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  “I was a cop. Now I’m a private detective. I’m a friend of Kathy’s. She asked me to find you.”

  “Why?”

  “She was worried about your little girl.”

  “Angel? How is Angel?”

  “She needs you.”

  The entire conversation was moving along without any eye contact. I was speaking to a sad young woman, but the sad young woman was speaking to the spoon in her fingers.

  “Nobody needs me. Nobody at all.” She stubbed out her cigarette and watched the tiny orange glow die out as if she had a bet on how long it would take.

  “Angel needs you. She needs you to get her away from your father.”

  “My father?” Animation infused her eyes for the first time since we’d met. “My father? What does my father have to do with anything?”

  “He spirited Angel away from Burton this past Sun-day. He feels he is better qualified to raise her than Burton, especially since you’ve split the family up. He also thinks she might be in danger because of his business rivals.”

  Her hand darted across the table, upsetting the coffee mug and flinging hot coffee across the tabletop in a screwball arc. She ignored the spreading puddle, grabbed me and dug fingernails like talons into the back of my hand.

  “Tell me you’re lying, God damn it. Tell me you’re lying. He wouldn’t dare take her!”

  She had the eyes of a three-week-old kitten being flushed down the toilet.

  “There’s only one way to get her back,” I said. “You and Burton have to appear together in court. Burton already tried it alone. Your father’s lawyer bamboozled the court, said they took her on your say-so.”

  When she finally set my hand free I discovered four bloody bird tracks across the back of it. I pulled a clean handkerchief out of my coat and wound it around the hand.

  “Melissa?” I said. “Are you coming back to Seattle with us?”

  Her brain tried to focus, but her eyes remained blurry. Still transfixed mindlessly on the spill, Melissa blurted, “I’m scared of what he’ll do. He fools everyone. He’s devious.”

  “I’ve seen it all, Melissa. I’m devious, too.”

  Without focusing, Melissa slid toward the aisle and began to rise, dragging her purse and coat along. Nothing had been promised, but physically and psychically we had decided to leave together.

  As we rose, a small man dressed in a white pin-striped suit bounded up to us. He was small and mean-looking and compact enough to be quicker than I. He kept one hand in his coat pocket, as if caressing a talisman of some sort. Or a switchblade. He was swarthy, appeared to be of Mediterranean stock, in his late forties or early fifties. His face needed a shave and specks of lint festooned his shiny black hair.

  “You goin’ somewheres, baby?”

  Melissa looked up at me as if seeing me for the first time and said, “He’ll do somethin’ terrible. I know he will.”

  “You must be Romano Solomon,” I said, extending a hand. He didn’t take it. His fist stayed in his coat pocket, the fist that may or may not have been wrapped around some tempered steel.

  “Bledsoe,” he said. “Romano Bledsoe. Some folks calls me Solomon but that’s jus’ a nickname.” He reached across to pull Melissa to him, but before he could, I took her by the shoulders and swung her behind me.

  “It’s all over, Bledsoe. Melissa’s going home now.”

  Running his free hand through greasy hair, dislodging one or two particles of lint, Bledsoe tried to see over my shoulder to Melissa. I purposely blocked his vision with my shoulder. He had a tough decision, whether or not to make a scene. Whether or not to risk pushing and maybe yelling and maybe spilling some blood on all that white he was wearing. He looked me over carefully and then opted for discretion.

  “See ya later, toots,” he said, plopping down awkwardly in the booth where Melissa had been sitting. I watched him dunk the elbows of his white suit into the spilled coffee without seeming to notice.

  At the door, Kathy took Melissa by the arm, helped her slip on her coat, and guided her out into the cold Tacoma night. I was surprised to find that Kathy was embarrassed by the situation, didn’t know quite what to say.

  Wordlessly we walked to the parking lot, got into the truck, and drove out of the city. It was beginning to mist.

  “Maybe you would feel better staying with me,” said Kathy, after half an hour of driving. We were crossing the .Duwamish River. “Your place might be kind of lonely.”

  “I should see Burton,” she said, resolutely. “I should see him tonight.”

  Kathy, who was sitting by the window, peered around the blonde and caught my eye. I shook my head almost imperceptibly, indicating that I hadn’t told her about Burton’s incarceration.

  Kathy said, “I have some clothes you could wear.”

  Melissa glanced down at herself. “Oh,” she said.

  “That’s an idea. Thanks. I’ll change first.”

  Kathy gave me a meaningful look. We both knew after Melissa heard the whole story she wouldn’t have the heart to spend the night alone at their rented house.

  She took it well, or seemed to. Kathy helped her change, scrubbed her face, gave her something solid to eat and hauled her back up to my kitchen. We all sat around the kitchen table munching on a batch of freshly made popcorn.

  We explained to Melissa exactly what had been happening in her absence. At first, she didn’t utter a word. Then she asked a couple of questions, but they seemed almost perfunctory, as though she were asking things she thought we would want to hear her ask.

  I should have known. The wordless, stunned reaction of Melissa to her husband’s plight, her aunt’s demise, her father’s actions, her daughter’s kidnapping, her counselor’s murder; it had all been too calm, too mannered. They went downstairs and prepared for bed and I should have known.

  Switching off the lights, I drifted around in the dark, watching the rain patter on the kitchen windows, checking the street in front for unfamiliar vehicles, locking up, and skimming the evening paper. There was no mention of Helen Gunther’s death in the Times.

  It was three in the morning when I heard bare feet padding up from the basement and into my bedroom. “Thomas?” It was Kathy. “She’s gone.”

  “How long ago?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “When did you wake up?”

  “Just a minute ago.”

  Flinging the covers off, I said, “I bet you heard the door closing. She’s probably still within the block!”

  “Think we can find her?”

  Scrambling into a pair of faded jeans that had been draped across the back of a chair, I said, “The door closing is what always wakes me up. I bet she’s not even two hundred yards away from the house.”

  Without asking, Kathy groped in my closet and selected a Navy pea coat, donning it over her nightgown. “I didn’t realize you had so much experience being walked out on,” she said, her face a stunning deadpan.

  I interrupted my scramble long enough to bestow a long, laborious look upon her. The corners of her mouth wrinkled upwards impishly and we both marched out through the kitchen. ?

  Chapter Nineteen

  IT WAS THREE-THIRTY WHEN WE STARTED THE TRUCK. THE streets were wet and slick and deserted. We looped around the block, then headed for the nearest bus stops. Half an hour into our search we drove to Ballard. The Nadisky house was dark and empty, the grass tall and damp, the rusty wheelbarrow still canted against the front porch. Across the street, Sidney Iddins was anchored in front of the boob tube gorging on beer. I had always thought the TV stations closed down before three.

  I went in and searched the Nadisky place. It was still unlocked. It was empty. Thoroughly empty and cold. The family that lived there might never come back.

  We paraded around the city, growing more and more discouraged, growing desperate enough to cruise past the Crowell mansion in the dark. Nothing. We checked the Greyhound bus depot and the train station and found only stranded travelers, sol
diers, and bag ladies. Melissa had vanished into thin air.

  “Maybe she went to a friend’s?” Kathy suggested.

  “Who should we try first?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She told me she had no friends.”

  “That’s probably true. She didn’t even seem friendly toward me anymore. It was like she’d just spent ten years in another country.”

  When we got back to the house, it was five A.M. I heated up two cups of Swiss Miss and we sat across from each other at the kitchen table staring bleary-eyed at the walls. Finally, I broke the silence. “Which set of clothes did she wear?”

  It took a few seconds for the implications of my query to sink in. When they did, Kathy sprang up, scurried to the basement door and burst down the stairs. Thirty seconds later, she staggered back into the kitchen, visibly upset.

  “She wore her old clothes, the blouse with one button and the skirt slit up to her gizzard. Why, Thomas?”

  “Don’t know. I guess it was all too much for her to handle.”

  “You don’t think she went back to…Tacoma?”

  “She may have. I really don’t know.”

  “Would it do any good to go fetch her again?”

  “You tell me. What did you two talk about down there? I heard you talking before I dozed off.”

  “Melissa hardly said a thing. She asked about the burglar. She saw some of the broken stuff and asked me about it.”

  “Did you give her the whole skinny, about being tied up, too?”

  Nodding, Kathy said, “Maybe I shouldn’t have gone into all the gory details?” Her voice became small and withdrawn.

  “You have any more visions? Anything to add to what you told me the other night?”

  Kathy averted her eyes. “I don’t want to say it.”

  “I think you’d better. Talking about it isn’t apt to make it happen, you know. Talking about it may even help stop it.”

  “It’s about the little girl. It’s awful.” Kathy folded the borrowed pea coat over a kitchen chair and walked to the stairs. She didn’t finish replying until she was in the stairwell, out of sight, her voice barely discernible. I knew enough to trust her intuitions. Her hunches were right more often than they were wrong.

  “Kathy?” I was afraid she would go downstairs without telling me.

  “I just have a mental picture of this little girl with a man. The man is…”

  “What?”

  “I think he’s going to kill her.”

  “Who do you see with her?”

  “Nobody. I mean, it’s nobody I can recognize, just a man, a grown man. Only I have the feeling it’s worse than just that.”

  “What could be worse than that?”

  “I see a girl in a deep pit. It’s dark. And there is something else in the pit with her. A body. Or bones. Maybe both.”

  I brooded over that for a few seconds. Kathy generally had a difficult time talking about her visions, and I could tell this one was harder for her to talk about than anything she’d ever told me. “Who’s the little girl?”

  “It’s…” She trailed off and I wondered whether she even knew the answer to that question.

  “Is it Angel?”

  “It’s Angel and isn’t Angel. It’s Angel and Melissa both combined. I’m not sure who it is, I just know I had the strongest premonition I’ve had in a long while when I found out Melissa was missing. Thomas, you have to do something. We can’t let anything happen.”

  “Did you tell any of this to Melissa?”

  “Certainly not. No.”

  “Are you sure you can’t tell me who the man is?”

  “I don’t know who he is. I’ve said too much already.” She fled down the stairs. Leaving me in limbo. If Kathy was right, all my thinking on the case so far was cockeyed, for I had-believed Angus Crowell when he told me business rivals were after him. And I did not see how bones in a pit could possibly have anything to do with my theories. A body in a pit, yes, but not bones. It took years for a body to become a pile of bones. That meant all this was connected to something that had happened long ago.

  The jangling phone woke me at ten. A scratchy voice prodded me awake.

  “Mr. Black? Mr. Black? Clarice here. You gave me your card? Remember? I found out some things I’m sure you’ll want to hear about. It’s just horrid all the secrets this family has. It really is. Mary Dawn was seeing a psychiatrist. Had been for years.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Did I waken you? I’m sorry if I did. It never occurred to me a private detective would be sleeping late. In Malibu, we rise at five-thirty and take the dogs for a walk on the beach. The dogs love it.”

  “I wish I was a dog.”

  “I did waken you!”

  “I was out late chasing bad guys. What else did you find out?”

  “Oh, I’ve got a whole assortment of things to tell you. But I’d better see you. Don’t you think? This is really such a personal matter.” Her tone portended trouble.

  “Are you here in town?”

  They were staying with her husband’s brother. When I gave her directions, she promised she would be out in twenty minutes. Before I could ask her to delay that for an hour, she banged the receiver down.

  A dirty yellow cab disgorged her onto my front doorstep sixteen minutes later. Horace, my retired neighbor, was out front in an Air Force parka and hip waders, proudly sponging the flanks of his Buick, when Clarice arrived. Quickly, she paid the driver and shooed him off. Horace gave her the once-over, obviously disapproving. Horace disapproved of ‘everything that happened on my side of the fence. I could be certain the word gigolo would crop up in his conversation sometime during the next week. Watching him swish the sponge across his chrome, I wondered if the rat trap was still intact under his bumper.

  “Goodness,” Clarice Crowell said, negotiating my front steps on a pair of rickety high heels, as if she had never been up steps before, “you’re not even dressed yet.”

  She blitzed through my living room, toured the kitchen, peered into both bedrooms and then looked at me. I was aghast.

  “You have such nice shoulders. No, don’t cover them up. I love to see a man dress. You’re a bachelor, aren’t you?”

  I wore jeans, Pumas, and a sleeveless undershirt. I went into the bedroom, made a point of shutting the door, and selected a shirt from the closet. When I emerged, Clarice was in the kitchen, the knob to the downstairs door held fast in her grubby little nicotine-yellow knuckles.

  “You have a basement, too? This little shanty is larger than it looks from outside. What’s down there?” She made a move to descend the stairs.

  “The old slave quarters. Don’t go. I keep women down there.” Clarice Crowell stared at me. In her circles, people did not joke like that. “Little women. Little teeny hunch backed women.”

  She didn’t bat an eye. She merely went into the living room and picked a comfy spot on my couch. I followed her and offered her things to eat, but that wasn’t what she had in mind. She spanked a cushion close beside her hips and motioned for me to sit down on it.

  “Have to stand,” I said. “It’s an old war wound. It flares up from time to time.”

  “Goodness,” she said, concern gracing her hoarse voice.

  “Those dirty Huns,” I grumbled.

  She’d been playing eye games from the moment she crossed the threshold, the kind of games you learn all about at your first pre-teen dance.

  “Your husband didn’t come.”

  “No. No.” She patted her hairdo. It had cost some poor sap Of a hairdresser a pair of faded blue hands and some blistered eatdrums. “Edward is very upset. I’m most certain he would not want me divulging any of this.”

  “But you’re going to anyway,” I said.

  “You’re a detective. You have your job to do just like the rest of us.” She was right. I located missing wives. Edward Crowell buried bodies and no doubt fleeced the relatives. God had given us all our own little missions. Claric
e Crowell spent her spare time trying to get laid by younger men.

  Without asking permission, Clarice fumbled with a package of Pall Malls, ignited one with a gold-plated lighter and began producing smoke. With each puff she exhaled in a different direction, making certain every corner of my house was permeated with the stench. It took a while for her to notice the absence of ashtrays. When she did, she stubbed the butt out in a planter and lit another.

  “So what did you find out?”

  “Oh, tons. Absolutely tons.” She crossed her legs and began playing with her knee, as if to attract my attention to the knobby thing. And then it all gushed out of her. Holding in gossip even that long had been an unnatural torment. Her eyes turned from raisins to prunes.

  “Ed’s father committed suicide years ago. Blew his head right off with a gun. It all had something to do with Angus. Ed won’t tell me exactly what happened, but it had something to do with Angus. And Angus never even showed up at the funeral.”

  “When was all this?”

  “Their papa got so mad at Angus that he dragged him down in the cellar and nearly whipped him to death. He used to use an old buggy whip, Ed says. Right after that, Angus ran away to join the Navy. Now, don’t tell me you see nothing queer in that.”

  “If he joined the Navy, he must have been close to being an adult, if he wasn’t one already,” I said. “Ed says he thinks he must have been about seventeen.”

  “He thinks? Can’t he remember? Or figure it out?”

  “Don’t bark at me, Tom. You should be thanking me. It took me practically all night to wheedle this out of Ed. Ed doesn’t like to talk about his family. I heard more the other night than I’ve heard in the last ten years. You really should be thanking me.”

  “Thank you, Clarice.”

  She simpered. “You’re welcome.”

  “You say he almost whipped Angus to death?”

  “The neighbors had to go down to the cellar and stop it. If they hadn’t stepped in, he might have killed Angus. The boys said he was in a blind rage that night. Of course, Angus, with his hot temper, swore revenge. He ran off and joined the Navy. A week later their father put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Ed said there was a long letter, but the pastor came and read it and took it.”