"How long have you been here? Maybe they left before you came on duty."
The bartender shook his head. "I came to work at three o'clock this afternoon."
I scratched my head. "I'm sure he said the Roanoke," I mumbled aloud to myself.
"Which one?" the bartender asked.
"Which one? You mean there's more than one?"
"Sure. This is the Roanoke Exit. There's the Roanoke Inn over on Mercer Island."
"I'll be a son of a bitch! You got a phone I can use?"
He pointed to a pay phone by the rest room. "Don't feel like the Lone Ranger," he said. "The number's written on the top of the phone, right under the coin deposit. It happens all the time."
Sure enough, the name Roanoke Inn and its number were taped just under the coin deposit. Knowing that I had lots of company didn't make me feel any better. I shoved a quarter into the phone and dialed the number. When someone answered, I had to shout to be heard over the background racket.
"I'm looking for someone named Peters," I repeated for the fourth time.
"You say Peters? Okay, hang on." My ear rattled as the telephone receiver was tossed onto some hard surface. The paging system at the Roanoke was hardly upscale. "Hey," whoever had answered the phone shouted above the din, "anybody here named Peters? You got a phone call."
I waited. Eventually, the phone was picked back up. "He's coming," someone said, then promptly dropped the receiver again.
"Hey, Beau!" Peters' voice came across like Cheerful Charlie. "Where you been? We've been waitin'."
It didn't sound like Peters. "Andi and I just had spaghetti. It's great. Want us to order you some?"
Spaghetti? Vegetarian, no-red-meat Peters pushing spaghetti? I figured I was hearing things. "Are you feeling all right?" I asked.
"Me?" Peters laughed. "Never better. Where the hell are you, buddy? It's late."
Peters is always accusing me of being a downtown isolationist, of not knowing anything about what's on the other side of I-5, of regarding the suburbs as a vast wasteland. I wasn't about to 'fess up to my mistake.
"I've been delayed," I muttered. "I'll be there in a little while."
It was actually quite a bit longer than a little while. I drove and cussed and took one wrong turn after another. The thing I've learned about Mercer Island is that no address is straightforward. The Roanoke Inn is an in-crowd joke, set off in the dingleberries at the end of a road that winds through a seemingly residential area. By the time I got there, it was almost nine o'clock. I was ready to wring Peters' neck.
The building itself is actually an old house, complete with a white-railed front porch. Inside, it was wall-to-wall people. The decorations, from the plastic scenic lamp shades with holes burned in them to the ancient jukebox blaring modern, incomprehensible rock, were straight out of the forties and fifties. I had the feeling this wasn't stuff assembled by some yuppies trying to make a "fifties statement." This place was authentic. It had always been like that.
In one corner came a steady jackhammer racket that was actually a low-tech popcorn popper. I finally spotted Peters and Andi Wynn, seated cozily on one side of a booth at the far end of the room. A pitcher of beer and two glasses sat in front of them. Peters, with his arm draped casually around Andi's shoulder, was laughing uproariously.
I had known Peters for almost two years. I had never heard him laugh like that, with his head thrown back and mirth shaking his whole body. He had always kept himself on a tight rein. It was so good to see him having a good time that I forgot about being pissed, about it being late, and about my getting lost.
I walked up to the booth and slid into the seat across from them. "All right, you two. What's so funny?"
Peters managed to pull himself together. He wiped tears from his eyes. "Hi, Beau. She is." He ruffled Andi Wynn's short auburn hair. "I swear to God, this is the funniest woman I ever met."
Andi Wynn ducked her head and gave me a shy smile. "He's lying," she said. "I'm perfectly serious."
That set him off again. While he was convulsed once more, Andi signaled for the bartender. "Want a beer?"
I looked at Peters, trying to assess if he was smashed or just having one hell of a good time. "No thanks," I said. "Somebody in this crowd better stay sober enough to drive."
The bartender fought his way over to us. I ordered coffee and, at Peters' insistence, a plate of the special Thursday night Roanoke spaghetti. The spaghetti was all right, but not great enough to justify Peters' rave review. I wondered once more exactly how much beer he had swallowed.
"What's going on?" Peters asked, getting serious finally. "It took you long enough."
"We found something in Joanna's car," I said. "I took it down to the crime lab."
Peters frowned. "What was it?"
I didn't feel comfortable discussing the case in front of Andi Wynn. "Just some stuff," I told him offhandedly. "Maybe it's important, maybe not."
Peters reached for the pitcher, glanced at me, and saw me watching him. "I went off duty at five o'clock," he said in answer to my unspoken comment. Leaning back, he refilled both his and Andi's glasses from the pitcher.
"We waited a long time. It got late and hungry out. We finally decided to come here. What do you think? It's a great place, isn't it?"
I wouldn't have called it great. It was nothing but a local tavern in the "Cheers" tradition, with its share of run-down booths, dingy posters, peeling paint, and loyal customers planted on concave barstools.
"I was telling Ron that we used to come here after school," Andi said. "Darwin, me, and some of the others."
When she called him Ron, it threw me for a minute. I tended to forget that Peters had a first name. And it surprised me, too, that in the time since I'd left them to go with Joanna Ridley, Peters and Andi had moved from formal address to a first-name basis. I felt like I'd missed out on something important.
"Is that right? When was that?" I asked, practically shouting over the noise of a new song blaring from the jukebox.
"Last year," she answered.
I swallowed the food without chewing it, gulped down the coffee, and rushed them out the door. Andi's pickup was parked outside. I got in to drive the Dodge while Peters walked Andi to her truck, opened the door for her, and gave her a quick goodnight kiss. Andi started her engine and drove away. Peters returned to our car looking lighter than air.
That kiss bugged me. I distinctly remembered Ned Browning calling her Mrs. Wynn, not Miss Wynn. What the hell was Peters thinking of?
I climbed Peters' frame about it as soon as he got in the car. "Isn't she Sadie, Sadie married lady?" I asked.
"Divorced," Peters said. And that was all he said. No explanation. Not even a lame excuse.
I stewed in my own juices over that for a while before I tackled him on the larger issue of the Roanoke Inn. "It's a good thing you left the car where it was when you decided to go drinking. We'd have one hell of a time explaining what we were doing hanging out in a tavern in a departmental vehicle at this time of night."
"Wait a minute. Who's the guy who was telling me just the other day that I needed to lighten up a little, to stop being such a stickler for going by the book?"
"I didn't mean you should overreact," I told him.
I took Peters to his own place in Kirkland rather than dropping him downtown to drive his Datsun back to the east side. I didn't know how much beer he had drunk, and I wasn't willing to risk it.
When I told him I was taking him home, he gave a noncommittal shrug. "I'm not drunk, Beau, but if it'll make you feel better, do it."