I charged into the den to find the two innocent-looking wretches sitting side by side and cross-legged on the floor. A stainless-steel bowl of popcorn nestled between them.
"All right, young ladies. What exactly have you two been up to?"
Tracy's eyes grew wide. "What do you mean? We popped some popcorn," she murmured. "Just like you said we could."
"I'm not talking about popcorn. Which one of you has been fooling around with soap in the Jacuzzi?" I demanded, forgetting completely that we live in a country where people-even kids-are presumably innocent until proven guilty.
Heather flounced to her feet and stood there glaring back at me, both hands planted on her hips. "Don't you yell at my sister!" she commanded, looking irate enough to tear me apart. If I hadn't been so bent out of shape, her pint-size fury might have been comical. But her outraged reprimand was enough to make me realize I was yelling.
I took a deep breath. They were both there; they were safe. Why the hell was I so upset?
"All right, all right," I said. "I'll calm down. Just tell me the truth. Which one of you put soap in the Jacuzzi?"
"We didn't, Uncle Beau," Tracy answered. "We were both right here watching TV the whole time. Honest."
"But somebody ran soap through a hot tub," I said. "The fire department's downstairs-on your floor, by the way-trying to clean it up."
"Come on, Tracy," Heather said, her voice stiff with disgust. "Let's get our stuff and go."
"You're not going anywhere," I objected. "Your parents still aren't home."
Heather glared at me. "Why should we stay here?" she demanded. "You're mad at us for something we didn't do."
As Heather hurtled out of the den with Tracy on her heels, I followed them. While they turned in to the spare bedroom to retrieve their stuff, I continued down the hall to the master suite and bath. The glass shower stall was flecked with drops of water from my morning shower, but the Jacuzzi itself was bone dry. Unused. The only wet thing in the bathroom was my own still-damp towel.
Flushing with embarrassment and contrite as hell, I hurried back down the hall to the spare bedroom, where they were gathering their overnight stuff into a pair of shopping bags.
"Wait a minute," I said. "Hold up. I'm sorry. I can see now that you didn't do it."
Heather wasn't in a mood for accepting apologies. "But you thought we did," she stormed. "I'm leaving anyway."
"Heather, please," I begged, "I made a mistake."
But she wouldn't let up. "You made Tracy cry."
"I didn't mean to. It's just that-"
"Something was wrong, so you thought we did it. Because we're kids."
"Yes, but I don't think so anymore. Really. I'm sorry. I apologize."
I'm convinced Heather Peters will be a heartbreaker when she grows up. She relented, but not all at once. She glanced coyly up at my face through eyes veiled by long blond lashes. "Cross your heart?"
"And hope to die," I returned. "Sorry enough to take you both to lunch, anywhere you want to go."
"Even McDonald's?"
"Even McDonald's, but only if you promise not to tell your dad that I took you there."
The shameless little imp grinned in triumph. "Well, all right then," she conceded.
When we left the apartment, the elevators still weren't working. We had to walk down twenty-four flights of stairs, but going down was a whole lot easier than climbing up. When we stepped outside the lobby, the news crew was still there. The reporter was busy interviewing Dick Mathers. Dick and his wife, Francine, are Belltown Terrace's resident managers.
Dick is one of those people who is incapable of talking without waving his hands in the air. He gave me what felt like an especially baleful glare as the girls and I walked past him, but I disregarded it. Some days I seem to feel more paranoid than others. And seeing the news crew gathering info about a flood of soapsuds, I knew for sure it really was a slow news day in Seattle.
In fact, I never gave the incident another thought, not during lunch at McDonald's, and not during the afternoon the girls and I spent-along with hundreds of other people-at the sunny but cold Woodland Park Zoo.
When we came back to the condo, everything seemed to be under control. The fire truck and news cameras were gone. The elevator was working properly. When I dropped Heather and Tracy off at their unit on the seventh floor, Ron and Amy were back from their big night out. They both said they'd had a great time. As I closed the door to their apartment and headed for my own, I breathed a sigh of relief. The girls were home, safe and sound. No problem.
My false sense of well-being lasted well into the evening-almost to bedtime. Ron Peters called upstairs at a quarter to ten.
"We've got trouble," he said. "Can I come up?"
"Sure."
He was there within minutes, looking distraught. "Ron, what's the matter?"
"It's Roz," he said. "She's back in town. She's staying at her mother's place down in Tukwila."
"So?"
"Did you leave the girls alone today?" he asked.
"Only for a little while," I told him. "I was on call. A body floated up under Pier Seventy, and I-"
"Roz called me about something on the evening news. She said the reporter was interviewing Dick Mathers, the manager, over something about soapsuds when you and the girls came out of the building. He blamed the ‘two little girls who live in the building' for the problem. He said he believed they'd been left without adequate supervision. Roz-I mean Sister Constance-wanted to know if there were any other girls who live here besides Heather and Tracy. I told her no, they're the only ones, but that anybody who said they'd been left alone was lying because they'd been with you the whole time. But if you were out…"
"Look, Ron, the girls were fine while I was gone. And believe me, they had nothing whatever to do with all that soap."
"You should have heard her on the phone. There's going to be trouble over this."
Again, since Roz Peters wasn't my ex-wife, it was easy for me to wax philosophical. "Come on, Ron, don't hit the panic buttons. It's no big deal. After all, what could Roz possibly do with a bunch of soapsuds?"
The answer, of course, was a whole lot different from what I thought. Roz Peters, otherwise known as Sister Constance, had every intention of turning a little molehill of soapsuds into a mountain of trouble. It pains me to say that I never saw it coming.
But then, I never do.
Two
I was pretty much feeling on top of things when I headed to the department the next morning. A yellow Post-it note was plastered on the wall next to the entrance to my cubicle by the time I got there. "See me," it said. It was signed, "L.P."
The L.P. in question, Captain Larry Powell, is even more of a troglodyte than I am. I've gradually moved into the modern era enough so that I can tolerate voice mail. I've gradually learned to hunt and peck my way around a computer keyboard. There are even times when I've found a fax machine downright useful. Larry, on the other hand, has come only as far as Post-it notes. That far and no further.
"What gives?" I asked, sauntering up to the open door of the captain's fishbowl office.
"I hear you took on yesterday's floater. Any progress on that one so far?"
"Not yet. It's still early. That's what I'll be working on this morning."
"Is it something you'd mind handling alone?"
Did Br'er Rabbit mind being thrown in the briar patch?
"No problem," I said, trying not to let Larry see the grin that threatened to leak out through the corners of my mouth. "Why? What's happened to Sue? Aren't she and I partners anymore?"
Detective Sue Danielson has been my partner for several months now. She's young and fairly new to Homicide-a transfer in from Sex Crimes-but she's also a capable investigator. I knew she had taken her two boys and gone to visit her folks in Ohio over the holidays, but I also knew that her sons were due back in school that morning.