Once in my room at the hotel, I spoke to Mel. Sarah had behaved herself admirably in the office and was now welcome to visit Bellingham PD whenever she wished. After touching base for a few minutes, we said our good-nights. I tried watching TV for a while after that, but I kept dozing off. It was ten o’clock Anchorage time, eleven in Seattle, when I turned off the TV and bedside lamp.
Dreaming about Sue Danielson had cost me most of the previous night’s sleep. Tonight, maybe because she knew I was looking for her son, Sue left me alone. The next time I looked at the clock, it was 7:00 a.m. The sky outside was nowhere near daylight, but I awakened with a sense of purpose. I had a job to do, and it was time to drag myself out of bed and get with the program.
Chapter 8
Over the years I’ve learned that the best way to gain access to a hospital emergency room is to bypass the reception desk altogether. I was approaching the ER entrance when an ambulance pulled up and began unloading a patient. As they rolled the gurney inside, I positioned myself a step and a half behind the medic and made my way inside as though I had every right to be there.
As my patient decoy was wheeled into a curtained cubicle, I looked around. At nine on a weekday morning, the ER wasn’t exactly filled to the brim. Thanks to the yearbook photo and the fact that Danitza Miller still wore her ash-blond hair in a pixie cut, I was able to pick her out on my own without having to ask for help. I spotted her, dressed in a pair of brightly colored floral scrubs, standing next to the nurses’ station, chatting with someone on the far side of the counter.
“Ms. Miller?” I asked, approaching her from behind. “May I have a word?”
She spun around and faced me. She was a little bit of a thing, only five-four or so, but she wasn’t short on spunk. “Is this about a patient?” she wanted to know.
“No,” I replied, holding out one of my cards. “This is actually something of a personal nature. If I could have a moment or two of your time.”
She glanced at the card briefly, pocketed it, and then peered up at me. “As you can see, I’m working right now and—”
“I’m a private investigator looking into the disappearance of Christopher Danielson.”
The change in both her attitude and expression was instantaneous. “You’re looking for Chris?” she asked.
I nodded.
She turned back to the woman on the other side of the counter. “I’m going to take my break now,” she announced. To me she added, “We can talk in the coffee shop.”
Leading the way, she walked briskly through the ER, out another entrance, and then across a granite lobby area into a coffee shop. She proceeded through the room to a table at the far back.
“Sit there,” she ordered, pointing. “I’ll get the coffee. Black or with cream and sugar?”
“Black, please,” I murmured.
I had no doubt that Danitza Miller ordered her ER patients around in exactly that way, and I’m equally sure they did the same thing I did and complied without a word of protest.
She reappeared a few minutes later carrying a tray bearing two paper cups loaded with steaming-hot coffee. She put the cups on the table and then shoved the tray aside before staring me in the eye.
“Who’s looking for Chris?” she demanded.
I had expected to be the one doing the interviewing, but that wasn’t the case.
“His brother,” I answered.
“Jared?”
I nodded.
“Why?”
“Their grandmother is dying,” I said, “their other grandmother, Annie Hinkle, back home in Ohio. She’s evidently hoping to make things right with Chris before she passes on.”
“You’re saying Chris isn’t in Ohio?” Danitza asked.
That surprised me. “Not as far as I know,” I replied. “From what I’ve been able to determine, he hasn’t set foot in Ohio since he ran away from home right after he graduated from the eighth grade.”
Danitza’s cheeks paled, as though some long-held forgone conclusion had at last been verified. Then she took a deep breath. “He’s dead, then, isn’t he?” she murmured.
Before I could reply, she stood up abruptly. “I can’t talk about this here. Do you know where I live?”
I nodded.
“I get off at three. I’ll be home by three thirty. Come by then. My son, James—we all call him by his middle name—has his Dungeons & Dragons club meeting right after school and won’t be home until around four thirty. I don’t want to discuss any of this in front of him.”
Abandoning her unfinished coffee, she walked away, leaving me sitting there wondering exactly what had happened, but one thing was pretty sure. There was no point in wasting my time looking for any of those unaffiliated boys from Chris’s high-school yearbook, at least not right that minute. Danitza Adams Miller was willing to talk to me, and I had a feeling she would be able to tell me most of what I needed to know. The finality of the way she’d said the words “He’s dead, then” made me think there was a lot more to the story than I’d managed to glean so far.
To while away the time, I spent the remainder of the morning and part of the afternoon doing some strategic Christmas shopping. Faced with either buying more luggage to get home or using UPS, I had most of the items wrapped and shipped, some to Bellingham for the kids who would be coming there for Christmas and some to Kelly down in Ashland, since she and her family were going to spend the holidays with Jeremy’s folks this time around. I sent another enormous package of wrapped presents to Texas, including an almost life-size plush husky for Athena and a rugged rubber walrus chew toy for Lucy. Naturally all the items had some kind of Alaskan connection.
I also bought a few things I didn’t ship home, including a pair of sturdy snow boots, not quite mukluks but good enough. Mel had gotten me a parka, but she’d neglected to buy a pair of gloves. I could hardly blame her for that. After all, at the time she was out doing her Christmas shopping, she’d had no idea that Alaska was about to become part of my agenda.
I already knew that at some point I’d have to make the four-hour-plus drive to Homer. In case something went haywire with the rental on the trip between Anchorage and there, I wanted to be prepared. To begin with, I told the clerk I was looking for a pair of fur-lined gloves. Much to my surprise and on her recommendation, I came away with what she said were highly insulated mittens instead