Page 54 of Den of Iniquity

That was when I realized I had blundered into an emotional minefield. Yes, we had located Marisa’s sister and niece. That was the good news. The bad news was that my call was also a death notice. No doubt the woman had resigned herself to the idea that both her missing loved ones had been dead for years, but now I was about to make that a certainty, at least as far as her sister was concerned.

“Yes, we have,” I told her, “but I’m terribly sorry to have to inform you that your sister passed away several years ago. She died of natural causes in 2016 and was buried in the Mount Olivet Cemetery in Renton, Washington.”

“Where the hell is Renton, Washington?” Marisa wanted to know.

“It’s in the Seattle area.”

“What on earth was Patricia doing in Seattle?” Marisa demanded. “That’s all the way across the country from Plainfield, New Jersey. That’s where she was the last time I saw her. And how could she die of natural causes at age thirty-nine? That seems really young unless she died of some kind of cancer.”

In that moment, the woman on the phone sounded more angry than grief-stricken, and I couldn’t fault her for that. She had spent years hoping for some kind of tearful reunion with her missing family members. This was anything but.

“I’m afraid your sister had a long history of drug abuse,” I told her. “She died of hepatitis C.”

Marisa took a moment to process that information. “Well, at least she wasn’t murdered,” she said at last. “I suppose that’s what I was expecting—that she would be found as nothing more than unidentified human remains. What about Serena? Is she dead, too?”

This time I was the one who took a breath. This was where the conversation would become much more complicated.

“No,” I said, “your niece is still alive. At the moment, she’s living in Ashland, Oregon, under the name of Caroline Richards. She’s had a number of other aliases over the years, but that’s her current one. I’m afraid she and her mother lived a pretty rough life once they came to Seattle. Your sister managed to scrabble out a living for them, but...”

“Was Patricia working the streets as a sex worker?” Marisa wanted to know.

In many circles, the wordprostituteis slowly but surely going out of favor, but Marisa was clearly prepared to hear the truth, and I gave it to her straight.

“Yes, she was,” I answered. “For at least some of that time, she and her daughter were homeless. At the time of Patricia’s death, the two of them may have been estranged. It’s possible Serena may not even be aware that her mother is deceased.”

“Estranged,” Marisa repeated. “Are you telling me Serena ran away?”

“It seems likely.”

“How old would she have been when that happened?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” I answered. “In her midteens, maybe.”

“Like mother like daughter then,” Marisa murmured with a sigh. “That’s about how old Patricia was when she took off for the second time and never came back. My parents never recovered from losing her, but tell me about Serena. Is there any chance you can put me in touch with her?”

“Before I answer that question,” I told her, “I need to let you know how I came to be involved in all this.”

“Didn’t you say you’re a private investigator?”

“Yes, I am.”

“So who hired you?”

“I’m actually working on behalf of my grandson, Kyle Cartwright. He’s eighteen and came to live with my wife and me a few weeks ago because his parents—my daughter and her husband—are divorcing, and his dad has moved his much younger pregnant girlfriend into the house.”

“And Serena’s the pregnant girlfriend?” Marisa asked faintly.

I gave Marisa Young several points for being perceptive. “Yes, she is.”

That one seemed to stop the conversation cold. “This all sounds very complicated,” Marisa said at last.

“It is, so before we go into all those details, please tell me what you can about your sister, and then I’ll share what I’ve learned so far.”

“Do you know anything about our parents?” she asked.

“Not very much,” I replied. “I believe your father was an academic of some kind.”

“Yes, a professor of philosophy at Princeton. Believe me, he was a very straitlaced individual, and so was my mother. In that regard, they were a matched pair. As for Tricia? She was a rebel from the get-go. She was a firecracker who went toe-to-toe with them at every opportunity. She was always a beauty, but she routinely got into trouble at school. She started getting into fights with both boys and girls while she was still in grade school. She began smoking, drinking, and hanging out with much older kids when she was twelve, and that only got worse over time. By the time she was in high school, she had graduated to hard drugs. The thing is, she and I were still really close back then. I knew all about everything Tricia was up to because I was the one who helped her sneak in and out of the house late at night.

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