by J. A. Jance
It was almost ten by then but not yet fully dark. We were on our way to the hotel. I was dead tired, but Mel had caught her second wind.
“Let’s go take a look at Ron Miller’s place before we call it a night,” Mel suggested.
She fed the Millers’ address into the GPS and off we went. By the time we reached North Cooper Point Road, it was full dark. Even so, it was possible to see that Ron Miller’s family lived in a home that made Sid Longmire’s place look like a slum and the governor’s mansion look modest. This wasn’t a gated community so much as a gated estate or a gated compound with several buildings looming into view. We drove past the driveway entrance slowly but without stopping.
Mel gave a whistle. “These people have moolah,” she observed. “So maybe showing up unannounced in the middle of the night to talk to their fair-haired boy isn’t such a good idea.”
I had visions of a Garvin McCarthy look-alike riding to the rescue before Mel and I had a chance to open our mouths.
“How about this?” I asked. “It’s been a long day. Let’s call it a job for tonight. Ron Miller may be tied in pretty tight with Janie’s House, but the place was closed all day today. If his conscience is bothering him, I’m willing to bet that he’ll show up there bright and early tomorrow, trying to get the lay of the land and figure out if the closure had anything to do with him. If he’s our guy, he’ll want to make sure his tracks are properly covered. I think Meribeth Duncan is far more likely to give us a crack at talking to Ron Miller than his parents will.”
“Agreed,” Mel said. “Time to head for the barn.”
Back at the hotel we stopped off at the coffee shop for a late supper. I had soup; Mel had salad. Once up in our room, I booted up my computer while Mel got first dibs on the bathroom. Hidden among all those penis enlargement spam messages was an e-mail from Todd Hatcher.
I checked on all the Web sites the person posing as Greg Alexander had visited. Surprise, surprise. Several of them feature snuff films. I think maybe we’re on to someone who is making and selling this crap. And there’s a new one-one that appears to feature the same girl and most likely isn’t faked. The strangulation was done barehanded and photographed with a stationary camera. If you can find the perpetrator, there should be defensive wounds on his hands and arms. I’m sending you a copy of the new clip. Warning: Don’t log on to the sites yourself. If you do, your spam folder will fill up with this junk within a matter of minutes.
I sent Todd a thank-you note and said that we’d be in touch tomorrow, which, it turned out, was very close to being today. There was an e-mail from my daughter, Kelly, with a photo of Kayla, my granddaughter, missing her right front tooth. That one rocked me because it didn’t seem possible that Kayla was already old enough to be losing her baby teeth.
Then, there at the bottom of the new-mail list lurked the one from Sally Mathers. I still didn’t know how to answer it, but I didn’t want her to think I was ignoring it, either.
Received your e-mail. Involved with a complicated investigation. I’ll get back to you when I can.
All of which was the truth, with only the smallest possible amount of varnish.
Mel emerged from the bathroom with nothing on and slipped into bed. I told her about the message from Todd.
“That squares with what the M.E. told us, too,” she said.
When she turned off her light, I got the message: Close the computer; step away from the chair; get in bed; turn out your light. I did all of the above.
Moments later I was snuggled up beside her in bed. I was drifting off to sleep when she awakened me with a snort of laughter.
“What’s so funny?” I grumbled.
“You are,” she said. “I can’t get over the idea that you thought it was strange that Ron Miller’s middle name came from an actual town. You don’t have any room to talk.”
“I didn’t say it was strange,” I corrected. “I said it was pretentious. And now that I’ve seen Ron Miller’s parents’ house, I’m not backing off on a single word of it. I’ll give Ron Miller the benefit of the doubt. He may not be pretentious, but his parents definitely are.”
When Mel’s cell phone alarm went off the next morning, it was time for our complicated single-bathroom tango. I stayed in bed snoozing while she did what she needed to do. Then, once she headed out the door for the elevator, I hit the bathroom. It was ten to eight by then, so I had to step on it. When I came down to the restaurant five minutes later, Mel and Ralph were seated together at a small table, both of them looking like they’d just stepped out of a store window. Compared to the two of them, I looked like a much-rumpled bed.
This is nothing new. Ralph Ames has always been a suave kind of guy. When I first met him, he was Anne Corley’s attorney. After her death, he came my way as part of the deal right along with the money I inherited from her. Since then, he’s been the one who has kept that inheritance not only intact but also growing. I believe that he’s now close to having been my attorney longer than he was Anne’s. And next to my former partner Ron Peters, Ralph is also my best friend.
In other words, I like the guy, but there are times when I also resent the hell out of him. I find it particularly provoking that, no matter the circumstances, he always manages to look like perfection itself. Even though I was wearing clothing fresh from the dry cleaner’s plastic bag, I couldn’t compete with Ralph’s terminal dapperness. And there’s no explaining Mel’s ability to look great no matter what, either.
As a consequence I was feeling a bit grumpy when I joined them in the restaurant where they sat, heads ducked close together, studying something on the table in front of them. I took one of the two remaining empty chairs.
Once I was seated-next to Mel and across from Ralph-I could see they were examining three eight-by-ten photos that lay on the table. Ralph glanced up at me and then pushed the photos in my direction.
“To what do we owe. .?” I began, pulling out my reading glasses and sticking them on my nose. When I saw the subject matter of the photos, my question dwindled away into shocked silence.
The first picture was one I recognized right off. It was my senior portrait from the Shingle, the Ballard High School yearbook. In it I wore my first-ever store-bought suit, purchased on layaway at JCPenney’s. At first glance I thought the other two were pictures of me as well. Upon closer examination, however, I realized that although the young man in the photo certainly looked like me, he wasn’t me. I didn’t recognize either the pose or the clothing. The third picture was of the same guy, grinning my own familiar grin. He was obviously fresh from basic training and wearing a World War II-vintage U.S. Navy uniform.
Ralph tapped first that photo and then the other lightly with his finger. “Meet Hank Mencken, Beau,” he said. “I believe this gentleman was your father.”
For a time I could barely breathe. Yes, I’d had a hint in Sally’s e-mail that this was coming and that I might finally be able to put a name on my father’s identity, but nothing had prepared me for the shock of that moment when I saw his photo for the first time. The world seemed to shift on its axis as I stared into the face of a complete stranger and discovered that it was almost a mirror image of my own.
Just as I had taken one look at Zoe Longmire and known at once that Marsha Gray Longmire was her mother, the same thing was true here. As I looked into the eyes in that photograph and studied the set of the jaw and the distinctive shape of the nose, I knew beyond a shade of doubt that I had found my family tree-my heritage and lineage.
“Mel told me about the e-mail,” Ralph was saying. “She thought I should try to find out what I could in advance of your making contact with Sally Mathers in case she was somehow trying to scam you. As near as I can tell, she’s not. She seems to be on the level.”
I tried to pay attention to his words, but I couldn’t. All I could do right then was stare in stunned silence at the face of someone who had been absent from my life for more than six decades, from before my birth. My mother and I nev
er discussed my father when I was growing up. It was almost as though he was a ghost who hadn’t ever existed in real life. And now the ghost was here, smiling back at me with a crooked grin and straight teeth. Those could have been my own, too.
For a moment, my eyes blurred with tears. How different all our lives would have been if my father hadn’t died in that motorcycle wreck or if he and my mother had married before I was born. What if he had lived long enough to take us back to Texas with him, back to Beaumont? Would my mother and father have lived happily ever after? Would my mother have been able to make the transition from being a Seattle girl to living in the wilds of East Texas? Would there have been other kids besides me in the family, a sister or a brother, perhaps, or maybe even both?
And what would my life have been like if I had been raised as Jonas Piedmont Mencken, with part of my name coming from my mother’s father and part of it from my father’s father? What would it have been like to grow up as the son of a loving father, as opposed to being a cast-off grandson, disowned twice over by two hard-bitten, hidebound old men who had no truck with a “no-good” woman who had borne a child out of wedlock? How had they justified turning away from that mother and child? After all, I was the result of an “unholy” union, not the cause of it. Why had they chosen to punish me right along with her?
All the while I was growing up, every holiday had served as a bleak reminder of how different our lives were from everyone else’s. Other kids came back to school after Thanksgiving and Christmas and Easter with stories of joyous holiday dinners and family celebrations complete with grandparents and cousins, aunts and uncles. For our little family it was always just the two of us-my mother and me and no one else.
I guess that’s part of what was going through my mind right then as I looked at the photos-that whole catalog of what-ifs and might-have-beens as opposed to what was.
When I could talk again, I looked at Ralph. “Tell me about him,” I said.
“Hank was a kid from a well-respected family. They had quite a lot of money-oil money, it turns out-but Hank wasn’t especially studious and he wasn’t drawn to the family business, either. He was a kid who liked to have fun, a little too much fun on occasion. Liked to walk on the wild side and all that. As Ms. Mathers told you in that e-mail, he got in some kind of hot water back home and was given a choice of joining the service or going to jail. He joined the navy. That’s how he ended up in Washington State, where he met your mother.
“I believe that after he died and before you were born, your mother made an effort to contact the family. They thought she was some kind of gold digger who was after the family money, and refused all contact.”
“Which explains why she made up a last name for me rather than using hers or his.”
Ralph nodded. “When your father’s parents, your grandparents, subsequently died, your aunt, your father’s sister, became your grandparents’ sole heir.”
“Sally Mathers’s mother.”
“Yes, Hannah. From what your cousin said in that e-mail, I wouldn’t be surprised if your aunt might want to name you as a beneficiary in her will.”
“That seems unlikely to me, doesn’t it to you?” I asked.
Ralph shrugged. “Stranger things have happened.”
“I sent Sally an e-mail when we got back to the hotel last night,” I said. “I told her I was involved in a case and that, as soon as it was resolved, I’d get back to her. But I don’t think I ever believed any of this was real. I thought it was some kind of pipe dream.”
“It’s not a pipe dream,” Ralph said. “I’ve checked newspaper records both here in Washington and in Texas. Hank Mencken’s military records show that he died in a motorcycle crash outside Bremerton in the last year of World War II. His body was transported back to Texas, where he was accorded a full military funeral and burial. Because of the family’s status in the community, his death received a good deal of coverage in the local newspaper. The Beaumont Daily Ledger no longer exists, but its archives have been digitized and turned over to the Texas State Historical Association. That’s where I found these two photos.”
The waitress showed up with menus and a carafe of coffee. I picked up the photos and held them out of harm’s way so no inadvertent drips from the pot would mar them.
Mel reached over and touched the back of my hand. “Are you all right?” she asked.
I shook my head. On the one hand, I wasn’t all right. On the other hand, I was. For the first time in my entire life I was a whole person-one with both a mother and a father.
“It’s a little much to take in all at once,” I said.
Ralph nodded. “I’ve made some discreet inquiries,” he said. “If you want to see your father’s sister before she passes, you should probably go to Texas as soon as possible. She’s a cancer patient who has decided to accept no additional treatment.”
“You mean like hospice?” I asked.
Ralph nodded. “Pain meds only. If you use your jet card, you can be there in a matter of hours.”
“I can’t walk away from this case,” I said. “Ross Connors is counting on us.”
And so is Josh Deeson, I thought.
Like me, Josh had been a fatherless kid until Marsha Longmire and Gerry Willis had tried to take him under their wing. Unfortunately, Josh had turned away from everything they’d offered him-a new family, a place in their universe, life itself. He had rejected it all. I didn’t want to make the same mistake.
But on the other hand. .
“Let me pull together a few more documents,” Ralph continued, “so that when you go you’ll have the benefit of the full story insofar as we know it. But don’t go by yourself,” he cautioned. “Take Mel with you.”
“Are you kidding?” I said. “She’s my partner. When it comes to family matters, she’s got my back.”
I looked at Mel. I expected her to be smiling; she wasn’t.
“I was worried that I had overstepped by turning Ralph loose on this,” she said. “I wasn’t sure how you would react.”
“I’m still not sure how I’m going to react,” I said. “But I think I needed something to get me off dead center and help me overcome decades of inertia.”
“So it’s all right then?”
I nodded.
The waitress stalked up to our table. “What’ll you have this morning?” she said. “And do you want separate checks?”
“No,” I said. “One check only. This one’s on me.”
We ordered breakfast. I don’t remember what I ate. I don’t remember what was said. I sat there the whole time continuing to stare down at the pair of photographs of the man who had been my father.
It was an odd sensation. Seeing him made me happy and sad. Glad to see who he was and to know he had once existed. Sad to realize that I had never known him; would never know him. And sad, too, to realize that he never knew me or my kids, especially his grandson, Scott, whose face was stamped with the same indelible family features-the Mencken family’s in Hank’s world; the Beaumont family’s in mine.
Hello and good-bye at the same time. It made me happy; it broke my heart.
Then Mel’s phone rang. She answered. “No!” she said. “When?” And then, “Okay. We’ll be right there.”
She picked up her purse. “Sorry,” she told Ralph. “Time to go to work.”
“What?” I asked.
“That was Ross,” she said. “There’s been a fire at Janie’s House overnight. He says the office building is a total loss.”
Chapter 23
Ralph’s cell phone rang just then, too. Answering, he waved at us while I gathered up the photos and took them along as we left the restaurant.
“Are you okay?” Mel asked as we got into the car.
“Okay,” I said, “and more than a little amazed. Thanks for putting Ralph on the case.”
“You’re welcome,” she said.
It took only a few minutes to drive from the Red Lion to what was left of Janie’s House. Contrast
is everything. The restaurant had been quiet and verging on sedate. At Janie’s House, chaos reigned for several blocks in either direction on Seventeenth Avenue Southeast. As Ross had told Mel, the middle building in the three-house complex had burned to the ground. Sparks from that had ignited the roof on one of the other two buildings and had burned through the shingles and into the attic space. No doubt that one would have suffered both smoke and water damage. Only the charred back wall of the middle building was still standing when we arrived. Firemen swarmed around it, extinguishing hot spots.
Our Special Homicide badges were enough to get us through the police barricades. Officers there told us that the fire chief in charge of the incident was Alan Mulholland. Dressed in full firefighting gear, he stood at the center of the action waving his arms and shouting out orders, while a frantic Meribeth Duncan, wearing sweats and with her orange-and-purple hair in sleep-tossed disarray, dogged his every step.
“How is it possible that there’s this much damage when the fire department is just down the street?” she demanded. “Couldn’t you have done something sooner?”
“Look, lady,” he said impatiently, “we were here less than four minutes after the call came in. You should have had hardwired smoke detectors in all the buildings. The one in the second building went off just fine when the roof caught fire,” he said, pointing toward the house next door.
“All three buildings had the same kind of equipment,” Meribeth insisted. “We had to install smoke detectors in order to bring them up to code. We have state-of-the-art intrusion detectors as well.”