cup of coffee,' she said on her way. 'I'll be right back.'
I turned to Jared, who was scowling at the menu. 'What'll you have?' I asked, trying once again to break the ice.
'I dunno,' he said. 'A cheeseburger, I guess.'
Such unbridled enthusiasm, to say nothing of gratitude. I wanted to slug him.
He avoided my gaze by staring out the window. 'So what are you?' he mumbled sarcastically. 'My mom's new boyfriend? Are you two going out or something?'
Boyfriend? Going out? If I had ever been tempted to cut the kid any slack, that just about corked it.
'The lady happens to be my partner,' I explained as civilly as I could manage. 'We're working a homicide case together. Period.'
He looked at me then, his eyes angry and accusing. 'Well,' he said, 'you're taking us to lunch. It seems like a date to me.'
The waitress showed up at the booth and saved me from knocking the presumptuous little shit upside the head. I ordered burgers for Sue and me, then stewed while Jared unconcernedly ordered a cheesburger and chocolate shake. I waited until the waitress left the table before I answered.
'Look, Buster. Your mother had to squander her lunch hour checking on a smart-mouthed kid who just happened to get his butt kicked out of school for the next three days. So for the record, I'm taking my partner to lunch. At the moment, however, I seem to be baby-sitting you, and it sounds to me as if you need it.'
Jared Danielson was used to dishing out free-floating hostility to any and all comers. He wasn't used to taking it, especially not from a complete stranger. My returned volley of dispassionate animosity caught him off guard.
'I hate school,' he said, as though that somehow justified his rude behavior. 'I hate this town. I hate my mother.'
'So give her a break. Go live with your dad,' I said amiably. 'Good riddance. You'll be doing your mom a favor. What's stopping you?'
For a moment, his chin jutted defiantly, then his face fell. 'I can't,' he croaked.
'Why not?'
Jared Danielson shrugged. The tough-guy mask disintegrated. His lower lip trembled, while his eyes filled with self-pitying tears. The surly, belligerent teenager faded into something younger and much more vulnerable.
'We don't know where he is,' Jared answered, while his changing voice cracked out of control. 'He's supposed to pay child support, but he doesn't. He left town, and Mom can't find him. She thinks he went to Alaska.'
Sue Danielson came back to the table. 'You two look serious,' she said, her questioning glance shifting apprehensively between Jared and me. 'What's going on? What are you talking about?'
For the first time, Jared Danielson's eyes met mine in a silent plea for help. 'Football,' he finally mumbled.
We were? I needed a second to take the hint. I took a clue from the WSU baseball cap still parked on his head and tried to follow his lead.
'How about those Cougs,' I said, feigning an enthusiasm for collegiate football that I don't feel. 'We were wondering who would win the Apple Cup this year-WSU or the U-Dub. Who do you think, Jared?'
As quickly as the boy had emerged from his hard little shell, he retreated back inside. 'Who cares?' he muttered before lapsing once more into a stubborn, resentful silence, but not before I caught a glimpse of what was ailing Jared Danielson.
I never knew my own father. He died as a result of a motorcycle accident eight months before I was born. Days before he and my mother planned to elope, my father was headed back to the naval base at Bremerton after a date with her when the motorcycle he was riding skidded out of control and threw him directly into the path of an oncoming truck. He died two days later without ever regaining consciousness.
Faced with Jared Danielson's pain, I could see now how losing a parent you never knew was different from being willfully abandoned by a father you had grown to know and love. Having a parent die on you is a long way from having your father run away. One loss leaves a clean break that eventually heals. The other leaves in its wake a lifetime of hurt, of unanswered questions and emotionally charged blame.
In spite of myself, I felt sorry for Jared Danielson-baggy pants, smart mouth, and all.
I expected Sue to see right through the phony football ploy, but she seemed to fall for it. 'Football,' she said, sliding back into the booth. 'That counts me out. Oh, by the way, that was Watty. Alan Torvoldsen called in and wants us to come by and see him sometime this afternoon.'
'We can do that later. I'd rather go see Else Gebhardt first.'
'Fine.'
Jared ate his cheeseburger and drank his shake in sullen silence. Sue and I talked some over ours, but by mutual-if-unspoken consent, neither one of us said anything more about the case. When we dropped Jared back at the duplex, he didn't bother to say thank you. Or even kiss my ass. Not to me and not to his mother, either.
'Sorry he was so rude,' Sue apologized after her son slammed the car door shut and sauntered off up the walk.
'Don't worry about it,' I reassured her. 'That's what twelve-year-old kids are like these days. Give him ten or twelve years. Maybe he'll improve with age.'
'I hope so,' she said.
I do, too, I thought as we headed for Ballard. For Sue's sake as well as Jared's.
Ballard as a district is considered to be Seattle's Scandinavian enclave. Whenever the king of Norway comes to town, somebody always schedules a ceremonial visit to Ballard. Whatever goes on there is headline-making news in the Ballard-based Western Viking, one of this country's two surviving Norwegian-language newspapers.
Ethnic jokes may be politically incorrect in the rest of Seattle, but down on Market Street, it's still open season on Sven and Ole jokes. People from Ballard don't necessarily see much humor in Garrison Keillor's tales of Lake Wobegon, because, as far as Ballardites are concerned, that's 'yust the way things are.' And when Ballard folks say ' Uff da,' or ' Ja, sure, you betcha,' it's no 'yoke.' And it's not sarcasm, either. Even down through third- generation Sons of Norway.
Blue Ridge, the neighborhood where Gunter Gebhardt had lived with his wife, Else, is upper-crust Ballard, which isn't the oxymoron one might think. In Seattle, the price of houses always goes up the closer you get to the water, and the Gebhardts' house was on the view side and in a cleft at the bottom of Ballard's westernmost glacial ridge. The corkscrew street was named Culpeper Court.
The house Sue stopped at was a tidy if unassuming sandstone-veneer 1950s-era rambler. It may have been a 'view property' once, but a newly constructed house with recently planted landscaping had been built directly across the street in a way that pretty much closed off the Gebhardts' visual access to the water and the shipping lanes.
Several cars were grouped in and around the driveway of the unfenced, meticulously mowed and landscaped yard. Three women, presumably friends, neighbors, or relatives of Else and Gunter Gebhardt, stood in a tight knot on the front porch. They eyed Sue and me suspiciously as we stepped up onto the porch from the manicured brick walkway.
'Can I help you?' one of them asked, but she moved in front of the doorbell and effectively blocked our access to it.
'We're police officers,' I explained, displaying my badge. 'Detectives. Is Else Gebhardt here?'
The women exchanged guarded glances, but finally, with a shrug, the one blocking the doorbell stepped aside. 'Else's in the kitchen,' she said. 'Go to the end of the entryway and turn right.'
In addition to Else, there were another seven or eight women milling about in the spacious country-style kitchen-middle-aged and older ladies who looked very much alike with their ice-blue eyes, more-than-ample figures, and blond hair going gray. Like the women outside the house, these turned on us as well with an unmistakable solidarity of distrust. Their collective message was clear. Mourners were welcome. Inquisitive strangers were not.
'Are you reporters?' one of them demanded.
This time, while Sue dragged out her I.D. and explained who we were, I caught sight of Else on the far side of the room. She was seated at a small desk that had been built into a bank of knotty-pine kitchen cabinets. Her
