a beverage and was pleasantly surprised when he went for a glass of straight tonic. With that my new favorite drinking buddy and I settled into the living room to watch the sun set over Elliott Bay.
“Did you make any progress?” he asked.
It was time to come clean, more or less. I spent the next half hour giving him a detailed report of what I’d learned while sitting amid layers of cat hair in Hilda Tanner’s humble abode.
“Tomorrow morning when I see that caseworker, do I need to tell her that we now suspect Petey Mayfield may be Athena’s father?”
“I think you do,” I advised him. “In cases like this, full disclosure is always the best strategy. Supposing we locate Naomi and get her to sign off, but then Petey shows up from somewhere out in left field and won’t sign or tries to cause trouble. Even if he does, I doubt he’d have a leg to stand on, since he abandoned both Naomi and her unborn baby long before Naomi abandoned Athena, but still it’s better to be up front about it.”
“Neither of them should have any say in this,” Alan muttered.
“That’s how it looks to both you and me,” I told him, “but I have a feeling Social Services may have a whole different take on the situation. In my experience they usually try to reunite families rather than break them apart.”
Of course, some families are so screwed up that they need to be disbanded, but I didn’t say that aloud to Alan Dale. He already had more than enough to worry about.
“So what’s next?” he asked.
“Have you filed a missing-persons report on Naomi?”
“No,” he responded. “Should I?”
“I think it’s time.”
“All right, then. If Marge can stay that long, I’ll try to get that done after my appointment with Social Services. Where do I go to do it?”
“Where’s your appointment?”
“Downtown somewhere—on Third Avenue, I believe, at Third and James.”
“Seattle PD is just a block or two away from there, uphill at Fifth and Cherry. You can file the report there. They’re likely to tell you that since Naomi’s an adult, she has a right to disappear if she wants to. In this case, however, I’m hoping Athena’s needs will take precedence.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going back over to West Seattle and have a chat with the developer who’s planning on building all those McMansions on what was once Agnes Mayfield’s property. If I can get their office to spring with a last name for Petey Mayfield’s Aunt Lenora, maybe I can get her to file a missing-persons report on him.”
“What are you going to tell the aunt?”
“The truth—that we believe her nephew to be Athena’s father and that we need to locate him in order to request that he put Athena’s future on track by relinquishing his parental rights.”
There was another thought in my mind as well—that if Athena really was Agnes and Peter Mayfield’s great-granddaughter, she might be in line for some kind of inheritance—from them, to say nothing of an inheritance from me. Those were parts of the story I had yet to disclose to anyone else, including not only Alan Dale but also my own kids, Scott and Kelly.
“Will she help us?” Alan asked.
“We’ll have to wait and see.”
Mel called about then so we could chat during her drive time home. Alan excused himself to go watch TV, but I think he really wanted to give us some privacy. I brought Mel up to date with my day’s worth of exploits, although it’s possible I neglected to mention that Hilda Tanner was walking around with a loaded handgun tucked away in her apron pocket. There are some things that are better left unsaid.
Once the call was over, leaving me to my own devices, I went into the family room, dropped into my favorite chair, and turned on my iPad. And then, just for the hell of it, I googled Highline Development. On their Web site I read the company’s history, which, as it turned out, was also the story of a family who despite suffering terrible hardships had somehow succeeded in achieving the American dream.
In the early 1900s, a Japanese sailor named Takumi Nishikawa jumped ship in San Francisco and made his way north to Washington State, working as a farm laborer en route and doing the same work he’d done before leaving Japan. Eventually he brought his wife, Suki, to the United States, where they both became citizens. Along with their two