Page 22

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

TUESDAY, MARCH 21, 2023

2:00 P.M.

Despite the fact that it meant canceling two of her regular housecleaning jobs for the week, Donna Jean had called in sick so she could attend Mr. Brewster’s funeral. It wasn’t as though she’d been invited. No one had bothered to notify her of where it would be or even when. Amy was the one who had gone on the internet and tracked down the time and location.

The media was there en masse. The murder was still big news in the Seatttle area, and the reporters were most likely hoping Mrs. Brewster would show up at her husband’s funeral in an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs. She hadn’t.

Donna Jean had no idea that the funeral was an invitation-only affair. She was at the door to the mortuary, trying to explain to the person in charge that she had worked for the Brewsters for years and that she needed to come pay her respects. He was in the process of turning her away when a miracle happened. Adam Brewster showed up and recognized her on sight.

“Why, Donna Jean,” he said pleasantly. “It’s so good to see you again. Thank you for coming.”

Adam, always the gentleman, immediately offered Donna Jean his arm. As they started inside, the doorkeeper held up his hand. “Your invitation, sir?” he inquired.

Adam favored the man with a sharp-eyed glare. “I’m Adam Brewster, Chuck Brewster’s son, and this is Joel, my husband,” he said, gesturing toward the man standing just behind him. And this,” he added, patting Donna Jean’s hand, “is Donna Jean Plummer, my parents’ longtime housekeeper. I don’t believe any of us needs an express invitation to attend my father’s funeral.”

Taken aback, the man quickly pulled a walkie-talkie out of his suit pocket and spoke into it briefly before holding it up to his ear and nodding as he listened.

“Pardon me, Mr. Brewster,” he said once that crackly conversation ended. “I’m so sorry. Mr. McCreedy will be here momentarily to escort you to the private family seating area. Your father’s service is scheduled for the third chapel on the right.”

“A private seating area won’t be necessary,” Adam replied. “Joel and I will sit wherever Ms. Plummer is seated.”

Donna Jean felt a tremendous rush of gratitude as Adam led her down a long corridor lined with several closed doors. Door number three stood open. The expensive floral arrangement on a nearby tripod announced that they were at the right place.

An usher quickly stepped forward to greet them. Adam accepted two of the proffered programs, passed one to Donna Jean, and then waved the usher aside. “We’ll manage on our own,” he said. “Thanks anyway.”

That was how Donna Jean attended Chuck Brewster’s funeral. She had always wondered if Adam was gay. Now she knew for sure, but that didn’t change the way she felt about him. She had loved him as a little boy and wept for him as he lost his mother. Now, official invitation or not, she was proud to be sitting next to him.

During the service, several people went up to the lectern to say what a wonderful man Charles Brewster was—how kind he had been and how civic-minded. Donna Jean didn’t know much about his being civic-minded, but she could have told that roomful of people about how kind he had been to her. Still, she was a little surprised when the pastor asked if anyone else had something to add. She fully expected Adam would stand up at that point and say something about his father, but he didn’t, and neither did she.

When the service ended, Adam asked if Donna Jean was interested in attending the reception. “No, thank you,” she told him quickly. She had already crashed the funeral. She had no intention of barging in on the reception as well. Besides, she didn’t feel like attending a party. She wanted to be back in her apartment with Pearl in her lap.

Donna Jean fled the funeral home immediately after the service and went straight home. Several hours later there was an unexpected knock on her door. Once she opened it, there stood Detective Raymond Horn.

“Good evening, Ms. Plummer. If you don’t mind, I’d like you to come with me.”

Donna Jean did mind. She minded with every fiber of her body, but clearly saying no was not an option. She couldn’t imagine why the cops were still coming after her. What did they think she could tell them?

“Why?” she asked. “What’s going on? Has something happened?”

“Just a few more questions,” he said. Once she gathered her coat and purse, Detective Horn escorted Donna Jean to his vehicle, telling her as they went, “Detective Burns will meet us back at the station.”

As he opened the back door to his vehicle and motioned Donna Jean inside, she tried to suppress the sudden wave of panic that rushed through her body.

“Am I under arrest?” she asked, once Detective Horn was in the driver’s seat.

“Not so far,” he answered, “but you very well could be.”

Donna Jean took that as a threat and didn’t respond. Fortunately, she was sitting down. Had she been standing up, her legs might have given way under her. Since it was rush hour, naturally the drive to Edmonds took the better part of an hour.

“Do you still have the cat?” he asked while they waited at a red light.

“Yes,” Donna Jean replied.

“Is she okay?”

Donna Jean knew he was trying to draw her into conversation, but she didn’t want to play that game. It was all designed to put her at ease and make her think that he was on her side—that he had her best interests at heart, but that wasn’t true.

“Pearl’s fine,” she answered.

“Have you heard from Mrs. Brewster?” Horn asked. “Has she made any effort to contact you?”

Why would she? Donna Jean wondered. “No,” she answered.

“Not even to ask about her cat?”

She has other things to worry about , Donna Jean thought. “No,” she said again.

“I saw you at the funeral in the company of Mr. Brewster’s son.”

“Yes,” she said. “As far as I could tell, Adam was always a good boy—kind and thoughtful. He probably still is, but he and his father had a big blowup about the time his mother died. Until today, I hadn’t seen him since.”

“Did you know he attended his father’s birthday party?”

“I had no idea.”

“I saw you at the funeral but not the reception. The reading of the will happened shortly after that, and you weren’t there for that, either.”

“I’m not good at socializing,” Donna Jean said. “As for the reading of the will? I had no reason to know about that and no reason to be there, either.”

“You had no idea that under the terms of Mr. Brewster’s will, you’re one of his beneficiaries?”

“Me?” Donna Jean asked faintly. “Not that I know of.”

“Well, you are,” Horn replied. “It turns out Mr. Brewster left you a cool hundred and fifty thousand dollars, but of course those funds can’t be distributed until after we’ve concluded our investigation.”

Donna Jean could barely believe what she’d just heard. For someone who struggled each month to pay the rent, keep the lights on, and buy groceries, a hundred and fifty thousand dollars sounded like an astronomical amount of money, but she also understood Detective Horn’s underlying message. As long as she was still a suspect in Mr. Brewster’s homicide, she wouldn’t see a dime of it.

Once they finally arrived at Edmonds PD, Donna Jean was again led into an interview room—a different one this time—where Detective Burns was already seated.

“Good to see you again,” she said.

Donna Jean nodded but said nothing. There was nothing good about it. She was fully expecting that this time one of the detectives would deliver a Miranda warning, but neither of them did. Supposedly that meant she was still a person of interest rather than an actual suspect, but was that true? Were they just leading her along, hoping that she’d say something to implicate herself?

Once the interview began, Detective Horn charged right in. “As I told you on our way here, Mr. Brewster’s will was read earlier today.”

He paused as though expecting Donna Jean to say something. She simply nodded.

“You told me that you had no idea you were a named beneficiary in that document. Is that true?”

“Mr. Brewster never mentioned anything of the kind.”

“That seems like a lot of money for him to hand over to a part-time employee,” Detective Horn continued. “Do you have any idea why Mr. Brewster would do that?”

That made it sound as though the detectives were back to thinking there had been some kind of illicit relationship going on between Mr. Brewster and Donna Jean. Or maybe they thought she was blackmailing him.

She shrugged. “I have no idea why he’d give me anything. I worked for him for a long time. When his first wife was dying, I took care of her every day. Maybe that’s why—as a way of saying thank you.”

“The thing is, Donna Jean,” Horn said, “I’m wondering if that’s true. I’ve seen murders where the amount of money involved was less than a hundred fifty K, so why don’t you tell us again exactly where you were on the night Mr. Brewster was murdered.”

“I already told you. I was at home, asleep in my apartment. You can check my phone. It was right there on its charger on the nightstand next to my bed.”

“Just because the phone was there doesn’t mean you were. You’re a person with unlimited access to the Brewsters’ home. That means you have opportunity. You’re due to receive a hundred fifty thousand dollars. That gives you motive. You also had easy access to the murder weapon. In homicide investigations, that counts as a royal flush. In addition, your DNA was found on the murder weapon. It doesn’t get much better than that.”

“I already told you how my DNA got on that knife. When I found Mrs. Brewster, she was out of her head—frantic—and waving it around in the air. I was afraid someone was going to get hurt. That’s why I took it away from her.”

“By the way,” Horn continued. “Mrs. Brewster is the other beneficiary under the terms of her husband’s will. Was she aware of your previous homicide conviction?”

“I’m not sure. She may have been, but I don’t think we ever discussed it. It’s not something I’m proud of, and I don’t like talking about it. I worked for Mrs. Brewster. I cleaned her house, washed her dishes, did her laundry. We didn’t sit around talking about my personal history.”

“Mrs. Brewster is the primary beneficiary of the will and is due to inherit most of his estate. If Mr. Brewster had gone through with his plan to divorce her, she would have received far less. If she was aware of your previous conviction, perhaps she turned to you for help.”

Donna tried unsuccessfully to stifle her outrage. “She didn’t, and even if she had, I would never have murdered Mr. Brewster.”

“If you really had nothing to do with what happened then,” Detective Horn offered, “why not take a lie detector test? That would prove once and for all that you’re telling the truth.”

But Donna Jean Plummer wasn’t about to fall for that one. She’d been down this road once before, and she wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. When the cops had been investigating Kenny’s death, the lead detective had been a guy named Kramer. She thought that she had forgotten his name long ago, but much to her surprise, in that moment it came back to her. He had told her the same thing in almost the same words—that taking the lie detector test would rule her out once and for all.

Then, during the test, the examiner had asked her if she had ever wished her husband would die. She had answered yes, and that was the truth. On more than one occasion, when Kenny was out drinking, she had wished he’d plow into a tree or a telephone pole or something on his way home and not come back—ever. At the very least, it would spare her that night’s torment and it might even keep her from having to face up to doing anything about it—like getting a divorce. She had a feeling that she wasn’t alone in thinking like that. There were probably plenty of unhappily married women out there who were in the same fix.

But then the operator had asked her the next question—the one about whether, on the drive from her parents’ place to her own, had she planned on shooting him. She hadn’t exactly planned it, but she had certainly thought about it, telling herself that if Kenny came after her, she was going to pull the trigger. But she was already sitting in a police interrogation room, and it seemed stupid to come right out and admit that she had reached that conclusion.

“No, of course not,” she had answered.

But that was a lie, and this was a lie detector test. No matter what she had said, it wouldn’t have been admissible in court, but it was enough for the operator to tell her at the conclusion of the examination that she had been found to be “evasive.”

Once the ordeal was over, she had found Detective Kramer and his partner waiting outside the examination room. She could still see the triumphant look on his face as he held up a pair of handcuffs.

“Hands behind your back,” he had said. “You’re under arrest for the murder of Kenneth Plummer.”

After that, Donna Jean had been hauled off to jail, and the rest was history.

At that point she looked Detective Horn full in the face. “No,” she said aloud. “Once and for all, I am not doing a lie detector test.”

“Is it possible you’ve already had some unfortunate dealings with one of those?” Detective Horn inquired.

Donna Jean felt her soul shrivel within her. There it was. That’s what this was all about—her previous conviction for Kenny Plummer’s death.

With a superhuman effort, she pulled herself together. “I’m done here,” she told him. “Either arrest me or let me go, but I’m not saying another word without having an attorney present.”

“Very well, Ms. Plummer,” he said. “Suit yourself, but if I were you, I wouldn’t plan on leaving town anytime soon.”