Sergeant Watkins seems to think the accident may be related to the fire. He wants you and Detective Danielson to get on it right away and check it out.'
Alan was already sipping his coffee. The man's lips must have been made of asbestos. The liquid in my cup was still far too hot to drink. Reluctantly, I put my untouched steaming mug down on the table.
'I'll have to take a rain check,' I said to Alan. 'I've gotta go.'
'That's fine,' Alan said, waving at me with his cigarette.
I looked at Else. As far as I was concerned, Gunter Gebhardt's widow was no longer Mrs. Gebhardt. She was, instead, Else Didriksen-a schoolmate of mine, a former cheerleader who had once urged a long-legged, awkward kid called BoBo Beaumont on to basketball-court glory. That was back at a time when we had all thought our futures would be very different from the way they actually turned out to be.
'Else,' I said. 'I'll need to get in touch with you later. How can I reach you?'
Putting one hand deep into the pocket of her long wool coat, she pulled out a set of car keys and a wrinkled business card. She laid the keys on the table next to her empty glass, then handed me the card. On it was written the words, 'Else Gebhardt, Consultant.' That and a phone number was all.
'What kind of consultant?' I asked, as I pocketed the card.
'Seafood,' she answered with a self-deprecating shrug. 'What else would it be?'
What else indeed? 'Look, Else,' I said. 'When you're ready to go home, one of the officers will be happy to give you a lift.'
'I'm fine,' Else said. 'I can drive myself home.'
'No, you can't,' Alan replied.
'Why not?' Else argued with a sudden stubborn jut of her chin.
With a deft movement, Alan reached across the table in front of her, snatched up the keys, and stuffed them in his shirt pocket.
'Because I said so,' he answered. 'Because you've been drinking.' He turned to me. 'When she's ready to go, I'll see to it that she gets home.'
His manner of saying it made it clear that he meant every word. And considering the effect I remembered from drinking aquavit, not driving anywhere under its influence was probably a damned good idea. I gave that point to Champagne Al. One missing ducktail wasn't all that had changed about him.
When I started back out on deck, Else stayed where she was while Alan walked with me as far as the rail. 'She'll be all right,' he said.
I don't know which one of us he was trying to convince, me or himself.
'Where will you be?' I asked. 'Give me your address in case I need to get back to you as well.'
'This is the only address I have,' he answered.
'You're living here on the boat? In the dead of winter?'
'It beats the hell out of where I was living before,' he said.
I looked around at the ragtag wreck of a boat. I'm sure my skepticism showed.
Alan Torvoldsen grinned and flipped his cigarette butt over the side into the water. 'If you think this is bad,' he said, 'you ought to try living on the streets.' And with that, Alan hurried back inside the galley, closing the door behind him.
When I made it back out to the Mustang, Detective Danielson was already sitting in the driver's seat of the idling car, but I didn't see her at first. With one hand on the wheel, she was leaning across the car seat far enough to rummage in the glove compartment. When I opened the door, she slammed the glove box door shut in obvious disgust and sat up.
'I thought every car on the force was supposed to come equipped with a damned street map,' she complained. 'Somebody must have lifted it.'
'Why do we need a map? What's up?'
'According to Watty, we're supposed to go see someone named Bonnie Elgin. I have her address right here. She lives on Perkins Lane, but where the hell is Perkins Lane? And how do we get there from here? Dispatch tells me it's right off Emerson, but I don't think Emerson goes all the way through.'
That is an understatement if ever there was one. Sue Danielson was absolutely right. Emerson doesn't go 'through' to anywhere, at least not anywhere useful and not directly.
Fishermen's Terminal is off Emerson on one side of Magnolia Bluff. Perkins Lane-one of Seattle's high-rent waterview property areas-is off Emerson on the other side of that selfsame bluff. It sounds easy enough, but between those two not-so-very-distant points, Emerson hopscotches around as though it were laid out by the proverbial drunken sailor. From what little I know about some of Seattle's early surveyors, it probably was.
I knew more about Magnolia than Sue Danielson did, and she settled down when I convinced her I could take us where we needed to go. Following my directions, she angled northwest on Gilman and Fort and then cut back down on Thirty-fourth Avenue West until it intersects with the westernmost section of West Emerson. No problem. In fact, it was totally straightforward.
Except for one small, unforseen complication. I got lost along the way-not physically but mentally. The route I outlined took us almost all the way to Gay Street. And to Discovery Park. And to the scene of a long-ago murder-the one that had brought an unforgettable woman named Anne Corley across my path. Wearing a bright red dress and tossing her hair, she had sauntered purposefully into my life and changed everything about it.
It shocked me to realize that, for the first time, the identity of that murdered little girl had somehow slipped off the end of my memory bank. What was her name?
Too much time had passed. Too many murders. No longer did the answer come readily to mind, not even after several long minutes of silent concentration and mental urging. That wasn't fair, not when the end of that poor mistreated child's life had made such long-lasting changes in mine. Surely her name was far too important a detail for me to have forgotten.
I was still berating myself for my failed memory as we drove past those several fateful landmarks. The whole while, Sue Danielson was talking away a mile a minute, but I wasn't listening, wasn't paying attention. Encountering memories of Anne always stirs me with a terrible sense of loss-with an inconsolable aching for what might have been.
I'm sure if I had caught a glimpse of my own face in the rearview mirror right about then, I would have seen reflected back my own J. P. Beaumont version of Alan Torvoldsen's thousand-yard stare. And maybe for many of the same reasons.
'You say this is a hit-and-run?' I asked finally, as we turned right on Emerson once more and started to get serious about finding Perkins Lane. I figured it couldn't be that hard, since I knew it was right down on the edge of the bluff, near the water.
'You haven't been listening to a word I've said, have you?' Sue Danielson chided.
'No, I guess not.'
'I don't blame you,' she said. 'It was bad, all right. When I first saw him, I almost tossed my breakfast.'
It would have been impossible and pointless to attempt explaining to Sue Danielson why Gunter Gebhardt's charred remains had been the last thing on my mind as we traveled around Magnolia's winding streets. Far better to let her continue believing that I, too, was lost in thought, haunted by that day's murder rather than by one that had taken place years in the past.
It was just after nine A. M. when we came down the steep, fallen-leaf-cluttered incline that marks the beginning of Perkins Lane. The Elgins' house-a three-story, ten-thousand-square-foot giant-couldn't be missed. Other houses on the street were clearly of Pacific Northwest origin. This one with its pale rose stucco walls and gray tile roof might have been an Italian villa that had shipped out to sea and come to rest on the wrong coast. It was so new that glass stickers still lingered on some of the upstairs windows.
Although most traces of construction rubble had been removed, the scarred earth sat naked or else covered with bales of hay placed at key spots to prevent erosion. The bare rocky ground seemed to be waiting to see what hardy trees or shrubs could be tricked or trained into clinging to that steep hillside.
Two black Mercedes, one from the mid-eighties and one newer, sat side by side in the driveway. Parked off to one side of the house was an old beater '76 Datsun station wagon that probably belonged to a housekeeper.
'That's cute,' Sue Danielson said, wrinkling her nose. 'His-and-her Mercedes.'
'Don't be so sure about that,' I said, once more unfolding my long legs out of the cramped confines of the Mustang. 'For all you know, in this day and age, it could be his and his or even her and her.'
