“Couldn’t figure out your coffee situation though,” he said, waving a spatula at my espresso machine, a gift from my father one Christmas that I rarely used. “So I made cowboy coffee.” He poured jet-black liquid into a mug straight from a sauce pan. Apparently cowboy coffee is coffee made by boiling grounds right in hot water. It had quite a jolt.
I didn’t have the heart to tell him I didn’t eat bacon so I nibbled on a piece and hid the rest in my napkin. Everything was smothered with either grease or butter or both. My kind of breakfast. I sighed with pleasure.
“So what are your plans for the day?” he asked, studying me from across my dining room table.
“I’m headed for Astoria,” I said. “Going to try to track down Smitty and find out what he knows about Ellie.”
“Give him a shout out from me,” Boo said.
“I will,” I said “And what about you?”
“Figure I should wait here for Matt to show up.”
“Yeah, he should be back today.”
I let the ferrets out to play while I did the dishes and packed the stuff I needed for my trip. They seemed to like Boo and spent some time sniffing at his shoes.
“Do you have insoles in your shoe?” I asked.
“Oh, into feet are you? A bit kinky but that’s OK with me.”
“No, it’s because of the ferrets.”
“They’re into feet?”
“No insoles. If you have insoles in your shoes, they’ll steal them.”
“What?”
“Yes, Bandit will pry them right out of your shoes and hide them. She’s really into them for some reason. Not the other one. He likes underwear.”
“That’s OK. I don’t wear any.” Boo waggled his eyebrows at me.
“Whatever. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you about the insoles.”
It takes about four hours to drive from Seattle to Portland if you drive the speed limit. I got there in three hours. After crossing the Columbia River into Oregon, I took a right on the Columbia River highway and followed the river as it headed towards the sea. It was a small and winding road and it took me almost another hour to get into Astoria, an old fishing town, built on a steep hill, with lots of old two-story wooden buildings. Smitty’s house was probably a former fishing shack. It was clung to the edge of a hill, down near the water, at the end of a dead-end street.
A wooden wheelchair ramp provided access to the front porch from the driveway which was empty. Yellow roses bloomed on either side of a short path that led from the sidewalk to the front porch. Pots of cheerful red geraniums in window boxes contrasted with the white paint, which was peeling off the old wooden structure.
I parked on the street and approached the house. A most delicious smell wafted out the open windows: the smell of cookies baking. I rang the doorbell and waited.
“Hold on! I’m coming!” said a voice. But it was a long time before the door opened. I had to look down to meet the eyes of the man in the wheelchair. Smitty had really beautiful blue eyes: open and clear. His head was bald and he had the bulked-up shoulders of someone who’s spent a lot of time in a chair. He looked puzzled to see me but smiled.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“Yes, if you’re James Smith who served with Matt Rossiter and Boo Riley in the Second Platoon,” I said.
“Wow!” he said, his eyes getting even brighter. “This is definitely a trip back in time. You just missed Matt.”
“Really? Matt was here?” I looked around, as if I would see him.
“Yeah, this morning. Thought he needed to warn me about some crazy guy who’s going around shooting our old platoon members.”
“There is someone going around shooting your old platoon members,” I said. “I was just at Boo’s when someone shot at him.”
A strange expression crossed Smitty’s face. I couldn’t tell if it was annoyance or disappointment. “OK, well I guess you should come in,” he said. He peered out the door, as if looking for signs of trouble, but the neighborhood was deserted. It was quiet little street, lined with small homes about the same age and condition as Smitty’s.
He pushed open the screen door and held it for me as I scooted inside. The living room was tiny and cramped. There was a sofa on one side facing a TV screen and on the other side, a desk set against the wall. The wall was covered with shelves filled with books. The desk contained a computer monitor, a keyboard, a printer, and stacks of paper.
A buzzer went off in the back room and I almost jumped.
“I’ve got to check the biscotti,” said Smitty, wheeling through an open door into an even smaller kitchen, which was designed like a galley, with a sink on one side, surrounded by cupboards, and the refrigerator and stove lined up on the other side. It was hot in there, but the back door at the end of the room was open and through the screen I could feel a cool breeze and see a small deck and beyond it the dark-blue waters of the Columbia River.
Smitty pulled open the oven door and peered inside.
“Yep, these are done,” he said, grabbing a towel and pulling out a baking sheet of biscotti. They were golden brown. He set the tray down on the counter next to the sink, then reached for tongs and started flipping each of the biscotti over.
“Got to toast the other side,” he said. Within a few minutes, he was sliding the baking sheet back into the oven. It was clear he had done this many times before.
“You obviously know what you’re doing,” I said.
“Yeah! This is what we do for a living.” He laughed. “I bake biscotti and my wife delivers them to coffee shops in town. She’s the brains of the operation. I just do the baking.”
“You’re married?” I don’t know why I was surprised.
“Yeah!” He waved his head at a photo on the refrigerator. It showed a smiling brunette in a bright red dress, holding a bouquet of daisies, and standing beside Smitty, who was sitting in his wheel chair, wearing a blue suit. “Been almost ten years now.”
The woman looked familiar. In fact, she looked a lot like Ellie Foley, if Ellie was ten years older, ten pounds heavier and had dyed her hair brown.
“What’s her name?” I asked.
“Nora,” he said.
“How’d you guys meet?” I asked.
“She was my home caregiver,” Smitty said. “The only one I didn’t run off. No matter how badly I treated her, she didn’t let it get to her. After a while, I realized I was in love with her. And then she told me she was in love with me. Been together ever since.”
“Congratulations,” I said.
He smiled.
“This was taken on your wedding day?” I asked.
“Yeah, we just went to the courthouse. She didn’t know anyone in town. She had just moved here from Kansas.”
“From Kansas?” I tried to keep the incredulity out of my voice.
But Smitty didn’t hear it. “Yeah.”
“So you never met her relatives?”
“She was an orphan. Her parents were dead.”
“In a tornado?” I couldn’t resist.
“What?” Smitty was confused. He really was an innocent in some ways. “No, in a car accident. When she was fourteen. She had a tough life, ran away from a couple of foster homes, lived on the streets for a while, did drugs. We had that in common. “
“What about friends? Did you ever meet any of her friends?”
Smitty shook his head. “She needed to make a clean break. Everyone she knew was using.”
“What about Boo?”
“What about him?”
“You suddenly stopped talking to him.”
Smitty looked thoughtful. “You know, once I met Nora, I didn’t need anyone else. We completed each other. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in love like that.”
I shook my head. Regrettably, I didn’t know what he was talking about.
“But you didn’t come down here to ask me about Nora,” Smitty said.
“No, actually I came to ask about another woman, a woman nam
ed Ellie Foley. Boo said he sent her to you about ten years ago.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell,” said Smitty. He wheeled over to the sink, turned on the water in the faucet and washed his hands.
“She was someone who was running from the law. Boo thought she might help you out since she had some training as a nurse.”
Smitty looked startled for a moment. Then he said, “She never showed up.”
“Are you sure?” I tapped the photo on the refrigerator. “Because your wife looks a lot like her.”
“I’m absolutely sure,” he said, with some indignation in his voice. “You think I don’t know my own wife.” His hands curled into fists and his voice was choked with anger.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m just trying to track her down. I figured you were the last person who saw her before she disappeared.”
“Why are you looking for her?” Smitty was back in control. He turned away, drying his hands on an embroidered dish towel.
“Apparently she’s been underground all these years and now she wants to come out of hiding,” I said.
“I wonder why,” Smitty said. His face was clouded.
“Yes, that’s the question I’ve been asking,” I said.
We were quiet for a moment. I couldn’t tell if he was lying to protect Ellie or if he was considering the possibility that his wife had lied to him.
“Well, I’m sorry I couldn’t help,” Smitty said, wheeling back towards the living room. I could see I was about to be dismissed.
I looked around the room, hoping I might find something else that would help me determine the identity of Smitty’s wife. The place had a few feminine touches: embroidered velvet pillows on the shabby beige couch, a jade green vase full of orange gladiolas, but nothing really personal. No photos on the walls, just a framed print of a Monet garden.
“Who’s the writer?” I asked, looking at the cluttered desk.
“That’s me!” said Smitty, sounding surprised. “My little hobby. Besides baking. Which I guess is no longer a hobby, now that we’re making money at it.” He rolled over to the desk. “I just finished a memoir about my time in Nam. Gave Matt a copy of it and asked him to read it.”
“What did Matt tell you?” I was grasping at straws, trying to prolong my time with Smitty. “About the shootings.”
Smitty’s face clouded again. “He said someone tried to kill Shabazz.”
“What?”
“Yeah. When Matt was down in Oakland. Shabazz was giving a speech and someone shot at him. Killed one of his bodyguards.”
“Wow! Is Shabazz OK? Is Matt OK?”
“Yeah. Shabazz—well I guess his name is Luther now—is in the hospital. Matt got a chance to visit him before he left. Then he thought he better head up here and warn me.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“You know, I hate to leave my home,” Smitty looked around his place helplessly. “I’ve got everything set up so it works for me. It’s really hard to stay anywhere else. I told Matt I was staying put.”
“Look,” I said, “you can make your own decisions. But look at the facts. Someone killed Rivers. Someone tried to blow up Matt. Someone shot at Boo. Now you’re saying someone shot at Shabazz. All in the last few days. I don’t know where you are on the list but you shouldn’t take any chances.” I paused. “Think about your wife and what she would want you to do.”
Smitty sighed. “I suppose I could go stay in a hotel for a few days. Nora and I have been talking about spending a weekend in Portland. Maybe it’s time. As soon as she gets back, I’ll talk to her about it.”
“The sooner the better,” I said.
The buzzer went off in the kitchen. “Got to go tend to my biscotti,” he said, but he didn’t move. I was clearly being dismissed. “Good luck with your search!”
And with that, there was not much I could do but head out the door.
Chapter 24
I didn’t believe Smitty’s story about Nora. Not for a minute. The question was: did he believe it? But what could I do? If he was protecting her, would he call her? Would he tell her someone was snooping around asking questions? I could sit outside the house and wait to see if she came home. I’ll always regret that I didn’t decide to do that.
But if there’s anything I hate, it’s surveillance. Sitting in a car. Watching and waiting. Boring! So I drove into downtown and looked for the courthouse. It was easy to find: an imposing two-story brown stone building, all pediments and pillars and cornices. Marriage ceremonies were performed there, but they didn’t have copies of marriage certificates. When I finally tracked down someone who could help me, after bouncing back and forth between several departments, I learned that the marriage certificates were in Portland but I couldn’t access recent records anyway unless I was licensed as an investigator in Oregon.
Nice that they are protecting people’s privacy. Bad for me. I thought about going into Portland and seeing if I could hire someone to do the research for me, but the odds were against me. Certainly Ellie would not have gotten married under her real name. She must have established another identity fairly early on for her to be able to cross the border, for her to get a drivers license. At best I might get the names of the witnesses.
I headed for the little coffee shop across the street from the courthouse, planning to have my usual nonfat tall latte and something sweet to go with it while I decided what to do next. As I was trying to choose between a chocolate-filled croissant and a huge oatmeal and raisin cookie, I noticed the jar of biscotti by the cash register.
“Oh, biscotti!” I said. “Who do you get those from?”
“A local couple,” said the tall, young man behind the counter. “Smitty and his wife Nora. We get them fresh every day.”
“What about these?” I said. “Were they baked today?”
“Absolutely. Nora just dropped them off.”
“I’d love to talk to her,” I said. “I’m doing a special event next week and it would be great to serve biscotti.”
“Well, I can give you her contact information,” he said, pulling out a drawer and flipping through the papers in it. I’ve often found people in small towns to be generous with information.
“It would be even better if I could talk to her in person,” I said. “Do you know where she is right now?”
“I think she’s just finishing up her route. She delivers to some of coffee stands on the beaches between here and Seaside,” he said. He looked uncertain. “You could try looking for her. She drives a red van and it says Smitty’s Biscotti on the door panel.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“So do you want one?” He lifted up the lid to the glass jar of biscotti. His tongs hovered above them.
“Sure,” I said. I paid for my purchases, took the biscotti in a little paper bag, and headed for my car. It seemed like I might be able to track this Nora down, find out for myself if she was Ellie Foley.
The highway took me out of Astoria and across a long bridge. All along the way I was watching the oncoming traffic, which was bumper to bumper, expecting to see a red van heading the opposite direction, but I didn’t see any. That was good.
It looked like the beaches were clearing out. The sun was dropping low in the sky. In the evenings on the northwest coast, the temperature drops abruptly and the sea breeze blows sand into your eyes. I expected the coffee stands would be closing too, as their customers departed. I cruised through several long parking lots, but saw nothing but the grey rolling waves of the Pacific.
Then, just as I was about to turn around, I spied a red van parked at the end of a parking lot. I parked beside it but there was no one inside. Using all my investigative powers, I decided Ellie must have gone for a walk, so I inspected the sand near the front of the car. I could see a distinct pattern of footsteps, leading down towards the water, and the silhouette of a person, sitting in the sand by the water’s edge, looking out at the breaking waves and the setting sun.
I made my way towards her
, slipping and sliding a bit in the sand. I wished I had a jacket as the moist, evening air settled around my shoulders. The woman was lost in thought, and I got close before she even noticed me.
I angled wide so I could approach her from the side, as if I were just ambling along the shore. But she spooked as soon as she saw me looking at her. She jumped up and headed back towards the parking lot.
I followed.
She quickened her pace but I quickened mine.
She broke into a run. That’s when I realized she was scared.
“Ellie,” I called out. “Wait.”
She was just at the edge of the parking lot, almost at her van. She whirled around and her hand went into her jacket pocket.
“That’s not my name,” she said, turning to face me. The wind was blowing her long brown hair into her eyes.
“That’s too bad,” I said. “I’m looking for Ellie Foley.” The shape of her chin. The defiant stance. The hazel color of her eyes. I knew I had found her.
She pulled out a gun and pointed it at me. “Who are you?” she asked.
I held up my hands. My heart pounded furiously.
“My name is Rachel Stern,” I said. “I’m not a threat. Please believe me. It’s just that I’ve been looking for you for a long time. There are some things I want to know.”
Her face melted. “Oh my God,” she said softly. She lowered the gun and crammed it back into her pocket. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I carry a gun for protection. You never know.”
She studied my face with wonder in her eyes. “Come here,” she said. “I want to see your face better.”
She sounded crazy but I did as she asked, moving to the side so I was not in silhouette against the sun. We stared at each other for a long time. She had changed a lot over the years. Her face was plumper. She had wrinkles radiating out from the corners of her eyes. And her hair was no longer red, but a glossy, even chestnut brown, that I guessed came out of a bottle.
She studied me as intently as I studied her.
“You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting for this moment,” she said. “But how did you ever find me?”
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