Nothing to Lose (J.P. Beaumont #25)(23)

“It turns out that before Shelley hooked up with Roger Adams, she was married to one of Roger’s best friends, a guy named Jack Loveday. Shelley and Penny went through school together. Penny was newly married and living in Anchorage when she went to a friend’s baby shower at some fancy Anchorage hotel. While there, she spotted Roger and Shelley being all lovey-dovey in the hotel restaurant, even though they were both still married to other people at the time. Penny spotted the lovebirds, but they didn’t see her. Shelley’s husband, Jack Loveday, was already a goner by the time Eileen Adams passed away. Shelley and Roger tied the knot three and a half months after Danitza’s mother’s death.”

“Did Danitza know about the affair?” Mel asked.

“Not until after their hurry-up wedding,” I answered. “That’s when Aunt Penny finally broke down and ratted them out to Nitz.”

“So Roger was pissed off about his daughter getting knocked up, even though at the same time he himself was carrying on a long-term affair?”

“Yup,” I said. “That’s the way it was.”

“What a hypocrite!” Mel exclaimed.

“Indeed,” I agreed, “although after all these years he might have decided to bury the hatchet.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Nitz mentioned that her father has handed off his law practice to a partner and is currently dealing with some kind of serious health issue. A couple of weeks ago, his longtime secretary reached out to Danitza, letting her know that he’s in pretty rough shape and hinting that maybe she should go see him.”

“I wouldn’t if I were her,” Mel declared, “not on a bet.”

“I doubt Danitza will either. At least it didn’t sound like it.”

“So what’s your next step?” Mel asked.

“Tomorrow I’ll be checking out some of Chris’s classmates from high school, the ones living in Anchorage. After that I plan to head for Homer.”

“Have you bothered looking at a weather report?” Mel asked.

“No, why?”

Glancing out the window, I could see a thick cloud of swirling snowflakes dancing in the glow of now-invisible streetlights several stories below. The flurries I’d seen earlier had become much more serious while I wasn’t looking.

“Because I just did,” Mel answered. “It looks like Anchorage is in for a hell of a snowstorm tonight—probably more than we had here. How far is Homer from where you are?”

“Four and a half hours,” I answered, “but my rental has four-wheel drive. I should be good.”

“Should be,” Mel repeated, “but the questions is, will you? I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but you’re a seventy-four-year-old man with two fake knees. I don’t like the idea of you driving around by yourself on unfamiliar roads and in questionable weather conditions. If you happen to run off the road into a ditch, you’re not in any condition to dig yourself out, and I don’t want you standing around in the cold waiting for a tow truck to show up either. Hire a driver.”

In case you’re wondering about that distant rumble you just heard, it wasn’t thunder. It was the sound of Melissa Soames lowering the boom. In my mind’s eye, nothing has changed, and I’m still perfectly capable of doing all the things I used to do. Usually a glance in the mirror is enough to correct that misapprehension, but right that second there were no mirrors handy, and even though her remark might have come as a blow to my ego, I knew she was right. I wasn’t in any better shape to deal with a foot or so of snow than our Sun Belt–raised Irish wolfhound was. Male pride, or maybe just plain cussedness, meant that I couldn’t concede the point without at least voicing an objection.

“I’ll look into it,” I grumbled, “but I’m not making any promises.”

Our conversation was winding down. “Sarah and I miss you,” Mel said. It was her understated way of apologizing for hurting my feelings, and I accepted it as such.

“I miss you, too,” I said, “but I feel like I need to be here. If Jared hadn’t taken my advice, grabbed Chris, run for their lives that night, there’s a good chance that Chris’s son, Christopher James, would never have been born. So I feel like I owe him and Danitza, too. It’s as though I’ve been personally designated to give Chris Danielson’s family a final answer as to what happened to him.”

“What a surprise!” Mel said with a laugh. “After all, isn’t that exactly what you’ve been doing for most of your adult life—providing those kinds of answers to grieving families?”

And as soon as she said it, I knew it was true. I was spending that night in snowy Anchorage doing exactly what I was supposed to do—finding out once and for all what had happened to Chris Danielson, not only for his still-grieving lover and fatherless child but also for someone who was no longer with us—for my former partner, Sue Danielson. She deserved answers every bit as much as they did.

So now, instead of having one pro bono client, I had three—Jared, Danitza, and Sue Danielson. I’ll give you one guess which one was most important.





Chapter 10




I awakened the next morning to a dark sky and the sounds of dead silence. You don’t realize that you’re hearing a constant din of traffic in the background until all of a sudden it isn’t there. The room was so dark I thought it had to be the middle of the night, but the bedside clock said 8:05. I got out of bed, hurried over to the window, and looked outside. It had stopped snowing, all right, but by the light from the still-glowing streetlights I could see that cars parked on the street below were literally buried in snow, and if the pavement had been plowed at all overnight, evidence of that was no longer visible. A quick glance at the local news told me that due to the storm schools were closed and all but essential workers were advised to stay home.