“Are the Daddy and Mommy fighting?” I asked.
Taffy nodded her head, her brown eyes solemn.
“What are they fighting about?”
“The baby ducky,” said Taffy, pointing out the smallest of the rubber duckies.
“Why are they fighting about the baby ducky?”
“They both want the baby ducky to live with them!” said Taffy. Her lower lip stuck out and quivered a little.
I frowned. “But that doesn’t make sense,” I said, without thinking.
When Ginger told her ex-boyfriend, Doug, that she was pregnant, he was upset and begged her to get an abortion. He had just met Sheila, the woman he later married. Ginger promised she wouldn’t ask him for child support if he promised to let her raise the child alone. Doug had agreed and, at first, wanted nothing to do with the baby. But once Taffy was born, he had softened and actually spent time with her one evening a week.
Then I realized that I should be reassuring the little girl.
“Let’s think of a way the duckies could solve this problem,” I said. “What do you think they should do?”
Taffy beamed. “They should all live together in Mommy Ducky’s house,” she said. “That’s a great idea,” I said. I smiled, but my smile was half-hearted. That was never going to happen. Not unless Doug was going to divorce Sheila. And even then, it was unlikely that Doug and Ginger would get back together.
Doug had been a starving artist when Ginger met him but he married Sheila, a wealthy widow, who he met at an auction when she bought one of his paintings. As a result of her patronage, his career had taken off. He was now represented by galleries in Los Angeles and New York City. He and his wife traveled frequently. I couldn’t imagine him giving that up to move in with Ginger in her funky loft.
Taffy played happily with the new configuration of duckies for a while, with the Daddy Ducky and Mommy Ducky smooching. Because our schedule was off, it took longer than usual to get her to sleep. I had to read Goodnight Moon five times, instead of the usual two, but finally she drifted off.
Just in time. Ginger arrived around eleven PM, very high energy, but then Ginger usually is. She kicked off her shiny black high heels at the door and tiptoed across the hardwood floor. She stopped to check on Taffy, who stirred but went back to sleep, then followed me into the kitchen while I turned on the kettle.
“How was class?” I asked.
“Great!” said Ginger. “Ben is such a talented teacher. He knows just how to make new dancers feel comfortable and he always introduces a new move at the right time.”
That certainly sounded like Ben. He had made me feel like a great dancer, even when I didn’t know what I was doing, and he had certainly introduced the right moves at the right time to get me to fall into bed with him.
Ginger must have noticed my expression. “I’m sorry, Rachel. Does it bother you that I talk about him?” She knew all about our short relationship. In fact, she had warned me about him.
“Maybe,” I said. “But it’s been a while. I should be over him by now.” Ben was the one who had broken it off. He couldn’t get over the fact that I had done a background check on him. I couldn’t get over the fact that I hadn’t done it sooner. I should have known better. After all, that’s my job.
I sprinkled some Darjeeling tea leaves (Ginger’s favorite) into a blue and white porcelain tea pot, poured hot water over them and set the pot down on the little yellow linoleum table in the kitchen. I don’t use the dining room much for entertaining because it’s where the ferrets live in a giant cage in the corner.
“Isn’t there some sort of rule about that?” Ginger asked, taking a seat. She knew I was big on rules for dating and relationships.
“Yes, it should take half as long as the time you are together for you to get over a broken relationship,” I said. “If that’s true, I’m good to go.” I set out two mugs, both also blue and white, and fetched the sugar in its willow pattern bowl from the counter.
I saw Ginger shake her head.
“Hey, it’s OK,” I said. “I just met someone interesting. Lots of chemistry. Of course, he’s a lawyer.” Ginger knew I had sworn I would never date a lawyer. I don’t think lawyers can be trusted, at least, not if my dad is a typical lawyer. I filled up the matching creamer with half and half from the refrigerator and set it on the table too.
“So how’d you meet him?” Ginger asked, as she poured us both a cup of tea.
“He hired me,” I said.
Ginger set the teapot down. “You swore you would never again mix business and romance,” she pointed out.
“That’s true,” I agreed, taking a sip of my tea. “So I guess I’ll have to wait until the case is over before I jump into bed with him.” I figured that was my mistake with Ben.
“Oh, Rachel,” Ginger sighed. I know she worries about me. I have a terrible track record with men, which is ironic, since it’s my job to protect other women from having their hearts broken.
“Speaking of relationships,” I said, “what’s this about you and Doug fighting over Taffy?”
“What? How do you know that?” Ginger’s eyes got big.
“Taffy told me!”
“She did?”
“Well, not in so many words. She was acting out a fight with the rubber ducks in the bathtub.”
“I’ve been trying so hard to keep it from her,” Ginger said.
“You know how sensitive kids are,” I said.
“So what’s going on?” I asked.
“It’s Doug,” Ginger said. “He’s trying to get custody.” She set down her cup.
“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “Did he break up with Sheila?”
“No, it was her idea.” Ginger looked down at the table. I could see she was trying to control her emotions. Ginger really hates having feelings. She blinked back tears.
“Why would she want custody of Taffy?” I asked.
“She can’t get pregnant,” Ginger blurted out, raising her eyes to mine. Her eyeliner was beginning to run. “Apparently they’ve been trying for years. They finally did some tests and she found out she can’t have kids. According to Doug, she was devastated.” Ginger’s voice got harsh. “She SO wanted to give Doug a child.”
“Auntie Rachel!” It was Taffy’s voice coming from the living room.
I went in and rubbed her back until she went back to sleep. By the time I got back to the kitchen, Ginger was a little calmer. She had poured us each another cup of tea and set out a plate of shortbread cookies, that she found in the back of one of my cupboards. I was surprised that I had any cookies in my cupboards. I usually eat them in one sitting.
“Then I guess she decided that since Doug already had a child, she would just steal mine. They’re going for sole custody. In order to do that, they have to prove that I’m an unfit mother.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “What about offering them joint custody?”
Ginger glared at me. “Do you really think I want to have my child bounced back and forth between two households with completely different sets of rules?”
Doug often complained about the way Taffy was dressed, about the hippy atmosphere of her preschool, even about her name. Ginger complained about the things Doug bought for Taffy: Disney videos, video games and candy bars. Taffy always came back from visits with Doug “high as a kite” on sugar.
“OK, OK,” I held up my hands. I thought Ginger might like the idea. I knew she was often overwhelmed by the difficulties of juggling child-rearing and self-employment. Ginger is an artist and an astrologer. Plus she has an active social life—to put it mildly. She’s usually dating one or two men at a time. I’m not sure how she does it all.
“So what are you going to do?” I asked.
“I’ve got to fight.” Ginger said. “But that probably means hiring a lawyer.”
“I don’t see how they can sue you for custody,” I said.
“She is Doug’s child,” Ginger said with despair.
“What ab
out your agreement?”
“It was never binding. I mean I got it in writing but it wouldn’t stand up in a court of law. You can’t sign away your parental rights. And I can’t sign away Taffy’s right for support from her father.”
“What’s the first step?” I asked.
“There’s going to be a paternity test,” Ginger said bitterly.
“Any chance?”
Ginger rolled her eyes.
“I wish.”
Chapter 6
Gus Holliday asked me to meet him at noon at the Blue Moon, “his old stomping grounds,” as he put it in his morning phone call. The Blue Moon was a tavern in the University District that had once been the hangout for radicals and artists, poets and professors. It looked like it had been around forever, as so did most of its patrons.
I had only been in the bar once, back in the days when I was drinking. I had a vague memory of dark booths, wooden tables carved with initials, bathroom walls layered with graffiti, floors sticky with spilled beer and stools occupied by old men who appeared to have been sitting there for decades.
By the light of day it was not much different. It looked like the same old guys were sitting at the bar as had been there ten years earlier. A huge crudely carved bear statue reared up besides an antique cigarette machine. Light filtered through the closed blinds, creating a dim glow as it filtered through the clouds of cigarette smoke which had settled over the empty pool tables. I wondered how I was going to find Gus Holliday.
I had done some preliminary research on him before leaving for my appointment. Back in the Sixties, Gus had been the editor of the first alternative paper in Seattle, the Freebie. Later he helped run a clinic which catered to street kids and he pioneered the idea of neighborhood councils, serving for a while as the head of the University District council. His current project was a web site which commissioned and collected articles on Washington State History.
But when, a man got up from one of the booths in the back, I recognized him immediately. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and had long hair, though not as long as in the pictures on the web site. He was over-dressed for the Blue Moon, in a crisp white shirt and dark slacks. We shook hands and he ushered me over to a booth, where another man was sitting, nursing a beer.
Gus introduced the other guy as Rick, a former professor of philosophy. Rick had grey hair pulled back in a pony tail and a bushy beard. He wore a t-shirt with a slogan on the front.
“Ran into Rick while I was waiting for you,” Gus said, “and thought he might have some more names for you.”
“Joel tells me you want to write an article on Ellie Foley,” Gus said, after figuring out what I wanted to drink: a cup of coffee. He shouted out the order to the bartender.
“Yes,” I replied. I didn’t know what Joel had told him about the circumstances so I didn’t want to go into detail.
“Haven’t heard that name in a long time,” said Rick.
“No one’s seen or heard from her since the Weevil robbery,” Gus said. His eyes were bright in the dim light. “Some folks think she died.”
“But you don’t,” I said, noticing his mild tone.
Gus smiled. “If anyone could successfully evade the FBI, it would be Ellie.”
“I’m interested in finding anyone who knew her,” I said. “People I can interview.”
“Well, we knew her, didn’t we, Gus?” said Rick, nudging Gus as he put the emphasis on knew.
“There was a lot of cross-fertilization in those days,” Gus agreed amiably. “We worked together, we lived together, we slept together.”
“You lived with her?” I asked, whipping my notebook open. The bartender came over with a thick ceramic mug of dark brown liquid. I took one sip and almost spit it out. It was burning hot and bitter.
“That was metaphorical,” Gus said. “But Rick did. Didn’t she live at the RAG house on Capitol Hill?”
“RAG house? What’s that”
“Short for Revolutionary Action Group,” Rick explained. “It was a political experiment.” He turned to Gus. “She only lived there for a few months. But we saw a lot of her, though, since her lawyer lived there.”
“My dad?” I asked.
They both seemed startled by that.
“You’re Marty and Silvia’s daughter?”
“Yes.”
They looked at each other.
“Do you remember living there?”
“No.” I shook my head.
“What year were you born?”
“1968.”
“You were probably too young to remember much,” Rick said. “It wasn’t really a good house for raising kids. At least, that’s what your mother said when they left.”
“As I recall, it was because the little one—” Gus nodded at Rachel—”that must have been you,”— then turned back to Rick, “ate your pot brownies.”
“Hey, not my fault,” Rick laughed, sitting back in the booth, and holding up his hands in mock surrender. “They were in the refrigerator clearly labeled with my name. No one else was supposed to touch them.”
“Try telling that to a toddler,” Gus said.
“I don’t remember that at all,” I said.
“Of course, you wouldn’t. You were stoned out of your gourd.” Rick laughed. “Just sat there staring at the wallpaper. That’s how we figured out what happened to the brownies. That and the chocolate smeared all over your face. Silvia threw a fit. She and Marty moved out a few weeks later.”
My first memories took place in a run-down apartment on Capitol Hill. When I was about to start elementary school, we had moved to a big three bedroom house on Mercer Island, where I finally got my own room.
I took this in and let it settle. “But we’re not here to talk about me,” I said at last. “I’m trying to learn something about Ellie. Tell me about her.”
“She didn’t last long at that house,” Rick said. “She got thrown out for being too radical.”
“Then she went to live with SDS crew in Fremont and they threw her out for not being radical enough,” Gus said.
“What was she doing that was not radical enough?” I wanted to know.
“Well, for one thing, she was dancing at a strip club. The other women thought she was participating in her own oppression.”
Rick snorted. “Ellie said she was exploiting the patriarchy.”
“And then she got pregnant.”
“Before the bombing?”
“No, during the trial. She hoped it might make the judge more sympathetic when she went in for sentencing.”
“Didn’t work though,” Rick observed.
“Yeah, the judge lectured her about the irresponsibility of bringing a child into the world that she couldn’t care for. And then sentenced her to twenty-five years.”
“What happened to the baby?” I asked.
“Sky was born while Ellie was in prison. They put her into foster care.”
“What about the dad?”
“What dad?” Rick laughed.
“Ellie would never say who the dad was. Probably she didn’t know.”
I was surprised by this. Gus must have seen the look on my face.
“Ellie was all about smashing monogamy.”
“So what happened to the kid?”
“Ellie got Sky back once she got out of prison. But Sky was at day care on the day of the bank robbery.” Gus shook his head. “When Ellie didn’t show up to pick her up, your mother took her home. We all got together and tried to figure out what to do with Sky. We held onto her as long as we could, thinking Ellie would come and get her, but she never did. She just vanished.”
“So what happened to Sky?”
“The police finally came and got her. They took her to Child Protective Services.”
It was quiet at the table.
“Poor kid.”
“Yeah.”
“Did anyone ever find out what happened to her?”
“No. I assume she was adopted. I don’t know. I don’t know
the protocol for something like that, you know the mother is on the FBI Most Wanted list and the kid has been abandoned.”
“You know who would know?” That was Rick
“Who?”
“Karen. She became a social worker. She works for DSHS now.”
“What’s her last name?” I asked.
Rick frowned. “It used to be Jones.”
Gus nodded. “She changed her name when she married Tammy.”
“They came up with a non-patriarchal name,” said Rick.
“Something like Freewoman or Eveschild,” said Gus.
I scribbled down the name, then realized I was not supposed to be looking for Ellie’s kid. I was supposed to be looking for Ellie. Well, actually I wasn’t supposed to be looking for Ellie. I was supposed to be looking for information about Ellie.
“So tell me about the bank robbery,” I said.
Gus shrugged. “Ellie got in with a desperate bunch when she got out of prison. That’s all I can say. You know the movement splintered in the Seventies. Some of us decided to work in the system but some people got really disillusioned. They thought any compromise was selling out. They went underground, armed themselves. The Weevil folks went that way.”
“Do you think it was prison that hardened her?” I asked. I was always interested in people’s stories. How they interpreted the events of their lives. How that affected their choices. That’s why I had become a counselor, which was my previous career. It turns out that was a useful background to have as a private investigator.
“I don’t know,” Gus scratched his head. “I didn’t see her much after she got out of prison. What do you think, Rick?”
Rick shook his head. “She was different all right but not harder. Actually she seemed more timid. Ran into her with Sky a couple of times at the co-op. I asked her what she was doing and she was vague. Didn’t want to talk. Maybe she was already involved with Weevil.”
“You know Karen was the only one who visited her when she was in prison,” Gus said. “I feel kind of bad about that.”
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