With that she hung up, leaving me with no clear idea of where I stood. She claimed she wasn’t speaking to me, but she had been. And the other part—the part she had left unsaid—about the reason behind her involvement with SASAC put a hole in the pit of my stomach. I had never even considered that someone as slick as Mel might have some dark corner in her past where she, too, had been gravely mistreated. If something like that had happened to her, I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear about it. Once I did, would I feel obliged to go out, track the jerk down, and throttle him with my bare hands? That would make a lot more sense than sending donations to SASAC!!!
I called Mel right back. “I know you’re still not speaking to me,” I said quickly, “but if you wanted to come back to the house and work together on Todd Hatcher’s stuff, I promise I won’t say a single word out of line.”
“I’ll think about it,” she said, “but I need some space, Beau—space and time.” She hung up again.
Rebuffed, I knew I couldn’t afford to spend the day sitting around thinking about Mel and what I did or didn’t know. I needed to do something, to take some kind of action. Twiddling my thumbs wasn’t an option when what I really wanted to do was go out and knock a few heads. So I did the next best thing. I called the DMV and ran a check on Carol and Jack Lawrence. Once I had their address information, I headed for Leavenworth, two and a half hours away, on the far side of the Cascades.
Many small used-to-be logging towns in rural Washington have drifted into almost ghost-town obscurity. Several of the burgs along Highway 2 run perpetual going-out-of-business sales in the form of retired churches, which, now devoid of parishioners, live on in a tawdry, makeshift fashion as threadbare antique malls.
Leavenworth, too, was once headed in that direction and might well have suffered the same fate had not some enterprising city fathers—and mothers, I’m sure—decided to reinvent the place. They slapped on layers of Bavarian facades, dressed everybody and his uncle in lederhosen, and declared the city a tourist attraction. Such is the magic of self-fulfilling prophecies that the ploy worked remarkably well. Now thousands of people flock there for their faux Octoberfest and for their annual Christmas-lighting ceremonies. For authenticity’s sake, it helps that Leavenworth is high enough in the mountains that this holiday extravaganza usually takes place in frigid snow, with the occasional blizzard thrown in.
If I sound somewhat churlish about all this, let me say that the one time I bravely went there is also when the “occasional” blizzard happened. That storm resulted in a combination of record snowfall in Stevens Pass and an avalanche on I-90 at Snoqualmie Pass, a one-two punch that brought most of Washington’s east-west travel to a halt. Karen and the kids and I didn’t make it back over the mountains until Tuesday afternoon, two days late for both work and school. Since this was March instead of November or December, however, I figured I was safe enough on the weather score. And since it wasn’t Christmas, there was no need for me to be brimming over with peace on earth and all that jazz—especially when it came to Mr. Jack Lawrence.
During the long solitary drive from Seattle across a still snow-bordered Stevens Pass I had plenty of time for thinking. Gradually I was able to let go of the Mel situation and turn my attention to the problem of Jack and Carol Lawrence. As I drove I realized this would probably be nothing more than a useless fishing expedition. In fact, if Lawrence hadn’t given his stepdaughter such a tough time, I probably wouldn’t have bothered trying to interview him at all. It turns out, though, that I’m a great believer in giving people like him the opportunity to reap what they sow. Besides, I found his interest in not discussing Tony Cosgrove’s decades-old disappearance most interesting.
It was late on a sunny but surprisingly chill morning when I pulled up at the Lawrences’ mailbox on Lavetta Road south of Leavenworth proper. Lavetta Road isn’t so much a road as it is a very angular circle. Maybe they should have called it Lavetta Oblong. With the help of my trusty GPS, I managed to locate the long winding driveway marked “Lawrence,” which took off from the southernmost curve of Lavetta and headed off into the forest.
The house itself was one of those some-assembly-required log cabins where someone else cuts up, notches, numbers, and fits together all the tree trunks necessary to build the house. They’re then taken apart, loaded onto a truck, and hauled to wherever the house is being built. At that point the hapless homeowner has to reassemble the pieces himself or pay someone else to do it. Since Lawrence was an engineer type, I figured he would have done the work himself.
This one was a large two-story affair with a steeply pitched roof and a covered porch that ran across the entire front of the house. A single vehicle was parked outside—a muddied Subaru Forester that seemed much the worse for wear. Out of force of habit, I jotted down the license number, then started up the walkway. In true Leavenworth fashion, the metal door knocker had been fashioned to resemble a nutcracker. I gave it a good bash and waited to see if anyone would answer.