I nodded. “That’s what we believe.”
“Did anyone else see her besides him?”
“No, but when he left the restaurant a few minutes later, that’s the last time he was seen alive.”
“How come you finally figured it out today?”
“We had to connect a bunch of dots,” I answered. “That’s what homicide detectives do—assemble all the pieces of the puzzle and then put them together. When your uncle first consulted me about your dad, we had no idea he was dead. First I contacted the authorities here in Alaska and discovered that a set of unidentified human remains, the remains of someone who’d died of homicidal violence, had been found near Eklutna Lake in 2008. That’s when I asked your Uncle Jared to provide a DNA sample. Next we had to assemble a timeline for when your father disappeared. That’s when I learned about the unidentified lady who asked him for help changing a tire. In the process we learned about the sum of money—ten thousand dollars—Roger Adams was prepared to pay Chris to leave town.”
Jimmy was clearly impressed. “Ten thousand dollars?” he asked. “That’s a lot of money. Is my grandfather rich?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” I replied. “At that point I really thought that if your father was deceased, Roger Adams had something to do with it. But then we found out about the money. At the time Shelley was living with her previous husband, Jack Loveday, in what she regarded as straitened circumstances.”
“What does that s-word mean?”
“Straitened? It means that she didn’t have much spending money. But then, a couple of weeks later in early April, just days after your father disappeared, she took a very expensive weekend trip to Vegas.”
“On the money she was supposed to give my dad?”
“I believe so.”
“If she’d given the money to him like she was supposed to, do you think my father really would have left?”
I didn’t have to give my reply to that even a moment of consideration. “No,” I answered at once. “I think he really cared about your mom, and he cared about you, too. Money or not, I don’t believe that Christopher Danielson would have left town and not taken both of you with him.”
“But if you know now that Shelley did it, how did you figure it out?”
“I’ve been working with a police detective here in Homer, a guy named Lieutenant Marvin Price. When we heard about the woman asking for help with that supposedly flat tire, we realized that whatever occurred must have happened somewhere near the restaurant. If he was murdered here in town, that meant his killer would have needed to move the body fast, before any witnesses spotted it. By then we had Shelley in our sights. Lieutenant Price ran a check on all vehicles belonging to Jack and Shelley Loveday in 2006. This afternoon we used luminol to examine one of those vehicles.”
“Luminol,” Jimmy repeated. “Isn’t that the stuff that lights up when it touches blood?”
I suppose Jimmy had seen instances of that on TV as well.
“It is,” I said, “and that’s what we found in that old Subaru of hers—bloodstains.”
Way too much, I thought. More than someone could lose and still survive. The amount of blood we’d seen in the luggage compartment indicated to me that Chris had most likely still been alive at the time he was loaded into the vehicle. That wasn’t an ugly detail I needed to share with either the boy or his mother.
After that, Jimmy fell silent for a very long time. Finally he gave a heartfelt sigh. “If you think Shelley did it, will you be able to prove it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s primarily a circumstantial case. That means a case without a lot of physical evidence, but I’m hoping we’ll be able to convince a judge and jury that she’s the culprit.”
“Good,” Jimmy pronounced. “She deserves to go to prison for that, but what about my mom? Have you told her about any of this—her or my Uncle Jared?”
“Not yet,” I said. “I should have, but I’ve been a little busy.”
“When you tell my uncle, do you think he’ll come here—to Alaska, I mean?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” I said, “especially if I called him and told him you asked for him to come.”
“Would I be able to meet him?”
“I can’t imagine that you wouldn’t,” I replied. “He only recently found out that you exist.”
At that moment Nitz entered the lobby. When she saw me, she smiled gratefully. “Thank you for being here with him,” she said.
“How’s Roger?” I asked.
She shook her head. “It was a near thing. He’s on a ventilator in the ICU. We’ll have to wait and see.”
I could tell from the concerned expression on her face that the professional nurse in Danitza Miller had somehow replaced the aggrieved daughter. Roger Adams was no longer her estranged father. He was her patient, and Nitz was going to fight for him tooth and nail.
At that point, however, she focused on the face of her son. “You look like you’ve been crying, Jimmy. Are you all right?”
The boy shook his head as his tears returned. “I’m not all right,” he blurted, racing into his mother’s arms and holding her tight. “Mr. Beaumont just told me about my dad. He says my father is dead. He thinks that woman named Shelley murdered him!”
A bewildered, slack-jawed Nitz gazed wonderingly at her son and then stared openly at me. “Is that true?” she whispered. “Chris is really gone?”
It wasn’t at all the way next-of-kin notifications are supposed to go, but the deed was done.
“I’m afraid so,” I murmured. “So sorry for your loss.”
The next thing I knew, all three of us were standing there in the ER lobby, holding each other in a group embrace, crying like babies. It was the right thing to do. Chris Danielson had been dead for twelve long years. It was high time someone grieved for him properly.
We were still in that huddle when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I loosened my grip on Nitz and Jimmy and turned to find Twinkle Winkleman, still in her grimy coveralls, standing there peering up at me.
“Sorry to interrupt,” she said.
“It’s okay,” I muttered, brushing away my own tears. “What’s up?”
“I just had a call from the FBI office in Anchorage. The resident agent in charge is requesting that I turn up there tomorrow morning to discuss my security breach at the Homer Municipal Airport. I’d like to drive there tonight rather than in the morning. It’ll still be dark, but there’ll be less traffic now than on a Monday morning.”
It occurred to me, as someone from Seattle, that what Twink regarded as traffic was far different from my version.
“I’m sorry I got you into so much hot water,” I apologized.
“You?” she said. “I didn’t see your hands on the steering wheel when I crashed through that gate. In fact, you weren’t even in the vehicle. That’s all on me, and I’m prepared to suffer the consequences. If some candy-ass agent tries to give me too much trouble, I’ll tell him to put it where the sun don’t shine.”