Fifteen. The same age Gabe had been when Pat died.
“Did his dad recover?” Nate asked.
“Mostly, but he never went back to work. Pat and his brother gave up sports and got jobs. He went to college and law school on academic scholarships, not the soccer scholarship he’d dreamed of.”
Kristen and I exchanged glances. We knew too well the power of family secrets. Her parents and mine had shared one for decades, and when it came to light a few months ago, it had nearly destroyed our friendship.
The exhaustion was beginning to show on Laurel’s face. I picked up plates and slid out of the booth, then beckoned to Nate. In the living room, voice low, I said “I want to stay with her overnight. Could you head home and take care of the dog?”
Nate’s official residence, to the extent that he has one, is a gillnetter called the Thalassa, docked at Fisherman’s Terminal, but since his unexpected return from Alaska a few weeks ago, he’d spent most nights at my loft.
“How ’bout I stay, too? I could call an Uber, but you know Eric will insist on running me back to your place, and I’d rather let them go straight home. I’ll call Glenn to take the dog.”
I put my hand on his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart. “How do you always know exactly what to do?”
“YOU’RE going to get involved, aren’t you?” Nate said as he slid between the sheets in Gabe’s old room, on the houseboat’s upper level. As Laurel had predicted, we’d found Snowball, the stray dock cat who adopted Gabe when they moved in, fast asleep on his bed. She barely opened an eye when I scooped her up and put her on the desk chair, atop a blue-and-green Seattle Sounders seat cushion. Gabe worshipped the city’s pro soccer team.
“I don’t know that there’s anything to get involved in. But I’ll do whatever Laurel needs. And Maddie.”
“What happened? To Pat, I mean. All I’ve ever heard is that he was shot at home while Laurel and Gabe were away and the case has never been solved.”
“That’s the gist of it.” I laid my shimmery blue velvet dress over the back of the chair. “Soccer team trip. Pat was supposed to go, but at the last minute, he needed to work so Laurel went instead. I never met him, but everybody says he was a great guy.”
“Well, sure,” Nate said. “I wouldn’t expect Laurel to marry a schmuck.”
“Why not? I did.” Although my ex hadn’t started out that way. Schmuckdom had crept up on him.
Wisely, Nate ignored that. “They honestly never had a serious suspect? But they thought he was killed in the line of duty, or whatever it’s called? Because of his work, I mean.”
“Not that I ever heard. And yes, killed because he was a federal prosecutor. Laurel’s never said much about the case, and I haven’t pressed her. My impression is they were focused on someone he’d been investigating who had a grudge against him. I knew they talked to Maddie, and to Kristen and Eric, but that’s it.”
“Why talk to them? Because of this development you and Laurel mentioned?”
“Yeah. On Twenty-Fourth, in Montlake, there’s a block of commercial buildings, though it’s pretty quiet these days. A developer had a plan to knock down the old corner grocery and put up one of those modern monstrosities. Pat was the spokesman for the neighborhood group that opposed it.”
The corner grocery that my brother and I had biked to for ice cream bars on hot summer days had been empty for ages, and it needed more than updating—one of those gray 1960s boxes that had been ugly from Day One. Like every other vacant or underused corner in the city, it was a prime target for a modern mixed-use development. That’s the new buzz word in urban design—retail on the ground floor, offices or apartments upstairs. After living blocks from Pike Place Market the last few years and seeing how well mixed-use works downtown, I’m a fan, when it’s done right.
“So it was Maddie’s project?”
Laurel had found a Sounders T-shirt for me and I pulled it on. “Honestly, I never knew the details of her role—investor, property manager, or what. The police talked with her and the other developer, but they both had alibis. She and Tim were up on Whidbey with Eric and Kristen and the kids.”
“Were the developers actually suspects?”
“Not that I ever heard. Just dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s. Anyway, I guess the other developer backed out and nothing happened for a while. Years. But then Maddie got the project moving again and finalized plans for the corner just in the last few weeks. It’s way scaled back, from what I heard.” I knew most of this from Kristen. Maddie and I didn’t see each other often; she didn’t have much time to spend with friends.
“So the neighbors got what they wanted, but Pat didn’t live to see the victory.”
“It’s all so sad.” I climbed in beside him. Never in a million years would I tell a professional fisherman that sleeping on a boat makes me dizzy. Nate slipped an arm beneath my shoulders and pulled me close, and I let the wind and water have their way.
Three
Known simply as “small lake” or “small water” to the Puget Sound Salish and other indigenous peoples, Lake Union earned its modern name at an 1854 Fourth of July picnic, when Seattle city father Thomas Mercer predicted it would someday link saltwater to fresh.
“PEPPER, I HAVE TO TELL YOU THIS. I HAVE TO TELL SOMEONE, and
