was always the poor newbie—the employee with the least amount of seniority and the least experience—who was left manning or womaning the front counter during the preferred lunch hour. I was prepared to deal with a certain amount of incompetence, but I knew that even a novice in the office would be more adept at searching out records than I was.
Nonetheless, I was a little taken aback to see that the young woman standing behind the counter sported a pink-and-purple Mohawk. I came of age when women in the workforce wore two-piece suits or dresses along with heels and hose. In those days wearing pants was strictly forbidden. In fact, back in the late sixties I’m not sure pantsuits had even been invented. This woman wore faded jeans topped by a T-shirt that said BITE ME! Her arms were alive with countless tattoos, and her ears sported at least seven studs each. She also wore a nose ring.
“May I help you?” she asked. An ID lanyard hanging around her neck identified her as Linda Collins. She might have looked scary as hell, but her greeting was cordial enough.
“My name is Beaumont,” I told her, “J. P. Beaumont.” I produced one of my business cards and handed it over. “I’m working for a client whose great-grandmother recently passed away, and I’m wondering if you could locate the deeds for several parcels of property.”
I was the one doing all the talking, but it wasn’t clear if the Tattooed Lady on the far side of the counter was listening to a word I said. Instead she stood there mutely staring down at my business card.
“J. P. Beaumont,” she murmured at last. “Didn’t you used to work for Seattle PD in homicide?”
That was unexpected. “Yes, I did,” I admitted.
“My grandpa used to talk about you all the time,” she replied. “He always said you were one of the best—that you solved more cases roaring drunk than most people could cold sober.”
Talk about a backhanded compliment.
“And your grandfather is?”
“Conrad Collins,” she answered, “but people at the department used to call him Corky.”
That was a name out of the past. Detective C. Collins and I had the shared idiosyncrasy of using our initials as opposed to our given names. At work I was usually called J.P., but for reasons I never quite fathomed, Detective Collins was dubbed Corky. In fact, I believe that day in the county Recorder’s Office was only the second time I’d ever heard the name Conrad. The first time had been at his retirement party. Corky was about ten years my senior, and the moniker had been well established before I ever came on the scene. In addition, the words “solving cases drunk” could have applied to him every bit as much as they did to me. Corky and I had knocked back more than a few adult beverages together back in our old Doghouse days.
“I’ll be damned,” I said. “How is Corky these days? Be sure to tell him I said hello.”
The expression on Linda’s face darkened. “I doubt it would do much good,” she said. “Gran had to put him in a memory-care facility up near where they live in Phinney Ridge. These days when she goes to see him, he usually thinks she’s his mother. I’ll tell Gran about meeting you, though. It’ll mean a lot to her that someone still remembers him. Now, what do you need?”
I opened my iPad to the Zillow page, told her what I was looking for, and passed the device across the counter to her. Looking down, she studied the screen while her fingers moved like lightning over her own keyboard.
“You need the current deeds?” she asked.
“And any previous ones.”
In less than five minutes’ time, Linda reached down and produced a stack of paper that had just shot out from a below-counter printer.
“Here you go,” she said with a smile, slipping the pages into a file folder, which she handed to me. “We usually charge for printouts, but today only I’m giving you the friends-and-family discount.”
“So what do I owe?” I asked.
“Not a thing,” she said. “Any friend of Gramps is a friend of mine.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you very much.”
I took the file folder and left the office. Outside in the drafty lobby, I paused long enough to examine them. Currently the properties in question were held by Highline Development, purchased on October 1, 2016, from a seller named Lenora Elizabeth Harrison. The properties had all been quitclaimed over to Lenora