Practice to Deceive Read online

  Navarre currently sold orange juice franchises.

  Sandra was an artist on the island, and the last person she ever wanted to run into again was Navarre. When nearly two decades had passed, she didn’t expect to. He was part of a different world, a self-styled “hippie.” They had never been romantically involved and, as far as she knew, he’d never been very interested in women.

  Sandra was afraid of him and also sorry for him, as he appeared to be living in his van. She had invited him to stay with Kenwell and herself for a few nights. But they had to ask him to leave after the second night.

  “He got very pushy and we had no privacy.”

  Eddie Navarre became one of the first “persons of interest” in the probe of Russ Douglas’s murder. But the Island County investigators couldn’t interview him; he had disappeared.

  Russ Douglas had led a scattered, compartmentalized life. Very few of his friends knew one another, and few groups truly knew him. There were people who had worked for the city of Mukilteo with him, coworkers at Tetra Tech, members of Gold’s Gym, Fran Lester, his girlfriend in Tacoma, Brenna and her family, his family, even strangers who had met him in a bar or on the beach when he was surfing.

  The one constant that he talked about to almost everyone was his estranged wife, their constant arguments, and his back-and-forth feelings on whether he should go back home and try again.

  If she would have him.

  CHAPTER TEN

  * * *

  ON JANUARY 26, 2004, Mike Birchfield received a phone call from a private investigator—John Blaine*—who had been hired by Farmers’ New World Life Insurance Company to do a follow-up on a claim made by Mrs. Brenna Douglas. Blaine wanted to set up a meeting.

  Birchfield agreed to talk with him, and told Blaine that he had asked Brenna about any insurance policies her late husband might have had.

  “She said the only one she was aware of was a policy that came with his job at Tetra Tech.”

  “What did Douglas do for a living?” the PI asked.

  “He was a zone manager for a company called Tetra Tech.”

  “Our application shows him as an unemployed hairdresser.”

  That application was made in the autumn of 2002. Birchfield found that Russ had worked for the city of Mukilteo at that time. He was, technically, also a hairdresser because he and Brenna were partners at Just B’s. Why he didn’t list his employment with the city of Mukilteo, too, was puzzling.

  The payoff value of this second policy was three hundred thousand dollars.

  Brenna Douglas had filed claims to release information regarding the claim on January 3, 2004—nine days after Russ’s death—and again on January 12.

  The insurance investigator traveled to Whidbey Island on February 4 to talk with Mike Birchfield and, he hoped, to Brenna. Blaine had phoned her and found her “evasive,” although she did agree to meet with him.

  Blaine asked the Island County detective about the way Russel Douglas had died, and how Brenna had reacted. Birchfield recalled how stoic she had been, and her apparent lack of shock or emotion when she heard she was a widow.

  “We haven’t ruled her out as a suspect at this time,” he said. “But we can’t really include her in, either.”

  John Blaine met with Brenna and it was an emotional interview. He felt that she was holding some information back, although he wasn’t sure what it might be. She wept often. When he mentioned that she and Russel had been on the verge of a divorce, she was vehement in denying that—insisting that they were not considering that when her husband was shot.

  “We were working things out,” she insisted. “While we were apart, Russ was writing a novel for me.”

  “Would you agree to take a polygraph exam?” Blaine asked.

  “No,” she answered. “I don’t want to take one.”

  With Blaine’s help, Birchfield learned that Russel had had somewhere between four hundred thousand dollars and seven hundred thousand dollars in life insurance when he died. The last policies he bought in 2002 insured both himself and Brenna. Whether he knew that his wife went back soon after and lowered the amount on her life is moot.

  The insurance underwriters involved continued their probes to see if there were any reasons that the policies should not be honored.

  If this was a scenario for a film noir in the forties where Barbara Stanwyck or Bette Davis plotted to do away with her movie husband for an insurance payoff, a real-life Double Indemnity, the murder of Russ Douglas probably would have been solved.

  But it wasn’t. One has to consider how a young mother who had lived through months of marital discord and indecision, with two children to raise, might react to the news that her estranged husband had been murdered. Brenna’s flat response and inappropriate attitude could very well have been a result of shock. How humans react to profoundly bad news isn’t predictable.

  The question was: was Russ’s death really profoundly bad news for Brenna Douglas?

  Brenna couldn’t handle money; Russ had said that often enough, and she had counted on him to do the books at their beauty salon. His mother—Gail O’Neal—verified that.

  “Russ was going to do their income tax,” O’Neal said. “But she hadn’t kept any records, bank statements, and other supportive information on the beauty salon’s profit and loss. And he found they owed a lot of back taxes.”

  Brenna Douglas didn’t have much money; she didn’t even own her house. She might have filed a claim for insurance so rapidly because she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to support her children and herself.

  Insurance adjusters for AIG were leery about payoffs to a beneficiary who was a probable suspect in the murder of the insured, and Brenna was in that category. They were more willing to set up trust funds for Jack and Hannah than to write a check for four hundred thousand dollars to Brenna.

  She would have none of that. She wrote out her statement. “The proceeds are rightfully mine, and while I intend to invest the money and it will ultimately go to benefit my children, it is inappropriate to hold the money or award it to my children on the unsupported allegation of the prosecutor.

  “Again, I categorically state that I was not involved in the death of my husband in any way!”

  Joan McPherson, an attorney appointed to represent Jack and Hannah, said she didn’t think that Brenna had any part in Russ’s homicide, but she still recommended that insurance money should be withheld until there was no question at all of Brenna’s innocence.

  Brenna was in debt; she hadn’t waited for the insurance money. By the late spring of 2004, she had bought a house, a Suburban, and an RV. In August of that year, she lost the house because she wasn’t making payments.

  In December 2005, Island County Superior Court Judge Vickie Churchill ordered that since there was no solid proof that Brenna was a part of any plot against her late husband, AIG should give her the proceeds of the first policy. It was believed to be around four hundred thousand dollars, with twelve hundred dollars in interest added.

  A year later, she sued Farmers New World Life Insurance for three hundred thousand dollars on December 26, the third anniversary of Russ’s murder.

  Brenna Douglas didn’t win this claim. Although she asked for a waiver of Russel’s medical information, the company refused. Russ had lied on his application and failed to mention some slight irregularities with his heart and his treatment for depression.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  * * *

  I HAVE NEVER WRITTEN ABOUT a case where the investigating detectives interviewed as many possible witnesses or informants as this one. That they hadn’t come up with a prime suspect by February 2004 wasn’t from lack of trying. Now, Mark Plumberg and Mike Birchfield enlarged their search for the Christmas killer. At the same time, there were other less compelling crimes to respond to on an island so large in area with relatively few residents.

  They asked for information from the public about anyone who might have visited Whidbey Island during the holidays in 2
003.

  They had searched computers for email correspondence, and now they scanned telephone records of calls that Russel Douglas had made and received.

  On May 12, 2004, the two detectives went over the Nextel records for Russel. It would be ironic if there was any kind of solid clue in them that could lead to a killer who had by now gotten away with murder for almost five months.

  They found one number that they didn’t recognize; there weren’t that many calls from that area code. It had a 702 prefix, which meant it had emanated from the Las Vegas area, or from a cell phone listed to that area.

  Whoever had the phone with the Las Vegas number had called Russ Douglas three times on December 23, 2003. And he had called that number twice on that same day. If it was a cell phone, the calls from the Nevada number could have been made in that state—or from anywhere in America, for that matter.

  Mike Birchfield picked up his phone and dialed the number. It rang a few times, and then a recording of a female voice came on, saying her name was “Peggy” and asking callers to leave a message.

  He didn’t do that. Only a few moments passed before the detective’s phone rang. A woman named Peggy was calling.

  “I just got a call from your number,” she said.

  Mark Plumberg answered and identified himself.

  “We called you because your number came up in an investigation here—on the murder of a man named Russel Douglas.”

  “Peggy” was quite forthcoming.

  “You called my cell phone,” she said. “I’ll give you my home phone number, too. I used to live up there, but I’m a limousine driver in Las Vegas now.”

  Peggy, who was using the last name “Thomas,” said she knew both Russ and his wife, Brenna. She owned their rental house on Furman Avenue in Langley. They were supposed to buy the house from her—but that hadn’t occurred yet.

  “I’m an unwilling landlord,” she said. “I know—knew—them both, but I’m closer to Brenna.”

  Plumberg asked about the five calls between her cell phone and Russel’s two days before Christmas.

  That was simple enough for her to explain. Peggy Sue Thomas said she had been “in the area” visiting her family for the holidays, and she had wanted to meet with Russ to give him a Christmas present she’d bought for Brenna.

  “We kept playing phone tag.”

  “Did you see Russel?”

  “No, I was supposed to get together with Russ and Brenna during the holidays, but that never happened.”

  A moment later, she corrected herself. She hadn’t seen the couple per se, but she had seen Russ at his apartment about nine on the night of the twenty-third and she gave him the present for Brenna then.

  “Do you remember what he was wearing?”

  “I can’t really recall—wait—I think he had on spandex shorts and a bandanna that covered his whole head.”

  Peggy said that she had only talked to Russ for about five minutes, but she remembered how happy he was and excited about spending time with Brenna and his kids over the holidays.

  “He felt pretty good and thought he and Brenna could get back together, and get past his affair.”

  “What do you know about that affair?” Plumberg asked.

  “I just knew it was in another state—I don’t know if it was with a woman or what. I know Brenna was crushed about an affair he had with a man.”

  Peggy seemed to know the couple very well. Before the twenty-third, Russ and his girlfriend had come to Las Vegas in October. Peggy hadn’t seen him during that visit, but she’d talked to him when he called her.

  “Did he talk about his girlfriend?”

  “Only a story he told me about them getting thrown out of a bar for dancing on the table.”

  Plumberg asked Peggy if she could tell the investigators about Russel or if she knew anyone who could help them.

  “Well, Russ sometimes wears kilts,” she said, “and he likes to explore sexually.”

  It occurred to Mark Plumberg that Peggy was following a story line that was very like what Brenna had told him back on December 28.

  “Do you have any personal knowledge of his activities?”

  “Well, I’ve personally seen him in a kilt,” she said. “And once at a meeting at the salon he told me he would like to ‘party’ with me. The way he said it, it really had sexual undertones.”

  Asked if she knew anything about Russel and a “swinging lifestyle” in Las Vegas, she laughed.

  “He’d probably be more likely to find that on Whidbey Island than he would in Vegas.”

  She mentioned rumors she’d heard about spots on the island—clubs and gyms—where that could have happened.

  Peggy said she would call if she thought of anything more about Russ that might have led to his murder. She didn’t seem at all concerned that she had been contacted by detectives investigating a murder. In fact she spoke with great confidence.

  More tips continued to come into the sheriff’s detectives, but Peggy Sue Thomas remained on the “interview again” list.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  * * *

  IN LATE DECEMBER 2003, Mark Plumberg couldn’t know that he would one day become the lead investigator in the most intense—and frustrating—homicide probe he has ever known. Almost a decade later, he still wakes in the darkest hours of the night and thinks about it.

  In June 2004, he revisited the Russel Douglas murder investigation from scratch, reading over the stacks of follow-up reports and statements he and Mike Birchfield had gathered.

  After he had reinterviewed Sandra Malle, the glass artisan in Freeland, Plumberg’s chosen person of interest was Eddie Navarre. Almost everything Sandra Malle said about the juice entrepreneur made him a very plausible suspect.

  Mark Plumberg listened carefully as she added more about Navarre. She had known him in the eighties in Sarasota, Florida. She worked in a health food store at the time, and he had been into nutrition, even though he had always been overweight. At that time, they had been casual friends—“hanging out and partying” together.

  “He used heroin,” Sandra said. “He also used to hang out at health clubs and he picked up prostitutes.”

  “Was he homosexual or bisexual?”

  “I wasn’t aware of that, but I wouldn’t put it past him. I stopped hanging around with him because of his temper. It was scary and we suspected that he sometimes carried guns.”

  Sandra Malle didn’t know how Navarre had found her in 2003, all the way across the country and after such a long time. She guessed that he might have known that she moved to the Seattle area, but was mystified how he could have found her on Whidbey Island.

  “My phone number isn’t listed,” she said. “I sometimes advertise in the local papers here, but I haven’t since early autumn. And then I didn’t use my name—only my glass business name.”

  “Did he know any of your friends on the island?”

  She shook her head. She had talked with the small circle of friends who knew where she lived and none of them had ever heard of Navarre.

  “I just don’t know. He told me he drove by my house many times. He even used the term ‘stalked’ when he talked about finding me. He said he had to be convinced that I lived here before he knocked on my door. I remember he said that I had ‘no idea’ what he went through to find me.”

  Eddie Navarre had always told stories about his life that Sandra doubted. After Christmas 2003, he explained that he had come up the West Coast from California, looking for someplace to live that was “laid back,” where there would be “no hassles.”

  He told her he had been living with an older woman in California who was “in the movie business.”

  She could not tell Mark Plumberg any details on crimes Navarre might have committed, but she did know that he’d had “minor brushes” with police. That didn’t matter; he had already obtained Eddie Navarre’s rap sheet.

  “So you moved out here and you hadn’t heard from him before?”

  “Not
until November. He called me out of the blue on Thanksgiving—this last Thanksgiving. I talked to him for a while, but I made sure he knew I wasn’t interested in seeing or hearing from him again.”

  Sandra thought she had succeeded in blowing Navarre off.

  At that time, he lived a good distance away in Redmond (the town where Russel Douglas had worked for Tetra Tech), and then in a penthouse suite in a hotel in Lynnwood, Washington, which wasn’t far from the Mukilteo ferry dock.

  “He told me he left Redmond because he had an argument with his landlady.”

  “Did Eddie Navarre have a gun?”

  “I’m not sure, but he told me several times that he was ‘protected—because you never know.’ He may have actually told me he had a gun—but I never saw one.”

  Eddie Navarre had always seemed paranoid about the police. And he used very bigoted terms for minorities.

  “Black people, gay people, cops, and basically everyone who wasn’t white like him.”

  Although Navarre had purported to be a hippie, Sandra had seen that he coveted a lavish lifestyle and put a price on almost everything.

  His current occupation was with some company that sold healthy juice bar franchises for twenty-five thousand dollars. He said his boss was located in Arizona, and the 2001 van he was driving was a company car.

  It was a nice Chrysler van that was silver and gold. Sandra had written down the license number, and Birchfield had checked it out the first time she reported how strange Eddie Navarre was. It was legally owned by a man who lived in Scottsdale.

  “Eddie said he was very angry with his boss because he wasn’t paying him on time.”

  The thing that brought Sandra Malle to the South Precinct in the first place, however, was that Navarre had come to Whidbey Island on the weekend of December 26 to 29. He appeared at her house in Freeland on the twenty-ninth. He probably was down on his luck because he said he’d been sleeping in his van in a state park for two nights, and she found it strange that he had gone from a penthouse suite to sleeping in his van.