I wasn’t sure how much Jimmy had overheard as Twink drove us to the Driftwood Inn, but obviously he’d been paying attention.
“Yes,” I answered. “She’s been taken into custody.”
“Good,” he said. Then, after a pause, he added, “Mom’s father was handcuffed to the bed when we found him. Mom said his wife was trying to kill him.”
I nodded. “I believe your mother is right. That’s exactly what Shelley Adams intended.”
At that point Jimmy seemed to be talked out. In the moments of silence that followed, I thought about the house on Diamond Ridge Road. It had looked more like a log-walled fortress than a house. I remembered the heavy oaken door, to say nothing of the dead bolt.
“Was the door locked?” I asked.
He nodded.
“How’d you get inside?” I asked.
“Through the window in what used to be my mom’s bedroom,” Jimmy answered. “There’s a big tree next to the house. We climbed that, and then she used a tool from the car—a putty knife—to jimmy the window. When she said that, I thought she was making fun of me.”
“No,” I told him. “That’s what it’s called—jimmying. It’s when you get into a locked house through a window by messing with the lock rather than breaking the glass.”
“Anyway, that’s how we got in. Mom climbed in first, and then she helped me. She said that’s how she used to sneak in and out of the house when she was a girl.”
“Have you ever snuck in and out of a house like that?” I asked.
In reply Jimmy ducked his head and shrugged his shoulders. In other words, asked and answered.
“If that’s how you and your mother got in, how about the EMTs? Was she able to find the dead-bolt key?”
Jimmy shook his head. “Mom remembered the door code on the garage because it was her mom’s birthday. We were able to let the medics into the garage, but they had to break down the kitchen door to get into the house.”
The old code was probably Roger’s doing. Had Shelley known about that, she would have changed it.
Jimmy paused for a moment before continuing. “Anyway,” he said, “we found Mom’s father in one of the bedrooms. He was asleep with one arm handcuffed to the frame of the bed. Mom tried to wake him up but couldn’t. She tried to call 911 from the bedside table, but the phone didn’t work. It had been unplugged. We had to plug it back in.”
That made sense. Even if Roger Adams had tried to call for help, he wouldn’t have been able to.
The boy shivered, and not from the cold either. “Why would anyone do that, Mr. Beaumont?” he asked.
Because they’re evil, I thought. “Greed,” I answered aloud. “We’ve uncovered evidence that Shelley Adams has been using fake IDs to sell off your grandfather’s properties without his knowledge or consent.”
“She’s been stealing from him, too?”
I nodded.
“Will she go to prison?”
“Ultimately that decision will be up to a judge and jury, but when she goes on trial, it won’t be just for what she did or tried to do to Roger Adams.”
That was the moment when I came to the fork in the road, when I could have wigged out on doing the hard part and left the remainder of the telling to Jimmy’s mother. Instead I forged on.
“There’s a whole lot more to the Shelley Adams story,” I said.
“Like what?”
“Like your father,” I answered.
“What do you mean?”
“You know that your parents were very young when they fell in love.”
Jimmy nodded. “She told me her parents didn’t approve of him—like they thought he was some kind of juvenile delinquent.”
“And they were worried about her having a baby when she was still little more than a child herself.”
“Me?” he asked.
“You,” I agreed. “But your mother wanted to keep you. That’s why she ran away and went to live in Anchorage with Aunt Penny and Uncle Wally.”
“But what happened to my father?” Jimmy insisted. “Mom said he just left, went home to Ohio, and never came back.”
I was relieved to hear that at least the boy knew that much—the broad outline of the story if not all the gory details. In reality it was as much as anyone in officialdom had known until today, until the moment Gretchen Walther had forwarded Jared Danielson’s DNA profile to Harriet Raines. Now it was time to do Chris’s next-of-kin notification. I’d never done one of those with a twelve-year-old survivor, but I had traveled too far down this path to back off now. Jimmy Danielson was Christopher Danielson’s son—and he had a right to be told.
“Your father never made it to Ohio,” I said quietly.
Jimmy gave me a wide-eyed, disbelieving look. “He didn’t?”
Obviously that was the story Jimmy had always been told. No doubt he’d believed it, most likely because the person who’d told him that tale had believed it, too.
I took a deep breath before continuing. “We now believe that on or about the twenty-seventh of March, 2006, Christopher Danielson was murdered, most likely by Shelley Adams.”
Jimmy seemed taken aback. “You mean the same woman who just tried to murder my grandfather?”
I nodded.
“But why?”
“She wasn’t your grandfather’s wife back then, but the two of them were very close,” I answered. “My understanding is that your grandfather’s plan was to pay Chris a sum of money in order to get him to go away and leave your mother alone.”
“Like a bribe you mean?”
“Exactly,” I agreed, “and Shelley was the one who was supposed to deliver the money. Instead we believe she murdered Chris and kept the money for herself.”
“How did he die?”
“Of blunt-force trauma,” I answered. “Do you know what that means?”
Jimmy nodded. “I’ve seen it on TV. It means someone bashed him over the head, but where’s he been all this time? And why didn’t we know about it?”
“Your father’s skeletal remains were located in a bear den near Eklutna Lake two years after he disappeared, but they remained unidentified until today, when DNA from those remains were matched to Chris’s brother, your Uncle Jared.”
I watched Jimmy’s face as his eyes flooded with tears. “So my father’s really dead, then? He’s never coming back?”
“Not ever. I’m sorry.”
Jimmy, sobbing brokenly, leaned over and rested his head on my shoulder. “Mom always hoped he’d come back someday,” the boy managed through his tears. “I did, too.”
Jimmy had at least had that myth to cling to—that someday his father would return. Now he no longer had even that.
As one fatherless child to another, I knew exactly how he felt.
Chapter 34
There’s a reason hospital lobbies and waiting rooms are stocked with unending supplies of tissues. When Jimmy finally started to settle down, I passed him a handful of those. He wiped his face and blew his nose.
“Do you know what happened to my dad?” Jimmy asked at last.
I sighed. He was just a kid, but still he wanted to know the whole story.
“Your father was working in a restaurant at the time, something called Zig’s Place. It’s still in business here in Homer. That evening when he was about to get off work, a woman asked him to come help her change a tire.”
“Was it Shelley?” he asked.