“Scott and Cherisse will be staying there, too,” I offered lamely. “And it’s only a couple of blocks from here.”
From Kelly’s point of view the hotel could have been on Pluto. “It’s all about Mel, isn’t it,” she raved on. “Mel this and Mel that. She’s shacked up with you there and has you completely under her thumb. Mel’s doing this because she doesn’t want to share you with anyone, not even with your granddaughter, who’s crazy about you, by the way!”
By now this amounted to the most bizarre conversation I’d ever had with my daughter—in terms of turning tables, that is. Because the truth of the matter was, having my children come stay at Belltown Terrace with Mel and me when we were obviously living in sin was a big deal—in my book, anyway. And I suspected it was in Mel’s, too. Of course I could have pointed out that Kelly and Jeremy hadn’t exactly tied the knot in a timely fashion. In actual fact, Kayla’s birthday predates her parents’ wedding anniversary by several months.
People say that there’s nothing worse than a reformed drunk, and the situation here was probably similar. Maybe now that Kelly had finished sowing her wild oats, she wanted her father to shape up and do the same. It occurred to me that Kelly’s great-grandmother, Beverly Jenssen, had been of the same opinion. DNA will out.
On the other hand, I wasn’t about to send Mel packing back to her apartment in Bellevue for the duration of the kids’ visit, either.
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I said soothingly. “I won’t be going in to work. We’ll be able to spend plenty of time together.”
“We will not!” Kelly insisted. With that, she hung up on me. I didn’t call her back. There wasn’t much point.
Mel came home a little while later. She whipped out of her work clothes, put on a jogging suit and sneakers, and dragged me with her down to the running track.
Belltown Terrace is one of the few buildings in Seattle actually constructed under an interesting, short-lived, and amazingly complicated set of residential/mixed-use zoning rules. The bottom five stories are office building. The sixth floor—including the rooftop of the office building—is a common recreation area for the taller residential structure. It includes a party room, a swimming pool and hot tub, an exercise room, as well as a sport court. Much of the outdoor rooftop area is devoted to gardens, which Mel tells me include an award-winning collection of hydrangeas. (Since I know zero about flowers and/or gardens, I more or less have to take her word for this.)
A rubber-mat-covered running track runs the full perimeter of the sixth floor—about a quarter of a mile in all. When the building was first built, this running track was supposed to be a big selling point, and maybe it still is, but what looks and sounds good on paper sometimes misses the mark when it comes to actual delivery.
What the architects and planners had failed to take into consideration was the wind-tunnel effect from nearby high-rise buildings. Even in the dead of summer you can be out on the Belltown Terrace running track with a chill gale blowing into your teeth. Since this was March and a long way from the dead of summer, it was downright frigid out there.
I’ve often said that my major form of exercise is jumping to conclusions. Mel had set out to change that. At least three times a week she dragged me, usually kicking and screaming, down to the running track, where she literally ran circles around me while I walked. (All knees are not created equal.)
Afterward, sitting in the hot tub, she leveled a blue-eyed stare in my direction.
“What’s wrong?” she said. “You’re a million miles away. Are you thinking about Beverly?”
I was sad about losing Beverly, but what was really bothering me right then was the fact that Mel’s good deed of making hotel reservations for Kelly and Scott was about to blow up in both our faces. I knew I’d have to tell Mel about the situation with Kelly eventually, but not right then. I nodded and sighed as convincingly as I could manage.
“It is sad,” Mel agreed. “Especially for Lars. Widowers often don’t fare too well when they’re left on their own.”
Which gave me something else to worry about entirely.
“How was your afternoon?” I asked in an attempt to change the subject.
Mel frowned. “More interesting than it should have been,” she said. “I started tracking down locations on those released sex offenders. I just barely scratched the surface, but already two of them are dead.”
“Dead?” I asked.
Mel nodded. “One suicide and one accident. It’s too bad I didn’t know about this over the weekend. We could have stopped off in Roseburg on the way coming or going and made some inquiries. Feet on the ground instead of phoners.”