Page 57 of Den of Iniquity

“Hey,” Mel said. “Just checking in. How’s it going?”

For starters, I told her about watching Loren Gregson eat his final meal before leaving the bar and walking to his death with no idea that a killer was lurking behind him in the darkness.

“That had to be tough to see,” Mel said.

“It was,” I agreed. “Knowing what was about to happen and being totally helpless to prevent it was awful. But just seeing that his killer was there doesn’t come close to having enough to reopen the case. The only way that’s going to happen is if I can actually ID her.”

“You’ll get there,” Mel assured me. “Look at how much you’ve managed to pull together in just a matter of days.”

“And that’s not all,” I added. “I’m also making progress on Caroline Richards.”

After that I gave Mel a brief recap of my conversations with first Marisa and finally with Caroline.

“Wow,” Mel said. “It sounds like the only reason she didn’t hang up on you was due to that powerful teddy bear connection. Who knew you’d end up working two separate cases with teddy bears front and center in both of them?”

I hadn’t thought of that, but of course Mel was right. Benjamin Weston’s teddy bear had set me on the path to solving Darius Jackson’s overdose death, and Caroline’s teddy bear, Mindy, was likely to be the key to Marisa’s yearslong search for her missing niece.

“Not just teddy bears,” I said with a laugh. “Old teddy bears.”

“And in trying to sort out Caroline Richards’s backstory, you’ve been able to locate Marisa Young’s relatives who’ve been missing for years. You’re bringing them back into her life.”

“I won’t know that for sure until if and when Caroline returns my call,” I said. “At this point I don’t know if she’ll be willing to reconnect with Marisa or even speak to her. I also don’t know if Caroline is aware that her mother is deceased.”

“That’s going to be a fun conversation,” Mel said, “and not one I’d be keen on making.”

“Me, either,” I agreed, “but while I’m waiting, I’ve queued up the footage from the mini-mart starting late in the afternoon of January 10, 2015. Going through that in real time and looking for a homeless woman with a loaded grocery cart will take hours.”

“Actually,” Mel said, “that’s exactly why I called. There’s no sense in your driving all the way home tonight only to turn around and drive right back to Seattle in the morning. Why don’t I call the Westin and book you a room for the night?”

I would have come to the same conclusion eventually, but it would have taken me a lot longer. And I wouldn’t have picked a hotel nearly as posh as the Westin.

“Good idea,” I said.

“I’ll text you the reservation info,” Mel said. “Gotta run.”

I turned back to my keyboard and monitor, located the time stamp for fourp.m., and started from there.

We usually have a big snowstorm in the Seattle area about the time kids are supposed to go back to school after Christmas vacation, and 2015 was no exception. There had still been snow next to the gutters and lining nearby sidewalks when I’d been studying the footage from the Fremont Inn. The mini-mart had gas pumpsas well as a large parking lot. Snow cleared from those areas was piled four feet deep next to the trash bins located at the back of the building. The weather looked cold and miserable, and not many people were visible, coming or going. And since days are short in wintertime Seattle, by the time the footage time stamp registered 4:15p.m., it was almost dark.

Just as I was about to give up on getting a call back from Caroline, my phone rang.

“Hello.”

“What am I supposed to call you?” Caroline Richards wanted to know.

Since I was possibly her boyfriend’s soon-to-be-former father-in-law, I could see how sorting that out might be tricky.

“Beau or J.P.,” I answered. “Either one works.”

“I told Jeremy I’m going out to get a massage,” she said. “And I am, because once the shutdown hits, no telling when I’ll be able to have another. But I can talk on my way there, so what do you have to say?”

It wasn’t exactly a cordial way to launch a conversation, but it was better than not talking at all.

“What do you know about your father?” I asked.

“Not much. My mother told me that when she got knocked up, her parents kicked her out and her boyfriend took off and left her. Even so, she wanted to keep me, and she did, although she wasn’t ever what you might call mother-of-the-year material.”

“Your parents’ story is actually a bit more complicated than that,” I told her, “and I believe that your mother most likely did the best she could under very difficult circumstances. But first, tell me about that teddy bear. I suspect that’s the only reason you agreed to talk to me.”

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