    â€œBeats me. That’s anybody’s guess. If there isn’t, those two women are going to be in a world of hurt.”
    Grim-faced, Kimiko came back out of the bank a few minutes later, clutching a cashier’s check, and we drove her to the mortuary, an old dilapidated one off Jackson. I