Dance of the Bones

To my way of thinking, there should have been a full stop to allow for a new thought and a new paragraph. That’s not how Mel Soames works. She goes straight for the jugular.

“Some tickets to Disney,” I said.

“And?”

“A getaway weekend for Scott and Cherisse at a B and B over at Port Angeles.”

“And?”

I didn’t want to tell her about the very expensive red glass bowl. I said, “It’s for you, and I’m not telling you. It’s a surprise.”

“How much did it cost?”

“Same answer. Not telling.”

“Spoilsport. Did you call Ralph?”

That counted as another abrupt U--turn in the conversation, with no advance warning. “I didn’t,” I said. “Not yet.”

It was also a sore spot. My friend and attorney, Ralph Ames, had helped start a privately funded and operated cold case organization called The Last Chance, a group that is patterned after the Vidocq Society. The guys who work TLC cases are retired law enforcement and forensics folks—--people who were and are, unfortunately, all too much like me.

As soon as Ralph got wind that S.H.I.T. was a thing of the past, he was all over me, trying to get me to sign on. And every time he asked, I turned him down. My recent experience with a cold case hadn’t gone well. Yes, the case got solved—-decades too late—-but a very talented homicide cop, Delilah Ainsworth, died in the process.

Ralph had been on my case about TLC, and so had Mel. The Harry I. Ball Project was completed, and my next venture into construction—-the remodel of our newly purchased fixer--upper in Bellingham—-was on hold. There was a major delay in the permitting process, which meant that everything was up in the air. Much as I despise being dragged around looking at appliances and designer plumbing and light fixtures, to say nothing of tile and backsplash materials, doing all those things was better than doing nothing. Because that was what I was up to right now, nothing, and it was driving me nuts.

I had come face--to--face with every retired cop’s worst nightmare. I had nothing—-not one thing—-to do. I don’t golf. I don’t bowl. I don’t play chess. I do, in fact, do crossword puzzles, but the older I get, the less time those take. Mel had told me on the way to the airport that she had learned, through Ralph’s wife, Mary, that his group was tackling a cold case in Portland.

“I don’t want to go to Portland to work a case,” I told her. “When you’re in Bellingham and I’m here, we’re already ninety minutes apart. Being in Portland would add three hours to that.”

The part I didn’t say aloud, although she probably suspected it all the same, was that I was still shaken by what had happened a -couple of weeks earlier when Mel’s second--in--command, Austin Manson, had gone off the rails. The man had fully expected to be handed the police chief’s job, and when the city council and city manager had settled on Mel, the assistant chief had been beyond pissed. Seething with anger and fueled by too much alcohol, he had caught Mel unawares, knocked her out, trussed her up, and tossed her in the trunk of his vehicle. He had been within minutes of dropping her off a seaside cliff when I, with the help of a cooperative tour bus driver, had managed to come to her rescue.