What She Found (Tracy Crosswhite #9)(73)

“You’re doing good, huh?” Faz asked.

“We’re killing it, Pop. Serving Mom’s gnocchi and sausage with peppers tonight. I’ll put some aside for you to take home.” Antonio winked. “I’ll check in with you later.”

Faz led Tracy down a narrow brick hall past the kitchen. The aromas of pasta sauce, garlic and capers, and fish flooded her senses. The hallway ended at a curtained room at the back of the restaurant, a heavy red drape pulled across the entrance. Tracy and Dan had celebrated with Faz and Del in this room, but this would not be a celebration.

Faz pulled back the curtain, and he and Tracy stepped in. A dark oak table and eight chairs, three per side and one at each end, dominated the room. Del stood at the head of the table dressed in slacks and a collared shirt, his sleeves rolled up. On the wall hung his black leather car coat and porkpie hat. Del sipped a glass of wine. He looked nervous. Tracy had never seen Del nervous in all her years working Violent Crimes. She had always thought him unflappable.

They exchanged greetings in soft voices. Del took Faz’s and Tracy’s coats and hung them on hooks. Light Italian opera music filtered into the room from ceiling speakers.

“Thanks for seeing us,” Tracy said.

“Hey, let’s not be formal like that, okay?” Del said. “We’ve known each other, what? Ten or twelve years?”

“Sure, no problem,” Faz said. “Right, Tracy? No problem.”

“No problem,” Tracy said.

“And don’t do that either,” Del said.

“What?” Faz said.

“Don’t intercede, okay? I’m a big boy. I can handle myself.”

Faz raised both hands in surrender. “The floor is yours, my friend.” He poured Tracy a glass of Syrah, then filled his own glass and acted like a disinterested consigliere.

“I knew when you came to me asking about Lisa Childress that it was just a matter of time before we had this conversation. Anyone else . . .” He waved with one hand. “I would have said no way. But you . . . You’re like a dog with a bone, Tracy. You don’t give up.

Where’d they find her body?”

“She’s alive, Del,” Tracy said.

Del looked from Tracy to Faz. Faz raised a hand. “Don’t look at me. You told me to keep quiet.”

“She’s alive?” Del asked Tracy. “Lisa Childress is alive?”

Tracy told him everything she’d told Faz—the tip that came from the tip line on Facebook and her trip to Escondido.

“Amnesia?” Del said. “Do you believe her?”

“I had my doubts,” Tracy said. “Until I heard her speak. She speaks with an Irish accent. Has since the day they found her. No way somebody can pull that off for twenty-five years. I figure if she wasn’t faking the accent, seemed unlikely she faked the amnesia.”

“She doesn’t remember anything?” Del said, more of a statement than a question.

Tracy shook her head. “Not a thing. Tell me what happened, Del. Tell me about the marina and Moss Gunderson.”

Del sipped his wine and turned sideways to cross his legs. “I’m embarrassed, Tracy.”

“Just start, Del.”

He set the glass on the table. “I was new here in Seattle. Back then they put us with an experienced detective to teach us the ropes.

I got Moss, and I got an earful every day, but I learned to cut through his bullshit, and to listen to the important stuff. Moss was old-school.

He made it clear from the start that if we were going to be partners, we had to have each other’s backs. He said he’d watch mine as best he could and help me to stay out of trouble. The guy was charismatic,” Del said. “He was straight from central casting. We couldn’t walk into the Public Safety Building without a dozen guys calling out his name and giving him a hard time. Around town he knew everyone, and everyone knew him.”

Having witnessed much the same thing at the country club, Tracy understood what Del had experienced. It had to have been intoxicating for a detective new to Homicide to be the partner of someone seemingly so well respected.

“I’m not on the job more than a week or two and we get called out in the early morning. Two bodies found floating in Lake Union.

We get there and meet the harbormaster, David Slocum. Moss starts asking questions about the two men. Slocum said he hadn’t seen them before. Moss, I could tell he wasn’t that interested. It was blistering cold and windy that morning. He wants to get moving. He tells me to go down to the dock and get a look at the bodies, then talk to the guy who found them and anyone else who saw anything.

I’m there for, I don’t know, a couple of hours. Nobody knows nothing about these two guys. Moss decides the two guys probably fell off a boat and the current brought them into the marina.”

Del took another sip of his wine. A waiter pulled back the red curtain and stepped into the room carrying the calamari and the bruschetta. The smell of butter, lemon, and garlic filled the room. The waiter set the plates on the table beside small appetizer plates and forks and rolled napkins. “How you doing, Mr. Fazzio?”

“Doing good, Ricky. Doing fine. How’s your old man?”

“Back’s bothering him. Needs to lose weight. Can I get you another bottle of the Syrah?”

“No. Nothing else. We’re good. You go do your job.”