Nothing to Lose (J.P. Beaumont #25)(16)

Leading the way, she walked briskly through the ER, out another entrance, and then across a granite lobby area into a coffee shop. She proceeded through the room to a table at the far back.

“Sit there,” she ordered, pointing. “I’ll get the coffee. Black or with cream and sugar?”

“Black, please,” I murmured.

I had no doubt that Danitza Miller ordered her ER patients around in exactly that way, and I’m equally sure they did the same thing I did and complied without a word of protest.

She reappeared a few minutes later carrying a tray bearing two paper cups loaded with steaming-hot coffee. She put the cups on the table and then shoved the tray aside before staring me in the eye.

“Who’s looking for Chris?” she demanded.

I had expected to be the one doing the interviewing, but that wasn’t the case.

“His brother,” I answered.

“Jared?”

I nodded.

“Why?”

“Their grandmother is dying,” I said, “their other grandmother, Annie Hinkle, back home in Ohio. She’s evidently hoping to make things right with Chris before she passes on.”

“You’re saying Chris isn’t in Ohio?” Danitza asked.

That surprised me. “Not as far as I know,” I replied. “From what I’ve been able to determine, he hasn’t set foot in Ohio since he ran away from home right after he graduated from the eighth grade.”

Danitza’s cheeks paled, as though some long-held forgone conclusion had at last been verified. Then she took a deep breath. “He’s dead, then, isn’t he?” she murmured.

Before I could reply, she stood up abruptly. “I can’t talk about this here. Do you know where I live?”

I nodded.

“I get off at three. I’ll be home by three thirty. Come by then. My son, James—we all call him by his middle name—has his Dungeons & Dragons club meeting right after school and won’t be home until around four thirty. I don’t want to discuss any of this in front of him.”

Abandoning her unfinished coffee, she walked away, leaving me sitting there wondering exactly what had happened, but one thing was pretty sure. There was no point in wasting my time looking for any of those unaffiliated boys from Chris’s high-school yearbook, at least not right that minute. Danitza Adams Miller was willing to talk to me, and I had a feeling she would be able to tell me most of what I needed to know. The finality of the way she’d said the words “He’s dead, then” made me think there was a lot more to the story than I’d managed to glean so far.

To while away the time, I spent the remainder of the morning and part of the afternoon doing some strategic Christmas shopping. Faced with either buying more luggage to get home or using UPS, I had most of the items wrapped and shipped, some to Bellingham for the kids who would be coming there for Christmas and some to Kelly down in Ashland, since she and her family were going to spend the holidays with Jeremy’s folks this time around. I sent another enormous package of wrapped presents to Texas, including an almost life-size plush husky for Athena and a rugged rubber walrus chew toy for Lucy. Naturally all the items had some kind of Alaskan connection.

I also bought a few things I didn’t ship home, including a pair of sturdy snow boots, not quite mukluks but good enough. Mel had gotten me a parka, but she’d neglected to buy a pair of gloves. I could hardly blame her for that. After all, at the time she was out doing her Christmas shopping, she’d had no idea that Alaska was about to become part of my agenda.

I already knew that at some point I’d have to make the four-hour-plus drive to Homer. In case something went haywire with the rental on the trip between Anchorage and there, I wanted to be prepared. To begin with, I told the clerk I was looking for a pair of fur-lined gloves. Much to my surprise and on her recommendation, I came away with what she said were highly insulated mittens instead

Back in my hotel room, I turned once more to The Log. This time, rather than focus on the junior-class head-shot photos, I scrolled through the various groupings of kids involved in extracurricular activities, scanning through the captions on the bottom, and found Danitza Adams’s name listed again and again. She was a member of the varsity cheerleading squad. She was in both the National Honor Society and the Quill and Scroll, an organization that recognizes high-school kids involved in journalism of one sort or another. Sure enough, Danitza was pictured as part of the yearbook crew. She had also played Juliet in that year’s school presentation of Romeo and Juliet.

That set me to thinking. Her family and Chris’s weren’t exactly the Montagues and the Capulets, but still, how could a bright young girl who had all the potential of being voted Most Likely to Succeed have ended up with an apparent loser of a kid like Chris, someone who seemed hell-bent on turning himself into a deadbeat? How had the two of them become a couple? I suspected that neither family would have been any too thrilled by the prospect.

As a consequence I wasn’t just Johnny-on-the-spot at Danitza’s place for our scheduled three-thirty appointment—I actually arrived fifteen minutes early, bringing with me, I confess, a preconceived notion about what I’d find there.

Danitza Miller was a single mom. Having been raised in a two-bedroom apartment by an unwed mother, I knew something about that reality. Growing up, I’d always envied kids who were able to live in actual houses. We never did, and my mom was a renter until the day she died. Since Danitza and her son were also a one-income family, I expected to find them living in somewhat humble surroundings. Instead when I pulled up outside the address on Wiley Loop Road, I found myself parked in front of a respectable-looking two-story house in what appeared to be a prosperous suburban neighborhood. The tall wooden fence surrounding the yard was strung with an array of multicolored lights, and a fully decorated Christmas tree glowed in the front window. Given that this was Alaska in the winter, I suspected Christmas lights stayed on around the clock. In fact, although it was barely midafternoon on my watch, the pinkish glow of the sky overhead said it was close to sunset.