“Rita Davenport. She runs the same catering company that served dinner tonight. She and I are both board members of SASAC. That’s how I knew to call her. Why don’t you check with the manager on party room availability. I’ll see what I can do about rounding up some food.”
Luckily, the party room was open for early Thursday afternoon. While I reserved it via the landline, Mel made arrangements for Magical Meals to provide food and beverages. In less time than I would have thought possible, Beverly Jenssen’s post-funeral reception was a done deal.
“You do good work,” I told Mel when she put the phone back down.
“Thank you,” she said, turning to give me a long, inviting kiss. “I’m actually a multitalented girl.”
And that was absolutely true.
I awakened the next morning to the smell of brewing coffee and to Mel’s voice on the telephone telling Harry I. Ball in no uncertain terms that Allen Kates or no Allen Kates, Mel was taking the day off.
“The man’s already been dead for more than a month,” she said. “If King County comes up with anything today, I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to bring me up to speed tomorrow.”
Harry Ignatius Ball was fearless, except when it comes to dealing with irate women. He’s liable to say something politically incorrect in the process, but he always capitulates. This was no exception. Harry buckled.
“Now that I’m not going in,” Mel said, handing me my coffee, “do we have a schedule?”
We didn’t, but Mel managed to organize one in short order. Scott and Cherisse were dispatched to Queen Anne Gardens to collect Lars and bring him to the Shanty on lower Queen Anne for a family breakfast. Despite the risk of occasionally running into Maxwell Cole, I’ve come to appreciate the Shanty in the past few months. It’s old enough for me to feel comfortable there, and I know Lars likes it, too. It had the added advantage of being within easy walking distance of the kids’ hotel.
I expected breakfast to be another disaster, but it wasn’t. Mel disarmed Kelly’s emotional Molotov cocktail by charming Kayla with a pocketful of stickers and by holding Kyle and cooing over him in a way that would have dumbfounded her fellow SHIT officers, Harry I. Ball included. And while Mel and I looked after the kids, Lars had everyone else’s undivided attention as he passed around Beverly Piedmont Jenssen’s treasured scrapbooks.
On that particular day, that collection of yellowed newspaper clippings served as my grandmother’s parting gift to me—and an incredible blessing. It amounted to pretty much a hard-copy LexisNexis report on the life and times of J. P. Beaumont, but this one had been done the old-fashioned way, with scissors and Elmer’s glue.
Back in the days when names meant business for local community newspapers, Beverly had culled all kinds of bits and pieces of my life from the pages of the now-defunct Ballard Dispatch. There were items about Cub Scout activities and high school athletic events, all of them carefully clipped and dated. I don’t think either of the kids had ever seen Karen’s engagement photo or our wedding announcement. (Our divorce announcement was there, too, but that was much later. Beverly wasn’t one for editing out bad news.)
Later on, the stories shifted away from the Dispatch and onto the pages of the Seattle Times and the P-I, as my career as first a Seattle PD beat cop and later as a detective took off and occasionally became newsworthy. There were secrets lurking among my grandmother’s treasures that neither of my children had ever known or suspected about their father. It turned out Beverly had managed to glean things about Kelly and Scott as well—their published birth announcements, for example. Beverly had continued keeping her loving long-distance vigil even after I had reconciled with her and my grandfather.
And at the very last, tucked into the first empty page in the most recent notebook, was the cardboard-framed hospital photo of Kyle. I’m sure Lars put it there for the simple reason that he needed to put it away. I don’t know if his choice of the notebook was deliberate or accidental, but I gave him credit for a stroke of pure genius when I saw the tearfully grateful look Kelly shot in my direction when she found it. The look was utterly priceless—and due entirely to Mel’s efforts rather than my own.
By the time we left the restaurant it was almost time to go to the funeral home.