diplomatically. But I didn’t expect what happened next. Mel simply turned and walked away. Make that stalked away. The manner in which she took off was far more definitive than mere walking.
“Where are you going?” I asked, trailing after her.
“To catch a cab,” she said over her shoulder.
“But…” I objected.
“I’m going home,” she added. “To Bellevue.”
I guess our voices were somewhat raised, and people started to gawk. Just then the valet showed up with my car and honked twice from the curb. By the time I tipped him and retrieved the Mercedes, Mel was nowhere in sight.
So, since she had said she was going to Bellevue, I drove there, too. There were no lights on in her apartment, so I parked outside and waited. And waited. Finally, forty-five minutes later, and needing to use the facilities, I headed back to Seattle. When I drove down into the underground garage I realized the error in my thinking. Her BMW was gone. So she had ridden the cab back to Belltown Terrace to pick up her car so she could drive herself across the lake to Bellevue. No wonder I had missed her.
Up in the apartment I soon discovered that her briefcase and her computer, along with Todd Hatcher’s stack of abstracts, were all among the missing. So were her nightgown, bathrobe, and makeup. I glanced in her closet. I’m sure some of her clothing was gone as well, but I couldn’t tell how much. If I could have sorted that out, it might have told me if I was dead or really dead. By then it was too late to consider driving back to Bellevue. I tried calling both her cell and her landline, but she didn’t answer. Finally I gave up. I removed my newly purchased tuxedo, which hadn’t exactly done me a hell of a lot of good, and took myself to bed.
When the phone rang bright and early the next morning, I grabbed for it eagerly, hoping Mel would be on the other end of the line. She wasn’t.
“Hi, Dad,” Scott said. “How’s it going?”
“Great!” he said. “I took Cherisse out to Lake Tapps and showed her our old stomping grounds. Geez, there are lots of houses out there now. I mean, our house used to be way out in the country. And the lake’s a lot smaller than I remembered.”
“But it was fun?” I asked.
“Sure. We had a blast. This morning we’re going to pick Lars up and take him to breakfast at the Mecca. Do you and Mel want to come along?”
I looked at Mel’s empty pillow. “I think we’ll take a pass on that,” I said.
“And then we’re going to go on playing tourist,” he said. “The Arboretum, Snoqualmie Falls, the aquarium. Care to join us for any of that?”
If I ever go back to Snoqualmie Falls, the place where Anne Corley died, it will be way too soon. “No,” I said. “I’m working on a case. I should probably spend some time on that, but a man’s got to eat. What are your plans for dinner?”
“Don’t really have any,” Scott said, sounding a bit abashed. “We’ve pretty much blown our budget.”
I remembered what it was like to be young and broke and wanting to impress your new wife but worrying about whether or not you’d be able to pay next month’s bills if you did so. Thanks to Anne Corley, my financial situation had taken an amazing turn for the better since those tough old days.
“Dinner’s on me, then,” I said. “What sounds good?”
“Steak?” Scott asked hopefully.
“We’ll go to El Gaucho, then,” I said. “They have some of the best steaks in town, and it’s only a couple of blocks from here. Say around seven or so. I’ll call for a reservation.”
“What happened to Kelly and Jeremy?” Scott asked. “I called to invite them to breakfast. The guy at the front desk said they’d checked out.”
“I guess Kelly wanted to go home.”
“She was acting weird,” Scott said. “Even for Kelly. I mean, if this is all because of Mel, it’s ridiculous. You do get to live your own life, don’t you?”
“Seems like I should,” I said.
“See you this evening,” Scott returned. “Where’s the restaurant, by the way?”
“Just come to the house,” I said. “We can walk from here.”
Missing Mel, I rolled out of bed and went out into the kitchen to make my own coffee. Then, while the coffee brewed, I called Nick down at El Gaucho. Mel and I go there enough that I have the number programmed into my cell phone. No one answered that early on a Saturday morning, but I left my name and a message. I brought in the newspapers from the front door, but I didn’t bother opening them. For some reason I didn’t feel up to working a crossword puzzle.
Instead, I sat in my recliner, sipping coffee and brooding. Finally I threw caution to the winds and dialed Mel’s cell.
Much to my surprise, she answered. “I’m not speaking to you, remember?”
This seemed like an egregious overreaction to whatever I had or hadn’t done, so I decided to ignore it. “If you were speaking to me,” I countered, “what would you say?”
“‘Those women’!” she said, repeating my ill-chosen words with an inflection I recognized all too well. “How did I get hooked up with ‘those women’?”
“Mel, look. I’m sorry. I’m sure I was out of line, but you’re not seeing this from my point of view. I spent dinner stuck next to that dreadful professor, who really does hate men, by the way, and listening to all of those awful stories. It seemed like every story and every single one of the women there said pretty much the same thing- that whatever had happened to them was all my fault. That I was somehow responsible. I’ll bet even Anita Bowdin’s husband…”
“Calvin Lowman,” Mel supplied. “And he’s not her husband.”
“Whatever,” I said. “I’ll bet even he was squirming in his seat. Every man there was probably doing the same thing.”
“Is there a purpose to this call?” Mel asked.
Her crisp tone would have deflected even the most determined of life insurance salesmen. “I invited Scott and Cherisse to dinner at El Gaucho tonight at seven,” I said hurriedly. “I was hoping you’d come, too.”
“What about Kelly and Jeremy?”
“They went home,” I said. “To Ashland.”
There was a pause. “I’ll think about it,” Mel said. “But don’t hold your breath. And there is a reason,” she added.
“I’m sorry?”
“A reason I’m involved with ‘those women.’ A reason I’m on the board. I just don’t like to talk about it, but maybe I’ll tell you sometime. If I start speaking to you again, that is.”
With that she hung up, leaving me with no clear idea of where I stood. She claimed she wasn’t speaking to me, but she had been. And the other part-the part she had left unsaid-about the reason behind her involvement with SASAC put a hole in the pit of my stomach. I had never even considered that someone as slick as Mel might have some dark corner in her past where she, too, had been gravely mistreated. If something like that had happened to her, I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear about it. Once I did, would I feel obliged to go out, track the jerk down, and throttle him with my bare hands? That would make a lot more sense than sending donations to SASAC!!!
I called Mel right back. “I know you’re still not speaking to me,” I said quickly, “but if you wanted to come back to the house and work together on Todd Hatcher’s stuff, I promise I won’t say a single word out of line.”
“I’ll think about it,” she said, “but I need some space, Beau-space and time.” She hung up again.
Rebuffed, I knew I couldn’t afford to spend the day sitting around thinking about Mel and what I did or didn’t know. I needed to do something, to take some kind of action. Twiddling my thumbs wasn’t an option when what I really wanted to do was go out and knock a few heads. So I did the next best thing. I called the DMV and ran a check on Carol and Jack Lawrence. Once I had their address information, I headed for Leavenworth, two and a half hours away, on the far side of the Cascades.
