walked out of the house at the end of October and hasn’t been seen since, which means . . .”
“If he’s homeless, that means he’s probably dead,” Loretta said, completing my sentence.
“Correct. If an M.E. is involved, having an exact match would probably be better than a familial one.”
I sat back and let another silence fill the phone line between us. Yesterday Loretta Hawk had used the story of her mother’s long-unsolved homicide to reel me in, thus landing a sizable contribution for the Sholeetsa Project. Today I hoped the reverse was true and the fact that Athena’s father was missing and presumed dead might work the same magic for me.
“What kind of source?” Loretta asked.
“Another hairbrush,” I replied, “Peter Mayfield’s this time. Are you open today?”
“We’re not,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean I won’t be here. We also have a secure drop box out front. What time do you think you’ll be here?”
“I have an appointment downtown at eleven. I can drop the hairbrush off before that—around ten thirty or so.”
“Fair enough,” she said. “Have it here by eleven, and I’ll ask one of my techs to come in on her day off to process it.”
“You’d do that?”
“You’re a donor, Mr. Beaumont, one of the project’s most recent benefactors, but four profiles is your limit. That’s all you get for a mere ten thousand. If you want another . . .”
It was time for me to finish her sentence. “White man will need to show up with another batch of wampum.”
“You got it,” she said. “For big bucks Sholeetsa will profile.”
Now that I had that definitive news, the next step was to share it with Alan.
Soon there was plenty of aromatic evidence in the air that someone was out in the kitchen making breakfast. It took a couple of minutes for me to make myself presentable. I live in Belltown Terrace’s penthouse. The kitchen and living room both face the water, with no intervening buildings to serve as a peeping Tom’s base of operations, so I’m accustomed to hopping in and out of the kitchen in my skivvies. With the house full of visitors, that wasn’t possible.
“Over easy again?” Alan asked, standing with an egg in hand poised over the top of a buttered and heated frying pan.
“Yes, please.”
When I went to get coffee, I noticed that Lucy was already eating. I was clearly the slugabed of the group. Everybody else was already up and at ’em.
“Walked her, too?” I asked, nodding toward Lucy.
“Yup,” Alan said. “I did that first thing. She stood in front of the door with the leash in her mouth, whining. It was hard not to get the message.”
Athena was strapped into that weird little slanted carrier of hers. She was front and center for all the activity, but she was also sound asleep.
“I spent the whole night worrying about the possibility that Naomi might change her mind,” Alan said later as we sat down to breakfast.
I’d been worried about the same thing. In fact, I still was, but there was no sense in both of us freaking out about it at the same time.
“I think she’ll be okay,” I said. “She seemed to be pretty squared away about it last night.”
My words seemed to reassure Alan. They didn’t do much for me.
About that time Mel showed up. There was a whole flurry of activity. Lucy was ecstatic to see her. Over Mel’s objections Alan hustled around and made breakfast for her, too, while Mel lifted Athena out of her little swingy thing and cooed about how cute and sweet she was. The cops who work for her in Bellingham would have been astonished. So, I suspected, would Mr. Mayor.
As Mel sat down to eat her breakfast, I decided it was time to come clean with both Alan and my wife. “I had a call from Loretta Hawk this morning,” I began. “The DNA profiles are back.”
“And?” Alan asked.
“Agnes Mayfield is definitely Athena’s paternal great-grandmother,” I announced to both of them.
Unfortunately for me, Mel can read me like a book. She knew there was more to the story than what I’d said so far.
“And?” she urged. “What else?”
“They also confirm that I’m her maternal grandfather.”
The words fell into the room, sucked the air out of it, and left behind a moment of utter silence. Mel, unaware that Alan and I had already covered this ground, shot him a wary glance. She seemed taken aback when his first response was to grin at me.