“She sure did.” Khadijah folded her napkin and handed it to her. “I’m sorry the last one upset you, but I’m not sorry we heard these messages. They’re amazing, Jo.”
“Shit fire.” This meant Marty was impressed. “Are you thinking you can catch a recording of Becca’s mom, Doc, if she ever speaks again? Is that what you’re going to try to do?”
“That depends on many things.” Jo slid her device into her shoulder pack. She looked at Becca evenly, and now her gaze was piercing again, and held only challenge.
“What do you mean?” Khadijah asked.
“She means…” Becca drew in a deep, slow breath. “We have to go back to the house where my parents died.”
Chapter Four
There was nothing distinctive about the two-story red brick house on Fifteenth Avenue, unless sitting directly across the street from one of Seattle’s oldest and largest cemeteries was a distinction.
Jo loved Lake View Cemetery. She strolled its grounds often enough to be thought an oddity by the staff, but she had no patience with those who found her affection for cemeteries macabre. To walk into Lake View was to enter a different world. It was a beautiful setting, with views of Lake Washington and both the Cascade and Olympic mountain ranges. It featured rolling hills shaded with dark greenery and extraordinary memorial statuary.
The Lady of the Rock was Jo’s easy favorite. The Lady was a tall, cast-iron statue of a seated, cloaked woman holding a book, a young girl kneeling at her feet, her head in her lap. The girl’s hair streamed over the woman’s knees, her face mostly hidden. The Lady’s right hand pointed into the distance, toward some enticing mystery. Her gaze was unfathomable, but whispered of loss.
Becca must have noticed Jo’s lingering attention on the gravestones as they stepped onto the front porch of the house. “That cemetery is a map of all the major Seattle city street names, by the way. All our traffic-choked big ones. The Borens are there and the Dennys and the Mercers.” Becca fumbled with the keys, and even Jo could pick up on her anxiety level. “Bruce Lee and his son Brandon are buried there.”
Jo wondered why Becca was telling her factoids all Seattle natives knew by heart. “Did you go to the cemetery often? I can’t imagine it being much of a playground for a five-year-old.” Lake View had been a favorite outing for Jo when she was five, but she kept that to herself.
“No, I never hung out there. I was scared of the place when I was a kid.” Becca dropped her keys, picked them up, and fit one into the front door. She sighed and slid it free. “First, this is the key to my apartment. Second, Rachel’s waiting to let us in.” She puffed her hair out of her eyes and pressed the doorbell, a discreet glowing circle in a metal frame. Jo heard a faint bong.
“Rachel’s shown a few renters around, but there are no takers yet.” Becca resumed her polite chatter. “We’re renting it furnished, that’s probably one problem. It’s a plain house, but this neighborhood’s too pricey for most.”
Jo could imagine. Like many of Seattle’s quirky neighborhoods, Capitol Hill was becoming both a haven for the wealthy and a shabby, subsidized housing refuge for the poor. Middle class families stood little chance of affording its market rate rents. They waited together on the porch for what seemed an unnecessarily long time to answer a doorbell.
“Jo, I’m sorry for ambushing you at the Rose the other night.” Becca’s tone lost its brightness and she looked up at Jo directly, a first for that afternoon. “I know social gatherings aren’t your thing.”
“It’s all right. I managed to avoid public disgrace.” Jo wasn’t being flip. She had only wanted to get away from that table when she first sat down, but the evening at the Rose had taken a strange twist. She had almost enjoyed it. Becca and the two other women were so openly fascinated by her work. Khadijah and Marty. Jo remembered the palpable, easy warmth between them. She cleared her throat. “Your friends care about you very much.”
“Yes, I’m lucky.” Becca’s features softened, losing some of their tension. “I’m good at friendship, and I like that about myself. It’s work, you know? Friends should have just as much of your attention and time as your job, your family, the other important things in your life. You have to work at it, make sacrifices sometimes. Friends like Khadijah and Marty are worth it.”
Jo was lost in the fondness in Becca’s eyes as she spoke their names. “I’ve never had that kind of friend. Not even close.”
Becca looked startled, but the ornate handle of the door rattled and the door swung slowly open.
“I am sorry it took me so long. A glacier could have let you in faster.” A small woman stood in the doorway, about Becca’s height. She wore a green silk blouse and expensive-looking slacks. Jo placed her in her early seventies. She was panting lightly, but her shadowed face was wreathed in a smile. “I’ve put some brownies in to bake. Just for you, Becca, of course. I’ll eat half of them only in solidarity with you.”
Becca didn’t answer right away, her pleased smile matching the woman’s. “Hello, you.” She stepped over the threshold and wrapped her in her arms, a brief but tender embrace, then stepped back. “Dr. Joanne Call, this is Dr. Rachel Perry. My psychiatrist when I was a kid, and my good friend ever since.”
“Hello, Dr. Call.” Rachel offered Jo her hand, and her grip was tighter and longer than Jo expected, as the woman seemed frail. “I’ve spoken to Becca on the phone about the work you want to do together. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you,” Jo parroted. She shifted the strap of the pack on her shoulder, trying to see past Rachel into the house. She was eager to set up the Spiricom.
“Come in, please.” Rachel draped her arm across Becca’s shoulders and led them into a small entry. “Your aunt is after me for another sit-down dinner, Becca. Can you stomach that, tomorrow night?”
“Any chance my uncle will be out of town tomorrow night?” Becca’s tone was light. “Eh, if you’re there, I’ll be able to choke down a plate or three, whether he’s around or not.”
“I’ll be there. Patricia does make a dynamite manicotti. Just sit close enough to kick my ankle if I bring up Michelle Obama again.”
They stepped down into a high-ceilinged living room, furnished simply with an overstuffed couch and matching armchairs. Jo spied a colorful Pendleton rug beneath an antique coffee table. The white walls held tall windows, necessary to catch the meager light of cloud-choked Seattle winters.
Becca folded her arms, and the tension had returned to her shoulders. Jo realized where they were. Five-year-old Becca had been sitting in this innocuous living room when the shootings had happened in the kitchen. Jo stepped closer to her and tried to make her tone gentle. “You heard the voice from a radio in this room the other day, correct?”
Becca nodded. “My aunt asked me to come by here to check out a broken washer. I hadn’t been in the house for many years. I was sitting here, in the living room…” Becca was watching Rachel, who was standing in a beam of sunlight that fell across the hardwood floor, and she frowned. She took Rachel’s arm and turned her toward the light. “Hey. What’s going on with you?”
“Well, I’m having a very bad hair day. Something about my new pillowcases make me wake up looking like a demented woodchuck.”
“Rachel.” Becca drew the older woman closer to the window. “I’m serious. You don’t look well.”
“I’m not, of course, you know that.” Rachel patted Becca’s hand. “Diabetes isn’t for the timid, friend.”