makes it a big deal is this: Twenty-nine years ago, I had a one-night stand with Naomi Dale’s mother, a woman named Jasmine Day.”
Mel Soames is cool and collected most of the time, but that was more than she could handle. She staggered slightly and then dropped heavily onto one of the stools at the kitchen island.
“If she’s the missing person, then who’s your client?”
“A guy by the name of Alan Dale, Naomi’s father—the man who raised her from day one.”
“What does he want? Is this some kind of blackmail scheme?”
“It’s no scheme,” I assured her. “As far as I can tell, Alan’s a hell of a nice guy.”
“Does he know he’s not her real father?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does he have any idea that you might be Naomi’s biological father?”
“Most likely not,” I answered. “If he did, it seems like I’d be the last person he’d be asking for help in locating her. As for Naomi? She’s gone missing, and he needs me to find her.”
“He needs to find her or wants to find her?” Mel asked.
“Needs,” I answered. “Naomi walked away from Harborview within hours of giving birth to a baby girl.”
Mel actually gasped. “Walked away and left her baby behind?”
“Not just a baby—a premature, underweight baby who was born with a full-blown addiction to methadone.”
“That’s awful,” Mel murmured.
“Yes, it is,” I agreed. “The baby’s name is Athena. Alan has spent the last six weeks seeing her through the worst of drug withdrawal, all the while commuting back and forth between the neonatal unit at Children’s Hospital and the local Silver Cloud Hotel.”
“He’s been looking after her on his own?”
“On his own,” I confirmed. “Alan’s a widower. He’s trying to get the state to appoint him to be Athena’s legal guardian on a permanent basis. In order to do that and be able to take Athena back home to Texas with him, he needs to find Naomi and get her to relinquish her parental rights. He’s stuck here until he can make that happen.”
“Sounds like a hot mess,” Mel breathed.
“It is,” I acknowledged. “And just so you know, I told him he and Athena are welcome to stay at Belltown Terrace until such time as they’re able to go home, however long that takes.”
“Which could be a while,” Mel said.
“That, too,” I agreed. “I’m planning on driving into town tomorrow so I can sort out keys and garage-door openers and anything else that needs to be handled. Once I get them settled in, I expect to hang around for a couple of days to see if I can get a line on where Naomi’s gone off to.”
I stopped talking then and waited to see what would happen next. I didn’t have long to wait, and what did Mel do? She got up from the stool where she was sitting, walked over to me, and gave me a long, heartfelt hug.
“You’re a good man, Mr. J. P. Beaumont,” she told me, “a very good man. Take it from me, under the circumstances I think you got it just about right. Now, what can I do to help?”
Chapter 4
MEL AND I ATE DINNER WHERE WE OFTEN DO—SITTING side by side at the kitchen island. Mel had a glass of merlot. I had a non-alcoholic O’Doul’s. There are plenty of AA hardliners who give me grief about that from time to time, but I’ve been sober and drinking the occasional NA O’Doul’s for more than twenty years now. I have yet to go off the wagon on an O’Doul’s-fueled bender or awakened with an O’Doul’s-induced hangover, so let’s just leave it at that.
While we ate, I told Mel the story—the whole thing—starting with that long-ago 5th Avenue Theatre case that had turned into a double-homicide investigation. The initial victim, a local stagehand who turned out to be working undercover for the DEA, had been plugged full of holes by someone wielding a cobalt-blue stiletto shoe and then pushed off a cliff. Shortly after the shoe guy’s death, someone administered a fatal overdose to his sick and dying roommate.
This version of the story included the background on the comped-ticket arrangement that had been designed to cast Jasmine Day as the drug smuggler’s fall guy. I also told Mel about the resulting tryst between Jasmine and me. I related the details behind Naomi Dale’s initial running away from home along with her more recent disappearance from the hospital. The long tale ended with my telling Mel about Alan Dale’s six-week round of caring for his