I had been to the Georgian Room on several occasions with Ralph Ames, and I wanted to take Beverly Piedmont someplace nice. Maybe it was showing off, and maybe it was nothing more than a misguided desire on my part to pamper her, to make my grandmother feel as though there was still someone in her life who cared about her, someone she could lean on if she ever needed to do some leaning.
Once I had her in the car headed back downtown, I began to have misgivings. Since I didn't have any viable alternatives in mind, I stuck to the original plan with the exception of parking in the garage off Fifth and Seneca instead of driving up to the posh front entrance and using the valet parking.
The trouble started as soon as we walked up the stairs from the lobby to the entrance of the Georgian Room. We stopped beside the maitre d's station behind a laughing, somewhat noisy group of well-oiled diners. There were several men in tuxes and women in long, sequined gowns, and from what conversation we overheard, they were evidently on their way to the opera.
Beverly Piedmont looked down at her plain but neat coat and dress. "I shouldn't be here," she whispered self-consciously. "I'm not dressed well enough."
"You're fine," I said reassuringly, urging her forward.
The unfailingly polite maitre d' took her modest wool coat and showed us to a linen-covered table, where he graciously helped my grandmother into her chair. While she examined the elegant room, I stole a glance at the menu. These were definitely not King's Table prices. If she caught a glimpse of the toll, she'd balk, and we'd be out of there in a flash.
Before she even had a chance to look at the menu, I shifted hers out of reach, closed mine, and waved away the sommelier.
I knew from being there with Ralph that the Georgian Room always has available an elegant fixed-price dinner, from soup to nuts, literally. The set five-course dinner offered the advantage of taking all the options out of ordering. The food was bound to be good, and it would keep my grandmother from reading the menu too closely. It would also keep me from trying to explain what any of the listed food actually was. Despite the name Beaumont, French and I are not exactly on speaking terms.
My menu sleight-of-hand may have been a slick maneuver, but Beverly Piedmont has a few jumps on me in terms of years and experience. She didn't fall for any of it.
"This place is very expensive, isn't it?" she observed, watchfully examining the room while she picked at her squash-soup appetizer.
"It's all relative," I said.
"I'm not a blind date, Jonas," she chided gently. "You don't have to impress me."
Touche. She had me dead to rights. Neither of us said a word while the busboy whisked the appetizer dishes out of the way of a waiter poised to deposit our entrees.
"Your grandfather was not a mean man; he just had no idea how to bend," Beverly Piedmont said. "In retrospect, I can see that what he did to your mother was heartless. It was only days after your father died in that motorcycle accident that Jonas and I found out our daughter was pregnant. He wanted her to give you up, and she refused. They had a terrible fight. I have to say your mother gave as good as she got. After that, there was no turning back for either one of them. And not for me, either.
"Through the years, it broke my heart to know that my only grandson was growing up right here in Seattle, almost under my nose, and yet I couldn't have anything to do with him. With you. I suppose I could have ignored your grandfather's wishes-done something underhanded and gone behind his back-but that's not the kind of person I am.
"I'm an old woman now, Jonas," she continued. "I never got to hold you when you were a baby or to save your first tooth in my jewelry box or to watch you unwrap your very first Christmas presents. Or any Christmas presents at all, for that matter. Now that I'm alone, I want to make up for lost time. I promise not to be a pest, but I do want to spend time with you, to get to know about who you are and how you think.
"And there are things I want to tell you, about what your mother was like when she was a little girl. About the places we lived when she was growing up and the things we did. Does that make any sense?"
I nodded. That's all I could manage.
"The food is very nice here," she went on, "but you don't have to take me to fancy restaurants. We could go someplace like Zesto's or Dick's Drive-In, or we could just sit at the house and talk. Mandy would like that. I swear that dog is lonely, too."
Beverly Piedmont put down her fork and then fumbled in her purse until she located a white lace-edged handkerchief, which she used to dab at her eyes.
It's a funny thing about Adam's apples. On special occasions, mine swells until it is approximately the size of a basketball. When that happens, I find it very difficult to talk. Impossible even. Rather than embarrass us both, I reached into my pocket and dragged out my notebook.
On the first blank page, one just beyond my hastily scribbled notes about Hans Gebhardt and Sobibor, I wrote myself a note. I put it in a spot where I was sure to stumble across it first thing the following morning.
"CALL KELLY," I wrote, printing my daughter's name in large capital letters. "INVITE TO T-DAY DINNER."
Who says you can't learn from someone else's mistakes?
19
Sue Danielson and I had agreed to drive to the Ballard Fire House in separate vehicles. It was later than it should have been when I dropped my grandmother off at her house and headed that way.
Back when I was a kid, the Ballard Fire House was still just exactly that-a firehouse. That was its raison d'etre from the old horse-drawn fire-engine days back in the early 1900s. Sometimes in the early seventies, the firemen moved into more modern quarters, and the old firehouse was transformed into a trendy sort of night-club/restaurant. It has operated in that guise ever since.
The Fire House was evidently a popular place. I had to park two blocks away. When I reached the entryway alcove, I found both Sue Danielson and June Miller waiting for me. Former congressman Miller was nowhere in evidence, and I had to look twice before I recognized Sue.
I'm used to seeing Detective Danielson in her work mode down at the department, dressed in what passes, I guess, for women's business attire-skirts, blazers, sensible heels-if heels can ever be said to be sensible, that is-and in blouses so prim, they leave absolutely everything to the imagination. The outfit she wore salsa dancing had barely any blouse and even less skirt. As soon as I saw her legs, I realized with a shock that I'd never noticed them before. It made me wonder if I'm getting old.
Dressed as she was, Sue was no slouch, but next to June Miller, I could see why Sue might have felt a bit drab in comparison. The wife of the former congressman was pencil-slender, but still curved in all the right places. She wore a sophisticated long black dress with an attention-capturing, knee-high slit up one side. Inch-wide straps ran across otherwise bare shoulders. She didn't walk. When she moved, she glided.
While I stopped at a table and forked over the cover charge, June and Sue went on inside and staked a claim to a spot three tables from the dance floor and right on top of the bank of electronics handled by the band's chief soundman.
I caught up with the women just as the band began revving up. "Your husband won't be joining us?" I shouted to June over the cacophony.
She shook her head. "Not tonight," she yelled back, followed by something totally incomprehensible.
"What?"
"Brett's having some friends for overnight."
More's the pity, I thought.
A cocktail waitress came by, and we ordered drinks-tall 7-Ups with lime all around. No wonder there was a cover charge. The Ballard Fire House wasn't making any money on drinks at our table, and it turned out that most of the others were pretty much the same way. Whether the drinks had booze in them or not, people tended to nurse them rather than swill them down. As far as I could see, most of the people came there to dance, not to drink.