for the drugs.”
“Both Chris and Sonja were into the drug scene?”
Pete nodded. “That’s why Marcia came back home to Seattle.”
“But you still haven’t explained how you ended up with Erin.”
“I knew from what I overhead in the bar that McLaughlin was there to pick up a load and take it back. He was only supposed to be there for a week or so. To make it look like an ordinary vacation, he hired himself a Mexican lady to take care of the baby and then he settled down to having a hell of a good time. He found plenty fun, all right, in all the wrong places. He disappeared and turned up three days later down on the beach with a knife stuck between his ribs.
“In the meantime, the baby-sitter, a cousin of the guy who owned the bar, came looking for him too. She was afraid what would happen to her if the cops found her with an Anglo baby with no father anywhere around. I think she was worried about kidnapping. She brought the baby and all her stuff to the bar, and while I was looking through the bags, in among the false bottoms, I found a stash of phoney IDs.”
“Including one for Pete Kelsey?” I asked.
Pete nodded. “Pete and Erin Kelsey and my deceased wife. I also found a half-written letter to Marcia in an address book. From the sound of it, he had planned to assume Pete Kelsey’s ID and disappear, from his drug connections and from Sonja as well.”
“So you took the baby and the ID and came to the States masquerading as a Canadian citizen?”
“That’s right. It was a ticket home and I used it. I thought, from the letter, that Erin was actually Marica’s baby, but I found out differently. She was as outraged as I was by Chris and Sonja using the baby to smuggle drugs, and between us we came up with the idea of getting married and keeping Erin ourselves. Marcia was the one who thought of letting Maxwell Cole believe he was introducing us and playing cupid. She worked behind the scenes and engineered my getting the remodeling job at Max’s mother’s house. He always took full credit for our getting together.”
“And it made things seem like they were all on the up-and-up,” I added.
“That’s right,” Pete said.
My heart went out to poor duped Maxwell Cole. He had spent twenty years taking credit for bringing Pete and Marcia Kelsey together without ever knowing how completely they’d played him for a fool. It made Erin’s calling him “Uncle Max” seem pitiable rather than laughable.
“So you two set out to raise Erin as your own?”
He nodded. “Marcia and I made an agreement that we would stick together for Erin’s sake, no matter what. It was like an old-fashioned arranged marriage, I suppose. We were both happy enough at first, but keeping that bargain got harder as the years went on, especially after Marcia met Andrea. It never occurred to me that Marcia would really run off with her.”
“Maybe she wouldn’t have,” I suggested.
Pete Kelsey frowned. “What do you mean?”
“According to Andrea Stovall, the woman on the phone told you a lie. She said Marcia had no intention of breaking her word to you.”
Pete Kelsey’s hard jawline went slack. “You mean she told me that just to make trouble?”
“And it worked, too, didn’t it?” I returned.
He thought about it a moment before nodding his head. “Yes,” he answered bleakly. “I guess it did.”
I took a second to try to organize my thoughts. “You’re sure Chris McLaughlin died in Mexico?”
“Yes, I saw him. I didn’t stay around afterward, though. I took Erin and headed for the border.”
“What happened to Sonja?”
“I don’t know. We never made any inquiries for fear of drawing attention to ourselves. Marcia went ahead and let her parents get the annulment, even though she already knew Chris was dead. The rest you know.”
“Where did they live in Canada?”
“In a commune-type arrangement someplace up near Nanaimo on Vancouver Island in British Columbia.”
“You’re sure this Sonja was Erin’s real mother?”
“As far as I know.”
“What was her last name?”
“McLaughlin too. He was a bigamist. That’s how come Belle and George were able to get an annulment without any problem. Actually, they probably didn’t even need to, but they wanted to wipe the slate clean.”
“And Marcia couldn’t have shown up with an annulment, a clean slate, and a baby.”
“By then Marcia had already had a hysterectomy. Erin was our only chance at having a child of our own.” Pete paused for a moment and seemed to mull an idea.
“Are you thinking that maybe after all these years, Sonja has come after us and she’s behind all this?”
“It’s possible.”
“Would she hurt her own daughter?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you stop her? I don’t care what happens to me as long as you keep her from hurting Erin.”
“We’ll try,” I said.
Pete Kelsey reached across the table and grasped my hand, squashing it in a powerful grip.
“Do more than try, Detective Beaumont,” he pleaded. “Once Erin finds out about all this, she may never want to see me again, but I can’t stand for her to be hurt anymore. Maybe she isn’t my real daughter, but she’s the only daughter I’ve ever had.”
Extricating my hand, I went to the door and signaled the guard that I was ready to leave. I was about to walk out when I remembered about the fruits of Detective Kramer’s search warrant and something else Andrea Stovall had mentioned.
“Who else besides you and Erin had keys to your house?”
It was a closing-the-barn-door question in view of the fact that the house had burned to its foundations, and if there hadn’t been so much other pain winging around the room, it might have been a painful one, but I asked it anyway, and Pete answered without hesitation. “We’re the only ones, other than Marcia.”
“Were Marcia’s keys in the envelope of personal effects from Doc Baker’s office?”
Pete Kelsey frowned. “No, I’m sure they weren’t.”
“And the garage door opener?”
“No. That wasn’t there either. Isn’t it still in the car?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to check. One last thing, Pete.” Calling him John David Madsen right then would have amounted to kicking him while he was down.
“What’s that?”
“Did you happen to take the pictures of you and Erin that were hanging in Marcia’s office?”
“Why, no. Aren’t they still there?”
“No. I’m sorry to say they’re not.”
That was the final straw. “I was hoping we still had those,” Pete Kelsey croaked. “I was hoping there was something left, but it’s gone, isn’t it? It’s all gone.”
And he buried his face in his arms.
I left then, quickly, feeling my own eyes fill with tears.
I was still sniffling when I reached the front desk. “I must have caught a cold somewhere,” I said to the guard, who eyed me quizzically as I stopped long enough to sign out.
Maxwell Cole’s goddamned cold, but of course, it wasn’t a cold at all.
Chapter 27
By three o’clock in the morning, I was back at my desk with an armload of work to do and with no intention or need of going to sleep. I called Paul Kramer, and got him out of bed. He squawked at first, but he listened intently to what I had to say. By the time I finished briefing him, he was up and moving and ready to go looking for
