But I had no doubt that the baby boy born three years before Maddie was Jacob Byrd.
How much had Maddie figured out? Arf’s leash in my left hand, I drew the imaginary family tree in the air with my right. Elizabeth the elder, Betty, had been Haig’s wife, making their daughter, Lizzie, cousin to David, Maddie’s father. That made Lizzie’s child, or children, Maddie’s second cousins.
Jake. Jacob, for the great-grandfather he had never known. I’d met a few Jakes in our age range over the years, but it had not been a trendy name back then.
Arf set a good pace, and before I knew it we’d reached our usual turn-around. On the way back, we slowed for cars leaving the ferry terminal. This time of year, tourist traffic wanes, but it was Friday night and people were spilling in and out of the waterfront restaurants. I found the sounds of laughter and footsteps comforting, a reminder that life carried on despite the grim mystery I’d stumbled into. I passed Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, one of Seattle’s oldest and oddest businesses, and Elliott’s Oyster House, a regular spice customer with crab cakes almost as good as Edgar’s, and kept going, north by northwest.
Maddie desperately wanted to regain the property her family had lost—through Haig’s shady dealings, if Tim had the story right. To restore the family legacy. Had Jake been trying to get control of it for the same reasons? And yet, his plans differed vastly from hers.
What did that difference tell me?
At Union, I turned away from the waterfront, and crossed the area once covered by the viaduct. Though the shadows were gone and I had left the crowds behind, I had the sense that I was not alone. I paused midstride, listening. Footsteps? Greer again? Or my overactive imagination, spurred by reading too many mysteries? I’d already been too stupid to live once this week. I was not going to be TSTL a second time.
I pulled my keys out of my pocket and found the key for the basement door. (Forget that tired advice to thread the keys between your fingers so you can jab an attacker with the pointy ends. Tag says you can’t do any real damage that way, except to your own hand. And you’ll probably drop your keys.)
Real or imagined, the sound of footsteps behind me continued, intermingled with the medieval harmonies I sometimes hear at moments of danger. I glanced over my shoulder but saw no one. Moths had weevilled their way into the light fixture by the back door, nearly blackening the glass. Digging out my phone and clicking on the flashlight app, while juggling Arf’s leash, would slow me down. I reached the steel door, thrust my key in the lock, and turned it. Yanked the door open and slid my hand around to grab the handle on the inside and shut the door tight.
It didn’t budge. Someone had grabbed the edge of the door and held it, sticking a foot out to keep me from closing it.
The light in the garage is one of those sensor things that turn on slowly, giving your eyes time to adjust. By the time it reached full brightness, my mind had considered and discarded a handful of possibilities, including the FBI and Jake Byrd.
But I had not considered Bruce Ellingson. He was roughly the same height and build as Smoking Man, and wore a similar dark rain jacket. A ball cap kept the mist off his face.
“Why are you following me? How did you find out where I live?”
“You’re not hard to find—your name is all over the Internet. I followed you home from your shop,” he said. “Figured you’d have to take the dog out sooner or later.”
The dog’s wiry coat brushed my leg, the touch enough to tell me he was on high alert. Me, too.
“You pushed your way into my house,” he went on. “Pretending you love roses when you’ve been a friend of Laurel Halloran for ages.”
“You knew we were friends.”
“Continuing her family’s vendetta against mine. What did we ever do to them? Now you’re using my son against us. If hiring him is part of your ploy—”
“That’s crazy. Cody heard I needed help with deliveries. He’s already working in the Market and wanted more hours, so he can gain some independence.” How did he think I was using Cody against them?
“BS,” Ellingson replied. “My son would never betray us.”
I was trapped in a basement with an angry, unstable man. Did he have a gun? The gun that had killed Pat Halloran and injured my old friend? I couldn’t tell, and I couldn’t squeeze past him. The Saab was too far away for me to take refuge in it or speed out of the garage to safety, and too old for one of those battery-powered key fobs that sets off an alarm.
“Cody’s terrified,” I said. “Someone saw the killer in the alley behind the grocery, and he’s terrified that it was you.” Ellingson’s brow furrowed and he started to protest, but I kept going. “He hasn’t connected you to Patrick Halloran’s murder, but the police will. He doesn’t know the truth about your brokerage firm, does he?”
“No, I—” In the distance, something electronic beeped and Ellingson stopped. After a long pause, he went on. “My wife worked her tail off to promote the Byrd’s Nest. She sank all our savings into that project, and Pat fought her at every turn. Then Maddie Petrosian conned a sick old man into selling her the property instead, for some pipe dream of restoring the glory days. Do you know how
