found. In addition to the sodas and ice cream, Tracie and Heather had cleaned me out of English muffins, crackers, peanut butter, and cheese slices. They had also raided the fruit bowl. One lone banana remained, so ripe that it was fermenting in the peel. Banana liqueur on the hoof.
“So what are you going to do now?” Peters asked impatiently. It had to be frustrating for him, lying there trapped in a hospital bed. He could help turn up the pieces of various puzzles but he was unable to manipulate them into place.
“I think maybe I’ve finally got a line on the wife,” I told him. “I have a meeting at nine tomorrow morning. If that works out the way I hope it will, I’ll be able to ask her some questions in person.”
It wasn’t much of an answer, but it was the best I could do under the circumstances. I told him I’d call him as soon as I knew anything more, and asked him to gather anything else he could. With that we signed off. I gave up searching for food in the kitchen and mixed myself a stiff drink instead, pouring the dregs of my last bottle of MacNaughton’s over ice and adding a drop of water.
Taking my drink with me, I walked back into the living room and settled down on the window seat overlooking Elliott Bay. It was a cloudless, still evening, the long, late dusk of a Seattle summer. As the sun gradually faded behind the Olympic Mountains, the water came to life with lights, mirroring back the glow of the city on one side and West Seattle on the other. Ferries moved sedately back and forth across the water, their lights shimmering both above and on the water’s surface. Behind them trailed inky black shadows where the chop erased all reflections from the glassy water.
The conversation with Peters had depressed me. Most of the time talking to him didn’t bother me, but that particular night, it got me good, right in the gut. Oh sure, I was thankful it was him and not me who was slowly learning to walk again, to feed himself, and put on his own clothes. But I railed at the unfairness of it, at the injustice, of a man Peters’ age, a man still with young children to raise, being locked up on the rehabilitation floor of a hospital for months so far.
If it had happened to me, it would have been different. At least my two kids were already grown, and I was financially set. But I was okay and Peters wasn’t. I was still walking around on my own steam. Ron Peters had a broken neck.
He could be in a wheelchair for increasingly long periods of time now, and Amy assured us that one day, with the help of braces and canes, he would walk again. But for the time being, his only avenue of escape and self- determination was to talk on the handless speaker-phone my attorney, Ralph Ames, had given him as a gift. It was that and that alone that allowed Peters to feel he was still a part of life outside his hospital bed, not only with his daughters, but also with the department.
I slugged down the last of my drink, hoping to wash the guilt away, trying not to think about it anymore. The homecoming blasts from the
Princess Marguerite’s ship’s horn jolted me out of my reverie. Back from her daily excursion to Victoria, British Columbia, the ship was returning with a cargo of weary day-trippers. Flashbulbs winked from here and there on the deck as inexperienced photographers tried to use puny pinpricks of light to capture the approaching Seattle skyline. The
Marguerite would dock at Pier 66, only a few blocks from where I live.
Glancing down at the street below, I saw a long line of cabs parked single file along Clay Street and turning onto Alaskan Way two blocks below. They would sit there and wait until the passengers cleared Customs and needed cabs. I wanted something to eat, and I wanted it fast, before hordes of
Princess Marguerite tourists invaded the waterfront watering holes.
The strength of that one drink, combined with the fact that I hadn’t eaten, ruled out any possibility of driving. From my window, I saw candles blinking in the bar at Girvan’s Restaurant at First and Cedar, a block away. I had been inside it once when I was working a case, but I had never eaten there. It seemed as good a choice as any.
Pausing only long enough to put my jacket back on, I headed out to the elevator, rode down to the parking garage, and walked out through the side entrance on Clay.
The restaurant occupied the penthouse suite of the low-rise First and Cedar Building. I took the elevator up to the fifth floor and walked down a long hallway to the maitre d’s station. To my left was the dining room filled with quiet, late evening diners. On my right was a doorway. Through it I heard the raucous, comfortable din of a busy bar. That was far more to my liking than the sedate diners I could see in the restaurant. I waved aside the services of the maitre d“ and stepped into the bar.
It was busy, all right. Crowded even, for a Monday night. I zeroed in on the only vacant stool at the long bar. The bartender, a lady close to my own age, was a pint-sized brunette wearing a heavy squash-blossom silver-and- turquoise necklace over a long-sleeved blouse. She was there Johnny-on-the-spot before I was firmly settled on the stool.
“What’ll you have?”
“Can a guy get something to eat in here?” I asked. “Or do I have to go into the dining room?”
“What’dya want? A sandwich?”
I nodded.
“Ever been in Butte, Montana?” she returned, looking at me with her head cocked to one side, a hand resting on her hip.
“No,” I said. “I never have.”
“You’re not Jewish, are you?”
Now I was convinced I was losing my mind, but I shook my head. “Fallen-away Presbyterian,” I told her.
She grinned then. “Boy, do I have a treat for you,” she said. “Now, what’ll you have to drink?”
“MacNaughton’s and water,” I said, “light on the water. But what the hell kind of sandwich am I getting?”
“Specialty of the house,” she answered. “A pork chop sandwich just like they make ”em at Pork Chop John’s back home in Butte.“
The priorities were definitely on straight. She poured my drink and served it before she disappeared to place the order for my sandwich. I tested the drink. It was fine-strong enough to help me forget Detective Ron Peters and his broken neck.
While I sipped my drink, I looked around the room. I suspected most of the crowd was from some kind of impromptu office party that had started early and run late. Most of the people seemed to know one another, and they were all having a hell of a good time. It was beginning to wind down though. A few people filtered out of the bar.
The pork chop sandwich, when it came, was enough to make me wish I’d been born and raised in Butte, Montana. It was terrific. I plowed through it like I hadn’t seen solid food in a week. When I pushed the plate away, the bartender was back.
“Did your mother always make you clean your plate like that?” she asked with a grin. “If you’re still hungry, I can order you another one, or how about dessert?”
I shook my head. “One sandwich is enough, but I do want another drink.”
“You new around here?” she asked when she brought the MacNaughton’s. “I don’t remember seeing you in here before.”
“I just moved into the neighborhood,” I said. I didn’t offer any more specifics. I wasn’t wild about making polite conversation. All I really wanted to do was savor my drink in peace.
Someone down the bar signaled for another drink and the bartender went to get it. Next to me a man got up and walked away. A newcomer, a woman, pounced on the vacant stool like her life depended on it. A man I took to be her escort planted himself firmly between the woman and me. He was tall and blubbery with a hairline that had receded almost as much as his chin. His companion was a frowzy, dated blonde whose skirt was about fifteen pounds too tight.
I don’t usually object to tight skirts, but this one wrinkled and bunched where it should have been smooth. And I don’t object to women getting older, either. The bartender was a prime example of someone who was comfortable with life in her forties. The dame next to me was dressed like she was fourteen and looked like a worn fifty.
She instantly endeared herself to me by hauling out a package of those long brown cigarettes, lighting one, and striking a fake glamour pose with the cigarette up in the air like a Statue of Liberty torch gone bad. Naturally
