“You and my dad were partners a long time ago,” Anne Marie said. “Mom remarried twice after Daddy died. The first guy was a loser who didn’t hang around long. The second one, Dan, was great. He died two years ago. Mom took his name, Lawson, when they married, so it’s not surprising that you wouldn’t have gotten word about her death.”
Anne Marie had given me a graceful out. Still, I couldn’t help feeling remiss, as if I had been deliberately neglectful. A part of me was glad Anna Gurkey—clearly Anne Marie was her mother’s namesake—had known about our finally solving the long cold Monica Wellington case before she died. That case was a loose end left hanging that Pickles and I had dragged around between us the whole time we worked together. Obviously, in the intervening years since Pickles’s funeral, Anna Gurkey’s life had continued just as mine had, with some good and some bad. Hers was over now, and I regretted that I hadn’t made any effort to see her before she died.
“Anyway,” Anne Marie continued, resuming her story, “I was here for several weeks while Mom was in hospice. Once she was gone, I had to go home and get caught up on things in Portland. That’s where we . . .” She paused, seemed to catch herself, before going on with the story. “That’s where I live now,” she corrected. “I just left everything in Mother’s house as is because I was at the end of my rope. I had expended every bit of energy I could muster, and I simply couldn’t face sorting through all that crap by myself. I’m an only child, you see. At the time she died, Mom was still living in the house she and Daddy bought when they first got married, the one I was raised in.
“My mother wasn’t a hoarder by any means,” Anne Marie said, rushing on, “but she didn’t throw much away. So I’ve spent all of Christmas vacation up here sorting through the house, getting ready for an estate sale that I’m planning on holding when the weather clears up in the spring. I’m on my way back to Portland now. I want to be back home before all the drunks hit the streets. The thing is, I found something down in the basement in a cedar chest that I thought you might want to see. I don’t know where you are in the city, but I’d be happy to drop it off on my way south.”
Pickles and Anna had lived at the north end of Ballard in an area called Blue Ridge. Depending on which route Anne Marie was going to take, she’d be within blocks of my Belltown Terrace condo on her way to I-5 and back out of town.
“I’m at Second and Broad,” I said. “In downtown Seattle. You’re welcome to stop by to visit.”
“I was going to head out right away,” she said. “I really don’t have much time.”
“How about at least stopping long enough for a cup of coffee, then?” I suggested.
“You’re sure it’s no trouble?”
“We have a machine. It’s just a matter of pushing the button.”
“All right then,” she agreed.
“The building has a doorman,” I told her. “Just pull up out front in the passenger loading zone. I’ll come down, meet you, guide you into the parking garage, and let you into the elevator. You can’t get into it from the garage without a key.”
Once I put down the phone, I stood up and looked around. In the old days the room would have been awash in newspapers, including at least one section folded open to the crossword puzzle page. These days I do the crosswords on my iPad. I closed it up and put it away. Then, leaving the den and my comfortable recliner behind, I went out into the living room, closing the French doors behind me.
Since all the kids had been home for the holidays, the living room and dining room were still decorated for Christmas,. My daughter, Kelly, and son-in-law, Jeremy, had come up from southern Oregon with their two kids. My son, Scott, and his wife, Cherisse, had recently moved back to Seattle from the Bay Area, so we’d had an over-the-top Christmas celebration. Because we’d hired a friend, an interior designer, to come in and do the holiday decorating, the place looked spectacular. I hoped when it came time to put the decorations away, we’d manage to fit all of them back into our storeroom down in the building’s basement.
On my way through the kitchen, I made sure the coffee machine was freshly supplied with water and beans. Then I went downstairs to the lobby to wait. I was sitting there, chatting with Bob, the doorman, when a woman in an aging Honda pulled up outside and honked. I went out through the front entrance to meet her. With the wind blowing and a driving rain falling, I was glad to have the building’s protective canopy overhead as I hurried over to the car. She opened the passenger-side window.
“I’m Beau,” I told her. “If you don’t mind, I’ll ride along and show you where to park.”
There was a pause with me standing in the rain while she heaved a stack of assorted junk from the front seat to the back. That’s what happens when you spend most of your driving time in a car all by yourself. The passenger seat morphs into a traveling storage locker.
Once Anne Marie had cleared the seat, I climbed in. By then I was wet, not quite through, but close enough. I directed her around the building on John, into the garage, and over to where the valet parking attendant stood waiting.