Nothing to Lose (J.P. Beaumont #25)(98)

She and Jared were still talking as I keyed in Twink’s number. “You again?” she asked with typical brusqueness as she answered the phone.

“Yes, me again,” I replied. “Are you booked for later on this afternoon?”

“Are you kidding? After the last couple of days, I figured I deserved a day off. What have you got in mind?”

“Chris Danielson’s brother, Jared, is coming in on a flight from Seattle that’s due to land in Anchorage at three. Could you meet him at baggage claim?”

“What’s the flight number?”

“I don’t know. I can get it—”

“Never mind,” Twink barked. “I’ll figure it out. Where do you want me to take him?”

“Bring him here to Homer.”

“To the Driftwood?”

“Yes, please.”

“Still on your charge card?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“All right,” she allowed. “I guess I’ll keep on giving you the multi-day discount, but only on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“Dinner at AJ’s,” she answered, “and this time I plan to stay long enough to eat my own damned sticky pudding.”





Chapter 38




That night, after once again feeding a kid who was evidently a bottomless pit where food was concerned, I was waiting with Jimmy in the lobby at the Driftwood Inn for Twink and the Travelall to deliver Father Jared Danielson door-to-door, airport to hotel. Nitz was still at the hospital. Fortunately for me, she’d brought Jimmy’s phone and charger along with his clothes on her panicked trip to Homer, and he was happily sprawled in a nearby chair, playing video games to his heart’s content.

As we sat there together in what now felt like companionable silence, I couldn’t help but think about how private investigators are portrayed on TV. Boob-tube PI dramas are always filled to the brim with fistfights, gunfights loaded with automatic firearms, and scene after scene of macho mayhem. It’s usually one death-defying act of derring-do after another. In all those scenes of never-ending drama, there are hardly ever any moments for quiet introspection.

A lot of what both cops and PIs do is boring—following one strand of inquiry or another just to see where it leads. When one thread dead-ends, you find another one to follow. Eventually those paths lead you from threads to dots and then from one small dot to another until you finally arrive at important ones. In this case those threads had involved paper chases rather than car chases—examining real-estate transactions and vehicle registrations until the puzzle pieces had finally come together in three separate homicides—two possibly provable and one not.

In addition, being a PI means showing up fully prepared to do whatever is necessary, which in this case meant looking after a middle-schooler who, without my being there, would have been either left to his own devices or stuck enduring two long nights in hospital waiting rooms.

The television and movie crime dramas seldom include stellar moments like the one I’d witnessed earlier in the evening when Danitza Adams Miller finally introduced her twelve-year-old son to his grandfather for the very first time. When Roger held out a frail, bony hand, Jimmy gave it a gentle shake. “I’m happy to meet you, sir,” the boy had said gravely. That one took my breath away.

As for Roger? At times he seemed somewhat more lucid than he’d been when I first met him on Saturday, but when an orderly appeared a few minutes later and deposited a food tray on his table, Roger had looked under the service plate’s cover and then dropped it as though it were hot to the touch.

“What’s wrong?” Nitz asked.

“I can’t eat that,” Roger objected, pointing at the food.

“Why not?”

“Because Shelley will be mad at me.”

“Why?”

“It’s my ulcer,” he said. “She says regular food makes me sick. That’s why she gives me that chocolate-flavored stuff to drink. Have them bring me some of that.”

Obviously there was still some confusion in Roger’s mind about what was really going on, but what he’d just said answered one lingering question. No wonder Roger Adams resembled a starving prisoner straight out of a Nazi concentration camp. He actually was starving and for months had existed on a liquid-only diet.

“It’s all right, Daddy,” Nitz assured him. “The hospital doesn’t have any of that chocolate stuff, and Shelley’s not here. Go ahead and try the food. You might like it, and if Shelley turns up, we won’t tell her about it, will we, Jimmy?”

“No,” a wide-eyed Jimmy agreed. “We won’t tell, cross our hearts.”

I couldn’t help but notice Nitz’s casual use of the word “Daddy.” In the previous hours, something important had occurred and the long estrangement between father and daughter had unobtrusively come to an end.

Moments later Roger was digging into his plateful of food. It was hospital fare—probably incredibly bland and mostly tasteless as well, but he downed it with obvious gusto. He was clearly disappointed when Nitz declared he’d eaten as much as he should and removed his plate with some food still on it.

“It’s all right,” she assured him. “If this doesn’t upset your stomach and you’re hungry again a little later, I’ll bring you something else.”