A rubber-mat-covered running track runs the full perimeter of the sixth floor-about a quarter of a mile in all. When the building was first built, this running track was supposed to be a big selling point, and maybe it still is, but what looks and sounds good on paper sometimes misses the mark when it comes to actual delivery.
What the architects and planners had failed to take into consideration was the wind-tunnel effect from nearby high-rise buildings. Even in the dead of summer you can be out on the Belltown Terrace running track with a chill gale blowing into your teeth. Since this was March and a long way from the dead of summer, it was downright frigid out there.
I’ve often said that my major form of exercise is jumping to conclusions. Mel had set out to change that. At least three times a week she dragged me, usually kicking and screaming, down to the running track, where she literally ran circles around me while I walked. (All knees are not created equal.)
Afterward, sitting in the hot tub, she leveled a blue-eyed stare in my direction.
“What’s wrong?” she said. “You’re a million miles away. Are you thinking about Beverly?”
I was sad about losing Beverly, but what was really bothering me right then was the fact that Mel’s good deed of making hotel reservations for Kelly and Scott was about to blow up in both our faces. I knew I’d have to tell Mel about the situation with Kelly eventually, but not right then. I nodded and sighed as convincingly as I could manage.
“It is sad,” Mel agreed. “Especially for Lars. Widowers often don’t fare too well when they’re left on their own.”
Which gave me something else to worry about entirely.
“How was your afternoon?” I asked in an attempt to change the subject.
Mel frowned. “More interesting than it should have been,” she said. “I started tracking down locations on those released sex offenders. I just barely scratched the surface, but already two of them are dead.”
“Dead?” I asked.
Mel nodded. “One suicide and one accident. It’s too bad I didn’t know about this over the weekend. We could have stopped off in Roseburg on the way coming or going and made some inquiries. Feet on the ground instead of phoners.”
“What’s in Roseburg?”
“Outside of Roseburg, actually,” she said. “A guy named Les Fordham got sent to prison for molesting his girlfriend’s twelve-year-old daughter. When he got out he went to live in southern Oregon. That’s where he was from originally. Got a job working in a sawmill there and seemed to be doing all right. Then, last summer, for no apparent reason he turned on the gas on his stove and ended up blowing himself to kingdom come. Started a mini forest fire in the process. Fortunately it rained like hell the next day, and the fire didn’t turn into a major one.”
“And the accident?” I asked.
“You may remember it,” Mel said. “The guy’s name was Ed Chrisman. He was living up in Bellingham. Got all drunked-up on a Sunday afternoon last December. The investigators theorized that he stopped off at one of the rest areas on Chuckanut Drive to take a leak. It was cold, so he left the car running while he got out to do his business…”
“I remember,” I said. “He also left his car in gear. It hit him from behind while he was standing there with his fly unzipped. Knocked him off the edge of a cliff into the water. The car went into the drink right along with him-on top of him, as I recall. Smashed him flat.”
Mel nodded. “That’s the one. Nobody bothered to report him missing until several days later. With the weather the way it was, his vehicle wasn’t found at the foot of the cliff until almost a week after it happened. The transmission was still in gear when they fished it out of the water.”
“Sounds like he was still in gear, too,” I said.
I admit, it was a tasteless joke-but dying with your pants unzipped is a tasteless joke. Mel glared at me. “Not funny,” she said.
“No,” I agreed. “I suppose not. But if those two guys were already dead, how come they’re still on Ross’s sex-offender list?”
“I believe that’s why Ross has me updating the list.”
“Right,” I said. “Makes sense to me. Sounds like me and missing persons. Now let’s go see about dinner.”
CHAPTER 6
One of the things Mel and I share in common is that we’re both terrible cooks. Yes, we can make coffee. And toast on occasion. And, according to Ron Peters’s girls, I could brew a mean cup of hot chocolate in my day. So we don’t eat at home, unless it’s carry-out or carry-in, as the case might be. Mostly we go out. Fortunately, since the Denny Regrade is full of restaurants, trendy and otherwise, we’re in no danger of starving to death.
Our current favorite is a little French place called Le P’tit Bistro two blocks up the street. I know, I know. Over the years I’ve developed a well-deserved reputation for unsophisticated dining, and some of my old Doghouse pals would choke at the very idea of me hanging out in a French dining establishment. But now that the Regrade has morphed into Belltown, that’s how much things have changed around here in the past few years. Maybe that’s how much I’ve changed, too.
I’m guessing Le P’tit Bistro comes close to being the French approximation of an old-fashioned diner. The food doesn’t put on airs, and neither does the waitstaff. Just for the record, real men do eat quiche-and crepes, too, for that matter.
“Maybe I should stay in Bellevue while the kids are here,” Mel suggested as she sipped a glass of red wine. I was having Perrier. As I said, the place is French.
It was almost as though Mel had implanted a listening device in my head and overheard my disturbing conversation with Kelly. “No way!” I responded.
Mel ignored me. “With the funeral and all,” she continued, “emotions are bound to be running high, and daughters can be…well, let’s just say they can be a little territorial.”
“Did Kelly say something to you about this?” I demanded.
Mel shrugged. “Not in so many words,” she replied. “She didn’t have to. I got the message.”
That’s another thing about women. You’re damned by what they do say and you’re damned by what they don’t say. For a guy, it’s lose/lose either way. It would have been nice to be able to change the subject again-to talk with Mel about something easy, like murder and mayhem and who blasted LaShawn Tompkins to smithereens, but that would have gotten me in trouble with Ross Connors, so I soldiered on.
“Look,” I said, “it’s bad enough that we have to play hide-and-seek with the guys at work, but I’m damned if I’m going to play the same game with my kids. You’re in my life because I want you in my life. Everybody’s just going to have to get used to it-Kelly and Scott included.”
Under the circumstances that seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to say, but the next thing I knew Mel was crying, mopping away tears and mascara with her cloth napkin while the lady who’s the co-owner of the restaurant shot daggers at me from her station behind the dessert case. Some days you really can’t win.
Mel was pretty quiet-make that dead-quiet-the rest of the time we were eating. I thought I was in more trouble with her than I was with the lady at the restaurant. On our two-block walk back to Belltown Terrace, however, Mel slipped her arm through mine, then leaned into my shoulder. “I think that’s one of the nicest things anybody’s ever said to me,” she said.
We went home. It was still early, but we went to bed anyway, and not to watch Fox News Channel, either. Later, with Mel nestled cozily against my side and sleeping peacefully, I lay awake for a long time. I realized that there were many things I was more than willing to give up for the sake of my children, but Melissa Soames wasn’t one of them. With a smile on my face I finally drifted off to sleep as well.