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CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

EDMONDS, WASHINGTON

SUNDAY, MARCH 26, 2023

1:30 P.M.

Raymond Horn was waiting his turn to tee off on the fourteenth hole of the Nile Golf Course when the cell phone in his pocket buzzed. Usually he would have been annoyed by the interruption, but he was having a crappy game. This was his first round of the year, and the course was a soggy mess. The greens had all been aerated, and carts were restricted to cart paths only. His shots had been so piss-poor that he’d done far more walking than usual.

On this occasion, the Sunday afternoon call from the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab—especially one from Gretchen Walther, their lead DNA tech—was welcome, but for right that moment, he went ahead and let the call go to voice mail.

“Hey, guys,” Ray said to the rest of his foursome. “It’s work. I’m going to have to bail.”

His fellow golfers, all cops, knew Ray was up against a high-profile case. As he shoved his driver back into his bag and set off for the pro shop, they waved him off without even razzing him about being a poor loser.

Gretchen had left a voice mail message, but he called her back without listening to it. “Sorry I couldn’t answer when you called. Why are you working on a Sunday?’ he asked.

“I was led to believe the evidence brought in for testing on Friday was a rush job,” she replied.

“Have you got a profile on that cork?” he asked.

“I certainly do, three to be exact. One leads to an unknown female, one leads to Donna Jean Plummer, and the third leads back to someone named Joel Franklin. We ran all three through CODIS. We got hits on Donna Jean and Joel, but nothing on the other one.”

“Nothing surprising about any of that,” Raymond said. “Donna Jean Plummer is in CODIS due to a previous conviction. She was the victim’s housekeeper and supposedly is the person who found the cork. Franklin is a nurse and married to the son of our homicide victim. He was also a guest at the victim’s birthday party the night before.”

“So the presence of those two of the DNA profiles at the crime scene can be explained away?” Gretchen asked.

“Maybe,” Ray replied. “We’re already looking at Plummer, but we’ll look into Franklin all the same. Thanks.”

But as Ray headed home, he thought about it some more. Moesha Jackson had said that Donna Jean had discovered the cork in the rail of a slider on Chuck Brewster’s back patio and that had kept the door from securing properly. Interviews with party guests had indicated that the party had been a catered affair. Did that mean that the catering staff had served the beverages? If so, why would Joel have been handling one of the corks?

Edmonds was a Seattle suburb, but it was also a relatively small, close-knit community. Ray knew that his wife, Mona, and the Brewsters’ caterer, Anna Rawlins, had become acquainted through PTA dealings while their mutual kids were in elementary and middle school and were still friends. Anna had already been questioned and said she had seen nothing out of the ordinary at the Brewsters’ party, but now Ray wanted to ask her an entirely different set of questions.

Back at his desk at the Edmonds Police headquarters, he located Anna’s interview, which contained her contact information. After reviewing the interview, he gave her a call.

“Detective Ray Horn here,” he said when she came one the line. “Sorry to call on a Sunday afternoon, but do you have a moment?”

“Sure,” she replied. “What’s up?”

“Did you have a bartender on duty at the party?”

“Of course.”

“So he would have been the one opening the wine bottles?”

“She,” Anna corrected. “Her name’s Lyssa. I put her on the job because she runs a tight ship. Mr. Brewster didn’t want anyone being overserved.”

Ray glanced through the list of interviewees. Lyssa’s name wasn’t among them.

“Do you happen to have her number?”

“Sure. Her last name is Owens. Here’s the number.”

Moments later, Ray had Lyssa Owens on the phone. They may have missed interviewing her the first time around, but that was about to be rectified.

“Sorry to disturb you at home on a Sunday, Ms. Owens,” he said. “This is Detective Raymond Horn with Edmonds PD. I’m investigating the Charles Brewster homicide. Do you mind answering a few questions?”

“I left town the morning after the party and didn’t hear about what happened until after I got back,” Lyssa said. “Mr. Brewster seemed like a perfectly nice man. I don’t know if I can help, but I’m happy to answer your questions.”

“You were in charge of the bar?”

“Yes.”

“What did you serve?”

“The usual—red wine, white wine, champagne, beer, the occasional cocktail, and a few nonalcoholic beverages, but not many of those.”

“And you opened all the wine bottles?”

“Absolutely,” she answered. “Opened them and counted them, too. That’s my job.”

“What do you do with the corks?” Ray asked.

“At the Brewsters, I tossed them into an extra ice bucket on the bar. I try to make a note of the bottles as I go, but I also hold on to the corks. It’s a second way of keeping track. At the end of the party, the number of empty bottles and the number of corks need to match up so the client gets charged correctly.

“By the time the party was over, there were fourteen empty bottles total and a few partials. The weird thing was, I ended up one cork short. The reds were all there, so it must have been one of the whites. They were all high-end wines. I was afraid I’d end up having to pay for it, but Anna said it was okay and not to worry.”

Ray was thunderstruck. It never would have occurred to him that collecting corks was a way of tracking wine inventory.

“About that ice bucket,” he said. “Where was it?”

“At the end of the bar. Why?”

“Could one of the guests have accessed it?”

“I suppose, but if someone did, I didn’t notice.”

“Did most of the guests come to the bar for their drinks or did someone serve them?”

“About half and half.”

“And, in your opinion, was anyone overserved that night?” Ray asked.

“Not by me, and definitely none of the guests, but by the time the wife of the birthday boy went upstairs, she was pretty much out of it. That wasn’t on me or on any of the waitstaff. One of the guests—her stepson’s husband, I believe—had been waiting on her hand and foot.”

“So he collected drinks from the bar and took them to her?”

“Pretty much,” Lyssa replied. “I didn’t realize she’d had too much until she started to go upstairs. Fortunately, he helped her negotiate the elevator, so I didn’t have to ask one of our servers to do it. I was surprised when I heard she’d been arrested. I didn’t see how a person that inebriated could possibly be responsible for stabbing someone to death.”

Detective Raymond Horn knew it was time to shut down the conversation. Other people had mentioned that Clarice had been drinking at the party, but no one else had recounted the real extent of it or how she’d gotten that way. Now he knew. And if Joel Franklin had been ferrying drinks from the bar to Clarice, what were the chances he’d had ample opportunity to slip something else into one of her drinks and lay hands on a used cork as well?

For the first time he wondered if he had been wrong the whole time. Maybe instead of focusing on Clarice and Donna Jean, he should have been looking at Adam and Joel. Tomorrow he intended to do just that.