Serious Moonlight(85)

I pointed toward the house next door. “That is a million-dollar home. What we have is a fixer-upper. We barely have modern plumbing.”

He took off his shoes and set them by the door while looking around the living room. “I like it. Very homey. I saw the greenhouse outside and the koi pond.”

“No koi for a couple of years, so I suppose it’s just a pond now.”

“Guess you don’t need it since you’ve got the entire Sound in your backyard,” he said, looking through the kitchen at the view through the back windows. “Holy shit. Mount Rainier looks huge out here. One day it’s going to erupt, and we’ll all be dead.”

“Not from lava. The earthquakes will kill us first.”

“I was hoping to be preserved like Pompeii. What’s the point of living near a volcano just to be killed by an earthquake?”

He padded into the kitchen, and I followed. It was so strange to have him here in my house. I couldn’t stop looking at him while he surveyed our beach.

After a while, he noticed. “It’s okay that I’m here, right?”

“Of course. I’m happy you’re here.”

“Your grandfather—”

“Is still in Yakima,” I said.

“I mean, he wouldn’t want to bite my head off that I was here?”

“He wants to meet you. And he’s pretty easygoing. Also, he’s not here, so it doesn’t matter, does it?”

Daniel chuckled. “Guess not.”

“So?”

“So . . . ,” he repeated. “We’re both off today. Did you have any plans?”

“Zero plans. You?”

“Also zero.”

I nodded, and he got quiet. So I said, “We could work on our case? I mean, the spreadsheet is a dead end right now, but maybe there’s something else we haven’t thought about.”

“You have any ideas since we talked about it in the diner? I can’t figure out how we pick up the thread if Darke isn’t coming into the hotel anymore. Only thing I can think to do is try to go to Kerry Park again and trail him.”

I didn’t like that idea. He already nearly caught us once, and obviously there were cops patrolling that street. Then something hit me. “Maybe there’s another way to get a different angle on this. Do you still have that video you took of Darke entering the hotel room?”

“Yeah, on my phone,” he said, patting the pocket of his jeans.

“Excellent. We’ll need to—well, it’s probably easier to do on my laptop.” I headed into the living room and remembered it wasn’t there. “My laptop’s upstairs,” I said, suddenly self-conscious that it was in my bedroom. I started to suggest he wait in the living room, but he was oblivious.

“Lead the way,” he said.

Feeling as if I had an entire hive of wasps buzzing around in my belly, I took the stairs two at a time. Daniel’s heavier footfalls thumped behind me as we breezed across the landing into my room.

“Oh, wow,” Daniel said, making me jump. His head turned as he looked around. “This is Casa de Birdie, huh? Did Mona paint all those? She showed me all the paintings in the theater. I see Sherlock. Who’s that with the mustache?”

“Hercule Poirot.”

“Duh. I should have guessed.” He glanced at my vanity mirror, where the Elvis not-a-penny fortune was stuck into the frame alongside his LOOK UP! playing card. He quickly took stock of my vase of lilies and the vintage Smith Corona on my desk before his gaze jumped to the adjoining wall. “Oh my God, are these your mystery books? Shit. You weren’t exaggerating.” He squatted in front of the bookshelves to browse. “Hey, it’s Nancy Drew. A ton of them.”

“Two different sets.”

“And who’s this? Billie Holiday?” He stood back up to look at the framed poster.

“She’s my style icon, with the big flower in her hair,” I explained. “Supposedly she burned her hair once with curling tongs right before she was going onstage to sing, so her friend went and got flowers to cover up the singed spot.”

“Didn’t know that,” Daniel said.

“And she was a great jazz singer, of course. No one could mistake that voice. The woman who owns the Moonlight, Ms. Patty—”

“The old woman who works the lunch shift? Really tall, husky laugh?”

I nodded. “She has a million old records. She used to let me listen to them sometimes when she babysat me. Anyway, I like how she sings all of these sad songs, like ‘Gloomy Sunday,’ but somehow her voice is comforting. It’s sort of like she’s commiserating with you.”

He looked at the poster and said, “I love it when they play her and Ella Fitzgerald in the hotel. My mom dances to a lot of old jazz standards. Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan. Billie Holiday’s kind of the best, though. Very nice. I approve.” He smiled at me, and I felt it in the bottom of my feet, warming me all the way into my chest. That smile was dangerous. I would know.

“Hey,” Daniel said, inspecting a couple of framed photos on the wall. “Who’s this? Same killer eyes. Not you.”

“That’s my mom,” I said.

“Jesus, she was gorgeous. Is that Mona . . . and a toy monkey?”

“That was her Frida Kahlo stage.”