Agnes’s great-grandchild, you see, and I’d like to know if it’s okay.”
“The baby’s fine,” I said. “Her name is Athena, and she was born at the end of January. The one who’s gone missing and may not be all right is Naomi.”
“But you’ll let me know when you find her?” Hilda insisted.
“Of course,” I said, making a promise I wasn’t at all sure I could make good on. “I’ll try to keep you in the loop.”
Chapter 8
I’D BEEN GONE FOR A LONG TIME, BUT UNLIKE HILDA Tanner’s Rocky, Lucy doesn’t hold grudges. She greeted me with a thumping tail wag and immediately assumed her customary automotive position with her chin glued to my shoulder.
Walking to the car, I had noticed that although my jacket had mostly dried out, my shoes hadn’t. But dry or not, the jacket was in exceptionally sorry shape. Earlier I’d made note of the developer listed on the coming-attractions sign located on Agnes Mayfield’s property—Highline Development. A quick check online told me that the Highline corporate office was only a mile or so away, right there in West Seattle. It would have been simple to stop by in passing, but then something my mother always used to say came to mind: “You never get a second chance to make a good first impression.”
Right then my torn and mud-splattered jacket wasn’t nearly up to “good first impression” standards. Between that and the reality of worsening afternoon traffic, I headed for Belltown Terrace instead, hoping there would be no unfortunate mishaps between hither and yon. One of Seattle’s most spectacular traffic-jam events featured a semi loaded with frozen crab that had overturned near the West Seattle Bridge, turning hour-long commutes into six-hour nightmares. (If you think I’m kidding about that, you can always Google it and see for yourself!)
While my jacket might not have been fit for a drop-in visit to a real-estate developer’s office, it was just fine for stopping by the Pecos Pit Bar-B-Que. As I said, the outlet in West Seattle was brand-new—at least it was new to me. For decades Pecos Pit operated out of a born-again gas station across from Sears on Seattle’s First Avenue South. That’s how people used to give directions to the place—it’s right across from Sears. Now that Sears is going the way of the dodo bird, those directions no longer work. The building once occupied by Sears now functions as the headquarters for Starbucks. From what I understand, Safeco Field is about to be renamed for a cell-phone company, and the Kingdome is long gone, too. Clearly I’m turning into one of those cranky old codgers who pine for the way things used to be as opposed to appreciating how they are now. But I digress. Again!
At Pecos Pit I ordered up some carry-out dinner fixings—a quart each of beef brisket, baked beans, and coleslaw in foam containers along with a dozen sesame-seed-covered hamburger buns. For dinner that evening, I’d be serving barbecue-beef sandwiches, some assembly required.
I was standing at the counter waiting while the staff put together my to-go order when my phone rang, Al Thorne’s name appearing in the caller ID. Clearly he was off work now and using his cell phone.
“How’s it hanging?” he asked when I answered.
Al’s standard bad-taste greeting never varies. His sense of humor is only one step up from fourth-grade-level knock-knock jokes, and he’s a walking, talking catalog of clichés, but he’s a good guy with a heart in the right place, so I try to overlook his linguistic shortcomings. Since he was calling me, I assumed that meant he had news.
“What have you got for me?” I asked.
“The Mount Baker Tunnel,” he replied.
The Mount Baker Tunnel is on I-90 between the bridge across Lake Washington from Mercer Island and the Rainier Avenue interchange. When you’re traveling westbound, that’s the first freeway exit inside Seattle proper.
“What is this?” I asked. “An afternoon traffic report?”
“That’s where the aid car picked up Naomi Dale, just to the west of the Mount Baker Tunnel,” he told me. Somehow or other she made it over the Jersey barrier and was standing there on the shoulder of the interstate, trying to wave down a passing vehicle. A Metro bus driver called it in. She was staggering all over the place, and he said he missed hitting her by bare inches. The poor guy almost crapped his pants. If he had hit her, she would have been squashed flatter than a pancake—her and that unborn baby of