The Millionair Club is a Seattle social service agency that provides meals, medical care, and temporary job placement to the homeless. I've eaten there on occasion as my part of the new police chief's policy of community outreach. Plain meals, made of donated food, and served cafeteria-style, don't make for a trendy luncheon-dining experience. But then, having just come from my boardlike burger in Renton, who was I to talk?
"Sounds like you're dining out in style," I said. "So who's Edward G. Jessup? A new boyfriend? Does your son Jared know about this?"
Sue smiled slightly in response to my teasing, but her answer was serious. "Jessup is a former Magnolia Bluff resident who used to live on a box spring under a blue tarp."
"Good work! How did you find him?"
"He found me. Or rather, his job-placement counselor did. The guy was there last night when the evidence van picked up his box spring. The crime lab tech told him it had something to do with a homicide investigation. He went into the Millionair Club for a job call this morning and talked to his job-placement counselor about it. The counselor went through channels and tracked me down.
"The counselor was downright belligerent with me-said he was tired of Seattle P.D. picking on his clients just because they're homeless. He was ripped because we'd ‘illegally confiscated' Jessup's property. Not only that, he said Jessup was prepared to take a blood test, if necessary, to prove the blood wasn't his."
"Did you schedule a blood test then?" I asked.
"Naw," Sue Danielson said with a casual shrug. "I decided not to bother."
That sounded like sloppy police work to me. "Why not?" I demanded.
"Because Edward G. Jessup wasn't home when Gunter Gebhardt's boat caught fire. The man has an airtight alibi."
"And what would that be?"
Sue grinned. "He was in the King County Jail overnight," she said smugly. "Drunk and disorderly. He was booked at twelve-oh-three A. M."
You win some; you lose some. "That's airtight all right," I agreed. "So what's next on your agenda?"
"I plan on spending the afternoon checking emergency rooms around town to see if anyone remembers treating Bonnie Elgin's hit-and-run victim. What about you?"
I gave her the Cliff's Notes summary of my morning with Detective Stan Jacek and Deanna Meadows, then I settled down at my desk and went to work. I checked voice mail for messages. There weren't any. I dialed Maxwell Cole's number at the P.-I.
"Leave your message at the sound of the tone," Max's cheerful recording told me in his own voice. "I'll get right back to you."
Like hell he would. He hadn't so far. I didn't bother leaving another message. I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing I'd called back.
As far as writing reports is concerned, my intentions were good. What was it my mother used to say? Something about the spirit being willing but the body weak. My body was weak, all right.
I started off like gangbusters, but the greasy lunch combined with serious sleep deprivation zapped me before long. By two-thirty, I had nodded off at my desk with my pen trailing aimlessly across and off the edge of the paper. I was dead to the world when Sergeant Watkins stopped by and woke me up.
"Maybe you ought to go home and grab some shut-eye," he suggested. "I wouldn't mind, but you're snoring so loud no one else can concentrate."
"Snoring? Was it really that bad?" I asked.
Watty shook his head and grinned. "Naw," he said. "No louder than a buzz saw. How are you coming on your paper, by the way? Captain Powell wants a status report ASAP, particularly on the Maxwell Cole leak."
"Tell him I'm working on it," I said.
I pushed the reports I had completed across my desk. Standing in the doorway to my cubicle, Watty pulled out a pair of reading glasses and then scanned through what I had written. When he finished, he took off the glasses and stowed them in his pocket.
"If I'm reading the time lines right, you must have spent most of the night up on Camano Island. I know for a fact you've been on the job since eight o'clock. You've had what, three hours of sleep?"
"Something like that, give or take."
"No wonder you look like hell. Go home. Get some sleep."
"But Sue and I were going to…"
My objection was strictly pro forma. Years ago, when I first came to work on the force, being up all night didn't faze me. Back then, a case would grab my attention and keep it. If I had to, I'd work round the clock, then sleep eight hours straight and be back on top of things again. I can't do that anymore. I'm like an aging rubber band that no longer bounces back to quite its original shape. I must be getting old, but come to think of it, I didn't recall ever seeing Watty use reading glasses before, either.
In any case, he cut me off in midsentence. "I said go home, and I meant it."
With no further discussion, I swiped the remaining papers off my desk and stuck them in a drawer. Then I stood up and pulled on my jacket. "Middle age is hell, isn't it?" I said.
Watty shook his head. "It beats the alternative," he replied. "Now get out of here before Captain Powell lays hold of you."
Usually, I'll toss off some kind of smart-ass comeback, but this time I was too brain-dead. And I'm glad I didn't. Watty was well within his supervisory rights to send me home. I was too damn tired to be out on my own recognizance.
After I retrieved my 928 from the parking garage on James, it was all I could do to stay awake long enough to drive home, park the car, and stagger from my parking place to the elevator. I was so tired, I think I might have welcomed some company in the elevator-even an unaccompanied dog. It would have given me something to lean on.
I didn't bother to stop for the mail, and I barely glanced at the blinking answering machine in the living room. I left it to its own devices without hitting the playback button. The messages would have to wait. I headed straight for the bedroom, where, after a moment's contemplation, I pulled the telephone jack out of the wall, stripped out of my clothes, and fell into bed. I slept for twelve hours straight. If I had any dreams-good or bad-I was sleeping too hard to remember them.
When I woke up, I was totally refreshed-bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as we used to say. I was also starved. The only problem was, it was three o'clock in the morning-not a good hour to discover that the cupboard is bare. A cursory inventory of the kitchen revealed that other than a bag of whole-bean coffee that I keep in my freezer, there wasn't a stick of edible food in the house.
When Karen and I split up, that was one of the first and hardest lessons I had to learn about living on my own. Food doesn't automatically transport itself from grocery-store shelves to refrigerator and cupboards or table. Someone has to go to the store and actually bring it home. And meals-especially balanced ones-don't appear on the table magically. They require advance planning and preparation. When it comes to cooking, I'm a complete flop.
Food considerations, odd hours, proximity, and loneliness were the several factors that had caused me to gravitate to the Doghouse. At three o'clock that morning, I missed it more than ever.
I glanced outside. It was foggy again-foggy and cold. I pulled on some clothes and walked out to the living room. I hadn't taken the messages off the machine earlier, and there was even less sense in doing so now. You can't call people back at three o'clock in the morning. Closing the front door on the blinking light, I headed downstairs.
I think Donnie, Belltown Terrace's graveyard-shift doorman, was most likely snoozing at his desk, but he lurched to his feet as soon as the elevator door opened.
"Mr. Beaumont," he said, a little too eagerly. "You're up and around early. Or is it late?"