Nothing to Lose (J.P. Beaumont #25)(38)

“Wait,” Bill interrupted. “You think Chris was murdered?”

I nodded. “Human remains that may be his were located a number of years ago, but since no missing-persons report had been filed, they’ve remained unidentified. At the moment they still are, but once we have access to Chris’s older brother’s DNA profile, that may change.”

Bill’s eyes clouded with tears. “Crap,” he said. “As soon as he was gone, I should have reported him missing. This is all my fault.”

“You don’t need to blame yourself,” I said. “If his grandmother wasn’t worried, why should you have been? But this is where we are now—trying to solve a homicide that more than likely happened in 2006. And that’s why I’m here.”

“How can I help?” Bill asked.

“Is there anything you can tell me about the woman who needed her tire changed—”

“Wait, you mean it might have happened that very night, right after work?”

I nodded.

Bill took a deep breath before replying, “There’s really nothing to tell,” he said. “Like I said, I didn’t see her, and as far as I know, no one else in the restaurant did either. But you think maybe she did it?”

“It’s possible.” I pulled out one of my cards and handed it to him. “If you remember anything else, please give me a call.”

“All right,” he said. “I will.”

I stood up to leave. “I’ll be going,” I said. “I’ve taken up far too much of your time and kept your kids from their video game long enough. But you should probably know that all the rumors you heard back then were right. Danitza was pregnant when she left home. She still lives here in Anchorage and is an ER nurse at Anchorage General. She has a twelve-year-old son named Christopher James Danielson. His mother calls him Jimmy. He seems liked a pretty squared-away kid, and I’ll bet he’d be thrilled to meet someone who was friends with his dad.”

Bill used the back of his hands to mop tears from his eyes. Then, leaving him sitting there staring off into space, I showed myself out. I had meant to ask if Bill thought there was anything to be gained by my talking to John Borman, but I didn’t bother. I had already brought the poor man enough bad news for the day. There was no point in piling on more.





Chapter 14




When I made it back to the Travelall, Twink was inside, still in her shirtsleeves, sitting in a cloud of smoke and reading a tattered Louis L’Amour paperback. When I climbed inside, the interior was warm enough that I suspected she’d idled the engine a time or two in my absence in order to maintain the temperature.

“Lunch?” she asked, tossing the book on the seat between us and turning the key in the ignition.

Figuring I was still in the doghouse with her for some reason, I simply nodded. As I fastened my seat belt, I saw that the title of the book was The Iron Marshal, with a gun-toting lawman on the cover.

“I see you like Louis L’Amour,” I said. “Me, too.”

“When Chad and I were little, our dad used to read us to sleep with Louis L’Amour stories. When Dad died, he had a whole bookcase full of ’em, and I inherited those right along with Maude here,” she added, patting the steering wheel. “I usually keep a couple of ’em in the glovebox, and if it turns out I’ve read them before, it doesn’t bother me a bit.”

Twink pulled out, and we headed back in what seemed to be the general direction of downtown. “We’re going to Simon & Seafort’s,” she informed me. “It’s a bit too swanky for my blood, but a lot of my customers rave about the food, and I figure you’re good for it.”

If treating Twinkle Winkleman to a high-end lunch would put her in a better mood, it would be money well spent. I’d been to a near relative of that restaurant, Stanley & Seafort’s in Tacoma. The food there was reasonably good, and I was pretty sure the same would be true at this one.

We were no sooner moving when Mel called. “How’s it going?” she asked. Mel was taking a late lunch and expected a full briefing on my morning’s worth of activities. I wanted to talk to her, too, but I didn’t want to discuss my adventures with TW Transportation or my meetings with Harriet Raines or Bill Farmdale with Twink listening in on every word. I latched on to what I hoped sounded like a reasonable excuse.

“We’re on our way to lunch right now, and I need to catch up on what Todd Hatcher just sent me,” I said. “Can I call you back a little later?”

“I suppose,” Mel said, and hung up.

That was not a good sign. Mel obviously didn’t approve of having to take a backseat to incoming messages from Todd Hatcher, so now, through no fault of my own, I had managed to land in trouble with two separate women fifteen hundred miles apart.

Back downtown, after turning onto L Street and barely a block away from my hotel, we encountered what has to be an only-in-Alaska traffic jam. Three vehicles ahead of us, a humongous moose was ambling slowly down the middle of the snowplowed traffic lanes, looking for all the world as if he owned the place, and maybe he did. Taking his antlers into consideration, he was taller than the topmost layer of the Travelall’s rooftop luggage. Since he didn’t appear to have a working turn signal, no one wanted to risk trying to pass him, on either side. Suddenly our previously speedy trip turned into a slo-mo, moose-led parade.