Nothing to Lose (J.P. Beaumont #25)(18)

Nitz nodded. “Once Chris and I started talking about it, I made it my business to look up everything I could find about that night. The fact that the two of you were partners was mentioned in one of the articles I read online.”

“Take it from me, Sue Danielson was a terrific partner and an amazing mother,” I said. “No matter what Richard’s parents might have told Chris about his father, the man was a violent and abusive drunk. He was also up to his eyeteeth in the drug trade.”

Nitz nodded. “I found out about that, too,” she told me. “Back then the Web wasn’t what it is now, but I was able to track down several news accounts written at the time, and those made his involvement in drug dealing pretty clear. Chris was stunned when I told him about it. Somehow Grandpa and Grandma Danielson had neglected to mention anything about that. As far as I’m concerned, what they did to Chris was nothing short of brainwashing.”

I have to say I was impressed. When all this had happened, Chris and Danitza had both been teenagers, seventeen and sixteen years of age respectively, yet it sounded as though they had discussed some pretty serious stuff.

“You cared for him a lot, didn’t you?” I suggested quietly.

She nodded.

“How did the two of you meet—at school?”

Nitz smiled and shook her head. “Not at school. As far as school was concerned, we were never in the same class and ran in totally different circles.”

With that, Danitza rose from her chair, walked over to a bookshelf, and retrieved what I assumed to be another framed photograph. When she handed it to me, however, I realized that it wasn’t a photo at all. Instead it was a pencil drawing of Danitza, not as she was now but as she must have been back then—pert, cute, and sweet, with glowing eyes and a bright smile illuminating her face. I was instantly reminded of the pencil portrait Chris had done of his mother.

“He drew this for you?” I asked.

She nodded. “He was working in a restaurant at the time.”

That’s when I noticed that the image had been drawn on something that looked like a used paper place mat, complete with a circular brownish stain from what was probably the bottom of a coffee cup. Under the drawing was a hand-scrawled message: “Would you like to hang out sometime?”

I gave the drawing back to Danitza. “Sounds like a killer of an opening line to me,” I said with a smile, “the kind of invitation no right-thinking girl could possibly refuse.”

All through our conversation, Danitza Miller’s facial expressions had been entirely serious. Now, for the first time, she gave me something that resembled a smile. “Yup,” she said thoughtfully. “I said yes and gave him my phone number on the spot. After that he reeled me in, hook, line, and sinker.”

Talk about the same old story—the local “it” girl becomes involved with the poor loser kid from the wrong side of the tracks. Not exactly Romeo and Juliet, but close enough.

“I take it your parents didn’t approve?” I ventured.

“Are you kidding? Not at all,” she agreed. “Homer’s not a very big a place. Unfortunately, there was a good deal of history between my father and Chris’s dad, Richard Danielson. While they were in high school, they were head-to-head rivals when it came to their varsity sports teams. To make things worse, they ended up chasing after the same girl—my mother, as it turns out.”

“And once your dad was declared the winner, the two of them became mortal enemies?” I asked.

“Something like that,” Nitz admitted. “I didn’t know anything about it until one night when Chris came to the house to pick me up for a date. My dad wasn’t home at the time, so I introduced him to my mother. When my mom told Dad about it later, he hit the roof. He was waiting up for me that night when I came home, and he was absolutely livid. He ordered me, ‘Stay away from that no-good Danielson kid. He’s a piece of crap, just like his father.’”

“Which you chose not to do?” I suggested.

Danitza smiled again. “Why would I?” she returned. “What’s better than the taste of forbidden fruit? From that moment on, Chris and I took our dating underground. My friends were all in on it and helped make it happen. I think they thought there was something romantic about our sneaking around behind my parents’ backs. When I wanted to go and be with Chris, my friends always claimed I was with them.”

“When’s the last time you saw Chris?”

“The morning of the final Sunday in March 2006,” she answered at once.

It was telling that she remembered the exact day and time.

“My folks were out of town that weekend. After Chris got off work on Saturday night, I spent the night at his place. The next morning I woke up sick as a dog. Chris borrowed a roommate’s car and took me home. I never saw him again after that. I didn’t even talk to him on the phone.”

Given her son’s birth date, it wasn’t difficult to put two and two together.

“Morning sickness?” I asked.

Nitz nodded. “I thought it was some kind of flu bug. I’d been having symptoms for a week or more. I was na?ve and had no idea what was happening, but when I was sick again that Monday, my mother figured it out. She went to the drugstore and bought one of those home pregnancy tests. It came back positive, of course.

“When my father found out, he went berserk. I was a minor. He demanded the name of the father so he could call the cops and put the SOB behind bars for statutory rape. I wasn’t going to let that happen, so I told Dad he’d have to take his pick, because the father could have been any one of three boys, and I wasn’t going to tell him any of their names.”