Nothing to Lose (J.P. Beaumont #25)(17)

When Danitza drove up in a late-model Honda, I noticed that she pulled in to a two-car garage with an SUV of some kind parked in the other bay. Hers might have been a one-income, one-driver family, but she had a two-car garage with two cars parked inside. My first thought was that maybe her folks had been helping her out financially, but of course I turned out to be dead wrong on that score. I was about to discover that the Adams family, not unlike my mother’s, never lifted a finger to help either their single-mother daughter or their fatherless grandson.

A shoveled walk led to the front porch, but Danitza motioned me over to the driveway and into the garage. Being ushered into her house like that, through the back door and into a small but tidy kitchen, made me feel as though I were being treated as a longtime acquaintance or friend rather than a complete stranger. In the mudroom she encouraged me to strip off the parka (warmer than I actually needed) and my boots before she led me on into the living room, turning on more lights as she went.

I paused at the fireplace and looked at a framed photo of a young man sitting in a place of honor among the Christmas decorations on the mantel. At first glance I thought it was Christopher, but closer examination revealed that wasn’t the case. The haircut and clothing didn’t work. This had to be a recent school portrait of Christopher James Danielson rather than one of his absent father.

“Your son’s a good-looking kid,” I commented, sensing that Danitza had walked up behind me and was gazing past my shoulder toward the photo.

“He is that,” she allowed. “Jimmy looks a lot like his dad. He’s also a straight-A student, plays in the jazz band, and helps out around the house. He’s the one who put up all the Christmas decorations.”

Having just accomplished that complex task on my own for the first time ever, I was suitably impressed.

“Won’t you take a seat?” she invited. “Can I get you something?”

“No, I’m fine, thank you,” I said sinking down onto a nearby sofa.

Danitza took a place in an easy chair across from me, laid my card on the intervening glass-topped coffee table, and then looked me in the face. “You’re a private detective, Mr. Beaumont?” she asked.

I nodded. “Most people call me Beau.”

“And most people call me Nitz,” she told me. “You said Jared Danielson hired you to look for Chris?” I nodded. “All right, then,” she continued resignedly. “What do you want to know?”

I decided this was no time for playing games or pulling punches. “Your initial response this morning surprised me,” I said.

“How so?”

“Once I said Chris has never returned to Ohio, you immediately concluded he had to be dead. Why?”

“When he left Homer without saying a word to me, that’s what I assumed—that he’d gone back home to Ohio. A couple of months earlier, he had gotten into a big fight with his grandmother in Homer, left her house, and dropped out of school. He was renting a room at a friend’s house and waiting tables at a local hamburger joint, Zig’s Place, trying to save up enough money to pay for a trip back to Ohio later that spring. He said he owed his brother an apology, and he wanted to deliver it in person. When he came back to Alaska, he told me he planned on getting a job on one of the fishing boats. You don’t have to have a high-school diploma to do that.”

“Wait,” I said. “What’s this about an apology?”

“As soon as I saw your card this morning, I recognized your name.” Nitz paused and gave me a piercing look. “You’re the detective who urged Jared to grab Chris and leave the house the night their parents died, right?”

I nodded. “Guilty as charged.”

“Chris and I talked a lot about that night,” Danitza said. “He was still a little kid when it happened, and that terrible event haunted him. He was angry that his parents were dead, and why wouldn’t he be? When he was shipped off to Ohio to live with his maternal grandparents, things got worse. He was rebellious and acting out. By the time I met him, he was starting to feel guilty about how much trouble he’d given his grandmother before he finally ran away and came to live with his other grandparents in Homer.

“While he was living in Ohio, his mother’s parents only told him their daughter’s side of the story. Once he got to Homer, his father’s family did the opposite. They filled him full of his father’s point of view. The Danielsons claimed that Richie was the real victim—that he’d been driven to do what he did because Sue was such a poor excuse for a wife and mother.”

“So one set of grandparents said one thing and the other ones said something else?” I asked.

Danitza nodded. “Which meant Chris ended up not knowing who or what to believe. Not only that. To begin with I believe Chris was under the impression that if he and Jared hadn’t left the house that night—if they had still been there—they could somehow have prevented what happened.”

With the horrendous scene from my recent nightmare still fresh in my mind, I shook my head.

“That’s not true,” I declared. “When Richard Danielson turned up at Sue’s house that night, he came armed to the teeth. I’m pretty sure that before he ever set foot inside, he had already made up his mind about what was going to happen. I believe that if the boys had been there, Richie would have murdered them right along with their mother.” I paused for a moment before continuing. “Did you know that Sue was my partner in the homicide unit at Seattle PD?” I asked.